D o you know where your UI kits come from? Our latest downloadable and free kit, fitgoal, comes from Guillermo Castillo, a designer living in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
We caught up with Guillermo to talk about the kit, some of his other projects, and how he got into design in the first place. Spoiler: he’s fascinated by the impact that design can have on lots of people.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Guillermo Castillo, the designer behind fitgoal.
When designing fitgoal, was there anything in particular that inspired you, that you kept coming back to throughout the design process?
Well, front and center you can see that we have a lot of movement in the shapes that we use since it’s an exercise application. So that is the basic concept that I took for the visual design language for fitgoal: since we’re going to be moving, we have to design a moving application, and not use traditional shapes, but organic shapes.
Organic shapes invoke movement— the point of fitgoal.
Was there anything in the kit that drew inspiration from your own life?
That’s an important question because you know as designers we spend a lot of time at the computer. But, since I have been focusing a lot on the design part of my life and career I haven’t been too active physically. It’s funny though, I used to be an athlete, a baseball player.
But now I have two kids so I get to take them to the park, to school, and play with them every day. So that’s really the only exercise I get to do nowadays.
Was there anything in the kit that you really liked creating, and want to call out?
I liked designing for the different device sizes out there, and having to think through how someone might be using the app differently on each of them. What is the point of each screen, what problem are you solving for the user? How do you give them that at different sizes? I remember imagining someone working out in different places with their devices, and what might make something easier to do on a phone than on a desktop.
Guillermo’s skills have grown with a similar trajectory to the Progress graph in fitgoal.
What drew you into design?
Well, it was really trivial. At the time I liked to draw a lot and enjoyed the visual part of design. So that’s what first drew me into this career, and then I started liking the brand part, and aspects of the design process.
In the beginning, when I was working for agencies, I liked the impact that a message can have. But now that I know the world of user products I am fascinated by the impact you can have by making the lives of people better by solving lots of problems for lots of people.
