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Jason Leow ~ plugins.carrd.co
Jason Leow ~ plugins.carrd.co

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Code + design + write = SUPERPOWER

Stack code, pixels and words for maximum, multiplier effect


Maker Twitter is awesome. Here’s a tweet by @jdnoc that got me excited:

If you know how to code you can help people.

If you know how to write you can influence people.

If you know how to design you can attract people.

If you know how to do all three you can build incredibly valuable things.

I never thought about it that way before, even though I’d been dabbling in all three spaces. I’d been doing design for many years now, it’s literally my day job and keeps me and my family provided for. Writing, on and off since my teens but only got more serious and regular the past few years. Coding, more recent, probably at baby stage now.

And yet I had never quite thought of stacking them together for maximum, multiplier effect. Right now the activities are mostly exclusive to each other, with writing being the most overlapping. I guess it’s the nature of the job market and how work is done – people want to hire specialists and you’re mostly only known for one thing and hired for one thing. But it makes perfect sense to stack these three skills as an indie maker, since we have to do literally everything when it comes to building, designing and marketing our products.

I should definitely seek more opportunities where I can combine all three skills. A few I can think of right now:

  • Write about my experience as I learn coding, while designing nice mini projects in public that are not just good for learning but also attractive to look at (I realised this when I was browsing Codepen – I tend to preview those that are well-designed, even if the function is small).
  • SEO-ing my products. Stunning landing pages, great writing content, combined with optimising the website with code.
  • Making great products. Designing in a user-centered way, using code as a way to address user needs and painpoints, and being able to talk/write about it in a way that resonates deeply with users.

What other opportunities are there to stack code, pixels and words?


Follow my daily writings on Lifelog, where I write about learning to code, goals, productivity, indie hacking and tech for good.

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