Lessons from side projects.
What small experiments can teach us about process, constraints, and making things just for the sake of making.
Shreyansh Shrivastava
4 min read
Some of the most useful things I've learned about design didn't happen on client projects.
They happened while making things that didn't need to exist.
A landing page for an imaginary product.
A strange interaction.
A new animation.
A component built simply because the idea wouldn't leave my head.
Side projects create a different kind of freedom.
There is no perfect brief
Client work comes with goals, constraints, timelines, and expectations.
Side projects often start with none of those.
That can feel liberating, but it can also make it surprisingly difficult to begin.
Without a brief telling you what to do, you have to create your own reason for making something.
That's where experimentation becomes useful.
Follow the interesting idea
Not every experiment needs to become a product.
Sometimes the value is simply discovering something.
A motion principle.
A layout technique.
A better way to structure components.
A visual direction that eventually finds its way into another project.
The work doesn't have to be immediately useful to be valuable.
Constraints still help
Ironically, having complete freedom can make experimentation harder.
A small constraint gives the project direction.
One typeface.
Two colors.
One interaction.
One afternoon.
Constraints reduce the number of decisions and create space for better ones.
Keep making things
The biggest benefit of side projects isn't the finished work.
It's the repetition.
You make something.
You notice what doesn't work.
You try again.
Eventually, those small experiments become intuition.
And intuition is difficult to build without putting ideas into the world.
