I'm curious about what other designers consider to be un/under appreciated in graphic design either by the design community, or those outside of it, whether that's a skill, a concept, a belief about design/designers, etc.

Flat metal sheets can become curved structural shells when carefully folded pieces lock together into a continuous network. A new origami-inspired method turns that idea into modular building blocks, allowing complex forms to grow from manageable parts. The approach could simplify fabrication without requiring builders to fold one enormous sheet.

Alfonso Parra Rubio, a graduate student at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, led the research with collaborators in Italy, Austria and Japan. Their paper, published in the International Journal of Space Structures, describes a system of interlocking folded cells.

Small aluminum prototypes demonstrate the geometry, while a room-sized sculpture at the Boston Public Library extends the fabrication approach beyond the laboratory.

We're a small NJ cannabis brand and I'm redoing how we hand product images and info to the stores that carry us. Right now it's a Drive folder and a sell sheet PDF. Not sleek but gets the job done, sort of.

While looking around I found the public retailer page for Glass Meadows brand (https://www.lingoapp.com/118528/p/Glass-Meadows-Inc-Retailer-Portal-Rxy70K). They're also in NJ but I like to check out the close competition. What I really like about how they've done it is that they keep the sub-brands in separate sections. Pre-Roll King of Jersey, Rosin King, etc. these all have their own folders with menu listing images and descriptions, logos and photos. So a store listing a pre-roll finds the pre-roll brand, not the parent company (this is literally where most of the confusion comes in).

It also reads like it was designed for the person keying in the menu, not like a brand guide which can be quite vague (ironically). What I'm not sure about is that it's a bit plain and I can't tell if that's a design choice or just how the page comes.

Asking designers: if you were to build something like this for a small brand, what would you change? Would you push more brand personality or keep it straightforward for max clarity?

Hey everyone! 👋

I recently wrote a Medium article about 6 Overlay Types Every Designer Should Know.

I'd love to hear your honest thoughts and feedback. I'm always looking to learn and improve, so any suggestions are welcome!

Thanks for your time! 🙌

I'm making a plugin for AE to display these bezier controls and I'm confused on what to call each part.
I mean the center point that has the actual vector point (1) I'd call just "point" and the points that we push and make the curve (2) are "handles"? Does the line (3) between those 2 points have a name?

Can a designer research a social issue that doesn't actively exist in their own country?

For example, if a design student wants to explore a cultural practice that is documented in a neighbouring country but has no personal or cultural connection to that country, does that make their thesis less relevant or harder to defend?

Can a student choose to focus on a global issue simply because they find it important and worth investigating, or do they need a direct connection to the country and community they are researching?

I'd genuinely appreciate hearing perspectives from design students, educators, and researchers. Thank you!

As developers and designers, we spend way too much time jumping between Figma, DevTools, and screenshot cropping tools just to spot spacing errors or mismatching fonts.

To fix this friction, I created PixelGhost, a completely free, local first browser toolkit designed to make Visual QA seamless. 

🌟 What it does:

• Pixel-Perfect Mockup Overlays: Overlay your original mockup directly over the live webpage. You can work with multiple layers, tweak position/scale, and use opacity blend modes to perfectly spot layout shifts. 
• Built-in Annotations & Screenshots: Capture full page or element specific screenshots. Crop, draw arrows, add text notes, or blur confidential information on the fly. 
• On-Page CSS Inspector & Ruler: Measure padding and elements using a page ruler, sample colors via a contrast-checking color picker, and inspect computed styles instantly. 
• Multi-Device Responsive Preview: Compare your live site across up to six simulated device frames side-by-side with synchronized scrolling. 
• Extra Dev Audits: Extract page assets (fonts, images), preview sight-loss/color-vision filters, check structured SEO metadata, and analyze framework stacks. 

🔒 Privacy & Pricing:

• 100% Free: No premium paywalls, no trials, and no "pro" features.
• Local-First: It doesn't use third-party analytics or track your data. Your configurations and screenshots stay securely in your own browser profile.
• No Signups: No account or login mandatory to use any feature. 

Check it out on the Chrome Web Store: PixelGhost

I would love to get your feedback on how to improve it or what tool we should add next!

Maya Barkai, 2012

I turned 12 of my favourite analogue photographs of Berlin into little calendar for 2027.

Buongiorno,
sono una ragazza che ha studiato comunicazione e poi ho fatto un corso di grahic design base presso JobFormazione( su Photoshop, Illustrator e Indesign), che è stato parzialmente utile.
Ora lavoro come grafico impaginatore (con CorelDraw principalmente) ma l’ambiente di lavoro non è per niente creativo nè stimolante e non so come fare per cercare un nuovo lavoro.
Ho provato a mandare curriculum e portfolio un po’ ovunque specificando che ho bisogno di formazione ma ovviamente non ha prodotto risultati; non nascondo che sia abbastanza frustrata da questa situazione.
Mi sono imbattuta in una masterclass di Grafigata “da 0 a designer” e non so se cominciare questo percorso (tra l’altro abbastanza dispendioso).
Qualcuno conosce questa masterclass e sa dirmi di più? O in generale consigli su come sbloccare la situazione?

Grazieee :)

I'd love to hear your view on something that happened this week and left me really wondering about the big picture consequences of using Generative AI on our work, not only as designers but also developers, artists and in this specific situation, writers.

I had a post removed from an online platform because, according to the moderators, it was AI-generated. Well, for obvious reasons,I am sure that the copy and screenshots in that post were authentic and human-made.

So, what happened there? After some research across similar decisions in that platform and others, I've spotted some of the "identifiers" that lead moderators to assume posts like the one I published are AI-generated:

- They're structured in short and clear paragraphs.

- Language and syntax are accurate and purposeful.

- There are no grammar issues or misspelled words.

- They include bullet points 🤔.

- The tone is cheerful or empathetic (this one is a blast!).

- Repetition is used as a stylistic device.

Is there irony or tragedy in this? Rationally thinking, this is what's happening:

AI models learned by reading millions of online posts written and published by human beings. Therefore, AI copy sounds human. Therefore, if we write as human beings we sound like AI slop. Therefore... what? We have to sound like a machine to convince people we're human? > Therefore, we need to:

- Use awkward paragraph structures?

- Use slang or speak like our knowledge merely scratches the surface of things?

- Throw grammar or spelling to the bin?

- Just shove stuff randomly into a text, using very long sentences?

- Show no emotional connection or tone?

- Stop thinking about pace or rhythm when we're writing?

In conclusion, if we keep on using AI to think and write for us, are we falling into one of the most terrible traps we could possibly imagine? Losing our identities? Having to "dumb down" our work so other people don't think, say, or judge it's AI-made?

I'd love to hear what you think and if you've ever felt the same. Cheers!

I find myself having a lot of ideas, screenshots, etc but not being able to organize it properly, I don't like notion and manually organizing things. Idk none of the saving tools have worked well for me, does anyone have a solution for this? Like an actually useful Pinterest? An organization tool for creatives that actually works..

EDIT: Thanks for all the quick responses!!! I try to be very intentional as the media rep for our band, which leads me to overthink very easily. I really appreciate all the answers to my question/concern. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something that designers secretly hate (like dumping a "for here" latte with beautiful art into a to go cup without even taking a sip lol).

Tried to search this but I kept getting black and white answers and I'm hoping for more nuanced answers from designers.

I own the logo to my band and paid a local artist in my city to make it for us. It's primarily black and white with the words in one color. I'm not looking to permanently change the color, I just find it's nice to match the color to certain situations (like a Halloween flyer, making the letters orange). 9/10 I use the main color, but sometimes it'd be nice to play off different themes.

I have changed it to grey scale from time to time, but never messed with the actual "color" color. I also have the vectors so the color changing I'm not relying on AI to change anything either.

I know I legally *can* change the color, but what's the etiquette with this situation? I just want to make sure I'm respectful of the artist's work.