Happy Sunday. I can’t believe it’s the last week of March already! I’ll be spending the end of it in Brooklyn, New York—my favorite place in the galaxy. I’m looking forward to a bit warmer weather than last month and excited for what the new quarter brings. This week we’re talking about the importance of a personal design language. This is different from the principles a company drafts up. This is what you are all about. I hope this issue helps you think about your personal design language and would love to read yours!

I was perusing through the Louis Vuitton: Virgil Abloh coffee table book in my living room the other day. As I turned through the pages celebrating the work of the late great polymath, I re-watched one of Abloh’s iconic lectures, "Insert Complicated Title Here." Learning about his personal design language reminded me to think about my own and understand why having one is important.

A design language isn't something you write hastily and deem what’s freshly scribed to be true. The elements of a design language come from actual work, trials, tribulations, and experiences formulated into doctrine. It may help to look at a few examples of design languages from other people, why this inevitability is something you should refine, and share my design language.

Examples of design language attributes

I’ll share a few examples of what a few of my biggest inspirations said that could be formulated in their design language. To preface, these are not direct design languages they proclaimed but how I interpret their work.

Zaha Hadid: utility and pleasure

Zaha Hadid is my favorite architect. When you the work of the Iraqi-British designer, her work stands out in a profession dominated by dudes. Of her many brilliant quotes, one of my favorites is, "There are 360 degrees, why stick to one?" This quote is personified in her work with the dynamic elements of structures that typically are four-sided with the same shape. This is and it shows in her incredible work.

Another quote I love is her perspective on the balance of design being utility and pleasurable. "Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space… On one hand, it’s about shelter, but it’s also about pleasure." I believe that something practical and business-oriented can express beauty and easily reject any design notion that you have to pick one or the other. Hadid's quote inspires me to embrace duality.

Bret Victor: creators need an immediate connection to what they're creating

One of the most inspiring talks in my career is Bret Victor's Inventing on Principle. Victor's talk in the shitty hotel conference room propelled many designers and developers myself to explore this principle. In Victor's essay, A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design, he talks about the idea of Pictures Under Glass; pushing the notion of direct manipulation and challenging us on how we think.

Paola Antonelli on the story behind the objects

The Curious Octopus herself, Paola Antonelli is one of my favorite minds in design and culture. She has a great moment in the documentary Objectified and has been a proponent of designers as policymakers in the future. She also has quite a reverence for objects and the deep meaning and stories behind them.

In the Sweet Flypaper podcast, Antonelli shared a bit about her point of view on the power of objects and the stories they tell. "We discuss her career and philosophy of design as power. For Antonelli, her 'gift' as a creative is to lose herself in objects, in the process of understanding how they work, what’s behind them, and their purpose. Antonelli sees a responsibility in sharing this gift with the world to empower people to make better decisions and take control of their lives."

Hideo Kojima: Making the impossible possible

One of my favorite game series ever is Metal Gear Solid due to its innovation and subversion of game mechanics. Creator Hideo Kojima challenges us to make the impossible possible. If you haven't seen it, take time to watch his keynote talk at the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in 2009. In addition to making the impossible possible, Kojima has pushed the medium of interactivity to be a stage for artistic communication. His games are essentially interactive movies and use this language to criticize the medium itself—making a stealth war game with an anti-war message—how ironic, and that's the point.

Your design language is inevitable

Style and taste are like bias in the same way they are human elements that can never be completely removed. Style can be an agent of positivity and making something unique. It bothers me when I hear you need to be a business-minded designer or expressive and artistic. Bias and style are two attributes of humanity that cannot be removed. Instead of shying away from design having artistic expression, embrace it.

Reverse engineer your design language

Everything is revealed in work and what you've done through action. It is better to reverse engineer your achievements to craft your design language vs. fabricating one from thin air. My personal design language comes from 18 years of making, learning, and re-doing. Take a look at your work and experience, and ask yourself:

• In my creative process, what are certain systems I apply to everything that correlates with a belief?

• When making decisions, what values and ethics come up that I consider

• What are things you want people to remember when you make your mark in your work?

My design language

I'll share my design language, and as a personification of this, it's a work in progress (expect iterations):

• Human-first: Everything we do should be in service of furthering humanity, not at the expense of it

• Everything is a proof of concept: Experiment, play, explore deeply, and prove it can be done

• Dream big: A former Webflow core behavior I hold close to my heart

• Embrace duality: Binary thinking is the biggest threat to creativity and innovation

• Seek paradigm shifts: Imagine the future and work on it now. Those who can spot trends of shifts will have enduring success

• Be entrepreneurial: Act like an owner or founder in everything you do. Entrepreneurship is a mindset and behavior

• The method makes magic: Design is not magic. It's a method—a rigorous process of exploration, iteration, and validation until you reach an outcome that feels like magic to end users.

• Iteration over perfectionism: The number one way to be more effective and productive is to reduce the iteration cycle. Perfectionism kills momentum.

Write your design language

Reflect on your personal design language. It doesn't matter if you publish it or simply memorialize it for yourself. I'm betting it will be valuable when you have to make a big design or life decision. If you end up writing yours, share it in the comments or reply as I'd love to learn from you!

Tweet of the week

Marco is a freaking wizard.

marco @marcofyi

building the new @diagram website 👀🔜

9:33 PM ∙ Mar 24, 2023

---

1,453Likes56Retweets

Job opportunities

Check out jobs on my Pallet board

• Replit is hiring a Product Designer

• Mercury is hiring a Senior Product Designer

• Runway ML is hiring a Senior Brand Designer

Hype links

• Virgil Abloh, “Insert Complicated Title Here”

• Should music videos learn to code? Check out Doja Cat's interactive music video (proudly built on Theatre.js)

• AI Tools for Innovators is a Notion site featuring some awesome AI tools. Huge shoutout to portfolio companies Notably and Viable for being featured!

• The Coming of Local LLMs by Nick Arner