This post is a long time coming. I've been using Notion since 2017, but it's been a slow journey to get to a point where I can say that our relationship is official. Notion is now an invaluable tool for how I operate my life, and I'm excited to walk through how I use it.My histor … | Continue reading
It's difficult to put into words just how terrible 2020 has been. It's been utterly devastating at a macro level, and at a personal level it's proven to be the most brutal year of my life, shattering me physically, mentally, and spiritually.Over 1,600,000 have died from the coron … | Continue reading
The more I author code as it will be run by the browser the easier it will be to maintain that code over timeSource: Cheating Entropy with Native Web Technologies - Jim Nielsen’s Weblog | Continue reading
The products we design are always influenced by the users’ world where they are situated. By bringing context into design systems first, before building the components which result from it, we enable teams to make more confident decisions and deliver the best outcomes for their u … | Continue reading
Fantastic article by Linzi Berry about creating a smart, accessible color system to power a design system. Source: Color within Constraints. A scalable color system for digital… | by Linzi Berry | Tap to Dismiss | Continue reading
Successful design systems are finely tuned to the organization they serve. At the beginning of every client design system engagement, we spend a great deal of time learning about our client's culture, politics, products, tools, and workflows. Sure, we'll get links to decks, GitHu … | Continue reading
I'm working on a couple themeable design systems right now, and we're architecting components to offer a white list of themeable CSS properties, so each brand can define their design language using design tokens and then pipe those through into the design system's components.Maki … | Continue reading
Hoo boy, a blog post rebounding a blog post which rebounds a blog post. Let me jump on this train!Jeremy Keith clearly articulates a concern about design systems I often hear from many designers:In that light, design systems take their place in a long history of dehumanising app … | Continue reading
Here are a few random stories from my last couple weeks of work.We have a datepicker field that has a calendar SVG icon sitting on top of the field. There was an issue where clicking the icon wasn't triggering the datepicker widget to pop up.To fix this, I first started transform … | Continue reading
There are a lot of parallels between music and web design/development. Here's how I see it:Art and scienceCall it the difference between Type A vs Type B personalities. Or Right brain vs left brain. Or whatever other split you want to come up with.On one hand, there's the discipl … | Continue reading
I had a fantastic time traveling to Amsterdam to speak at CSS Day (I was part of the + UI Special day). It was an absolutely phenomenal event and I learned a ton from all the amazing speakers.In my talk, I discuss a bunch of topics around the technical aspects of creating and mai … | Continue reading
Hey there! I wrote a book called Atomic Design that dives into this topic in more detail, which you can buy in paperback and/or ebook formats.We’re not designing pages, we’re designing systems of components.—Stephen HayAs the craft of Web design continues to evolve, we're recogni … | Continue reading
There was a fun tweet circulating around yesterday:You're working on a frontend project. You can install max. 5 dependencies. Which ones do you pick?— Kitze (@thekitze) July 19, 2019Naturally, everyone weighed in with their tools of choice, and it's of course fascinating to see w … | Continue reading
Frontend designers create the HTML, CSS, and presentational JavaScript code that powers web products' user interfaces. I see frontend design as helpful mortar that bridges the gap between design and development.Of course "frontend designer" may or may not be the right title for i … | Continue reading
I was just talking with Dave about the accessibility of moving images on the web, and he said:hm... I wonder if you could use picture + prefers-reduced-motion?He then sends the following code:
Last week I got a call from my bank regarding a wire transfer I had just scheduled. The customer support guy had me repeat everything back to him because there seemed to be a problem with the information. "Hmmmm, everything you said is right right except the last 3 digits of the … | Continue reading
Heydon Pickering published a fantastic post called Reluctant Gatekeeping: The Problem With Full Stack. I have about 3 blog post drafts covering similar ground and apparently we see very much eye-to-eye on this, so I thought it might be worthwhile to walk through Heydon’s post and … | Continue reading
A while back I upgraded my computer to a new MacBook Pro, and ran into a ton of issues with it. My post on the topic apparently found its way to Apple's engineering team, and I ended up working with them for a few months to get to the bottom of some of the software bugs I was exp … | Continue reading
After putting my daughter to bed last weekend, I crept downstairs to finally hang pegboard and organize the jumble of tools scattered around my basement. And wow, what a therapeutic, enjoyable experience that was! As I was performing this strangely cathartic chore, I thought to m … | Continue reading
Hi, I'm a web designer. I make websites for a living. I try to keep up with how things are getting done in the industry in order to continue to make websites.That means I learn new things. I'm fortunate to spend a lot of time learning about new stuff. I consult with and work with … | Continue reading
I absolutely love this article by Sarah Drasner about replacing jQuery with Vue.js. We need more articles like this. "Here's how to replace the once-new hotness with the new hotness."I've been neck-deep in React-land for a while, and I'm trying to think of how this article would … | Continue reading
I'm going to be honest: I've had a hell of a time getting my head around React. More than any other technology I've touched over the last 10 years of my career, I just haven't had it click for me. It's very frustrating as I really want to learn it, and it's clear the library has … | Continue reading
I have yet to dive deep into CSS-in-JS, but I'll admit I'm skeptical. This podcast by Chris Ferdinandi lays out a lot of the reasons why I'm a bit apprehensive.Three other observations I've noticed as I encounter CSS-in-JS in my consulting clients' work and other projects I come … | Continue reading