Claude Design launched last week, and the design internet lost its mind. If you missed it, Anthropic dropped a tool that generates prototypes, decks, and mockups, reads your company’s codebase and design files, and applies your design system automatically. Figma’s…
Creativity isn’t a talent. It’s not something you’re either born with or forever without. It’s a skill, and more specifically, it’s a practice of pattern-breaking. The real reason most designers hit a creative rut isn’t that their ideas have run…
A lot of the thinking in this post was inspired by design director and ADPList mentor Guy Segal, who articulated this framework better than we’ve heard it put before. If you get a chance to hear him talk about critique,…
I’ve been in this meeting a hundred times. The client pulls up a mood board or points to a brand they love and says, “We want it to feel like Apple.” Or Nike. Or some other brand that took decades…
Here’s the trap every creative leader falls into. You care about your team. You want them to succeed. So when you see someone heading toward a risky creative direction, you step in. You soften the edges. You steer them somewhere…
We’ve been deep in building Thriveful for a while now, and feedback is at the center of everything we’re designing. How it gets requested, how it gets delivered, how the community structure encourages the kind of critique that actually helps…
As a creative director, most of my day is providing feedback. I review work, I push teams to think harder, I challenge directions that feel safe. It’s the core of the job, and I’ve been doing it long enough to…
From mentoring sessions over the past year, I’d say about 70% of the designers I talk to are now dealing with design tests as part of the hiring process. And almost all of them hate it. I hate them too,…
I spent the first chunk of my career in agencies and freelancing, and one thing was always true: the relationship was transactional. If a client wanted a last-minute change or a rush job, we’d scope it out, send a change…
There’s a moment in Star Wars that I think about all the time. Luke Skywalker is flying down the trench toward the Death Star. He’s got a high-tech targeting computer locked in — coordinates, trajectory, perfect math. Everything is dialed.…