I joined the company as the first full-time employee and, over five years, tried on multiple roles — from product design to strategic planning. I helped the product evolve from an idea to a market-ready service, went through one pivot, and gathered a lot of insights along the way. Here’s what I learned — I hope these lessons help you avoid common mistakes in your own journey.

This week, I found myself surprisingly invested in the great modal drawer debate. A perfect reminder that even the smallest UX choices spark strong feelings. In this issue, you’ll find smart takes on notifications, a neat CSS image grid trick, and a peek at design careers without the usual fluff.

Ever wondered where that bold, slab-serif “college look” comes from? It goes way back to mid‑19th century Ivy League sportswear. Harvard’s baseball team embroidered an “H” on their flannel jackets in 1865, making them the first varsity-style letter sweaters.

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect with external data sources, tools, or systems. This makes them much more useful by allowing them to do things like run code, manage files, and interact with APIs.

Welcome to this week’s Unicorn Club. If you’re as fascinated by those subtle CSS discoveries as I am, don’t miss Chris Coyier’s journey into animation-composition and stacked transforms. It’s a good reminder that sometimes the ‘aha’ moments come from just digging into how things actually work, not just following docs.

Let’s be honest for a second. Most “free Lightroom preset” packs are garbage. They’re either a bait-and-switch for a paid bundle, or they’re so over-the-top they make your photos look like a cartoon parody from 2014. As a designer, your eye is trained for nuance, for balance, for an aesthetic that communicates something. Slapping a garish, one-size-fits-all filter on your work just feels… wrong.

Learn how to create an interactive 3D text effect where letters explode into dynamic shapes using Three.js, WebGPU, and Three Shader Language (TSL).

Welcome to this week’s Unicorn Club, and a quick shoutout to the 29 new readers who joined us. You’re in good company.

Scroll-driven animations are great! They’re a powerful tool that lets developers tie the movement and transformation of elements directly to the user’s scroll position. This technique opens up new ways to create interactive experiences, cuing images to appear, text to glide across the stage, and backgrounds to subtly shift. Used thoughtfully, scroll-driven animations (SDA) can make your website feel more dynamic, engaging, and responsive.

Sales teams are under more pressure than ever to do more with less. In 2025, AI tools to book more meetings have gone from nice-to-have to mission-critical. These tools don’t just save time—they personalize outreach, schedule calls faster, and help you close more deals with less human effort.