The five best design links, every weekday

Tuesday09/01

1

seangoedecke.com

You have to beat the models at something

You’re not doing yourself any favors by pretending that LLMs can’t actually write code and it’s all just a scam.

2

davesresearch.com

A good move is enabling

Don’t build into dead ends: anticipate what happens next.

3

wayofmarkdown.com

Markdown database pattern

Treat a folder of markdown files as records in a database—the pattern behind Obsidian Bases, Notion-style workflows without lock-in, and more.

4

clarity.addy.ie

Clarity: AI writing skill and editor

An open-source writing skill for AI agents and a private browser editor for clearer, more human prose without invented facts or flattened voice.

5

nngroup.com

The custodial era of UX: Cleaning up after AI

AI lets teams build faster than UX can evaluate. UX can adapt by building shared judgment, accelerating evaluation, and guiding AI-generated designs.

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Monday08/31

1

bit.ly

Gridset: Turn drafts into on-brand documentsSponsored

Feed in a draft, Claude output or a PDF and get back a designed, on-brand document in under a minute. Set brand rules once.

2

doc.cc

We used to log off

Online used to be a place you could leave.

3

ordinaryabundance.com

Ordinary abundance

A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.

4

buzzusborne.com

AI operating principles

Five principles for protecting a strong creative practice as AI increases what designers can do.

5

allinframestock.com

All in Frame

A free stock photography collection led by disabled creatives to help creative teams tell more authentic stories about disability.

Friday08/28

1

ajwaxman.com

Software for one

Robin Sloan wished for a HyperCard that could build a family app in a day. That world showed up.

2

itsnicethat.com

Step inside Teddy Blanks’ film title design process

Teddy Blanks, the Chips co-founder behind the title sequences for Barbie, Weapons and Robert Eggers’ upcoming Werwulf, unpacked.

3

borretti.me

Futurism is always extreme

Rigorous thinking about the future produces extreme outcomes.

4

claude.com

The AI-native SDLC playbook

Anthropic’s stage-by-stage playbook for the AI-native SDLC: how teams plan, design, build, test, deploy, and maintain software with Claude.

5

gatesnotes.com

The turbulent AI era is here

If the world takes the right steps, AI will be a force for good and leave everyone better off.

Thursday08/27

1

petermerholz.com

Design’s legibility gap

The concept of ‘legibility,’ and why it's crucial to understanding why UX/Design struggles within so many organizations.

2

cssunits.com

CSS Units

A complete interactive reference to every CSS measurement unit. From the basics of px and rem to the nuances of svh, dvh, and cqw.

3

henry.codes

I dream of quieter computing

A quick note about future of computing and indieweb.

4

plotter.cc

Plotter

Occasional works of short fiction.

5

ilyabirman.net

Let me click

How interfaces prevent input errors by resolving invalid states automatically rather than disabling options or displaying errors.

Wednesday08/26

1

uxdesign.cc

What is the purpose of software

Mapping 50 years of economic data to measure software's productivity yield.

2

gkurt.com

Tegaki

Animated handwriting from any font.

3

karlkoch.me

On teaching AI how you work

Personal skills turn years of writing into loadable judgement you can install instead of re-explaining, and one command that runs all of it.

4

interfaces.kylejeong.com

The AI Interface Museum

A visual history of how humans learned to interact with AI.

5

about.gitlab.com

When code is abundant

Producing code is getting cheap. Trusting it is not. Why enterprises need a durable layer of context, verification, and governance around AI.

Tuesday08/25

1

ilyabirman.net

Vibe coding and quality

Just last year, vibe coding seemed like a toy. Today I think that high quality is achievable only through vibe coding

2

blog.murphytrueman.com

Every fork looks like adoption

How we measure design system adoption and how the graph keeps going up anyway.

3

is-agentic.com

Is Agentic

Score how ready a website is for AI agents, then get evidence and recommendations to improve it.

4

balsa-ui.com

Balsa UI

Balsa UI is an agent-native, open-code component system for Vue and React.

5

youtube.com

Susan Kare: Designing icons & graphics for the original Mac

Stories behind the Happy Mac, Command key, Chicago font, and more, along with the design lessons Susan learned from Steve Jobs and others.

Monday08/24

1

bit.ly

The AI Notepad for back-to-back meetingsSponsored

Notes, actions and memory for your AI Agents. Without a meeting bot. Try it in your next meeting.

2

var0.xyz

Perfection is not over-engineering

The industry conflates perfection with over-engineering. They’re not the same.

3

elliotjaystocks.com

Keeping type consistent in changing conditions

How typographic grade preserves visual balance across screens and print substrates without altering layout geometry.

4

utopia.fyi

Fluid type scale calculator

Generate CSS clamp functions for fluid typography scales, automating responsive font sizing across viewports.

5

how.complexsystems.fail

How complex systems fail

Latent flaws, hindsight bias, and operator adaptation. Offering product teams a framework for system safety.

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