TLDR Index
TLDR Design

TLDR DESIGN 2026-05-29

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02OPINIONS & TUTORIALS

WHY I DON'T USE ICON FONTS IN FIGMA

Icon fonts in Figma require a cumbersome 7-step process that involves leaving the application to browse icons on external websites and copying tiny renderings. Users must memorize exact icon names without visual previews, creating a poor experience compared to SVG components with fuzzy search and instance-swapping capabilities. Icon fonts also make comparing different glyphs tedious since icons can't be easily placed side by side for visual comparison.

alicepackarddesign.com5 min read

THE MCDONALD'S CHARITY LOGO FINALLY GOT THE REDESIGN IT DESPERATELY NEEDED

Ronald McDonald House Charities has introduced a long-overdue rebrand that replaces its outdated logo featuring Ronald McDonald's hand with a warmer, more modern and versatile identity better suited to its global mission of supporting families with ill children. The redesign keeps the charity's emotional warmth and connection to McDonald's through color and hand-drawn elements, while improving clarity, donor appeal, and independence as the organization expands toward its goal of doubling the number of families it serves by 2030.

creativebloq.com4 min read

03LAUNCHES & TOOLS

AI MARKETING EMAIL BUILDER

Bluor is an AI-powered email marketing tool that helps users create professional marketing emails. The platform uses artificial intelligence to automate the email-building process. It simplifies email marketing for businesses and marketers.

bluor.aiTool

TINY ENGINE FOR 3D VOXEL SCENES

heerich.js is a minimalist JavaScript engine that constructs 3D voxel compositions and distills them into pristine SVGs.

meodai.github.ioTool

04MISCELLANEOUS

DESIGNING WHERE THE PIXELS ACTUALLY LIVE

A senior product designer at Slack describes how AI tooling helped her bridge the longstanding gap between static design mockups and real, interactive product experiences. Working primarily in Cursor, she now builds and deploys functional prototypes that teammates can actually test, enabling faster alignment and richer design conversations. The transition came with trade-offs — AI occasionally breaks existing work and demands smaller, more deliberate iteration steps — but the ability to design closer to the real experience feels like a meaningful shift.

slack.design6 min read

WHY UX SHOULD OWN RETENTION

UX teams should own customer retention since acquiring new customers costs five times more than keeping existing ones, yet most organizations focus on acquisition while neglecting retention strategy. Retention currently falls between departments with no clear ownership, creating an opportunity for UX to claim this strategic responsibility and tie their work directly to revenue metrics. By owning retention, UX can shift from being perceived as making screens look nice to being seen as strategically important for business outcomes like lifetime customer value and churn reduction.

boagworld.com4 min read

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE OPTIMISED: ON FRICTIONMAXXING AND THE CREATIVE VIRTUES OF INCONVENIENCE

Modern life is increasingly designed to eliminate friction and inconvenience, but in doing so it may also be removing the pauses, boredom, and small inefficiencies that foster creativity, intimacy, reflection, and human connection. The growing “frictionmaxxing” trend argues that some forms of slowness and inconvenience — like walking to a shop, cooking, waiting, or doing things manually — are not obstacles to life but essential parts of experiencing it fully, pushing back against a culture obsessed with constant optimisation and productivity.

itsnicethat.com10 min read