How fonts die, layoff lessons, atomic design in motion, working with AI

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.

“When the layoffs caught up with me, I was relieved. I had been secretly hoping I would be next because I felt stuck after having worked on the same products for 12 years (6 years on user documentation and another 6 years on UX writing). I had tried looking for other opportunities but just wasn’t very active because I still had a job. I thought this would be a good change.”

My first layoff was the best thing that happened to my career →By Felicia Wu

I’ll bet that you didn’t know Excel could do this…[Sponsored] This free set of templates and tutorials summarizes a decade of experiments to make Excel look less like… Excel. It’s all about using Excel’s built-in design features to make boring spreadsheets stand out. You’ll get a free Excel template to work with each week along with guidance and tutorials.

Editor picks

Adding motion to Atomic Design →
Defining the next decade of animation.
By Darren Yeo
What productivity tools miss about AI →
Incumbents often turn new technology into a feature.
By Tejas Gawande
How can humans and AI work together? →
Towards a harmonious partnership.
By Filipe Nzongo

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and illuminates the path to design mastery and critical thinking. Here’s how we’re boosting stories through our partnership with Medium.

Tiny illustrated sci-fi stories: a new micro-story every day →

Make me think

We use too many damn modals →
“Modals are the crutch of the inarticulate designer and developer. While there are genuine, good uses for them, many modals are disruptive, invasive, and confusing, used as an interaction junk drawer, hard to escape, poorly accessible, a frustrating user experience on small screens, and blocking the user’s interaction with the parent window.”
Perceptually uniform color models and their implications →
“Albert Munsell, an artist and professor of art at the Massachusetts Normal Art School wanted to create a rational way to describe color that would use decimal notation instead of color names which he could use to teach his students about color.”
Consistent with what? →
“Consistency is a word you hear a lot in tech. Designers talk about it (do not play the “drink when you hear this word” game with this word at a design systems conference), developers talk about it, everyone! But when it comes to consistency, it’s important to recognize that consistency comes in different flavors.”

Little gems this week

Fonts can die. Are we doing enough to save them? →By Micheal Xing

Resigns and gains, how the negotiation works in UX teams →By Kike Peña

Figma, I love you but you’re bringing me down →
By Joe Bernstein

Tools and resources

Figma cheat sheet →
For developers using inspect mode.
User journeys vs. user flows →
The differences in scope, purpose, and format.
UX sheet: Preview and full display →
Making navigation easier for your users.

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How fonts die, layoff lessons, atomic design in motion, working with AI was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.