Over the last few weeks, I’ve been quiet on my social media channels, and that wasn’t by mistake. I have been struggling with imposter syndrome and insecurity as I tried to find for the best ways to respond to the murder of George Floyd, the numerous recent acts of senseless police violence and racism, and a much longer history of racism.

Like all of us, when I want to help take on any large problem, I started by listening to the people most affected and sat down with Black, Brown, Indigenous and/or LGBTQ+ friends, co-workers, and members of the community. Those conversations led to a lot of self-reflection, and it became clear that one of the impactful starting points for change will only come when we truly hear voices other than own to understand their experiences and perspectives.

To help more people hear these voices and perspectives, I am joining #ShareTheMicNow.

This campaign started in early June, with famous white women handing over their social media platforms to black women for the day. The intention is to magnify Black women and the important work that they’re doing to help address the problem that when the world listens to women, it usually defaults to listening to white women.

I am joining this movement because as I look across the landscape of the companies I work with and the numerous global events I speak at, I see the same problem. If we are all honest, there has never been an equal playing field because companies and events default to listening to white men who dominate leadership positions, board seats, and event stages. After all my conversations, I think that being a white ally means getting out of the way, making space for Black, Brown, Indigenous and/or LGBTQ+ people to set the vision and stepping up to support that work in ways that are meaningful for them. It has also made me very aware that since the beginning of the podcast, my voice has been the only one anyone has ever heard, and there is no better time to change that.

I have sent out personal emails and posted open invitations in a number of online design communities inviting any Black, Brown, Indigenous and/or LGBTQ+ people to create episodes of The Crazy One podcast sharing their insights, experiences, and perspectives with no involvement from me.

I’m happy to say that there are already two episodes in production that will be released when they are ready in the coming weeks, and there are more in the works.

In addition to these episodes, I will not be accepting any new public speaking engagements for the foreseeable future and will be passing those opportunities on to Black, Brown, Indigenous and/or LGBTQ+ speakers. I will continue to work with producers of all design events to have more diverse speakers and attendees and will no longer speak at any event which is not making real changes. I will continue to work with collaborators who can help the CEOs and leadership teams I work with to have more diverse leadership, organizations, and hiring practices. Finally, I will continue to only mentor female and/or Black, Brown, Indigenous and/or LGBTQ+ led start-ups.

Today, more than ever, it is NECESSARY that other leaders, podcasters, speakers, influencers, and any member of the design and creative communities join #ShareTheMicNow to create unifying actions centered around Black, Brown, Indigenous and/or LGBTQ+ lives, stories, and calls to action.

Design is in my DNA. A lot of people say things like that but as the son of a Creative Director and a soft sculpture fabric artist, who had his design education start when I was just two years old in the basement of my childhood home, its true. My father and I would write my storybooks and then create all the handset type and linoleum blocks we needed to bring the story to life on an antique letterpress. That education continued when I was 12 years old when I started to follow in my father’s footsteps on the path to becoming a Creative Director by working as a designer in his advertising agency cutting Rubylith and doing paste-up key art before there were even computers. I know things like that date me horribly, but it was a magical childhood that gave me a massive head start on my career.

Then it was off to college, and afterward, I was carving out a nice career in advertising when one client changed my life — American Airlines on September 11th. I had been helping to lead their advertising when that day happened, and over the following years, the team and I worked with them to find a new way forward for the company, a new voice for their brand and new ways to help them find the revenue to stay out of bankruptcy. That work helped me realize that for me building a brand was a much more interesting challenge than building an advertisement for a brand.

I loved that work, but I decided it was time for a change and the past 12+ years I’ve built and led in-house design teams for Starwood Hotels and Citi. Those teams and the resulting body of work let me rewrite my bucket list more times than I can count. I’ve been able to work with Apple on multiple projects including creating one of the featured apps for the launch of Apple Watch, and they have featured my work in 10 keynotes, 4 TV commercials, the Human Interface Guidelines on top of other honors like having one of my designs chosen as one of the world’s 100 best apps.

I loved being able to build the empowered design teams who were creating this world-class work and who were changing the course of the companies we worked for. During this time I also started to speak at more design conferences to share what I had learned, but I became very aware that our success as an in-house team seemed to be the exception and not the rule. I couldn’t understand why since I felt like creatives have the opportunity to affect business like we hadn’t seen since the Industrial Revolution. I started to share and teach more about how to empower design teams, become better leaders, be more creative and be more effective through my The Crazy One podcast and speaking engagements.

I could see it was having a positive effect, but there was still a massive opportunity to help to weave together all of the methodologies, processes, information, and tools that are available to design teams into a comprehensive strategy that would elevate the business impact of design within every company. I am very excited to share that I am joining InVision as the Head of Design Transformation to take on that problem.

Why InVision?

Creating a strategy to elevate the business impact of design within every company is an incredible opportunity and a massive challenge, but I can’t think of a company better positioned to take it on than InVision. At first, given the innovative work I was doing, I was drawn to their focus on bringing design-driven innovation to every company. My admiration grew as over the years as I saw that they were doing two critical things.

The first is their investment and commitment to the design community through things like the Design Leadership Forum, Design Disruptors and IBM Loop documentaries, their investment in Design Education, and more. The second is their roadmap and investments that have been more in tune with the needs of the design community than anything I have seen from other companies. You can see it in everything from their recent acquisition of Wake to help tackle the issue of design visibility, to the launch of Design Systems Manager to support complex needs in building and sustaining digital design systems, to the creation of InVison Studio to give designers a new design tool that they will give away for free, and much more. This combination of their commitment to the design community and innovative tools empower design teams to have a greater impact and do better work. These things made me and so many others a huge fan and supporter of the brand.

When it came time to think about making a change in my career, their CEO ‘Clark from InVision’ (who is real) was one of the first people I reached out to for advice but the ensuing conversations as nothing like what I expected. He started by simply saying “Tell me what it is you love to do, and let’s figure out how we can help you do it a more often.” As we talked it quickly became clear that we both saw the same challenges and opportunities in trying help elevate the business impact of design within every company. What I didn’t expect was the end of the conversation when he asked me if it was a challenge I would like to lead for InVision and if I would write up a job description for this new team and position. That one talk led to a lot more and now this new chapter in my career.

Empowering designers and creatives

I have spent most of my entire career as a Creative Director so some people have been surprised by this new direction in my career. I see it as a natural extension of the work I have been doing over the past 12+ years trying to empower design teams and elevate the role of design in some of the world’s best companies.

My team and I will start out working with InVision’s Enterprise clients who are over 80% of Fortune 100 companies and over 3,000 Enterprise customers globally which not only gives us the unique opportunity to see how the best operate, but also gives us access to work with nearly all of the world’s leading companies and emerging startups. We will consult and help teach those teams about things like design transformation and cultural change, design leadership, design best practices, and even more tactical things like how to build and implement a digital design system. Even though we are just starting out, I am lucky to already have a team of incredibly talented design leaders and experts from companies like NASDAQ, LinkedIn, Lego and others.

I am not going to go on this journey alone as I will be partnering with Aarron Walter, VP of Design Education. While we will both have our groups, we will both focus on design practices, and empowerment with Aarron focusing on how to bring that information to as many people as possible and I will focus on how to bring that information to teams in more of a one-on-one consulting style model. We will be using assessments models that will help designers and teams better understand the current state of their skills and that will then lead to helping them learn new practical skills, connecting them to other design leaders, and helping to draw attention to the incredible work of their teams. We will each have our own unique expressions of this core approach and feel this is going to be something very new and unique for our industry.

I could not be more excited to start this next chapter in my career with InVision. Design and the modern creative process are changing so quickly that we want to learn from you, work with you and share the work you’ve done and the things you’ve learned. If you are interested, please reach out to me ( stephengates@invisionapp.com ) as will all go further and faster together!

I’ve been talking at design and creative conferences of all sizes for a while, and during that time I noticed one thing always stays same — the format. I stand on stage and try to cram as much information as I can into my allotted time, trying to leave as much time as I can for questions at the end and then stay afterward in the lobby outside the auditorium as long as I can after the session to answer as many questions as I can.

On the one hand, the audience is getting useful information, but on the other hand, that information was generating a lot of questions as they tried to figure out the best way to apply it to their jobs and companies. I knew I had to rethink this conference format after one of my session at Adobe MAX last year when I stood in that hallway answering questions for nearly 2 hours.

I am excited to announce that I am going to pilot this new approach to my talks at HOW Design Live in Boston on Tuesday, May 1st with a two part format.

The first part will be a traditional 45-minute talk at 11:15 am on May 1st called ‘In-house powerhouse: Creating empowered in-house creative teams’ which will share everything I know about the challenges, insights, and strategies I have found to be successful for in-house design teams.

After that session, we are going to do something different where I am giving the control of the next 30 minutes completely over the audience for an ‘In-house Design Therapy Session.’ You can submit the questions you want to be answered and then everyone can vote on them to see which ones will be answered in the session. This new format makes sure that I will answer all the questions that people want to know about and make sure that they are walking away and making the biggest impact they can on their team and company.

I got things started with some of the questions I get asked most often but submit and vote on the questions you need answered for all things in-house design here — https://sdgates.canny.io/how-design-live

I talk in episode 43 of The Crazy One podcast about one of the ways I do to keep myself out of creative slumps is to constantly look for new tools to help my creative process. This means that I am downloading, trying and then deleting about 98% of what I try out. Over the past few years Evernote has remained my go-to Swiss Army knife for my creative process but over the past year I’ve found myself falling out of love with it but I wasn’t sure why. In the last month, I’ve finally found a new tool that solved my frustration and re-energized my process. It just took a little digging and self-reflection for me to finally see why Evernote wasn’t working for me.

EVERNOTE: Some new but too much old

I love Evernote because it lets me capture inspirations, insights, and ideas anywhere on any device which is perfect because you never know when inspiration will strike. And I’ve come to realize that is where Evernote really shines — in that initial moment when you just need to capture something simple and small. But over time I came to realize that I found it difficult to then work up those ideas because as its core the application is nothing more than a word processor. Yes, you can have multiple “documents” all available within the app, and, yes, they added the ability to draw in the all, but if you have ever used it you know it isn’t very good.

This revelation sent me back to the drawing board and back to the process that works best for me — Post-it notes. For me, concepting is at its best when it is free, fluid, and dynamic where I can draw on written and visual inspiration to work up my ideas. The Evernote word processor interaction construct wasn’t letting this flow happen, and it is what was frustrating me. I just hadn’t taken the time to look at why it wasn’t working but this old interaction model wrapped in a cloud that made it feel like something it wasn’t.

MILANOTE: POST-ITS 2.0

About a month ago my search for an Evernote replacement took a new turn thanks to a tweet from Mihajlo Vucetic who turned me on to a new app called Milanote which bills itself as “the notes app for creative work”. It comes as either a web version or Mac desktop app and it struck me a little strange that ther ewas no iOS but we will get to that later in the article.

I downloaded the desktop app to try it out and my initial response was a little like the first time I downloaded Sketch. You get a large blank canvas where you can add four different elements (notes, images, lines and links) that can then be grouped in columns and all your content can be housed in boards that create as many unique work space as you want. It seemed too simple on the surface with only 6 things to choose from but when you start to dig in and use it you see that the simplicity is deceptive.

You can use the links and image to create a mood board that is visual and combine it with other boards to add depth to areas of your concept. You can use the notes like Post-It notes that you can jot down ideas, group them together, find themes and then work up those themes into more refined ideas. For my podcast I set up a whole new workflow where I create multiple columns including ‘raw’ that are for show ideas that are not much more than a show title concept, ‘rough’ where I have started to block out the show, ‘needs polish’ where I like the structure but I just need to polish the flow, ‘ready to record’ for shows that I need to record and ‘done’ where I can archive the shows after they are done. Each show is then its own board that I can click into and get the entire working flow. I use columns for the sections of the show and then fill each column with the notes that are the points I want to talk about.

It’s that flexibility that I came to realize makes all the difference for me. When I was freed from that tired word processing interaction model by the open interface where I can put images or notes into one object that I can then work with like a new age Post-It note feels new but so familiar as I’ve done it for years with actual Post-It notes. I’ve found that I have created 2 or 3 times more shows working this way than I did in the past and it was been incredibly energizing.

NOT THE COMPLETE PACKAGE… YET

It isn’t all sunshine and roses as the application is still in its infancy. The biggest problem for me is what I mentioned in the intro that there is no iOS app and the web version does not work on Safari for iOS. For someone who lives and does 90% of his concepting on his iPad Pro this is a HUGE problem. As you work with it more you also start to see other little things that would be good for the app and some of the things I’ve submitted include copying columns between boards, a color picker to select specifics colors for boards and columns, select multiple notes or columns and then have the app distribute/space them evenly, zoom in and out of boards and more.

They are very open about what is on their roadmap and give users the ability to help shape what they should work on through voting on upcoming features (iOS app is #1). I increasingly find that I will only take a chance on apps that are this transparent with their roadmap and I will give them credit because there is a help chat window built right into the app and every time I wrote them with a question or comment about what I thought the app should do they got back to me with the next 6 hours every time and were always open to my thoughts.

BUT even in spite of these big hurdles to the way I have done things I thought there was more than enough to get me to believe in their vision and subscribe to a year of Milanote. You can sign up for Milanote for free and try it out with 100 notes to get you started to see if you like it.

FINAL THOUGHT

I love what they are trying to do. It isn’t perfect but as an industry, we all need to step up to embrace and financially support the people who are willing to take these risks. Our tool sets have to evolve off of these old constructs and too often we sit back, judge, pointing out what is wrong, complaining when something is a 99 cent app store download and get off the sidelines to stop this. I look forward to seeing what is to come from Milanote as I think they have an amazing start and have made a huge difference in my work.

Disclaimer: You may be tempted to think this is an advertisement parading as an article but I can assure that nothing I write is ever influenced by any of the parties involved, I haven’t been paid by any of them and I pay for all the applications and services myself.

As a foundation to this podcast here are the apps I use, the books I read, the web sites I visit, the people I follow and the video I watch as a starter kit for all creatives to use when listening to this podcast.

APPS: These are the apps that I use every day and cannot live without or create without.

Evernote

Create a project to-do list. Jot down a reminder. Or snap a picture of a sketch. A note can be anything you want it to be. And once you make a note, it’s accessible wherever you go, forever.
About | Download

Pocket

Save For Later. Put articles, videos or pretty much anything into Pocket. Save directly from your browser or from apps like Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite.
About | Download

Flipboard

Flipboard is your personal magazine, the single place for all your interests, used by millions of people everyday. Reading, collecting and sharing stories you care about.
About | Download

AppyGeek

Appy Geek is a specially designed app for technology enthusiasts that lets you track the latest and most relevant topics across technology and innovation.
About | Download

Paper by FiftyThree

Paper is the best way to capture and connect your notes, photos, and sketches. Create checklists, spotlight details in photos, and sketch diagrams with unbeatable speed and ease.
About | Download

Mindly

Mindly helps to organize your inner universe through mind mapping. Give a structure to your thoughts, capture ideas, plan a speech, take notes. It is up to you.
About | Download

BOOKS: These are the books I have learned the most from and find the most inspiring.

GETTING TO KNOW YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality
As the founder and CEO of Behance, a company on a mission to empower and organize the creative world, Belsky has studied the habits of especially productive individuals and teams across industries. Now he has compiled the principles and techniques they share, and presents a systematic approach to creative organization and productivity.
By Scott Belsky — Buy it here

The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice
It isn’t enough to just do your job anymore. In order to thrive in today’s marketplace, all of us, regardless of our role, have to be ready to generate brilliant ideas on demand. The Accidental Creative teaches effective practices that support your creative process.
By Todd Henry — Buy it here

Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day
Die Empty is a tool for people who aren’t willing to put off their most important work for another day. Todd Henry explains the forces that lead to stagnation and introduces practices that will keep you on a true and steady course.
By Todd Henry — Buy it here

FINDING YOUR CREATIVE VOICE

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation — into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture — but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.”
By Ed Catcall — Buy it here

Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice
Louder Than Words offers specific strategies and tactics for uncovering, developing, and bravely using your authentic voice to create a body of work you are proud of, that resonates deeply with others, and that ultimately impacts the world.
By Todd Henry — Buy it here

Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, and allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems.
By Tom Kelley — Buy it here

CAREER GROWTH

Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind
The world has changed and the way we work has to change, too. With wisdom from 20 leading creative minds, Manage Your Day-to-Day will give you a toolkit for tackling the new challenges of a 24/7, always-on workplace.
By Jocelyn Glei — Buy it here

Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career
With wisdom from 21 leading creative minds, 99U’s Maximize Your Potential will show you how to generate new opportunities, cultivate your creative expertise, build valuable relationships, and take bold, new risks so that you can utilize your talents to the fullest.
By Jocelyn Glei — Buy it here

CREATIVE THINKING

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way — and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
By Simon Sinek — Buy it here

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t
As Simon Sinek noticed in his travels around the world, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things. Some of these teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other.
By Simon Sinek — Buy it here

WORK ETHIC

The Nature and Art of Workmanship
This is one of the classic books on craftsmanship and design. In it, David Pye explores the meaning of skill and its relationship to design and manufacture. Cutting through a century of fuzzy thinking, he proposes a new theory of making based on the concept of good workmanship and shows how it imparts all-important diversity to our visual environment.
By David Pye — Buy it here

BEING A CREATIVE IN A CORPORATE ENVIRONMENT

Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace
Originally self-published and already a business “cult classic”, this personally empowering and entertaining look at the intersection between human creativity and the bottom line is now widely available to bookstores. It will be a must-read for any manager looking for new ways to invigorate employees, and any professional who wants to achieve his or her best, most self-expressive, most creative and fulfilling work.
By Gordon MacKenzie — Buy it here

PRESENTATION SKILLS

Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches, How to Guarantee a Standing Ovation for All the Performances in Your Life
In Steal the Show, New York Times best-selling author, top-rated corporate speaker, and former professional actor Michael Port teaches you how to make the most of your own moments in the spotlight. He makes it easy to give your presentations a clear focus, engage your listeners, manage your nerves, play the right role in every situation to give your message maximum impact, and much more.
By Tom Asacker — Buy it here

Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds
Many people have a fear of public speaking or are insecure about their ability to give a TED-worthy presentation. Carmine Gallo’s top 10 Wall Street Journal Bestseller Talk Like TED will give them the tools to communicate the ideas that matter most to them, the skill to win over hearts and minds, and the confidence to deliver the talk of their lives.
By Carmine Gallo — Buy it here

INNOVATION

The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization
Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience managing IDEO, Kelley identifies ten roles people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas while offering an effective counter to naysayers. Among these approaches are the Anthropologist — the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the Cross-pollinator who mixes and matches ideas, people, and technology to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the Hurdler, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation.
By Tom Kelley — Buy it here

BRANDING

The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers into True Believers
It will teach marketers how to align themselves with a specific segment of the population, how to attract and keep new “members,” how to establish a mythology about the company, and how to manage a workforce filled with true believers. The Culting of Brands will reveal the secrets of fierce customer identification and, most important, unbreakable loyalty.
By Douglas Atkin — Buy it here

The Business of Belief: How the World’s Best Marketers, Designers, Salespeople, Coaches, Fundraisers, Educators, Entrepreneurs and Other Leaders Get Us to Believe
The Business of Belief is Tom Asacker’s most compelling — and important — book yet. It will fundamentally change the way you think about your work and your life. Use it as your companion and as a guide in this fast-paced world overwhelmed by complexity and choice.
By Michael Port — Buy it here

BLOGS/SITES: These are the sites I read every day, use for reference and inspiration.

99u

Visit the site

A List Apart

Visit the site

Digiday

Visit the site

This is what inspires us

Visit the site

Quartz

Visit the site

PSFK

Visit the site

Fubiz

Visit the site

The Next Web

Visit the site

Smashing Magazine

Visit the site

Creative Bloq

Visit the site

Highsnobiety

Visit the site

RGA Futurevision

Visit the site

UI Garage

Visit the site

Digerati

Visit the site

Pttrns

Visit the site

Designer Hangout

Visit the site

CONFERENCES: I have attended A LOT of conferences but these are the one I return to every year.

99u

The 99U Conference is a one-of-a-kind live experience that inspires creative professionals to bring their ideas to life and shape the future of the industry. Learn from the world’s top thinkers and doers in a series of main stage talks over two days. 99U speakers offer pragmatic, real-world insights that transcend creative sectors.
Find out more here

Adobe MAX

Where thousands of designers, developers, and business leaders will come together to learn new skills, discover the latest technologies, and discuss emerging trends. Learn directly from industry and Adobe experts and connect with peers from across industries.
Find out more here

CLASSES: The online classes I have found to be worth the time and money.

IDEO U

There’s no shortage of challenges to tackle in the world. IDEO believes the world needs more creative leaders to solve these challenges. IDEO U is an online school where anyone can unlock their creative potential through design thinking and collaboration. As a part of IDEO, an award-winning global design firm that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to helping organizations innovate and grow. IDEO U takes a similar approach to online learning.
Learn more

PEOPLE/COMPANIES TO FOLLOW: The smartest and most creative people I follow on Twitter.

Scott Belsky

Founder of Behance, 99U. Author of Making Ideas Happen
Follow him on Twitter

Todd Henry

Author of The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, & Louder Than Words
Follow him on Twitter

Simon Sinek

Author of Start With Why & Leaders Eat Last
Follow him on Twitter

Eric Snowden

Adobe Senior Director of Design
Follow him on Twitter

Mike Stern

Apple Design Evangelist
Follow him on Twitter

Jennifer Aldrich

InVision UX & Content Strategist
Follow her on Twitter

Sina Mossayeb

Explorer. Fabulist. Designer at IDEO
Follow him on Twitter

IDEO

Global design company and creator of Design Thinking
Follow them on Twitter

Facebook Design

The designers, content strategists and researchers who shape Facebook
Follow them on Twitter

InVision

A prototyping, collaboration, and workflow platform for designers
Follow them on Twitter

Designer Hangout

The Ultimate UX Community of 8,000+ on Slack
Follow them on Twitter

Google Design

The designers, content strategists and researchers who shape Google
Follow them on Twitter

Playbook

One place for all the best design thinking
Follow them on Twitter

PODCASTS: The smartest and most inspiring podcasts I listen to every week.

TED Radio Hour

A journey through fascinating ideas, astonishing invention and new ways to think and create. Based on riveting TED Talks from the world’s most remarkable minds.
Listen now

The Accidental Creative

Shares how to build practical, everday practices that help you stay prolific, brilliant and healthy in life and work.
Listen now

Start With Why

This podcast exists to deepen our understanding of The Golden Circle so we can better harness the power of Why.
Listen now

Adventures in Design

America’s only daily morning talk show for creatives exploring the reality of trying to live your creative dreams.
Listen now

WATCH: Some of the best talks that I think are essential for every creative to watch.

Start With Why

Simon Sinek | TEDxPugetSound
Watch the video

Making Ideas Happen

Scott Belsky
Watch the video

Why Leaders Eat Last

Simon Sinek | 99u
Watch the video

How to Overcome the 3 Fears Every Creative Faces

Christoph Niemann | 99u
Watch the video

Quieting the Lizard Brain

Seth Godin | 99u
Watch the video

The Art of Book Design

Chip Kidd | TED
Watch the video

Your Work is a Gift

James Victore | 99u
Watch the video

If You Don’t Understand People, You Don’t Understand Business

Simon Sinek | 99u
Watch the video

How to Get People to Follow You

Simon Sinek | Inside Quest
Watch the video

Over the past few years the demands on my time have steadily increased and as a result, I find that I’m rarely able to write the more in-depth articles I really want to for this blog. Most of my writing consists of my weekly inspirations which are an important part of my process but I hate being reduced to someone who is just passing on the creativity and experiences of other people.

At the same time, I’ve always been aware of the fact that I am a designer by profession and a writer by necessity. I love writing but I love speaking at conferences and teaching more. So a podcast seemed like a natural next evolution of this site. It’s also selfishly important for me because I’ve learned that when I feel like my process is stagnating or I am not able to be as creative as I want to be then I have to blow up my process and do something different.

So I thought I would do something new and launch this podcast to be able to go in more depth on the subjects that really matter to me like creativity, leadership, innovation and design. I still plan to write some article for the this but feel like the podcast is a forum where I can share a lot more of my experience with everyone.

I already have the first three episodes done which consist of a quick introduction to the show, an episode looking everything I have learned about creativity and the first of a two-part show on leadership. I have another 20+ shows mapped out and some of the topics will be things I can cover in a single episode and some of them I will cover in 3 or 4 episodes that I will release all at once.

You can listen and get the show notes on my website or click the links below to subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music.

You can listen and subscribe now on Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, Sound Cloud, Pocket Casts and TuneIn.

You can check out the show notes and listen to more episodes here.

It is a great time to be a designer because the number of apps and plug-ins to help you with your workflow is exploding right now. I wanted to start writing a new series to highlight the best one’s I find. I am going to let the content dictate the timing of these pieces since have no idea if there will be enough content to write it every month or not — we will see. Here are the best new apps and plug-in I've found this month.

SKETCH TOOLBOX

Sketch Toolbox is a simple but fantastic tool that works as a plug-in directory and manager for Sketch, It is a stand-alone application that lets you see all the plugins you currently have installed but also lists out all the currently available plug-ins. This makes is really easy to search and install new plug-ins when you read about them without having to search all over the place. It is currently in Beta and have a lot of enhancements coming soon.

Price: Free
Get the plug-in here

SKETCH RUNNER

Runner helps you to get around Sketch quicker by giving you an intuitive interface to supercharge your daily workflow. Stop searching through your menu & start running commands directly from your keyboard. It has five different options of run, goto, insert, create and apply. Run lets you quickly search through all available plugins and Sketch menu commands. With goto you can jump to any page, artboard, group or layer in your document. If you are tired of looking through your symbols panel use jump to insert and start typing to see matching results. The create command lets you quickly define symbols and shared styles from your current selection. Apply recognizes which layer is currently selected to list you all your shared styles. It is still in beta is a powerful tool to make navigating large files much easier.

Plug-in for: Sketch
Price: Free
Get the plug-in here

CHECKPOINTS

Checkpoints let’s you save important stages of your artboards so you can then keep working and jump back to that point if you new design direction doesn’t work out. You can keep up to three of these checkpoints and is a nice way to be able to work through a number of ideas quickly and safely.

Plug-in for: Sketch
Price: Free
Get the plug-in here

FORNEA

Fontea is a plug-in that gives you access to all 700 Google fonts in Photoshop (and soon in Sketch). Working with Google fonts in design apps has always been a pain for me so I love this and how simple it is to integrated it into your Photoshop workflow.

Plug-in for: Photoshop
Price: Free
Get the plug-in here

RADIAL PROGRESS BAR

This plugin for Sketch makes it super easy to create circular progress bars. It generates nice clean vector paths that you can style however you want. You can enter the radius, progress percentage, line width, a background and with or without rounded ends.

Plug-in for: Sketch
Price: Free
Get the plug-in here

TAILOR

Tailor is iOS app that lets you stitch your conversations, websites, emails, and more. Just take a few overlapping screenshots and the Tailor app will automatically detect them and create one long, seamless image. If you need to take screenshots from a prototype or want comps for your portfolio it is a huge time saver.

Price: Free
Get the plug-in here

In a world where people now officially have a shorter attention span than goldfish (serious — read this) bite-sized information often trumps a good book. But I still believe that you constantly have to keep seeking out new ideas and perspectives so you can keep evolving your palette on creativity, design and everything that touches your creative process. I have found the ability to develop your palette is an essential skill that goes constantly overlooked because people think that their talent alone is enough to create great ideas or designs. I think that would be true if we were just creating art for art’s sake but since we are creative designs and experiences that are going to be used by other people we need to start with a constantly evolving context of what else those people are experiencing. It gives you a measuring stick and insights into what works and what doesn’t. It gives your palette context. You can then use your palette to know when you have created an idea that stand out from the crowd. But you also have to understand that this cycle consumption and developing your palette never stops no matter how long you have been in the industry. It has to continue because your palette has to be constantly evolving to keep up with changes in society, psychology, technology and design. I have seen many great creatives who think that they know it all or that they don’t need to keep up this constant evolution are the ones who quickly find their work and their careers in the dumpster.

You also have to understand that no book, article or tweet is ever going to be a silver bullet to great thinking and creativity. This is because all of this new information is great but all it will do is give you a way to evaluate your creative process not revolutionize it because every single person has a different way that they connect the dots in their process. So it’s up to you to take these new insights / perspectives and figure out how to apply them to the way you create ideas.

With so many books out there how do you know which ones are any good? This is a list of the books that I always keep on my iPad, I re-read the most and are the ones that I give to my teams to read.

GETTING TO KNOW YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS

One of the biggest challenges I find with leading creatives is all levels is that very few of them really understand their creative process and know how to summon their best creativity on demand. These books are my favorites on how to get to know and strengthen you creative process.

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality
By Scott Belsky — Buy it here

Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day
By Todd Henry — Buy it here

The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice
By Todd Henry — Buy it here

FINDING YOUR CREATIVE VOICE

Once you understand you creative process then the next part is having the ability to express and sell your ideas through a unique perspective. These books are my favorites on how to find and use your voice to be a more effective creative and leader.

Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice
By Todd Henry — Buy it here

Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
By Tom Kelley — Buy it here

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
By Simon Sinek — Buy it here

CAREER GROWTH

Even if you understand and can express your ideas managing your career is a whole different problem. These books are my favorites on how to make the most of your career to be able to do the type of work and get the types of opportunities you really want.

Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind
By Jocelyn Glei — Buy it here

Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career
By Jocelyn Glei — Buy it here

LEADERSHIP

The world desperately needs a lot more people who really understand how to lead and inspire creative teams to do great work and overcome the political challenges that can stand in the way of that work seeing the light of day.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
By Ed Catcall — Buy it here

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t
By Simon Sinek — Buy it here

WORK ETHIC

The reality is that there is no substitution for hard work in being successful. This book by David Pye is my favorite on understanding the nature and art of the workmanship that you need to put into your craft,

The Nature and Art of Workmanship
By David Pye — Buy it here

BEING A CREATIVE IN A CORPORATE ENVIRONMENT

Many people find a huge challenge when they go to work on a client-side creative team because there are just a lot of different challenges than you will find working in an agency. This book by the late Gordon MacKenzie is one I re-read at least once a year because it is a simple and funny reminder of how to overcome the hairball of corporate creativity.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace
By Gordon MacKenzie — Buy it here

PRESENTATION SKILLS

Over the years I have had to put a huge amount of work into becoming a great public speaker because it is a skill that did not come naturally to me at all. These are my favorite books on how to become a better and more effective public speaker.

Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches, How to Guarantee a Standing Ovation for All the Performances in Your Life
By Tom Asacker — Buy it here

Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds
By Carmine Gallo — Buy it here

INNOVATION

Innovation is another subject where a lot of people talk about it but few people really understand how to actually create and launch innovative ideas. This book from IDEO looks at the 10 different types of people who you need on any project to be able to get to real breakthrough on a regular basis.

The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization
By Tom Kelley — Buy it here

BRANDING

Finally here are two books that I really like about how to create stronger and more resonant brands that can really connect with consumers.

The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers into True Believers
By Douglas Atkin — Buy it here

The Business of Belief: How the World’s Best Marketers, Designers, Salespeople, Coaches, Fundraisers, Educators, Entrepreneurs and Other Leaders Get Us to Believe
By Michael Port — Buy it here

I would love to hear from you about it there are some other books that you really love, have gottena lot out of or have seen have a positive on your team. Feel free to tweet @sdgates any of those books so I can add them to the list.

I think one of the best features of Sketch is their vibrant plug-in community who continues to work to create new functionality and features that you can add to the application. But the problem is that when you go to the Sketch Extensions / Plug-ins page all you can do is search for a plug-in by name. So with no reviews or ability to even sort by downloads how are you supposed to know which ones are any good and how do you know if you are missing out on any really great plug-ins? I wanted to share a few of my favorites but also put the question to Twitter and with the help of Sketchapp TV and Sketch Hunt heard from a lot of other Sketch users on their favorites. So here are what I think are the 10 best Sketch plugins that I use and love every day.

CRAFT

If you are only going to get one plug-in for Sketch make it Craft from Labs by InVision. I say that because Craft isn’t just a single plug-in but a suite of plugins that lets you design in a really elegant and seamless way using real data. For me the ability to use or dynamic data is really important since most of my designs are structures that will by populated with dynamic and ever-changing content once they go live. Craft includes Photos, Type, Duplicate, Styles, Craft Manage and Prototype.

Photos: Photos lets you import photos from Dropbox, a private folder, Google or my favorite Unsplash which lets you choose a color or category it will randomly select a photo for you. It is a great way to easy import the photography you want or try out different colors and visual densities to be sure you design will hold up to dynamic photography.

Type: Type can also pull content from Google or you can use the Samples functionality which will create dynamic names, headlines, articles, dates, currency, email, countries, cities or addresses for you. So the days of having to Greek in the names of your entire family into a layout are over as you can select a page full of name fields and have the populated with dynamic content in just one click.

Duplicate: Maybe I am too old school but it I need to create and align a number of items in a design I copy and paste the item so I have the right number on the screen and then use the vertical and horizontal distribution and alignment tools to get them to line up the right way. Duplicate makes it much easier than that as you just select the item and then specify if you want vertical or horizontal, the item count and the gutter spacing to create all the items in just one click.

Styles: As someone who runs global design teams we always have to take our designs and create re-usable style guides for colors, type, text styles, etc. for other teams who we are collaborating with or who are going to base their own on what we have done. It is always a huge pain as someone needs to go through and create this document and keep it up to date. Styles will do all the work for you with a single click and put the results on a new page in your document. It makes the process incredibly easy and I even use it as a check to be sure my colors and typography are consistent throughout my entire document since anything that strays can easily be seen and fixed.

Craft Manager: Craft Manager is the plug-in manager that will let you activate, deactivate, and update all your plugins directly from your desktop.

Prototype: Coming soon and more detail is explained below.

It is available for Sketch and Photoshop but the Sketch version has the Styles which does not exist in the Photoshop version.

Price: Free
Get the plug-in here

SILVER (coming soon to Craft)

Shortly after I wrote my article called “Prototype Within Sketch with Silver” it was announced that Silver has been bought by InVision. This is why when you download Craft you will see it say “Prototype coming soon”. I have had access to the private beta since that article and it is a nice way to prototype but I didn’t find it as easy to use as Adobe XD or as powerful as Principle.

Price: Still in private Beta testing but coming soon to Craft
Learn more about the plug-in here

ANIMATEMATE

AnimateMate is a plug-in that lets you produce and export simple animations straight out of Sketch. Animations are all done with keyframes that you can refine with easing, organize them in a text view, offset animation when you need to apply alterable or overlapping values to layer animations and even use random animation data. You can then export the animation as an animated GIF or PNG sequence. It isn’t a replacement for After Effects but it is a nice tool when you need to create simple animations to illustrate a concept.

Price: Free
Get the plug-in here

DYNAMIC BUTTONS

One big downside of current design applications is that none of them have responsive elements that will resize or adapt to the amount of text in a button or the column size of a design. The Dynamic Buttons plug-in looks to fix that problem by letting you create buttons that automatically adapt to keep the padding you defined in the properties without any extra effort. In simple terms buttons automatically expand based on the text they contain with a preset padding. It makes creating buttons really simple and is a much bigger time saver than you might think.

Price: Free on GitHub
Get the plug-in here

SEGMENT CIRCLE (Updated to 2.0)

It doesn’t come up that often for me but when I need to create circles with a custom number of points/segments/lines it is a huge pain the butt. I have to get out a calculator, take the total radius, divide it by the number of segments I need and then sit there and rotate lines at the resulting angle until I get what I need. The Segment Circle plug-in was just updated to 2.0 and it makes that so much easier as it lets you creating variable values pie chart segments, perfectly spaced dashed circles and tick mark graphics to get the exact graphic you need.

Price: Free on GitHub
Get the plug-in here

FIND AND REPLACE

Everyone has had ‘find and replace’ functionality in every word processing program since the dawn of computers so it might not sound like much of a great plug-in — until you need it. As someone who has had a client change the name of a product, forget to add a trademark or any number of other text problems this simple feature can be a huge time saver when you need it. It finds text in selected layer(s) and all layers contained within — and replaces it with different text.=inlcuding the ability to do partial, case-sensitive and full-document matching.

Price: Free on GitHub
Get the plug-in here

SORT ME

This is another one of those simple plug-ins that sounds so simple but can make things much easier if you work with really complex design documents. The Sort Me plug-in will sort artboards and layers by name which makes cleaning up and organizing large document so much easier.

Price: Free on GitHub
Get the plug-in here

SKETCH PALETTES

As someone who works on well-defined brands one of the things thats always frustrating is having to keep a document open that has all of the brands colors available while I am designing so I am sure all the values are correct. I have fixed that problem by using the Sketch Palettes plug-in that lets you save and load colors into the color picker. This way I can keep those brand colors saved and easily pull them up when I start working on a new design.

Price: Free on GitHub
Get the plug-in here

SKETCH MEASURE

Sketch Measure is a great plug-in to quickly measure the size of any object, measure the spacing between objects, create notes and get properties like fill or border color, object opacity and shadows. It is all done through keyboard shortcuts that you can customize so it works exactly the way you want it to.

Price: Free on GitHub
Get the plug-in here

NOTEBOOK

If you work in a studio with multiple designers or even designers in multiple locations then you know how important it is to be able to document and put notes into your designs. The problem is that this isn’t something that is easy to do within Sketch but the Notebook plug-in will help you fix that problem. It lets you add, order, realign, edit, delete, reset and update your comments through a customizable sidebar. This is only plug-in on this list that isn’t free though. It will cost you anywhere from $4 to $60 depending on the features and level of support you want.

Price: $4, $8 or $60 depending on features and support levels
Get the plug-in here

Originally published at blog.stephengates.com on March 17, 2016.

The 10 Best Sketch App Plug-ins was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I thought we would start off the new year by looking at some new tools you probably have never heard of. After years of Photoshop being the only horse in the design tool race, we saw a host of new apps and Photoshop starting to losing its popularity among designers. Its market share was mainly lost to Bohemian Coding Sketch but also saw the rise of more real-time design and prototyping with tools like InVision. It looks like this is only going to accelerate in 2016 with a whole new crop of contenders trying to grab a place in our application dock and break into the mainstream design workflow consciousness. Here are 9 new or soon to be released tools you should keep an eye on in 2016.

Adobe Project Comet

Last year at MAX, Adobe announced their newest digital design app which is temporarily called Project Comet that is a digital design tool they are building from scratch. Comet lets you start by designing your app or website using multiple artboards but you can then wire together those designs into a working prototype. It sounds simple but having your design tool and prototyping tool finally exist within the same application is simply fantastic. I think it’s the most promising design tool on the horizon and can say that because I have hands-on experience with the Project Comet as I was lucky enough to be chosen as an alpha tester for the app. The beta will be available in the first part of this year and I will have a lot more on it after it launches.

Platform: Mac
Price: Included in your Creative Cloud membership when it launches
Explore Project Comet here.

Principle

I’ve previously written about Principle and it’s still my favorite digital design prototyping tool. Check out the article for all the details but Principle makes it easy to create richly animated, interactive UI designs with a level of finesse and complexity I have not been able to find in other tools. I also love that the development team is actively working to make enhancements to the app, the team is very willing to listen to users about what they want to see in the app, it has an active community on Facebook and a few sites are springing up with good tutorials and sample code.

Platform: Principle has a 30 day free trial period and is $99 to purchase.
Price: 30 day free trial period and is $99 to purchase.
Explore Principle here.

Atomic

The other tool that I think is really interesting is called Atomic. Just like Principle, Atomic lets you quickly create prototypes, craft the motion of those prototypes and preview it on a device. But Atomic adds a few interesting features including a version history to let you rewind to a previous version, with collaboratively with other designers and lets you share your prototypes through links. There are two drawbacks to this product though as it is only browser-based which means there is no way to use the tool offline and it only works in Google’s Chrome browser.

Platform: Google Chrome browser
Price:You can start using Atomic for free and then can upgrade functionality for $15, $25 or $35 a month with the best functionality unlocked at $25 a month which is pretty steep compared to other tools in its class.
Explore Atomic here.

ProtoSketch

ProtoSketch is the first desktop-class graphic design tool I’ve found for the iPad. It’s a vector design tool that lets you create everything from illustrations to digital designs quickly and on the go. I like it because the number of tools, the level of control and built-in libraries make it feel much more like a desktop class app than anything else I’ve used. I also like that when you are done you can export your work as ProtoSketch, SVG, PDF, PNG or JPG files. It also obviously works the best on iPad Pro where you can really use the larger screen to design on.

Platform: iOS / iPad
Price:$8.99
Explore ProtoSketch here.

Fuse

Fuse is one of the more interesting new tools as it is a UX tool suite that developers and designers use to create native, cross-platform mobile apps for iOS and Android. It will let you do real-time previews simultaneously on multiple devices, it uses hardware acceleration, and has native UI’s for iOS and Android. The two most interesting things are that there is an experimental drag and drop Sketch importing feature and it outputs real native code for iOS and Android (though I haven’t had an engineer I trust test the code quality yet). It is important to understand that even though this tool says it was created for designers and developers it is mainly targeted at developers or designers who really know how to code as there is no WYSIWYG interface to create your works — it all has to be done through code.

Platform: OS X and Windows
Price:Free
Explore Fuse here.

Floid

Floid is a rapid prototyping tool for any platform and device (Web, iOS, Android). Its feature set isn’t that different from a lot of other apps already in the market where you can import Sketch or Photoshop files, see your prototypes in real-time on a device, use shared animations, create animated GIF’s of your work or export the prototype as HTML. It will be interesting to see if they will be able to develop functionality for the app that will differentiate it from other products which it will need to survive in this ever more competitive market.

Platform: Mac
Price: Free trial and $69 to purchase which is reasonable given its toolset.
Explore Floid here.

Ceros

Ceros is content creation software that seems to be more targeted at marketers than designers since you can great things like infographics, ebooks, microsites, magazines, and banners. You can start by bringing your assets into the design part of the app where you can use canned animation and effects to bring them to life. You can them publish your content and get your own URL or can embed it in your existing website. You can finally use their analytics to see how the content performs and make enhancement based on that performance.

Platform: Web browser
Price:Unknown. You have to a live demo to find out more about the app and pricing is not listed.
Explore Ceros here.

Figma

Figma is a bit of a mystery as it hasn’t hit its preview release yet but it is a cloud-based software that allows you to collaborate on interface design projects from the idea to the ready-to-ship product. The interesting feature they are working on is that the app will let you collaborate on a design on real-time so multiple people would be able to design at the same time on the same design. This feature seems like it could either be useful for something like a group working session or it could be a complete nightmare if you are working on it with the wrong person. You can go to their site and sign up to reserve your spot for the preview release now.

Platform: Web browser
Price:Free during the preview release with pricing coming later in the year
Explore Figma here.

UXPin

UXPin is a web-based all in one design tool that lets you wireframe, design, prototype, present, collaborate and manage your design process all from one place. It is clearly the most ambitious of all the apps in this list as it is trying to be a 360-degree solution for the entire design studio workflow. I haven’t been able to play with this tool as much as I would like but it did seem like if you were willing to invest in learning how everything works and would change the process of your studio it could be a viable tool. I really want to run a full project through the tool to see if it can really stand up the stress of the challenges of a big design project. I would also really like to see if the presentation, testing, and design management tools are robust enough to be used by a serious design studio. I will find the time soon to work through it and will do the follow-up as a standalone article.

Platform: Web browser
Price:You can start using UXPin free for 7 days and then it’s $17, $26 or $44 a month with the best functionality unlocked at $26 a month which makes this the most expensive tool o.n a yearly basis that I’ve looked at.
Explore UXPin here.

Originally published at blog.stephengates.com on January 6, 2016.

Best New Digital Design Tools You’ve Probably Never Heard Of was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.