This milestone issue (50!! 🎉) is sponsored by UXPin’s Design Value Conference​

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Hi Reader,

Thanks to the 210 of you who voted in the poll last week! Let’s get into the results, a look at a notebook-style personal website, and a free conference that’s coming up at the end of the month.

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📊 The results are in. Which digital design tool won out?

I am not at all surprised to see that Figma won the majority vote from the poll in last week's issue, given that a lot of my newsletter readers probably first found me through my Figma videos on YouTube!

I was, however, surprised to see that Adobe XD users doubled Sketch users. I knew Sketch was being used less and less by design teams though, so I guess this is indicative of many teams making the switch.

It was fun to run this poll via the newsletter! Stay tuned, cos I’d love to do more of them in the future (perhaps about website builders next?)

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🎟️ Register for a free online design conference!

UXPin is hosting a free Design Value Conference on March 29th. It’s an online event for anyone looking to learn more about design operations, scaling design and increasing the impact of design work. It’s a great fit for any designer who wants to create better harmony between design and the business.

You’ll hear from Design Ops leaders at Uber Eats, Sirius XM, PayPal and more in a series of talks. And they’re all in the morning pacific time (so, EU folks: we can actually watch it live!).

Grab your ticket and tune in on March 29th!

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📓 A personal notebook online

I always love seeing how my handwritten font Grayscale is used in projects, but Drew’s site is one of the first I’ve seen that uses Grayscale heavily, so I wanted to showcase it today!

The site opens with an animated waving svg and the text above it at a slight angle. Grayscale is used for the site navigation and headings.

Drew told told me that with the design of the site he was going for a notebook-style feel which is why he picked Grayscale. He really leaned into this with the headings on each article (which he’s called ‘stories’!) being on a slight angle, and wavy svg underlines on his links.

The soft cream background adds to the ‘notebook’ feel as well, and Drew was smart to use a different font for his body text. Grayscale was certainly not designed to be used for body copy!

Being that he’s a product engineer, Drew has of course added a dark-mode switcher to the site which turns it from a notebook to a chalkboard in my mind.

You can read the story of how he built the blog and the tech behind it right here. And given that I opened this issue with a design tool poll I had to ask him what he used to design the site too:

As much as I of course want to celebrate the use of Grayscale (it’s always fun to see a font you created playing a central role in someones design!), what i mostly want to celebrate here is that Drew’s site is a classic personal blog, filled with writeups on things he’s worked on, things he’s thinking about, and documenting his process. Why do personal blogs feel like a rare thing these days? I miss them!

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Huge thanks to the Design Value Conference for sponsoring this issue! Remember to get your free ticket here.

Can’t believe I’ve made it to 50 issues of the Marketing Design Dispatch. Whether this is the first issue you’ve read, or if you’ve opened every single one, or somewhere in between; thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this issue, click the heart below to let me know.

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See you next week,

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