
The Best Articles, Videos, and Newsletters in Design
The most useful articles, videos, and newsletters in Design from around the web, curated by thought leaders and our community.
Refind focuses on timeless pieces and updates the list whenever new, must-read articles or videos are discovered.
Top 5 Design Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved in Design by Refind users in 2026 so far.
Videos
Watch a video to get a quick overview.
An AI artist explains his workflow
How it works — and why it takes a surprisingly long time to make something good.Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://...
Japanese web design: weird, but it works. Here's why
Japanese website design looks weird. But, they work just as well as other websites around the world. Why is that? I mean, they're information dense, cluttere...
What is ...?
New to Design? These articles make an excellent introduction.
What is a picture?
If we want to understand what a picture is, then we must look at the difference between perception and imagination.
A gentle introduction to Domain Driven Design
Starting into DDD is hard, even though it’s heavily praised by their practitioners. This article introduces the topic, gently.
A beginner’s guide to Design Tokens
Learn the basics of what design tokens are, how they’re used, their benefits, and some tools and resources to get you started.
The Woman Who Theorized Color: An Introduction to Mary Gartside’s New Theory of Colours (1808)
Shared by 1371, including Marcos, Jennifer Ouellette, Tamsen Webster, Message Strategist (she/her), Gabriele
How to ...?
How to get started with hand-lettering
Earlier this year, I pushed out a tweet about my desire to be a beginner again, learn something new and took a particular interest in hand…
How to create a perfect home-office desk
Gretchen Hansen, founder and CEO of the online interior design company Decorist offers advice for getting your best work done at home.
Trending
These links are currently making the rounds in Design on Refind.
Designing A Streak System: The UX And Psychology Of Streaks — Smashing Magazine
What makes streaks so powerful and addictive? To design them well, you need to understand how they align with human psychology. Victor Ayomipo breaks down the UX and design principles behind effective…
Labubus to burkinis: V&A unveils updated 21st-century design galleries
Museum’s revitalised galleries bring together 250 objects to show how design shapes modern life
LukeW | AI Enables As-Needed Software Features
In traditional software development, designers and engineers anticipate what people might need, build those features, and then ship them. When integrated into a...
The New Business Case For Design Systems
What you need to know about how to track and communicate the value of your design system
Usability, Accessibility, and Inclusivity
Usability makes your product easy to use. Accessibility removes barriers so everyone can use it. Inclusivity ensures it's designed for the full spectrum of human diversity from the start. Together, they form the backbone of human-centered design: an approach that puts real people at the heart of every decision. Think your design checks all the boxes? Discover how these three principles work together to create products that don't just function but connect, empower, and truly serve everyone.
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in Design—all under 10 minutes.
Why is quality so rare?
The modern world has made huge advances in knowledge, technology, and skill. We can build faster than ever. We know more than ever. Yet quality still feels so rare. So many things feel unfinished,…
An Holistic Framework for Shared Design Leadership
“The relationship between a Design Manager and Lead Designer isn’t about dividing territories. It’s about multiplying impact. When both roles understand they’re tending to different aspects of the …
Systems, Stables and Stars
Why mature organizations still rely on rockstars for critical work, and how systems raise the floor while stars raise the ceiling.
«Raising the floor and raising the ceiling are completely different problems that need completely different solutions.»
Design Leadership in the Age of AI: Seize the Narrative Before It’s Too Late
Design is changing. Fast. AI is transforming the way we work — automating production, collapsing handoffs, and enabling non-designers to ship work that once required a full design team. Like it or…
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in Design.
New Front-End Features For Designers In 2025 — Smashing Magazine
Searching for the most flexible front-end workflows and toolkits, it’s easy to forget how powerful some of the fundamentals on the web have become these days. This post is a journey through new front…
Designing for the Eye – Optical Corrections in Architecture and Typography
The Nuberodesign Blog
Cognitive load is what matters
There are so many buzzwords and best practices out there, but let's focus on something more fundamental. What matters is the amount of confusion developers feel when going through the code.
Why I’m Giving Up My Design Title—And What That Says About The Future of Design
Suff Syed, former Head of Product Design, announces his shift to a technical role, arguing that design has been commoditized in the AI era while technical depth is now where innovation happens. He…
Thought Leaders
We monitor hundreds of thought leaders, influencers, and newsletters in Design, including:
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. Picking only a handful of links means focusing on what’s relevant and useful.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets the most relevant links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, mark as read, read later, «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Who are the thought leaders in Design?
We follow dozens of thought leaders in Design, including Oliver Reichenstein, swissmiss, Cory LaViska, Meng To, zeldman.
Missing a thought leader? Submit them here
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to [email protected]
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Keep Learning
Learn something new, guided by experts. Deep Dives are carefully hand-curated series of time-tested articles and videos from around the web.
Get the big picture on your favorite topics.



















