Search Results for ‘atomic design’
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29 Aug, 2018
Thinking About React, Atomically
React, at its core, follows Atomic Design inherently by encouraging developers to keep components as simple and as broken down as possible. From this simplicity, we can create more complex components and containers of components to create the user interfaces […]
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24 Aug, 2018
Designer+Developer Workflow: Head-Down Work
Following up on the video Dan and I recorded that shows how we collaborate as designer and developer, I recorded a video of me doing a bit of head-down development work. Dan and I mention in our first video that […]
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10 Aug, 2018
Designer + Developer Workflow
I’ve had the extreme privilege of collaborating on a bunch of projects with my friend Dan Mall (@danmall) over the last five and a half years. Dan is a designer. I’m a developer. And together, we’ve been refining our process to […]
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01 Jun, 2018
Encouraging Play in Design Systems
Here’s Tyler Sticka with a great article about how important it is for a UI design system to continue to evolve and improve over time. You can’t just get things built and then say, “That’s it! Things must stay this […]
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02 Apr, 2018
Creating Themeable Design Systems
TL;DR: Design systems + CSS Zen Garden = Awesome. Is it possible to create a single design system that powers wildly different-looking brands and experiences? The answer is yes! But why would you want to? Different audiences and contexts – […]
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12 Feb, 2018
Your Sketch library is not a design system redux
I wrote a post where I talk about how a set of components living inside static design tools like Sketch isn’t itself a design system. Pardon my clickbait. Perhaps a better title would have been “Your Sketch library is not a(n […]
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07 Feb, 2018
Design Systems: Why Snowflakes Are Counterintuitively Integral
This great post by Mike Rivera discusses handling snowflake patterns in a design system in a way that keeps product teams productive yet also maintains the integrity of the system. He describes the possible outcomes for a snowflake: Debate over whether or […]
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02 Feb, 2018
Your Sketch library is not a design system
You can write words explaining how to properly use a toaster, draw pictures of toasters, and even create more efficient ways to draw pictures of toasters. But at the end of the day, if you don’t have a functioning toaster, […]
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25 Jan, 2018
Style Guide-Driven Design Systems
There are many facets of a design system initiative, so it can be extremely daunting to figure out where to begin. There are stakeholders to educate, tools to choose, principles to establish, frontend guidelines to settle on, components to build, tokens to […]
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19 Nov, 2017
Inside design systems with Brad Frost, Jina Anne, and Marco Suarez
I had a great time chatting about design systems with Aarron Walter, Jina Anne, and Marco Suarez. We covered a lot of ground, from what exactly is a design system, how they help, interface inventories, design tokens, making patterns a […]
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11 Nov, 2017
Design System Frictions
Creating a design system to serve an organization’s digital products is a delicate dance of decision-making, compromise, and balance. There are some intrinsic frictions that every organization creating and maintaining has to address. There’s no shortage of eternal battles in the […]
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22 Oct, 2017
About Face: How About.com Changed its Design Process and became Dotdash
Adam McClean and Dan Mall had a fantastic chat with Jared Spool about the work we did to help transform About.com into the new Dotdash. We took their monolithic brand and exploded it into a suite of topic-specific brands, with […]
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17 Aug, 2017
Things you could be doing instead of designing & building that card component for the umpteenth time
Making that card pattern more accessible Making that card pattern more responsive Making that card pattern more performant Making that card pattern more agnostic so it can handle different content patterns Making that card pattern more resilient to extreme content […]
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06 Jun, 2017
In the future, design principles won’t be about design
There’s a tinge of clickbait-slash-unnecessary controversy in this post, but it’s a great analysis of design principles nonetheless. The gist is that design principles should go beyond basic good design practices (“Make it clean and simple!”) and help differentiate organizations and clearly steer them in […]
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14 May, 2017
Design Better Data Tables
This is a fantastic roundup of data display patterns. In my own work creating design systems with huge organizations, we’ve found providing data tables with plenty of options to be critical to the system’s success. Some of these patterns are […]
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25 Apr, 2017
Designing for Edge Cases
This is fun. I’m a big fan of designing for dynamic content, which is why template and page stages of the atomic design methodology are two separate things. It’s critical to address best case scenarios, worst case scenarios, and everything in between. That’s […]
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11 Apr, 2017
Josh Clark on The Full Stack Design System
Josh wrote up some thoughts about the fantastic, previously-shared Full Stack Design System article, which includes a bit where he goes to bat for atomic design. From the original article: Atomic Design will tell you to take some of your […]
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07 Nov, 2016
CSS Architecture for Design Systems
We just created a design system for a huge organization and established a CSS architecture we’re quite pleased with. It’s one of the first times I’ve ever gotten to a project’s finish line without wishing I’d done at least a […]
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26 Apr, 2016
Design Edu Today Podcast
I had a great time chatting with Gary Rozanc about working remotely, atomic design, and a whole lot more.
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02 Mar, 2016
AMA on Designer News
I’m doing an Ask Me Anything session on Designer News. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have, especially around atomic design, the role of frontend design in the design process, responsive design, bullshit, music, art, and whatever else. […]
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17 Feb, 2016
Frontend Design
Somewhere between design – a world of personas, pixels, and polish – and engineering – a world of logic, loops, and linux – lies frontend design. Frontend design involves creating the HTML, CSS, and presentational JavaScript code that makes up a user […]
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08 Jan, 2016
10 Web design trends you can expect to see in 2016
I was happy to see The Next Web include modular design as an important trend in modern web design, and of course was happy to see they think atomic design is a good resource for it.
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25 Jun, 2015
Sketch, Iterate, Repeat: Prototyping Your Website Design
Andrew Smyk (@andrewsmyk) discusses how he iterates on his web designs. There’s a strong focus on getting ideas out of his head and onto paper as quickly as possible, which is excellent. I enjoy how he cuts up his sketches to play with […]
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09 Jan, 2015
Unique web design book explores how interfaces fit together
The folks at Net Magazine were kind enough to write about my upcoming book called Atomic Design. I chatted with them about how I’m writing the book in the open and what I’m trying to accomplish with it.
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26 Jun, 2014
Designing with Dynamic Content
A lot of visual designers I’ve worked with have convinced themselves every user’s name is “Sara” without an “h”. For most of my career I’ve had to battle designers creating incredibly unrealistic best-case scenario mock-ups. You know what I’m talking […]
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13 Feb, 2014
Animated video of me talking about Responsive Design
UIE made a really cool video of me talking about responsive design, and what to do about it. I’m doing a full-day workshop all about atomic design, responsive design workflow, and more.
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04 Jan, 2024
2023
There’s no doubt about it; 2023 was objectively way better than 2022. And 2021. And 2020. Our family has been through a lot over the last 5-ish years, and I’m happy to report that 2023 contained no major medical emergencies, […]
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02 Nov, 2023
Joining Big Medium
Well I’ll be, I’ve now been running my own business for over a decade! In January 2013 I left agency life and set out into the world of self employment. When I announced I was going to start my own company, here’s […]
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06 Oct, 2023
From Template to Atoms.
I’m definitely not trying to single this particular article, but it’s a common misconception about atomic design that’s persisted over the years: Starting Point: The initial stage of Atomic design begins with the smallest design elements, such as buttons, labels, […]
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05 Sep, 2023
Educational Sensational Inspirational Foundational
Absolutely honored to have atomic design included in this roundup of Educational Sensational Inspirational Foundational posts.