# Practice methods - how Kennedy trains the eye

Digested from Erik D. Kennedy, [5 Practical Exercises to Learn UI Design (For Free)](https://www.learnui.design/blog/5-practical-exercises-learn-ui-design-free.html) and rule 7 of [7 Rules Part 2](https://www.learnui.design/blog/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeous-ui-part-2.html). Paraphrased in our vocabulary.

## The five exercises

1. **Analyze.** Weekly: pick 5 good and 1–2 bad interfaces and *articulate why*. Every reason you can name becomes a technique you own forever.
2. **Copywork.** Recreate an excellent design pixel-for-pixel; every decision the original made, you must remake, which surfaces the invisible ones. Write down each technique discovered.
3. **Fonts database.** Keep a living record of fonts you like - character, uses, pricing, screenshots - so font choice becomes lookup, not paralysis.
4. **Style tiles.** Quick, loose compositions of type + palette + imagery + components; speed matters, because learning rate = speed of the think→make→judge loop.
5. **Personal project mockups.** 1–3 screens of something you care about - the low-stakes arena where the other four exercises combine.

**The meta-rule: 90% production, 10% consumption** - ten minutes making per minute reading.

## Steal like an artist

Mimic the best until mimicry is easy, then diverge. Sources he rates: Dribbble (curated eye candy), Mobbin (300k+ real app screens, filterable by UX pattern), Layers. Style emerges from craft, never before it (his Paul Graham quote: just make good things and the distinctiveness follows).

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## Delta vs our system

**CONFIRMS**
- **"Reference implementations audited to 0 violations" = his copywork logic.** Our system doc's exemplar pages (Cuba tower, Jamaica tower, marketplace v2) play exactly the role of his copywork corpus: learn by inhabiting a verified artifact.
- **Style emerges from craft** matches our stance that the system doc, not taste talk, produces the look.
- **90% production** is how this workspace already operates - screens first, artifacts over narratives (`screens-first-design`).

**ADDS**
- **The adversarial analysis habit as a scheduled practice.** Our typography diagnosis of 2026-07-03 was exactly exercise 1 - done once. Kennedy makes it a cadence: periodically pick one shipped page and one admired external page and articulate the differences.
- **Mobbin as a pattern reference** - when designing an unfamiliar screen type (login, wizard, profile), look at 20 real implementations before inventing.
- **The fonts database idea** - for us, a small `fonts.md` ledger of faces we've validated per brand/country would end repeated deliberation.

**TENSION**
- None. This file is method, not rules; it explains how the rest of the shelf was earned.