Open Studio #5: Laura Palmer Learned Figma on the Job and So Can You.

Open Studio is a brand new podcast about what the creative industry's actually like. For the people in it, the people near it and the people still working out whether to jump in.

Laura Palmer's toolkit looked nothing like it does now.

That's not a knock on her, it's the whole industry. In episode five of Open Studio, the senior digital designer and freelancer, who's worked with Koto, How and How, and Raw Materials, talks us through what's actually changed in digital design, and what hasn't: the fight to stay creative when everyone's looking at the same Pinterest boards.

Laura Palmer is a Shillington graduate, now a Senior Digital Designer and Freelancer with studio work behind her. Her view on where Digital Design has been, and where it's headed, comes from having lived through the shift herself.

Digital design doesn't look like it did five years ago, and Laura learned that the hard way. Picking up Figma after she'd already started her first job, not before.

• Why it matters: the tools you trained on won't be the tools you're still using in three years. That's not an edge case, it's the job.
• How to adapt: learn on the job, not just before it. Laura didn't wait to be Figma-fluent before she needed to be.
• Skip this at your peril: clinging to the software you already know instead of the software the brief actually needs.

There's a constant tension in digital design between what a designer wants to make and what a client thinks they're paying for. Laura's not interested in picking a side, she's interested in finding where they overlap.

• Why it matters: work that only satisfies the brief is forgettable. Work that only satisfies your ego doesn't get approved.
• How to find your voice: push an idea further than feels safe and see what happens. Laura's most exciting web work came from an agency that actively encouraged that.
• Real example: the projects Laura's proudest of aren't the safest ones. They're the ones where someone let the idea go further than the brief technically asked for.

Ask any designer where they get inspiration and you'll hear the same three websites. Laura thinks that's the actual problem.

• Why it matters: if everyone's inspiration board looks the same, everyone's output starts to look the same too.
• How to do it: libraries, galleries, the shop on your local high street. Real-world typography and colour don't come pre-filtered by an algorithm.
• Skip this at your peril: treating Pinterest as your only source. It's a mood board, not a personality.

• Learn tools as you need them, not before. Waiting for total fluency before you start is slower than learning on the job.
• Push past the safe version of the brief. The work you're proudest of rarely comes from playing it completely straight.
• Go find inspiration that isn't on a screen. Libraries and local shops beat another scroll through the same three sites.

Open Studio, made at Shillington. Episode 05, listen here.