Posts in ‘post’ Category

Like everyone else, the tragic wildfires ravaging Los Angeles area make our hearts ache. We feel for all of our friends, industry pals, and everyone who has been impacted by the fires. LA-based design systems extraordinaire Elyse Holladay has been […]

I could do a deep dive into the UX of login codes, but I’ll do my best to keep it short. If your product texts/emails login codes, the experience better be amazing. Bad Better Best The best experience is for […]

I just got a Squire Bass VI, an instrument I didn’t know existed until developer/musician Tim Hilton mentioned it to me in a LinkedIn message (of all places!). I had a few holiday/birthday gift cards to my favorite local music […]

I wore my Olukai Mahana slippers all day every day for 3 years. They finally got beat up enough that when my family asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said that I’d welcome a new pair of slippers. […]

In addition to stuffing our faces with cookies, Ian and I were hard at work over the holidays creating our design tokens course. I’m freaking thrilled that we published 2 hours of preorder-exclusive video content, shared several dozen links, and included […]

Frostapalooza was a one-of-a-kind concert and an unabashed celebration of love, joy, fun, music, creativity, and positivity. It was an excuse to celebrate our talents and collective human potential. It was a reminder to myself, my friends, my family, and […]

BIG NEWS! We’re hard at work making an online course called Subatomic: The Complete Guide To Design Tokens. Over the past decade, Ian Frost and I have created design token systems for dozens of organizations — including some of the […]

FRIENDS! FAMILY! COUNTRYMEN! On Saturday, December 14th I’ll be performing as part of Pittsburgh Plays The Cure at the beautiful Roxian Theatre. Several super groups comprised of Pittsburgh-based musicians will be playing a whole night of music by The Cure. […]

ULTRA PROUD DAD MOMENT: Ella made her first website! Melissa and I woke up on Saturday morning to our goofy 6-year-old daughter entering our bedroom making this obnoxious sound. It was impressively annoying, especially considering she hasn’t seen Dumb and […]

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 […]

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 ADHD. I finally drew the unfortunate trauma diagram […]

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, […]

I made this sign to try to capture how I’m feeling about everything right now.

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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!

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 collaboration. Pattern Lab. I’ve shared […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]