I wrote a piece called The History of Themeable User Interfaces, which weaves together the history of computers, video games, the web, design systems, and my own existence on this planet. It was a hell of a lot of fun to write!
As I was putting this together, I came to a realization that blew my mind. Two of the most iconic characters in the history of pop culture — red-clad Mario and green-clad Luigi — are themeable UI elements brought to life as sprites ingenuity to overcome technological challenges.
These themed pixelated Italian plumbers resulted in a franchise worth an estimated $60 billion. Feel free to throw that little fun fact around next time the suits say design systems can’t create value. All this and a whole lot more in our Subatomic Design Tokens Course!
MASTER DESIGN TOKENS LIKE NINTENDO
Jeffrey Zeldman on Wake Up Excited!
My hero Jeffrey Zeldman and I talk about the importance of sharing, the multi-sensory power of music, creativity vs creative profession, the role of AI and creativity, the ideals vs reality of the web, and a lot more. Watch/listen & subscribe!
In Antwerp & Freiburg for SmashingConf!
I’m writing this en route to Antwerp to give my Advanced Design Systems workshop and then move onto SmashingConf Freiburg! The trip has already been a blast because I brought my mom along for the ride! It’s been incredible to see my retired art teacher mom experience the masterpieces she’s taught me and countless students. Her enthusiasm and eye for aesthetics are unrivaled.
Meanwhile, on the internet…
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LogoIpsum provides free placeholder logos to use in mockups and prototypes. I’m definitely going to be making use of this for all sorts of things.
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My Life In Weeks by Gina Trapani is something I think about a lot as I’m working on some really interesting new things.
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Git diagramming “The Weave” - Dave Rupert with a brilliant bit of data/concept visualization using git to try to make sense of a certain president’s speech patterns.
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Our community created a shared Spotify playlist. When you order our courses you can join our Slack to meet other passionate/creative people, ask questions, and talk/share music!
My question to you: If you could learn directly from any living person, who would it be and what would you want to learn from them?
Reply with your answer and tell me what you’ve been proud of lately.
Many thanks and much love,
