8px's Clipped Content #10
š Your dose of pixel-based stuff
Hello everyone!
A few things have been playing on my mind recently within the design industry, and giving me reason for alarm.
The merging of job roles
OpenAiās impressive demos
The merging of job roles
In particular, an expectation that designers will either code, or contribute more to product management. This is great! I love the idea of getting closer to the source, thereās not much more frustrating than being told to focus just on the pixels.
What Iām concerned with though is that as soon as a non-creative, non-technical executive smells this trend, those that arenāt ready will be the first to suffer.
With that in mind, Iād encourage all of you to at least take the introduction to HTML and CSS course over on Scrimba.
Get ahead of the game!
OpenAiās impressive demos
Wow, entire videos from text? Sure, they look cool, but until very recently this type of work was days or weeks worth of someoneās entire job.
How are we preparing ourselves for this? As far as I can tell, we arenāt. Similar to the previous point, the practitioners at risk need to be prepared for this potential onslaught of āAi can do your job now, bye byeā.
Letās all start to try and look beyond the horizon. What does work look like for you in 12, 24 months? Are you trying to anticipate significant industry change yet?
Have a great week folks,
p.s. If you donāt remember what this is, itās a quarterly (ish) newsletter that I send out which includes a bunch of cool stuff that I find from being online a lot.
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š¦ Donāt think: The intellect is a danger to creativity
Seriously, thinking is the devil on your shoulder of great ideas.
Watch this 3 minute video from an author explaining it in a much better way than I ever could.
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š Thoughts on a global design system
From Chris Coyier, of CSS Tricks fame. He breaks down his thoughts on the current āwe need a global design system!ā trend. Personally, I think we need a globally aligned set of conventions on component and token naming, every company is too different to use the same implementation.
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š Navigating design critiques with grace andĀ grit
Some nice advice here from the Slack design team on how to have productive and respectful design critique sessions! They are pretty hard to get right, but thereās some excellent advice in here.
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š OKRs suck
Okay, that was my title, but itās still true! This article, although not about everyoneās favourite topic, is a brilliant explainer on why OKRs typically donāt work, and how to make them so much better within your teams. If you want to have a happier and more productive team, check it ouuuuut.
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š Work hard and take everything really seriously
This is a fantastic article about passion. Specifically passion for what we do for 10 hours every day. These points in particular stood out for me:
Wisdom is acquired by experience
Energy begets energy
Most jobs donāt give you time to learn
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š In loving memory of the square checkbox
Hey nerds, this one is for you. Itās a very very deep dive into the history of the checkbox online. Why? Because Apply are trying to make make it round and we should all be calling the police to let them know.
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š You arenāt that important
Talk about a downer of a title š¤£. This article is about striking the balance between self care and an obsession over work. Should we be hustling our way to success? No, we shouldnāt. Will the world care if we spend an extra few hours polishing those buttons? Also no. Itās important to take a step back and analyse the importance and need for anything we decide is important in the workplace.
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8px Radio podcast is baaaack
In the latest season, I interviewed someone who wore a Sketch t-shirt to a Figma conference, someone who loves Twitter threads, someone who might be an AI, and someone who worked on the original UK Gov design system release.
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube
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See you next time
Always delightful to read through the collection of interesting thoughts youāve found on the internet, thank you for sharing Luis!