Foundations
Principles
The working principles that guide how I design — phrased like design system principles, because they are.
Working principles
01
Systems outlast decisions.
The principle you ship will govern decisions made by people who weren't in the room. Write it like it has to work without you.
02
The aesthetic is the argument.
How something looks is a claim about how it was made. Inconsistency doesn't just look bad — it says something you didn't mean to say.
03
Adoption is the only metric.
A system nobody uses is a design artifact. What matters is what changed after it shipped, not what shipped.
04
Name what it means, not what it is.
--color-action-primary survives a rebrand. --paypal-blue doesn't make it past the first brand extension.
05
Deprecation is a feature.
Shipping without a migration path just defers the hard part. The exit belongs in the spec from day one.