TIL a senior designer told me to stop using opacity for shadows, and he was right
I was working on a landing page for a client in Austin last month, and my drop shadows were looking muddy on every screen. A guy named Mark, who's been doing UI work since the 90s, saw my file and said "opacity is a crutch, use black at 15% fill instead." I almost ignored him because I thought he was gatekeeping. But I tried it on a hero section with a product mockup, and suddenly the shadows felt clean and natural. The client even commented that the design looked "more professional" without me asking. I saved maybe 10 minutes per comp just not tweaking opacity sliders back and forth. Has anyone else had a random piece of advice from an older designer that actually made a huge difference?