Following our conference in Tokyo, an interest has been sparked in telling stories that highlight where creative designers from Denmark and Japan meet. Aage Würtz, a famous potter based in Horsens, Jutland, and Etsuji Noguchi, born in Saitama, Japan, symbolise their two countries. Aage Würtz and Etsuji Noguchi engaged in…

Eriol Fox has over nine years of experience in the design industry, primarily focusing on robust UX research. Through the design lens, Eriol focuses on humanitarian causes. — Design Matters met with Eriol to discuss how the Covid-19 crisis is being handled from a digital point of view, designers’ responsibility towards humanitarian issues, and the technology involved in crisis response.

Derek Fidler is an Amsterdam-based product manager and designer. He shares his experience on gaming, technology, and his predictions, hopes, and concerns for the future. — Derek is currently working at the San Francisco-based company, Twitch, a global community of millions who entertain themselves through gaming, esports and music. He is also involved in a non-profit organisation, ShelterTech, focusing on helping people who experience homelessness. His expertise in design allows us the opportunity to look at…

Maxjenny opens up about the opportunity to make it in an industry centred on nepotism through focusing on authenticity, sustainability, and working hard at what comes so naturally. — Swedish designer, Maxjenny Forslund, started her luxury Copenhagen-based clothing brand, maxjenny! in 2017. She owes her fame to combining clean lines, bright colours, and handmade colourful prints, which she designs using only a digital camera, a pencil, and a computer. The brand aims for 100% recycled or other sustainably sourced…

The Light Phone is a fashionable way to switch off. This device offers an alternative to other phones. — Being so accustomed to having the ability to do everything at our fingertips, where’s the balance between participating in this fast-paced world, and taking a step back? How can we appreciate Minimal Tech design? What’s too heavy? And what’s too light? Design Matters have been following the Light Phone since…

SAGA Space Architects are designing habitats to make Space livable for future Space travelers, in a way that supports social sustainability and mental well-being. — We have been studying Mars for a few decades now, and with the latest research, technological developments, and our inability to slow down climate change, inhabiting other planets seems to be more of an imminent reality than a distant future possibility.

Bringing real objects into the digital world is now possible with a new AR app developed by French artist and AI/UX programmer Cryil Diagne — Cryil is the co-founder of Lab212, an interdisciplinary art collective, and used to be head of interaction design company Ecal M&ID. He has spoken at a handful of events, including INSTINT, a conference based on art, technology and interaction, and The Business of Fashion Voices, an online magazine that organises…

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit. Your scheduled user tests have been cancelled, but the need to test your designs is as pressing as ever. What to do? Remote unmoderated testing comes to the rescue! …

Whether you’re creating your own Design System from scratch or are just looking for some inspiration for your projects, these resources are definitely a must-see! — Producing design guidelines and components for clients and collaborators has been around for a long time. However, this trend has skyrocketed in the past few years; more and more companies today are based solely on digital supports and don’t offer graphic guidelines for print anymore.

Spending hours and hours researching on new design trends and the coolest speakers for Design Matters 20, we constantly stumble upon cool and funky websites. So, we made a list of our favorites right now. Enjoy ❤ — 1. PURCHASE.DESIGN

“Real Fake”, one of the three themes of the annual conference on digital design, explored the dichotomy between the tangible and intangible in a world increasingly affected by Extended Reality technologies. — A Bit Out of the Ordinary Obviously, Design Matters was a little bit different this year. Yes, with it being 2020 the conference was held both in-person and streamed live online. And yes, the in-person attendees sat a couple meters apart, wore masks, and obsessively sanitized their hands. …

“Next-Gen Design”, one of the three themes discussed at Design Matters 20 annual conference in September on digital design, explored the motivations, mindset, and work of up-and-coming young designers. — Despite establishing the three themes of Design Matters 20 well before grasping the global impact of Covid-19, the themes we chose ended up being hyper-relevant to this moment in time. In a recent article we explored the theme of Real Fake and discussed how the designers who blur the boundaries…

How Shopify is making Polaris more cohesive by emphasizing user insights — Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform that helps users start, run, and grow a business. Offering online retailers a suite of services including payments, marketing, shipping, and customer engagement tools, Shopify powers over 1,000,000 businesses worldwide. From 2016 to 2019, businesses on Shopify contributed $319 billion in economic activity worldwide.

For a long time Color Fonts were largely dismissed because browser support was patchy. But recently, new formats with greater graphic capabilities are being developed, opening this technology to new opportunities. If more widely adapted, Color Font technology could in fact improve web accessibility. — SPONSORED CONTENT Dalton Maag is a typeface design studio based in London. The studio works with designers and branding specialists worldwide to help clients find their best typographic expression — from logotype refinement, font licensing and font modification, to the creation of custom font suites. Working with clients of all…

Get a glimpse at the many stages involved in shipping a major new feature, and see how we brought real-time collaboration to Sketch — SPONSORED CONTENT Article by Pieter Omvlee, Co-Founder & CEO at Sketch Sketch has evolved a lot in the last decade. When we first launched in 2010, our editing tools were fairly basic, and focused on vector shapes and UI tools. …

How designers at McKinsey fuse qualitative and quantitative data to find inspiration in the most unexpected places — SPONSORED CONTENT Article by McKinsey Digital McKinsey Design is a global community of designers, strategists, engineers, and researchers focused on helping organisations innovate and thrive in the digital age. Nick Whiting leads design for complex manufacturing and industries where digital transformation and advanced analytics are central to the challenge. …

As NFTs and AI become more mainstream, there’s so much noise circulating right now about whether both are good or bad. There is no clear answer because they’re both evolving constantly, but as both start entering different markets it’s important that as designers we start thinking about them critically. — Art and design is no longer just a 2D or 3D tangible experience. An even stranger thought is that design and art is shifting from being human made to being made by machines and artificial intelligence. You’ve probably heard about NFTs, but what exactly is an NFT and is it…

Sara Bertova, the designer behind our new visual identity for Design Matters 22 guides us through her process of conceptualizing the new identity. — This year Design Matters decided to stir things up in a slightly different direction. The overall theme we wanted to encapsulate in 2022 is sustainability and planet-centric design. Due to the vast concern we all feel regarding the Earth’s climate crisis, we shifted our attention to the UN sustainable development…

Learn how these tools by designer Pablo Stanley can help you generate digital art in a quick and intuitive way — Robotos and Bueno art generator are two of the latest projects by designer and illustrator Pablo Stanley, who is also CEO and co-founder of Blush Design. You might already know Pablo for his open-source illustrations such as Open Peeps, Humaaans, Avataaars, Buttts, Bottts, and Open Doodles. …

As NFTs and AI become more mainstream, there’s so much noise circulating right now about whether both are good or bad. There is no clear answer because they’re both evolving constantly, but as both start entering different markets it’s important that as designers we start thinking about them critically. — Art and design is no longer just a 2D or 3D tangible experience. An even stranger thought is that design and art is shifting from being human made to being made by machines and artificial intelligence. You’ve probably heard about NFTs, but what exactly is an NFT and is it…