tl;dr #015
The one where you'll have to click to find out...
And just like that, it’s December again. Surprise! Highlights? Kicked some touchdowns, celebrated birth-yays and the designer formerly known as ‘intern’ became Brig.
But we can’t stop thinking about all the people who don’t read this newsletter. We can’t get them out of our heads — imagine them all, just out there, just living their lives, not even knowing. Charl can’t sleep. It consumes him. Hey. Here’s an idea. And no pressure if you don’t want to, but it is Holiday Season…
#graphic-design-is-my-passion
Dispatch, or the handover from design to development, is often a fraught process where much can be lost in translation. We’ve spent years iterating on our process to try and get it right but we’ve still not cracked it yet (if you know the secret to a perfect dispatch, let us know and we’ll hire you?).
We’ll do a deeper dive in the future, but this week we’ve been thinking about how we divide designs down into components to align with Shopify’s best build practices in 2022. In this system, components are Sections (blue) or Blocks (red). Sections are the larger components that make up a page, and they contain Blocks which can be added and reordered.
It’s a small change but if we can all use the same language (clients included), we all be on the same page component, and avoid confusion. These small iterations add up over time to make dispatch a way better time.
#code-city
In the past week or two, Nerds have been hyping about Hydrogen. As a non-Nerd, all you need to know is that it’s been pretty build-ups in Slack. There have been a lot of exclamation marks. We had to ask for some explanation so that fellow non-Nerds can learn/build meaningful relationships/give Nerds a chance. Turns out prehistoric Nerd Dérg is going to be writing an article about that soon… Isn’t that enthralling? He’s doing the job his-self! Here’s what we know so far:
Not sure about you, but we probably still have batter life on our old 3310s. Share this newsletter and cash in on the clout that comes with Derg’s hot take.
#vibe
In these highly partisan times, following a year not yet willing to close the book on civil unrest, there are certain topics that should not be discussed if a copasetic office environment is to be preserved. Politics. Religion. Vaccine mandates. Possums.
This fortnight it was reported that scientists from Otago were looking into using gene splicing to eradicate possum populations. This would represent a considerable new policy direction for the NZ government, which currently uses 80% of the world’s supply of 1080 (a metabolic poison) on the little critters, and then let’s school kids play with the bodies.
This fortnight at LAM battle lines were drawn. In one corner, Mona, “I-think-possums-are-cute” Malamiri, and in the other corner Adnaan, “I-support-the-eugenic-destruction-of-all-quadrupal-diprotodonts-marsupials” Narot.
Both sides have their arguments. In Adnaan’s defence, possums are an introduced species to Aotearoa, New Zealand, that eat just so much stuff that they shouldn’t, like Kiwi eggs. New Zealand gave Australia Neil Finn and Russell Crowe, Australia returned the favour with a tuberculosis-carrying tree rat which costs the NZ economy about $95 million annually because it just can’t help infecting the agricultural industry whilst breeding like crazy, and one time took a lady hostage.
In Mona’s defence, they have small hands like little people and really big eyes.Of course there is a third party in all this - the insouciant (i.e the remainder of the LAM team).
Our official line on possums is:
“Here at Love + Money, we understand that the wellbeing of possums is a highly politicized issue. That’s it.”
#processes-and-platforms
What is a process? What is a platform? What is life? These are the questions we’ve been thinking about a whole lot in completing this section of tl;dr. Simply, a process is something that allows us to practice what we love (and what you love to see). The platform is where we do the thing, in this case, a Substack. We digress…
We found a really cool file in the Figma community for setting up and previewing Instagram posts on different mobile device sizes.
And if there’s a particular device that you’d like to comment on, you can do it with Figma's comments update, which makes comments much far more visible. We’re liking them so far.
We also found a gold standard in describing processes and platforms. Miss Excel is a Tik-Tok-er/Instgrammer that makes spreadsheet formulas fun. We’re working on some high quality video content like this too, so expect innovative choreography, infectious dance-trends, and like, more learning.
Always Beta, Baby.
tl;dr
A weekly newsletter by Love + Money.
Copyright © 2021
All Rights Reserved
Love + Money Agency
”Melbourne, VIC”
-
Love + Money acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land in which we work and pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging.