TWID - Stop chasing your dreams (WK40)

@tobi doesn't want you to follow your dreams, @dannpetty returns to the silver screen, @pondorasti generates cute emojis, @danmall shares his major keys, @webflow & @patreon rebrand, and more...

Oct 06, 2023

Happy Friday!

Welcome to TWID - the only design newsletter on the internet written (in a quiet rage) by me.

Interesting week, we kinda got a little bit of everything.

Thanks for being here, let’s get into the sauce 🥫

WK40

@tobi doesn’t want his employees to have a side project

Earlier this week, articles of an internal leaked memo @shopify surfaced, where Tobi Lütke supposedly discouraged his employees from having side hustles.

My initial reaction was pretty negative, obviously…

Your employer shouldn’t try to tell you how to spend your free time. As long as you complete the job you’re hired to do, there’s no reason this should even be a discussion.

Not to mention, almost every great designer I know has practiced their craft outside of work (this goes for other positions as well).

Building side projects is a great way to expand your skills, which you inevitably bring back to your day job. This benefits everyone, except for that one insecure boss…

That said, the truth about Shopify’s stance on this is probably somewhere in the middle. Tobi pointed out that the headlines were exaggerated.

Either way, stop being weird (talking to you - people in leadership positions). To most people their job is just a job, stop forcing them to extinguish their own goals and ambitions.

@dannpetty is back on the silver screen

Dann is back at it with a masterpiece of a commercial for Contra & Spline (not spine). He’s done a few of these before, but this one is definitely my favourite.

You should check it out. (It’s dope, and he kinda looks like Adam Sandler for a few frames).

@pondorasti drops an AI emoji generator

A couple of days ago, Alexandru dropped an open source AI emoji generator that broke design Twitter.

In a timeline where 100 new AI projects ship every day, this one truly ✨sparks joy✨

I’ve probably generated over a dozen emojis at this point, and the results are quite good.

I mean just look at how cute this Italian plumber turned out 🥰

You can try it out for yourself here.

✨ This week’s sponsor

@usesuperflow will help you ship landing pages faster

You know how landing page feedback ends up all over the place? Screenshots, Slack, emails—you name it. Superflow lets you and your team comment and collaborate directly on the website itself.

No more mess. It's like turning your actual website into a living document where feedback lives. Teams use it to optimize design, fix bugs, and tweak content way faster—like 10x faster. Want to see it in action? Check out this live demo. Use SUPER20 to get 20% off

@danmall shares 10 major keys 🔑

Dan Mall is a design veteran who doesn’t need much of an introduction. Over the last 2 decades he’s been writing about design & helping people all around the world fine-tune their craft.

And this week, Dan shared his 10 principles for a worthy design career over on Figma. As far as design careers go, Dan has had a very successful one - so I strongly recommend checking it out.

@patreon & @webflow rebrands

At their conference yesterday, Webflow revealed their brand new look (alongside some exciting new features).

Huge fan of how this turned out. Pretty clever, too.

Patreon, on the other hand went in a completely different direction.

If Webflow’s new logo can be described as geometric, Patreon’s is … uh …. organic (get it?) Seriously, this thing looks like a rotated human liver.

Jokes aside, I don’t actually hate this logo, and the new art direction is pretty dope. Time will tell, maybe this isn’t even Patreon’s final form.

Design Dopamine 💊

As promised last week, once a month I’ll use the Design Dopamine section to spotlight an incredible designer that you might not be familiar with.

And who better to start with than Rafael Serra?

Spotlight → @faelpontopt

Rafael is a Type Designer and Lettering Artist based in Porto, Portugal.

I’ve been following his work for a while now, and strongly believe that he deserves a lot more recognition. His style gives off the perfect “retro” + playful vibe that I cannot get enough of.

Check out his work, I think you’ll be inspired.

That’s a wrap for WK40

Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed this issue (or hated it), please let me know in the comments (or tweet at me).

If you have an idea for how I can improve TWID or want to suggest something for next week’s issue, be sure to tag @twidfyi on twitter

Love you all, have a great weekend

- @aleksliving