A cross-team design system can only flourish if people from outside the systems team are properly equipped to participate and contribute to the system. These contributions can take different formats: suggestions, feedback, bug reports, proposals for new components, etc. — and you should be ready for them as soon as you kickstart your design system.…… Continue reading Be ready to accept design system help
Category: Design
Designer interview tests: should designers write?
Knowing whether a candidate is right for a role isn’t straight forward. Jobs are different, teams work differently, and assessing someone’s ability to adapt to a different set of circumstances can feel like an impossible task. I’m not particularly fond of design exercises. They can easily feel like spec work, especially when the recruiter’s expectations…… Continue reading Designer interview tests: should designers write?
What’s in a name?
As I consider a move away from having my blog separate from my namesake domain, something dawned on me: my blog is called Web Designer Notebook, but is that name still accurate? How many of us still call ourselves web designers? Recently I advised a friend looking for a new job to not only search…… Continue reading What’s in a name?
Architect’s myopia
Before I get to my main point, I must mention (once again) the phenomenal quality of the hand-picked articles that are featured on the Give Me Something To Read website, the source of the piece I will be referring to in the following lines. The article “The Architect Has No Clothes”, by Michael Mehaffy and…… Continue reading Architect’s myopia
Do designers need a personal style?
A post by Darren Hoyt caught my eye the other day (among the hundreds of unread posts on my RSS reader…) where he asked whether designers needed a personal style or not. I wrote up a quick comment at the time, but I feel the question deserves a little more discussion — specially because no-one…… Continue reading Do designers need a personal style?
The tangibility of websites, or something like that
Last night I watched Objectified, a good film about the design of everyday things. In the film, the matter of durability and sustainability in design is mentioned a lot, and that led me to think of how those ideas translate to web design. Users are not owners One of the main difference between an object…… Continue reading The tangibility of websites, or something like that
From print to web: avoiding common design mistakes
Moving from print to the web is not as easy as it may seem. I had to do it myself a few years back, so I can speak from my personal experience of the process and also from my experiences coding designs that have been created by print designers that were new to the web.…… Continue reading From print to web: avoiding common design mistakes