Craftwork
7 March 2025
Craftwork Design Digest #5: Build UIs that don't suck, AI updates, Evolution of BMW design and much more
8 mins to read
Welcome to the fifth edition of Craftwork Design Digest!
Each week, we'll bring you a curated collection of the best design news, inspiration, articles, events, design resources, expert tips and more – all in one convenient place, just for you. Whether you're a designer, creator, or just someone who loves good design, we've got you covered with fresh content to fuel your creativity.
What we found this week
Build UIs that don't suck
2 ways to make your design ideas compelling
Fresh Design Resources
Curated Design Websites
Muse AI – new model for friction writers
Evolution of BMW design over the decades
Runway Gen-3 Alpha
Hunyuan Video
Ideogram 2a
Motion Guidelines at GoDaddy
SUX Network - Resource Collection
Building what customers need, not just what they ask for
In good company: How publishers use Figma to help design the news
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Build UIs that don't suck
A new crash course from Tailwind Labs on how to design beautiful user interfaces. Although the course is aimed at engineers, we think it is also a great resource for designers. Here are some of the details they teach you to pay attention to:
- Fine-tuning click targets for mobile;
- Getting the border radius mathematically perfect on nested elements;
- How to make a table scrollable without cutting off the content with page padding;
- Creating layouts that don't break when the content is longer than you planned in Figma.
2 ways to make your design ideas compelling
As a designer, you can build delightful design concepts, but if none of them gmake it into production, it doesn't really matter. Convincing leadership to dedicate resources to your idea is hard, but designers from Figma, Webflow and Meta shared key tips on how to convince higher-ups and your team of the value of a project:
- Build interactive prototypes in code. With AI, it is now more accessible than ever. A prototype simply provides much more value when you need to convince management to ship your idea;
- A video walkthrough where you walk through a prototype and pitch your idea.
Fresh Design Resources
Curated Design Websites
1. Endex | The autonomous financial analyst
3. Tailwind CSS 4.0 | Rapidly build modern websites without ever leaving your HTML.
Curated
Muse AI – new model for friction writers
Sudowrite announced their pretty exciting model made specifically for friction and by design for authors. It has been trained to write high quality fiction and removed from the filters of usual AI models.
Explore the full articleEvolution of BMW design over the decades
BMW has been making its mark on the automotive world since 1916. It started with early models in the 1920s and became famous for its sporty and stylish designs. Over the years, BMW has created many popular cars, from classic post-war models to modern favorites. This is the guide that takes you through key BMW design milestones.
Explore the full articleRunway Gen-3 Alpha
Runway has unveiled their new AI model for Video Generation. It is a big improvement in fidelity, consistency, and motion over their previous model, and a step towards building general world models.
Explore the full articleHunyuan Video
The Chinese developers don't sleep on AI releases, so they showed off their new Hunyuan Video AI model. With 13B parameters, it's the most powerful open source video generation model available, they claim.
Explore the full articleIdeogram 2a
Another text to video model was released this week. It is specifically optimized for graphic design and photography. The model can generate designs with text and photorealistic images in 10s, or in just 5s with 2a Turbo.
Explore the full articleMotion Guidelines at GoDaddy
Justin Crabtree, Associate Creative Director at GoDaddy, reflects on the value of motion design to the user experience. It's become a focus after the company saw a direct ROI from incorporating motion. However, motion is complex; there is a lot going on behind the final animations that users see on their screens. To ensure consistency in the company's motion, they've created Motion Production Guidelines. It provides a common vocabulary for each designer on the team and clear guidelines for collaboration.
Explore the full articleSUX Network - Resource Collection
The SUX Network’s Resource Collection is a repository with a huge collection of design resources specializing at integrating sustainability into user UX design practices. Here is what you can find there:
- Practical Resources by Design Phase;
- Sustainable User Journey;
- Carbon brainstorming;
- and much more curated resources.
Building what customers need, not just what they ask for
Linear recently released their customer request feature, which allows you to capture feedback from tools like Intercom, Zendesk, etc. In the article, they address the balance between capturing customer feedback and maintaining product vision. While innovative products are often based on intuition rather than direct requests – Steve Jobs famously said that customers don't know what they want until you show it to them – customer insights are still important to refine that intuition.
Explore the full articleIn good company: How publishers use Figma to help design the news
Publishers such as The New York Times, The Economist, and The Minnesota Star Tribune use Figma to improve their news design processes. Figma allows design teams to collaborate, design, and brainstorm at scale with different stakeholders, management, and engineers. It is also great for providing an immediate sense of what colleagues are working on.
Explore the full articleLet us know what you think at hello@craftwor.design, see you next week!
