Jacob Knights

I took the Squarespace Design Course with my business partner because we didn't know what we didn't know, so we wanted someone to test our ability using Squarespace as a design platform and this course does that. We also run a Squarespace design company but were not entirely confident in our ability to run a web design business so we wanted to get some formal training around how to run a website design as a business process and how to manage client onboarding and offboarding without making it super corporate and complicated.

Section 3 where we designed our custom site was the section we learned the most. We were pretty happy with our ability as designers to recreate sites like we did in Section 1 and 2 but when we hit Section 3, we had a bit of internal struggle with what we thought looked good and what we thought a site in this 'industry' should look like. We went with what it 'should' look like. Then the design feedback from Puno almost ended up being exactly the original gut design we had come up with and that gave us confidence that we should trust our design instincts a little bit more because they were right the first time around.

We loved being able to ask other professional designers for feedback in the Discord and course work. This industry can be really siloed but being able to reach out to designers who are at your expertise level or are already commercially successful and having them willing to chuck in their two cents is invaluable.

Advice to anyone thinking about taking the course is actually fill out the workbook! Track your time properly! It is so handy when trying to quote projects. Go through the course at a sustained pace. Doing 2 sections in a month and then 1 section in 9 months doesn't feel very cash money!

We 100% have a better direction for where our business should go and how we want it to run. This course forces you to put a lot of stuff down on paper and by doing that you can see the failing points in it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and doing the workbook exposes your ideas to sunlight. There is so much BS on the internet about how you SHOULD run a web design business and it's nice to have it reinforced that you can make it what you want. You don't have to jump on Upwork or charge your friends and family exorbitant amounts even if you feel guilty. It's your business and clients are there for YOU!