Andrew Thomas, Head of Retail Design at Google EMEA, shared his creative journey and philosophy with members of Creative Boom's private network, The Studio, emphasizing the transformative power of belief, collaboration, and resilience in creative work. Drawing on personal experiences—from designing for Kylie to leading campaigns for global brands—he encouraged creatives to respect ideas, seek diverse perspectives, and embrace feedback as a tool for growth and innovation.
Apple is facing growing criticism over a string of underwhelming product launches and its sluggish entry into the AI space, with research firm LightShed suggesting the company may need a new, more product-focused CEO to remain competitive. As rivals surge ahead in AI innovation, commentators argue that under Tim Cook's leadership, Apple has lost its edge in design and breakthrough hardware, raising doubts about its future growth trajectory.
AI is transforming product design by enabling rapid prototyping, automating tasks, and streamlining collaboration, but its speed and convenience risk overshadowing critical thinking and systems-level understanding. While AI can be a powerful accelerator, designers must avoid over-reliance on tools and maintain a strong foundation in strategic thinking, user insight, and holistic problem-solving to ensure quality, purpose-driven outcomes.
Professional real-time AI interviews, personalized feedback, and resume matching for your dream role.
A plugin for Figma that helps designers create design variables and styles quickly. The word Kigen is Japanese for 'origin', 'source', or 'starting point'.
Design recruiting has shifted dramatically, with portfolios now completely overtaking resumes as recruiters skip straight to evaluating craft quality and business impact metrics. Companies prioritize collaboration skills and strong design opinions that AI cannot replicate, making designer conviction a make-or-break factor in startup hiring. Most design hires still happen through word-of-mouth referrals rather than cold applications, with active community participation becoming crucial for early-career designers.
2025.07.16·designbuddies.substack.com·3 min read·TLDR Design Neurodesign combines neuroscience, psychology, and design to create digital experiences that align with the brain's natural processing of information. The approach applies principles like Hick's Law, Miller's Law, and Fitts's Law to reduce cognitive load and make interfaces more intuitive by respecting visual scanning patterns and memory limitations. Designers now use eye-tracking technology, heat maps, and AI-powered attention prediction tools to measure and optimize brain-friendly user experiences.
2025.07.16·links.tldrnewsletter.com·5 min read·TLDR Design Designer Olivia King created “Penguin Inclusive Sans,” a custom, accessible typeface for Penguin Books, rooted in the publisher's rich typographic history and designed to balance historical authenticity with contemporary readability. Inspired by archives and humanist design principles, the open-source font features friendly, inclusive details and supports over 600 languages, advancing Penguin's mission of making books accessible to all.
Freepik has launched unlimited AI video generation for Premium+ and Pro subscribers, eliminating the credit-based anxiety that typically restricts the use of AI creative tools.
Samsung's Galaxy AI Forum revealed how smartphones are transitioning from "smart" to "ambient" devices, where AI anticipates user needs invisibly rather than requiring active engagement.
Ikea announced it will release 20 smart home products in January 2026, marking its most significant step toward making smart home technology open, simple, and affordable. The system centers around Dirigera, a Matter-compatible hub that works with devices across different brands to lower barriers for consumers entering smart home technology. Two preview Bluetooth speakers are launching before the main release - Nattbad this month and Blomprakt in October - signaling Ikea's minimalist yet attractive design direction for home tech.
2025.07.15·links.tldrnewsletter.com·2 min read·TLDR Design Meta has announced a crackdown on unoriginal content on Facebook, targeting accounts that repeatedly repost others' videos, photos, or text without adding meaningful originality. The company has already removed 10 million impersonator profiles and penalized 500,000 accounts for spammy behavior, and says creators who abuse reposting will face monetization loss and reduced reach. This move follows similar efforts by YouTube and comes amid criticism over Meta's automated enforcement issues and the rise of low-quality AI-generated content.
UX debt accumulates when design teams make compromises due to tight deadlines, limited resources, or a lack of user research, much like technical debt in development. This debt manifests as inconsistent interfaces, poor user experiences, and navigation issues that eventually require costly fixes and refactoring efforts. While UX debt cannot be completely avoided, teams can manage it through conscious decision-making, regular user research, early designer involvement, and maintaining dedicated backlogs for debt repayment tasks.
While design thrives on optimism, ignoring pessimistic perspectives—especially in high-risk projects—can lead to catastrophic failures, as seen in disasters like OceanGate and Grenfell. Integrate “wildcard thinking” into design processes to challenge blind faith, encourage preparedness, and balance hope with realistic scrutiny.
2025.07.15·links.tldrnewsletter.com·7 min read·TLDR Design "Accidental managers" are skilled creatives pushed into leadership roles they never wanted. Career progression shouldn't be tied exclusively to management. Explore alternative paths, seek support roles to bridge team dynamics, and consider leadership training only if it aligns with personal goals. Staying hands-on should remain a valid and respected career choice.
Create 1,000+ of studio-quality product images in seconds with the best bulk mockup generator API and e-commerce integrations.
YoinkUI is a browser extension that allows users to extract and convert website UI into Tailwind CSS and React components.
This Figma plugin helps designers bring static Figma designs to life with one-click animation. It is perfect for portfolio demos, social media, launch videos, or adding motion to apps and websites.
Intercom's product design team used AI tools to rebuild its Design website during a hackathon in London, creating a canvas-style experience in just over a day. The team discovered AI's limitations when tools like Lovable confidently claimed to implement features like draggable blocks and scrolling that didn't actually work. They switched to Cursor for better control, refined the design iteratively, and launched an MVP that won the hackathon despite imperfections.
Human agency, the ability to initiate, decide, and lead rather than wait for instructions, will become a critical career skill as AI handles routine tasks. While AI excels at execution, humans must provide direction and make strategic decisions about what problems to solve and which AI-generated options to pursue. Developing agency requires taking initiative at work, treating AI as a partner rather than a replacement, and building influence through persuasion, skills that can be cultivated through practice and supportive environments.
Failing to save scroll position can frustrate users by forcing them to repeat actions, increasing interaction cost, especially on long or complex pages. While preserving scroll position is usually best, the ideal behavior depends on context, content freshness, and user intent. Designers should aim for the least disruptive default, which often involves combining scroll memory with visible reset options.
Tuneshine is a 6.3-inch LED screen device that displays album artwork from streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.
WCAG 2.2 has significant flaws, including inaccurate color contrast algorithms, weak requirements for alt text quality, and insufficient focus indicators.
Google expanded its Veo 3 AI video generator by adding image-to-video functionality to the Gemini app, allowing users to upload photos and generate videos with optional audio descriptions. The feature, which has been available in the Flow tool since May, is now accessible in over 150 countries. There is a three-video daily limit for Ultra and Pro subscribers. Since launching weeks ago, users have created over 40 million videos across both platforms, with all content bearing visible "Veo" watermarks and invisible SynthID digital markers.
Apple may be planning a “significant evolution” of the iPhone's Dynamic Island, aiming for deeper integration and increased functionality over time. Although all four iPhone 17 models are expected to retain the current version of the feature, rumors remain divided over whether short-term changes to their design or software are in store. The leaker has not disclosed specific details, but their comments suggest that Apple could be preparing for a more advanced, possibly cut-out-free interface in the years ahead.
Intangible, a new AI video tool created by Pixar, Apple, Google, and Unity alumni, aims to address the control issues of generative AI video through a 3D interface. The platform enables users to create custom 3D scenes using drag-and-drop objects, cameras, and spatial controls, and then utilizes AI to render realistic videos from these structured environments. While the current version shows promise in addressing the gap between human imagination and AI video creation, it remains imperfect with rendering mistakes and relies on existing AI engines like Kling for final video generation.
2025.07.14·links.tldrnewsletter.com·7 min read·TLDR Design AI is reshaping how teams work by lowering the barriers to creation, enabling anyone, from PMs to designers, to turn rough ideas into working prototypes without waiting for specialized help. While AI accelerates the early stages of projects, design expertise still matters deeply for refining, guiding, and ensuring quality, so the future belongs to those who combine craft with broader technical fluency.
Most current AI design tools reside outside the creative flow, forcing designers to interrupt their work and wade through impressive yet unbuildable or unsourced outputs. In contrast, “Practical AI” must be embedded directly in the messy, iterative act of creation, like an exoskeleton that automates real tasks (moodboards, specs, admin, and sourcing) and keeps designers in their zone so they can explore more ideas faster.
Designers can effectively work with indecisive leaders by becoming facilitators who make decision-making easier, much like gelato salespeople help customers choose among many flavors. Use problem-framing questions rather than direct statements, and present options analysis with clear recommendations while still allowing leaders to maintain final choice authority. This method reduces endless revisions and frustration while avoiding the need to antagonize leadership or completely take over decision-making responsibilities.
2025.07.14·dataanddesign.substack.com·5 min read·TLDR Design 48 dark and light gradients for banner backgrounds.
Rocket.new turns ideas into live web and mobile apps in minutes. Generate clean code, customize with AI, and launch fast, all with no code.
Vecto3d is a simple tool for converting your 2D SVGs, mostly logos, into 3D models.
Bentley has transformed its historic 1939 Crewe HQ into a state-of-the-art design lab, highlighting a shift toward modernising the brand with a focus on design, innovation, and electric mobility, exemplified by the launch of the EXP 15 concept car and a new, simplified logo. The studio brings together CMF, UX/UI, and Mulliner teams under one roof to foster collaboration and create cars that blend cutting-edge technology with heritage-inspired design, aiming to meet the complex demands of luxury buyers—especially in the growing Chinese market—while retaining Bentley's storied identity.
AI design tools are transforming from futuristic concepts into essential workflow accelerators, particularly excelling at rapid prototyping and layout generation. Figma's native AI capabilities, such as Make, have addressed key integration challenges that plagued earlier standalone tools, making AI adoption more practical for structured design environments. Teams should start with low-risk pilots to build AI fluency now, as success depends more on operational integration than tool sophistication.
AI products struggle with context management, as users need to understand what information influences responses. However, current solutions, such as context chips, break down when dealing with complex, multi-agent systems. The evolution from simple context display to agent-based systems creates a nested amount of context that overwhelms traditional UI approaches. As users become more confident with AI tools, context management interfaces may become less prominent, as people typically only examine the underlying process when the results seem questionable.
Dear Monday, formerly the Female Leadership Academy, has rebranded with a bold new identity by Arndt Benedikt to reflect its evolution from a coaching platform into a dynamic movement empowering women in leadership.
Catriona Drummond, the 23-year-old lead art director for Bluey's first series, developed the show's distinctive visual style by drawing from Brisbane's architecture and light.
Apple plans to release an updated Vision Pro headset featuring the M4 processor and a redesigned strap for improved comfort as early as this year. The M4 chip offers roughly 50% better CPU performance and 20-25% better graphics performance compared to the current M2 version, while new headbands aim to reduce neck strain during extended use. This iterative update serves as a bridge to a more extensive redesign, expected in 2027 or 2028, that will significantly reduce the headset's weight.
YouTube launched a new feature that allows creators to voluntarily share channel and audience data with brands and advertisers for potential sponsorship opportunities. The platform has been expanding its influencer marketing capabilities through updates to BrandConnect and the introduction of new tools, such as Insights Finder and Open Call, to compete with Instagram. This data-sharing initiative aims to address measurement inconsistencies in influencer marketing by enhancing communication between creators and brands, leading to improved campaign results.
Range Rover has introduced its first bespoke emblem in 55 years, but the new logo—featuring two mirrored "R"s—has sparked widespread criticism for looking out of place on a luxury car brand. Critics have compared it to designs from jewelry brands or early 2000s dance albums, echoing backlash similar to Jaguar's controversial rebrand last year. Although the symbol is intended for smaller applications rather than car exteriors, many believe it fails to honor the brand's heritage and risks further alienating loyal customers.
"Powered By AI" as a primary value proposition weakens product development by obscuring actual user benefits and making adoption harder. Teams that focus on AI as their main selling point often lose the ability to prioritize features effectively, unlike successful products that solve specific problems first. Clear value propositions should emphasize what users accomplish, not the underlying technology, as AI integration without defined user goals leads to unfocused products that struggle with market fit.
Designer trends, such as LinkedIn action figures, reveal how mimicking popular content creates "slop" rather than authentic craft, highlighting the industry's contradiction between demanding originality while discouraging reinvention. Scrolling through curated feeds and studying existing patterns won't develop genuine taste, as the internet serves sameness disguised as endless newness. An authentic design voice emerges from analog inspiration, such as books, films, and museums, which require patience and presence rather than algorithmic validation.
2025.07.11·thecursormag.substack.com·4 min read·TLDR Design While much attention is given to AI's threat to creative jobs, a deeper crisis lies in the broken talent pipeline—underfunded education, outdated teaching, and lack of access are preventing the next generation from entering and thriving in the industry. Unless this systemic gap is addressed through investment, modern curricula, and stronger school-to-industry links, AI will only worsen inequality and marginalize emerging creative talent.
Create step-by-step guides, how-to videos, and training modules for your knowledge base in minutes.
Transform ordinary images into stunning masterpieces effortlessly with Pokecut's AI-powered editor.
Animate your icons to add personality, improve UX, and guide user interaction across apps and websites.
Webflow's design team has built an AI-powered prototyping platform that enables designers to create functional prototypes in under an hour utilizing tools like Cursor and GitHub. The platform integrates Webflow's Spring design system with AI-friendly conventions and automated deployment, allowing designers to validate complex interactions and user flows rather than just describing them. Examples include working prototypes for AI assistant experiences, animation controls, and access management systems that revealed UX issues invisible in static mockups.
2025.07.11·wf-blog-2021.webflow.io·7 min read·TLDR Design Pangram Pangram has launched a redesigned website that prioritizes a refined, intuitive user experience, allowing its high-quality fonts to take center stage through a minimalist, editorial-inspired interface. More than just a storefront, the new platform enhances usability, font testing, and licensing while expanding its role as a hub for education, inspiration, and community engagement in the design world.
Uai is a new typeface from Brazil's Naipe Foundry explicitly designed for digital environments that combines technical precision with the cultural warmth of Minas Gerais. Developed with input from over 100 UI designers, Uai offers 14 styles optimized for accessibility, dark mode, and consistent layout, making it a versatile and personable choice for modern digital interfaces.