# Further reading The primary sources. Anything worth understanding properly is better read there than summarized here, and most of these are readable in an evening. ## Essays and talks The writing and talks the chapters draw on. - [*7 Practical Animation Tips*Emil Kowalski's seven tricks: button scale, no scale(0), instant subsequent tooltips, easing, transform-origin, speed, and blur.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/7-practical-animation-tips) - [*A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden*Maggie Appleton, 2020: the history of digital gardens and the six patterns of gardening.](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history) - [*A Sloppy Interface Is a Security Liability*Jim Nielsen, 2026; interface quality as a security control against impersonation.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/sloppy-ui-is-security-liability/) - [*A Subtle Nicety of Fault Tolerance in HTML & CSS*Jim Nielsen, 2024; prefixing a CSS rule with a character to toggle it while prototyping.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/fault-tolerance-html-css/) - [*A Treatise on AI Chatbots Undermining the Enlightenment*Maggie Appleton, 2025: on chatbot sycophancy and the case for more critical interfaces.](https://maggieappleton.com/ai-enlightenment) - [*Agents with Taste*Emil Kowalski on packaging animation judgement into skill files, with his easing flowchart and duration tables.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/agents-with-taste) - [*Airfoil*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2024: the physics of flight, with flow fields you can drop markers into.](https://ciechanow.ski/airfoil/) - [*Ambient Co-presence*Maggie Appleton, 2023: a pattern for a subtle, peripheral sense of shared space on the web.](https://maggieappleton.com/ambient-copresence) - [*An exhaustive review of design tool hover areas*Steve Ruiz, 2026: a scripted survey of selection hit areas across tldraw, Figma, Excalidraw, Miro, Spline, and Rive.](https://tldraw.dev/blog/a-review-of-design-tool-hover-areas) - [“Apple Human Interface Guidelines (1987)”Apple, 1987; the original HIG, listed in Rauno's resources.](https://andymatuschak.org/files/papers/Apple%20Human%20Interface%20Guidelines%201987.pdf) - [*As Good as HTML*Jim Nielsen, 2023; HTML's composability as a quality bar for components.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/as-good-as-html/) - [*Aspect Ratio Changes With CSS View Transitions*Jim Nielsen, 2025; a subtle outline bug and the one-line fix from Jake Archibald.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/aspect-ratio-in-css-view-transitions/) - [*Back to Content*Steve Ruiz and Ani Krishnan, 2026: a 20-month bug from confusing not-visible shapes with culled shapes.](https://tldraw.dev/blog/back-to-content) - [*Bicycle*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2023: the invisible forces that make a bicycle ride, built up from a wooden box and a slider.](https://ciechanow.ski/bicycle/) - [*Bridging the hard and the soft*Amelia Wattenberger: rigid and flexible interface parts, with strategies borrowed from nature.](https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/hard-and-soft) - [*Building a drawer component*Emil Kowalski on Vaul: the iOS sheet curve and 500 ms duration, drag performance, scroll guards, snap points, and the theme-color bar experiment.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/building-a-drawer-component) - [*Building a Toast Component*Emil Kowalski's account of building Sonner: naming, the stacking animation, transitions over keyframes, momentum swipe, and the Observer pattern.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/building-a-toast-component) - [*Building an animation course*Emil Kowalski's behind-the-scenes of animations.dev, including the easing flowchart and his 18 custom easings.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/building-an-animation-course) - [*Building Websites With LLMS*Jim Nielsen, 2025; lots of little HTML pages linked and enhanced with cross-document view transitions.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/lots-of-little-html-pages/) - [*Cameras and Lenses*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2020: a camera built from first principles, sensor first.](https://ciechanow.ski/cameras-and-lenses/) - [*cmdk ARCHITECTURE.md*Paco Coursey's notes on the compound-component constraint behind cmdk and the alternatives he rejected.](https://github.com/pacocoursey/cmdk/blob/main/ARCHITECTURE.md) - [*Code was our medium for thought*Amelia Wattenberger: what agentic coding loses when code stops being where thinking happens.](https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/code-is-a-medium-for-thought) - [*Coding Is Designing*Jim Nielsen, 2026; a short post arguing code is a way to find a design, not just implement one.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/code-is-design/) - [*Color Spaces*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2019: RGB color spaces explained by playing with two color pickers that disagree.](https://ciechanow.ski/color-spaces/) - [*Command K Bars*Maggie Appleton's 2022 pattern write-up: what command bars are, why they scale where GUIs do not, and the apps that use them.](https://maggieappleton.com/command-bar) - [*Computational Notebooks*Maggie Appleton, 2023: a pattern for shareable, browser-based documents that run code.](https://maggieappleton.com/computational-notebooks) - [*Contrasting Aesthetics*Rauno Freiberg, January 2024, on aesthetic intersections and how the right amount of contrast invites curiosity.](https://rauno.me/craft/contrasting-aesthetics) - [*Craft and beauty: The business value of form in function*Stripe Sessions 2024 talk cited by Emil Kowalski for the commoditisation argument.](https://stripe.com/sessions/2024/craft-and-beauty-the-business-value-of-form-in-function) - [*Craft and Satisfaction*Jim Nielsen, 2025, asking whether AI help changes how much you care about what you made.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/craft-and-satisfaction/) - [*Crafting the Next.js Website*Rauno Freiberg, 2023; grid lines, switchboard, focus rings, serif quotes, clamp, and gradient tracing from the Next.js site.](https://rauno.me/craft/nextjs) - [*Creating a Zoom UI*Steve Ruiz, 2021: the canvas, camera, screen, and viewport model and the math for pan and zoom.](https://steveruiz.me/posts/zoom-ui) - [*Creative Output*Paco Coursey, 2019, on being unhappy with his own work, remixing, and the inspiration phase.](https://paco.me/writing/creative-output) - [*Curves and Surfaces*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2021: Bezier curves, splines, and subdivision surfaces through draggable control points.](https://ciechanow.ski/curves-and-surfaces/) - [*Custom text underlines*Paco Coursey, 2020; linear-gradient underlines with position, weight, dashes, and descender skipping.](https://paco.me/writing/custom-text-underlines) - [*Daily Notes Pages*Maggie Appleton, 2022: a pattern for frictionless daily capture in knowledge tools.](https://maggieappleton.com/daily-notes) - [*Dead Zone Dragging*Steve Ruiz, 2021: a minimum distance before a drag begins, built as a three-state machine.](https://steveruiz.me/posts/dead-zone) - [*Debugging a physical race condition with modifier keys*Steve Ruiz and Ani Krishnan, 2026: a 150ms release delay for modifier keys.](https://tldraw.dev/blog/adding-delays-to-modifier-keys) - [*Design engineer*Jeremy Keith, 2021; embracing the title despite misgivings about the word engineer.](https://adactio.com/journal/17838) - [*Design Engineering at Vercel*Glenn Hitchcock, Henry Heffernan, John Pham, Rauno Freiberg, and Yasmin Pessoa, 2024; what Vercel's design engineers care about and how the work is organised.](https://vercel.com/blog/design-engineering-at-vercel) - [“Design Engineering Handbook”Natalya Shelburne, Adekunle Oduye, Kim Williams, and Eddie Lou, 2020; the InVision PDF that Voisen calls the most thorough resource on the role.](https://marketing.invisionapp-cdn.com/www-assets.invisionapp.com/epubs/InVision_DesignEngineeringHandbook.pdf) - [*Design engineering, a working definition*Sean Voisen; the three activities of design engineering, from running the practice inside Adobe Design.](https://sean.voisen.org/writing/design-engineering-working-definition) - [*Design Engineers*Chris Coyier, Frontend Masters blog, 2024; the engineer half and the design half, and a vote for Web Design Engineer.](https://frontendmasters.com/blog/design-engineers/) - [*Design Leadership Interview at DoorDash*Kathryn Gonzalez, 2020; how the Design Infrastructure team came about and what she looked for when hiring.](https://www.ryngonzalez.com/blog/design-leadership-interview-at-doordash) - [*Design Systems and Infrastructure*Kathryn Gonzalez, 2018; what Design Infrastructure at DoorDash does and why it is a home for people who love both sides.](https://www.ryngonzalez.com/blog/design-systems-and-infrastructure) - [*Design Systems in Transition: Anxiety, AI, and Where We Go*Kathryn Gonzalez, Config 2023 talk; busywork, the extra ten percent, and design systems as the language AI tools consume.](https://www.ryngonzalez.com/blog/design-systems-in-transition-anxiety-ai-and-where-we-go) - [*Designing Between the Lines*Jim Nielsen, 2021; design the relationships between things, not just the things.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2021/designing-between-the-lines/) - [*Designing Depth*Rauno Freiberg's 2024 essay on dirtying the frame, blurred backdrops, choreography, staggering, and affordance through motion.](https://rauno.me/craft/depth) - [*Designing Fluid Interfaces*C. Karunamuni, N. Vries, M. Alonso, WWDC 2018; Apple's session listed in Rauno's resources.](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/803/) - [*Designing Search for DoorDash*Kathryn Gonzalez, 2015; the article she says got her the most important job of her life.](https://www.ryngonzalez.com/blog/designing-search-for-doordash) - [*Developing Taste*Emil Kowalski on why taste matters and how to train it: exposure, analysis, practice.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/developing-taste) - [*Disable transitions on theme toggle*Paco Coursey, 2020, on temporarily removing all CSS transitions while switching themes and forcing a repaint with getComputedStyle.](https://paco.me/writing/disable-theme-transitions) - [*Engineering imperfection with draw shapes*Steve Ruiz, 2026: seeded randomness, multi-pass strokes, and corner rounding for hand-drawn shapes.](https://tldraw.dev/blog/engineering-imperfection-with-draw-shapes) - [*Erasing shapes*Steve Ruiz, 2026: treating eraser input as line segments to avoid tunneling.](https://tldraw.dev/blog/erasing) - [*Evolving the infinite canvas*Amelia Wattenberger: proposals for hardcoding spatial behaviours and Gestalt rules into canvases.](https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/evolving-the-infinite-canvas) - [*Exposing Floating Point*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2019: IEEE 754 floating point, a companion to his tool float.exposed.](https://ciechanow.ski/exposing-floating-point/) - [*Figma's Interactive Components Were Not Designed For This*Steve Ruiz, 2021: what Figma prototypes could not model and why the constraints are useful.](https://steveruiz.me/posts/it-wasnt-made-to-do-that) - [*Fish eye for text*Amelia Wattenberger: focus and context at once, from maps to Wikipedia to the code editor.](https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/fish-eye) - [*Fixing the Drift in Shape Rotations*Steve Ruiz, 2021: why rotating a selection back leaves it elsewhere, and the held-pivot fix.](https://steveruiz.me/posts/rotating-shapes) - [*Folk Interfaces*Maggie Appleton, 2022: a pattern for people reappropriating software to solve their own problems.](https://maggieappleton.com/folk-interfaces) - [*Friction as a Feature*Emil Kowalski's short essay arguing that friction forces judgement and filters ideas that do not deserve to be built.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/friction-as-a-feature) - [*Gas Town's Agent Patterns, Design Bottlenecks, and Vibecoding at Scale*Maggie Appleton, January 2026, on Steve Yegge's vibecoded system as design fiction and why design becomes the bottleneck.](https://maggieappleton.com/gastown) - [*Gathering Structures*Maggie Appleton, 2024: structures for running meetups and communities, from the London Future of Coding meetup.](https://maggieappleton.com/gathering-structures) - [*Gears*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2020: an interactive article on rotational motion, torque, and tooth shape.](https://ciechanow.ski/gears/) - [*Get the browser default font size*Paco Coursey, 2023; read the browser default with font-size: medium.](https://paco.me/writing/browser-default-font-size) - [*Getting creative with embeddings*Amelia Wattenberger, 2023: using embeddings to place sentences on interpretable scales in a writing app.](https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/yay-embeddings-math) - [*Good Design*Jim Nielsen, 2022; good design for who, and a priority of constituencies.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/good-design/) - [*Good vs Great Animations*Emil Kowalski's practical tips for going from good to great: origin, easing, custom curves, springs, knowing your tools.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/good-vs-great-animations) - [*Good Writers*Paco Coursey, 2019, learning to recognise good writing by pulling apart a first sentence.](https://paco.me/writing/good-writers) - [*Goodbye, DoorDash*Kathryn Gonzalez, 2023; leaving after almost eight years, from an old animal hospital to a post-IPO product.](https://www.ryngonzalez.com/blog/goodbye-doordash) - [*Gotchas in Naming CSS View Transitions*Jim Nielsen, 2025; what a view-transition-name custom-ident can and cannot contain.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/view-transition-name-gotchas/) - [*GPS*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2022: builds a positioning system from a draggable figurine up to trilateration and satellite signals.](https://ciechanow.ski/gps/) - [*Great Animations*Emil Kowalski's principles for animations that feel natural, fast, purposeful, performant, interruptible, and accessible.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/great-animations) - [*Historical Trails*Maggie Appleton, 2023: a pattern for showing people where they have been on a branching journey.](https://maggieappleton.com/historical-trails) - [*How Do You Want to Live?*Kathryn Gonzalez, 2023; a travel essay on what comes after the role.](https://www.ryngonzalez.com/blog/how-do-you-want-to-live) - [*How to Build a Modal*Kathryn Gonzalez, 2017, on what a design-system modal really takes: stacking contexts, focus management, scroll locking, and real-device testing.](https://www.ryngonzalez.com/blog/how-to-build-a-modal) - [*Interdisciplinary Website Maker*Jim Nielsen, 2024; how interviewers react to a designer who codes, and why Design Engineer almost fits.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/interdisciplinary-website-maker/) - [*Invisible Details of Interaction Design*Rauno Freiberg's 2023 essay; its Frequency and Novelty section argues that command menus used hundreds of times a day should not animate.](https://rauno.me/craft/interaction-design) - [*Job Screening Blog Post*Jim Nielsen, 2024; two GIFs, a heading that shifts by one pixel, and one question: do you care?](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/design-engineer-job-screener/) - [*Language Model Sketchbook, or Why I Hate Chatbots*Maggie Appleton, 2023: sketches of non-chat interfaces to language models.](https://maggieappleton.com/lm-sketchbook) - [*Lights and Shadows*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2020: light, power, angles, and shadows in a scene you can drag around.](https://ciechanow.ski/lights-and-shadows/) - [*LLMs as a tool for thought*Amelia Wattenberger: language models as a brainstorming partner rather than a way to steer somewhere.](https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/llms-as-a-tool-for-thought) - [*make real, the story so far*Steve Ruiz, 2023: how Make Real came about and what putting generated websites back on the canvas showed.](https://tldraw.dev/blog/make-real-the-story-so-far) - [*Making Films and Making Websites*Jim Nielsen, 2024; the only source of truth is the website people use; everything else is a tool in service of it.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/making-films-and-making-websites/) - [*Mechanical Watch*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2022: a watch movement you can rotate and slice open, explained part by part.](https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/) - [*Moon*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2024: the Moon, orbits, tides, and eclipses, starting from a draggable sky.](https://ciechanow.ski/moon/) - [*Novelty*Rauno Freiberg's 2026 essay on how much novelty an interface can carry, including first-load-only staggers.](https://rauno.me/craft/novelty) - [*On Design Engineering: I think I might be a design engineer*Trys Mudford, 2021; finding the name in the Design Engineering Handbook, the design to engineering gulf, and CSS as the primary language.](https://www.trysmudford.com/blog/i-think-im-a-design-engineer/) - [*On taste, part 3*Julie Zhuo's essay, cited by Emil Kowalski for building a curated list of tastemakers.](https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/on-taste-part-3-d7d9f069f0b2) - [*Our interfaces have lost their senses*Amelia Wattenberger: a case for multimodal interfaces and tangible artifacts over chat logs.](https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/our-interfaces-have-lost-their-senses) - [*Out With the JS, In With the HTML*Jim Nielsen, 2026; replacing a JS resize widget with four pre-rendered pages and view transitions.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/out-with-js-in-with-html/) - [*Perfect Dragging*Steve Ruiz, 2021: why a drag should use the delta from its origin, not the last pointer event.](https://steveruiz.me/posts/perfect-dragging) - [*Personal Website, Personal Shrine*Kathryn Gonzalez, 2023; why she rebuilt her site, the three principles behind it, and the sites that inspired it.](https://www.ryngonzalez.com/blog/personal-website-personal-shrine) - [*Programmable Notes*Maggie Appleton, 2022: a pattern for note systems that run user-written rules and prompts.](https://maggieappleton.com/programmatic-notes) - [*Programming Portals*Maggie Appleton, 2022: a pattern for small, scoped programming areas inside graphical interfaces.](https://maggieappleton.com/programming-portals) - [*Putting knowledge in its place*Amelia Wattenberger: on giving the human user context around an answer, not just the model.](https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/this-is-not-a-rant-about-chatbots) - [*px vs rem in font-size*Paco Coursey, 2022; rem only matters if you respect browser font scaling.](https://paco.me/writing/px-vs-rem) - [*Quality Means The Flexibility to Change*Jim Nielsen, 2024; quality as ease of change, via Dave Farley and Ben Nadel.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/easy-changes/) - [*Redesign 2021*Paco Coursey, 2021; stripping a personal site down to documents and links in the name of performance, simplicity, and craft.](https://paco.me/writing/redesign-2021) - [*Redesigning the laser tool for better annotations*Steve Ruiz, 2026: from a self-consuming polyline to grouped fading scribbles.](https://tldraw.dev/blog/redesigning-lasers) - [*Reminder: You Can Stitch Together Lots of Little HTML Pages With Navigations For Interactions*Jim Nielsen, 2026; post-mortem on the multi-page approach, including the history.back() menu close.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/small-html-pages/) - [*Reordering Part 1: Arrays*Steve Ruiz, 2022: Send to Back, Bring Forward and friends as array operations.](https://steveruiz.me/posts/reordering) - [*Reordering Part 2: Tables and Fractional Indexing*Steve Ruiz, 2022: fractional indices for ordering items in tables and multiplayer documents.](https://steveruiz.me/posts/reordering-fractional-indices) - [*Safari favicon showing white background on dark mode*Paco Coursey, 2023, on Safari's favicon contrast behaviour and the colour change that fixed Linear's icon.](https://paco.me/writing/safari-favicon-showing-white-background) - [*Sanding UI*Jim Nielsen, 2024; build, click around a ton, tweak, repeat, and the dead click zone a flexbox gap left behind.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/sanding-ui/) - [*Sanding UI, pt. II*Jim Nielsen, 2025; an SVG selected as text, fixed with user-select: none.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/sanding-ui-pt-ii/) - [*Should you pursue a career in design engineering?*Sean Voisen on the Adobe Design blog; the role at Adobe, T-shaped people, and three ways to get started.](https://adobe.design/stories/leading-design/should-you-pursue-a-career-in-design-engineering) - [*Some Miscellaneous Thoughts on Visual Design Prodded By The Sameness of AI Company Logos*Jim Nielsen, 2025, on homogeneity at scale and why the work of individuals and small teams keeps its soul.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/visual-design-homogeneity-at-scale/) - [*Sound*Bartosz Ciechanowski, 2022: air, pressure waves, and tones you play on little keyboards.](https://ciechanow.ski/sound/) - [*Stay away from my trash!*Steve Ruiz, 2026: why tldraw began closing external pull requests after an influx of AI-generated ones.](https://tldraw.dev/blog/stay-away-from-my-trash) - [*SVG Caching with *Paco Coursey, 2020; reuse rendered icon DOM with SVG use and hashed ids.](https://paco.me/writing/svg-caching-with-use) - [*Taste is Eating Silicon Valley*Anu Atluru's essay, quoted by Emil Kowalski: in a world of abundance, we treasure taste.](https://www.workingtheorys.com/p/taste-is-eating-silicon-valley) - [*Text is not enough*Steve Ruiz, 2026: tldraw's MCP App puts a canvas inside a conversation with an agent.](https://tldraw.dev/blog/text-is-not-enough) - [*The AI Aesthetic*Jim Nielsen, 2026, cataloguing the design idioms of the AI moment: sparkles, streaming and shimmering text, tiny icons, cream and orange and serif.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/ai-aesthetic/) - [*The Attributes of a Design Engineer*Kathryn Gonzalez, 2024; her definition of the role after building the practice at DoorDash: autonomy, craft, and fidelity.](https://www.ryngonzalez.com/blog/the-attributes-of-a-design-engineer) - [*The Browser Company on the novelty tax*Video cited by Rauno Freiberg in Novelty; Arc as a saxophone that was hard to turn into a piano.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzF7S8zc1IQ&t=652s) - [*The Case for Design Engineers*Jim Nielsen, 2022; why the artifact explosion of responsive design makes design engineers worth their weight in gold.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/the-case-for-design-engineers/) - [*The Case for Design Engineers, Pt. II*Jim Nielsen, 2024; a draggable divider shows why look and feel cannot be specced in a design tool.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/the-case-for-design-engineers-pt-ii/) - [*The Case for Design Engineers, Pt. III*Jim Nielsen, 2024; Christopher Nolan's Writer/Director credit and why the creative process is not an assembly line.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/the-case-for-design-engineers-pt-iii/) - [*The curious case of user interfaces*Rasmus Andersson, Figma, 2023; a talk listed in Rauno's resources.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76b3c_ssyPQ&ab_channel=Figma) - [*The Dark Forest and Generative AI*Maggie Appleton, 2022: proving you are human on a web flooded with generated content.](https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest) - [*The Figma to Browser Chasm*Jim Nielsen, 2023; a Figma file is only as good as its implementation.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/figma-to-browser-chasm/) - [*The Gulf Between Design and Engineering*Rune Madsen, Design Systems International; the design handover as the root cause, and code as the real design product.](https://designsystems.international/ideas/the-gulf-between-design-and-engineering/) - [“The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement”Paul Morris Fitts, 1954; the paper behind Fitts's law.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law) - [*The Magic of Clip Path*Emil Kowalski's guide to animating with clip-path: comparison sliders, image reveals, scroll progress, and tabs.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/the-magic-of-clip-path) - [*The origins of design engineering*David Luhr, 2024; a timeline of the term from Coyier's Great Divide and Shelburne's 2019 talk to the 2024 job listings.](https://luhr.co/blog/2024/02/26/the-origins-of-design-engineering/) - [*The Taste Gap (Ira Glass)*Clip of Ira Glass on the gap between taste and ability, posted by Emil Kowalski and cited in Developing Taste.](https://x.com/emilkowalski/status/1765004718131068971) - [*The Tension Between Logical Reasoning & Illogical Creativity*Jim Nielsen, 2023; design engineers hold the logic of code and the illogic of ideation in balance.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/logic-of-code-and-illogic-of-creativity/) - [*The Tumultuous Evolution of the Design Profession*Jim Nielsen, 2025; on Elizabeth Goodspeed's essay, profit margins, and the optics of building.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/tumult-in-design/) - [*The Unseen Work of Design*Jim Nielsen, 2021; the final product is discovered through unseen refinement.](https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2021/unseen-work-of-design/) - [*Tools for Thought as Cultural Practices, not Computational Objects*Maggie Appleton, 2021: a historical and anthropological reading of the tools for thought field.](https://maggieappleton.com/tools-for-thought) - [*Train Your Judgement*Emil Kowalski's side-by-side exercises on duration, easing, scale, stagger, popLayout, interruptions, and layered motion.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/train-your-judgement) - [“Understanding Interaction Design Practices”E. Goodman, E. Stolterman, R. Wakkary, CHI 2011; the paper Rauno cites on treating practice as a black box.](https://summit.sfu.ca/_flysystem/fedora/sfu_migrate/15215/2011_CHI_Understanding_Goodman_vy-edited.pdf) - [*Vibe Code is Legacy Code*Maggie Appleton, August 2025, agreeing with Steve Krouse that vibe code is code nobody understands.](https://maggieappleton.com/2025-08-vibe-legacy-code) - [*View transitions: Handling aspect ratio changes*Jake Archibald, 2024; explains and fixes aspect ratio changes in view transitions.](https://jakearchibald.com/2024/view-transitions-handling-aspect-ratio-changes/) - [*Visualizing Fitts's Law*Kevin Hale, 2010; an illustrated article on the law, listed in Rauno's resources.](http://www.particletree.com/features/visualizing-fittss-law/) - [*What will you ship?*Rauno Freiberg with Glenn, Henry, and Alasdair, 2023; shipping the Vercel homepage with performance and constraint as north stars.](https://rauno.me/craft/vercel) - [*Why Chatbots Are Not the Future*Amelia Wattenberger, 2023: the case for tools with affordances and controls instead of a bare text box.](https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/boo-chatbots) - [*Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?*Radek Sienkiewicz's piece on logo sameness that prompted Jim Nielsen's post on homogeneity.](https://velvetshark.com/ai-company-logos-that-look-like-buttholes) - [*Write it down*Paco Coursey, 2019; the policy of writing every idea down, every time.](https://paco.me/writing/write-it-down) - [*You Don't Need Animations*Emil Kowalski's essay on why you are animating more often than you should: purpose, frequency of use, and perceived speed.](https://emilkowal.ski/ui/you-dont-need-animations) ## Tools and libraries The things you will actually install. - [*AI Skills for Design Engineers*Emil Kowalski's free skill files for coding agents: design engineering, animate, review-animations, and more.](https://emilkowal.ski/skill) - [*cmdk*Paco Coursey's composable command menu React component; the README doubles as the documentation site.](https://github.com/pacocoursey/cmdk) - [*cmdk*Rauno Freiberg, 2022; the command menu component behind many Command K bars, downloaded millions of times per week.](https://cmdk.paco.me) - [*Code Atlas*GitHub Next exploration by Amelia Wattenberger: a model's answer as an editable workflow of code blocks.](https://githubnext.com/projects/code-atlas/) - [*Code Brushes*GitHub Next exploration in Copilot Labs (preview ended December 2023): select lines, pick a brush, see the code change.](https://githubnext.com/projects/code-brushes/) - [*Collaborative coding workspaces*GitHub Next exploration: remote collaboration as sharing context, not just cursors.](https://githubnext.com/projects/workspaces/) - [*Copilot for Docs*GitHub Next exploration (preview ended December 2023): documentation answers with citations.](https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-for-docs/) - [*Easing Graphs*Alex Vanderzon and Lochie Axon; 28 named easing curves with their cubic-bezier values and CSS snippets.](https://www.easing.dev/) - [*Emil Kowalski's design engineering skills*Skill files encoding Emil Kowalski's animation and component rules, including the duration table and the modal transform-origin exception.](https://github.com/emilkowalski/skill/blob/main/skills/emil-design-eng/SKILL.md) - [*emilkowalski/skill*The repository behind Emil Kowalski's skills; the README explains why agents do not have great taste.](https://github.com/emilkowalski/skill) - [*GitHub Blocks*GitHub Next exploration (preview ended December 2023): custom, interactive blocks for files, folders, and repositories.](https://blocks.githubnext.com) - [*Make Real*tldraw: sketch an interface on the canvas and get a working website back.](https://makereal.tldraw.com) - [*Minimap*Rauno Freiberg, 2024; the minimap scroll prototype inspired by games.](https://rauno.me/craft/minimap) - [*next-themes*Paco Coursey's theme abstraction for React apps: no flash on load, system preference, and a documented set of defaults.](https://github.com/pacocoursey/next-themes) - [*perfect-arrows*Steve Ruiz: functions for drawing arrows between points and shapes.](https://github.com/steveruizok/perfect-arrows) - [*perfect-freehand*Steve Ruiz: a library that draws perfect pressure-sensitive freehand lines from input points.](https://github.com/steveruizok/perfect-freehand) - [*Radial Menu*Rauno Freiberg, 2023; the prototype embedded in the Fitts's law section, hold and rotate from anywhere.](https://rauno.me/craft/radial-menu) - [*repo-visualizer*Amelia Wattenberger's GitHub Action that draws a codebase as nested circles and redraws on every change.](https://githubnext.com/projects/repo-visualization/) - [*skill-creator*Anthropic's skill for writing skills, which Emil Kowalski uses to package taste decisions.](https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/main/skills/skill-creator/SKILL.md) - [*Sonner*Emil Kowalski's opinionated toast component for React, with documented defaults for gap, visible toasts, and duration.](https://sonner.emilkowal.ski) - [*tldraw SDK*tldraw: an infinite canvas SDK for React, with the tldraw.dev blog.](https://tldraw.dev) - [*Vaul*Emil Kowalski's drawer component for React, built on Radix Dialog and modelled on the iOS sheet.](https://vaul.emilkowal.ski) - [*Web Interface Guidelines*Rauno Freiberg; a non-exhaustive list of details that make a good web interface.](https://interfaces.rauno.me/) ## People and sites Personal sites that are portfolios in themselves. - [*(Basic) Bookmarks*Rauno Freiberg, 2023; the bookmarking tool where he removed motion from core interactions.](https://bmrks.com) - [*Amelia Wattenberger*Essays on novel interfaces, data visualization, and AI tools, plus her GitHub Next work.](https://wattenberger.com) - [*amo*The social app whose wordmark animates through contrasting typefaces, cited in Contrasting Aesthetics.](https://get.amo.co/en) - [*Andrew Swank*Designer and engineer by design; a site built from scratch as a demo, with project pages for Google Assistant and Google Flights.](https://andrewswank.com) - [*App Dissection*Brian Lovin's close studies of apps, cited by Emil Kowalski as a model of studying rather than using.](https://brianlovin.com/app-dissection) - [*Bartosz Ciechanowski*Interactive articles on machines, physics, and graphics, each opening with a model you can drag.](https://ciechanow.ski) - [*Emil Kowalski*Design engineer at Linear, formerly Vercel; creator of Sonner, Vaul, and animations.dev.](https://emilkowal.ski) - [*Jim Nielsen*Fifteen years of blogging, 805 posts, and icon galleries; his home page and blog.](https://www.jim-nielsen.com) - [*Kathryn Gonzalez*Independent design and engineering director, formerly Head of Design Infrastructure at DoorDash; her site and writing.](https://www.ryngonzalez.com) - [*Linear careers*Linear's careers page and its statement on the lost art of building software.](https://linear.app/careers) - [*Maggie Appleton*A digital garden of notes, essays, and patterns, designed and built by her and published as open source.](https://maggieappleton.com) - [*MercuryOS*Jason Yuan, 2019; the concept OS Rauno recreated in SwiftUI for the swipe-trigger example.](https://www.mercuryos.com/) - [*Not Boring*Apps for everyday functions that are novel for people who value beauty and game-feel; cited in Novelty.](https://notbor.ing/) - [*Paco Coursey*Webmaster at Linear, formerly Vercel; a site of documents and links, plus a craft page of interaction experiments.](https://paco.me) - [*Paco Coursey's craft page: Command Menu*The 2021 playground that became cmdk, with a 249-item test set and a 2,000-item performance goal.](https://paco.me/craft/command) - [*PP Foundry bitmap fonts*The NeueBit and Mondwest page that pairs a bitmap typeface with Leonardo's Annunciation.](https://pangrampangram.com/products/bitmap-fonts) - [*Radix UI*Where Rauno Freiberg first saw serif quote marks paired with Inter.](https://www.radix-ui.com/) - [*Rauno Freiberg*Rauno Freiberg's site: essays, the craft log, projects, and a running diary; the site itself is an argument for its subject.](https://rauno.me) - [*Rauno Freiberg's craft index*Rauno Freiberg's index of prototypes and essays, including Command Menu (2021) and ⌘K Breadcrumbs (2022).](https://rauno.me/craft) - [*Raw Materials*The studio whose logo has four animations, one per visit; cited in Contrasting Aesthetics.](https://www.therawmaterials.com/) - [*Steve Ruiz*Steve Ruiz's site and blog, with the design tool micro-UX posts.](https://steveruiz.me) - [*Stripe Press*Stripe; an intentionally experimental site cited in Novelty as novelty working through contrast.](https://press.stripe.com/) - [*Vercel homepage*The October 2023 Vercel homepage documented in What will you ship?](https://vercel.com/home) ## Hubs and resources Collections that map the field and keep it current. - [*A Collection of Design Engineers*Maggie Appleton, 2024; a short definition and a roster of ten people who do design engineering work in public.](https://maggieappleton.com/design-engineers) - [*Animations on the Web*Emil Kowalski; a course on easing, timing, springs, and taste, with four walkthroughs and more than 35 lessons.](https://animations.dev) - [*Bartosz Ciechanowski on Patreon*Where every ciechanow.ski article asks readers to support the work.](https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski) - [*desengs.com*Curated by Maze Heart; a tagged feed of tools, articles, people, communities, and jobs for design engineers.](https://desengs.com/) - [*Design Engineer Jobs*Moe Amaya; a job board dedicated to design engineering.](https://designengineer.io) - [*Design Engineering Club*A design engineering community, listed on desengs.com.](https://designeng.club/) - [*Design Engineering Resources*Arun Venkatesan; a curated list of posts, conversations, courses, tools, and a job board, contributable on GitHub.](https://designengineering.arun.is/) - [*Design engineering resources*Sean Voisen, updated 2025; an annotated list of articles, the Handbook, podcasts, and communities.](https://seanvoisen.com/writing/design-engineering-resources/) - [*Devouring Details*Rauno Freiberg; an interactive reference manual for interaction-curious designers, 23 chapters with 23 React components.](https://devouringdetails.com) - [*Fullstack D3 and Data Visualization*Amelia Wattenberger's book and course on building charts with D3, design principles included.](https://www.newline.co/fullstack-d3) - [*Maggie Appleton's patterns catalogue*Design patterns gathered from observation and research, each with context, pattern, and examples.](https://maggieappleton.com/patterns) 197 sources Links go to the primary sources; anything worth understanding properly is better read there than summarized here.