Designing in the open
Throughout my career, most of my design work has been produced in relatively controlled environments: It was covered under strict NDAs, or it was presented to a very select group of colleagues, clients, or other […]
Building Websites with Passion for Our Customers
When I was in my early teens, I started using a tool called ResEdit to customize the splash screens of applications on my computer. I opened the original splash screen image files in GraphicConverter, added some […]
Finding my way into the WordPress community
I’ve been on the periphery of the open source WordPress community for years now. I’ve attended one local WordPress meetup, one WordCamp, and I even helped design and produce a book about WordPress. Here at […]
Reproducing a Discover feature in Gutenberg
Gutenberg is rapidly getting better and better. I’ve been digging into its relationship to themes, and have been experimenting with its role in content as well. In that vein, I took on a Gutenberg challenge […]
There's no trick to getting 1,000 views
Last month, the designers at Automattic were given the following challenge: Pick a colleague’s post, and explain why you chose that one. Outline a plan for the post to get 1,000+ views. Imagine that you […]
On Finding Joy in the Unexpected and Making the Decision to Be Busy
Earlier this month, I attended the inaugural Dribbble Hangtime conference in Boston, MA. I had a lot of fun, and thought I’d share a couple of the ideas I took away from the event. Kelli […]
I will never stop learning
Last week, everyone at Automattic got together for our “Grand Meetup.” This is the only occasion each year that all 600+ of us are together in one place. With such a large group, there are […]
Typographic Tweaks for Longreads
During the 7 years I’ve been involved with Longreads, we’ve gone from sharing links on Twitter to publishing our own in-depth, investigative stories. While we’ve grown substantially in scope and focus, the brand has largely stayed consistent. The […]
Hundreds of Tiny Arrows
I recently hand-drew hundreds of tiny arrows for a Longreads illustration. It took about four hours, with a few breaks to check Slack and refill my chai. I knew I could have drawn a few […]
