G'day, I'm Brody MacLean, a multi-disciplinary design lead from Sydney, Australia. :-)

A very well crafted essay from Nikita Prokopov.

If you’ve looked at MacOS 26 Tahoe, you’re surely appalled by the new UI guideline that recommends putting icons next to every single menu item.

Prokopov argues — with copious screenshot illustrations every step of the way — that this is a terrible idea in the first place, and that Apple has implemented it poorly.

The craft bar keeps rising. Good is no longer good enough, and taste becomes leverage. Designers, PMs & engineers with strong product taste will stand out.

Tom Scott writes on his blog:

1. AI is making the best designers more productive
2. Hands-on is the new default, regardless of level
3. You need to be fluent in systems NOT just pixels
4. The role of a ‘designer’ will shift to being a curator.
5. Show actual work to find a new job
6. Design/eng/product roles are merging QUICK

An interesting ongoing story about the fragility of your digital life and howeven a single dependancy failing could brick your entire life.

Another good reason to backup and move towards a file over app setup.

Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison writing on his blog:

A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I have no recourse.

For a long time, I’ve been dipping my toe across to the “engineering rail” to help guide the implmentation in code but it’s more and more obvious that my impact would be greatest if I made a more intentional move to overlap both rails.

Yann-Edern Gillet, writing on his blog:

The real Rosetta Stone didn’t solve languages, it overlapped them. Same meaning, carved three times, so people could decode one through the other. Design engineering is the same: we’re constantly trying to express intent twice — once visually, once in code, without losing the meaning in between.⁠

Design engineering isn’t about merging roles. It’s not about “one person doing everything.” It’s about live translation.⁠

The job isn’t to switch sides. It’s to stay on the track and keep both rails aligned. It’s not about roles, it’s about function.⁠