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AI DESIGNS, FULLY EDITABLE

Create fully-editable, on-brand slides, social posts, PDFs, and diagrams with AI on a real canvas you control.

CREATE ISOMETRIC LAYERS AND GROUPS

The Easometric Figma plugin uses SSR30⁰, the most popular and flexible method for creating isometric artworks.

SKETCHING WITH CODE

Sketching with code involves treating programming as a flexible ideation tool rather than a rigid blueprint, allowing for rapid exploration without the constraints of formal design systems. The author starts with low-fidelity code prototypes (simple HTML divs) and uploads hand-drawn wireframes to AI tools to generate multiple variations, focusing on technical structure before visual polish. This approach leverages AI's ability to read visual input and generate functional code, enabling faster exploration of ideas through programming than traditional design tools.

WHY THIS NEW ICE-CREAM BRAND ONLY MAKES SENSE AFTER DARK

Snooz is a sleep-friendly ice cream brand built on the insight that most ice cream is eaten at night, replacing typical ingredients with calming ones like chamomile and magnesium. How&How created a fully night-oriented brand identity—dark palettes, moon-infused typography, late-night photography, and an adult, conspiratorial tone—demonstrating how a strong insight, when followed boldly and coherently, can define an entire creative system.

RANDO SANS — A HANDWRITTEN FONT THAT CYCLES VARIATIONS AS YOU TYPE

Designer Beau Maher created “Rando Sans”, a free handwritten-style font that cycles through multiple versions of each character to create a pseudorandom effect using OpenType's Contextual Alternatives (CALT), after discovering the built-in RAND function was limited and poorly supported. By building complex class-based substitution logic (and using ChatGPT to automate repetitive code), he solved duplication and sequencing issues to make the font feel more naturally varied—showing how designers can experiment with technical systems to solve creative problems.

NATIVE HTML COMPONENTS DON'T GUARANTEE GOOD UX

Native HTML components like reset buttons, date inputs, and tooltips often provide a poor user experience despite being built into browsers.

FIBONACCI SEQUENCE INSPIRES SURREALIST BALI BEACH CLUB'S ARCHITECTURE

A beach club in Bali features surrealist architecture inspired by the Fibonacci sequence.

ANTHROPIC LAUNCHES NEW PUSH FOR ENTERPRISE AGENTS WITH PLUG-INS FOR FINANCE, ENGINEERING, AND DESIGN

Anthropic launched a new enterprise agents program featuring pre-built plug-ins for finance, engineering, and design tasks that companies can deploy through their Claude AI system. The program includes stock plug-ins for departments such as finance, legal, and HR, along with enterprise connectors for Gmail, DocuSign, and Clay, allowing agents to pull data directly from linked systems. This represents Anthropic's most aggressive push to integrate AI agents into everyday workplaces and poses a significant threat to existing SaaS products performing similar functions.

NEW M6 MACBOOK PRO DETAILS REVEALED, INCLUDING DYNAMIC ISLAND, TOUCH, MORE

Apple is reportedly releasing its first touchscreen Mac later this year with the OLED-equipped M6 MacBook Pro, featuring a smaller hole-punch camera cutout enhanced by a Dynamic Island-style interface and a redesigned macOS that dynamically adapts between touch and traditional input, and offering context-sensitive menus, enlarged touch-friendly controls, and iOS-like gestures such as fast scrolling and pinch-to-zoom. However, touch will complement rather than replace the keyboard and trackpad. The launch is expected around October or November after the upcoming M5 Pro and M5 Max updates.

ADOBE FIREFLY'S VIDEO EDITOR CAN NOW AUTOMATICALLY CREATE A FIRST DRAFT FROM FOOTAGE

Adobe has added a new AI feature called Quick Cut to the video editor in Firefly that automatically assembles a first draft by trimming footage, arranging takes, and inserting B-roll transitions based on natural language prompts. Users can control pacing, aspect ratio, and apply the tool to entire projects or selected clips, while still refining transitions and edits manually to complete the final version. The update builds on Adobe's recent push into prompt-based and timeline-driven video editing, reinforcing its focus on faster turnaround times for creators and marketers.

MY FAVORITE TYPE OF DESIGNERS

There are five standout types of designers, each valuable in different contexts: the commercial chameleon, who adapts seamlessly to any style or client; the execution star, who delivers precise, reliable work when given clear direction; the beautiful visionary, who generates bold, original concepts but struggles with consistency and structure; the system architect, who brings order and functional clarity through strong structural thinking; and the anthropologist storyteller, who excels at cultural insight and early-stage research but not technical execution. Most designers embody a mix of these traits, and their strengths may shift over the course of a career.

PRODUCT DESIGN IS CHANGING

AI is fundamentally reshaping product design by changing processes and bottlenecks rather than simply replacing jobs, shifting value away from pixel-level execution toward taste, judgment, and orchestration. As engineering and other “invisible” work become easier to automate, the real constraints become human evaluation and decision-making, with designers increasingly working directly in code through machine-readable design systems, enabling smaller, empowered teams to move faster and giving those who can effectively direct AI workflows far greater leverage than those relying on traditional mockup-to-handoff models.

THE SALAD BAR THEORY OF UX PROFESSIONALISM

The tech industry often confuses volume and speed with value, celebrating “code by the pound” and 10x productivity even though high output doesn't necessarily translate into meaningful impact. While incremental improvements matter, real significance comes from deciding what's worth building in the first place, and the current arms race around speed and tooling risks prioritizing quantity over thoughtful, customer-centered innovation.

BUILD EXPRESSIVE AVATARS FAST

Avatune lets you quickly build expressive avatars with customizable features, including hair, body, eyes, and other facial details.

FLEXIBLE COLOR PICKER FOR REACT

React Beautiful Color is a flexible, lightweight color picker for React that provides compound components for custom layouts and a powerful useColorState hook with full TypeScript support.

IMAGE TO IMAGE AI AND IMAGE TO VIDEO AI

Img2.ai transforms images into AI-generated art and videos using image-to-image and image-to-video AI technology. Users can upload photos and generate polished results in seconds without editing skills, including style transformations, animated videos, and upscaled images.

WHY AI IS EXPOSING DESIGN'S CRAFT CRISIS

AI design tools are revealing a craft crisis in design by exposing the technical literacy gap that has been undermining designers' strategic influence for over a decade. While tools like Figma's AI can generate designs from text prompts, they produce technically flawed outputs with serious accessibility violations and poor code quality that only experienced designers can identify and fix. The paradox is that AI democratization tools don't make design accessible to everyone, they only help people who already understand what constitutes good design and technical implementation.

FROM CLAUDE CODE TO FIGMA: TURNING PRODUCTION CODE INTO EDITABLE FIGMA DESIGNS

Figma now lets teams capture working UIs built in Claude Code—whether from production, staging, or localhost—and instantly convert them into fully editable Figma frames, bridging fast code-based prototyping with collaborative canvas-based exploration. This enables side-by-side comparisons, easier iteration without rewriting code, earlier cross-functional decision-making, and shared direction, while also supporting a roundtrip workflow back into development via the Figma MCP server, creating a fluid loop between building in code and refining together in design.

DESIGNERS, WE SHOULD BE KILLING IT RIGHT NOW

Design isn't disappearing in the age of AI. In fact, it's more essential than ever. The panic comes from designers focusing on vague concepts like “taste” and “craft” or over-indexing on flashy prototypes instead of clearly articulating their real value. Designers thrive when they emphasize their unique mindset—human-centered, strategic, systems-aware, and comfortable with ambiguity—working at the intersection of business, user needs, and technology, and using AI to expand their toolkit and become more holistic makers rather than defending titles or fearing replacement.

ADOBE VS APPLE CREATOR STUDIO: FULL SOFTWARE AND WORKFLOW COMPARISON

Adobe Creative Cloud is a cross-platform ecosystem with cloud-powered AI and extensive collaboration tools, making it ideal for professional teams and agencies.

WHY ARE BRANDS NO LONGER AFRAID OF PRODUCING AI SLOP?

Brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Samsung have recently released AI-generated advertisements without showing remorse or attempting to hide their use of artificial intelligence.

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CANVA ACQUIRES STARTUPS WORKING ON ANIMATION AND MARKETING

Canva has acquired animation startup Cavalry and marketing AI company MangoAI to expand its creative and advertising capabilities. Cavalry's 2D motion tools will be added to Affinity, giving Canva a more complete professional suite that now includes motion editing alongside photo, vector, and layout design. MangoAI's reinforcement learning technology aims to improve video ad performance and measurement, strengthening Canva's push into marketing as it builds on tools like Canva Grow and MagicBrief.

OPKEY LAUNCHES DESIGN STUDIO TO AUTOMATE ENTERPRISE CLOUD APPLICATION DISCOVERY AND DESIGN

Opkey launched Design Studio, an AI-powered suite that automates enterprise cloud application discovery and design processes from statement-of-work creation through configuration. The platform uses Argus, a domain-specific AI model trained on over 200 terabytes of enterprise application data, to manage the entire application lifecycle and reduce manual work. Opkey claims the system can accelerate Oracle and Workday implementations by up to 50% while reducing delivery effort and improving project margins for systems integrators.

BLUESKY DARK MODE AVAILABLE ON MOBILE AND WEB

Bluesky offers Light, Dim, Dark, and System appearance options across iOS, Android, web, and desktop, letting users manually choose a theme or sync with their device's dark mode schedule. Dark mode can improve comfort in low light and save battery life—especially on OLED screens—while Dim provides a softer alternative. If issues arise, updating the app or checking system-wide dark settings usually resolves them.

HOW I'M DEALING WITH THE PRESSURE TO ADOPT AI AS A DESIGNER

A designer overcame AI-related career anxiety by realizing his control over which AI tools to adopt based on whether they improve work quality. With the development of a "six-month rule", he was able to avoid hype cycles by waiting to see which AI tools remain relevant and useful after initial excitement fades. The key is to focus on actual work outcomes rather than industry noise, and to experiment with tools broadly but only implement those that genuinely enhance results.

YOUR AI FEATURE WORKS. SO WHY DON'T USERS CARE?

Transparency alone isn't enough to build trust in AI. Real adoption depends on aligning AI features with users' existing mental models, habits, comfort zones, and cognitive limits. To move beyond early adopters, AI must fit how people already think and work—starting with low-stakes, “outsource-safe” tasks, mirroring familiar workflows, managing expectations clearly, and respecting human pace—because trust begins with alignment, not just explanation.

DESIGNING PRODUCTION-READY UIS WITH YOUR DESIGN SYSTEM USING MOONCHILD AI

Using Moonchild's new Design System feature significantly accelerated MVP development for a restaurant management product by establishing a mini design system—tokens, components, and visual rules—before generating UI screens. This system-first approach ensured strong visual consistency, reduced iteration waste, improved design-to-code alignment, and, combined with ChatGPT for research and Antigravity for frontend implementation, resulted in a workflow nearly 10x faster than previous AI-driven methods.

DESIGN AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

Vecti is a collaborative UX design tool that enables real-time team collaboration and transforms complex workflows into intuitive visual solutions.

WALL OF PORTFOLIOS

Explore designer portfolios by category, experience level, job title, and location, and showcase your own work globally.

AI IMAGE GENERATOR

Generate high-quality images from text instantly. Powered by Z-Image-Base for quality and Z-Image-Turbo for speed.

HOW TO DESIGN FOR TRANSPARENT SCREENS

David Allin Reese, a Senior Visual Designer at Google, shares insights on designing Jetpack Compose Glimmer, a new design system for AI glasses that projects interfaces onto transparent displays. The unique challenges included designing without traditional screen boundaries, where the interface appears at arm's length in the user's field of view and requires conscious shifts in focus from the real world. Key technical constraints included additive display technology and the need to rethink fundamental design elements such as color, typography, and shadows.

WHAT A UX AUDIT REALLY REVEALS ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT'S PERFORMANCE

A UX Audit systematically evaluates a digital product to identify usability issues, structural weaknesses, and friction points that hurt conversions, engagement, and growth. It examines real user behavior through heuristic evaluation, analytics data, and qualitative insights. The audit prioritizes findings by business impact and transforms them into a strategic roadmap, enabling teams to make evidence-based improvements.

WHY READING ON MOBILE IS UNIQUELY CHALLENGING

Mobile reading happens in distracted, fragmented conditions, which significantly reduces comprehension. Research shows understanding can drop from about 39% on desktop to just 19% on mobile. Cloze tests, which measure whether readers can reconstruct missing words from context, reveal how easily meaning breaks down on small screens and highlight the need for simpler, clearer writing—especially for high-stakes content—because mobile usability isn't just about layout, but about whether people truly understand what they read when attention is limited.

STUNNING PAINTERLY FANTASY WORLDS AND CREATURES BY BRITISH CONCEPT ARTIST THOMAS CHAMBERLAIN‑KEEN

British concept artist Thomas Chamberlain-Keen creates intricate, painterly fantasy worlds and creature designs while freelancing for Riot Games.

WHAT EVERY DESIGNER CAN LEARN FROM THE OLYMPIC MEDALS DISASTER

The 2026 Milan Winter Olympics medals repeatedly fell apart during medal ceremonies, with athletes' medals breaking on camera as they celebrated their victories.

VICKILICIOUS: THE TATTOO ART BRAND THAT FEEDS ITS CREATOR'S SOUL

South Wales–based designer Vicki Ashurst founded Vickilicious, a tattoo culture–inspired brand born from personal loss and creative rediscovery.

Design Pathway

IOS 27 WILL BRING LIQUID GLASS CHANGES, AND I'M EXCITED FOR ONE REASON

iOS 27 is expected to introduce modest interface tweaks—less extensive than iOS 26's Liquid Glass redesign—while Apple focuses primarily on AI improvements and bug fixes. However, the update is notable as the first under new design leader Steve Lemay, who replaced Alan Dye, and may signal a shift toward refining usability and addressing areas where recent visual changes have impacted functionality.

GOOGLE MAPS LOOKS DIFFERENT FOR SOME USERS IN BIG CHANGE

Google Maps appears to have introduced a "limited view" mode for logged-out users, stripping key features such as nearby business listings, user reviews, and dine-in details. Whether the change is intentional or a glitch remains unclear, as some users received error messages suggesting network or browser extension issues, while others saw the stripped-back version with no error at all.

NEW FIGMA MAKE CONNECTORS

New connectors in Figma Make now allow teams to pull in context from tools like Amplitude, Box, Dovetail, Granola, Marvin, and zeroheight. Custom connectors can also be configured by connecting any remote MCP server through the Connectors settings. Organization admins have control over connector access and publishing via admin settings.

DESIGNERS WHO PARTNER WITH AI WILL WIN

Designers who embrace AI as a creative partner — not a replacement — will gain a decisive edge in speed, strategy, and collaboration. AI is already used daily at Rule29 and O'Neil Printing to accelerate ideation, align teams more quickly, and sharpen strategic thinking. The human skills of taste, empathy, and judgment remain irreplaceable, and AI only makes them more valuable.

YOUR DESIGN SYSTEM WORKS IN FIGMA. DOES IT WORK IN CODE?

Design systems often fail not because of poor components, but because design files and code speak different languages, creating friction at every handoff. Five practices help bridge that gap: structuring code-like frames, building through composition, organizing components by decision flow, using AI to validate naming and structure, and making documentation part of the design process. When systems mirror how code works, translation becomes effortless, and the system scales without breaking.

DESIGNERS ARE WARMING UP TO THE CONTROVERSIAL UTAH 2034 LOGO

Utah's bold and initially divisive 2034 Winter Olympics logo—featuring angular typography inspired by the state's landscapes and petroglyphs—has recently seen warmer reception during the Milano Cortina 2026 Games, with many praising its uniqueness and practicality despite early criticism. However, it's only a transitional design. The official logo is set to debut in 2029.

PATTERN COLLIDER

Generate and explore quasiperiodic tiling patterns. Every pattern that you create has a custom URL that you can bookmark and share.

EDIT VIDEO AS A PRO

Filmora is an all-in-one video editing software for desktop and mobile. Easily create professional videos with intuitive tools, AI-powered features, and creative effects.

FORMS THAT FEEL LIKE CONVERSATIONS

Create AI-powered forms with natural language prompts. Collect feedback through engaging chat interfaces.