Trading Photoshop for Sketch 3

With new design and prototyping tools hitting the market every few months, the pace of software development that targets designers is accelerating. While it’s great to see the attention being given to improving software that we as designers use, I’m typically slow to adopt new tools. Maybe I’m set in my ways, but I find the learning curve often outweighs any new power or efficiency gains that I’ll receive.

Of course, there are always exceptions. Sketch 3 from Bohemian Coding is one of them.

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Best Kids Books for a Two Year Old

My son is well into his second year of life. During his first year of life, I wrote about the best books for a one-year-old. He’s now moved on to an entirely new set of books. As he crossed the two-year mark, I saw how the standard elements that defined a good book for him began to change. While thick pages used to be essential, the dexterity of his hands has significantly improved making it easier for him to handle books with thinner pages. And while he previously preferred simple illustrations and short bits of text, he’s now graduated to books with more complex visuals and narratives.

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In Swahili, Tangawizi Is the Word for Ginger

Stories of an intriguing East African ginger beer had been making their way to me for a couple of years. As told by a handful of travelers, the tale was always strikingly similar: hot and sweaty under the mid-day sun, a local guide, or an ex-pat friend, introduced a brown glass bottle with an elaborate logo and a funny name over lunch in a market or neighborhood restaurant. The taste–an intense ginger burn and an explosion of carbonation–cut through the midday heat and the dusty streets leaving a lasting memory. So goes the tale of Stoney Tangawizi.

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