Preoccupations
The seam between design and engineering daily
The moment a drawing stops being a drawing and has to hold weight.
Interfaces that read like good prose ongoing
Clear, unhurried, nothing showing off. You should not notice the sentence.
Teams as the actual medium always
The work is downstream of the people. Shape the people, shape the work.
What the web is still for recurring
A place to make things in public, quickly, and mean them.
Where craft hides inside speed lately
Fast and considered are not opposites. Most people just pick one.
Currently
Building a smaller vocabulary, used better
Reading back issues of things I already own
Watching a mouse solve problems, on repeat
Avoiding a third typeface
Drinking a saffron iced latte, even in January
Said out loud
Design is how an idea enters the world. Before a product is understood, it is felt.
A portfolio can show me what you made. I want to understand what you see.
Taste is just paying attention for longer than is comfortable.
Built for Monday, beautiful on Friday. If it cannot do both, it is not finished.
A design system is a set of promises. Most of them fail as promises, not as components.
Finish the parts no one will see. They are the ones that hold.
Places
New York, NY home
A desk with the good afternoon light most days
A corner table that is not for sale held
A villa in Fiesole, built only for the view a previous life
Objects
A 24-patch colour chart kept
The one from the old site. It stays, off to the side, watching.
A mechanical pencil, 0.3mm in use
Architecture leaves marks. This is the tool that left them.
A floor plan I never built framed
Proof that some good ideas are better left as drawings.
A bag in caban carried
One artisan, every stitch, start to finish. The patience shows.
A draft latte from La Colombe daily
Nitrogen does the frothing now. The chipped cup pretends not to mind.
Elsewhere
Thinking out loud x / @zeejab
Work, mid-thought github / @zeejab