Spline is like a Figma of the 3D world — web-based, real-time, and collaborative. (I still can’t believe that this is actually possible!) They’ve just introduced Spline Viewer, a new and easy way to embed 3D on your site. Support of all kinds of interactions makes it really fun to play with. Check out a recent experiment by Vijay.

“This document outlines a non-exhaustive list of details that make a good (web) interface.” Great list by Rauno Freiberg, Staff Design Engineer at Vercel. I’ve had the idea of writing an internal “quality UI checklist” for a long time, and this list would have made a fantastic foundation.

This new color palette generator took “design Twitter” by storm last week, and for a good reason! “Poline is an enigmatic color palette generator, that harnesses the mystical witchcraft of polar coordinates. Its methodology, defying conventional color science, is steeped in the esoteric knowledge of the early 20th century. This magical technology defies explanation, drawing lines between anchors to produce visually striking and otherworldly palettes.”

Marcin Wichary leads the editor design team at Figma and wrote some of my favorite deep dives on design-related topics (like underlines on Medium or fonts and line height at Figma). Now he is working on a gorgeous book about keyboards, “covering 150 years from the early typewriters to the pixellated keyboards in our pockets.” Shift Happens (what a name!) has already become the #3 Kickstarter non-fiction book of all time, and seems like it’s on its way to a stretch goal, unlocking a larger 3rd volume. Highly recommend listening to his recent interview on the Design Details podcast about the book, its publication, website, and more. Consider backing this project by March 9, 2023 to help it reach a stretch goal.

Loved this article by Paul Stamatiou on elevating product quality. His thoughts on the constant tension of shipping faster vs. shipping better and a promise of iterating are something I’ve been pondering a lot. Paul’s website itself is an inspiring example of a truly personal “homepage” with carefully crafted essays and resources.

Affinity announced Version 2 of the Designer, Photo, and Publisher apps on November 9th. Their suite provides the strongest alternative to Adobe Creative Cloud, and now is an important time to support indie alternatives. Affinity offers the Universal License on all platforms with just one payment (currently 40% off!) and without subscriptions.

I’m not a heavy user by any means, but bought the previous version of Designer back in 2016 and been using it occasionally. The app was regularly updated all these years, so I just ordered the Universal License and set up the new apps. Hope after climbing the learning curve they’ll become a great addition to my Figma-centric workflow.

Speaking of the font metrics, I’ve just bought the Martian Grotesk font family for the upcoming redesign of my personal website. Its author Roman Shamin put a great deal of work into making this font a fantastic choice for web and digital design — equal vertical metrics for perfect positioning inside a bounding box, glyph height sticking to the pixel grid at common sizes, case sensitivity, and a variable version. It’s one of the most thoughtfully made fonts for the UI work and currently it’s 60% off until September 4th. (See also his free open-source font Martian Mono.)

If you ever looked for a Mac app for a specific task, you probably sifted through a ton of low-quality apps to find some gems. And the gems were probably paid apps or required a subscription, which is not always feasible for one-off tasks. Setapp is an alternative app store offering a single subscription to a curated catalog of high-quality apps. I’ve been using it for a few years and always check first when looking for a new app. Some of my favorites installed on all computers include CleanShot X, TablePlus, Bartender, and Sip. Bonus point: Setapp is made by a Ukrainian company based in Kyiv. (My referral link gives both of us a free month.)

I’ve been using Alfred since v1, but lately been trying Raycast as another fast and extendable launcher. So far it feels more modern and polished. Extensions make it really powerful and there are tons of them made by the community. Figma File Search lets you quickly find and navigate to Figma files in your team account.

Eagle is a fantastic app for taking screenshots and organizing visual references. I was a heavy user of the Ember app a decade ago, but it was discontinued in 2015 and I’ve been looking for a replacement until finding Eagle a couple of years ago. It’s available for multiple platforms as a one-time purchase. A must-have for every designer! (An easter egg: you may find me somewhere on their home page!)

My first cool thing is a gorgeous editor and knowledge base for Mac and iOS. If you’re familiar with Notion, you’ll feel right at home. I use Craft to prepare Figmalion issues, take notes during meetings, plan family trips, and save and organize highlights from my reading. It’s a native app, so saving things by dragging or using a sharing extension is effortless on all platforms.