A designer who writes.
Fresh ideas about craft, clarity, creativity, and personal growth, as well as updates on my projects, media recommendations, and links to all the weird and delightful things I find on the internet.
Here’s what I want to say: Good fucking riddance you shitty fucking year. And I did say it, I’ve thought it and written it. Fuck you you bullshit arbitrary unit of time! Like this: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tiina Menzel (@therese_nothing) Because it was bad, right? It seems like everyone’s … continue
Sometimes when I share writing from old newsletters or other publications, I make the date in the WordPress CMS match the original publication date, so as to appropriately place it chronologically if someone goes on a deep-dive into my stuff. I could have done that for this…made the date January 1, 2021 or something. But … continue
Some of the most insidious design advice ends up sticking around because it sounds true. Or clever. Or both. I suppose this is true of all bad advice. One particular piece of true-sounding, clever-sounding, and ultimately dangerously-reductive advice that irks me is the trope that compares good interface design to a good joke. You might have seen it in this form: A user interface … continue
I’ve lost track of where this question came from. Based on my writing workflows and where I found this long-neglected draft, I’m ~80% sure this is an expanded and clarified version of an answer I gave extemporaneously during an event Q&A. Regardless, while content audits and migrations are not my unique area of expertise, I’ve … continue
What do I tell people who tell me they dream of being a UX writer someday? (You’d be surprised how often I hear it.) Well, here’s what I just told someone who wrote to me: My tippy-top advice when someone tells me they want to be a UX writer someday is to make damn sure … continue
I had a chance recently to meet and chat with folks from the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC), a UK-based organization. As this was an audience I hadn’t previously connected with, I took it as an invitation to assemble some greatest hits, if you will, from all of the various presentations, office hours … continue
This essay originally appeared as Issue 102 of the UX Writing Events newsletter on September 26, 2022. I’ve written and deleted at least three drafts of this issue. Draft being a generous way to describe them. Ranty rabbitholes, meandering messes. I started writing about how feedback on your writing from stakeholders shouldn’t be taken as literal instructions, … continue
Folks seem to like my latest bit of advice for aspiring designers: Learn Thinky Things. I coined this advice (with an unconscious assist from Marc Maron, I suspect) as part of an off-the-cuff remark during UX Content Office Hours. Someone asked whether content designers need to learn Figma, a popular tool for front-end design. I shared my response as a … continue
This excerpt originally appeared as part of Issue 100 of the UX Writing Events newsletter on September 12, 2022. Would you lookie there?! Issue 100! Gotta say, it felt a little ambitious to go with a 3-digit number when I started indexing these issues, but we made it! Just 899 to go until the curse … continue
This was originally shared as Issue 099 of the UX Writing Events newsletter on September 5, 2022. It’s Labor Day in the United States today, where I live. I never thought much about what Labor Day meant, growing up. You’d get the occasional news item about the origin of the weekend, or recounting the story … continue
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