The Daily Index — Wednesday, September 17, 2025 · TLDR Index

NEWS & TRENDS

TLDR Design

TLDR Design

BMW QUIETLY DROPPED A NEW LOGO

BMW has quietly updated its car emblem, bringing the flat, simplified 2020 logo to vehicles for the first time with the new iX3. The change removes chrome borders and dividing lines for a cleaner, more consistent look across digital and physical branding, aligning the badge with BMW's modern design language.

creativebloq.com · 2 min

TLDR Design

ANNOUNCING THE 2025 WEBFLOW AWARDS WINNERS

Webflow has announced its 2025 Awards winners, recognizing outstanding creative, technical, and impactful work across Community, Customer, and Partner categories. The Community Awards honor educators like Timothy Ricks and creators like Ilja van Eck who elevate the Webflow ecosystem through education and innovation. Customer Awards celebrate organizations like Monday.com for AI achievement and Dropbox for animated experiences, while Partner Awards recognize agencies like Parallax and BX Studio for delivering exceptional client solutions.

webflow.com · 15 min

TLDR Design

IT'S DANGEROUS TO SEE THE ‘BUSINESS' AND ‘CREATIVE' WORK AS SEPARATE SILOS

Creativity and business knowledge shouldn't be treated as separate silos. The most effective work comes from understanding business priorities, data, and strategy while applying creative thinking. Embedding creative teams within businesses fosters collaboration, ensuring solutions are both imaginative and aligned with measurable impact.

itsnicethat.com · 1 min

TLDR Design

THE ART OF INVISIBLE AI: WHAT GRANOLA'S 70% RETENTION TEACHES US ABOUT PRODUCT DESIGN

Granola, a London-based meeting notes app, achieved 70% weekly user retention by pioneering an "invisible AI" that enhances rather than replaces human note-taking. The app lets users take their own notes during meetings, then uses AI to transform rough notes into organized summaries without intrusive meeting bots or clunky interfaces. Granola's success demonstrates that the most effective AI products seamlessly integrate into existing workflows, building trust through transparency and becoming more valuable over time as they accumulate user context.

uxplanet.org · 6 min

TLDR Design

ACCESSIBLE DESIGN IN FIGMA: THE TOP 5 SKILLS FOR UX AND UI DESIGNERS

UX and UI designers need five essential Figma skills for accessible design: Auto Layout for responsive layouts, advanced prototyping for keyboard navigation, plugin-powered accessibility auditing, built-in testing tools, and AI prompt crafting. These skills help designers create inclusive products by default while leveraging AI to streamline workflows and catch accessibility issues early. The guide emphasizes building accessibility into design workflows from the start rather than treating it as an afterthought, especially with regulations like the European Accessibility Act making inclusive design legally required.

uxdesigninstitute.com · 11 min

TLDR Design

FIGMA MAKE: THE BIGGEST SHIFT IN UX/UI SINCE SKETCH

Figma Make, launched in 2025, transforms Figma from a design tool into a full design-to-production platform by enabling designers to generate functional, code-ready prototypes directly from their designs. Building on the legacy of tools like Sketch and Zeplin, it lets designers create, iterate, and test apps—including PWAs—using AI-powered front-end coding, eliminating traditional handoff friction, speeding up workflow, and making real-time user testing possible without developers.

uxdesign.cc · 7 min

TLDR Design

NEW IOS 26 ICONS: HERE'S HOW ALL THE NEW APP ICONS LOOK ON YOUR IPHONE HOME SCREEN

iOS 26's Liquid Glass redesign not only updates system components but also reimagines all app icons for the first time since iOS 7, unifying their appearance across iOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS. Icons now share consistent shapes, glass-layer effects, and alignment guidelines, with subtle motion-responsive lighting, resulting in a cleaner, more cohesive, and visually appealing home screen.

9to5mac.com · 2 min

TLDR Design

FREE ASSOCIATION: PRODUCTION DESIGNER JEREMY HINDLE ON BUILDING SEVERANCE

Emmy-winning production designer Jeremy Hindle transformed a sparse script description of "four desks, large room" into Lumon Industries' unsettling corporate world. Drawing from Jacques Tati's "Playtime," Eero Saarinen's architecture, and Dieter Rams' furniture, he created an atmosphere described as "stunning and lonely." His design philosophy focuses on crafting emotion through kinetic rather than cerebral responses, using references from films like "Fargo" and "Twin Peaks" to build Severance's uncanny aesthetic.

figma.com · 6 min

TLDR Design

WHY SUPER MARIO BROS IS STILL AN ESSENTIAL LESSON IN GAME DESIGN

Forty years after its release, Super Mario Bros' opening level, World 1-1, remains a masterclass in intuitive game design that teaches players movement, enemy interaction, and power-ups without feeling like a tutorial.

creativebloq.com · 5 min

TLDR Design

HERE'S WHY USAGE OF GEMINI'S NANO BANANA IMAGE EDITOR IS GROWING

Google's Gemini app surged to the top of app stores worldwide after launching its Nano Banana image editor in late August, adding 23 million users in two weeks.

theverge.com · 3 min