Articles
There’s just something about writing ideas down that make you think differently. Communicating ideas effectively is also a big part of design. I need to get better at this, but here are a couple of things I’ve been thinking about lately.
2016
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That Time One of My Tweets Reached 33K Retweets
All that snow can make it a little hard to drive sometimes… 💥🚙🚌🚓❄️ pic.twitter.com/TMPeQD2lR0— Kevin Clark (@vernalkick) December 5, 2016 …
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Designed By Few 2016
Last week I had the chance to do something I’ve never done before: take part in a design competition where I (along with 2 other talented design…
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The Heart of the Builder
Sep Kamvar offers a very intelligent argument against user-centered design in this article: The danger in user-centered design is that it releases t…
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We vs They
I’ve been interviewing a lot these days at Shopify, so I’ve started to pick up on certain patterns I see when talking to people in intervi…
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The Veil of Ignorance
Adam Morse on accessibility: When I sit down to design things I try to put on the veil of ignorance. I imagine a world where I am not who I am …
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The Empathy Machine
I’ve only started getting into House Of Cards. I know what you’re thinking. I simply never got into the show after its first episode. For a long…
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Lingo
Khoi Vinh, writing about Lingo by Noun Project: Designers can drag and drop their assets into Lingo’s thumbnail browser interface; the assets are …
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Generalist vs Specialist
Last week I asked people on Twitter if they considered themselves a generalist or a specialist. Here are the results: Good morning! Quick questi…
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Brydge Mini II Review
Since getting my iPad Mini 4, I’ve been completely in love with it. I use it for reading, browsing Twitter, watching movies and TV shows, …
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Firewatch-Themed Desktop & Text Editor
I’m not a gamer. I have 2 games on my iPhone: Monument Valley and Alto’s Adventure. But I’m a huge fan of Panic and Olly Moss. When …
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Operator
Hoefler & Co. Just released an interesting typeface called Operator. The most interesting part about it are the italic letterforms. I feel like …
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Book Recommendations from Twitter
A few days ago I asked people on Twitter what was the best non-fiction book that they read recently. Fortunately, I got a lot of good recommendations.…
2015
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My 2015
2015 has been a fantastic year for me. I traveled a bunch, met tons of new people, shipped amazing projects that I’m super proud of, helped buil…
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Our best meetup so far
Last Tuesday we (Shopify) hosted the 6th MTL Dribbble Meetup, but it was the first in our brand new office space. Our lounge area was designed w…
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Failure is like learning to ride a bike
I’m currently reading Creativity Inc. and this passage about different ways to deal with failures resonated with me: Left to their own de…
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Two Degrees
Adil Majid wrote an excellent post about a question I’ve often asked myself: “What did wildly successful people do differently from the re…
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Save is a byproduct
From Jerome R’s answer on the rationale behind the “no save” approach of Google Docs on Stack Exchange UX: Save is a byproduc…
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Sharpie Art Workshop
Sharpie Art Workshop: Techniques and Ideas for Transforming Your World is a great book about the art…
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Some speech shuts down more expression than it opens up
Medium recently updated its policy to prohibit public shaming amongst other things (emphasis mine): We want everyone to feel at home on Medium.…
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Antifragile Design at CocoaHeads MTL
A few people asked me if I was doing my “Antifragile Design” talk somewhere in Montreal. The answer is yes! I’ve been asked by the…
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One Day Before
If you’ve been following my Twitter feed for the last couple of weeks, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been working on a talk. The…
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I Gave up on RSS
As I’m typing this, I currently have 243 unread items sitting in my RSS app. It was too much. It’s hard to pinpoint a specific time when i…
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Hide your Dock without Losing your Mind
Yesterday I decided to clean up all the files that were piling up on my desktop, I changed my wallpaper and tried hiding my dock to see how I would …
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Custom Domains with Heroku
I recently rewrote the Montreal Dribbble Meetup website using Sinatra. The previous version was simply static HTML and CSS files, so hosting and using…
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Her Story
I tweeted about it already, but a single tweet isn’t enough to express how much I enjoyed this game. I’m not a gamer1. I have very few g…
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The Teehan+Lax Partners Are Joining Facebook
I have mixed feelings about the announcement that the Teehan+Lax partners are joining Facebook and shutting down the agency. I’m happy for the…
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On the Apple Watch Companion App
The Apple Watch’s homescreen looks awesome, but finding an app on it seems overly cumbersome. Mark Gurman is on a roll with Apple leaks lately.…
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Interview Saturation
I’m tired of interviews in magazines, podcast, books, websites. The pattern is always the same: get someone somewhat famous, ask them a few ques…
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Excuse-A-Day
Jonathan Mann, famous for his song-a-day project recently made this video1 telling the story of Jack Dolsen, a guy who decided to parody Jonathan&rsqu…
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Jonnie Hallman on Refactoring Code
I love how Jonnie, aka @destroytoday, has been writing a ton about his process as he’s building Cushion. This post on refactoring especially r…
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Ev Williams on Metrics
Ev Williams, CEO of Medium (and co-founder of Twitter) recently wrote a post explaining his reaction to Instagram being “bigger” than Twitter. He shar…
2014
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Dustin Senos on Reducing Design Friction
Dustin Senos, product designer at Medium recently investigated the biggest causes of design friction within different design teams. The number one iss…
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Mackenzie Child on Learning Rails
Here’s another great example of a designer learning the basics of Rails for fun: I always had ideas I wanted to bring to life, but I didn’t ha…
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Lumia Gestures
Microsoft recently announced Gestures for Lumia phones, which are basically shortcut gestures for things you commonly do when talking on the phone. …
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Awesome New Videos from Facebook
I love these quick, funny informational videos on how to do the “more complex” things1 on Facebook. I’d love to see this side of the…
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Every App is a Communications App
Messaging as a primary way of interaction is strange trend for us in North America, because it didn’t become a thing here until very recently. W…
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Designing Time
Ustwo, explaining their process for designing watch faces for Android Wear. Ustwo, makers of the beautiful Monument Valley recently partnered …
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Invalid Username or Password: a useless security measure
Kevin Burke on his blog: If you tell an attacker the email address is wrong, they’ll try a different one. If you tell them the password is wro…
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Everybody Scrolls
I normally just roll my eyes at any article about “the fold,” but this one caught my attention. The UX researchers at Huge Inc. conducted …
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Amazing Fan Art for The Force Awakens
People have already started making awesome fan art for the new Star Wars. It makes you think just how much Star Wars is a huge part of our culture. …
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Pomplamoose 2014 Tour Profits
Pomplamoose at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon and musician in the band Pomplamoose shared the profits of their 2014 tour o…
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When to Use a Extend / When to Use a Mixin
Harry Roberts wrote a great post on CSS Wizardry about the distinction between @extend and @mixin: Only use @extend when the rulesets that you …
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A Theory About the Next iPads and Side by Side Apps
Countless rumors have been pointing to the fact that Apple might introduce a way to run apps side by side on the iPad later today. For example, you co…
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Better Looking Bullet Placeholders
A common pattern these days, is to put bullets as a field’s placeholder to indicate a credit card number, a discount or a password field. The pr…
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Should Engineers Design?
Cap Watkins replies to designers who ask “Why should I learn to code if engineers don’t have to learn to design?”: Throughout my en…
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Design is…
A few of my favorite shots from the contest. We’ve recently teamed up with Dribbble for an official playoff centered around the theme of &ldquo…
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A New Side Project
I’m going to try to write a real app this time. I have this idea for an app that I think would be pretty useful to me. I don’t want to rev…
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Overcast 1.0
Marco Arment just shipped 1.0 of his new podcast app – Overcast. As expected it’s pretty good. Of course I have a few complaints: I wish…
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Tungsten Rounded
It’s no secret that I’m a complete sucker for Tungsten1. It might very well may be one of my favorite typeface ever made. It’s nic…
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Toughts on Stock UI
Brent and Marco (two people I admire and respect) have posted two great pieces on why there are many advantages for using stock UI and how it might re…
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The Journey to my First iOS App
I work on the web day in, day out. I know the medium very well: its capabilities, its limitations, its opportunities and for a long time, mobile app…
2013
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Why Instagram Direct Matters
Last week, Kevin Systrom introduced a new key feature in Instagram that lets you send pictures directly to specific users of the service, adding a l…
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Looking at Progressive Enhancements the Wrong Way
A few websites that don’t work at all with Javascript disabled. From left to right: Basecamp, Corsa Colours, McDonnalds, Tool, Squares…
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The Idea File
I’ve been slowly trying to get back to writing after a hectic past couple of weeks, and getting back in the groove hasn’t been as easy a…
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Joining Shopify
If you’ve been following along, you may be wondering why I’ve took a few trips to Ottawa recently. Well, I’m proud to announce that …
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Sketch as a web design tool?
How could you not like an app with an icon this gorgeous? For a long time, we’ve been waiting for the ultimate web design app. Although we may …
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Tasks, Not Apps
Facebook’s ChatHeads in action. We’ve arrived at a point with iOS where we’re wondering… what’s next? All the low hanging fr…
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Responsive Layouts
Responsive Web Design is what everybody’s talking about now. It arrived like a revelation at a time when designers didn’t know what to make of the s…
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Closer to the Words
When planning for the website, I’ve done a fair bit of research into content management systems and writing tools. Actually, writing on the web …
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Finally
A few pages of the site displayed at various breakpoints. It’s been almost a full year since I’ve started working on this website, my web…
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Trent Walton on The Great Discontent
The Great Discontent, one of my favorite website, recently interviewed Trent Walton. The whole thing is chock-full of great advice and great insight i…
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Rdio and Music Consumption
I’ve always admired Rdio’s elegance and I absolutely love this illustration. Rdio is doing to iTunes what iTunes did to CDs. Managing mus…
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The Screen
The web is still pretty young and for many years, web designers were struggling with publishing. The magazine (or the book) was the model we tried t…
2012
2011
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The Eighteenth Finish Line
One hour and three minutes. That’s how much time there is left until I become officially an adult. I say “officially”, because that change…
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9/11
Everyone knows what they were doing when it happened. I was coming back from school for dinner and when I came outside, my mother was waiting for …
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The Edge
There’s only a split second where you’re completely fearless. That single moment where your feet still touch the ground, but your hair is waving throu…
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The Ink Network
I collect things every day — inspiration, articles, photos, quotes, links — but I rarely take the time to go back to those to get something out of the…
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The Last Goodbye
This is my last day of highschool. It’s pretty scary and awesome in a lots of ways. Think about it — in five years, we’ve had more than 4 500 pe…