Guidebooks to countries that no longer exist.
The first book will be on the Republic of Venice. There’ll be maps, infographics, and I suspect there’ll be an appearance by Aldus Manutius.
Our first guidebook tells the story of the Republic of Venice, la Serenissima, a 1000-year old state that disappeared in 1797.
What a lovely way to walk through the design system underpinning the Guardian website.
Bonus points for using the term “tweak points”!
Amy’s talk at Patterns Day was absolutely brilliant! Here’s an account of the day from her perspective.
The evident care Jeremy put into assembling the lineup meant an incredible mix of talks, covering the big picture stuff right down to the nitty gritty, and plenty in between.
Her observation about pre-talk nerves is spot-on:
I say all of this because it’s important for me and I think anyone who suffers with anxiety about public speaking, or in general, to recognise that having a sense of impending doom doesn’t mean that doom is actually impending.
Here’s a nice little round-up of Friday’s Patterns Day.
Just look at these fantastic pictures that Trys took (very unobstrusively) at Patterns Day—so rock’n’roll!
Stuart took copious notes during every single talk at Patterns Day—what a star!
This really is a most excellent introduction to React. Complete with cheat sheet!
There’s something quite lovely about this site, both in its purpose and execution.
Dimensions.Guide is a comprehensive reference database of dimensioned drawings documenting the standard measurements and sizes of the everyday objects and spaces that make up our world. Created as a universal resource to better communicate the basic properties, systems, and logics of our built environment, Dimensions.Guide is a free platform for increasing public and professional knowledge of life and design.
A starter list of Fractal examples and links. You can expand it.
Mozilla’s work-in-progress style guide and pattern library.
Fascinating snippets of information about some of the most interesting buildings in Brighton.
(The website was made by Lydia and Tash as a project for Code First: Girls)
I like the questions that the TELUS team ask about any potential components to be added to their design system:
- Is it on brand?
- Is it accessible?
- Has it been tested?
- Can it be reused?
They also have design principles.
I really, really like the way that this straightforward accessibility guide is subdivided by discipline. As Maya wrote in the blog post announcing its launch:
Each person on a team, whether you’re a manager, designer, or developer, has a role to play. Your responsibilities are different depending on your role. So that’s how we structured the guide, with a separate section for each of five roles:
- Product management
- Content design
- UX design
- Visual design
- Front-end development
The Gov.uk design system is looking very, very good indeed—nicely organised with plenty of usage guidelines for every component.
Guidance on using components and patterns now follow a simple, consistent format based on task-based research into what users need in order to follow and trust an approach.
I really like the way that this pattern library includes research insights to provide justification for design decisions.
It really, really bothers me that wireframes have evolved from being a prioritisation tool into a layout tool (disempowering UI designers in the process), so I’m happy to see an alternative like this—somewhat like Dan Brown’s Page Description Diagrams.
Monzo’s guidelines for tone of voice, including a reference to “the curse of knowledge.”
This design system takes an interesting approach, splitting the documentation between designing and coding.
Accessibility isn’t a checklist …but this checklist is a pretty damn good starting point. I really like that it’s organised by audience: designers, engineers, project managers, QA, and editorial. You can use this list as a starting point for creating your own—tick whichever items you want to include, and a handy copy/paste-able version will be generated for you.
Some lovely branding work for the UK Parliament, presented very nicely.