Better typography with text-wrap pretty | WebKit
Everything you ever wanted to know about text-wrap: pretty in CSS.
Link tags: design
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Item Flow, Part 1: A new unified concept for layout | WebKit
I really like the idea of unifying some layout values in CSS. If you’ve got any feedback, please chip in!
Elizabeth Goodspeed on why graphic designers can’t stop joking about hating their jobs
We trained people to care deeply and then funnelled them into environments that reward detachment. And the longer you stick around, the more disorienting the gap becomes – especially as you rise in seniority. You start doing less actual design and more yapping: pitching to stakeholders, writing brand strategy decks, performing taste. Less craft, more optics; less idealism, more cynicism.
Design for a Small Planet – Scott Jenson
So, let’s start with a simple premise: how can we make design less opaque and encourage teams to make small changes more efficiently? Not every product decision needs to be a big, complicated design process.
This checklist, in four parts, is meant to be a simple, lightweight way for the team to get the ‘gist’ of the issue and make a shared decision quickly. It’s a starting point, a way to get the critical information in once place so the entire team can understand and discuss. The four parts are:
- Gather: Bring the right info together into a single place
- Impact: List the size of the problem and possible risks
- Sketch: Create a preliminary sketch of a solution
- Team Huddle: Get the product team to discuss and agree on a solution.
Another uncalled-for blog post about the ethics of using AI | Clagnut by Richard Rutter
This is a really thoughtful piece by Rich, who’s got conflicted feelings about large language models in the design process. I suspect a lot of people can relate to this.
What I do know is that I find LLMs useful on occasion, but every time I use one I die a little inside.
CSS Form Control Styling Level 1
This looks like a really interesting proposal for allowing developers more control over styling inputs. Based on the work being done the customisable select element, it starts with a declaration of appearance: base.
Building WebSites With LLMS - Jim Nielsen’s Blog
And by LLMS I mean: (L)ots of (L)ittle ht(M)l page(S).
I really like this approach: using separate pages instead of in-page interactions. I remember Simon talking about how great this works, and that was a few years back, before we had view transitions.
I build separate, small HTML pages for each “interaction” I want, then I let CSS transitions take over and I get something that feels better than its JS counterpart for way less work.
Why I Like Designing in the Browser – Cloud Four
This describes how I like to work too.
This page is under construction - localghost
I see the personal website as being an antidote to the corporate, centralised web. Yeah, sure, it’s probably hosted on someone else’s computer – but it’s a piece of the web that belongs to you. If your host goes down, you can just move it somewhere else, because it’s just HTML.
Sure, it’s not going to fix democracy, or topple the online pillars of capitalism; but it’s making a political statement nonetheless. It says “I want to carve my own space on the web, away from the corporations”. I think this is a radical act. It was when I originally said this in 2022, and I mean it even more today.
Citywide – Jason Santa Maria
A fun new font from Jason:
Citywide is a sans serif family inspired by mid-1900s bus and train destination roll signs.
Monzo tone of voice
Some good—if overlong—writing advice.
- Focus on what matters to readers
- Be welcoming to everyone
- Swap formal words for normal ones
- When we have to say sorry, say it sincerely
- Watch out for jargon
- Avoid ambiguity: write in the active voice
- Use vivid words & delightful wordplay
- Make references most people would understand
- Avoid empty adjectives & marketing cliches
- Make people feel they’re in on the joke – don’t punch down
- Add a pinch of humour, not a dollop
- Smart asides, not cheap puns and cliches
- Be self-assured, but never arrogant
The hardest working font in Manhattan – Aresluna
This is absolutely wonderful!
There’s deep dives and then there’s Marcin’s deeeeeeep dives. Sit back and enjoy this wholesome detective work, all beautifully presented with lovely interactive elements.
This is what the web is for!
How Indie Devs and Small Teams Can Win in a Tech Downturn - The New Stack
In which Rich nails Clearleft’s superpower:
“Clearleft is a relatively small team, but we can achieve big results because we are nimble and extremely experienced. As strategic design partners, we have a privileged position where we can work around a large company’s politics,” Rutter said. “We need to understand those politics — and help the client staff navigate them — but we don’t need to be bound by them. We bring a thoroughly user-centered approach to our design partnership, and that can be something novel to companies. By showing them what good design looks like (not so much the interface, as the actual process of getting to really well-designed products and services), we can be disruptive within the organization and leave them in a much better place.”
Putting the ink into design thinking | Clearleft
The power of prototyping:
Most of my work is a set of disposables rather than deliverables, and I celebrate this.
I like the three questions that Chris asks himself:
- What’s the quickest, cheapest thing I can create to help make the next design decision?
- What can I create to best demonstrate the essence of the concept?
- How can I most effectively share the thinking behind the design with decision-makers?
UI Pace Layers - Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Every UI control you roll yourself is a liability. You have to design it, test it, ship it, document it, debug it, maintain it — the list goes on.
It makes you wonder why we insist on rolling (or styling) our own common UI controls so often. Perhaps we’d be better off asking: What are the fewest amount of components we have to build to deliver value to our users?
Justified Text: Better Than Expected? – Cloud Four
Some interesting experiments in web typography here.
Prescriptive and Descriptive Information Architectures | Jorge Arango
Interesting—this is exactly the same framing I used to talk about design systems a few years ago.
Dark Patterns Detective
Deceptive design meets gamification in this explanatory puzzle game (though I wish it weren’t using the problematic label “dark patterns”).
I created this interactive experience to explore the intersection of design ethics and human psychology, helping us all make more informed choices while browsing the web.
Hixie’s Natural Log: When complaints are a good sign
This is a very smart way to handle feedback about a product.