UX design
fromSmashing Magazine
3 days agoA Practical Guide To Design Principles - Smashing Magazine
Design principles align teams, inform decisions, and embody organizational values, serving as essential tools in the design process.
"It's an amalgamation of the Chicago neighborhood aesthetic with a Bulls fan, quite literally. It's kind of on the nose, but that's how I juxtapose the elements of my work, with the structure of a home and then a figure who is around or in the home."
The clever and stylish ad, which debuted in October 2025, was for the Google Pixel 10 phone and Google's partner on the release, T-Satellite from T-Mobile. And it was written, codirected, edited, and starred in by Cooper, host of the wildly popular podcast Call Her Daddy and founder and CEO of the millennial- and Gen Z-focused media company Unwell.
Keen to ditch an over-reliance on discounting in favour of stronger brand-led campaigns, Launch partnered with Weird Fish on a multichannel performance strategy to drive website sales, elevate brand reputation and wean customers off discounts to improve margins.
Stewart had put the home, which he had owned since 1975, on the market at $14.5 million just before his December, 1990, wedding to New Zealand-born model Rachel Hunter. At the time, his publicist said that Stewart wanted to move because "he's starting a new life."
The ridges of eucalyptus bark, the geometries of shell formations, moss-covered trees, Indigenous grasslands and the hidden networks of fungi beneath the soil. These landscapes produce organic yet abstract patterns - natural systems that quietly shape the way we see and design the world around us.
Driskell started collecting in 1955 after taking a position as an art professor at Talladega College. As he explained in a 2017 lecture at the Whitney Museum of American Art, he put aside a small budget for art each year from his beginning salary of $3,000.
We needed a visual identity that was uniquely Getty and distinct enough to unify how we show up globally. This system gives Getty one clear, ownable expression in support of the work we do around the world.
DixonBaxi takes creative sabbaticals to help designers connect with each other, recognizing that meaningful collaboration and relationship-building are essential components of a thriving creative environment and sustained innovation within the agency.
Static images don't show motion. You can't inspect real product structure. You don't see how interfaces evolve over time. You rarely understand what actually works in production. So I decided to go deep. I reviewed every major design reference platform I could find - not just the popular ones - and analyzed how they actually help in real-world work. The conclusion?
AT FIRST GLANCE, the phrase "avant-garde advertising" might seem like a contradiction in terms: The avant-garde is assumed to be inherently anti-capitalist and the realm of advertising crassly commercial. But the involvement of avant-garde artists with advertising is in fact rich, complex, and long-standing, encompassing a full century of collaborations, critiques, and reworkings of all sorts. That entanglement-in all its diversity-is the topic
We've both fought against needless promotional content before and lamented that frontier AI platforms are falling into the same pattern. As designers and users, we've learned that "free" usually means putting up with interruptive, slightly creepy ads that feel more like a tax than a benefit - a frustration tax that now colors how we approach free‑tier services and now AI tools.
"We started by asking everyone to collect images regularly. Just spontaneous snapshots as we went. Of everything. Sketches, screens, notes, half thoughts, moments in motion. Over time it became this huge grab bag of elements," Simon says.
We might be exposed to more ads and commercials today than ever before in human history, but the idea of advertising itself is certainly not a new concept. According to Instapage, the first signs of advertisements actually appeared in ancient Egyptian steel carvings from 2000 BC. Meanwhile, the first printed ad was published in 1472, when William Caxton decided to advertise a book by posting flyers on church doors in England.
Helping people to reconnect with old memories, viewers are transported to their local corner shop, school playgrounds and childhood cupboards. "I think this project has struck a chord because there's a particular interest in hand drawn designs of the past in the current age of AI where human effort is at an all-time low. Now the first thought is 'I'll get AI to do that', rather than commissioning an illustrator," says Chris.
If you're based in London, you've probably walked past one of Sean Thomas' meticulously hand-painted designs. Whether that was grabbing a sandwich at Dom's Subs, dining in at Forza Win (an Italian restaurant in Peckham that the designer has shaped the visual identity of over the last three years), or picking up a copy of Hoxton Mini Press' new book on Britain's best bakeries at your local bookshop.
A graphic designer that isn't limited to working in 2D, Ward Goes has been working in aluminium of late. His recent solo show in Rotterdam, Literally Anything, was full of things that moved beyond the screen or printed page, including some wonderful metal signage and archival storage. The exhibition at Alley Space was the result of the designer's decision to pursue more tactical investigations alongside his commissioned work at the start of 2025.
The main problem with the existing homepage was that, besides the most recent posts, other content, once it aged and 'fell off' the front page, was then difficult to discover. The new design makes more use of available screen 'real estate', is visually much richer, and reorganizes 18 years of posts, so that even older long-forgotten posts are more easily found.