Design Details

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394: Open Source Design ft. Joey Banks Apr 21, 2021

Show notes

This week, we caught up with Joey Banks to talk about contributing to open source design. In the Sidebar, we ask Joey bonus questions about ramping up in a new job, the design advocate role, and being Twitter famous.

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Main Topic:

This week, we grabbed Joey Banks to help us answer a listener question. Joey is a product designer working on design systems at Twitter. Before this, he was a design advocate at Figma.

flyingjuggernaut asks on GitHub:

Why would a designer contribute to open-source design communities? What are the benefits for a designer to spend valuable time contributing to these? Do you contribute and if so, why? I can see entry-level designers contributing to gain some experience or projects for their portfolio but for designers that have been working for some time, apart from exposure or reputation, I can't make sense of it.

Cool Things:

Brian shared Screen Rant Pitch Meetings, a lovely playlist of sarcastic movie pitches that pokes fun in all the right ways.
Marshall shared Olivia Rodrigo – start with drivers license.
Joey shared HazeOver, a helpful macOS utility to dim distracting windows on the Mac.

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393: The Not-So-Humble Button Apr 14, 2021

Show notes

This week, we talk about the hidden complexities of a designer’s favorite element: the button. In the Sidebar, we examine interfaces that defer moderation responsibilities onto the end user.

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The Sidebar:

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

Main Topic:

This week we talk about the intricacies, details, and complexities of the designer’s favorite element: the button.

Starting points for the psychology for rounding corners:
Lickable buttons

Cool Things:

Brian shared Godzilla vs. Kong. Monke punch lizerd.
Marshall shared Brandon Sanderson, the author of the Mistborn Trilogy, Warbreaker, Stormlight Archive, and more.

Design Details on the Web:

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Byeee!

392: Becoming a Strategic Designer Apr 07, 2021

Show notes

This week, we talk about how to become a more strategic designer: what should you be doing day to day, or thinking about more often? In The Sidebar, we talk about the downsides of using metaphors to describe the role of designers in building software.

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The Sidebar:

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Tweets:

Nejat Seçkin Oral tweeted: I’m pretty sure I said this multiple times before but @designdetailsfm manages to answer questions that I’m seeking at that particular time. Almost every episode. I don’t know what magic it is but I’m here for it.

Main Topic:

Jessica Tong asks on GitHub:

I work at a small startup with less than 15 people and I'm the only designer. Recently, I've had a performance review and my manager, who is the Head of Product has recognised that I am lacking in "strategy skills". I seem to mostly come up with short term ideas. eg. we have a problem regarding X, so i am able to come up with multiple solutions, etc. I've also been to a job interview where they said I was lacking high level, strategy skills. I am unsure as to how to develop this skill and think of my work more in the long term and plan for the long term. My manager has suggested a book called "Good Strategy/Bad Strategy" by Richard Rumelt but other than that, he does not know how to help - probably because he is from a product management background, and I should be developing a UX strategy skills. Do you have any advice, or resources you can point me to where I can grow in this area as a product designer?

OKRs: Objectives and Key Results
Spotify acquires Locker Room
Stratechery

Cool Things:

Brian shared Readng, a beautiful app for tracking what you read, and following other people’s book recommendations. It’s like Letterboxd, but for books! And it’s beautifully designed, and a joy to use.
- Design by Aziz Firat – follow!
Marshall shared Quadeca – From Me To You, a music video. Quadeca also comes from the YouTube world, alongside his own music productions, so dive into the backlog of videos.

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📻 We are @designdetailsfm
- 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
- 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
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Byeee!

391: Portfolio Review Tips for Senior Designers Mar 31, 2021

Show notes

This week, we share tips and best practices for senior designers who are presenting their work in a portfolio review. In The Sidebar, we break down the qualities of great typographic hierarchy in interface design.

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The Sidebar:

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Main Topic:

Aloni Sanbira asks: I feel like there’s a lot of discussion around entry level design portfolios. What’s your take on senior level portfolios? What do you think a seasoned designer should pay extra attention to when presenting themselves?

We also tweeted the question out, and received some great replies

Cool Things:

Brian shared Enes Yilmazer, a YouTuber who tours very fancy and very expensive homes. We enjoy watching to find the little tiny details that we’d appreciate in our own lives someday.
Marshall shared weighted blankets, in general. Check out this article diving into the science of weighted blankets. Having trouble falling asleep? Try one!

Design Details on the Web:

📻 We are @designdetailsfm
- 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
- 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
- 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com
🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
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Byeee!

390: Building Design Infrastructure ft. Kathryn Gonzalez Mar 24, 2021

Show notes

This week, we catch up with Kathryn Gonzalez, the Head of Design Infrastructure at DoorDash. We talk about building DoorDash’s first design system, how to scale a design systems team, balancing technical and design skills, how to become a better systems designer by learning outside of work, and much more.

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The Sidebar:

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to the bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

Main Topic:

This week, we have an interview! We caught up with Kathryn Gonzalez, the Head of Design Infrastructure at DoorDash. We talk about her experience building DoorDash’s design system from scratch, working as a technical designer, hiring for design systems roles, and much more.

Cool Things:

Kathryn shared March Madness, which is actually happening this year!
Brian shared The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, the newest Disney+ series for the MCU. We’re only one episode in, but it’s off to a good start.
Marshall shared Formula 1: Drive to Survive on Netflix. Even if you’re not into cars or racing, it’s a show that ramps you up and gets you invested in the players and teams.

Design Details on the Web:

📻 We are @designdetailsfm
- 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
- 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
- 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com
🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
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Byeee!

389: Better Design Reviews Mar 17, 2021

Show notes

This week, we talk about how to have better design reviews. Who, what, where, and when? We share our experiences, and frustrations, with certain formats and processes. In The Sidebar, we try to answer the question: WTF is up with NFTs?

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The Sidebar:

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to the bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

Main Topic:

This week, Clooks asks on GitHub:

What does your design review process look like?
What should a design review be and what shouldn't it be (what should be broken out into a different forum)?
What are some helpful tips for remote facilitation to make design reviews fun, collaborative, and productive?

Cool Things:

Brian shared MusicalBasics, a YouTube channel with a ton of fun and interesting content around music composition and experimentation. In particular, the playlist about time boxed compositions is very fun to watch.
Marshall shared two “reacting to movies” YouTube channels: Natalie Gold and Shanelle Riccio. Watching friends watch the movies we love is just so delightful.

Design Details on the Web:

📻 We are @designdetailsfm
- 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
- 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
- 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com
🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
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Byeee!

388: Design Tips and Tricks, Part 2 Mar 10, 2021

Show notes

This week, we cover part two of our design tips and tricks series. We talk about naming conventions, thinking in divs, structuring frames, and share a few Figma pro-tips. In The Sidebar, we talk about design content overload.

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The Sidebar:

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.

In this week's Sidebar, we talk about how to deal with design content overload. If you live and breath design, this might be for you.

Follow up:

David Luft tweeted: It would be so helpful if you made a video companion to episode 386 that shows how you set up and use your grid systems in Figma.
- Keep an eye out, we’ll try to do something here!
Camden Gaba tweeted: Should the vertical spacing between text elements be set by their line height or multiples of your grid interval? And thanks for another episode!
- Generally by line height, unless you just have a text-heavy site with many columns, in which case just let the text flow and then pick up the grid in between your content blocks.
- leading-trim: the future of digital typesetting
- NYT on how they implemented a baseline grid using CSS
Richard Picot tweeted: Follow up question, do you conform to a grid for padding inside a button for example or is the overall size of the component more important?
- Vertical padding just ends up being whatever is required to make your button height a certain size (e.g. minimum tap target size). Leading and trailing padding can be some step on your grid (like 16pt or 12pt).

Main Topic:

This week Marshall continues with part 2 of design tips and tricks! We dig into naming conventions, thinking in divs, how to structure your frames, and some Figma-only pro-tips.

Margin considered harmful

Cool Things:

Brian shared Mouseless, an indie app to help you build muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts in your most-used apps.
Marshall shared The World’s a Little Blurry, the new Apple TV+ documentary about Billie Eilish.

Design Details on the Web:

📻 We are @designdetailsfm
- 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
- 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
- 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com
🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
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Byeee!

387: Design Craft Tips & Tricks Mar 03, 2021

Show notes

This week, we dig into specific tips and tricks to level up your craft game: how to leverage tools to make faster iterations, stay organized, and allow your mocks to easily scale over time. In The Sidebar, we dig into how to give design critique without having full problem or product context.

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The Sidebar:

In this week's Sidebar, we talk about how to give design critique without having the full context on a problem or product area.

Follow up:

Stevanus Satria tweeted: The next MMORPG I play my character shall be a wizard hailing from the Northland wielding a powerful electric guitar 🤣 Please do!

Main Topic:

This week Marshall runs us through all his craft tips and tricks: little ways to use tools to make designing interfaces faster, more efficiently, with more organization, and in a way that will scale as you explore.

Cool Things:

Brian shared the Lift desk stand from Artifox. It’s expensive, but very pretty, and has some smart integration with magnets.
Marshall shared Mistborn: The Final Empire, a story by Brandon Sanderson. The book is a fantasy heist kind of tale, where the magic is based on metallurgy and its interesting combinations. The audio book is 24 hours, so not too bad!

Design Details on the Web:

📻 We are @designdetailsfm
- 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
- 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
- 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com
🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
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Byeee!

386: Designing with Grid Systems Feb 24, 2021

Show notes

This week, we talk about designing with grid systems. In particular: when grid systems break, and what to do when they don’t align with our hardware screens perfectly. In The Sidebar, we talk all about design debt: how to work with it, pay it down, and eventually learn to accept it.

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The Sidebar:

In this week's Sidebar, we answer a listener question that can be ultimately paraphrased as: How do you deal with design debt?

Main Topic:

Joey Jungle asks on GitHub: Designing with grid systems? – and continues with many words asking why grid systems are often unintuitive, and don’t align neatly with our hardware screens. Great question!

Cool Things:

Brian shared the iA Quattro typeface, one of three beautiful (and free, open source!) typefaces from the iA team. It seems to be striking a happy middle ground between a sans and a mono, making it useful for adding a computer-y tone to an interface while staying readable.
- My thread with some work in progress screenshots.
Marshall shared Little Nightmares II, a beautiful (and scary) indie side-scroller. It looks gorgeous, and the sound design is incredible.

Design Details on the Web:

📻 We are @designdetailsfm
- 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
- 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
- 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com
🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
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Byeee!

385: Raising Your Team’s UI Bar Feb 17, 2021

Show notes

This week, we talk about strategies and tactical tips for elevating a team’s bar to design high quality interfaces. In The Sidebar, we talk about how to transition from web to mobile design.

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The Sidebar:

In this week's Sidebar, we talk about things to learn and new mental models to adopt in order to transition from web to mobile design.

Follow up:

Vincent van der Meulen tweeted a very nice note: Best thing I did early on was spend hours listening to @designdetailsfm interviews. It taught me how to talk about my work and reflect on it long before I had any skills. I got my first internship by answering the interview Qs like I thought a designer on Design Details would 😆
- Thanks so much for your note! This makes it all worth it 😊

Main Topic:

sallythat asks us on GitHub: What to do when the design team’s bar for UI is low?

We discuss some tips and strategies for communication and finding leverage in systems to raise the bar for a product’s UI.

Cool Things:

Brian shared CleanShot X, a fantastic alternative to the default macOS screenshot tool. Highlights: auto-copy to clipboard and place window screenshots perfectly centered on your wallpaper.
Marshall shared r/thatsabooklight, a subreddit about props in movies or shows that were repurposed from everyday household items.

Design Details on the Web:

📻 We are @designdetailsfm
- 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
- 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
- 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com
🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
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Byeee!

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