Daniel De La Pena did not arrive as a beginner, and he did not arrive with a portfolio either. He arrived having told a client he was a Framer expert, and then made it true.

The client who bought the expert

Figma had given him the fundamentals, and enough of them carried across that Framer never felt alien. What he did not have was a finished project. So on a first interview with a client, he said he was a Framer expert, took the job, and used it to build his first ever Framer site while knowing, as he puts it, probably just the fundamentals and the basics.

He built it to completion. It published. The client paid, and then went further than paying.

He just kept saying, oh my God, your work is amazing. I can’t wait to work with you again. And I’m going to tell everyone how a great designer you are.

He found the course about a week after handing that website over, which is its own kind of timing: proof he could do it, immediately followed by the route to doing it properly.

Thirty days

The 30 Day Challenge is where the guessing stopped. He had made animations before by clicking effects until something looked acceptable, without much idea what sat behind them.

Now it is parallax, scroll animations, scroll speed, and the understanding that there is a great deal happening behind a single effect. He also picked up the discipline that goes with it: that animation is easy to overuse, and that a website which never sits still is not better, just louder.

If I go back 29 days till now, everything’s looking way better. Everything is behaving way better.

Logic, not just clicks

The gap the course closed was not technique. It was understanding why any of it behaves the way it does, instead of the habit he describes as just putting elements down and adding a stack without knowing how it will respond.

What surprised him was scope. He had assumed Framer was limited, and specifically that the CMS was less capable than it is. His verdict now is that it is an infinite world in there.

He also rates the live calls above the recordings. Not because the videos are weak, but because a conversation is a different thing from a lesson.

Blindfolded

The ambition is fluency rather than coverage. He wants to finish the course completely, then know it well enough that building is automatic.

I want to dominate it, blindfolded.

After that: better client work, his own projects, and a career built on it. He is a long-time fan of the Framer community and does not rule out working there one day. As he says, he has work to do first.