Pixels and Process #1 - Geeking over the good stuff (with a cup of coffee 🍵)
Articles, blog posts, podcasts, and videos that got me thinking, learning, or just made me go, “Oh, that’s cool!” 😎
No fluff - just sharing what I’ve been reading and watching over the last week. Grab a coffee🍵 and let’s geek over some good stuff.
1) How to look impressive without impressive projects or past jobs
Some designers have worked at companies like Airbnb and Nike. They have impactful projects in their portfolio. They glide into new jobs.
But what if you’re an absolute loser like me?
- Anthony Hobday
This really resonated with me. As someone who has changed careers (to Product Design) and for all those starting out in Product Design, this post is a lot of encouragement. These are some great, sure-shot but not-so-easy ways to stand out. Anthony Hobday suggests strategies such as specializing in a niche, crafting a visually appealing portfolio, designing great interactions and creating design resources among others. The idea here is to open up new opportunities by significantly boosting your perceived value as a designer.
2) Meng To - How to build your designs with Claude and Cursor AI
Meng dives into how AI tools like Claude and Cursor are changing the game for designers and are helping them build and ship products.
AI as your design buddy - Meng calls AI a “technical co-founder,” and I love that analogy. It’s not about writing the perfect prompt. It’s about collaboration, constant back-and-forth, and building something together.
Start small - He talks about breaking down projects into simple steps. Instead of asking AI to build a full-blown product, start small, and layer on complexity as you go.
Its amazing how Meng has leveraged AI tools to build a full fledged video editor and screen recorder, DreamCut.
There’s a lot more Meng talks about in this fascinating and very inspiring episode!
3) UI Collective’s Design System Playlist
Understanding how to build a Design System in Figma is invaluable. This Design System playlist by UI Collective walks you through the nitty-gritty of getting up and running with a Figma Design system. From creating colour palettes, Figma variables, typography to building complex components, this playlist has you covered.
4) Baseline #25 – Using Auto Layout in Figma
In this article, Joey Banks delves into creating responsive and robust components using Figma's Auto Layout feature.
When Joey Banks first started using Auto Layout, he recalls how he built a component using it, confident he had applied everything correctly, only to see it fall apart when used in design.
His approach today -
I first like to generate an unfinished component instance and stretch it in bizarre and unexpected ways to see what happens. If I can make this component work as expected in the strangest sizes, I’ll feel confident that it’ll work for nearly all situations.
- Joey Banks
5) Design Systems Q&A
Design System fans 🔉 assemble!
Brad Frost recently joined a Q&A session with Molly Helmuth’s Design System Bootcamp cohort, tackling a variety of insightful questions.
There’s a bunch of great questions about design systems, workflow, atomic design, the future of design systems, buy-in, designer-developer collaboration, personal development, and global design system stuff.
- Brad Frost
Here are some Q and A’s I personally loved!
Is it ever too soon to start creating a design system?
Is there such a thing as over designing a design system? If so, how can I avoid this?
What’s the biggest mistake you see teams, make when tokenizing the system?
I’ve heard some design teams only adding components to their Figma design system once they’re in code. What do you think about this workflow?
What do you believe is the most significant trend shaping the future of design systems? In what ways do you predict AI improving design systems for designers and developers?