Words that would otherwise be coming out of my mouth

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  1. 22 Jul, 2024

    Master design system governance with this one weird trick

    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 […]

  2. 17 Jul, 2024

    40 Reasons to come to Frostapalooza

    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 […]

  3. 01 Jul, 2024

    Design Downtime – Brad Frost Loves to Play Music

    🎸 I had a fantastic conversation with Guy Segal on the Design Downtime podcast about my love of playing music. We talked about: My musical background The beauty and role of the bass guitar The importance of having hobbies for […]

  4. 15 Jun, 2024

    The future is built on solid foundations

    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 […]

  5. 14 Jun, 2024

    Sidebar is taking a break

    Sidebar is taking a break. 😭 Ah man, this makes me so sad. Sidebar has been my number 1 way to keep up to speed with the web, design, and beyond for the last decade. I love it so much. […]

  6. 04 Jun, 2024

    A rare use case for em units

    text-decoration-offset is a good use case for em units. Most of the time we favor rems over ems, but in this case we want the text underline offset to proportionally scale with the `font-size` property. Here’s a quick demo: See […]

  7. 04 Jun, 2024

    Sentient Design: AI and the Next Chapter of UX – Big Medium

    This is an absolute must-read/watch for any designer or design leader navigating this wild new AI world. Josh Clark is second to none at demystifying this new crop of technologies, demonstrating how to wield AI as a design material, and […]

  8. 23 May, 2024

    Be gone, vile rectangle!

    One day I’ll fulfill my dream of throwing my phone into the ocean*, but for now I’m settling for throwing my phone in my basement. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt articulates how the potent combination of smartphones and social […]

  9. 22 May, 2024

    Every Sample from Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys

    One of my all-time favorite albums. Fantastic to listen to all of the source material. This video catalogs every borrowed sample from Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys, from the soundtrack to Car Wash to the Sugarhill Gang to the […]

  10. 17 May, 2024

    The age of average (encore) — Alex Murrell

    The age of average (encore) by Alex Murrell is a wild analysis of how the technology landscape has changed the shape of music.  “Media has always shaped music,” the author states, (David Byrne’s How Music Works is a wonderful book […]

  11. 17 May, 2024

    Code & Pixels

    The Code & Pixels podcast is A podcast about turning pixels into code. hosted by Adekunle Oduye & Kelly Harrop. I’m excited to dig into this as there aren’t a ton of resources specific to us front-of-the-front-end developers.

  12. 16 May, 2024

    Generative AI Is Totally Shameless. I Want to Be It

    What I love, more than anything, is the quality that makes AI such a disaster: If it sees a space, it will fill it—with nonsense, with imagined fact, with links to fake websites. It possesses an absolute willingness to spout […]

  13. 07 May, 2024

    Transparent borders

    You Want border-color: transparent, Not border: none by Dave is a great reminder to not remove borders from components for accessibility reasons, especially to better support high contrast mode. border-color: transparent comes in handy for other use cases as well. […]

  14. 03 May, 2024

    The Weather Channel’s Local on the 8’s Throughout The Years

    Our family was raised on The Weather Channel. So much so that Ian became a meteorologist. So this video that steps through the Local on the 8s over the years gives me all the nostalgic feels.

  15. 02 May, 2024

    AI and harm

    Every time I read about how is being applied in the world, this graph immediately pops up in my head: As the potential to do harm increases, there must be a corresponding increase in the level of caution, skepticism, and […]

  16. 29 Apr, 2024

    Don’t put crap in the design system

    One of my favorite Josh lines that’s really stood the test of time and cuts through a lot of noise in a conversation: Don’t put crap in the design system. Josh Clark What is crap? Crap is rushed work, low-quality […]

  17. 25 Apr, 2024

    Design Systems Smashing Magazine Discussion, April 2024

    I had a fantastic time chatting with a group of design system wizards,  Nathan Curtis and Ben Callahan. Geoff Graham did a great job facilitating the conversation, and we covered a lot of ground!

  18. 24 Apr, 2024

    It’s the End of the Web as We Know It

    Here’s a pretty damning read about LLMs’ impact on the web. Just how SEO produced an extremely lucrative-yet-icky industry, optimizing web content for AI models seems inevitable. SEO will morph into LLMO: large-language-model optimization, the incipient industry of manipulating AI-generated […]

  19. 22 Apr, 2024

    The art of design system recipes

    Recipes are a critical — and often misunderstood! — layer in the design system ecosystem. First of all, what exactly are recipes? As the name suggests, recipes combine ingredients to create UI experiences that are complex, delicious, nutritious. The design […]

  20. 10 Apr, 2024

    The Component Gallery

    There have been tons of design system roundup sites over the years, but The Component Gallery  by Iain Bean is particularly well designed and fun.