387: Design Craft Tips & Tricks

387: Design Craft Tips & Tricks

Author: Brian Lovin, Marshall Bock March 3, 2021 Duration: 28:59

This week, we dig into specific tips and tricks to level up your craft game: how to leverage tools to make faster iterations, stay organized, and allow your mocks to easily scale over time. In The Sidebar, we dig into how to give design critique without having full problem or product context.

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The Sidebar:

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.

In this week's Sidebar, we talk about how to give design critique without having the full context on a problem or product area.

Follow up:

  • Stevanus Satria tweeted: The next MMORPG I play my character shall be a wizard hailing from the Northland wielding a powerful electric guitar 🤣 Please do!

Main Topic:

This week Marshall runs us through all his craft tips and tricks: little ways to use tools to make designing interfaces faster, more efficiently, with more organization, and in a way that will scale as you explore.

Cool Things:

  • Brian shared the Lift desk stand from Artifox. It’s expensive, but very pretty, and has some smart integration with magnets.
  • Marshall shared Mistborn: The Final Empire, a story by Brandon Sanderson. The book is a fantasy heist kind of tale, where the magic is based on metallurgy and its interesting combinations. The audio book is 24 hours, so not too bad!

Design Details on the Web:

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Every week, Brian Lovin and Marshall Bock settle in for a thoughtful, often meandering chat that pulls back the curtain on how things are made. Their Design Details podcast lives in the rich space where technology and the arts intersect, focusing less on polished case studies and more on the real, sometimes messy, work of design. You’ll hear them dissect the nuances of product decisions, debate the evolving culture of creative teams, and share personal stories from their own experiences in the industry. It feels less like a lecture and more like eavesdropping on a conversation between two deeply knowledgeable friends. The discussions regularly venture into the philosophical side of craft, examining why certain choices resonate and how design shapes our daily interactions with the world. For anyone curious about the thinking behind the pixels and interfaces, this show offers a consistent, grounded perspective. Tuning in provides a sense of community and a candid look at the process, making it a staple for designers and creators who appreciate substance over flash.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Design Details
Podcast Episodes
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420: The Pointer Cursor Debate [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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419: Teaching Design at Work [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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This week, we share our strategies and motivations for teaching design at work. In The Sidebar, we talk about the shape of software, how we visualize the tools we build, and what it means for software to feel like someth…
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417: The Side Project Prophecy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:09
This week, we reflect on why it is that talking about building a side project can often reduce your motivation to actually finish the project. We dig into our latest side project progress and share tips for maintaining m…
416: UI Reviews and QA [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 22:33
This week, we talk about our processes for reviewing UI and making sure that things are shipping as close to spec as possible. In The Sidebar, we recap Apple’s Unleashed event, sharing our favorite moments and spicy take…
415: News Desk, Vol. 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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This week, we talk about the new Stripe Press website, pasting behavior in Figma, the latest tvOS UI, and the importance of using fake data in placeholder copy. In The Sidebar, we share our tools and strategies for remem…