Adobe/Macromedia Flash: Thank You for Your Service

When I was in college from 2004 to 2008, Flash was arguably at its prime. It was an amazing, eye-candy-filled cesspool of terribleness. At the time, it was hard to see all of its shortcomings. It was a blank canvas where you could create whatever you wanted — and that was the problem. Flash lacked […]

How to Build Flexible, Reusable, Complex Components in Figma with Autolayout

The problem with complex components is that they don’t usually adapt well to design variations. They aren’t flexible. The profile card shown below has many different elements; editing or even removing one would be nearly impossible in a prebuilt component. In an application like Sketch (or even early on in my experience with Figma), I […]

Is Sketch Still King? My First Impressions of Figma

I love Sketch — it’s my go-to for wireframes, high-fidelity mockups, and even prototyping. I’ve become as proficient as I can, including mastering nested symbols and utilizing JSON data connections to populate real data into static designs. But I recently started helping a client’s design team build out their design system. The problem? They exclusively […]

A “Design Problem” Is Everyone’s Problem

“Well, that sounds like a ‘design’ problem.” It’s a phrase I’ve heard many times in my career. I used to love it. There was a unique challenge, and everyone was relying on designers to find the solution. But recently, it’s started to dawn on me that this phrase has not been used appropriately, or rather, […]

Getting Through Limitation Fatigue in Software Design

Design thrives on rules and limitations. It’s within these boundaries that we can flex our creative problem-solving skills and come up with great solutions. Sometimes, however, a project’s limitations can feel like an absolute brick wall that we can’t see beyond. It can be incredibly draining. How do we get beyond this rut? I want […]

Five Tips for a Successful Design Portfolio Review; Are You Ready?

As a student, it was during my final portfolio review that I got my big break (by talking to the person that would become my first boss and employer). It was also during the portfolio review process that design professionals reinforced what my professors had been teaching us all along (which, maaaaaaaybe, I was too […]

Don’t Pay Consultants to be ‘Yes-People’

I’ve always had a hard time talking to “blue-sky” thinkers and entrepreneurs with the “next big idea.” It’s not because I don’t enjoy talking to them. It’s the opposite — they hate when I question them. I’ve been guilty of this, too. You’re passionate about your good ideas — you love them. And when people […]

Using Sketch Symbols to Build a Dynamic Breadcrumb

While working on a design system for a client, a colleague and I were building out our components in Sketch. It was important to utilize symbols for nearly everything so we could maintain consistency throughout our designs. It was also important that we could make global changes quickly when needed.

Don’t Forget: Design Is Also Agile

Agile methodology, in its truest form, is not a series of processes, sprint cadences, and ceremonies. It’s the ability to quickly adapt or pivot when faced with unforeseen challenges or new information. It often comes into play while reprioritizing a backlog of work or deciding on a quicker/cheaper way to implement a feature during development. […]

Users Absorb Rules (Until They Can’t Trust Them)

The other day, I was golfing in my league, at a course I had played many times. As I was trying to figure out which club I should use for my second shot, I looked around the course for something specific—an indicator to let me know how far away I was from the pin. This […]

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

By: Kyle Harris

Author: Kyle Harris