Side projects are the signal

Most designers I know have a side project buried in a Notion doc.

Not shipped. Not shown to anyone. Just there.

That's fine. Side projects don't have to be products. But the ones that are real, shipped things, built alone and outside a team and a process, tell interviewers something a portfolio deck can't.

They show you can start without a brief. Finish without a deadline. And care about the outcome when nobody's watching.

I've been building Daygrain for over a year. A health app, solo, no team. The pace is slow. Some weeks nothing ships. But walking into a conversation and saying "here's what I built, here's what I learned" is different from walking in with case studies where twenty people were involved.

If you have something half-built: ship a version. The artifact matters less than what it signals.