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nathanacurtis.bsky.social
Design systems consultant at Directed Edges in Fairfax, VA USA. Figma Specs plugin creator. Blogger on @medium. Formerly EightShapes. Supports Arsenal, University of Chicago and Virginia Tech. From Ohio, originally.
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Oh my goodness: have we entered the Post FAB era of UI design?

submitted 24 days ago • 1 comment

Referee Michael Oliver hasn't given an Arsenal opponent a red card since March 2021 (Lamela, Spurs at Arsenal), in that same time (21 matches total) he's given Arsenal 5 red cards. In 62 Arsenal matches refereed, Oliver has given Arsenal 9 reds, opponents 5; awarded Arsenal 5 pens, opponents 14.

submitted 32 days ago • 18 comments

It’s this kinda clutter that erodes faith in AI and brands. 🤬🤡 Google, c’mon, I don’t need these for email, and an anchored very-oft used Archive interaction is now demoted and muddled as a tap target.

submitted 40 days ago • 2 comments

What's the maximum value you've ever seen to fully round a corner radius? I just encountered 40,000. That's not messing a"round"!!!!

submitted 43 days ago • 5 comments

Reflecting on the state of Arsenal after listening to @arseblog.com Arsecast: If someone had said “Lose Ode for a couple months, and before his return begins to boil lose Saka for longer. Surprised if you *only* have 40 in 20 and leave cups unexpectedly early?” No. We are so blessed to have both.

submitted 44 days ago • 1 comment

Snow thunderstorms with whiteout conditions of dippin dot textured snow are cool.

submitted 54 days ago • 0 comments

After months of conversion, and a realization that copying from Design to Slides is easy in Figma, I'm abandoning (for now) the clunky Slides editor experience and returning to the Design editor for all but the last step of preparing a presentation.

submitted 55 days ago • 1 comment

Pedant alert: Should we be using the term "primitive" to refer to a value of an attribute/style/property of an object, such as a "color primitive?" I've always understood "primitive" to be a term to describe an object (like a shape, glyph or text string, not attributes of that object.

submitted 55 days ago • 7 comments

Extending my Specs Figma plugin to add Dev Mode-based annotations is straightforward, but not optimal: 1. You must run *second* in Dev Mode. 2. Only some attributes are supported (extras could be added to a label) 3. Dev Mode feels tedious and inhibits comparison. Has me wondering: is it worth it?

submitted 69 days ago • 0 comments

I'm having one of those 🤔 moments as I encounter new entrants wrongly framing design system's emergence as within the past few years. Like, Dell.com used ecommerce component libraries with atoms and molecules in the 1990s. Cisco, Yahoo, Sun, and eBay all had heavy library investments in the 2000s.

submitted 70 days ago • 1 comment

What's your favorite design system history date? Two of my most oft cited are: Design Tokens written about by Salesforce, 2014 Google Material docs site visible by public, Fall 2014

submitted 71 days ago • 2 comments

Proud to be hosting the Design Systems Planning and Process workshop with @nathanacurtis.bsky.social for a third time!🥳 We've sold out all previous rounds Learn how to plan, scope & manage processes like a Design System lead! 🗓️ January 27+ 28 2025 Online Link in comments 👇

submitted 71 days ago • 1 comment

Measuring design system success as objectives of a DS team, their users, and THEIR customers questions, examples and methods you can use to see how you're doing.

submitted 76 days ago • 1 comment

Yeah, OK, maybe I will. My specs plugin is pretty much shovel-ready to integrate this easily so that (a) you don't have to otherwise build your own plugin to do it and (b) it's already intelligent enough to only annotate and *difference* the attributes that matter.

submitted 82 days ago • 0 comments

The Sorry State of States: Today’s Figma assets show design could align better with code medium.com/p/89dd4668737e

submitted 84 days ago • 1 comment

The Sorry State of States: Today’s Figma assets show design could align better with code medium.com/@nathanacurt...

submitted 85 days ago • 2 comments