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Ian Stewart
The story of the story of the Four Planets of Design
Working at a fully distributed company where everyone at the company is working remotely from each other means you’re simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. You’re in Slack or a P2 or video call synchronously and asynchronously but you’re also completely removed from each other. Last year Automattic Design took a stab at fixing that by reframing…
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The Remote Speaker Coach
Practical tips for giving talks, and how to get started
Guest Post by Danielle Krage, professional speaker coach. Public speaking is a skillset. Getting better at it is a process. And no matter what your current level of experience, there is always a place to start, and a way to improve. This video post is designed to meet you where you are as a speaker and…
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Dave Whitley
A Design System Approach to Improving Usability through Color
Like many other companies with expansive digital products, Automattic (makers of WordPress.com) has recently dedicated a significant amount of energy into creating a design language system that we call Muriel. This new design system is ambitious and could reach a wide range of products, potentially transforming our process at Automattic. With only a small team,…
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Alexis Lloyd
A meditation on the open web
Come with us on a journey to explore the landscape of the web and get to know the people and possibilities of open source, the open web, and open opportunities.
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Jeff Ong
Automating Asset Creation
The first thing a child draws looks like a circle. People spontaneously arrange themselves in a circle when they need to observe something close up, and this led to the origin of the arena, the circus, and the stock exchange trading posts. Bruno Munari, “La Scoperta del Cerchio (The Discovery of the Circle)” 1964 At…
Various formats / examples of brand assets generator. -
David A. Kennedy
Better conversations about accessibility
Great design includes accessibility. However, a delta can often form between the two, especially early on during the design process. Without accessibility, you deny equal access to someone, so you can call it a moral imperative. In many countries, the law requires it so minus it, you break the law. If you don’t incorporate it…
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John Maeda
The Four Planets of Design
Concept by Adam Becker and Brie Anne DemkiwImages by Marly GallardoText by Ian Stewart We call our design process “deep design” per a talk I gave at WordCamp Europe in 2018. It emerged from the realization that by being so technology-focused, we spent a disproportionate time on Planet Deliver. So we needed to consider the…
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Alexis Lloyd
Growing design community with the Automattic Design Awards
At the end of 2018, we launched the inaugural edition of the Automattic Design Awards, a program intended to honor the best design work in the WordPress ecosystem. There are beautiful websites built with WordPress, there are plugins and other features that extend the functionality of WordPress in elegant and thoughtful ways. The more we…
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Courtney Burton Doker
The first ATL Design Systems Meetup
Building design systems is hard. What makes it even harder is that a lot of these teams are very small, sometimes even comprising a single person. This can sometimes leave design systems practitioners feeling isolated and overwhelmed. The power of community can help to remove this feeling of isolation, making you feel connected to something…
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David A. Kennedy
Inclusive design: Whose Opportunity Is It?
Maybe you already know the answer to that question, but let me tell you a bit about the journey I’ve taken so I can answer it myself. I’m a twin. Born two-months premature with a number of health challenges early on. I was a small kid who wore thick glasses and had a visible scar…
A fully distributed team making the web a better place.
A fully distributed team making the web a better place.
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