Happy Friday!

Welcome to the 8th issue of TWID - the only design newsletter on the internet written by me.

TWID has been growing so fast & I’d like to show my appreciation for everyone that has supported it so far. My goal was never to make any money from readers, but several people have have paid to subscribe anyway.

I’m going to use all of that money to print & mail some stickers to whoever wants one. If that’s you, reply to this tweet and I’ll send you one in the coming weeks™

Thanks for being here, let’s get into the sauce 🥫

WK36

Low Fidelity wireframes are a waste of time 

Ah, yes – hot takes, aka the bread and butter of design twitter. This week, @socoloffalex decided to be really brave & share his take on lo-fi wireframes.

Controversial to some, but I definitely agree. Unless a client specifically asks for it, I will usually skip this part (because I’d rather watch grass grow).

Michael distilled this really nicely – wireframes can definitely be useful when you need to visually communicate ideas without fully committing to a draft.

This is especially true for larger and more complicated projects. But listing a lo-fi wireframe as a requirement for every project is probably an overkill.

Unhinged clients

The world of freelance is a unique combination of freedom (at least from a traditional 9-5) & really fun new problems.

It’s been memed to death, but sometimes clients really are the problem – @jeroenvaneerden has a perfect example.

As I read through this list (& it was really hard to continue even after the first point), I could feel my blood pressure rising to dangerous levels.

This literally feels like a horrible full time job with extra steps.

I need a drink. But hey, at least the client was decent enough to share this list of demands early on.

@hm commits a deadly sin

Fast fashion has been plagued with plagiarism since the dawn of time, & H&M is no exception to these allegations.

This week, @5uperfreak shared this side by side comparison of his work and the latest release from @hm.

I think it’s pretty hard to deny the resemblance here, but the community response was a little mixed.

@nutty_sol had a slightly different POV ↓

I think that one can argue that Super Freak’s work itself was inspired by Disney, the Hamburger Helper mascot, CDG, & similar illustration styles of the past.

However, I also believe that there is a really fine line between inspiration and straight up copying. Being an independent artist isn’t easy, and these fat cat corporations need to do better.

@dribbble gets dunked on

Last week @dribbble changed their logo, and this week everyone figured out that the new logotype used Fort Foundry’s typeface – Alkaline.

It didn’t take long for everyone and their auntie to “rebrand” themselves and share their new identity on Dribbble.

I think this is kinda hilarious tbh, but apparently not everyone agrees. According to Vadim, Dribbble is silencing all shots using this font.

I have no idea if this is true (I’m not a journalist, pls), but this whole thing is really entertaining, so I chose to believe.

Hmmm, something about it though.

@loops is out of beta

As someone forced to use Mailchimp and SendGrid for way too long, I’m really rooting for Loops to succeed in this space.

Email sucked for way too long, but Loops is on its way to change that (hopefully)

I might be a bit biased (I helped on the marketing site), but Loops is a really great product being built by even better people. This isn’t sponsored, but if you send email - you should probably check them out.

Design Dopamine 💊

I’ve said this a million times, but the love (& lust) I have for for gorgeous serifs is bordering on unhealthy. This week, I was introduced to this ✨ masterpiece ✨ and I knew that I had to share it with ya’ll.

Tobias - Editorial Font

Displaay Type Foundry does it again, with this instantly timeless typeface. If I were a font sommelier I’d say that I’m picking up on notes of Baskerville and Times New Roman.

Shout out to @ayushsoni_io for blessing my timeline with this. Super excited to use this in a project down the road.

That’s a wrap for WK36

Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed this issue (or hated it), please let me know in the comments (or tweet at me)

If you have an idea for how I can improve TWID or want to suggest something for next week’s issue, be sure to tag @twidfyi on twitter

Love you all, have a great weekend

- @aleksliving