Happy Friday!

Welcome to TWID - the only design newsletter on the internet written (in a padded & windowless room) by me.

Design twitter always seems to have something to discuss (though most of the time, it’s nothing of any great consequence…), and this week is no exception.

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

WK41

Pretty well-rounded week

Just kidding, the design twitter hive mind decided to transform everyone’s timeline into a border radius hellscape.

I had the misfortune posting a somewhat viral tweet about nested radii back in August, and this week the cringe ghosts of my past have decided to come back & haunt me (right in time for spooky szn).

As far as I know, Rob was the one that ruined everyone’s week with this full circle (heh) moment…

His tweet took off, and started a truly unfortunate chain reaction of border radius memes.

While the horse we’re beating has been long dead, it was hard to look away from the memes flooding my timeline. Here’s my favourite ↓

Though after about 4 days of shenanigans, the trend appears to have died, I don’t think I’ll ever round a corner again.

@adobe ships text to vector

This week, Adobe announced the addition of “Text to Vector Graphic” to Illustrator, and somewhere, an angel lost its wings.

While this is technically a cool achievement, it’s also a pretty big middle finger to illustrators everywhere.

Obviously the popularity of AI is growing, but I think we can all agree that some things should be left to humans. Especially things that require creativity.

Things like … idk … illustrations.

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@vercel’s new home page

A few days ago, Rauno teased an upcoming refresh of Vercel’s home page.

I’m a big fan of Vercel’s design language (& the talented designers that work there), so I was definitely eager to check it out.

Personally, I’m a huge fan of the upcoming refresh – it feels incredibly polished, has excellent attention to detail, and (most importantly) looks great in light mode.

I love simple landing pages that don’t go sickomode on animating every possible element, and (for me) this hits the spot.

The new landing page isn’t live yet, but if you want to check it out for yourself, just follow these steps.

@x bulldozes the home icon

The blue bird has been dead for a while, but its beautiful bird house remained as a relic of what once was.

Until this week, when X changed the perfectly crafted (by @avstorm & @srioz) home icon, to an asymmetrical house with a tiny door.

I understand that we have to accept Twitter’s rebrand (and the need for a new home icon). But, why does it need to suck?

@loom’s exit

@Atlassian has agreed to buy Loom for a ridiculous $975m.

I know what you’re thinking - “I really hope they make it more like Jira, that would be awesome,” and same!

Obviously $975 million is a boatload of money, but that last $25 million sliver would haunt me… So close to the tres comas club.

Jokes aside, this is a huge achievement for the Loom team and pretty awesome to see in the startup community.

Asshole VCs

Speaking of the startup community, check out this ridiculous exchange between a design founder and a VC that’s really “passionate about helping immigrant founders.”

Imagine pouring love, sweat, & tears into your startup only to get dunked on by a potential investor for a single grammatical mistake.

Honestly, seems like Gary really dodged a bullet here, can’t imagine it would have been fun to have Ihar on the board.

After being put on blast, Ihar first doubled down (see above), but eventually apologized.

I get that everyone has rough days, but yikes…

Design Dopamine 💊

So much awesome design work on my feed this week. As always, really hard to choose a favourite, but here’s something that scratched an itch I didn’t even know I had.

Redesigned iOS Icons

These reimagined iOS icons by @eddydsn are so cute - love the playful, hazy vibe. They’re all great, but that Maps icon is just 🤌

Seeing this reminded me of the good ol’ jailbreak days and Winterboard themes. That was fun. Are we still doing that? Brb.

That’s a wrap for WK41

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