Timothy Martin

The second part of my article on the value of explicit design rules is here. In it I dive head first into example in layout, position, ordering padding and margins with examples from various design tools. In the end of this part there's also a treasure trove of links to other insightful people writing on adjacent subjects. Hope you find it interesting and be swayed to try tools that allow for more expressive explicit design rules. https://lnkd.in/dmGpUHU6

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🎨 Color is hard. As our team leverages variables to apply themes across a design system, things break. Maintaining accessible color contrast across multiple components with various states is a beast of task. - Brand colors can vary from light to dark affecting foreground contrast. - State changes across various components require independent contrast checks for foreground text. - Yellow. (Do I need to say more? Whether its a brand or system color, yellow and orange demand special attention) 🌈 Color for brand designers working with product teams by Katie Cooper I dig everything Katie Cooper writes about color for design systems. The approach outlined offers a great perspective on how to evaluate brand color viability. It includes considerations for secondary colors and color ramps as you develop proper contrast ratios. https://lnkd.in/gna4CGCV 💛 The dark yellow problem by Lodestar Design via UX Collective I know a lot of folks have touched on this, but I like how succinctly this writeup spells out the problems when designing with yellow while trying to maintain some form or brand consistency. Mustard anyone? https://lnkd.in/gsA4FZgQ 👏 Color in design systems by Nathan Curtis A classic write up on color in design systems and considerations for theming. Big takeaways for our team included limiting how themes cascade through various components like links and buttons, as well as ensuring any “changes” to brand colors to meet the needs of the UI get approval first. If you haven’t read everything by Nathan on Medium on design systems you’re missing out! https://lnkd.in/gYXVCY2e ✨ So grateful for all the resources out there and hope some of this can be useful to your team. From our research, the team has established a few best practices: - Start by auditing color contrast options across all brand colors through color ramps and component states - Ensure a consistent lightness ramp across all steps of each color in the palette to help with predictable contrast - Pay special attention to your yellows to balance brand consistency with accessibility - Limit how brand colors cascade into critical elements such as forms, buttons and links to ensure usability - Continue to use plugins and manual review to check color contrast ratios across the system, components and patterns as you go #ui #design #designsystems #color #branding #theming #accessibility

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GitHub makes collaboration and communication easy when it comes to design systems. We use issues and discussions to track bugs and questions, it helps us build a knowledge base. These tools are surprisingly absent in our design tools, and this needs to change. I am going to change that. #ux #designsystems #equalityintools

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Portfolio tip for design leaders: Unless your values/leadership style/‘how I lead’ slides are unique or clearly showing why they make you a good fit for this specific role, skip all that in your portfolio presentation. It’s a waste of time and if it sounds like what all the other candidates are also doing(which is true 90% of the time), it will make you blend in. Not good: Generic words like empathy, team building, servant leadership etc Good: Super specific values that apply to this role Better: Super specific values that are actually then evidenced in the work you will shortly present

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Really annoyed at Figma's price gouging here. There is no reason other than greed: https://lnkd.in/gfdrEiWH Oh, and I emailed them about it and this line from their reply was particularly poignant: "Additionally the minimum for enterprise is a $5k invoice minimum. 6 enterprise seats or made up with other products." To put that in context... our monthly Adobe bill (for 8 CC, 7 PS, 6 Acrobat licenses) is ~NZ$2k... Amazing how quickly enshittification sets in... #Figma #Design #SoftwareLicensing

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🕸️ “How do you style the spaces in between?“ As our team assembles components into patterns and layouts, we lack shared mental models for how we talk about spacing and layout. We're trying to figure out how we can be more intentional about creating rhythm and structure at the same time. → Grid systems have been around forever as an ideal, but in the real world things get complicated when nesting components and moving between breakpoints → New layout systems like flexbox and CSS grid let engineers do amazing things, but how can our designers start playing with these concepts → While utilizing the same components across different use cases like admin dashboards and public marketing sites, we have different needs for white space around our content and components 📐 Designing Grids by Mark Boulton was one of the early talks that really blew my mind when it came to thinking about grid design and the web. Highly recommend the history lessons including the reminder of the essential link between your typography sizing and your layout system.  https://lnkd.in/gjqyg_2a 🧮 Why UI designers should understand Flexbox and CSS Grid by Christine Vallaure 🟦 🟠 🔺 provides a stellar overview of the principles of emerging layout systems. Concepts critical for designers include fractional units, one and two dimensional layouts as well as rethinking our use of breakpoints.  https://lnkd.in/gEY64ruu 📜 Density in Material Design is a great example of how a system can support designers to think about the space between content as a variable within components and layouts. Depending on your application your users may benefit from either tighter proximity of elements or more white space. https://lnkd.in/g_V6w-T7 💎 Laying things out is hard. When working with patterns there are a couple of things my team tries to keep in mind, based on these amazing resources. Hope these reminders can be helpful to your team: → When assembling multiple components consider the relationship between your type scale and your layout spacing → Collaborate with engineers and experiment with CSS grid and flexbox to develop a common language so folks know what to use and when → Consider multiple density modes when styling page margins, grid gaps and vertical rhythm to compliment your context and use case #space #ui #design #designsystems #grid #density #figma

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Everyone wants a fabulous logo. It takes a great design process to get there. And that's exactly what we are covering in this series of posts. Yesterday, I covered the preliminary, "discovery phase" or, as some people like to call it, "onboarding." If you haven't read that post and the one before it, I recommend reading both to get full context. I'm breaking out the full brand design process so you know what to do if you are trying to do it yourself, or know what to expect of a really great designer if you are hiring someone. Here we go! The Brand Design Process: Phase 1 - Research This is THE MOST IMPORTANT PHASE. The better the research, the better the strategy. The better the strategy, the better the execution. The research phase is mainly comprised of audits. Compiling lists and comparing data. These are the audits and the data within each that we want to examine if it exists: • Brand - name, messaging, taglines, trademarks, brand manuals • Business - stationary, forms, invoices, business cards • Internal - memos, employee swag, holiday greetings • Retail - packaging, promos, bags, merch • Sales - sales/product literature, decks, investor relations, campaigns • Electronic - social/web, video, apps • Environment - interiors, exteriors, signage, trade show booths I use a checklist and a corresponding file structure to gather and organize all of this data from each client. This can take days, weeks or even months, depending on the size and history of the brand. (DM me if you would like the checklist and file structure) It should be noted that you can use the checklist to also reverse engineer the deliverables that will be created for the brand in phase 4 of this process. Corresponding with this data gathering is the interview. I interview the team that is responsible for branding decisions. The owner, founder, CEO, whoever it may be that is on the team. The interview is comprised of 16 questions that elicit the values, purpose, mission, vision, culture, goals and more. It is recorded, and transcribed and annotated and delivered for the team's digestion. This interview usually goes for several hours and a byproduct is a business/life coaching session where the answers that the team comes up with are revelatory for those being interviewed. I have found that time and again, that interview ends up being one of the most valuable parts of the branding process. The value comes from the clarity that arises for the leadership of the company. Even if the company had plenty of clarity in their business, it's amazing what happens when you get a whole lot more. Once the audits and interview are finished and all of the data is in our hands, the research phase is complete. The next phase is strategy, which is distilling this data down to two one page briefs. The Brand Brief defines the brand personality and the Creative Brief defines where we are going and why. And I have hit the character limit! See you tomorrow!

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Check out this episode of My Life as an ID: Best AI Tools for IDs! We took a look at Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and Vyond. What are your favorite AI tools to use for instructional design? #AIforID #InstructionalDesign #AI #ArtificialIntelligence https://lnkd.in/gVshzRuP

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We're so excited to welcome over 10k attendees to Config next week! We know that people may or may not ignore pre event emails 😉 but you can't hide from me here. Here are all the absolutely must knows for Config next week if you're joining us in person! I'm about to use so many emojis (I think that's legally required on LinkedIn) so buckle up! ------- 📆 Do I have to build my agenda and grab spots at sessions ahead of time? Yes! We ask that you build your agenda before coming to Config. We'll be scanning badges at each session so if you haven't grabbed a spot ahead of time, you won't be able to go to that session. Build your agenda on the website. 🎟️ Can I cancel or transfer my ticket? You can cancel your ticket for a full refund up until June 25th at 6am PT. You are ✨not able to sell or transfer your ticket ✨ to another person. Please note that we require government issued IDs at check in. If the ID doesn't match the ticket name, you won't be able to enter. 🚪 How will I check in? Don't forget to bring a government issued ID! To check in and pick up your badge, you will need your ID and your unique Config QR code, which you can find in your ticket confirmation email. The name on your ID and the name on your Config ticket must match. Badge pick-up will begin on Tuesday, June 25th at Moscone South. Full hours below: Tuesday, June 25: 11:30AM-7:30PM PST Wednesday, June 26: 7AM-4:30PM PST Thursday, June 27: 7AM-4:30PM PST 💃🏻 What other Config events can I attend? Join us at Config Commons on Tuesday, June 25th to network, find your community, and play before Config officially kicks off on Wednesday. For more info and to check out more Config events, head to the "community events" footer on the website. 🌯 Is there food at Config? We'll be serving lunch on both days, as well as coffee and small snacks throughout the day. Please note we won't be serving breakfast. 🎧 Will there be language support? We are so excited to offer live translation support for our attendees in Korean, Japanese, French, German and Spanish. Please download the Interprefy app and bring your headphones for the best Interprefy experience. More questions answered at:

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My top 3 project selection tips for design leaders doing portfolio presentations: 1. Pick projects that have a good mix of what you did directly plus what the team did. Very rarely is anyone looking for a pure people manager while hiring a design leader. Your personal contributions need to stand out in your work. It doesn’t have to be IC work (but if you do that, show it). It could be a doc you wrote, an insight you uncovered, a strategy you formulated etc. Differentiate between what you did yourself, what you directed the team to do, and things the team might have driven independently. Make this distinction clear as you present your portfolio. People want to see you can do smart stuff yourself, can direct a team well, but will also build a high functioning team that does good work. Also, if you would like I can do a separate post in these 3 modes of operation for any design leader. 2. Pick projects based on the role you’re applying for. It doesn’t have to be and most certainly won’t be a 100% match. But for example, if what the team needs is scaling a successful product, pick examples where you enabled scale. This needs to be deeper than “I’m applying for fintech so here’s another fintech project”. Your project selection should show you understand the challenges for the company and have transferrable skills. 3. Pick projects where you can show both macro and micro user insights. Scale the macro according to your seniority and level. For example, if you’re applying for a Director role, you better have projects that show you driving user insights at Director scale (for instance something that drove resourcing decisions). At the same time, the project should also show micro insights appropriate to role. For example, key interaction design flows redone by your team for the goal. Or even things like font/color selection and how that drove impact. Use these guidelines and apply the filter for what fits with your past experience and this new role. If you have the same portfolio presentation for completely different roles, something is off somewhere. You only need to present 2-3 projects in a presentation, pick the most appropriate ones. If this sounds complicated and like a lot of work, it is. Project selection is THE foundation for how your presentation will play out.

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interesting study of the common user patterns for scanning content https://lnkd.in/dBmTf2dA

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🤷‍♂️ "I have no idea what I'm talking about..." The first conversation I recommend my design team has when starting a new partnership with product or engineering is about what they "don't" know. Being willing to be vulnerable at the outset of a new collaboration allows all parties to let their guard down and let go of any imposter syndrome that hangs in the room. 😐 Be honest about what you don't know ✨ Surface what you're personally excited about doing or learning 🤝 Figure out together how you can trade skills, "do each other's homework" and learn from each other After some open sharing, the team can always dig deeper and generate some artifacts like a simple DACI model (driver, approver, contributor, informed) to eliminate ambiguity around overlapping skills. #vulnerability #design #product #collaboration #communication

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I remember one of these specific PJisms, and design principle of PJ Onori's when we worked together, spending less time on design artifacts. Fast forward to when we started the podcast, I've always wanted to record an episode about our ISMS, and what were some design principles that have followed us along. We'll be dropping some more of these backlog episodes that we recorded over the winter, but have been sitting as b-sides over the next few months! Listen here 🎧 https://lnkd.in/gdZ7qZmm #designsystems #designsystem #podcast #productdesign #designops

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Check out the 4 step exercise at the end of the article. Excellent advice.

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Back in 1997, Adobe blew me away with the capabilities of photoshop. Since then, the key players in the CC suite have been part of my toolkit as a designer. But this article has me concerned as a creative. Adobe has it's haters for sure. The reality is that it holds what is tantamount to a monopoly on the creative industry bar Figma and a handful of other solutions. But if the concerns in this article are to be believed, Adobe, how on earth is this reasonable? There is a growing trend where tech providers are becoming to powerful and this falls into that for me. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀: 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗰𝘆: Adobe can access your project files, including those under NDA, for unspecified reasons. 𝗔𝗜 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: Adobe can potentially use your project files to train its AI tools, without your explicit permission. 𝗟𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆: The terms of service are vague about how Adobe will use your data and don't clearly explain how to opt out of AI training. 𝗡𝗼 𝗢𝗽𝘁-𝗢𝘂𝘁: There is no easy way to opt out of the new terms and continue using Adobe software. 𝗨𝗻𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗿 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲: You can't uninstall the software without agreeing to the terms, and cancelling your service may come with financial penalties. Interested to hear thoughts particularly from creatives and legal folk. Thanks to Mat Venn for sharing the original link.

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We started remx.xyz with a clear mission: "Empower artists to make a living doing what they love." Although we are starting small, the Collect2Earn program is our first step to help realize this mission. In a complex earning landscape, our model is simple. Collect free digital on-chain artwork from amazing artists and earn crypto for doing so. Brand sponsors have an opportunity to support artists and collectors by spending marketing dollars in an authentic way that promotes brand loyalty. We have another amazing lineup of Collect2Earn drops this week featuring Neothereal by Jen Panepinto and Far Away by nftloremipsum (Featured below). You’ll find new Collect2Earn artist drops on Remx every Tuesday and Thursday at 12pm EST. #blockchain #art

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I’m going through an iterative design process with a XFN team right now. We know we’re solving the right problem because we get repeadted validation that the value prop aligns to user needs, but the experience doesn’t provide that outcome in an easy/intuitive way. So we iterate and iterate some more, each time finding ways to better achieve the outcomes we’re targeting. This process is messy. You learn that your initial assumption were off so you lean on failure to improve incrementally. It means as a designer you need to be vulnerable…that it’s not about you providing all “the answers” to your team in a beautifully packaged deck/speck. You need to show what’s “behind the curtain” and bring them along during your process. Show your thinking and learn to interpret feedback. Approach everything as a hypothesis, remain curious, explore and share.

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👉 New at S&N: Kerfuffle on the Planet of the Apes (part 2) I’ll explain how I made the layout using a combination of container queries, Flexbox, and grid. https://lnkd.in/dTBS2e4g

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Following up on yesterdays Design Leadership Chat, and thanks again Dee (Denise) Sadler - the shift to engaging with what AI actually *does* for us, rather than its mere existence, is fundamentally, a design problem. Right now, engineers are dominating AI implementations, to all our detriment. “A.I.-policy conversations are dominated by terms like “alignment” (is what an A.I. “wants” aligned with what humans want?), “safety” (can we foresee guardrails that will foil a bad A.I.?), and “fairness” (can we forestall all the ways a program might treat certain people with disfavor?).” https://lnkd.in/g_zmh7MF

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