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NEW ADVENTURES, NEW COURSES, AND NEW SIGNALS
Level-up your skills and shift your perspective for the year ahead
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2025 has already been a year of change; amid the tumult we're leaning into what's new, exciting, and freshly possible. We have a lot of big ideas, big projects, and big changes to share!
Josh and Veronika shared three free sessions about Sentient Design in the last month. With a free membership at Rosenfeld Media, you can learn all about AI and radically adaptive interfaces, new experience postures for AI-mediated experiences, and emerging UI design patterns.
Big Medium is leading a slate of mind-bending “design for what’s next” engagements—and together they send some tantalizing signals for UX and product design in the year ahead.
Brad Frost and Ian Frost have published over 4 hours of their deep-dive Design Tokens Course! Chapter 1 covers design token fundamentals and the ROI of establishing a sound design token system, while Chapter 2 covers a three-tiered token architecture, color systems, typography systems, spacing, border, animation, and more.
2025 also ushers in a new chapter for Big Medium. We're cheering on Brad and Ian as they go independent to focus on courses and a slew of other new and exciting projects. And our longtime producer Jessi Hall is heading out for adventures abroad—and a personal creative hiatus. Back at Big Medium HQ, the new year has us hurtling down our own new paths of product design, production, and strategy. All of us are so proud of the work that we've done together over these many years—and excited for what's next for this group who are so much more than colleagues. We're sure gonna miss seeing this crew's faces every day. Much love and best wishes to all.
Along with these changes, this newsletter will see some changes as it splits into two awesome channels. Subscribe to both!
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The current mailing list will revert back to Brad Frost's original newsletter (cream and orange colors and all!) for all things design systems, web design/development, music, creativity, leading a fulfilling life, and more.
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Join the new Big Medium newsletter to stay current on design for what's next: Sentient Design and AI-mediated experiences, UX design, product strategy, and upcoming events.
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As the wise sages Semisonic once said, “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” There are exciting new beginnings underway, and we’re so thankful you’re along for the ride.
Much love,
—The Big Medium team
HERE’S THE SCOOP
VIDEO SERIES: FOUNDATIONS OF SENTIENT DESIGN
Josh and Veronika take you from eye-opening possibilities to practical techniques, sharing strategies to use machine intelligence to craft experiences that are at once powerful, responsible, and effective.
DESIGN TOKENS COURSE UPDATE: 4HRS NOW LIVE!
Brad and Ian are cooking with gas on their new design tokens course: chapters 1 and 2 are published, as well as over 2 hours of pre-order exclusive content.
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2025: THE YEAR AHEAD
Josh maps 2025's big shifts for design: Design finally shifts from consolidation to innovation, AI shifts from tool to design material, design systems mature, and generative AI gets boring.
BRAD AND IAN ARE GOING INDEPENDENT!
Read Brad’s announcement about going independent to focus on courses, education, workshops/training, light consulting, and a whole bunch of other exciting stuff.
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NEW ADVENTURES FOR OLD FRIENDS
Josh writes a sweet send-off for Brad, Ian, and producer extraordinaire Jessi Hall.
WHAT WE’RE READING
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Opera introduces Opera Air – a new browser built to make you feel better
We love the idea of products baking mental health and mindfulness into the fabric of software. Not just lip service, but explicit design principles backed up by real, tangible features.
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“The most widespread and influential AI programs are the less flashy ones quietly whirring away in your pocket, influencing culture, business, and (in this case) matters of national security in very real ways.”
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MS Copilot Flying Straight Into the Mountain
Agents work on their own; they set and pursue goals, make decisions about how to achieve them, and take action across multiple systems until they decide the goal is complete. Vaclav Vincalek ponders what happens when anyone can create and set these loose.
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“If you care about your creativity, and what you make and bring into the world, I’d suggest having your own website. A place you can shape and change as often, or as little as you like. That is something worth being and feeling precious about.”
🗓️ UPCOMING EVENTS
BRAD FROST ADVANCED DESIGN SYSTEMS WORKSHOP
Online: February 18–26, 2025
Brad will dig into advanced design systems topics like the design system ecosystem, design tokens, governance models, and design system adoption.
BRAD FROST @ FRONTROW
Online: February 18-20, 2025
Brad Frost will be diving into the awesomeness of design tokens at this online web design event that’s free to attend!
SENTIENT DESIGN @ SXSW
Austin, TX: March 9th, 2025
Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred will discuss the already-here future of intelligent interfaces—AI-mediated experiences that feel almost self-aware in their response to user needs.
