Flighty is one of the best-designed apps on the App Store — a flight tracker that’s won Apple Design Awards and set the bar for what great product design can look like. Everything about it is intentional. So when I noticed that some planes were still showing up as blank white, it caught my attention.

I reached out to the team on Twitter and offered to help. No résumé. No deck. Just curiosity and a genuine love for what they were building. I had never touched Photoshop before, but I taught myself enough in a weekend to start recreating aircraft liveries pixel by pixel — obsessing over tail curves, engine paint, and alignment. I submitted a few batches. Some were accepted. Most weren’t.

This project was a turning point for me — not because it was successful, but because it was humbling.

Up to that point in my career, I’d mostly worked with engineers, marketers, and operators. I was often the only designer in the room, which meant I rarely got pushback from people who spoke the craft. Flighty changed that. For the first time, my work was being critiqued by world-class designers — people who had built systems at a level I hadn’t touched yet. They tore it apart. Not maliciously. Precisely. Pixel by pixel, they pointed out things I hadn’t even considered. And they were right.

That’s when I truly understood what it means to design for quality at scale — where “close enough” isn’t good enough, and every detail earns its place. I didn’t get invited back to do more work, but I left that experience sharper, more aware, and with a deeper respect for what great design actually demands.

It wasn’t a win. It was a milestone. The kind that shifts how you work forever.