Product design. Un-minimalist minimalist
CHI mostly - SF often
Joined February 2008
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David Trang retweeted
We need to stop talking about product design in absolutes… there are no rules. Everything is made up. Do what makes sense and feels right.
David Trang retweeted
Anthropic’s team has Figma open all day. As much as we are all changing our design tooling - and that’s massive - i’d like to be talking more about how other tools like Figma are very much still a part of our workflow.
This is insanely cool
We made a tool that lets you absorb the vibe of anything you point it at and apply it to your designs
It's absurd and it just works
Style Dropper, now available in @variantui
David Trang retweeted
Real diversity: Whoever shows up is welcome.
Real equity: We all help carry the meaningful burden.
Real inclusion: Your political opinions are your own.
Open source gets better when it's focused on making great software for all, and doesn't obsess over tiresome divisive dogma.
David Trang retweeted
The richest man in Europe is the chairman of LVMH, cashing in on the declining glory of its past
The richest man in America is the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI, cashing in on the glory of its future
That’s really all you need to know to understand the sickness and the cure
🎯
I've been thinking a lot about this, and this is why I think designers are toping the chart.
Design as a practice is uniquely difficult to quantify, and design work in it of itself is even harder to verify.
Take code for example, it either works or it doesn't, it compiles or it breaks. But design exists in the ambiguous gray area of taste and subjective judgment.
Designers get tons of highly subjective feedback, "make it pop," "it feels bland", "it’s missing something, I can't quite name" , yet they're expected to deliver systematically, almost programmatically, like developers.
But creativity isn't a faucet that can be turned on and off at will. Yet, designers are expected to consistently output high-quality, creative work quickly.
I think for a design to be great, there has to be an emotional investment into the project. You have to care deeply, because you know you are not just drawing rectangles, you are trying to build a meaningful experience.
Now put all that weigh, pressure and uncertainty together and you get this chart with design and other highly ambiguous, creative roles like research and growth at the very top.
David Trang retweeted
The real reason Dribbble died? Because design died.
The early 2010s were a golden age—the best era of design in human history. It was chaos, creativity, and pure, unfiltered exploration.
Remember the Daily UI challenge? We all got the same prompt—music player, login screen, whatever—and flooded Dribbble with our wildest ideas. I did that for 100 days straight. Then I did it again. And again. And I loved every second of it.
Back then, designers actually pushed boundaries. We explored ideas without worrying if they could be built. We experimented with wild, unconventional patterns and posted them without hesitation.
No rules. No restrictions. Just raw creativity. If we could dream it, we designed it—and we shared it.
Then minimalism took over. We stripped every bit of emotion out of design, followed it up with design systems, tokens, variables, and variables nested within variables.
Now? Most of us don’t even know what era we’re in. Do we even have one anymore?
Design has been sanitized. Systematized. The fun stripped away. Creativity is no longer the priority.
So yeah, maybe I have a little resentment toward design systems, tokens, variables, and all the things that turned design into a rigid machine.
Maybe it’s because some of us were lucky enough to experience design before it became a system. And maybe—just maybe—we carry a chip on our shoulder, hoping for even a spark of that magic to return.
David Trang retweeted
"Having kids means making the most interesting people in the world. Not because toddlers or even teenagers are intellectual oracles, but because your children will become the most interesting people to you." world.hey.com/dhh/the-most-i…
David Trang retweeted
Black Mirror ain't got nothing on Facebook 😱 xitter.gq/BSADigitalSoc/status/9…
Echo Spot is a great evolution to an already great device. Attractive form factor, beautiful display, and obviously most important... synced song lyrics.
