Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I interview a lot of designers in the course of any given week. Less than half have taken the usual path to becoming a designer. Most took a more meandering route, stumbling upon design through some…

I recently shared a video I created (with the fantastic Caresse Haaser) that explored the spaces of the open web in contrast to the more closed environments that have dominated our recent online experiences. As part of that project, we shared the source materials on GitHub and asked for others to translate the meditation into…

Dave Martin is one of the world’s most experienced distributed designers and design leaders. I first found out about Dave’s work by reading one of his old blog posts where he described the challenges when hiring for an all-distributed design team. Dave left Automattic in 2015 for new adventures, and then three years later came…

I don’t have a formal design background. I had to learn everything the hard way through the usual methods. Diving into, or letting myself get thrown into, the deep end of the pool. Working hard to learn as much as I could whenever I could. Asking lots of questions. Admitting what I don’t know to…

I learned how to change the oil in my car before I could drive. Twenty years later, I still change it myself. Sure, I could have someone else do it in the same amount of time for the same amount of money, but I think its important to get under the hood yourself. I feel…

This post originally appeared on filippodt.com. Wikipedia defines a silver bullet as “a metaphor for a simple, seemingly magical, solution to a difficult problem”. Working in product development, I have come across my share of silver bullets and every time they end in the same way. First with disappointment and then the additional hard work…

Kelly Hoffman: Design is now so many things! At its essence it’s identifying and solving problems. / Pablo Honey: Design is a practice that strives for better “(blank)” with the right balance of form and function. / Ian Stewart: Design is like drawing the essence out of something, for someone. It might be a message,…

The Mayor of Saint Étienne, France cordially kicked off a two-hour long presentation on #DesignInTech in a collaboration between Automattic Design and the Material Design team at Google. Complete context for the collaboration is available on our aptly named microsite: https://materialdesignandautomatticdesigninfrance.blog/ Direct jump to talks by Dave Martin | Jeff Ong | Kunal Patel |…