Small rooms make big decisions
Every person added to a meeting subtracts something from the decision. There's a better way to be inclusive than a calendar invite.
Our Journals
Strategy, craft, and a few articles we just felt like writing. From our founder, team, and a few friends.
179 Articles
Handoff is a myth
The baton pass from strategy to design to development looks clean on a process diagram. Batons don't carry context. People do.
Good light is the whole trick
The cheapest special effect on any set is also the most ignored one. It works on screens, too.
The second project is the real one
Project one is a first date where everyone remembered to iron their shirt. The interesting part starts after.
Post-mortems without blame
A retro where everyone is polite is a retro where nobody learned anything. Getting the truth into the room is a design…
Write the launch email first
If the announcement can't be drafted on day one, the problem isn't the copywriting. The project doesn't know what it is yet.
The client is not the bottleneck
Before blaming the approver for a stalled approval, look at what got sent. Five stakeholders, no deadline, and a "thoughts?" is not…
Estimates are forecasts, not promises
The single number sounds confident. The range is telling the truth. One of them blows up the relationship around week nine.
The status meeting is a smell
A recurring meeting where nothing gets decided isn't communication. It's a weekly ceremony to confirm the project still exists.
Naming things is design
Menu labels, button copy, file names. The words are the invisible half of information architecture, and when they're right, everything else gets…
Automation with a signature
Efficiency is a gift. Absence is an insult. A working rule for deciding which parts of the machine still need your name…
Ship the skateboard
The MVP lesson about skateboards to rocket ships survives because it's right and almost nobody follows it.