Adobe Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat now available for free on ChatGPT (5 minute read)
Adobe has integrated free versions of Photoshop, Adobe Express, and Acrobat directly into ChatGPT, allowing users to edit images, apply effects, design cards and animations, and modify or merge PDFs through natural language prompts, with optional manual controls and the ability to open fully layered projects in Adobe's web apps. The features are available today on desktop, web, and iOS (Express on Android now, Photoshop and Acrobat coming soon). Adobe plans to expand these capabilities further in the coming weeks.
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Google Photos Launches New Video Editing Tools (2 minute read)
Google Photos has introduced new video editing features, including specialized templates with preset music and text overlays for quick highlight reel creation on Android devices. The update features a redesigned video editor with a universal timeline and an adaptive canvas. It is now available on both Android and iOS. Users can select templates, add their chosen photos and videos, and Google Photos automatically generates a video synchronized to the music's beat.
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Instagram's design tweak opens a massive can of worms (3 minute read)
Instagram's first navigation update since 2022 has sparked strong backlash, not because of the buttons themselves but because users feel it reflects a deeper problem: the platform keeps drifting toward a TikTok-style algorithm of viral videos instead of prioritizing posts from accounts people actually follow. Many see the changes as part of a broader trend of social platforms homogenizing around short-form viral content, leaving users nostalgic for Instagram's earlier, photo-focused, community-driven era.
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How “Saving Two Minutes” as a Designer Can be Huge, Depending on Scale (6 minute read)
A Lead UX Designer streamlined a B2B workflow, saving employees 2 minutes per task, which translates to 500,000 hours saved monthly across 10,000+ users completing the task 50 times daily. Designers often miss how scale amplifies impact—a medium-priority issue affecting one million users on a homepage typically warrants higher priority than a critical issue affecting only 800 users in profile settings. Mapping user workflows as funnels helps designers identify where problems occur in the user journey and calculate which fixes deliver maximum business value when resources are limited.
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The Five Most Important Lessons for All Designers (3 minute read)
Scott Berkun reflects on his books How Design Makes the World and Why Design is Hard, sharing five core lessons that underpin both. These lessons include: someone must pay for quality improvements, discussing "quality" resonates better with leaders than "design", decision-makers with power ultimately determine project outcomes, good design depends entirely on context and constraints, and products are often designed primarily for sale rather than use, creating a tension that explains pervasive UX problems.
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Pantone's new Colour of the Year is giving me existential dread (3 minute read)
Pantone's 2026 Colour of the Year is “Cloud Dancer,” a soft white meant to symbolize calm, reflection, and mental clarity. Many designers are unimpressed, finding the choice bland, bleak, or even recession-like. While Pantone frames it as a serene reset amid digital chaos, online reactions mock its emptiness, arguing that instead of inspiring optimism for the year ahead, the selection feels more like an emblem of uncertainty and creative fatigue.
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Your Online Portfolio (Website)
Carbon is the easiest and fastest way to show off your work. Get your site up and running in minutes, so you can start getting noticed and getting work.
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It's Time to Move to Experience First (9 minute read)
Organizations should adopt an "Experience-First" mindset that integrates business strategy, technology, and design from the outset, rather than treating them as sequential or siloed functions. Previous approaches like Technology-First, Mobile-First, and Design-First each offered valuable lessons, but ultimately remained limited by focusing on individual aspects rather than the holistic customer journey. This integrated approach requires structural alignment across people, business models, processes, and technology, treating the complete experience as the business strategy itself rather than an afterthought.
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Grilli Type's GT Era brings an early Bauhaus chic back to the sans serif (2 minute read)
Grilli Type's new release, GT Era, is Thierry Blancpain's modern reinterpretation of early, characterful pre-modernist grotesks like Venus and Akzidenz Grotesk, designed to balance their warmth and eccentricity with contemporary functionality. After extensive study and refinement of historical curves and quirks, the typeface now works across text and display sizes, with streamlined forms in smaller weights and expressive details in heavier ones, launched alongside a vibrant demo site that helped shape final adjustments, and ultimately intended as a richer, more flavorful alternative to today's overly uniform modernist sans-serif branding.
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How to survive Instagram's algorithm as a creative (5 minute read)
Creator struggling with Instagram's collapsing reach aren't alone—many artists say the algorithm now prioritizes engagement, virality, and even selfies over actual work, leaving creators feeling invisible despite loyal followings. Contributors stress that this drop in visibility isn't personal: Instagram has shifted toward pay-to-play dynamics and unpredictable recommendations, making it a poor source of creative validation. Detach self-worth from metrics, treat Instagram as a simple tool or portfolio, focus on real relationships with clients and peers, and keep creating without letting fluctuating numbers define your talent or future.
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