I recently shared that I was diagnosed with ADHD. I write these words 12 days into medication and holy shit I feel totally transformed. The stuck, scrambly feelings and frustration have nearly evaporated. I am firing on all cylinders, which […] | Continue reading
I woke up this morning, took a pill, and proceeded to have one of the most productive writing days I’ve had in perhaps years. The day prior, a doctor diagnosed me with Adult ADHD. I finally drew the unfortunate trauma […] | Continue reading
I recently had the pleasure of doing a Q&A session with Molly Helmuth’s Design System Bootcamp cohort. The questions were great and varied, so I asked Molly if she’d be alright if I shared my answers with you all. Thankfully, […] | Continue reading
I am the programming equivalent of a home cook. The exhortation “learn to code” has its foundations in market value. “Learn to code” is suggested as a way up, a way out. “Learn to code” offers economic leverage, professional transformation. “Learn to […] | Continue reading
Museum of Modern Fart. This is what the internet was always for. | Continue reading
I made this sign to try to capture how I’m feeling about everything right now. | Continue reading
The great and kind Tim Brown has made his Flexible Typesetting A Book Apart book available for free. | Continue reading
Here’s how you can find and follow me: It’s difficult to express just how important and meaningful Twitter was to my life and career. I’m sad to leave it behind, but I have to now. It was always fun when […] | Continue reading
At Big Medium, we’re fans of Web Components, and over the last 6 years have been helping our clients build standards-based, interoperable, design systems with them. The ability to deliver a consistent, cohesive experience to a any web-based technology perfectly […] | Continue reading
Mundango is a simple game by Dave Rupert about noticing the small things in life. More of this please. | Continue reading
Here’s Ian’s recap of Frostapalooza. Folks didn’t just show up, but everyone was so kind and encouraging. It was never about them, it was about the show and how we could make it as fantastic as possible. The guitarists were […] | Continue reading
Cameron’s World is a web-collage of text and images excavated from the buried neighbourhoods of archived GeoCities pages (1994–2009). Holy shit this is amazing: Cameron’s World | Continue reading
Every problem at every company I’ve ever worked at eventually boils down to “please dear god can we just hire people who know how to write HTML and CSS.” This UX is awful? That UI looks old? Accessibility busted? Performance […] | Continue reading
When design system users run into issues designing and developing with the system, they often have a hard time distinguishing between a bug, a missing feature, an intentional design deviation, a new pattern they need to create, or something else. […] | Continue reading
Well this is just a really nice piece of flattery, and a nice breakdown of my design system masterclass I delivered at HATCH Conference in Berlin last year. I truly enjoy teaching masterclasses, running workshops, and working with teams to […] | Continue reading
When you don’t hear from teams using your design system, we’ve learned over the years that it’s typically not a sign of “everything is going great” but “something is probably wrong.” We teach our client teams to be very skeptical […] | Continue reading
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be playing bass as part of the Pittsburgh Plays concert series on December 14th at The Roxian Theatre. From Pittsburgh Play’s website: Pittsburgh Plays is a semi-annual event that offers music lovers of all […] | Continue reading
You should buy Approachable Open Source by Brian Muenzenmeyer. If you written code before, you should buy this book. If you’ve ever spent any time on GitHub, you should buy this book. If you care about the web, you should […] | Continue reading
Now available! We offer private workshops to teach product and design teams to imagine, design, and deliver AI-powered features and products. It’s all backed by Big Medium’s Sentient Design methodology, a practical framework for designing intelligent interfaces that are radically … | Continue reading
I’m extremely excited to be a part of Smashing Conf NYC coming up on October 7-10. I’ll be: If you’re in NYC or able to make it there, I hope you’re able to make it! | Continue reading
I’ve spent pretty much my entire career helping teams design software rather than pictures of software. Development is design. Frontend design. Front-of-front-end code. Front-end workshop environments. Death to the waterfall. The Hot Potato process. Designer/developer collaborati … | Continue reading
Web Components are great for building Design Systems that need to work across multiple frameworks. If you’ve been working in framework-land for quite some time now, you may find some topics confusing at first. Web Components for Framework Developers by […] | Continue reading
I came across this great post by my friend Cameron Moll on LinkedIn. He says: Telling designers they shouldn’t use high-fidelity designs early in the exploration process can be the equivalent of telling an artist they shouldn’t use paint and […] | Continue reading
Source: Popcorn Style – Meetings that make you smile. There’s so much greatness on display here. Popcorn Style is a tool for running standups in a way more efficient and fun way! Here’s why I love it: Respect: we need […] | Continue reading
This by Matt Webb is easily one of the coolest and most creative bits of web design I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a fantastic reminder that there’s still so much room to explore and innovate on the web. […] | Continue reading
Here’s a great recap of Frostapalooza over on CSS Tricks by Ryan Trimble. CSS Tricks for me always was the Rolling Stone magazine of web design, so it’s great to get a concert review in Rolling Stone :). | Continue reading
FIFTEEN YEARS. That’s how long Melissa and I have been married! And holy shit, what a ride. To say our life together has been an adventure is a supreme understatement. We’ve traveled to over 30 countries across 6 continents, climbed […] | Continue reading
One of the best things about roping a bunch of prolific web bloggers into my show is that I get to read their take afterwards. Here’s Chris’s recap of Frostapalooza, written as only Chris could. The way Brad envisioned it, […] | Continue reading
Raw-dogging websites: index.html, styles.css, script.js. No frameworks, no CMSes, no build steps, no nuthin’. Sure, you can call it a static site, but even those tend to be compiled by sophisticated tooling behind the scenes. And also, c’mon, gotta get […] | Continue reading
After over a year of planning, Frostapalooza finally took place on Saturday night at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Pittsburgh. It’s going to take me a really long time to process what transpired and to find the words to properly describe […] | Continue reading
Just over here sobbing while reading Jeremy’s recount of Frostapalooza. In fact, the tentative plans we had to travel to the States in April of 2024 for the total solar eclipse ended up getting scrapped in favour of Brad’s shindig. […] | Continue reading
TL;DR: You can submit your Codepen animations to be considered for display at Frostapalooza! Holy smokes, Frostapalooza is happening next Saturday! We’re about to find out what happens when you give 40 musicians a whole year to plan one night […] | Continue reading
Well, holy shit, I’m 40! How do I feel, you ask? Great! Better than great. Fantastic even. Life’s a wild ride; I’ve had many many many utterly amazing experiences as well as some really truly capital-S Shitty experiences. After it’s […] | Continue reading
This is so great!: The Design Better Podcast is doing a Frostapalooza ticket giveaway! You may have been a part of our recent AMA with Brad Frost, where we learned that he’s hosting a benefit concert this summer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania […] | Continue reading
That one weird trick? TALK. What do you do when someone doesn’t see what component they’re looking for in the design system? TALK. What do you do when someone has questions about what a component does, if it meets their […] | Continue reading
HOLY SHIT! Frostapalooza is happening in exactly one month! I’d really, really, really, truly love for you to come to this one-of-a-kind, one-night-only concert fandango happening on August 17th in Pittsburgh. Here’s 40 reasons why you should come: Sounds pretty […] | Continue reading
🎸 I had a fantastic conversation with Guy Segal on the Design Downtime podcast about my love of playing music. We talked about: My musical background The beauty and role of the bass guitar The importance of having hobbies for […] | Continue reading
If you feel like you’re struggling to keep up with the pace of technological change, you’re certainly not alone. We feel this pressure at an individual level, but also at an organizational level. How do digital organizations establish solid, stable […] | Continue reading
Sidebar is taking a break. 😭 Ah man, this makes me so sad. Sidebar has been my number 1 way to keep up to speed with the web, design, and beyond for the last decade. I love it so much. […] | Continue reading
text-decoration-offset is a good use case for em units. Most of the time we favor rems over ems, but in this case we want the text underline offset to proportionally scale with the `font-size` property. Here’s a quick demo: See […] | Continue reading
This is an absolute must-read/watch for any designer or design leader navigating this wild new AI world. Josh Clark is second to none at demystifying this new crop of technologies, demonstrating how to wield AI as a design material, and […] | Continue reading
One day I’ll fulfill my dream of throwing my phone into the ocean*, but for now I’m settling for throwing my phone in my basement. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt articulates how the potent combination of smartphones and social […] | Continue reading
One of my all-time favorite albums. Fantastic to listen to all of the source material. This video catalogs every borrowed sample from Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys, from the soundtrack to Car Wash to the Sugarhill Gang to the […] | Continue reading
The age of average (encore) by Alex Murrell is a wild analysis of how the technology landscape has changed the shape of music. “Media has always shaped music,” the author states, (David Byrne’s How Music Works is a wonderful book […] | Continue reading
The Code & Pixels podcast is A podcast about turning pixels into code. hosted by Adekunle Oduye & Kelly Harrop. I’m excited to dig into this as there aren’t a ton of resources specific to us front-of-the-front-end developers. | Continue reading
What I love, more than anything, is the quality that makes AI such a disaster: If it sees a space, it will fill it—with nonsense, with imagined fact, with links to fake websites. It possesses an absolute willingness to spout […] | Continue reading
You Want border-color: transparent, Not border: none by Dave is a great reminder to not remove borders from components for accessibility reasons, especially to better support high contrast mode. border-color: transparent comes in handy for other use cases as well. […] | Continue reading
Our family was raised on The Weather Channel. So much so that Ian became a meteorologist. So this video that steps through the Local on the 8s over the years gives me all the nostalgic feels. | Continue reading