No. 003 — January 25th, 2023

Hello Reader,

Inside the Coterie is a bi-weekly dispatch of insights and resources that make a difference in your design practice.

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Happy New Year!
We took a break at the Coterie to settle into our day jobs, setting the pace for a (hopefully!) productive quarter ahead.

During the holidays, while eating Christmas food and wine in the warm embrace of family, I wondered how my work as a designer helps improve the odds of this good luck for many more people worldwide. In essence, is design truly a change for good in a capitalist (and recently hyper-inflationary) economy that seems to value productivity over shared leisure?

I believe it is true that design can be used to promote economic inclusion and make technology accessible to a wider range of people. By focusing on the needs and wants of diverse groups, designers can create products (and services) that are more inclusive. This can help to expand access to technology, making it more widely available and affordable for marginalized communities. Meaning that more people/players will be involved in building the global economy.

To put it simply, design can play a significant role in promoting economic inclusion and socializing the benefits of technology for all. Companies can drive the revenue they need to grow while also making a positive impact on society.

I guess my navel-gazing question for this issue of Inside the Coterie is: Is design a socialist tool that can displace many of the inequal extremes of capitalism? Or is it naive to think so. Happy to get replies to this newsletter or you can tag me to your thoughts on Twitter.
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(now the good stuff)

📖 What we're reading

I.
To hold on to the thought above, I would definitely recommend reading Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World. It gets a bit dense with (veeery) descriptive experiments in some chapters, but it's a gold mine of insights on design with respect to society and the economy.
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II.
As the internet gets more immersive with the rise of the metaverse (particularly virtual reality), how do you design for such experiences? This article on spatial interfaces for conversations highlights some considerations to have.
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🎧 What we’re listening to

I.
Figma, your favorite interface design tool (amongst other uses), is known for shipping valuable features fast. In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, Yuhki Yamashita (Figma's Chief Product Officer) shares more on how Figma does it better than many.
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II.
We brought back the OG Design From Home playlists we released in 2020 during the kpandemi. (Fiyin mentioned them in passing on the group and I just had to go dig them back up.)
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⚡ What we’re making

Today's featured coterifolk is Ibrahim Otukoya. Ibrahim is a truly talented brand designer with a minimalist style that is as elegant as it is effective. He has a keen eye for vibrant and enduring colors that add depth and dimension to his work.

His portfolio of work covers brand design and illustration studies that make him a valuable asset to any team or client.

See more of what Ibrahim is making​

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🧰 What we’re using

I.
Designing interfaces while keeping track of which components to create can get overwhelming at times. This component library is a frequently recommended resource within the coterie for product designers.
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​II.
And if you ever want to jump right into iterating through a product without the upfront investment of building your own design system, you can always start by using an open source system like Google's Material or IBM's Carbon. The best part is these systems already have a codebase.
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📺 What we’re watching

I.
Being great at typography can actually be enough to take your design skills to critical level. While it may seem like there's a lot to learn about type (and there is!), this video by The Futur covers some key tips to try when designing anything from posters to websites to digital products. Practice makes better.
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Until next time folks,
​Caleb.

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PS: Got content ideas for this newsletter? Leave 'em here.

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