Resources

Things I actually use.

A mix for what you need next, books I return to, and the software I rely on to teach, design, and ship.

Listen + watch

A creative mix for what you need next.

Answer a few quick questions and I’ll build a six-part mix of podcasts, talks, and videos for the creative problem in front of you.

1 of 3 · About 30 seconds

What would help right now?

Books

Four books I’d start with.

One each for visual craft, usability, customer conversations, and positioning.

Thinking with Type

Ellen Lupton

The clearest bridge I know between typography rules and the decisions you make in an actual layout.

Good forYou’re learning typography and want principles for hierarchy, spacing, and real layouts.

Don’t Make Me Think

Steve Krug

The fastest reset for a product that has started making people study the interface instead of use it.

Good forYou’re improving navigation, scanning, or a lightweight usability-testing practice.

The Mom Test

Rob Fitzpatrick

A practical correction for customer conversations that produce compliments instead of evidence.

Good forYou need interviews that reveal real behavior, pain, and commitment.

Obviously Awesome

April Dunford

A concrete way to position a product around familiar alternatives and the value only you can claim.

Good forYour product works, but customers cannot see how it differs from familiar alternatives.

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More books, grouped by what they help withCraft, creative practice, motion, usability, and research.11 more

Craft + systems

Typography, composition, visual systems, and the decisions behind them.

Grid Systems in Graphic Design

Josef Müller-Brockmann

A rigorous case for treating the grid as a design decision—not a cage or a layer of cleanup.

Graphic Design: The New Basics

Ellen Lupton & Jennifer Cole Phillips

A visual foundation for stronger choices with type, color, grids, hierarchy, texture, and form.

The American Printer

Thomas MacKellar

A field manual that makes typography physical: type, presses, proofing, and the whole printing shop.

The Laws of Simplicity

John Maeda

A small book about the expensive work behind making complex things feel simple.

Creative practice

Idea generation, motion, and production.

Graphic Design Thinking

Ellen Lupton, editor

A working catalog of ways to get unstuck: define the problem, generate ideas, and turn those ideas into form.

Designing Interface Animation

Val Head

A guide to using motion to explain change, preserve context, and make interfaces easier to understand.

Motion Design Toolkit

Austin Shaw & John Colette

A production-minded guide to timing, keyframes, 3D space, compositing, editing, and professional workflow.

Product + research

Usability, behavior, research methods, and better product decisions.

The Design of Everyday Things

Don Norman

When people struggle with a product, the interface—not the person—is usually where the diagnosis should begin.

Laws of UX

Jon Yablonski

A practical map from familiar psychology principles to concrete product and interaction decisions.

Universal Methods of Design

Bruce Hanington & Bella Martin

A practical catalog of 125 methods for research, synthesis, ideation, prototyping, and evaluation.

Hooked

Nir Eyal with Ryan Hoover

A model of triggers, actions, rewards, and investment—and a prompt to ask when retention becomes manipulation.

Software

The stack behind the work

The tools I reach for most often to move from a visual decision to something built, reviewed, and live.

Figma

Interface design

Where I teach interface systems, work through visual decisions, and hand ideas enough structure to build.

Codex

Design + engineering agent

Where loose product questions become code, browser review, and shippable changes without losing the thread.

GitHub

Source control + collaboration

The project history, review layer, and public record behind the things I build and ship.

Next.js

Web framework

The foundation under this portfolio and most of the product surfaces I ship publicly.

Supporting tools

Supabase

Database + product backend

My usual path to Postgres, authentication, storage, and enough operational visibility to run a real product.

Vercel

Hosting + deployment

Preview deployments, production releases, analytics, and the feedback loop between a branch and a live URL.

Motion

Interface animation

The animation library underneath DriftKit and my preferred way to make interface movement feel physical.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Visual production suite

Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and After Effects handle the visual production work beyond the interface.