WRITING FOR A BETTER WEB
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leilabyron
Working towards higher-quality agentic experiences
An agentic experience asks people to trust a system that can act on their behalf. To earn that trust, the design needs to make the system’s intentions clear, show what is happening, and give people control when something needs to change.
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Dave Whitley
Figma Tips and Shortcuts I Wish I Knew Earlier
Generally speaking, it’s good to learn as many shortcuts as you can. They keep you in a flow state and give you superpowers. Instead of listing every single Figma shortcut in a cheat sheet, this post pulls out the ones we think are super useful to memorize.
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leilabyron, Jana Hernandez, veronicafasulo, Ilona Jaudzemyte, Jackie Tran
When building is cheap, judgment is the job
In September, five of us from design, product, and program management traveled to Copenhagen for Future Product Days. We spent three days attending talks and workshops, and many ideas resonated with us.
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Feeding the machine with chaos
I’ve always been a bit chaotic. When I start a new project, I really (really!) try to stick to a process. A plan, a structure… something. But my brain often jumps from one idea to the next, and all of a sudden I’m stuck in a loop of “what if…”
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Alicia Blázquez, archiesessions
Seven Key Insights from Forward Festival 2026, Berlin
A small group of Automattic designers made a pilgrimage from Australia, Argentina, the US, and all across Europe to attend the Forward Festival in Berlin this August. After dozens of talks and workshops, thousands of steps, and plenty of calories consumed together, here’s what we brought home.
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Alicia Blázquez
Disruptive Until It’s Not
I’m Spanish, so football was always present in my life, but I never became a fan. I understood its significance to those around me, as it was more than just a game; it represented tradition, loyalty, and community. However, I never felt that same sense of belonging that others did.
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Ilona Jaudzemyte
Am I still designing? Yes, but on a bigger canvas
I built an AI image plugin for WooCommerce, then a lab to check whether the product survived the picture. What that taught me about trust, and about where design decisions live now.
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leilabyron, Russell Prowse
Meet Russell Prowse
We recently welcomed Russell to our Automattic Design team. Enjoy this brief interview with him.
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Henrique Iamarino
Build a WordPress theme without ever opening Figma
Two years ago, building a professional WordPress theme meant bouncing between design tools, code editors, and the browser. But in 2025, we built Crafted—a complete, production-ready theme—almost entirely inside the WordPress Editor itself. The creative process has caught up with the visual interface, and that changes how theme work feels and gets done.
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Meredith Hoppe, Francisco Alvez Francese, Toto Castiglione
Celebrating Polish creators at WordCamp Europe 2026
People flew home from Kraków with a dragon in their bags. A Renaissance portrait, too, and a hobby-horse rider out of local legend. WordCamp Europe came to Lesser Poland’s capital this June, and the swag came from the city itself.
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Zeljko Gudelj, Nebojsa Jurcic
Designing for Curiosity at Rodeo Adventure Labs
Not every redesign should make a site feel simpler. Some brands need their complexity because that is where the knowledge, stories, and character live. Rodeo Adventure Labs was one of those projects: a bike company shaped by exploration, experimentation, and a community that cares as much about the ride as the product.
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Elizabeth Pizzuti
Agents, Agents Everywhere: Designing for AI Buyers vs AI Coworkers
In 2026 commerce, the term “agent” has become ambiguous, referring to both AI shoppers (Agentic Commerce) and AI workers for merchants (Agentic Merchant Operations). Distinct design principles are necessary for each type to enhance transparency and control. Clear language usage is essential to foster understanding and trust among merchants in this evolving landscape.
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Joen A.
Directing AI
Reflections on an AI experiment that integrates personal creativity and technology, creating a small open-source project focused on storytelling and aesthetics. Key principles include openness, connection, and hackability. The experience underscores the importance of user-driven AI engagement, emphasizing that AI is a tool shaped by how we use it.
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Sylvester Wilmott
When AI Takes the User Test
Most UX feedback comes from one of two places: real user tests, which are slow and expensive, or internal design reviews, which are biased toward the people who built the thing. A lot of small UX problems live in the gap between those two.
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Alicia Blázquez, Roosmarijn van Kessel
Bringing the NoHo Collection Into Conversation During NYCxDESIGN
On May 14, Automattic’s NoHo Space in New York welcomed over 100 guests for the first edition of the NoHo Speaker Series during NYCxDESIGN. The evening centered on design, community, and the growing NoHo Collection, featuring NYC-based Anna Kulachek and Ronaldy Navarro in conversation with Automattic’s Head of Design, Pablo Honey.
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Ilona Jaudzemyte, Filipe Varela
When Designers Start Building
What a workshop taught us about closing the gap between design and code. In most design workflows, there’s a point where the work leaves your hands. The spec goes to engineering, and from there you’re shaping the outcome through comments, screenshots, and Slack threads—staying involved, but one step behind.
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João Miranda
I Like the Shapes You Read
I care about text. Not just what it says, but how it looks and behaves on a layout. How it sits on a page, how it moves, how it breaks.
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Alicia Blázquez
Designing Porto Design Meetup ’26
How a zip code became the visual identity for our biggest in-person gathering of the year—and what it felt like to watch a design system come alive in the real world.
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leilabyron
Best in WordPress Design: Monemvasia Winery by K2 Design
K2’s website for Monemvasia Winery is a deliberate break from convention, vibrant, contemporary, and unmistakably modern, built entirely on WordPress using WooCommerce. In this edition of Best in WordPress Design, the Athens-based studio shares the creative vision and technical thinking behind a digital experience that challenges everything a winery website is expected to be.
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Marko Ivanovic, Noam Almosnino
Telex Experiments
“Describe your idea. Telex will build a WordPress block for you.” — That’s the promise featured on the Telex website. Created by Automattic, this experimental tool has been generating buzz across the WordPress community as a powerful new companion for developers.
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Henrique Iamarino
The Writing Lesson Hidden in My Automattic Hiring Trial
My design hiring trial valued clear thinking over perfect pixels—and that priority has shaped my career ever since. The onboarding screens and mockups I designed during those weeks are no longer relevant, but the practice of documenting my reasoning clearly continues to guide how I approach design challenges today.
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Roosmarijn van Kessel
Drawing the Holiday Spirit — Interviewing Cinta Arribas
Based in a small city in Northern Spain, Cinta Arribas is an illustrator and visual artist with over ten years of professional experience. She studied Fine Arts in Salamanca and Kassel (Germany), and recently completed an artist residency in Washington, DC, through a program of the Spanish Embassy.
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Toto Castiglione, leilabyron
Best in WordPress Design: General Condition
General Condition’s new website is a study in atmosphere: slow, intentional, emotionally charged design brought to life with WordPress. In this edition of Best in WordPress Design, its founder, Jovan Lakić, shares the inspirations, challenges, and tools behind their narrative-driven digital world.
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Fernando Pérez, Marta Przeciszewska
Illustrations That Scale: Building a Cohesive Style for Woo
At Woo, we’ve been rethinking how illustrations can support both our product and our brand. The result is a new system designed to feel cohesive, flexible, and fast to work with. We’ve built a framework that balances functional clarity with expressive storytelling, giving us a style that adapts seamlessly across contexts.
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Dominic Camozzi
Smarter, More Open Podcasting with Pocket Casts
This past year at Pocket Casts, we focused on making discovery more relevant, libraries easier to browse, and adding new ways to support creators, alongside improvements to playback and accessibility. Every change reflects our belief that podcasting should remain open and centered on people, not platforms.
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Toto Castiglione
Pablo Honey On the “Daring Creativity. Daring Forever” Podcast with Radim Malinic
Pablo Honey joins Radim Malinic on the “Daring Creativity. Daring Forever” podcast to explore what it really means to dare creatively.
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Dave Lockie
Content for Fun Vs. Content for Purpose: Designing for Two Distinct Modes of Consumption
From AI assistants to digital platforms, how can we design for rapid mode switching in real life? Reflections about utilitarian and experiential content and why understanding both matters.
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Diana Costa
Craft Meets Community: Designing for the Bedfordshire Bird Club
The most rewarding design projects emerge when passionate communities with a clear vision partner with technical experts to achieve something neither could accomplish alone. The Bedfordshire Bird Club embodied this perfect collaboration.
A FULLY DISTRIBUTED TEAM MAKING THE WEB A BETTER PLACE.
Women At Work Podcast
Automattic sponsored Season 2 of Women At Work, a podcast about female creativity, leadership & feminism.
