Web Designer, Teacher, Consultant, Writer, Musician, Artist
Just You Wait, by Chris Shiflett is a fantastic read. While I'm slightly younger than Chris, his description of the journey of growing and evolving with technology feels very familiar. The whole article is well worth a read, but really loves how he closes it out: For the first time in years, I see possibility. Not utopia. AI’s problems aren’t being exaggerated. Like every technology before it, it…
Backyard Designers is making its rounds, and I got to see myself as a little character. I saw commentary about it feeling icky in-club kinda stuff, which is why the parody site Brokeass Designers with its pitch-perfect Sarah McLachlan music made me LOL. I'm not a fan of this type of thing, and have never liked being put on a pedestal. Literally every person on this planet has value, and we can all…
Two years ago I shared 40 thoughts as I turned 40 , and last year I added a 41st thought . So as I make my 42nd lap around the sun, I figured I'd throw another thought onto the pile. 42. Things take the time they take When I was working at R/GA, someone (I can't remember who) said something along the lines of: You can't make a baby in one month by throwing nine people at it. Despite this reality,…
Yesterday, I sent out a newsletter and wanted to share it here too because HOLY CRAP. It's been nearly two months since I've published a newsletter or substantive blog post, to which I say, “ No sir, I don't like it .” I'm tired of saying I'm busy (it's unhealthy, not a badge of honor), but it continues to be the truth. Just how busy, you ask? Well, I had a fantastic conversation with Don Norman…
ooooo, Design System Maturity Model from zeroheight measures your design system maturity across 6 dimensions: Foundations, Documentation & Knowledge, Governance & Team, Adoption, Measurement & Impact, and AI Readiness
Poetic CSS Understand CSS as a system — so you can write, review, and maintain web styles with confidence on a timeline and under budget. My friend Miriam Suzanne has a new course on CSS. I've learned SO MUCH from Miriam over the years and continue to have my perspectives changed and challenged by her thinking and hard-earned wisdom. It's an insta-buy for me. You should order it to, especially…
Chapters 1 & 2 of our AI & Design Systems Course are live! 🎉 Our course now has over 16 hours of videos , which includes course lessons, community jam sessions, and other demonstrations. TJ, Ian, and I have been busting our asses, and are SUPER pleased with how these new chapters turned out! Chapter 1 - Core Concepts: This is a huge chapter that covers the broad arc of technology, the history,…
I want to talk about this moment in time, this AI era, through the lens of grief. Grief is a powerful response to loss. When we think about grief, we often think about death, but it's taken me a long time to understand that we grieve all sorts of non-death loss : relationships, community, home, money, dreams, expectations, identity, sense of purpose, and even the loss of ideals or ideas. It's…
The internet you grew up on isn’t dying. A commercial veneer glued on top of it is. YESSSSSS. The Boring Internet by Terry Godier
I had a wonderful chat about design systems and AI with Donnie D'Amato on his wireframe show. We talked about all sorts of spicy topics, and I feel like this conversation captures a lot of where my head's at lately and the picture we're painting with our course .
On the latest episode of Wake Up Excited! , I got to talk with my friend, fellow traveler, and recent collaborator, Ben Callahan . Ben and I met at BDConf many many moons ago, and since then we've shared many adventures together, including recently collaborating on an actual conversation. I have so much admiration for Ben and the community-oriented way he operates, so I'm incredibly pleased we got…
Lately, I've been talking websites into existence. Not metaphorically, but actually sitting in important meetings with people — clients, collaborators, my wife, friends, neighbors — watching real websites materialize in front of us as we converse. I've been half-jokingly call it mouth coding , and the more I use that term the more I like it. Mouth coding is one of the things that has me most…
Brendan Dawes is a brilliant multi-disciplinary artist, designer, and technologist. Just one of his many many many creative projects is working on the incredible Eno documentary (directed by one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, Gary Hustwit ). Brendan created the technology so that the film is different every time it's viewed. Which, C'MON. Creative generative systems for a generative film…
I've gone a lot of hard and scary experiences that's made me deeply value stability. After enduring varied traumas, I really turned on the afterburners to make up for being ripped away from my own life and to rebuild a sense of forward momentum. That translated into a real drive to earn money to feed my family, which I'm sure is an instinct that we all share. I've been head down grinding for over…
Dominic Nguyen (Founder of Storybook and Chromatic ) joins me to talk about Storybook MCP the long journey of design system quality. We get into what it actually feels like to be "scaredcited" right now, and Dom shows off the newly-released Storybook MCP. He shows me a demo where AI generates a new search feature using sturdy existing design system components, run it through Storybook's testing…
Today I trekked to my daughter's school (a long walk across the street!) to speak at her after-school coding club that's been meeting weekly over the last month. It was really fun to see how they were learning to code. I knew they were using Scratch (which Ella has excitedly talked about over dinner), but I only learned about the little Dash robots as they swarmed around my feet while I was…
My 8-year-old vibe-coded a video game called "Play With Michael McDonald" , and she wanted to present it. So here's Ella! The origin story After playing some Mario Party minigames the other evening, my 8-year-old daughter said, I wanna make a game where you are a backing musician for Michael McDonald on his world tour, and you traveled to the south pole and play music, and there are penguins…
I found myself using the phrase "the Creative Infinite" when I'm talking about AI as a design material. I keep coming back to it because I don't think we've fully grasped what this technology actually is , what it can do, and what it means for human creative potential. I want to set aside the usual conversations — IP concerns, job displacement, college kids lazy term papers. All of that is real,…
On Friday night, I needed a break from screens, so decided to work on a bathroom mural that our family has been chipping away at for the last 4 years. But a lot was on my mind, so made the decision to work on a long-overdue redesign of my website while painting the mural. What started as an experiment turned into the most fun I’ve had in the 30 years I’ve been making websites. I want to share the…
A curated collection of the best in contemporary type design Elliot is back with a new typography book! Elliot Jay Stocks