Designing Empty States: The First Screen Users Ever See
Every user meets your product empty before they meet it full. Turning blank screens from dead ends into starting lines — guidance, gradients of emptiness, and tone.
Border Radius Consistency: The Detail That Exposes Rushed UI
Mismatched corner radii are the typo of visual design. Nested radius math, a sane token scale, and why concentric corners feel right.
Whitespace Is Hierarchy: The Cheapest Design Tool You Have
Before color, weight, or size, spacing tells readers what belongs together. Proximity ratios, spacing scales, and why cramped interfaces feel cheap.
Dark Mode Done Properly: It Is Not a Filter
Inverting colors is not designing a dark theme. Elevation flips from shadows to lightness, saturation must drop, and pure black is a mistake. The real checklist.
OKLCH: The Color Space Your Design System Should Have
HSL lies: 50% lightness in yellow and blue are wildly different brightnesses. OKLCH makes lightness honest — and makes generated palettes finally look designed.
Fluid Type Scales: Stop Breakpointing Your Typography
Font sizes that jump at breakpoints are a relic. clamp() plus viewport units give typography that glides between devices — one line per text style.
Optical Alignment: When the Math Is Wrong
Perfectly centered is often visibly off. Why play icons, quotation marks, and rounded shapes need optical correction — and how to train your eye to see it.