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- New Look, New Rhythm — Welcome to the New Today in Design
New Look, New Rhythm — Welcome to the New Today in Design
Hunter Hammonds
May 05, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes
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What’s New
A Fresh Start for Today in Design
We’re switching things up. Starting today, Today in Design is moving to a new cadence: instead of daily emails, you’ll now receive thoughtfully curated issues twice a week — every Monday and Friday.
Why the change? We want to give you more value and less noise. With each edition, you’ll get sharper insights, deeper stories, and a better reading experience — starting with this brand-new design we’re debuting today.
Here’s what to expect:
🗓 Monday Edition – Everything you need to start your week: Curated inspiration, up and coming designer highlights, pro tips from the community, fresh tools, jobs, and trending news.
🗓 Friday Edition – A dive into the stories and workflows behind your favorite designers and founders, exclusive interviews, and explorations of the business of design.
We’re also rolling out a new visual identity that reflects where Today in Design is headed — more modern, more focused, and more connected to the design community.
Thanks for being here with us. We can’t wait to show you what’s next.
— The Today in Design Team
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Moodboard | 01 |
@FonsMans
 @FigsFromPlums |  @studio__aaa |
@driceroland
 @colderoshay |  @rileyhennigh |
ARTICLE | 02 |
How we designed the new Today in Design
When we first launched the new Today in Design, the mission was clear: deliver curated, thoughtful design content to provide a creative pulse check for designers. As the newsletter grew, so did its audience, and with that came the need for a clearer, more memorable identity.
The original branding served us well, but it lacked the visual voice that matched our tone: bold, dynamic, and deliberately experimental. Our content reflects both structure and surprise, routine and revelation — and we needed a brand system that could hold all of that.
At the core of the new brand is a clean, sans-serif wordmark. We chose to keep it simple and strong — something that holds up across formats, scales well, and doesn’t compete with the content. Minimalist. Familiar. Almost invisible.
But behind that simplicity is a lot of exploration — dozens of alternate versions, shapes, and directions we tried along the way. We liked them all and couldn’t make peace with letting go of them—as designers tend to. Instead of discarding them, we chose to incorporate them in the final wordmark.
The animated logo variations — where each letter is replaced by a different style — are built from those early drafts. It’s a way of honoring the process. The final logo is clean and minimal, but the variations let us show our working.
To balance the clean lines and strict typography, we also introduced a grainy dither effect across brand assets. It adds texture — a nod to print design and early digital graphics — and gives the system a bit of friction. The contrast between sharp type and soft noise keeps things from feeling too polished. It’s design with edges.
We used Dither — a plugin for Figma to produce these noisy assets. It’s honestly one of the quickest ways to bang these out. So shout out to Mike Bespalov who made it.
Alongside the visual identity, we also redesigned the newsletter itself. The new layout is cleaner and more focused, with more breathing room between sections and fewer distractions around the content. We pulled back on decoration and leaned into typography — clear hierarchy, generous spacing, and simple formatting that makes the newsletter easier to scan, but also easier to sit with.
We’re excited to keep evolving the brand as Today in Design grows — and as always, thanks for reading.
FEATURED | 03 |
Damian Chmiel
“For me, the design process is a lot like playing with LEGO...All the little pieces, neatly coming together, creating something greater than the sum of their parts.”
Damian is a designer who constantly observes the design and technology world from every possible angle. I help people broaden their knowledge, and help clients get the product they want. I like building useful and pretty products, in which the UX is smoothly playing along with the UI, just a perfect combination.
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TID: | What’s a design challenge you’re proud of solving? How did you approach it? |
DC: | The recent Headers Club project: This year, I finally became more active on Twitter after spending 11 years lurking in the shadows. I struggled to find inspiration for my own header, so I launched a simple Framer site showcasing headers from others, a library meant to spark ideas. It gained great traction, and people started paying more attention to the design and feel of their profiles. Later, my friends jumped in to help build a custom site, giving us more freedom to create a better experience. Big thanks to @pugson and @saintjcob, exciting things are coming soon. |
TID: | What’s a design challenge you’re proud of solving? How did you approach it? |
DC: | Sometimes I catch myself thinking, “Why am I stuck?” then I realize I haven’t turned on the music. As soon as I do, the block disappears, just like that. |
TID: | What are the best and worst pieces of advice advice you’ve received as a designer? |
DC: | To be honest, I’ve never really received great advice, mostly bad ones. The worst was being told to intentionally deliver poor designs so the CEO could keep the client around longer and earn more money. That approach didn’t sit right with me. I don’t know how to design poorly on purpose. Everything I create has to meet a high standard. The very next day, I walked into the office with my resignation letter. I couldn’t be part of that mindset any longer. |
TID: | What design trend are you over — and what’s one you’re excited about? |
DC: | Over: Quick trends feel like AI snapshots. Fun for quick learning and exposure. But at the end of the day, it’s another passing wave where everyone’s generating all sorts of things. Cool. But let’s check back in five years and see how individual skills have actually grown. Anyone can open a tool and type a prompt, but can you design that same thing from scratch? / Excited about: I’m genuinely curious about what comes after AI. If technology keeps advancing this quickly, I want to stay excited about where it’s all headed, how tools will evolve, and how and where we’ll be designing in the future. Also curious to see how Paper will stack up against Sketch, Figma, or Affinity. |
TID: | Where do you go when you need inspiration? |
DC: | Pinterest, Cosmos, Twitter, Real Life, Books |
TID: | If you could give your past self one piece of design advice, what would it be? |
DC: | Share feedback as early as possible and explore a wide range of design directions during the initial phase of the project. This helps identify the client’s preferred style early on, allowing everyone to align and focus on refining the details later. |
TID: | Anything we didn’t ask that you want to share with the design community? |
DC: | To young designers: explore A LOT in early stages and enjoy the process. Ask for quick feedback often, and don’t worry about what others might think. Just keep creating and putting out great work. |
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Links We Love | 04 |
PRODUCT NEWS
Raycast finally brings productive minimalism to iOS
Raycast’s Mac launcher has finally landed on iOS, and while it doesn’t replicate the full desktop experience, it brings along AI Chat, Notes, Snippets, and Quicklinks that sync seamlessly with the desktop app. The mobile interface centers around a streamlined “Home” view, allowing users to access various AI models, dictate with Whisper, and pin favorite commands to widgets, Shortcuts, Control Center toggles, or even the Action Button for quick “Ask AI” functionality. Everything is designed for speed: open the app, press the mic, speak, and your conversation is waiting back at your Mac when you sit down again.
EXCLUSIVE DEMO OF PAPER
Stephen Haney gives us a first look at Paper.
Stephen joined Release Notes this past Friday to give us a first look at Paper, the new design tool they’re calling “the new home for designers.”
CASE STUDY
Ambassaden Hotel gets a rebrand by Bleed
Designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, the Ambassaden’s angular modernist stature holds a striking presence in the heart of Oslo. When it opened in 1959, it functioned as the US embassy until its closure in the early 2000s. Fast-forward to today – the building has been reopened and its programming altered.
JOBS | 05 |
