Discussing the Power of Low-Code and Design Tools with Dumeme! ⚙️
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by kirupa | Interviews with Creative People: https://www.kirupa.com/podcast/index.htm

Dumeme (https://dumemearts.webflow.io/) talks about building websites that feel alive instead of interchangeable. The conversation covers his path from graphic design into web work, why Webflow became such a powerful fit, how he learns advanced interactions by studying and rebuilding them, and why strong design judgment still matters more than any single tool.

Watch the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ
A conversation with Dumeme | 46m

ABOUT THIS CONVERSATION

This episode opens with a simple frustration that many web people share: too many sites blur together. Dumeme's work becomes the counterexample. He joins the conversation as a designer, Webflow developer, and visual artist whose portfolio stands out through motion, color, and a strong sense of personality. From the start, the interview frames low-code tools not as shortcuts, but as a way to bring ambitious ideas to life on the web.

Dumeme traces that perspective back to a creative background that started well before web design. He talks about moving from graphic design and small paid commissions into a broader creative practice that included video and animation. Web design became the next step when he wanted a more professional medium for presenting his work and reaching clients beyond his immediate circle. That transition also pushed him to raise his standards by studying the global level of work he wanted to compete with.

A big part of the discussion focuses on learning. Dumeme describes trying tools that did not match the kind of experiences he wanted to build, then leaning into Webflow once he found a better fit. He highlights tutorials, experimentation, and repeated rebuilding as the real engine of progress. Instead of treating advanced effects as magic, he breaks them apart, studies reusable examples, and adapts them to his own work. Figma, Framer, and Webflow each get a place in that workflow, with different roles depending on speed, depth, and polish.

What makes the episode useful is that it keeps one foot in craft and one foot in execution. Dumeme talks about winning clients, shaping a stronger portfolio, sketching motion before building it, and testing carefully across devices so the final result holds up outside a mockup. The broader takeaway is refreshingly grounded: low-code can dramatically speed up production, but taste, curiosity, and patience are still what turn a tool into memorable work.

WHAT YOU'LL HEAR ABOUT

- Low-code tools shine when they amplify strong design judgment.
- Studying the work you admire can quickly raise your own quality bar.
- A personal portfolio can double as both practice ground and calling card.
- Breaking apart existing interactions is a practical way to learn motion design.
- Responsiveness and polish matter as much as visual ambition.

JUMP TO A TOPIC

- 0:00 - Why so many sites look the same: Kirupa opens by contrasting generic web layouts with Dumeme's far more distinctive portfolio. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=0s)
- 3:00 - From graphic design to web work: Dumeme introduces his background in design, branding, art, and the path that led him into web projects. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=180s)
- 9:05 - Finding clients and staying visible: The discussion turns to recognition, recurring work, and how creative professionals build a sustainable pipeline. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=545s)
- 12:00 - Choosing Webflow seriously: Dumeme explains why he pushed toward web design and why Webflow became the tool that matched his goals. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=720s)
- 17:00 - Learning the hard parts: He talks through the learning curve, the role of tutorials, and why progress comes from building instead of only watching. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1020s)
- 20:37 - Where Framer and Webflow fit: This section compares the ease of getting started in Framer with the deeper control available in Webflow. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1237s)
- 23:54 - Studying cloneables and effects: Dumeme describes how he learns advanced interactions by dissecting reusable examples and adapting them to his own work. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1434s)
- 26:53 - Flash-era inspiration and motion: The conversation zooms out to older creative tools and how animation influences modern web experiences. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1613s)
- 33:00 - AI, no-code, and faster workflows: They explore how smarter tools could broaden who can build while still leaving room for individual talent. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1980s)
- 39:00 - From mockup to responsive final build: Dumeme walks through sketching motion, refining the design, and testing across devices before shipping. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2340s)

TO LEARN MORE

- Dumeme's Portfolio: https://dumemearts.webflow.io/
- Dumeme's LinkedIn: https://mogulnetworking.com/
- Dumeme's Twitter: https://twitter.com/dumemearts

TRANSCRIPT

The automatically generated captions have been organized by speaker, lightly edited for clarity, and broken into paragraphs for readability. Names and wording may still contain errors.

0:00 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=0s)

Hi everybody. Have you noticed that almost every website we visit tends to look the same? They have the same boring layout, or maybe one of four different layouts. They all have similar color schemes. They have a picture of a product, they have codes somewhere here, they have pictures of their team or people who seem happy to be using their product. They look the same. If you squint your eyes and look at these sites all side by side, there's a very good chance you'll probably not know which one is which. Well, hold on, I have to show you something.

So what I'm showing you here is the personal portfolio of a very talented designer, developer and content creator known as Dumeme, and what you can see here is it doesn't look like most sites that you've seen. There's a lot of cool visual Flair. It is interactive. The color scheme is very bold. Notice the amount of Animation you see. It's not static in any stretch of the imagination. All subtle details have a certain level of fun and playful on this to them. You can even see, for example, the colors between transition from second section have very varying visual Styles.

So, for example, my mouse cursor suddenly becomes this much larger circle with black and white highlight as we go along and there's a nice polar effect as I'm hovering over various elements. It's very nicely done. In many ways, this is very different than most of the things we see on the internet today, and it kind of takes us back to a time when websites were creative. There's a bit of personality to them. They had a flare, which often was considered part of what made Flash sites so exciting, and the interesting thing is this is not done in Flash.

This is all HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with the occasional video thrown in there to make everything look more seamless, and the interesting thing part about also is not just that, it's all just web Technologies. It's how Dumeme built the content. He built it using not a web framework, not by spending time writing code and debugging and doing the things that many of us think is the proper way to build high performance or high quality websites and applications.

He built it using the low-code, no-code, web builder, Webflow, and so I'm very fortunate to be able to chat with Dumeme and you're going to learn more about how he got started, how he processes all this information and turns his really creative ideas. It is something that is visually stunning and very, very compelling, and so I'm pretty sure you're gonna enjoy my conversation with them, and we're going to cover a bunch more topics around his process for learning new content, how he acquires clients, and many more, and so stick around, all right, remember, it's great to meet you. I had an introduction.

I showed a preview of your personal portfolio, which is probably one of the coolest things I've seen on the internet in forever, and so I definitely want to talk more about that. But before then, though, can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about you?

3:03 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=183s)

Thank you. Thank you for having me. So my name is Dumeme I'm a graphic designer, web designer, Webflow developer, and I'm also a visual art artist and I'm based in Lagos, Nigeria. You know, I've been doing this for about eight, nine years in the creative industry, so I've been doing things like General graphic design- you know, logos, branding, you know, and then I recently picked up web design because I feel I felt like, you know, at that time in my career was time to transition into something more, you know, professional, something to get, you know, my work really out there and, you know, get noticed on a global scale.

And, you know, with web design and with Webflow, that allowed me to really, you know, bring my ideas to reality in such a seamless way, you know, without having the limitations of, you know, knowing how to code and, you know, just going from your ideas directly into, you know, reality. That's the, that's the beauty about Webflow and web design. So, yeah, that's pretty much, summarized version of myself and, yeah, thank you for having me again. It's nice to nice, it's nice to talk to other Professionals in the field.

4:20 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=260s)

Oh no, I'm flattered. You consider me a professional, you know so. But you know, let's start at the beginning. You know you started off in design. So what got you interested in design in particular?

4:33 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=273s)

I would say I'd say I've been, I've kind of been designing for as long as I've known, but if I want to go into specifics, because growing up I was really artistically inclined, so I would always, you know, be drawing something or painting something or creating something. I'm, I've always been a creative at heart, so design kind of came natural to me. But I didn't take it professionally until, I think, a friend of mine, he's, he's an artist, so he wanted to drop his new single and then he was like, oh, you know, you do this art stuff. Why don't you create like an album cover for me?

And like let's see how that goes? And then I use you know the paint app that comes like every default Windows PC. So I use that. Yes, you know, I scanned the drawing that I did and then I put it into paint and then kind of manipulated it and you know we ended up with something you know decent. And then you know, from there I just like started taking on commissions, like you know little commissions here and there, like 50 dollars here, you know stuff like that, this is like just leaving high school. So like I was like, okay, this is, this is cool.

I, you know I can make like a little money on the side from doing design and then over the years I've just like kind of built on that. You know learning new software programs. You know getting into Photoshop, the Adobe Suites, getting into After Effects- so it's not just designs, I also like double into like video stuff as well. So like I Video Edit. And then you know animations as well. I did my first, very first animation like way back in 2014, I think it's. I think it's still on my YouTube channel now.

So I mean those combination of things really, you know, piqued my interest in design and like pursuing designers as a as a career, like full time and you know it's just been, it's been a journey. Ever since then you know I've been growing and you know this year is like was like the most pivotal moment in my career. You know really getting everything together like up to this point. You know all my experiences, all my you know- knowledge of design, like putting everything into. You know it's overwhelming. You know how I've been able to put all of that together in just the space of a couple of years.

And you know, yeah, I'm still growing, still learning always willing to learn.

7:01 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=421s)

Yeah, that's awesome, I mean almost. You know, you had a passion, you had interest in design and you ended up making a career out of it, which is always like the probably the best way to pull off a living. You know, in my opinion, mm-hmm, yeah, I completely agree. When you created- nice, when you created- your first content, you know, did you have an idea that you're going to be doing this for a long time? Like when you created the album, you know, for your friend album cover for your friend?

We're thinking that this is going to be what I'm going to be spending my rest of my career doing, or is it just kind of like? You know, let me just do this because my friend asked me to, and then we'll see how it goes from there?

7:37 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=457s)

I'd say, at the time I didn't really see myself doing it full time. I'd say that because I kind of had other interests. At some point I was supposed to go to architecture school, so I was more, you know, on the technical side of you know, drawings and whatnot. So I thought I was always gonna, you know, have a career in that. But you know that didn't work out and you know, I just ended up studying business. And then I ended up studying business to, you know, kind of monetize the Arts and the design stuff I was doing.

Because you know, when architecture school didn't work out, I decided to, like you know, go back to the drawing board and see what I could, you know, kind of put together and, you know, kind of have a master plan of how I wanted the next couple of years to be. And you know, from there I really started to build on that. I really started to kind of- you know, my power have have kind of like a road map of how I wanted my career to go. And I'd say, you know, over time that's what you know got me into design.

It wasn't necessarily at the first instance and you know, I keep, I like I appreciate my friend for pushing me into getting into design, you know, in the most unconventional way, but I mean, ultimately it worked out in the end. So.

9:01 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=541s)

Yeah, nice. So when it comes to, you know, Finding clients, you know, I mean, I work with designers frequently. They often mention the biggest challenge for them is getting recognized, getting clients and being able to, you know, sustain the business over a period of time. What are your tricks? You know, how do how do clients find you? Do you find them, do they find you and how do you keep recurring business, if that's a big part of how you do design work?

9:28 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=568s)

Okay, I- I don't actually answer that question in two parts, so the first part would be: I kind of see my- because I think I have like two points in my career- was my graphic design error and then, like now, like the more branding web design error. So, like, during my graphic design days, I would usually do stuff for, like, family and friends- you know people that would, you know, already know me for doing this kind of stuff- would just be like, oh, I need a logo for my business, or or, oh, I need an album art. So I'd usually do stuff like that.

And then you know, I'd get referrals, you know, from doing just doing good work. You know, if your work is good enough, it's gonna speak for itself. So I actually for a long time I really sucked at, you know, putting my stuff out there. I'll just, you know, depend on- not necessarily depend, but, like you know, as I'm finishing one person's job or you know someone's logo, like the next thing's coming, someone else is like, oh, okay, I need this, you know.

So it was mostly through referrals for the you know better half better part of the first half of my career, and then you know, nowadays it's, things I like a lot more different now. Things have kind of evolved over the years. You know, there's a lot more competition, so you know if you're offering this, someone's probably offering it at a lower price, you know. Or you know someone's doing it slightly better than you, someone's using better tools than you.

So what I kind of decided to do, especially this year, because I noticed, like earlier this year, I was trying to apply for like some jobs overseas, you know, trying to look for something more lucrative, and when I got my first couple of rejections- because you're always going to deal with, you know, criticism and rejections throughout your career- so, I kind of took like a step back and, you know, went back to that same drawing board and I was like, okay, what can I do differently? How can I stand out from the crowd?

How can I, you know, really showcase all these things I'm able to do in a cohesive way and kind of, you know, put everything together in one place, because, I remember designing my first website, like back in 2014 with Squarespace, and, you know, with the limitations of like tools like Squarespace and Wix, you know you can't really get it the way you want it to be. You're just at the mercy of the themes that you have available to you.

So I kind of took a step back and looked at the landscape, looked at my competition, kind of looked at what was being done on a global standard and I had to make sure, you know, what I was doing was going to match that standard, because that's the only way to, you know, even stand out between your peers. So that that was kind of what I did for the better part of this year. So that's when I decided to dive into Webflow.

That because I remember, you know, just watching some, some stuff on YouTube- because I'm always on YouTube and, you know, seeing some ads about Webflow- and I'm like, okay, this looks cool. You know, obviously their unique selling proposition was, oh, build these amazing sites with no-code. I'm like, yeah, yeah right, yeah sure I can build this, yeah, okay. But you know, the more I looked into it, I realized quickly that, you know, there was a whole Community like building around this thing and, like it had been something that was established for so many years.

So I decided to look into it and, ultimately, it piqued my interest and took things up from there.

12:58 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=778s)

No, that is really cool, and you mentioned that you've been learning from YouTube. Are you a self-taught designer, or did you go through formal education to learn animation, design, video editing, and so on?

13:13 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=793s)

Yeah, I would say I'm self-taught. I have a cousin who I kind of started designing with. He put me onto this application called GIMP, it's the OG, and then onto Photoshop and a couple of the Adobe tools. So we just kind of played around with those things for so many years and built some experience doing that. Because the truth about most of these tools is that if you kind of know the basics, oh the fundamentals, you kind of really know how to use anything. You know it's all based on layers, all based on you know the tools you use to. You know splice and cut things and move things around.

So if you understand the basics of how to use these applications, it's kind of going to be easier for you to be able to adapt to. You know new and emerging software. So.

14:15 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=855s)

Do you learn from articles, or is it videos or other types? Or like books?

14:23 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=863s)

I wouldn't really say I'm a book person. I hate reading, to be very honest, so I'm more of a visual person. So I'd rather, you know, yeah, I'd rather- go through 100 videos on YouTube. You know, trying to get, well, I don't, I don't like. One thing I notice about me is I don't necessarily have to go through, oh, from step one to step two. Oh, okay, how to draw a square. So like I would really just dive into the software first and just like play around and like mess around and make mistakes. And I tend to learn faster that way because you're actually doing rather than just like consuming.

You know hours and hours of content. You actually end up doing stuff and you know making the mistakes and then when you run into those mistakes, you can that. You can then go to YouTube and like, oh, how to you know create a div block, how to you know do flexbox and stuff like that. So it really allows you to learn a lot faster. So I'd say, if anyone wants to, you know kind of learn any tools, just dive in. It can get really intimidating.

At first, you know opening up the software and you're seeing so many things on screen, but once you get to play around with it, know which tools do what things. It kind of makes it easier in the long run.

15:36 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=936s)

Yeah, no, absolutely. Like. You know, tools like Photoshop, even game. They have what's traditionally known as the- the airplane cockpit effect, where you're, like you know, you're overwhelmed with like all the options there, like and the area for designs, like this tiny area, and like, figure out, like how do you make it bigger? And then start figuring out everything from there. But no, that's great. That's great that experimenting through the product and then going to other visual sources has been a great way for you to learn things as you go along.

So now you know I want you to gears a little bit and talk about Webflow and your current website. So you're using Wix, using Squarespace, and then you found that their templating and they're theming kind of limited the things that you could do, and so what was the jump from there to going into into Webflow? Did you take a step back and go: okay, maybe I need to learn this whole web development, learn web programming and all these things, or where you're like, nope, I'm just gonna go figure out the next best low-code editor that allows me to create the kind of things I need to create.

16:32 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=992s)

Okay, yeah, I'd say I kind of mess around with a bit of everything. So when I was applying for you know, positions back then I, you know, obviously needed, I knew I needed a portfolio, I knew I needed to put something together. So I kind of started out with Wix at first. I kind of skipped Squarespace because I'm like, okay, I've been there, done that. You know, it's not really my thing, not really gonna help me get where I need to be. So I started with Wix.

I actually created an entire website in Wix and then when I was done, I was like no, I hate this, I don't want to use this. This is no, this doesn't represent what I want to do, what I want to achieve. It doesn't represent my ideas, you know. So that's when, you know, I came across Webflow and then I quickly realized there was a very daunting learning curve to you know, web play. It wasn't just your usual Figma just dropping, you know it was. You needed, like to know the technical side of it. You needed to understand some HTML and CSS.

You know how Dev blocks work, how flexbox Works, you know, position sticky and all of that. So again, I, you know, went back to YouTube, went back to the Webflow university. Those are really good resources learning Webflow, especially the Webflow university, because they have, they have the best tutorials I've seen on any platform anywhere. Tutorials are amazing, amazing team, they're funny, engaging. So, you know, if you want to learn, want to learn Webflow, you know, go to the Webflow university. You know, and get get soft to have like the basic guys to get started. You know, quickly.

So I kind of use those things and you know, I basically learned by making mistakes, because I made a lot and I made so many mistakes. One of my biggest mistakes was creating the entire website and then I realized I was on the biggest breakpoint and then I needed to create this on the base breakpoint. So, like, when I went to the other breakpoints, everything was just all over the place so I had to stop. So, like, I've really my website has gone through at least seven to eight iterations and they all have different, looks different, feels different. You know it's it was crazy. It was a crazy process.

That's why, when I made the tweet that you know- oh, okay, I'm finally done with my portfolio- I put in the tweet that this took, you know six to seven months of you know making mistakes, you know learning new things, and then the crazy part was that I kind of did all of this without really having to spend anything, because with Webflow you have to do like the hosting and the in, and then you know you're being limited with the free plans to you know kind of add like custom code and like stuff like that.

But like I was using that time to like kind of find out you know loopholes on how I can you know kind of finesse doing this, and then you know, so it was a. It was really you know, trying to play around with those kind of things, and then ultimately getting the end result, which is the most important thing. Nobody needs to know how long you spent on. You know how many Blood, Sweat and Tears you put into it. But like the end result was what I was mostly focused on and, yeah, I'm glad I was able to achieve that in the end.

20:09 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1209s)

So did it take you six, seven months from going- I'm gonna try out Webflow- going through all those eight iterations and then having the website that you have currently?

20:19 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1219s)

No, I would say the current website took, let's say, four months. The other four months were me making mistakes, learning Webflow, building in Wix, and then throwing that away. I also tried Framer as well. Framer is another really good no-code tool. I think it's one of the first ones you should learn before diving into Webflow, because Framer lets you import your Figma designs and publish them right away. It's not as advanced as Webflow. It doesn't have the same integrations, or the same kinds of animations and all of that, but it's a really nice no-code tool to get started with in the no-code space.

21:07 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1267s)

Yeah, I've. I've seen a lot of demos that both framer and Webflow create and I'm always impressed by it.

And the reason what impresses me is that a lot of web developers- you know who's who I tend to work very closely with- we spend a lot of time learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, whatever framework is the flavor of the month right now, and all these things and the end result- you know the- we all enter it going like we want to create sites that look virtually stunning, that have animation, that do all these cool things, but the kind we get through the whole end of learning all those technical things, we're like, okay, I'm just building a landing page that looks just like everybody landing page, because you're completely burnt out from all the technical details and then you realize that.

Okay, everything I've learned isn't even going to translate. And I think a big reason for that- and I think why I'm a big fan of low-code, no-code tools, is that there's always a saying that you want to solve problems in the domain you're in and so solving visual tasks and animation tasks, you want to be able to solve it using direct manipulation and things.

We're actually moving things around in the way the final output might be, whereas in most professional development setups you're writing in text, you're writing an Arcane JavaScript or WebGL or you know some very abstract language that is completely decoupled from what the final output of it looks like.

If you're drawing the rectangle, but you're writing like eight lengths of code in, like using numbers, but what you really want to do is be able to draw a rectangle like you always have done in the past, and that's what I actually really enjoy about local tools, because what you have created would be, I'm going to say, either impossible to do by any one person in a reasonable period of time using a traditional web framework, or maybe someone's thinks where they're going to be like.

Okay, I'm going to start with this, but I'm going to put a video for everything out there, because there's no way I'm going to have interactive elements that are going to do what I wanted to do. So that's why you would impressed me the most about this and hearing you talk about the low-code- no-code Journey. It just further reinforces my general bias towards cool, creative things need to be done in visual tools, because that's where the real you know mapping between. I have an idea to do. I now want to create something really lives. Yeah, and so let's talk about your, the website itself.

You know so many things that are going on there which I find fascinating, like there's, there's Marquee effect, there's a cursor that's changing. How many of that required you to, you know, learn some of the more technical details to pull off and how much of it is more of just Webflow, giving you capabilities to be able to easy translate your vision into something that works in the browser.

23:35 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1415s)

I'd say it was a lot of learning from things that already exist and you know kind of making it, making it your own. What I mean by that is, you know Webflow has this community of designers and developers that create these cloneables. So I work with a lot of clonables. You know, looking for clonables that kind of represent, let's say, maybe an effect that I'm trying to achieve and then kind of Clone it, break it down and see how it was created and then you know see how I can Implement something like that into my website. So, for instance, you spoke about you know things like interactive elements.

You know Marquee effects, all those things. You can have the basic knowledge of knowing how to do one thing, but then how do you make those two things kind of work together? So that's where you have to apply. You know, I'd say common knowledge, because I don't really know how else to. You know, kind of put it's just knowing with your experience as a designer, and you know just knowing how most design tools work. So, for instance, you're doing a lot of things in Webflow that you'd normally do in things like After Effects.

So you're doing that natively in Webflow and then, and then it allows you to kind of, you know, have that full control of you know, your animations or your transitions, or your score scroll animation. So you're doing all of that natively in Webflow. You don't have to go to any other. You know. So learning that in itself is its own task. You know knowing how to animate, knowing how to you know kind of hide elements you don't want to be seen, you know, and kind of making everything work together and then at the same time you have to make everything responsive. You have to make everything Snappy.

You have to make everything you know, kind of you know, accessible, so to speak, because it's one thing for you to have all these fancy designs and then it's another thing to for it to be breaking on someone's. You know low powered PC and then you know it looks great on your, on your Mac and everything. And then you know you just have to optimize for as many devices as possible. You have to optimize how many break points.

So it's kind of it takes some level of finesse to be able to do that in such a way that everything still works, because there were so many times like things were just breaking, things were not loading in properly. So you have to just take the time back and kind of figure out: okay, how can I fix this? There were so many times, so many times all the animations on the page would just unlink themselves and then I would have to do everything all over again. So you know, there are things that can really, you know, frustrate that. That's why it can take that long.

Do you understand what I'm saying? So it's not necessarily you know building it and you know learning. It's also the mistakes, is also the you know optimization. It's also things breaking. Things are going to break a lot all the time. Things are going to break and then it's up to you to like just use your knowledge and you know resources on the internet to just, you know, kind of try and fix them. You know, yeah.

26:46 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1606s)

No, I don't envy having to create all that content, especially these days. I got my feet wet with animation using a tool called Flash from Macromedia that got bought. Did you ever use Flash, or was it maybe before your time?

27:02 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1622s)

Yeah, I. I heard about Flash. I heard about Dreamweaver. I heard about these tools like way back in the day. I never knew what they were used for. I just heard about them, you know, because I think they were a product of their time. So I think you know. In many ways, flash is like.

27:21 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1641s)

Yeah, exactly, it was definitely a product that was unique for its time, and the thing is that you know you could create anime. It's very much like After Effects, except the output would be content that ran in your browser in a vector format. It's probably the simplest way I can describe it. But back then, though, you didn't have to worry about multiple screen sizes or like mobile devices and so on.

You pretty much create a fixed size viewport content and just went there, and for people who did not, who wanted something that's more accessible and was like more friendly for other things, it created an HTML version of the site, where it's mostly just a much more bare bolts version. So oftentimes it'd see like, when you go to all those pages- and you know Archive.

Org is great to kind of go back in time like 20 years and look at how some of the big Brands you know position their content- you'd have a choice: you can view the high quality interactive Flash version of the website or you can click on the basic HTML version, and that's how people did it back then, and so nowadays, hearing what you do and seeing what others do as well, it's much more complicated because your Prime provide an experience that is tailored to the capabilities of the device that the user is on. So then, a hard machine, high bandwidth, large screens.

There's a particular look that is optimized for that. If you're on a mobile device with, you have lower bandwidth and you have to take into account variety of other things like lower processor speed and so on, they have a different version. It's all done Dynamic. There's no choices a developer makes. So I can absolutely sympathize with the amount of work you're doing, but, on the other hand, also not synthesize deeply, because we took, we copped out, we took an easy way out where we just said, nope, you're just gonna get a basic text version of all this content.

That's good enough, because you don't have, you know these kind of things. So that's all the more impressive. When he said he couldn't, you know, you started creating animations and, like, I think you know, like eight, nine years ago, what two were using for the animation. Was it After Effects? Okay so.

29:15 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1755s)

I kind of used the tools we had available at the time. I think my first proper software was something a lot of people probably won't know: Sony Vegas Pro, an editing suite made by Sony way back then. I used that to piece together my first animation, which was a rotoscoped, stop-motion animation. I drew the individual frames in Photoshop for a friend's music video, and then I put all those frames together in Sony Vegas Pro. That was my first animation, my first proper shot at something of that scale. It was really ambitious, but those were the tools I had available at the time.

I don't think things like After Effects were really in my world back then, or if they were, they were way above my pay grade at the time. So it's crazy to see how things have evolved over the years and the kinds of tools we have today. It's really nice to see.

30:37 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1837s)

No, that is awesome because I actually use Tony Vegas Pro. You know, I always liked it, even though I flash and after effects- because, yeah, it was approachable. You know, I felt like, if I want to do something that went from point A to point B and had an idea in mind that I want to do, from having an image, I found it to be one of the best tools out there for being able to do this, and so you're probably the first person to have ever spoken to that. Also, they've used 20 Vegas Pro. I never mentioned they're like, what is that Sony made?

Yeah, like, yeah, back then, they make really good design, I think. Yeah, I think it takes hands a few times and, yeah, I think that you're still good, but I think it has kind of lost its last year to, you know, webflow and so the more modern tools out there- no, that is that is really, really cool to see that, and so we wanted to make sure you do video editing and all these things.

Have you been following the trends in this whole AI, artificial intelligence, machine Learning Community where you can just type in text, prompts, you know, and you get output which could be full motion video or even like high quality images. Have you played with any of those?

31:42 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1902s)

I haven't really had the opportunity to play around with those AI generators and AI tools. I probably want to get my hands dirty with that, but I haven't really had the time to dive into that rabbit hole because there's a lot to process with it. But I've seen stuff that's made with AI, and I think it's a step in the right direction. It hasn't come to take our jobs yet, but it's kind of a proof of concept to see what's possible and how far we can take the AI technology and build on it. I see it more as a helper, a support tool, than a replacement for us.

So yeah, I'd really like to dive into that. I think Midjourney and a couple other AIs, DALL-E too, yeah, I'd like to get into all of that too.

32:55 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1975s)

And one could imagine the next step of it could be that you have AI/ML assistants that help you take your low-code knowledge one step further, which means more people are able to create things and the quality of the work will vary greatly based on their own talents.

33:10 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=1990s)

Yeah, yeah, I think if these no-code tools can get to that point, it will be amazing. I think people will do amazing things. It will make the workflow a lot faster, it will make things get pushed out a lot faster, and ultimately it's just going to make everyone a lot more productive.

33:33 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2013s)

Absolutely. Are you also following some of the work in the 3D game engine space, like Unity and Unreal and all those areas?

33:44 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2024s)

Not as much as I want to, not as much as I want to, I think, I've watched a couple of Unreal Engine 5 demos and it's amazing stuff. The nanite technology, you know, I haven't really seen what people have been able to do with that, I haven't really been been following that, but I'd really like to see how far that, especially with, AAA gaming and how, you know, the developers can really start to push that in. You know, these powerful systems we have now with the Xbox and the PS5 and whatnot, but like, in terms of like, 3D stuff, I'd say I still know the basics.

I haven't really been able to, I haven't really had the time to kind of dive into 3D, but I made sure I wanted to have some 3D elements, implemented in my website as well to kind of show my interest in that, you know, and you know, to kind of implement that as well. Webflow, again, it wasn't able to make it possible without really having any knowledge of you know how, how to you know move from 3D to web with no-code, because it literally was no-code involved in making that transition foreign.

35:05 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2105s)

Yeah, on your website you have this 3D sphere made up of many geometric points. How did you build that? Was it a 3D model you exported and were able to rotate using Webflow, or was it something you had to do in a more technical fashion?

35:22 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2122s)

Yeah, so I think I made that in Blender and kind of animated it out as a Lottie file in After Effects. I didn't want to get too technical with the 3D shapes and whatnot, because you need some code to plug that into the site, and I didn't really have the time to dive into all of that. So like with most of these things, I just worked around it to get kind of the same effect with less time spent. So yeah, they're just Lottie files.

36:10 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2170s)

Those effects are, in many ways, where you're like, oh, it's very subtle, but they're also things that really set your visual brand apart from everyone else's. After a bit of time, my biggest frustration with the web today is that everything looks the same. Everyone does the same thing from the same basic template, even though they didn't use a template. The end result is that you might as well save time and use one; everything basically looks exactly the same.

The thing I often feel like we've lost is how to create an emotional connection between the person who's viewing your content and the brand, and what you're ultimately promoting, showing off, or highlighting. That's what I really love about your website: it really has personality. The colors, the bold choice of contrast—for example, when you hover over it, the cursor actually changes to an inverse color scheme depending on the background. It's yellow and black in some cases, then black and yellow in others. Those are really nice touches that you normally don't see unless someone thought about them. So what is your process like for designing? Do you start with paper and pencils?

Do you do your sketching and ideating in Photoshop? Or do you use Webflow directly and say, you know, I'm going to do it live?

37:23 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2243s)

Yeah, I did that at first, then it didn't really work out. That was part of my mistakes phase. One thing I would say is that I always follow a process now, which is why it took me such a long time to get this done, because at first I was focused on the result and not really on the process. I was moving from point A to C and then from C to Z, so I had to take a step back. When I realized I was wasting too much time, I stepped back and started from the design. I decided to break down exactly how I wanted it to be.

So I did that in Figma, wireframed it out, sectioned out everything I wanted on the landing page, and then there was a lot of research looking at other portfolios that inspired me. I looked at things made in Webflow, saw what was possible, and started putting everything together. If something didn't work, like the way I wanted to display my product design case studies, that changed many times. I kept thinking about how to make it accessible, how to display just enough information, and how to get people inclined to click and find out more.

Finding better ways to shape the user experience is really what you have to keep in mind when you're creating something like this. Going back to the drawing board and doing all of that saved me a lot of time because, once you're done designing, the transition into Webflow becomes more seamless. Designing itself took me about a full month. After making all those mistakes in Webflow, I went back, designed everything properly, and when I was happy with the final design, I started building in Webflow. Then the transition was much smoother. You can kind of pixel-peep and create it the way you want it to be.

You don't have to keep thinking, oh, I want to change this, because you can always go back to Figma and do that. So I was doing it the wrong way at first in Webflow. Since it's obviously not drag and drop, it's not as easy to just move things around. I'd say having that process is really important. It's going to save you so much time. Don't feel like you need to skip anything, because you're probably going to have to come back and do that thing anyway. That's the truth.

39:59 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2399s)

With Figma, you have a lot of visual transitions and animations and so on. How were you able to think about, or at least sketch out, what those might look like? Figma gives you a good static wireframe, but how do you bridge the gap between the static design and the movement before you go into Webflow? Or were you just using Webflow directly to experiment with that?

40:20 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2420s)

Okay, so I'd say I kind of had the ideas in my head and just put them into a static mode in Figma. I'd have the idea in my head and display it in a way that I could always reference it. Like, okay, this is how it's going to look, but I know this element is going to move, I know this is going to do that, so I sort of map that out in my head. I'm the client, so I already know how I want it to be.

I don't really need to spend all the time prototyping in Figma when I can just start building, because I already know what I want it to look like and how I want the animation to move. For instance, when you get to the featured projects and see elements rotating with the scroll animations, I already had that in mind. I knew I wanted one thing to rotate and another to rotate in the opposite direction. Figma is static, but in my head I know exactly how I want it to be. That's how I worked.

But if I'm working for a client, then I definitely have to find a way to present that visually to them, because they're not in my head. I can only do so much by explaining it. Putting it into a visual form gives them the perspective and at least a rough idea of how it's going to be.

41:46 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2506s)

Yeah, you mentioned that you were your own client at one point. Did you ask for feedback or run it by a few people before you did it, or was it more a case of you designed it, liked it, and just went ahead with it?

42:00 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2520s)

Yeah, I think the latter, because it's really personal. I felt like getting feedback on something so personal wasn't really going to do much because, at the end of the day, I'm going to do what I feel really represents me and puts my beliefs and ideas out in the open. Nobody is going to do that better than the person designing it. So yeah, that's why I said I was my own client, because everything that goes into a personal portfolio like that is really coming from you. But I'm not against feedback, don't get me wrong.

I just felt like I'd be wasting more time getting feedback on things I probably wasn't going to change. But it's always important to get feedback from a technical standpoint. That's why I did a lot of testing. I made sure I tested on different devices so everything was optimized and it wouldn't be a problem of, oh, it's not responsive, it's breaking. I'd rather have that problem than have the design itself be the problem, because I feel like design is really subjective. Some people might see it and it just won't be their thing. They might say there are too many animations, or ask why there are so many vibrant colors.

It's really subjective, and I felt like whoever was going to appreciate it would appreciate it, so I just went with that.

43:40 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2620s)

Nice. Essentially, it's an autobiography in visual form. That is all you, and for that, asking people for feedback on it doesn't really apply, which is great to hear. So what has the feedback been like? What have people been saying? I've made it very openly clear that I love the site. What are the other kinds of things you've been hearing?

44:00 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2640s)

It's been amazing. It's been amazing. I didn't think it would go the way it did because, prior to that, I'd been spending so much time working on it that I really hadn't been on social media much. I hadn't tweeted in a while, and when I did tweet, I usually didn't get that much engagement because I wasn't tweeting about anything really design-related. So the feedback has been amazing. The tweet did astronomically better than I thought it was going to, and that really opened a lot of doors for me. I'm so grateful. People appreciating how much work, blood, sweat, and tears went into it brings a real sense of fulfillment.

Once you've put in that much work and you're confident in it, I feel like everything that follows, you probably deserve that.

44:59 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2699s)

Yeah, I think that's great to hear, and congratulations on all the success you've received. I don't think there's a better way to end our conversation than on that note. Thank you so much for taking the time to walk through your process, how you got started with design, how you built your personal portfolio, and all the interesting things in between, from how you prototype to how you find clients. So thanks again.

45:26 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2726s)

Yeah, thank you for having me. And for getting clients, I just want to quickly add something I think I forgot in my initial point. For getting clients and putting your work out there, I'd say Twitter and LinkedIn are really important on a professional level. Twitter is such an amazing tool for getting things out in front of people. You never know who's on Twitter or who's looking at that stuff, and LinkedIn matters as well. Just put your stuff out there. I've struggled with that for so long, and once I finally took the plunge, it's paying off. So I'd say that as well. But yeah, thank you for having me.

This has been an amazing chat. It's definitely out of my comfort zone, but I'm glad I did it anyway. I hope we can build some sort of meaningful relationship out of this and, you know, help the community.

46:17 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2777s)

Sounds like a plan to me. I definitely want to have you on again the next time you create something like this, and talk more about how you've grown as a designer and as a technical person, and anything interesting you've learned since starting down this path with Webflow. It's a long-term journey. Like I said, I've been doing this since 1998, since I was in middle school. I'm still doing it because I really enjoy it, and that's been true for more than 20 years, which is basically a lifetime on the internet.

So I'm looking forward to chatting about this 20 years from now as well, and hopefully that won't be the second and last time. All right, I'll talk to you in a bit.

46:51 - Dumeme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVtLub42UUQ&t=2811s)

Thank you again. All right, cheers, take care.


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