Category: Blog

Picture this: You’re in a meeting room at your tech company, and two people are having what looks like the same conversation about the same design problem. One is talking about whether the team has the right skills to tackle it. The other is diving deep into whether the solution actually solves the user’s problem. Same room, same problem, completely different lenses.

This is the beautiful, sometimes messy reality of having both a Design Manager and a Lead Designer on the same team. And if you’re wondering how to make this work without creating confusion, overlap, or the dreaded “too many cooks” scenario, you’re asking the right question.

The traditional answer has been to draw clean lines on an org chart. The Design Manager handles people, the Lead Designer handles craft. Problem solved, right? Except clean org charts are fantasy. In reality, both roles care deeply about team health, design quality, and shipping great work. 

The magic happens when you embrace the overlap instead of fighting it—when you start thinking of your design org as a design organism.

The Anatomy of a Healthy Design Team

Here’s what I’ve learned from years of being on both sides of this equation: think of your design team as a living organism. The Design Manager tends to the mind (the psychological safety, the career growth, the team dynamics). The Lead Designer tends to the body (the craft skills, the design standards, the hands-on work that ships to users).

But just like mind and body aren’t completely separate systems, so, too, do these roles overlap in important ways. You can’t have a healthy person without both working in harmony. The trick is knowing where those overlaps are and how to navigate them gracefully.

When we look at how healthy teams actually function, three critical systems emerge. Each requires both roles to work together, but with one taking primary responsibility for keeping that system strong.

The Nervous System: People & Psychology

Primary caretaker: Design Manager
Supporting role: Lead Designer

The nervous system is all about signals, feedback, and psychological safety. When this system is healthy, information flows freely, people feel safe to take risks, and the team can adapt quickly to new challenges.

The Design Manager is the primary caretaker here. They’re monitoring the team’s psychological pulse, ensuring feedback loops are healthy, and creating the conditions for people to grow. They’re hosting career conversations, managing workload, and making sure no one burns out.

But the Lead Designer plays a crucial supporting role. They’re providing sensory input about craft development needs, spotting when someone’s design skills are stagnating, and helping identify growth opportunities that the Design Manager might miss.

Design Manager tends to:

• Career conversations and growth planning
• Team psychological safety and dynamics
• Workload management and resource allocation
• Performance reviews and feedback systems
• Creating learning opportunities

Lead Designer supports by:

• Providing craft-specific feedback on team member development
• Identifying design skill gaps and growth opportunities
• Offering design mentorship and guidance
• Signaling when team members are ready for more complex challenges

The Muscular System: Craft & Execution

Primary caretaker: Lead Designer
Supporting role: Design Manager

The muscular system is about strength, coordination, and skill development. When this system is healthy, the team can execute complex design work with precision, maintain consistent quality, and adapt their craft to new challenges.

The Lead Designer is the primary caretaker here. They’re setting design standards, providing craft coaching, and ensuring that shipping work meets the quality bar. They’re the ones who can tell you if a design decision is sound or if we’re solving the right problem.

But the Design Manager plays a crucial supporting role. They’re ensuring the team has the resources and support to do their best craft work, like proper nutrition and recovery time for an athlete.

Lead Designer tends to:

• Definition of design standards and system usage
• Feedback on what design work meets the standard
• Experience direction for the product
• Design decisions and product-wide alignment
• Innovation and craft advancement

Design Manager supports by:

• Ensuring design standards are understood and adopted across the team
• Confirming experience direction is being followed
• Supporting practices and systems that scale without bottlenecking
• Facilitating design alignment across teams
• Providing resources and removing obstacles to great craft work

The Circulatory System: Strategy & Flow

Shared caretakers: Both Design Manager and Lead Designer

The circulatory system is about how information, decisions, and energy flow through the team. When this system is healthy, strategic direction is clear, priorities are aligned, and the team can respond quickly to new opportunities or challenges.

This is where true partnership happens. Both roles are responsible for keeping the circulation strong, but they’re bringing different perspectives to the table.

Lead Designer contributes:

• User needs are met by the product
• Overall product quality and experience
• Strategic design initiatives
• Research-based user needs for each initiative

Design Manager contributes:

• Communication to team and stakeholders
• Stakeholder management and alignment
• Cross-functional team accountability
• Strategic business initiatives

Both collaborate on:

• Co-creation of strategy with leadership
• Team goals and prioritization approach
• Organizational structure decisions
• Success measures and frameworks

Keeping the Organism Healthy

The key to making this partnership sing is understanding that all three systems need to work together. A team with great craft skills but poor psychological safety will burn out. A team with great culture but weak craft execution will ship mediocre work. A team with both but poor strategic circulation will work hard on the wrong things.

Be Explicit About Which System You’re Tending

When you’re in a meeting about a design problem, it helps to acknowledge which system you’re primarily focused on. “I’m thinking about this from a team capacity perspective” (nervous system) or “I’m looking at this through the lens of user needs” (muscular system) gives everyone context for your input.

This isn’t about staying in your lane. It’s about being transparent as to which lens you’re using, so the other person knows how to best add their perspective.

Create Healthy Feedback Loops

The most successful partnerships I’ve seen establish clear feedback loops between the systems:

Nervous system signals to muscular system: “The team is struggling with confidence in their design skills” → Lead Designer provides more craft coaching and clearer standards.

Muscular system signals to nervous system: “The team’s craft skills are advancing faster than their project complexity” → Design Manager finds more challenging growth opportunities.

Both systems signal to circulatory system: “We’re seeing patterns in team health and craft development that suggest we need to adjust our strategic priorities.”

Handle Handoffs Gracefully

The most critical moments in this partnership are when something moves from one system to another. This might be when a design standard (muscular system) needs to be rolled out across the team (nervous system), or when a strategic initiative (circulatory system) needs specific craft execution (muscular system).

Make these transitions explicit. “I’ve defined the new component standards. Can you help me think through how to get the team up to speed?” or “We’ve agreed on this strategic direction. I’m going to focus on the specific user experience approach from here.”

Stay Curious, Not Territorial

The Design Manager who never thinks about craft, or the Lead Designer who never considers team dynamics, is like a doctor who only looks at one body system. Great design leadership requires both people to care about the whole organism, even when they’re not the primary caretaker.

This means asking questions rather than making assumptions. “What do you think about the team’s craft development in this area?” or “How do you see this impacting team morale and workload?” keeps both perspectives active in every decision.

When the Organism Gets Sick

Even with clear roles, this partnership can go sideways. Here are the most common failure modes I’ve seen:

System Isolation

The Design Manager focuses only on the nervous system and ignores craft development. The Lead Designer focuses only on the muscular system and ignores team dynamics. Both people retreat to their comfort zones and stop collaborating.

The symptoms: Team members get mixed messages, work quality suffers, morale drops.

The treatment: Reconnect around shared outcomes. What are you both trying to achieve? Usually it’s great design work that ships on time from a healthy team. Figure out how both systems serve that goal.

Poor Circulation

Strategic direction is unclear, priorities keep shifting, and neither role is taking responsibility for keeping information flowing.

The symptoms: Team members are confused about priorities, work gets duplicated or dropped, deadlines are missed.

The treatment: Explicitly assign responsibility for circulation. Who’s communicating what to whom? How often? What’s the feedback loop?

Autoimmune Response

One person feels threatened by the other’s expertise. The Design Manager thinks the Lead Designer is undermining their authority. The Lead Designer thinks the Design Manager doesn’t understand craft.

The symptoms: Defensive behavior, territorial disputes, team members caught in the middle.

The treatment: Remember that you’re both caretakers of the same organism. When one system fails, the whole team suffers. When both systems are healthy, the team thrives.

The Payoff

Yes, this model requires more communication. Yes, it requires both people to be secure enough to share responsibility for team health. But the payoff is worth it: better decisions, stronger teams, and design work that’s both excellent and sustainable.

When both roles are healthy and working well together, you get the best of both worlds: deep craft expertise and strong people leadership. When one person is out sick, on vacation, or overwhelmed, the other can help maintain the team’s health. When a decision requires both the people perspective and the craft perspective, you’ve got both right there in the room.

Most importantly, the framework scales. As your team grows, you can apply the same system thinking to new challenges. Need to launch a design system? Lead Designer tends to the muscular system (standards and implementation), Design Manager tends to the nervous system (team adoption and change management), and both tend to circulation (communication and stakeholder alignment).

The Bottom Line

The relationship between a Design Manager and Lead Designer isn’t about dividing territories. It’s about multiplying impact. When both roles understand they’re tending to different aspects of the same healthy organism, magic happens.

The mind and body work together. The team gets both the strategic thinking and the craft excellence they need. And most importantly, the work that ships to users benefits from both perspectives.

So the next time you’re in that meeting room, wondering why two people are talking about the same problem from different angles, remember: you’re watching shared leadership in action. And if it’s working well, both the mind and body of your design team are getting stronger.

As a product builder over too many years to mention, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen promising ideas go from zero to hero in a few weeks, only to fizzle out within months.

Financial products, which is the field I work in, are no exception. With people’s real hard-earned money on the line, user expectations running high, and a crowded market, it’s tempting to throw as many features at the wall as possible and hope something sticks. But this approach is a recipe for disaster. Here’s why:

The pitfalls of feature-first development

When you start building a financial product from the ground up, or are migrating existing customer journeys from paper or telephony channels onto online banking or mobile apps, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of creating new features. You might think, “If I can just add one more thing that solves this particular user problem, they’ll love me!” But what happens when you inevitably hit a roadblock because the narcs (your security team!) don’t like it? When a hard-fought feature isn’t as popular as you thought, or it breaks due to unforeseen complexity?

This is where the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) comes in. Jason Fried’s book Getting Real and his podcast Rework often touch on this idea, even if he doesn’t always call it that. An MVP is a product that provides just enough value to your users to keep them engaged, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or difficult to maintain. It sounds like an easy concept but it requires a razor sharp eye, a ruthless edge and having the courage to stick by your opinion because it is easy to be seduced by “the Columbo Effect”… when there’s always “just one more thing…” that someone wants to add.

The problem with most finance apps, however, is that they often become a reflection of the internal politics of the business rather than an experience solely designed around the customer. This means that the focus is on delivering as many features and functionalities as possible to satisfy the needs and desires of competing internal departments, rather than providing a clear value proposition that is focused on what the people out there in the real world want. As a result, these products can very easily bloat to become a mixed bag of confusing, unrelated and ultimately unlovable customer experiences—a feature salad, you might say.

The importance of bedrock

So what’s a better approach? How can we build products that are stable, user-friendly, and—most importantly—stick?

That’s where the concept of “bedrock” comes in. Bedrock is the core element of your product that truly matters to users. It’s the fundamental building block that provides value and stays relevant over time.

In the world of retail banking, which is where I work, the bedrock has got to be in and around the regular servicing journeys. People open their current account once in a blue moon but they look at it every day. They sign up for a credit card every year or two, but they check their balance and pay their bill at least once a month.

Identifying the core tasks that people want to do and then relentlessly striving to make them easy to do, dependable, and trustworthy is where the gravy’s at.

But how do you get to bedrock? By focusing on the “MVP” approach, prioritizing simplicity, and iterating towards a clear value proposition. This means cutting out unnecessary features and focusing on delivering real value to your users.

It also means having some guts, because your colleagues might not always instantly share your vision to start with. And controversially, sometimes it can even mean making it clear to customers that you’re not going to come to their house and make their dinner. The occasional “opinionated user interface design” (i.e. clunky workaround for edge cases) might sometimes be what you need to use to test a concept or buy you space to work on something more important.

Practical strategies for building financial products that stick

So what are the key strategies I’ve learned from my own experience and research?

1. Start with a clear “why”: What problem are you trying to solve? For whom? Make sure your mission is crystal clear before building anything. Make sure it aligns with your company’s objectives, too.
2. Focus on a single, core feature and obsess on getting that right before moving on to something else: Resist the temptation to add too many features at once. Instead, choose one that delivers real value and iterate from there.
3. Prioritize simplicity over complexity: Less is often more when it comes to financial products. Cut out unnecessary bells and whistles and keep the focus on what matters most.
4. Embrace continuous iteration: Bedrock isn’t a fixed destination—it’s a dynamic process. Continuously gather user feedback, refine your product, and iterate towards that bedrock state.
5. Stop, look and listen: Don’t just test your product as part of your delivery process—test it repeatedly in the field. Use it yourself. Run A/B tests. Gather user feedback. Talk to people who use it, and refine accordingly.

The bedrock paradox

There’s an interesting paradox at play here: building towards bedrock means sacrificing some short-term growth potential in favour of long-term stability. But the payoff is worth it—products built with a focus on bedrock will outlast and outperform their competitors, and deliver sustained value to users over time.

So, how do you start your journey towards bedrock? Take it one step at a time. Start by identifying those core elements that truly matter to your users. Focus on building and refining a single, powerful feature that delivers real value. And above all, test obsessively—for, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker (whomever you believe!!), “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

“Give me my bent bow in hand, and my broad arrows I’ll let flee; and where the arrow is taken up, there shall my grave digged be.” So sayeth Robin Hood with his near dying breath—or at least that is what is passed down to us by one version of his end in a folktale […]

The post See Hugh Jackman as Old Man Robin Hood in New A24 Trailer appeared first on Den of Geek.

The X-Men will return again in Avengers: Doomsday. To put a finer point on it, 20th Century Fox’s version of the X-Men are having what must be their umpteenth swan song in the next Avengers movie (or two). For some fans, this is mixed news since we’ve been waving goodbye to the Fox-verse since the conclusion of 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand 20 years ago, and certainly after 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, which also used timey-wimey sci-fi logic to present a story where major characters died but then got better. Come to think of it, that made it also a dry run for Avengers: Infinity War too…

All of which has left some frustrated that this version of the X-Men is central again in next December’s Doomsday. For proof, look no further than the latest teaser trailer, which is now online nearly a full year before the movie’s release. In the bit of sizzle footage, the forever-welcomed Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart give events their familiar gravitas, and James Marsden is seen at last rocking Cyclops’ iconic costume design by Jim Lee from the early 1990s—although to most, it is synonymous with X-Men: The Animated Series from the same era and its sublime sequel series now on Disney+, X-Men ’97.

The shameless but superb fan service of seeing Marsden’s Scott Summers get promised his long overlooked due, complete with costume and pride of place in marketing, signals a few things: first there is at least one more X-Man who didn’t get his proper send off between Days of Future Past, Logan (2017), and even the Marvel Studios-produced Deadpool & Wolverine from 2023. And secondly, we deep down cannot help but enjoy saying goodbye to these prized pieces of 2000s geek culture, no matter how many encores they get.

And for that same reason, we have one tiny, infinitesimal, but (we’d argue) significant suggestion to make for this year’s Avengers movie: send them off using the John Ottman’s X-Men themes from X2 (2003) and Days of Future Past instead of The Animated Series theme song.

Obviously given Marsden’s glorious costuming, Avengers: Doomsday will be melding nostalgia for the 2000s and 2010s X-films with that of The Animated Series, and if we are speaking purely X-Men music, nothing is quite as iconic as the opening credits suite written by Ron Wasserman. To children of the ‘90s, that piece of music was more epic than all of the prose and tales of Homer put together. And Disney/Marvel Studios has been shrewd to tap into this vintage of member berries, as proven when a few bars of the theme were played during the first crossover between the Disney and Fox eras in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). There we saw Patrick Stewart briefly reprise the role of Charles Xavier for a cameo that felt more like a wink than a sign-off.

Given how Marvel Studios still taps into the even older 1960s cartoon theme song for Spider-Man after all these decades, there is no doubt that the Mouse House will be using ‘90s nostalgia when adapting X-Men for many, many years to come. But the Fox era of X-Men seems like it must be coming to an end for realsies this time. And if so, this is the perfect time to send them off with their own sound and vibe.

Plus, for whatever else you can say about the uneven and checkered history of the Fox-verse era, they had plenty of highs, including in the music department. The perennially underrated Michael Kamen provided a pounding, almost terrifying soundscape to the original X-Men movie more than a quarter century ago, and Henry Jackman’s theme for Magneto in X-Men: First Class (2011) remains sadly forgotten despite its intensity.

But the sound that defines the Fox era, warts and all, is the undeniably thrilling and lush compositions Ottman offered three X-Men pictures between 2003 and 2016. And wouldn’t you know it, two of them remain among the better superhero movies ever made. So if this must be the end of the Fox-verse—and it really should be at this point—let them take a bow to the beat of their own drum.

Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters on Dec. 18.

The post Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Raises an Important Question: What X-Men Theme Will Be Used? appeared first on Den of Geek.

The Sith’s Rule of Two states that there must always be a master and an apprentice. One embodies the power while the other craves it. Turns out studio executives operate in a manner not too different from the Sith, as the current head of Lucasfilm is about to step down and be replaced by the […]

The post Report: Star Wars Will Make the Obvious Choice to Replace Kathleen Kennedy appeared first on Den of Geek.

The X-Men will return again in Avengers: Doomsday. To put a finer point on it, 20th Century Fox’s version of the X-Men are having what must be their umpteenth swan song in the next Avengers movie (or two). For some fans, this is mixed news since we’ve been waving goodbye to the Fox-verse since the conclusion of 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand 20 years ago, and certainly after 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, which also used timey-wimey sci-fi logic to present a story where major characters died but then got better. Come to think of it, that made it also a dry run for Avengers: Infinity War too…

All of which has left some frustrated that this version of the X-Men is central again in next December’s Doomsday. For proof, look no further than the latest teaser trailer, which is now online nearly a full year before the movie’s release. In the bit of sizzle footage, the forever-welcomed Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart give events their familiar gravitas, and James Marsden is seen at last rocking Cyclops’ iconic costume design by Jim Lee from the early 1990s—although to most, it is synonymous with X-Men: The Animated Series from the same era and its sublime sequel series now on Disney+, X-Men ’97.

The shameless but superb fan service of seeing Marsden’s Scott Summers get promised his long overlooked due, complete with costume and pride of place in marketing, signals a few things: first there is at least one more X-Man who didn’t get his proper send off between Days of Future Past, Logan (2017), and even the Marvel Studios-produced Deadpool & Wolverine from 2023. And secondly, we deep down cannot help but enjoy saying goodbye to these prized pieces of 2000s geek culture, no matter how many encores they get.

And for that same reason, we have one tiny, infinitesimal, but (we’d argue) significant suggestion to make for this year’s Avengers movie: send them off using the John Ottman’s X-Men themes from X2 (2003) and Days of Future Past instead of The Animated Series theme song.

Obviously given Marsden’s glorious costuming, Avengers: Doomsday will be melding nostalgia for the 2000s and 2010s X-films with that of The Animated Series, and if we are speaking purely X-Men music, nothing is quite as iconic as the opening credits suite written by Ron Wasserman. To children of the ‘90s, that piece of music was more epic than all of the prose and tales of Homer put together. And Disney/Marvel Studios has been shrewd to tap into this vintage of member berries, as proven when a few bars of the theme were played during the first crossover between the Disney and Fox eras in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). There we saw Patrick Stewart briefly reprise the role of Charles Xavier for a cameo that felt more like a wink than a sign-off.

Given how Marvel Studios still taps into the even older 1960s cartoon theme song for Spider-Man after all these decades, there is no doubt that the Mouse House will be using ‘90s nostalgia when adapting X-Men for many, many years to come. But the Fox era of X-Men seems like it must be coming to an end for realsies this time. And if so, this is the perfect time to send them off with their own sound and vibe.

Plus, for whatever else you can say about the uneven and checkered history of the Fox-verse era, they had plenty of highs, including in the music department. The perennially underrated Michael Kamen provided a pounding, almost terrifying soundscape to the original X-Men movie more than a quarter century ago, and Henry Jackman’s theme for Magneto in X-Men: First Class (2011) remains sadly forgotten despite its intensity.

But the sound that defines the Fox era, warts and all, is the undeniably thrilling and lush compositions Ottman offered three X-Men pictures between 2003 and 2016. And wouldn’t you know it, two of them remain among the better superhero movies ever made. So if this must be the end of the Fox-verse—and it really should be at this point—let them take a bow to the beat of their own drum.

Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters on Dec. 18.

The post Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Raises an Important Question: What X-Men Theme Will Be Used? appeared first on Den of Geek.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones was… let’s just call it controversial. From Daenerys Targaryen’s death and the ascension of King Bran the Broken to Jon Snow’s self-imposed exile north of the Wall, almost everyone was left in a place that felt, if not outright unhappy, at […]

The post Sophie Turner Was One of the Only Actors Happy with Her Game of Thrones Ending appeared first on Den of Geek.

The X-Men will return again in Avengers: Doomsday. To put a finer point on it, 20th Century Fox’s version of the X-Men are having what must be their umpteenth swan song in the next Avengers movie (or two). For some fans, this is mixed news since we’ve been waving goodbye to the Fox-verse since the conclusion of 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand 20 years ago, and certainly after 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, which also used timey-wimey sci-fi logic to present a story where major characters died but then got better. Come to think of it, that made it also a dry run for Avengers: Infinity War too…

All of which has left some frustrated that this version of the X-Men is central again in next December’s Doomsday. For proof, look no further than the latest teaser trailer, which is now online nearly a full year before the movie’s release. In the bit of sizzle footage, the forever-welcomed Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart give events their familiar gravitas, and James Marsden is seen at last rocking Cyclops’ iconic costume design by Jim Lee from the early 1990s—although to most, it is synonymous with X-Men: The Animated Series from the same era and its sublime sequel series now on Disney+, X-Men ’97.

The shameless but superb fan service of seeing Marsden’s Scott Summers get promised his long overlooked due, complete with costume and pride of place in marketing, signals a few things: first there is at least one more X-Man who didn’t get his proper send off between Days of Future Past, Logan (2017), and even the Marvel Studios-produced Deadpool & Wolverine from 2023. And secondly, we deep down cannot help but enjoy saying goodbye to these prized pieces of 2000s geek culture, no matter how many encores they get.

And for that same reason, we have one tiny, infinitesimal, but (we’d argue) significant suggestion to make for this year’s Avengers movie: send them off using the John Ottman’s X-Men themes from X2 (2003) and Days of Future Past instead of The Animated Series theme song.

Obviously given Marsden’s glorious costuming, Avengers: Doomsday will be melding nostalgia for the 2000s and 2010s X-films with that of The Animated Series, and if we are speaking purely X-Men music, nothing is quite as iconic as the opening credits suite written by Ron Wasserman. To children of the ‘90s, that piece of music was more epic than all of the prose and tales of Homer put together. And Disney/Marvel Studios has been shrewd to tap into this vintage of member berries, as proven when a few bars of the theme were played during the first crossover between the Disney and Fox eras in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). There we saw Patrick Stewart briefly reprise the role of Charles Xavier for a cameo that felt more like a wink than a sign-off.

Given how Marvel Studios still taps into the even older 1960s cartoon theme song for Spider-Man after all these decades, there is no doubt that the Mouse House will be using ‘90s nostalgia when adapting X-Men for many, many years to come. But the Fox era of X-Men seems like it must be coming to an end for realsies this time. And if so, this is the perfect time to send them off with their own sound and vibe.

Plus, for whatever else you can say about the uneven and checkered history of the Fox-verse era, they had plenty of highs, including in the music department. The perennially underrated Michael Kamen provided a pounding, almost terrifying soundscape to the original X-Men movie more than a quarter century ago, and Henry Jackman’s theme for Magneto in X-Men: First Class (2011) remains sadly forgotten despite its intensity.

But the sound that defines the Fox era, warts and all, is the undeniably thrilling and lush compositions Ottman offered three X-Men pictures between 2003 and 2016. And wouldn’t you know it, two of them remain among the better superhero movies ever made. So if this must be the end of the Fox-verse—and it really should be at this point—let them take a bow to the beat of their own drum.

Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters on Dec. 18.

The post Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Raises an Important Question: What X-Men Theme Will Be Used? appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains Stranger Things spoilers. Like all of it. Winona Ryder was not in the final season of Stranger Things nearly enough. Once the marquee name around whom the first season was built and marketed, the actor responsible for giving Joyce Byers a ferocious mama bear energy that bordered on delirium has spent the […]

The post Stranger Things Finale Remembered to Give Winona Ryder One Great Easter Egg Moment appeared first on Den of Geek.

The X-Men will return again in Avengers: Doomsday. To put a finer point on it, 20th Century Fox’s version of the X-Men are having what must be their umpteenth swan song in the next Avengers movie (or two). For some fans, this is mixed news since we’ve been waving goodbye to the Fox-verse since the conclusion of 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand 20 years ago, and certainly after 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, which also used timey-wimey sci-fi logic to present a story where major characters died but then got better. Come to think of it, that made it also a dry run for Avengers: Infinity War too…

All of which has left some frustrated that this version of the X-Men is central again in next December’s Doomsday. For proof, look no further than the latest teaser trailer, which is now online nearly a full year before the movie’s release. In the bit of sizzle footage, the forever-welcomed Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart give events their familiar gravitas, and James Marsden is seen at last rocking Cyclops’ iconic costume design by Jim Lee from the early 1990s—although to most, it is synonymous with X-Men: The Animated Series from the same era and its sublime sequel series now on Disney+, X-Men ’97.

The shameless but superb fan service of seeing Marsden’s Scott Summers get promised his long overlooked due, complete with costume and pride of place in marketing, signals a few things: first there is at least one more X-Man who didn’t get his proper send off between Days of Future Past, Logan (2017), and even the Marvel Studios-produced Deadpool & Wolverine from 2023. And secondly, we deep down cannot help but enjoy saying goodbye to these prized pieces of 2000s geek culture, no matter how many encores they get.

And for that same reason, we have one tiny, infinitesimal, but (we’d argue) significant suggestion to make for this year’s Avengers movie: send them off using the John Ottman’s X-Men themes from X2 (2003) and Days of Future Past instead of The Animated Series theme song.

Obviously given Marsden’s glorious costuming, Avengers: Doomsday will be melding nostalgia for the 2000s and 2010s X-films with that of The Animated Series, and if we are speaking purely X-Men music, nothing is quite as iconic as the opening credits suite written by Ron Wasserman. To children of the ‘90s, that piece of music was more epic than all of the prose and tales of Homer put together. And Disney/Marvel Studios has been shrewd to tap into this vintage of member berries, as proven when a few bars of the theme were played during the first crossover between the Disney and Fox eras in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). There we saw Patrick Stewart briefly reprise the role of Charles Xavier for a cameo that felt more like a wink than a sign-off.

Given how Marvel Studios still taps into the even older 1960s cartoon theme song for Spider-Man after all these decades, there is no doubt that the Mouse House will be using ‘90s nostalgia when adapting X-Men for many, many years to come. But the Fox era of X-Men seems like it must be coming to an end for realsies this time. And if so, this is the perfect time to send them off with their own sound and vibe.

Plus, for whatever else you can say about the uneven and checkered history of the Fox-verse era, they had plenty of highs, including in the music department. The perennially underrated Michael Kamen provided a pounding, almost terrifying soundscape to the original X-Men movie more than a quarter century ago, and Henry Jackman’s theme for Magneto in X-Men: First Class (2011) remains sadly forgotten despite its intensity.

But the sound that defines the Fox era, warts and all, is the undeniably thrilling and lush compositions Ottman offered three X-Men pictures between 2003 and 2016. And wouldn’t you know it, two of them remain among the better superhero movies ever made. So if this must be the end of the Fox-verse—and it really should be at this point—let them take a bow to the beat of their own drum.

Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters on Dec. 18.

The post Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Raises an Important Question: What X-Men Theme Will Be Used? appeared first on Den of Geek.

Gotham City is about to get even more interesting. According to Deadline, Sebastian Stan is in talks to join the cast of The Batman: Part II. If Stan makes the leap to DC, he’ll join his fellow Avengers co-star Scarlett Johansson in exchanging the MCU for director Matt Reeves‘ grounded take on the Caped Crusader. […]

The post The Batman 2 – Who Will Sebastian Stan Play? appeared first on Den of Geek.

The X-Men will return again in Avengers: Doomsday. To put a finer point on it, 20th Century Fox’s version of the X-Men are having what must be their umpteenth swan song in the next Avengers movie (or two). For some fans, this is mixed news since we’ve been waving goodbye to the Fox-verse since the conclusion of 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand 20 years ago, and certainly after 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, which also used timey-wimey sci-fi logic to present a story where major characters died but then got better. Come to think of it, that made it also a dry run for Avengers: Infinity War too…

All of which has left some frustrated that this version of the X-Men is central again in next December’s Doomsday. For proof, look no further than the latest teaser trailer, which is now online nearly a full year before the movie’s release. In the bit of sizzle footage, the forever-welcomed Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart give events their familiar gravitas, and James Marsden is seen at last rocking Cyclops’ iconic costume design by Jim Lee from the early 1990s—although to most, it is synonymous with X-Men: The Animated Series from the same era and its sublime sequel series now on Disney+, X-Men ’97.

The shameless but superb fan service of seeing Marsden’s Scott Summers get promised his long overlooked due, complete with costume and pride of place in marketing, signals a few things: first there is at least one more X-Man who didn’t get his proper send off between Days of Future Past, Logan (2017), and even the Marvel Studios-produced Deadpool & Wolverine from 2023. And secondly, we deep down cannot help but enjoy saying goodbye to these prized pieces of 2000s geek culture, no matter how many encores they get.

And for that same reason, we have one tiny, infinitesimal, but (we’d argue) significant suggestion to make for this year’s Avengers movie: send them off using the John Ottman’s X-Men themes from X2 (2003) and Days of Future Past instead of The Animated Series theme song.

Obviously given Marsden’s glorious costuming, Avengers: Doomsday will be melding nostalgia for the 2000s and 2010s X-films with that of The Animated Series, and if we are speaking purely X-Men music, nothing is quite as iconic as the opening credits suite written by Ron Wasserman. To children of the ‘90s, that piece of music was more epic than all of the prose and tales of Homer put together. And Disney/Marvel Studios has been shrewd to tap into this vintage of member berries, as proven when a few bars of the theme were played during the first crossover between the Disney and Fox eras in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). There we saw Patrick Stewart briefly reprise the role of Charles Xavier for a cameo that felt more like a wink than a sign-off.

Given how Marvel Studios still taps into the even older 1960s cartoon theme song for Spider-Man after all these decades, there is no doubt that the Mouse House will be using ‘90s nostalgia when adapting X-Men for many, many years to come. But the Fox era of X-Men seems like it must be coming to an end for realsies this time. And if so, this is the perfect time to send them off with their own sound and vibe.

Plus, for whatever else you can say about the uneven and checkered history of the Fox-verse era, they had plenty of highs, including in the music department. The perennially underrated Michael Kamen provided a pounding, almost terrifying soundscape to the original X-Men movie more than a quarter century ago, and Henry Jackman’s theme for Magneto in X-Men: First Class (2011) remains sadly forgotten despite its intensity.

But the sound that defines the Fox era, warts and all, is the undeniably thrilling and lush compositions Ottman offered three X-Men pictures between 2003 and 2016. And wouldn’t you know it, two of them remain among the better superhero movies ever made. So if this must be the end of the Fox-verse—and it really should be at this point—let them take a bow to the beat of their own drum.

Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters on Dec. 18.

The post Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Raises an Important Question: What X-Men Theme Will Be Used? appeared first on Den of Geek.

The X-Men will return again in Avengers: Doomsday. To put a finer point on it, 20th Century Fox’s version of the X-Men are having what must be their umpteenth swan song in the next Avengers movie (or two). For some fans, this is mixed news since we’ve been waving goodbye to the Fox-verse since the […]

The post Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Raises an Important Question: What X-Men Theme Will Be Used? appeared first on Den of Geek.

The X-Men will return again in Avengers: Doomsday. To put a finer point on it, 20th Century Fox’s version of the X-Men are having what must be their umpteenth swan song in the next Avengers movie (or two). For some fans, this is mixed news since we’ve been waving goodbye to the Fox-verse since the conclusion of 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand 20 years ago, and certainly after 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, which also used timey-wimey sci-fi logic to present a story where major characters died but then got better. Come to think of it, that made it also a dry run for Avengers: Infinity War too…

All of which has left some frustrated that this version of the X-Men is central again in next December’s Doomsday. For proof, look no further than the latest teaser trailer, which is now online nearly a full year before the movie’s release. In the bit of sizzle footage, the forever-welcomed Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart give events their familiar gravitas, and James Marsden is seen at last rocking Cyclops’ iconic costume design by Jim Lee from the early 1990s—although to most, it is synonymous with X-Men: The Animated Series from the same era and its sublime sequel series now on Disney+, X-Men ’97.

The shameless but superb fan service of seeing Marsden’s Scott Summers get promised his long overlooked due, complete with costume and pride of place in marketing, signals a few things: first there is at least one more X-Man who didn’t get his proper send off between Days of Future Past, Logan (2017), and even the Marvel Studios-produced Deadpool & Wolverine from 2023. And secondly, we deep down cannot help but enjoy saying goodbye to these prized pieces of 2000s geek culture, no matter how many encores they get.

And for that same reason, we have one tiny, infinitesimal, but (we’d argue) significant suggestion to make for this year’s Avengers movie: send them off using the John Ottman’s X-Men themes from X2 (2003) and Days of Future Past instead of The Animated Series theme song.

Obviously given Marsden’s glorious costuming, Avengers: Doomsday will be melding nostalgia for the 2000s and 2010s X-films with that of The Animated Series, and if we are speaking purely X-Men music, nothing is quite as iconic as the opening credits suite written by Ron Wasserman. To children of the ‘90s, that piece of music was more epic than all of the prose and tales of Homer put together. And Disney/Marvel Studios has been shrewd to tap into this vintage of member berries, as proven when a few bars of the theme were played during the first crossover between the Disney and Fox eras in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). There we saw Patrick Stewart briefly reprise the role of Charles Xavier for a cameo that felt more like a wink than a sign-off.

Given how Marvel Studios still taps into the even older 1960s cartoon theme song for Spider-Man after all these decades, there is no doubt that the Mouse House will be using ‘90s nostalgia when adapting X-Men for many, many years to come. But the Fox era of X-Men seems like it must be coming to an end for realsies this time. And if so, this is the perfect time to send them off with their own sound and vibe.

Plus, for whatever else you can say about the uneven and checkered history of the Fox-verse era, they had plenty of highs, including in the music department. The perennially underrated Michael Kamen provided a pounding, almost terrifying soundscape to the original X-Men movie more than a quarter century ago, and Henry Jackman’s theme for Magneto in X-Men: First Class (2011) remains sadly forgotten despite its intensity.

But the sound that defines the Fox era, warts and all, is the undeniably thrilling and lush compositions Ottman offered three X-Men pictures between 2003 and 2016. And wouldn’t you know it, two of them remain among the better superhero movies ever made. So if this must be the end of the Fox-verse—and it really should be at this point—let them take a bow to the beat of their own drum.

Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters on Dec. 18.

The post Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Raises an Important Question: What X-Men Theme Will Be Used? appeared first on Den of Geek.

Jim Katzman wrote a great article on Medium about creating swag that customers actually want. One of his tips was “Leverage Local Pride.” That got me thinking: Local products would make the best swag. Local products are easier Instead of designing a batch of custom pens or ordering another lot of logo coffee mugs, walk […]

Jim Katzman wrote a great article on Medium about creating swag that customers actually want. One of his tips was “Leverage Local Pride.”

That got me thinking: Local products would make the best swag.

Local products are easier

Instead of designing a batch of custom pens or ordering another lot of logo coffee mugs, walk into a local shop and buy what they’ve got. Local honey. Locally made soap. Beef jerky from a nearby producer. A small art or craft piece.

You skip the minimum order quantities and the wait time. You support another local business. And you hand people something they’ll actually use and remember.

Whether you’re at a trade show, conference or heading to a special event, you can share your local flavor rather than “yet another water bottle.”

People love local products

I often give visitors Shawnee Mills cornbread mix packets when they come through Oklahoma or I visit them. Cornbread is an important cultural food to me. Even though I live a few hours from Shawnee, it’s local enough. And people love it when I share stories about my grandmother making cornbread.

That’s what local products do. At their best, they tell a story about your place.

Head Country BBQ Sauce in Ponca City, Oklahoma, once made mini 3-ounce bottles specifically as swag. Small enough to meet TSA liquid rules, so visitors could take it home even when flying.

Make it yours and theirs

You can co-brand if you want: add your sticker or tag to local sauces, seasoning mix, or whatever fits your business. Or just hand it over as-is with your business card (or your loyalty card).

Those Head Country sample bottles included some promotional text about Ponca City, done in cooperation with their economic development team. (Go, Ponca!)

Shawnee Mills actually does custom mixes, and that would be so much cooler than a generic water bottle with your logo.

When I managed a liquor store and was participating in social media conferences, I took mini 50ml bottles of liquor, added a little card from Moo printers, and used that as my calling card. People would fight over them!

It’s better marketing

When you give someone local products, you’re not just promoting your business. You’re showing that you support other local businesses. That’s good marketing for you and good for your community.

Next time you need swag, look local first

Walk around your downtown. Check out local makers and producers. See what’s already on the shelves at local shops. Look regionally and check out “made in your state” products.

You’ll find something better than another notebook, and you’ll be supporting the businesses around you at the same time.

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I’m not sure when I first heard this quote, but it’s something that has stayed with me over the years. How do you create services for situations you can’t imagine? Or design products that work on devices yet to be invented?

Flash, Photoshop, and responsive design

When I first started designing websites, my go-to software was Photoshop. I created a 960px canvas and set about creating a layout that I would later drop content in. The development phase was about attaining pixel-perfect accuracy using fixed widths, fixed heights, and absolute positioning.

Ethan Marcotte’s talk at An Event Apart and subsequent article “Responsive Web Design” in A List Apart in 2010 changed all this. I was sold on responsive design as soon as I heard about it, but I was also terrified. The pixel-perfect designs full of magic numbers that I had previously prided myself on producing were no longer good enough.

The fear wasn’t helped by my first experience with responsive design. My first project was to take an existing fixed-width website and make it responsive. What I learned the hard way was that you can’t just add responsiveness at the end of a project. To create fluid layouts, you need to plan throughout the design phase.

A new way to design

Designing responsive or fluid sites has always been about removing limitations, producing content that can be viewed on any device. It relies on the use of percentage-based layouts, which I initially achieved with native CSS and utility classes:

.column-span-6 {
  width: 49%;
  float: left;
  margin-right: 0.5%;
  margin-left: 0.5%;
}


.column-span-4 {
  width: 32%;
  float: left;
  margin-right: 0.5%;
  margin-left: 0.5%;
}

.column-span-3 {
  width: 24%;
  float: left;
  margin-right: 0.5%;
  margin-left: 0.5%;
}

Then with Sass so I could take advantage of @includes to re-use repeated blocks of code and move back to more semantic markup:

.logo {
  @include colSpan(6);
}

.search {
  @include colSpan(3);
}

.social-share {
  @include colSpan(3);
}

Media queries

The second ingredient for responsive design is media queries. Without them, content would shrink to fit the available space regardless of whether that content remained readable (The exact opposite problem occurred with the introduction of a mobile-first approach).

Media queries prevented this by allowing us to add breakpoints where the design could adapt. Like most people, I started out with three breakpoints: one for desktop, one for tablets, and one for mobile. Over the years, I added more and more for phablets, wide screens, and so on. 

For years, I happily worked this way and improved both my design and front-end skills in the process. The only problem I encountered was making changes to content, since with our Sass grid system in place, there was no way for the site owners to add content without amending the markup—something a small business owner might struggle with. This is because each row in the grid was defined using a div as a container. Adding content meant creating new row markup, which requires a level of HTML knowledge.

Row markup was a staple of early responsive design, present in all the widely used frameworks like Bootstrap and Skeleton.

  
1 of 7
  
2 of 7
  
3 of 7



  
4 of 7
  
5 of 7
  
6 of 7



  
7 of 7

Another problem arose as I moved from a design agency building websites for small- to medium-sized businesses, to larger in-house teams where I worked across a suite of related sites. In those roles I started to work much more with reusable components. 

Our reliance on media queries resulted in components that were tied to common viewport sizes. If the goal of component libraries is reuse, then this is a real problem because you can only use these components if the devices you’re designing for correspond to the viewport sizes used in the pattern library—in the process not really hitting that “devices that don’t yet exist”  goal.

Then there’s the problem of space. Media queries allow components to adapt based on the viewport size, but what if I put a component into a sidebar, like in the figure below?

Container queries: our savior or a false dawn?

Container queries have long been touted as an improvement upon media queries, but at the time of writing are unsupported in most browsers. There are JavaScript workarounds, but they can create dependency and compatibility issues. The basic theory underlying container queries is that elements should change based on the size of their parent container and not the viewport width, as seen in the following illustrations.

One of the biggest arguments in favor of container queries is that they help us create components or design patterns that are truly reusable because they can be picked up and placed anywhere in a layout. This is an important step in moving toward a form of component-based design that works at any size on any device.

In other words, responsive components to replace responsive layouts.

Container queries will help us move from designing pages that respond to the browser or device size to designing components that can be placed in a sidebar or in the main content, and respond accordingly.

My concern is that we are still using layout to determine when a design needs to adapt. This approach will always be restrictive, as we will still need pre-defined breakpoints. For this reason, my main question with container queries is, How would we decide when to change the CSS used by a component? 

A component library removed from context and real content is probably not the best place for that decision. 

As the diagrams below illustrate, we can use container queries to create designs for specific container widths, but what if I want to change the design based on the image size or ratio?

In this example, the dimensions of the container are not what should dictate the design; rather, the image is.

It’s hard to say for sure whether container queries will be a success story until we have solid cross-browser support for them. Responsive component libraries would definitely evolve how we design and would improve the possibilities for reuse and design at scale. But maybe we will always need to adjust these components to suit our content.

CSS is changing

Whilst the container query debate rumbles on, there have been numerous advances in CSS that change the way we think about design. The days of fixed-width elements measured in pixels and floated div elements used to cobble layouts together are long gone, consigned to history along with table layouts. Flexbox and CSS Grid have revolutionized layouts for the web. We can now create elements that wrap onto new rows when they run out of space, not when the device changes.

.wrapper {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, 450px);
  gap: 10px;
}

The repeat() function paired with auto-fit or auto-fill allows us to specify how much space each column should use while leaving it up to the browser to decide when to spill the columns onto a new line. Similar things can be achieved with Flexbox, as elements can wrap over multiple rows and “flex” to fill available space. 

.wrapper {
  display: flex;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
  justify-content: space-between;
}

.child {
  flex-basis: 32%;
  margin-bottom: 20px;
}

The biggest benefit of all this is you don’t need to wrap elements in container rows. Without rows, content isn’t tied to page markup in quite the same way, allowing for removals or additions of content without additional development.

This is a big step forward when it comes to creating designs that allow for evolving content, but the real game changer for flexible designs is CSS Subgrid. 

Remember the days of crafting perfectly aligned interfaces, only for the customer to add an unbelievably long header almost as soon as they’re given CMS access, like the illustration below?

Subgrid allows elements to respond to adjustments in their own content and in the content of sibling elements, helping us create designs more resilient to change.

.wrapper {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(150px, 1fr));
     grid-template-rows: auto 1fr auto;
  gap: 10px;
}

.sub-grid {
  display: grid;
  grid-row: span 3;
  grid-template-rows: subgrid; /* sets rows to parent grid */
}

CSS Grid allows us to separate layout and content, thereby enabling flexible designs. Meanwhile, Subgrid allows us to create designs that can adapt in order to suit morphing content. Subgrid at the time of writing is only supported in Firefox but the above code can be implemented behind an @supports feature query. 

Intrinsic layouts 

I’d be remiss not to mention intrinsic layouts, the term created by Jen Simmons to describe a mixture of new and old CSS features used to create layouts that respond to available space. 

Responsive layouts have flexible columns using percentages. Intrinsic layouts, on the other hand, use the fr unit to create flexible columns that won’t ever shrink so much that they render the content illegible.

fr units is a way to say I want you to distribute the extra space in this way, but…don’t ever make it smaller than the content that’s inside of it.

—Jen Simmons, “Designing Intrinsic Layouts”

Intrinsic layouts can also utilize a mixture of fixed and flexible units, allowing the content to dictate the space it takes up.

What makes intrinsic design stand out is that it not only creates designs that can withstand future devices but also helps scale design without losing flexibility. Components and patterns can be lifted and reused without the prerequisite of having the same breakpoints or the same amount of content as in the previous implementation. 

We can now create designs that adapt to the space they have, the content within them, and the content around them. With an intrinsic approach, we can construct responsive components without depending on container queries.

Another 2010 moment?

This intrinsic approach should in my view be every bit as groundbreaking as responsive web design was ten years ago. For me, it’s another “everything changed” moment. 

But it doesn’t seem to be moving quite as fast; I haven’t yet had that same career-changing moment I had with responsive design, despite the widely shared and brilliant talk that brought it to my attention. 

One reason for that could be that I now work in a large organization, which is quite different from the design agency role I had in 2010. In my agency days, every new project was a clean slate, a chance to try something new. Nowadays, projects use existing tools and frameworks and are often improvements to existing websites with an existing codebase. 

Another could be that I feel more prepared for change now. In 2010 I was new to design in general; the shift was frightening and required a lot of learning. Also, an intrinsic approach isn’t exactly all-new; it’s about using existing skills and existing CSS knowledge in a different way. 

You can’t framework your way out of a content problem

Another reason for the slightly slower adoption of intrinsic design could be the lack of quick-fix framework solutions available to kick-start the change. 

Responsive grid systems were all over the place ten years ago. With a framework like Bootstrap or Skeleton, you had a responsive design template at your fingertips.

Intrinsic design and frameworks do not go hand in hand quite so well because the benefit of having a selection of units is a hindrance when it comes to creating layout templates. The beauty of intrinsic design is combining different units and experimenting with techniques to get the best for your content.

And then there are design tools. We probably all, at some point in our careers, used Photoshop templates for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices to drop designs in and show how the site would look at all three stages.

How do you do that now, with each component responding to content and layouts flexing as and when they need to? This type of design must happen in the browser, which personally I’m a big fan of. 

The debate about “whether designers should code” is another that has rumbled on for years. When designing a digital product, we should, at the very least, design for a best- and worst-case scenario when it comes to content. To do this in a graphics-based software package is far from ideal. In code, we can add longer sentences, more radio buttons, and extra tabs, and watch in real time as the design adapts. Does it still work? Is the design too reliant on the current content?

Personally, I look forward to the day intrinsic design is the standard for design, when a design component can be truly flexible and adapt to both its space and content with no reliance on device or container dimensions.

Content first 

Content is not constant. After all, to design for the unknown or unexpected we need to account for content changes like our earlier Subgrid card example that allowed the cards to respond to adjustments to their own content and the content of sibling elements.

Thankfully, there’s more to CSS than layout, and plenty of properties and values can help us put content first. Subgrid and pseudo-elements like ::first-line and ::first-letter help to separate design from markup so we can create designs that allow for changes.

Instead of old markup hacks like this—

  First line of text with different styling...

—we can target content based on where it appears.

.element::first-line {
  font-size: 1.4em;
}

.element::first-letter {
  color: red;
}

Much bigger additions to CSS include logical properties, which change the way we construct designs using logical dimensions (start and end) instead of physical ones (left and right), something CSS Grid also does with functions like min(), max(), and clamp().

This flexibility allows for directional changes according to content, a common requirement when we need to present content in multiple languages. In the past, this was often achieved with Sass mixins but was often limited to switching from left-to-right to right-to-left orientation.

In the Sass version, directional variables need to be set.

$direction: rtl;
$opposite-direction: ltr;

$start-direction: right;
$end-direction: left;

These variables can be used as values—

body {
  direction: $direction;
  text-align: $start-direction;
}

—or as properties.

margin-#{$end-direction}: 10px;
padding-#{$start-direction}: 10px;

However, now we have native logical properties, removing the reliance on both Sass (or a similar tool) and pre-planning that necessitated using variables throughout a codebase. These properties also start to break apart the tight coupling between a design and strict physical dimensions, creating more flexibility for changes in language and in direction.

margin-block-end: 10px;
padding-block-start: 10px;

There are also native start and end values for properties like text-align, which means we can replace text-align: right with text-align: start.

Like the earlier examples, these properties help to build out designs that aren’t constrained to one language; the design will reflect the content’s needs.

Fixed and fluid 

We briefly covered the power of combining fixed widths with fluid widths with intrinsic layouts. The min() and max() functions are a similar concept, allowing you to specify a fixed value with a flexible alternative. 

For min() this means setting a fluid minimum value and a maximum fixed value.

.element {
  width: min(50%, 300px);
}

The element in the figure above will be 50% of its container as long as the element’s width doesn’t exceed 300px.

For max() we can set a flexible max value and a minimum fixed value.

.element {
  width: max(50%, 300px);
}

Now the element will be 50% of its container as long as the element’s width is at least 300px. This means we can set limits but allow content to react to the available space. 

The clamp() function builds on this by allowing us to set a preferred value with a third parameter. Now we can allow the element to shrink or grow if it needs to without getting to a point where it becomes unusable.

.element {
  width: clamp(300px, 50%, 600px);
}

This time, the element’s width will be 50% (the preferred value) of its container but never less than 300px and never more than 600px.

With these techniques, we have a content-first approach to responsive design. We can separate content from markup, meaning the changes users make will not affect the design. We can start to future-proof designs by planning for unexpected changes in language or direction. And we can increase flexibility by setting desired dimensions alongside flexible alternatives, allowing for more or less content to be displayed correctly.

Situation first

Thanks to what we’ve discussed so far, we can cover device flexibility by changing our approach, designing around content and space instead of catering to devices. But what about that last bit of Jeffrey Zeldman’s quote, “…situations you haven’t imagined”?

It’s a very different thing to design for someone seated at a desktop computer as opposed to someone using a mobile phone and moving through a crowded street in glaring sunshine. Situations and environments are hard to plan for or predict because they change as people react to their own unique challenges and tasks.

This is why choice is so important. One size never fits all, so we need to design for multiple scenarios to create equal experiences for all our users.

Thankfully, there is a lot we can do to provide choice.

Responsible design 

“There are parts of the world where mobile data is prohibitively expensive, and where there is little or no broadband infrastructure.”

“I Used the Web for a Day on a 50 MB Budget”

Chris Ashton

One of the biggest assumptions we make is that people interacting with our designs have a good wifi connection and a wide screen monitor. But in the real world, our users may be commuters traveling on trains or other forms of transport using smaller mobile devices that can experience drops in connectivity. There is nothing more frustrating than a web page that won’t load, but there are ways we can help users use less data or deal with sporadic connectivity.

The srcset attribute allows the browser to decide which image to serve. This means we can create smaller ‘cropped’ images to display on mobile devices in turn using less bandwidth and less data.

The preload attribute can also help us to think about how and when media is downloaded. It can be used to tell a browser about any critical assets that need to be downloaded with high priority, improving perceived performance and the user experience. 

There’s also native lazy loading, which indicates assets that should only be downloaded when they are needed.

With srcset, preload, and lazy loading, we can start to tailor a user’s experience based on the situation they find themselves in. What none of this does, however, is allow the user themselves to decide what they want downloaded, as the decision is usually the browser’s to make. 

So how can we put users in control?

The return of media queries 

Media queries have always been about much more than device sizes. They allow content to adapt to different situations, with screen size being just one of them.

We’ve long been able to check for media types like print and speech and features such as hover, resolution, and color. These checks allow us to provide options that suit more than one scenario; it’s less about one-size-fits-all and more about serving adaptable content. 

As of this writing, the Media Queries Level 5 spec is still under development. It introduces some really exciting queries that in the future will help us design for multiple other unexpected situations.

For example, there’s a light-level feature that allows you to modify styles if a user is in sunlight or darkness. Paired with custom properties, these features allow us to quickly create designs or themes for specific environments.

@media (light-level: normal) {
  --background-color: #fff;
  --text-color: #0b0c0c;  
}

@media (light-level: dim) {
  --background-color: #efd226;
  --text-color: #0b0c0c;
}

Another key feature of the Level 5 spec is personalization. Instead of creating designs that are the same for everyone, users can choose what works for them. This is achieved by using features like prefers-reduced-data, prefers-color-scheme, and prefers-reduced-motion, the latter two of which already enjoy broad browser support. These features tap into preferences set via the operating system or browser so people don’t have to spend time making each site they visit more usable. 

Media queries like this go beyond choices made by a browser to grant more control to the user.

Expect the unexpected

In the end, the one thing we should always expect is for things to change. Devices in particular change faster than we can keep up, with foldable screens already on the market.

We can’t design the same way we have for this ever-changing landscape, but we can design for content. By putting content first and allowing that content to adapt to whatever space surrounds it, we can create more robust, flexible designs that increase the longevity of our products. 

A lot of the CSS discussed here is about moving away from layouts and putting content at the heart of design. From responsive components to fixed and fluid units, there is so much more we can do to take a more intrinsic approach. Even better, we can test these techniques during the design phase by designing in-browser and watching how our designs adapt in real-time.

When it comes to unexpected situations, we need to make sure our products are usable when people need them, whenever and wherever that might be. We can move closer to achieving this by involving users in our design decisions, by creating choice via browsers, and by giving control to our users with user-preference-based media queries. 

Good design for the unexpected should allow for change, provide choice, and give control to those we serve: our users themselves.