Penpot is Experimenting with MCP Servers for AI-Powered Design Workflows (6 minute read)
Penpot is experimenting with MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers that enable AI assistants like Claude to understand and interact with Penpot design files through secure API requests without exposing user data to the AI. These servers leverage Penpot's design-expressed-as-code approach to enable workflows such as converting designs to code and back, generating documentation, validating consistency, and performing operations via natural language commands. Penpot is seeking beta testers to help refine the MCP server capabilities and explore additional use cases for AI-powered design workflows.
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Mystery AI lab that poached iPhone Air designer revealed (2 minute read)
Former Apple industrial designer Abidur Chowdhury has joined a new AI startup called Hark. Founded by Brett Adcock and funded with $100M of his own money, Hark is quickly hiring engineers from companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon to build “human-centric” AI, though its exact product remains unclear. Most AI hardware efforts have struggled to gain traction, aside from Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses. OpenAI has hinted at future AI hardware without yet revealing what it will be.
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Tailwind Labs Lays Off 75 Percent of its Engineers Thanks to ‘Brutal Impact' of AI (3 minute read)
Tailwind Labs laid off 75 percent of its engineering team after AI tools caused an 80 percent drop in revenue, despite growing usage of its popular CSS framework. AI agents answering developer questions reduced website traffic by 40 percent, preventing the discovery of the commercial component packages that sustain the business. Following the announcement, major tech companies, including Vercel and Google's AI Studio team, pledged sponsorships to support the open-source project.
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The Formula that Changed How I Think About Design (2 minute read)
Design fundamentally shapes behavior by understanding users deeply while controlling their environment through interface choices. Designers have two levers: researching who users actually are, and crafting every environmental detail from button placement to word choice that interacts with users to produce desired behaviors. Social platforms uniquely complicate this model because users become each other's environment, creating emergent behaviors that designers can only indirectly influence through algorithms and guidelines.
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As AI Takes Hold, Designers Should Prioritise Tech's Off Switch (4 minute read)
Designers must now prioritize giving users frictionless control over when technology is active, as consumer fatigue with omnipresent AI grows. Four trends signal this shift: backlash against vague "AI-powered" marketing, demand for clear opt-outs and agency over AI features, sustainability concerns around AI's environmental costs becoming central, and preference for AI that enhances rather than replaces human creativity. "Tech for tech's sake" will decline in 2026 as emotional intention and purposeful design reclaim priority over indiscriminate technology integration.
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When your best work gets tossed (15 minute read)
Design gets sidelined, not because it lacks value, but because the profession never learned to explain its impact in business terms, leaving decisions driven by opinion instead of evidence. To survive and lead, designers must translate user and craft outcomes into revenue, cost, and risk language, while education, organizations, and the industry build systems that make design's business value visible and undeniable.
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10 Low-effort Ways to Get Your Creative Brain Working Again (5 minute read)
This post presents gentle approaches that help restart creative thinking after the holiday break, emphasizing low-pressure actions over forced productivity. Methods include tidying workspaces briefly, revisiting abandoned ideas, doing creative warm-ups unrelated to client work, and changing work locations. Other strategies involve scheduling inspiring events, consuming art in different media, setting short-term tasks, reviewing past work, reorganizing small spaces, and copying admired pieces to ease back into creativity.
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With 210 Brands Active on Roblox, Top Games Have Become the Hot New IP (2 minute read)
Super League has acquired an ownership stake in Hide or Die!, a top-100 Roblox game that has nearly three million daily active users, signaling a strategic shift toward building branded experiences around owned IP. The move follows industry trends, with 210 brands launching Roblox content in 2025, and firms like Gamefam similarly partnering on popular games to create sponsorship opportunities. Super League focuses on investing in proven, revenue-generating properties that can reach Gen Alpha and Gen Z audiences.
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