DailyDe–lights

A curation of links about art, design and development picked -somewhat daily- by Félix Péault, Art Director and Digital Designer.

The modern world has made huge advances in knowledge, technology, and skill. We can build faster than ever. We know more than ever. Yet quality still feels so rare. So many things feel unfinished, broken, or forgettable – why?

linear.app

Article

Thursday, 5th

1 link

Good vs Great Animations

We all want our UIs to feel great and animations can definitely help with that. But how do you actually create a great animation? This article is a collection of practical tips to help you go from good to great animations.

emilkowal.ski

Article

May 2025

Tuesday, 27th

1 link

Design or Disappear

In an era defined by accelerating AI, ecological urgency, and cultural division, design is no longer optional—it is essential for survival. For centuries, design and craft have shaped our tools, our systems, and our sense of self. From the meticulous detail of the Arts & Crafts movement to the functional…

maeda.pm

Article

Monday, 19th

1 link

Design in the age of vibes

How the new wave of design and dev tools are changing who builds it, how decisions get made, and what the role of a designer even is.

uxdesign.cc

Article

Thursday, 15th

1 link

The history of album art

Album art didn’t always exist. In the early 1900s, recorded music was still a novelty, overshadowed by sales of sheet music. Early vinyl records were vastly different from what we think of today: discs were sold individually and could only hold up to four minutes of music per side. Sometimes, only one side of the record was used.

matthewstrom.com

Article

Tuesday, 13th

1 link

The creative power of constraints

Constraints act not as limitations but as catalysts for creativity. Examples from architecture, design, and art reveal the paradoxical relationship between boundaries and innovation.

arun.is

Article

Friday, 9th

1 link

You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown

I often find myself contemplating the greatest creators in history — those rare artists, designers, and thinkers whose work transformed how we see the world. What constellation of circumstances made them who they were? Where did their ideas originate? Who mentored them? Would history remember them had they lived in a different time or place?

chrbutler.com

Article

April 2025

Thursday, 24th

1 link

The Post-Developer Era

When OpenAI released GPT-4 back in March 2023, they kickstarted the AI revolution. The consensus online was that front-end development jobs would be totally eliminated within a year or two. Well, it’s been more than two years since then, and I thought it was worth revisiting some of those early predictions, and seeing if we can glean any insights about where things are headed.

joshwcomeau.com

Article

Tuesday, 15th

1 link

The Best Programmers I Know

"I have met a lot of developers in my life. Lately, I asked myself: “What does it take to be one of the best? What do they all have in common?” In the hope that this will be an inspiration to someone out there, I wrote down the traits I observed in the most exceptional people in our craft. I wish I had that list when I was starting out. Had I followed this path, it would have saved me a lot of time."

endler.dev

Article

Thursday, 3rd

1 link

Design by Decision Fatigue

An essay on how the decisions we make writing software shape our enjoyment of the craft

questdb.com

Article

March 2025

Friday, 21st

1 link

A fluid CSS methodology

Fluid CSS methodologies have completely transformed my approach to web integration by improving the responsive aspect and simplifying maintenance. I find this topic deceptively simple yet incredibly powerful and still relevant today.

willybrauner.com

Article

Wednesday, 19th

1 link

How I review design work. Defining what “good design” actually looks like.

Good design can be tricky. What’s obvious to one person might not make sense to someone else. Design might feel subjective, but there are things I (and the rest of design leadership) consistently…

uxdesign.cc

Article

Monday, 17th

1 link

13 lessons creatives wished they'd known earlier in their career

We've gathered essential tips from seasoned creatives to help you navigate your career with confidence, clarity and long-term success.

creativeboom.com

Article

February 2025

Friday, 28th

1 link

Reimagining Fluid Typography

Are we responding to the right inputs? For many years, it has been ‘best practice’ to use relative units (especially em and rem) for sizing text. That’s great! But after playing around with my user preferences, I think we can improve on the common approaches.

oddbird.net

Article

Tuesday, 25th

1 link

Websites are dead (and more click bait!)

Some thoughts, experiences, opinions and unsolicited advice on the current state of websites and web design as a freelancer.

perozzi.blog

Article

January 2025

Wednesday, 15th

1 link

Pricing Design

Dan Mall explains how to earn more by understanding what goes into a price and what your clients really want—and are willing to pay for. Learn the right questions to ask and when, and ways to turn client requirements into numbers, with a real-world example from Dan’s agency.

pricingdesignbook.com

Article

December 2024

Tuesday, 3rd

1 link

Creativity is the only thing. An open letter to my fellow creatives…

Creativity is risk. To do something different, or meaningful, or human, is messy. Creativity is accessing the part of the brain adjacent to emotions, and emotions are the opposite of rationality. It doesn’t fit neatly into an ideal customer profile. You can’t attach quarterly goals to it.

uxdesign.cc

Article

November 2024

Wednesday, 27th

1 link

Rethinking Rebranding

Rebranding isn't just a logo swap—it's a deep introspective journey. By questioning fundamental purpose and making thoughtful, incremental changes, even centuries-old institutions can breathe new life into their core identity and relevance.

reiinamoto.substack.com

Article

Monday, 25th

1 link

Design Principles

Set of guidelines that empower a team to make wise decisions and appropriate trade-offs when designing, building and innovating.

principles.design

Article

Tuesday, 19th

1 link

Jonathan Ive - rams foundation

Jonathan Ive, the long-time Chief Design Officer at Apple, is among the most prominent creatives who have been influenced by Dieter Rams and his design principles. Here, in one of his rare interviews in recent years, Ive speaks openly about his admiration—pointing out one important achievement of Rams that is often overlooked.

rams-foundation.org

Article

Monday, 18th

1 link

Updating Our Web System For A New Era

Want to see how we used Figma’s latest features to audit and refresh our web system? Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how we streamlined our components, improved our workflows, and built for the future.

figma.com

Article

Wednesday, 13th

1 link

The obsession over craft

People get annoyed about hearing about craft as they know being a good designer requires other skills to succeed: strong communication skills, a growth mindset, and ability to collaborate. However, I must share the hard truth. Craft is an unavoidable foundation as a designer.

proofofconcept.pub

Article

September 2024

Monday, 30th

1 link

Branding Anterior. Medical Insurance? AI? Oh my!

Smith & Diction showcases their project for Anterior. […] After Perplexity dropped we got a lot of inquiries from other AI companies. Like, a lot a lot. Most of them were very early in their journey and didn’t really know what they were building or who they building for.

medium.com

Article

Monday, 23rd

1 link

UX needs more punk. Disrupting the status quo in design.

Polished interfaces and seamless experiences dominate the design landscape. UX design has, in many ways, become too safe. We prize consistency, accessibility, and user-friendliness — values that are crucial to creating good products. But is “good” enough? Have we, in the quest for perfection, lost the soul of UX? Don’t we need more punk?

uxdesign.cc

Article

Tuesday, 10th

1 link

Sanding UI

One of the ways I like to do development is to build something, click around a ton, make tweaks, click around more, more tweaks, more clicks, etc., until I finally consider it done. With software, the fact is that sometimes there are just too many variables to know and test and smooth out. So I click around, using the UI over and over, until I finally cannot give myself any more splinters. It’s a small thing, but lots of small splinters lead to an agonizing experience.

blog.jim-nielsen.com

Article

Friday, 6th

1 link

The Lost Sense

Next time you reach for your smartphone, pause and consider what else you could reach for that offers not just a function, but some feeling. And if you are someone who creates, in any medium, challenge yourself to elevate touch to the level of other senses. […] Otherwise the default path we’re on will lead us into an empty room with just walls and screens — and not much else.

workingtheorys.com

Article

August 2024

Friday, 30th

1 link

Madalena Studio push the boundaries of branding in their look for Crucible, cultured with bacteria

A petri dish bursting with vibrant bacteria – Crucible’s identity is as intriguing, unconventional and experimental as the creative hub itself. Housing a drinks, bar and restaurant consultancy, flavour lab and a collaborative workspace, the London-based company is designed for bartenders to unleash their creativity – working with equipment such as a centrifuge, a freeze dryer and a rotovap!

the-brandidentity.com

Article

Wednesday, 21st

1 link

“Smart” Layouts With Container Queries

Modern CSS keeps giving us a lot of new, easier ways to solve old problems, but often the new features we’re getting don’t only solve old problems, they open up new possibilities as well. Container queries are one of those things that open up new possibilities, but because they look a lot like the old way of doing things with media queries, our first instinct is to use them in the same way, or at least a very similar way.

css-tricks.com

Article

Friday, 16th

1 link

We don't need a boss, we need a process

Everyone can agree that design by committee usually fails. But it’s not because there are multiple people involved, it’s because (most) committees are not made up of skilled collaborators with a shared vision and process. Shared vision and collaborative process don’t just happen when good developers sit around a table. Like anything else, collaborative art and design are skills that people learn and practice […]

miriamsuzanne.com

Article

Monday, 5th

1 link

Losing is part of being a designer

This is a good thing. Because when you realise that being challenged and ignored is part of the job it takes the pressure off and you do better. But how do you actually take this realisation and apply it in the workplace. Follow these 3 simple steps.

adamsilver.io

Article

July 2024

Wednesday, 31st

1 link

Useless design

Design is defined by its utility. Unlike art, we expect design to provide us with some useful function in order to accept it into our lives. At least, that’s the story our rational brain tells us. Appealing to this unimpeachably logical side of us we find every product description practically humming with gigabytes, megapixels, thread counts and earnest lists of useful ‘features’.

designlobster.substack.com

Article

Monday, 15th

1 link

On AI and the commoditisation of design

With the recent announcement of Figma’s AI feature-set at the corporate vibe-fest that is Config, there’s been something of a clamour to opine, positively and negatively, on the impact these features will have on designers and the industry as a whole. Now, a lot of these are actually half decent, minor features that might save us a few minutes here and there. As a serial ‘Group 24098’ layer-name-forgetter, the ‘rename layers’ functionality is sound. The enriched search even veers on actually useful.

scott.is

Article

Page 1 — 3

DailyDe–lights

Why is quality so rare?

Good vs Great Animations

Design or Disappear

Design in the age of vibes

The history of album art

The creative power of constraints

You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown

The Post-Developer Era

The Best Programmers I Know

Design by Decision Fatigue

A fluid CSS methodology

How I review design work. Defining what “good design” actually looks like.

13 lessons creatives wished they'd known earlier in their career

Reimagining Fluid Typography

Websites are dead (and more click bait!)

Pricing Design

Creativity is the only thing. An open letter to my fellow creatives…

Rethinking Rebranding

Design Principles

Jonathan Ive - rams foundation

Updating Our Web System For A New Era

The obsession over craft

Branding Anterior. Medical Insurance? AI? Oh my!

UX needs more punk. Disrupting the status quo in design.

Sanding UI

The Lost Sense

Madalena Studio push the boundaries of branding in their look for Crucible, cultured with bacteria

“Smart” Layouts With Container Queries

We don't need a boss, we need a process

Losing is part of being a designer

Useless design

On AI and the commoditisation of design