Design

Figma Config was just a couple weeks ago. This year I had a hard time getting excited about software features, especially when that kind of work will be largely automated soon. It’s true. Creative teams that are solely focused on quality and craft as their outcome are going to find themselves fighting a losing battle.

With that in mind, Figma’s new updates do look impressive in the near term. There were a lot of great talks about design systems, prototyping, and content design, but I was most drawn to the ones talking about product, business, and leadership.

I enjoyed hearing how the Figjam team squeezed so much fun into their product (we all want to do it, but only a few actually pull it off). Halli’s talk is also top notch and a bit of a tear jerker.

My favorite talk is Nick Johnson’s lightening talk at the 1:21:00 mark of the opening keynote titled Design Without Business is Art.

Must watch.

Email Geeks

Ten years ago I published the first version of Cerberus, some open-source patterns for HTML email. It’s wild to think this project has now spanned a decade of my life.

In those ten years, I never monetized it.

Never even thought about it until last month when someone offered to buy it. It didn’t work out, but it got me thinking: would it be so bad to try and make some money from this thing after all these years?

Before I get ahead of myself, I want to ask to ask some of my closest email friends (ahem, that’s you 😉): would you feel about it?

How would it make you feel if I pushed paid templates? Or charged for a professional license?

I’d love to know your opinion before doing something I might regret.

Climate

So much of our pollution can be traced to a few corporations, so voting is the most impactful thing we can do as individuals to combat climate change. But that doesn’t mean we can’t curb our individual impact.

I’m reading Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book and there’s a section on our attitude towards personal consumption. One passage about Americans was striking:

Our culture values convenience, valorizes excess, and hides the true cost of our lifestyle. Too many use too much. Waste too much. Have too much. And care too little. The problem is especially acute in the United States, where higher education, health care, and child care are extremely expensive but stuff is cheap.

Yea, that’s us to a T. We are almost completely protected from having to understand anything about the climate impacts of the things we do and buy.

I recently moved into a new role at Dialpad that will require me to fly from NYC to SF three or four times a year just to sit in a conference room for a couple days. Since flying is one of the most carbon-intense things an individual can do, I’m conflicted.

Do I really need to be there in person for what can be done over Zoom? How would the company react if I told them I felt guilty flying that much?

What would you do?

Fun from Twitter before it dies

hi, i'm the client rep for the software suite that drives you insane with rage on a daily basis. i'm writing you today to tell you about all the exciting AI integrations we're introducing that will make you hate us more than you ever thought possible. - Lauren Walker

Thanks for reading, see you in a fortnight ✌️

-Ted
@tedgoas