Anthony Hobday on why most design career advice comes from people who don’t hire designers and reflects a single lucky path. The practical core: a five-minute curriculum, ways to look impressive without impressive jobs, and the signs an org genuinely values interface design. His argument that one strong credential can cover for a weak portfolio pairs neatly with ​“Components Are Dead” below — both circling what actually holds value as the job changes.

Luis Ouriach makes the provocative case that when LLMs make code cheap to write, edit, and migrate, the contribution model and the component-as-source-of-truth lose their reason to exist. His point is that consistency was always carried by tokens, not components, so a well-defined token set could govern ten different LLM-generated inputs at once. He stops short of full obituary, asking whether components live on as the unit of constraint.

Rauno Freiberg, a design engineer widely respected for his UI craft, keeps a running collection of short notes on the small decisions that make interfaces feel right. One entry works through why an animation delay meant to highlight a scrolled-to message backfired and felt more awkward; another walks through the redesign of cards. It’s the kind of thinking-out-loud that can teach more than any tutorial.

Just updated my annual Config Study Guide with the remainder of the recordings — all 70 talks are now organized and ready to watch. (Only the Learning Lab videos are still unavailable.) This is a practical way to work through the talks at your own pace, mark what you’ve watched, and trade recommendations with friends and colleagues.

New weekly live show by Ridd and Tommy Geoco, focused on design, tools, and the people behind the software.

A large survey of tech workers in 2026 finds the industry splitting into two groups: roughly half feel amplified by AI, while 14% feel destabilized and 12% are simply resentful. Designers and researchers are overrepresented in the fragile half. What’s striking is that the fear isn’t ​“AI will take my job” — only 22% name that. The bigger worry is unsustainable pace and doing more work for the same pay. Career optimism is down, burnout is up, and 53% would actively discourage someone from entering their field.

Dylan Field’s own Config 2026 recap, covering all six announcements at once: Code Layers, Figma Motion, Shader fills and effects, Generative Plugins, Weave Tools, and the Figma Agent. His framing: ​“AI has lowered the floor, but it has not raised the ceiling. Designers, creatives, builders: You will raise the ceiling.” A deliberate pushback against the narrative that AI replaces creative work.

Dylan Field opens Config 2026 by settling the design-vs-code debate once and for all: ​“Code is not the opposite of design. Code is material for design.” The keynote’s headline feature, Code Layers, puts live interactive code directly on the canvas alongside design layers, with a shared agent chat so teams can explore and riff together rather than each going a hundred prompts deep alone. From the same team: Figma Motion in beta, a full timeline-based motion tool with shader effects, 3D transforms, and export to MP4, GIF, and animated SVG. Worth watching in full: the Weave AI tools and custom shader section is genuinely impressive, and the generative plugin demos near the end show where the platform is heading.

A fresh edition of my annual Config Study Guide, with all recordings grouped by day, organized by stage (from larger to smaller), and color-coded by theme. The stage size is a good cue for how important organizers considered a specific talk — I recommend starting from the top of deep dives and themes you’re interested in. Some talks haven’t been published yet, so the study guide will be updated.

I make this resource because even while attending in person, I can only make it to a small fraction of talks I’m interested in. Use the Stamp tool to mark the talks you want to watch or have already watched, add your thoughts with stickies, and share your version of this file with friends.