Designer at Basecamp. Occasionally tweeting at https://twitter.com/adamstddrd.
You hear a ton of different advice on the right and wrong way to go about designing an app or website.
“You should be using Sketch.”
“Design Systems or GTFO.”
“Real Designers design 100% in code.”
“Wireframes are a waste of time.”
“If you’re not making prototypes, you’re not doing it right.”
“You need to start on paper.”
You’d think there’s no agreement whatsoever about the right way to design, but there’s one point that’s largely free of controversy — that your process should be linear.
For many many many people, the term “marketing” is interchangeable with words like “spin,” “flim-flam,” “malarkey,” and of course, “bullshit.”
You can’t really blame people who think this way. A huge amount of marketing is reality-ignoring bullshit/spin/hokum/snake oil.
This fact — that marketing is mostly poppycock — is the foundation that the movie Crazy People builds on. For anyone unfamiliar with the movie, here’s the quick synopsis (I swear this is relevant):
Keep reading “Everything I know about marketing I learned from the 1990 movie “Crazy People.””
Not too long ago Jason Fried wrote about his experience shopping at Apple Stores, in which he described the common occurrence of walking into a store and being immediately set upon by a too helpful Apple rep (the “bouncer”).
In trying to be as attentive, helpful, and friendly AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE, this bouncer ended up being too helpful. Aggressively helpful.
I was Twittering away the other day, and Prettier came across my feed. Prettier turns the conceptual moorings of lint on their head. Instead of “Well, actually”-ing you when you make a commit and forcing you to fix whatever pedantic issues it’s squawking about, it just… fixes them.
As you can guess, I have an uneasy relationship with lint. I value what lint brings to the table, but I don’t like my tools saying, “You need to do x before I’ll do what you want.” Who’s serving who here? You’re a hammer. Swing.