Tag: design
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Make a mess, then clean it up.
When I encounter any new design problem, I always start the same way: I make a mess. I grab whatever assets I have, hastily sketch out ideas, and scribble down notes as I study the problem. It’s messy and disorganized, an explosion of creativity where speed is the priority. My output will appear nonsensical to…
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Consider the composition
It’s easy to get lost in the details; Obsessing over pixel-perfect screens and clever micro-interactions. But the result of our work does not exist in isolation. It’s a woven tapestry of threads across screens, flows, products, and environments. The details are incredibly important, but we must also consider the composition of the whole. For all…
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Start with the ending
Designers are storytellers. We have the power to define and shape a person’s experience. But when we’re caught up in the immediacy of a new project — it can be easy to forget the importance of the ending. Any good storyteller can attest; Its the ending that leave’s your audience with a lasting impression. Since…
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Communication is Oxygen, But Too Much Will Kill You
In the hyperconnected world of Automattic, where Slack channels buzz like beehives and p2 threads stack up like digital paperwork, communication is a double-edged sword. It keeps us linked, breathes life into our distributed existence. It’s our oxygen. But too much oxygen will kill you. Navigating the river of constant chatter and updates as a…
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Learning App Design
A few days ago I switched teams at Automattic to work on the mobile apps team until the end of this year. So, for most of the summer I’ll be flexing some long-forgotten muscles and designing the WordPress and Jetpack mobile apps. Its been a (really, really) long time since I’ve done any iOS or…
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Thinking Through: Plugin Dependencies, A.K.A. Required Plugins
Its been well over 10 years since this Trac ticket was created discussing plugin dependencies. There’s a few tickets around the same subject that are even older. More recently, there’s been renewed interest in adding support for plugin dependencies with a Make P2 post and a Github repository. This post takes a look at this…
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Thinking Through: Switching Block Styles
The WordPress block editor has a feature called “Block Styles” that allow a block (or plugin, or theme) to provide CSS-like style options to alter the appearance of the block. For example, the Table block offers two styles: Default and Striped. This post looks at the interface for switching between styles and how it could…
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Living Between the Clouds and the Mud
Jay Koster sums up one of our team’s mantras, “Clouds and Mud.” …our team affectionately refers to this challenge of high-level thinking and low-level acting as “clouds and mud”. It sounds cliché, but it summarises the mental exercises designers working in this space have to do. My favorite line from Jay’s post is this little…
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Jazz’n up WordPress.org
Beatriz Fialho has posted some designs she’s been working on to update the WordPress.org News blog, which has been mostly stagnant for years. Her new designs are full of freshly vibrant colors and feelings. Give it a look and let everyone know what you think.