This week, Google debuted their Gemini 3 AI model to great fanfare and reviews. Specs-wise, it tops the benchmarks. This horserace has seen Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI trade leads each time a new model is released, so I’m not really surprised there. The interesting bit for us designers isn’t the model itself, but the upgraded Gemini app that can create user interfaces on the fly. Say hello to generative UI.

I will admit that I’ve been skeptical of the notion of generative user interfaces. I was imagining an app for work, like a design app, that would rearrange itself depending on the task at hand. In other words, it’s dynamic and contextual. Adobe has tried a proto-version of this with the contextual task bar. Theoretically, it surfaces up the most pertinent three or four actions based on your current task. But I find that it just gets in the way.

When Interfaces Keep Moving

Others have been less skeptical. More than 18 months ago, NN/g published an article speculating about genUI and how it might manifest in the future. They define it as:

A generative UI (genUI) is a user interface that is dynamically generated in real time by artificial intelligence to provide an experience customized to fit the user’s needs and context. So it’s a custom UI for that user at that point in time. Similar to how LLMs answer your question: tailored for you and specific to when that you asked the original question.

Like many people, I tried OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas browser last week. I immediately made it my daily driver, seeing if I could make the best of it. Tl;dr: it’s still early days and I don’t believe it’s quite ready for primetime. But let’s back up a bit.

The Era of the AI Browser Is Here

Back in July, I reviewed both Comet from Perplexity and Dia from The Browser Company. It was a glimpse of the future that I wanted. I concluded:

The AI-powered ideas in both Dia and Comet are a step change. But the basics also have to be there, and in my opinion, should be better than what Chrome offers. The interface innovations that made Arc special shouldn’t be sacrificed for AI features. Arc is/was the perfect foundation. Integrate an AI assistant that can be personalized to care about the same things you do so its summaries are relevant. The assistant can be agentic and perform tasks for you in the background while you focus on more important things. In other words, put Arc, Dia, and Comet in a blender and that could be the perfect browser of the future.

There were also open rumors that OpenAI was working on a browser of their own, so the launch of Atlas was inevitable.

Since I finished migrating my site from Next.js/Payload CMS to Astro, I’ve been wanting to redo the tag taxonomy for my posts. They’d gotten out of hand over time, and the tag tumbleweed grew to more than 80 tags. What the hell was I thinking when I had both “product design” and “product designer”?

Anyway, I tried a few programmatic ways to determine the best taxonomy, but ultimately manually culled it down to 29 tags. Then, I really didn’t want to have to manually go back and re-tag more than 350 posts. So I turned to AI. It took two attempts. The first one that Cursor planned for me used ML to discern the tags, but that failed spectacularly because it was using frequency of words, not semantic meaning.

So I ultimately tried an LLM approach and that worked. I spec’d it out and had Claude Code write it for me. Then after another hour or so of experimenting and seeing if the resulting tags worked, I let it run concurrently in four terminal windows to process all the posts from the past 20 years. Et voila!

I spot-checked at least half of all the posts manually and made some adjustments. But I’m pretty happy with the results.

See the new tags on the Search page or just click around and explore.

Two weekends ago, I quietly relaunched my blog. It was a heart transplant really, of the same design I'd launched in late March.

The First Iteration

Back in early November of last year, I re-platformed from WordPress to a home-grown, Cursor-made static site generator. I'd write in Markdown and push code to my GitHub repository and the post was published via Vercel's continuous deployment feature. The design was simple and it was a great learning project for me.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, marked a horrifying inflection point in the growing debate over how digital platforms amplify rage and destabilize politics. As someone who had already stepped back from social media after Trump’s re-election, watching these events unfold from a distance only confirmed my decision. My feeds had become pits of despair, grievances, and overall negativity that didn’t do well for my mental health. While I understand the need to shine a light on the atrocities of Trump and his government, the constant barrage was too much. So I mostly opted out, save for the occasional promotion of my writing.

Kirk’s death feels like the inevitable conclusion of systems we’ve built—systems that reward outrage, amplify division, and transform human beings into content machines optimized for engagement at any cost.

For men of a certain age, Pink Floyd represents a milieu—brooding, melancholy, emo before emo had a name. I started listening to Floyd in high school and being a kid who always felt like an outsider, The Wall really resonated with me. In college, I started exploring their back catalog and Animals and Wish You Were Here became my favorites. Of course, as a designer, I have always loved the album covers. Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis’ surreal photos were mind-bending and added to the music’s feelings of alienation, yearning, and the aching beauty of being lost.

I hadn’t listened to the music in a while but the song “Two Suns in the Sunset” from *The Final Cut *periodically pops into my head. I listened to the full album last Sunday. On Tuesday, I pulled up their catalog again to play in the background while I worked and to my surprise, all the trippy cover art was replaced by white type on a black surface!

Today’s Apple keynote opened with a classic quote from Steve Jobs.

Then a video played, focused on the fundamental geometric shapes that can be found in Apple’s products: circles in the HomePod, iPhone shutter button, iPhone camera, MagSafe charging ring, Digital Crown on Apple Watch; rounded squares in the charging block, Home scene button, Mac mini, keycaps, Finder icon, FaceID; to the lozenges found in the AirPods case, MagSafe port, Liquid Glass carousel control, and the Action button on Apple Watch Ultra.

I rewatched the 1982 film TRON for the umpteenth time the other night with my wife. I have always credited this movie as the spark that got me interested in computers. Mind you, I was nine years old when this film came out. I was so excited after watching the movie that I got my father to buy us a home computer—the mighty Atari 400 (note sarcasm). I remember an educational game that came on cassette called “States & Capitals” that taught me, well, the states and their capitals. It also introduced me to BASIC, and after watching TRON, I wanted to write programs!

President Trump signed an executive order creating America by Design, a national initiative to improve the usability and design of federal services, both digital and physical. The order establishes a National Design Studio inside the White House and appoints Airbnb co-founder and RISD graduate Joe Gebbia as the first Chief Design Officer. The studio’s mandate: cut duplicative design costs, standardize experiences to build trust, and raise the quality of government services. Gebbia said he aims to make the U.S. “the most beautiful, and usable, country in the digital world.”

Ironically, this follows the gutting of the US Digital Service, left like a caterpillar consumed from within by parasitic wasp larvae, when it was turned into DOGE. And as part of the cutting of thousands from the federal workforce, 18F, the pioneering digital services agency that started in 2014, was eliminated.

Ethan Marcotte, the designer who literally wrote the book on responsive design and worked at 18F, had some thoughts. He points out the announcement web page weighs in at over three megabytes. Very heavy for a government page and slow for those in the country unserved by broadband—about 26 million. On top of that, the page is full of typos and is an accessibility nightmare.

In the 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, then 85 year-old sushi master Jiro Ono says this about craft:

Once you decide on your occupation… you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That’s the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably.

Craft is typically thought of as the formal aspects of any field such as design, woodworking, writing, or cooking. In design, we think about composition, spacing, and typography—being pixel-perfect. But one’s craft is much more than that. Ono’s sushi craft is not solely about slicing fish and pressing it against a bit of rice. It is also about picking the right fish, toasting the nori just so, cooking the rice perfectly, and running a restaurant. It’s the whole thing.

In Part I of this series on the design talent crisis, I wrote about the struggles recent grads have had finding entry-level design jobs and what might be causing the stranglehold on the design job market. In Part II, I discussed how industry and education need to change in order to ensure the survival of the profession.

Part III: Adaptation Through Action

Like most Gen X kids, I grew up with a lot of freedom to roam. By fifth grade, I was regularly out of the house. My friends and I would go to an arcade in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf called The Doghouse, where naturally, they served hot dogs alongside their Joust and TRON cabinets. But we would invariably go to the Taco Bell across the street for cheap pre-dinner eats. In seventh grade—this is 1986—I walked by a ComputerLand on Van Ness Avenue and noticed a little beige computer with a built-in black and white CRT. The Macintosh screen was actually pale blue and black, but more importantly, showed MacPaint. It was my first exposure to creating graphics on a computer, which would eventually become my career.

For my series on the Design Talent Crisis (see Part I, Part II, and Part III) I interviewed five recent graduates from California College of the Arts (CCA) and San Diego City College. I’m an alum of CCA and I used to teach at SDCC. There’s a mix of folks from both the graphic design and interaction design disciplines. 

In Part I of this series, I wrote about the struggles recent grads have had finding entry-level design jobs and what might be causing the stranglehold on the design job market.

Part II: Building New Ladders

When I met Benedict Allen, he had just finished with Portfolio Review a week earlier. That’s the big show all the design students in the Graphic Design program at San Diego City College work toward. It’s a nice event that brings out the local design community where seasoned professionals review the portfolios of the graduating students.

Allen was all smiles and relief. “I want to dabble in different aspects of design because the principles are generally the same.” He goes on to mention how he wants to start a fashion brand someday, DJ, try 3D. “I just want to test and try things and just have fun! Of course, I’ll have my graphic design job, but I don’t want that to be the end. Like when the workday ends, that’s not the end of my creativity.” He was bursting with enthusiasm.

This is the first part in a three-part series about the design talent crisis. Read Part II and Part III.

Part I: The Vanishing Bottom Rung

Erika Kim’s path to UX design represents a familiar pandemic-era pivot story, yet one that reveals deeper currents about creative work and economic necessity. Armed with a 2020 film and photography degree from UC Riverside, she found herself working gig photography—graduations, band events—when the creative industries collapsed. The work satisfied her artistic impulses but left her craving what she calls “structure and stability,” leading her to UX design. The field struck her as an ideal synthesis, “I’m creating solutions for companies. I’m working with them to figure out what they want, and then taking that creative input and trying to make something that works best for them.”

Since graduating from the interaction design program at San Diego City College a year ago, she’s had three internships and works retail part-time to pay the bills. “I’ve been in survival mode,” she admits. On paper, she’s a great candidate for any junior position. Speaking with her reveals a very thoughtful and resourceful young designer. Why hasn’t she been able to land a full-time job? What’s going on in the design job market? 

For nearly three years, Arc from The Browser Company has been my daily driver. To be sure, there was a little bit of a learning curve. Tabs disappeared after a day unless you pinned them. Then they became almost like bookmarks. Tabs were on the left side of the window, not at the top. Spaces let me organize my tabs based on use cases like personal, work, or finances. I could switch between tabs using control-Tab and saw little thumbnails of the pages, similar to the app switcher on my Mac. Shift-command-C copied the current page’s URL. 

All these little interface ideas added up to a productivity machine for web jockeys like myself. And so, I was saddened to hear in May that The Browser Company stopped actively developing Arc in favor of a new AI-powered browser called Dia. (They are keeping Arc updated with maintenance releases.)

They had started beta-testing Dia with college students first and just recently opened it up to Arc members. I finally got access to Dia a few weeks ago. 

When I was younger, I had a sheet of US Bicentennial stamps and I always loved the red, white, and blue star. Little did I know then that I would become a graphic designer.

The symbol, designed by Bruce Blackburn at Chermayeff & Geismar is a multilayered stylized five-pointed star. It folds like bunting. Its rounded corners evoke both a flower and a pinwheel at the same time. And finally, the negative space reveals a classic, pointed star.

I was in London last week with my family and spotted this ad in a Tube car. With the headline “Humans Were the Beta Test,” this is for Artisan, a San Francisco-based startup peddling AI-powered “digital workers.” Specifically an AI agent that will perform sales outreach to prospects, etc.

Artisan ad as seen in London, June 2025

I’ve long left the Bay Area, but I know that the 101 highway is littered with cryptic billboards from tech companies, where the copy only makes sense to people in the tech industry, which to be fair, is a large part of the Bay Area economy. Artisan is infamous for its “Stop Hiring Humans” campaign which went up late last year. Being based in San Diego, much further south in California, I had no idea. Artisan wasn’t even on my radar.

I kind of expected it: a lot more ink was spilled on Liquid Glass—particularly on social media. In case you don’t remember, Liquid Glass is the new UI for all of Apple’s platforms. It was announced Monday at WWDC 2025, their annual developers conference.

The criticism is primarily around legibility and accessibility. Secondary reasons include aesthetics and power usage to animate all the bubbles.

Apple’s annual developer conference kicked off today with a keynote that announced:

• Unified Version 26 across all Apple platforms (iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS)
• “Liquid Glass” design system. A complete UI and UX overhaul, the first major redesign since iOS 7
• Apple Intelligence. Continued small improvements, though not the deep integration promised a year ago
• Full windowing system on iPadOS. Windows comes to iPad! Finally.

Of course, those are the very high-level highlights.

The Talking Heads have released a new music video for an old song. Directed by Mike Mills—who is not only a filmmaker but also a graphic designer—and starring Saoirse Ronan, the video for the band’s first hit, “Psycho Killer” is a wonderful study on the pressures, anxieties, and joys of being a young person in today’s world. It was made to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary.

Watch on YouTube

On Instagram, the band said, “This video makes the song better- We LOVE what this video is NOT - it’s not literal, creepy, bloody, physically violent or obvious.”

Me too.

Tommy Geoco and team are finally out with the results of their 2024 UX Design Tools Survey.

First, two quick observations before I move on to longer ones:

• The respondent population of 2,200+ designers is well-balanced among company size, team structure, client vs. product focus, and leadership responsibility
• Predictably, Figma dominates the tools stacks of most segments

I knew instantly that the brand identity was paying homage to Eadweard Muybridge’s famous photographic studies of a galloping horse. It’s a logo for an AI video company.

The whole case study from Jody Hudson-Powell and Luke Powell of Pentagram is great.

Nearly three weeks after it was introduced at Figma Config 2025, I finally got access to Figma Make. It is in beta and Figma made sure we all know. So I will say upfront that it’s a bit unfair to do an official review. However, many of the tools in my AI prompt-to-code shootout article are also in beta. 

Since this review is fairly visual, I made a video as well that summarizes the points in this article pretty well.

I remember two years ago, when my CEO at the startup I worked for at the time, said that no VC investments were being made unless it had to do with AI. I thought AI was overhyped, and that the media frenzy over it couldn’t get any crazier. I was wrong.

Looking at Google Trends data, interest in AI has doubled in the last 24 months. And I don’t think it’s hit its plateau yet.

Four months into his role as interim CEO, Tom Conrad has been remarkably candid about Sonos’ catastrophic app launch. In recent interviews with WIRED and The Verge, he’s taken personal responsibility—even though he wasn’t at the helm, just on the board—acknowledged deep organizational problems, and outlined the company’s path forward.

But while Conrad is addressing more than many expected, some key details remain off-limits.