Whoa! Epic collab between Soleio and Indie​.vc. Six interviews with design pioneers and true first-of-kind designers — Henry Modisett, Colin Dunn, Jessica Hische, Julie Zhuo, Nicholas Jitkoff, and Susan Kare. Now I just need to set aside 7 hours to watch them all ASAP.

Lenny Rachitsky’s survey was all over Design Twitter this week. Next are a few interesting takeaways. 1) ​“Workers at smaller companies report significantly lower burnout levels than those at larger companies.” 2) Designers are the most burnt-out tech workers, closely followed only by Research and Growth — I wonder if it’s because these roles constantly deal with ambiguity and limited autonomy. 3) Optimism about career and current role is on the decline, with designers having the largest negative sentiment change. 4) ​“Fewer than 1 in 3 tech workers (26.6%) rate their managers as highly effective, while more than 4 in 10 (42.3%) rate their managers as ineffective. […] People in product and design roles have the most negative leadership perceptions.” 5) Startup founders are the happiest people in tech.

My friend Christine Vallaure shares a few lessons learned building her educational platform as a company of one. Christine’s approach to running a business is truly inspiring, and she masterfully told her story at this year’s Config and in her new book Solo. (Which I genuinely recommend and she offers a coupon to my readers in the Friendly Promo above, which is not an ad.)

Inga Hampton, a Product Designer at Raycast, and Noah McAskill, a Chief Doodler at NBA Paint, are challenged to draw each other’s portraits in Figma Draw. The reveal at 20:00 is my favorite part.

Gary Simon shows how to create your own Figma Draw brushes by scanning physical samples or generating them with AI. He also offers 30 pre-made stretch brushes as a free resource.

Watch Tim Van Damme design symbols for keyboard keycaps in the new Figma Draw.

Molly shows how to simplify a common list design element by using the new Grids instead of nesting vertical Auto Layout stacks inside horizontal rows.

Evil Martians open-sourced their Martian Grotesk font, which I’ve been using at Figmalion for almost 3 years. I highly recommend trying it out and reading about the design philosophy of this project — Roman Shamin put so many innovative ideas into its design, making it an excellent choice for UI design.

This plugin lets you create custom color interpolation grids using up to four corner colors. It’s perfect for designers exploring palette variations, easing models, or just geeking out on color theory.