Meet "The Webflow Guy" : Corey Moen
Give us a snippet of your story, how did you get to where you are now? What’s your general background?
I found design way back in high school, thinking it was a path to learn how to design video games (which I dearly loved back then), and it ended up being something I enjoyed so much that it made time fly by while Designing. I ended up pursuing Design in college, then fell in love with designing and building for the web, which has been the inspiration behind my career path to date.
What is “Precious” to you?
Time is the most precious aspect of every project and tool that gets me fired up across my career today are those that help me make the most of my time — the most impact, growth, and balance of the time I spend with my collaborators and family.
You've earned the nickname "The Webflow Guy" - could you share what Webflow entails and what drives your passion for it?
Webflow is a visual development tool that allows Designers and Developers to build websites using the same concepts of code, but in a visual interface similar to design tools like Illustrator, Figma, etc.
Before I found Webflow, I worked on teams utilizing a more traditional workflow where we would design websites statically, then pass them along to a Developer to make them "real" with code. I found myself constantly frustrated with that workflow though as it typically comes with a lot of back and forth, confusion, and lower quality results when design and development teams can’t closely align. With Webflow, I am able to do both the design and development in a way that aligns more closely to my personal preference for visual thinking, while outputting clean, semantic, performant websites that can outperform many traditionally coded approaches.
Today, my passion for Webflow is even more fueled by the impact I have personally witnessed it can have on others lives who go all-in on learning and freelancing with the tool. I have met and mentored several people I have met through the Webflow community that have left entirely different careers to pursue freelance Webflow development and now earn far more than ever before, while enjoying the freedom of independent work.
How do you foresee the future of Webflow evolving in the Midwest, particularly in Iowa?
I am excited to see more agencies and companies across the midwest try modern tools like Webflow to ultimately save time and produce higher quality sites. I can see this coming to life through a natural progression of more people learning about the latest tools in web design and development, and all it takes is trying them to realize the benefits and transformation they can have for their businesses.
As someone with experience in both design and front-end development, how do you approach bridging the gap between creative vision and technical execution?
I have found no end to the benefits of getting closer to the medium you create for, in my case being first a web designer that is eager to learn more about how the web I am designing for actually works! Through using tools like Webflow that still have a learning curve, but are much easier to learn then scratch coding, I have been able to learn more about how the web works over the years and it's not only grown the skills and services I can offer to teams/clients, but it also improves my web design skills as well due to a higher efficiency of designing things I also know how to then develop.
What sparked your motivation to create No-Code Supply Co.?
No-Code Supply Co. was first inspired by a place where I wanted to curate amazing sites that others built with Webflow as a directory I could then privately share with collaborators and clients to show the power of what has/can be done with Webflow. From there, it also became a way for me to store things like tools, code snippets, articles, and that I thought would be useful to quickly reference later.
The content started out in a few private Notion databases, but in 2022 I decided it could make for an interesting public directory that others may find useful as well and started building the site which launched in January 2023. At first, I thought it may be odd to have several different types of content (inspiration, code snippets, resources, tools, etc.) all in one directory, but then realized I typically reference all of those types of content for nearly every client project I work on so it could make sense to then curate them all together as well.
Today, I continue to curate new items on NCSC daily, and collaborate alongside another Precious member, Max Lind, to grow NCSC along other avenues of features and curation.
What emerging trends or technologies in the design industry are you most excited about?
It's cliche at the moment, but AI is so exciting and I feel we are still so barely starting to feel the true impact it will have on nearly every industry in the future. AI has already had a profound impact on parts of my own workflow like idea generation, writing, and most critically with writing code faster and more technically then I ever have been able to before.
"I truly don’t have any secret to it and simply love what I do for a living, so I can’t wait to tell the world about it."
For those fortunate enough to have crossed paths with you, your vibrant energy, positivity, and passion are unmistakable. What's your secret to sustaining such vitality, especially while balancing work and life?
I truly don’t have any secret to it and simply love what I do for a living, so I can’t wait to tell the world about it. My passion is also often fueled by being deeply grateful that I can provide for my family through pushing pixels and writing code to create things that bring real value to others.
More recently, I have also found a love for side projects like No-Code Supply Co. that sit within the space I love (design and development), and which have also opened up more opportunities for me to share things I have learned and teach others.
It’s a known fact that you’re a car guy, tell us more about what ignited that interest.
I was raised around cars, boats, snowmobiles, and many other things that make noise and go fast so it's in my blood. I have always been fascinated by the combination of aesthetics, engineering, and technology that goes into things like this — in a way, it overlaps with my love for design (aesthetics) and development (engineering) too!
Today, I also enjoying sharing that passion with my son, Otto, as he loves helping me work on our old ski boat, or regular maintenance on the cars.
Lastly, what advice would you give to aspiring designers who are looking to build a successful career in the design industry, especially in the realms of UX design and front-end development?
Design and development are not skills of fact (“I did X, now I’m a Designer”) — they are skills of fitness. Learn the fundamentals, then put in the reps every week to stay in shape and become more and more fit in time.
The longer I have been in this industry (12+ years now) the more I realize just how true this is. I once thought that I would eventually get to some tenure as a Designer that it was smooth sailing from there, but the reality is there is always something new to learn, and just coming back to keep jamming everyday will keep you on that continuous path of growth.
I am always eager to learn from others in the industry (new or seasoned!) so feel free to reach out on X (@CoreyGMoen) or via email (hello@coreymoen.com).