Every tool decides how expensive a mistake should be. Most of them decide badly.

The best tools are patient. They don't ping, they don't pull, they wait to be picked up.

A red number in a corner is a small lie about urgency. Here is what I use instead.

Four years in, the hardest part of working alone isn't the work. It's deciding what the work is.

I stopped selling hours. Now I sell afternoons, and clients understand them better than I expected.

I spent a year sketching every interface on grid paper before opening a design tool. Some notes on what changed.

Why I put notes beside the text instead of at the bottom, and what the old books got right.

Tram 28 is slow, loud and always full. It is also the most honest progress indicator in Lisbon.

Most people never change a setting. That makes whoever picks the default the most powerful designer in the room.

I check email twice a day and answer on Thursdays. The world has not ended yet.

My first drafts are for me. The second one is where I find out what I actually think.

Lisbon's azulejos are a lesson in systems: one small square, repeated until it becomes a façade.