# Donnie D'Amato > User Experience Architect based in New York, author of Mise en Mode, and international speaker who finds creativity within constraints, bridging design and engineering with thoughtful systems. User Experience Architect based in New York and author of Mise en Mode. I began as an artist making creative interactions and, after two decades of being a maker on the web, found my purpose: building great systems by finding creativity within their constraints, and passing the knowledge on to others. ## Projects - [Personal MCP Server, Live Content for AI Assistants](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/mcp.md): 2026, A remote Model Context Protocol server that gathers my thoughts, projects, and writing in one place, so when people ask an AI to 'behave like Donnie' the answer comes from my actual content, almost like asking me directly without scheduling time with me. - [Mise en Mode, Scoped Expressions & Semantic Tokens](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/miseenmode.md): 2023, A design systems technique that curbs token bloat: instead of minting a new token for every expressive change, it rewires existing semantic tokens within a scope, re-pointing a style value at a generic UI concept inside a boxed part of the experience. - [DAMATO Design System, A Playground for Exploring New Ideas](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/damatods.md): 2022, A personal design system playground for proving the longer-term, less-obvious ideas on their own merits, the ones real projects rarely have room to try. - [Gridless Design, A Reference Site for Layout Without Grids](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/gridless.md): 2021, An educational reference site that helps designers and developers build resilient, responsive layouts by working with the browser's layout engine instead of imposing a print-style grid. - [GoDaddy, UXCore & Semantic Theming](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/godaddy.md): 2019, Lead UXCore, GoDaddy's React design system: replaced statically generated palettes with CSS Custom Properties theming and a semantic Intent token system that themes across 20M+ customers, and rebuilt the component library in place toward composable primitives. - [Compass, UX Engineering & Design Systems](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/compass.md): 2017, Built and grew Compass's design system from a prototype component library into a cross-organizational resource, owned the CSS across Compass.com, and pushed the platform forward with early CSS Grid, a Storybook-to-Sketch pipeline, and web component / React interop. - [willarrive.in, Real-Time NYC Train Arrivals](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/willarrive.md): 2016, A minimal PWA for New York City transit: save a subway line to your device, grant location once, and see the next trains in both directions at your nearest station in real time, with almost no tapping. - [deltazeus, Weather Feed & Passive Notifications](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/deltazeus.md): 2015, A passive weather notification service that sends RSS feed updates only when the weather changes significantly from the previous day. - [Itemize, UX & Frontend Engineering](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/itemize.md): 2015, Hired as Itemize's first frontend engineer, then handed design too: I owned UX and frontend across the product, rebuilding the web app, improving the internal data-entry and analysis tools, helping build a team payment system, and reworking the marketing site. - [NextUp, Tournament Brackets & SMS Automation](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/nextup.md): 2014, A tournament management platform that automated bracket progression and competitor notifications via SMS to reduce manual coordination at gaming events. - [Roxor Games, In The Groove Step Charts](https://donnie.damato.design/projects/roxorgames.md): 2006, Authored roughly 70% of the step charts for In The Groove, the DDR-style rhythm game, across its PC release and arcade-bound sequel, focusing on the demanding doubles charts. ## Decisions - [Avoid z-index Escalation in the System](https://donnie.damato.design/decisions/avoid-zindex-escalation.md): Stacking conflicts tempt teams into an arms race of ever-larger z-index values, 'my thing is more important than your thing', until the numbers are meaningless and overlays fight each other unpredictably. - [Classify Tokens by Intent, Not Just a Value](https://donnie.damato.design/decisions/semantic-intent-tokens.md): Runtime theming opened a large value space, but the real gap was upstream: variables carried almost no classification. A variable held a value yet said little about what it was for, so teams reasoned about them inconsistently and a variable's meaning lived only in the head of whoever defined it. - [Favor the Browser's Native Layout Over a Curated Grid](https://donnie.damato.design/decisions/gridless-layout.md): Designers from traditional backgrounds reach for fixed grids on the web. But overlaying a curated grid onto the browser's own alignment algorithms fights the medium and produces brittle, less accessible layouts. A grid also assumes the designer controls the final rendering, when in practice the user does, through their font size, their zoom level, and the language they read in. - [Grow the System Organically, with Transparency Over Gatekeeping](https://donnie.damato.design/decisions/transparency-over-gatekeeping.md): The traditional design system move is to spot that an organization has, say, 20 different buttons and have experts synthesize them down to a few. The trouble is that the wider org stops trusting decisions that don't account for its needs, so adoption suffers. What has been missing from this work is transparency. - [Prove the Design in Black and White Before Adding Color](https://donnie.damato.design/decisions/usability-before-color.md): A visually appealing interface earns goodwill: the Aesthetic-Usability Effect means users forgive real usability problems when something looks nice, so color can quietly mask a design that does not actually work. At the same time the industry reaches for ever-larger color palettes and treats color as the thing that makes an interface good, when it is closer to the finish than the foundation. - [Render Metadata as Text, Not Interactive-Looking Chips](https://donnie.damato.design/decisions/metadata-as-text-not-chips.md): Tags, type labels, and status markers are non-interactive metadata, yet the common chip/pill treatment (background, border, rounded box) makes them look like buttons. When labels and real controls share the same shape, users cannot tell what is clickable, so they hesitate or avoid the controls entirely. - [Scope Styles to Components, Not Utility Classes](https://donnie.damato.design/decisions/component-scoped-styles-over-utilities.md): Utility-class frameworks promise speed: every style has a ready-made classname, and you compose an interface by stringing them together. But that bargain pushes concrete values into the markup (`border-teal-darkest`), so the same classnames that feel convenient also pin an element to a fixed look and fight a themable token system. Left without a convention, projects also drift into a soup of ad-hoc, colliding classnames (`btn`, `main-navbar` defined many times over) that no longer say what an element actually is. - [Treat Modals as a Last Resort](https://donnie.damato.design/decisions/modals-as-last-resort.md): A modal is the default reach for almost any interruption, but it is often a way to avoid organizing the page: when content has no obvious home, it gets dropped into a dialog that appears on demand. It is also one of the hardest patterns to get right. Focus management, screen reader announcements, and stacked dialogs are all genuinely difficult, and even the native `` does not hand you full accessibility for free. - [Use Nested Modes Instead of New Tokens for Expressive Moments](https://donnie.damato.design/decisions/modes-over-themes.md): Design systems struggle with expressive fragments, like highlighting a premium product on an otherwise uniform page. The instinct is to mint new tokens for each moment, but that bloats the token set and erodes consistency. Figma's 2023 introduction of Variables with Modes sharpened the question, and it's the idea I went on to promote as Mise en Mode at mode.place. ## Journey - [Named Smashing Magazine's Person of the Week](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/smashing-person-of-the-week.md): 2026-06-01, Recognized by Smashing Magazine as its Person of the Week for contributions to the design community across UX, front-end engineering, and education, including the book Mise en Mode and the Undefined live event. - [Published the Mise en Mode Book](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/mise-en-mode-book.md): 2026-05-01, Released Mise en Mode, a book that rebuilds design token architecture from first principles. Its premise: stop adding tokens, start expressing modes. Available in hardcover and EPUB. - [Earned AI and Ethics Certifications](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/ai-credentials.md): 2026-04-01, Completed a set of AI and ethics certifications in April 2026, covering LLM fine-tuning and customization, AI ethics, avoiding AI harm, and ethical considerations in crafting AI identities. - [Began Teaching at the Fashion Institute of Technology](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/fit-teaching.md): 2025-10-01, Joined the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) to teach in its user experience program, guiding students from creative backgrounds through the full arc of an interaction design study. - [Introduced Mise en Mode at Clarity 2023](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/mise-en-mode-technique.md): 2023-10-30, Published the Mise en Mode technique at Clarity 2023, moving semantic responsibility away from design tokens and toward nested, scoped modes so a system can stay consistent while still allowing local expression. - [Founded Design Systems House](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/design-systems-house.md): 2022-10-15, Launched Design Systems House as a brand and platform to host my design systems work and community projects, Tokenpedia, Wireframe, and Undefined among them. - [Design Systems Consulting](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/design-systems-consulting.md): 2022-05-01, Advised teams as a design systems consultant, including engagements with Candy Digital (2022) and Sensible (2023), helping organizations shape token architecture, theming, and component strategy. - [Published Gridless Design](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/gridless-design.md): 2021-07-15, Released Gridless Design, an educational resource teaching designers to work with the web's native layout engine instead of imposing rigid grids. - [Joined the University of Miami as Faculty](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/university-of-miami.md): 2021-02-01, Taught part-time at the University of Miami from 2021 to 2022, continuing to bring design systems thinking and UX practice into the classroom alongside my work at GoDaddy. - [Began Teaching at Parsons School of Design](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/parsons-teaching.md): 2019-12-01, Joined Parsons (The New School) as adjunct faculty in user-centered design, facilitating user research and interaction design courses and framing UX as evidence-driven decision-making. - [Joined GoDaddy to Lead UXCore & Semantic Theming](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/godaddy-principal.md): 2019-08-01, Became Principal on the UX Platform, leading GoDaddy's UXCore component library. Introduced CSS Custom Properties-based theming and the semantic 'Intent' token system supporting accessibility, localization, compliance, and performance for 20M+ customers. - [Founded the Design Systems Practice at Compass](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/compass-design-systems.md): 2017-04-15, Moved from frontend engineer into a UX Engineer role embedded in the design organization, turning repeated prototype work into a shared component library and growing a cross-functional design systems team. - [First Application Role at Itemize](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/itemize-first-app-role.md): 2015-05-15, My first job in application development out of college. I rebuilt a painful .NET UI into a modern web app, redesigned a keyboard-first data-entry experience, and grew into leading engineering hiring. - [Graduated NYIT, BFA & MA](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/nyit-degrees.md): 2014-05-23, Completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (2013) and a Master of Arts (2014) in Communication Arts & Media at the New York Institute of Technology, and was invited back to teach live event production as adjunct faculty. - [Investigator at United Parcel Service](https://donnie.damato.design/journey/ups-investigator.md): 2003-04-01, Before fully landing in the web, I spent 2003 to 2011 as an investigator at UPS, a steady day job while I pursued creative work, the rhythm-game community, and a fine arts degree on the side. ## Speaking - [The Future of Design Systems](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/the-future-of-design-systems-uxdx.md): 2026-05-13, A UXDX panel, moderated by Jim Morris with Alexander Wilson, debating where design systems are headed as AI generates more of the interface layer: from component libraries to the rules, constraints, and infrastructure behind dynamic experiences. - [Agentic Development within Design Systems](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/long-island-technologist-agentic-development.md): 2026-05-07, A Long Island Technologist meetup host presentation with Michael Rispoli on agentic development within design systems. - [Creativity within Constraints](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/creativity-within-constraints-ux-days.md): 2026-04-17, A UX Days 2026 talk for the University of Illinois arguing that constraints, including design systems, unlock richer, more focused creativity rather than limiting it. - [A Pretty UI Does Nothing](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/coak-standup.md): 2026-02-16, A Cause of a Kind 'Stand Up' conversation with hosts Mike Rispoli and Justin Abrams on building trustworthy products: keeping design systems coherent as products scale, the marketplace-of-components idea, and why functionality has to come before aesthetics. - [Don't Tell Typographers](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/dont-tell-typographers.md): 2026-01-22, A Design Engineering Meetup talk at Datadog on typographic fundamentals for the web: the mathematical relationships between letter spacing, font size, line height, and line length, and bringing them into CSS, because just because we can doesn't mean we should. - [Creativity within Constraints](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/creativity-within-constraints.md): 2025-10-30, Converge 2025 talk arguing that constraints, including design systems, unlock richer, more focused creativity rather than limiting it. - [Design Systems, AI, and the Human Role](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/knapsack-patterns-ai-panel.md): 2025-07-23, A panel at Knapsack's Patterns event in New York on building meaningfully with AI: where it creates real value, what foundations make adoption sustainable, how design systems evolve when interfaces become generative, and what must stay human when AI can generate anything. - [Craft Across: Design Tokens](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/craft-across-design-tokens.md): 2025-06-12, A Craft Across panel by Infa.ai with Brad Frost, Samantha Gordashko, and Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent on the future of design tokens: standardization and token bloat, keeping documentation current, AI's impact, and the tools shaping token workflows. - [Design Tokens for Developers](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/design-tokens-for-developers.md): 2025-04-17, A UX Engineering Meetup talk in NYC, hosted by Chromatic (Storybook) and Betterment, on design tokens from a developer's perspective: how to think about them, name them, and wire them into the code that ships. - [Talking Tokens](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/talking-tokens.md): 2025-02-28, A Knapsack 'Talking Tokens' webinar with Jackie Lai (Dow Jones) and Miranda Bouck (Instacart) on token governance and adoption at scale: who owns tokens, how to name them, building from scratch vs. retrofitting, and how AI might reshape token work. - [Inspect & Reflect, Nord Health](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/inspect-and-reflect-nord.md): 2025-02-21, An Inspect & Reflect session by Infa.ai reviewing the Nord design system with Maya Hampton, Davy Fung, Beatriz Martín Martins, and Alexander Wilson: layout components, naming conventions, props vs. slots, and balancing flexibility with consistency. - [Inspect & Reflect, Adobe Spectrum](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/inspect-and-reflect-spectrum.md): 2025-02-07, An Inspect & Reflect panel by Infa.ai reviewing Adobe's Spectrum design system with Guy Segal, Marta Conde, and Francis Thibault: alert banners, search fields, naming conventions, accessibility, and design tokens across products. - [Content in Design Systems](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/content-in-design-systems.md): 2024-12-02, A JPMorganChase panel discussion where experts shared their experiences and tips on creating effective design systems in terms of content variants, taxonomy of elements, and optimizing for findability. - [What is a Component?](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/what-is-a-component.md): 2024-10-07, A lightning talk at the SmashingConf New York 2024 Jam Session, hosted at Figma, on the terminology behind components and why shared units of measurement let teams compare usage and success across systems. - [Design Annotation Live](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/design-annotation-live.md): 2024-09-12, An interview in The Design Annotation LIVE community series with Donnie, founder of Design Systems House, on his journey into design systems, the day-to-day at Design Systems House, and where design systems and AI are heading. - [Design System Token Architecture Planning](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/the-question-token-architecture.md): 2024-09-12, Episode 032 of Ben Callahan's The Question, co-hosted by Donnie D'Amato, working live through the approaches to implementing design tokens in a design system and the challenges each one surfaces. - [Strictly from Nowhere](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/strictly-from-nowhere.md): 2024-07-08, A Strictly From Nowhere episode on founding and bootstrapping Design Systems House: how design systems build consistency and trust, their impact on SEO and accessibility, and the realities of building a business from the ground up. - [State of Design Tokens 2024](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/state-of-design-tokens-2024.md): 2024-04-22, A Supernova panel digging into their State of Design Tokens 2024 report with Jacob Miller and Kathleen McMahon: engineering's role in tokens, the rise of Figma variables, naming and standardization challenges, and code-based sources of truth. - [Do Components Exist?](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/do-components-exist.md): 2024-04-17, A conversational UXDX Community session in New York questioning what a component actually is: whether a card with a button is one component or a composition of several, how patterns and styles shift the definition, and why shared units of measurement make success comparable across systems. - [What's a Component?](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/code-and-pixels.md): 2024-04-16, Episode 15 of the Code & Pixels podcast, where Donnie joins as founder and Chief Architect of Design Systems House to unpack what actually makes something a component. - [Mise en Mode](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/mise-en-mode.md): 2023-10-30, Donnie's Clarity 2023 talk introducing Mise en Mode: organizing experiences through nested modes instead of ever-growing token sets, taking semantic responsibility away from tokens to avoid the 'OnDark' sprawl and keep systems expressive yet consistent. - [The Future of Design Systems](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/the-future-of-design-systems.md): 2023-10-29, A Clarity 2023 panel, moderated by Chris Strahl with Amy Lee and Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent, on where design systems are heading: the convergence of design and engineering, composite tokens, decoupling structure from behavior, AI's emerging role, and systems as organizational infrastructure. - [HTML by CSS](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/html-by-css.md): 2023-10-16, A CSS Club NYC meetup talk at Resobox in the East Village: what if we made HTML by writing CSS? A playful look at pushing CSS past styling into structure. - [Token Operations](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/dsw-day-2023.md): 2023-09-27, A DSW Day 2023 talk introducing 'token operations,' a proposed enhancement to the Design Tokens Community Group format that turns static token values into dynamic ones to serve the most complex systems. - [Theming in Complex Ecosystems](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/theming-in-complex-ecosystems.md): 2023-08-31, A panel on theming in complex ecosystems with Skim Kimball and Mark Reynolds: how tools like Token Studio and Figma Variables are reshaping design and development workflows and the way design and engineering collaborate. - [Config & Design System Updates](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/design-leader-insights.md): 2023-08-16, A Design Leader Insights interview where Alex talks with Donnie about the new Figma features shown at Config, where the design industry is heading, and his advice for design systems. - [Design Systems Field Guide](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/design-systems-field-guide.md): 2023-07-13, Episode 2 of the Design Systems Field Guide, a live Q&A session with special guest Donnie on building and maintaining design systems. - [Complementary Space](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/complementary-space.md): 2022-10-10, A lightning talk at the SmashingConf New York 2022 Jam Session on how designers use space, and how those habits might inform a new design token strategy for spacing. - [UX Untamed, What Does a UX Architect Do?](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/ux-untamed.md): 2022-06-28, A UX Untamed episode with host Julieth Fajardo on what a UX architect actually does: the responsibilities, skills, and career path, and when a team needs one. - [Scaling Your Design Systems](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/scaling-your-design-systems.md): 2022-05-24, A UXDX USA 2022 panel on scaling design systems for alignment across teams, with Alkistis Mavroeidi (KAYAK), Davy Fung (Disney Streaming), and Troy Azmoon (ServiceNow): how the designer's role is evolving and why alignment matters to product success. - [Shifting Towards a Gridless Design System](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/shifting-towards-a-gridless-design-system.md): 2022-05-23, A UXDX USA 2022 talk on moving past the layout grid: how grid-based design limits inclusivity, how to adopt a gridless methodology in an existing system, and why it points to the future of product design. - [Design Systems Social Club #13, Managers](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/dssc-13.md): 2022-05-07, Design Systems Social Club episode on management, leadership, and organizational challenges in design systems teams. - [Design Systems Social Club #11, New Tools](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/dssc-11.md): 2022-03-12, Design Systems Social Club episode exploring new tools and emerging technology in the design systems space. - [Design Systems Social Club #8, Exotic Platforms](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/dssc-8.md): 2021-11-06, Design Systems Social Club episode on supporting 'exotic' platforms in a design system, like TVs, cars, and VR. - [Design Systems Social Club #7, Governance](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/dssc-7.md): 2021-10-02, Design Systems Social Club episode on governance structures and decision-making frameworks in design systems. - [Designing for Scalability](https://donnie.damato.design/speaking/designing-for-scalability.md): 2019-04-24, An NYC Design Systems Coalition meetup talk, hosted by Reaktor, with a live demo of using html-sketchapp and Storybook to automatically generate Sketch symbols straight from coded components. ## Writing - [Lawful Design](https://blog.damato.design/posts/lawful-design): 2026-06-09, The least fun but most required part of our work. - [Conway's Law](https://blog.damato.design/posts/conways-law): 2026-06-01, Reflecting our culture through a transparent lens. - [Eigengrau](https://blog.damato.design/posts/eigengrau): 2026-05-20, Close your eyes, what do you see? - [Tiny toggle](https://blog.damato.design/posts/tiny-toggle): 2026-05-05, Switching between light and dark as lazily as possible. - [The Daily Vibe](https://blog.damato.design/posts/the-daily-vibe): 2026-04-10, No, you didn't vibe design/code a system in a few hours - [Pretext review](https://blog.damato.design/posts/pretext-review): 2026-03-30, Another distraction from improving user experience - [Book Authoring Backstage](https://blog.damato.design/posts/book-authoring-backstage): 2026-03-25, Some behind the scenes notes about book writing. - [Thinking Full Stack](https://blog.damato.design/posts/thinking-full-stack): 2026-03-16, Delegate design decisions to the people who own them - [Avoiding z-index](https://blog.damato.design/posts/avoiding-z-index): 2026-03-13, My thing is more important than your thing - [People's Primitives](https://blog.damato.design/posts/peoples-primitives): 2026-03-03, You crave them but you don't need them - [Chip Away](https://blog.damato.design/posts/chip-away): 2026-02-23, Chip, badge, pill, tag, lozenge, how about none? - [Fit Text Responsibly](https://blog.damato.design/posts/fit-text-responsibly): 2025-12-05, Be careful of the shiny new things. - [Minefield Context Protocol](https://blog.damato.design/posts/minefield-context-protocol): 2025-11-26, Being ahead of the curve can make you a pawn on the field. - [Complementary Space](https://blog.damato.design/posts/complementary-space): 2025-11-16, Design spacing tokens semantically. - [Fluid Headings](https://blog.damato.design/posts/fluid-headings): 2025-10-10, Uniformly reducing headings for smaller screens. - [Storefront & Warehouse](https://blog.damato.design/posts/storefront-warehouse): 2025-10-02, How may I help you today? - [Design Attractors](https://blog.damato.design/posts/design-attractors): 2025-09-26, Chaos theory meets design systems. - [Late start](https://blog.damato.design/posts/late-start): 2025-09-11, Begin counting on your terms. - [My Top 4](https://blog.damato.design/posts/my-top-4): 2025-08-15, If I could only use 4 CSS properties, what would they be? - [Antidatalossconfigurationism](https://blog.damato.design/posts/antidatalossconfigurationism): 2025-07-08, Wrangling text and the CSS behind it all. - [Font size dimensions](https://blog.damato.design/posts/font-size-dimensions): 2025-06-20, Pixels or font size for dimensions, and when. - [Accent Color](https://blog.damato.design/posts/accent-color): 2025-06-10, Personalization causes privacy concerns amongst engineers. - [CSS Only Contrast](https://blog.damato.design/posts/css-only-contrast): 2025-06-04, We've always wanted it, now it looks like we can have it. - [Beer goggles](https://blog.damato.design/posts/beer-goggles): 2025-05-19, You too could be a bored intern and influence a generation of design - [Done with components](https://blog.damato.design/posts/done-with-components): 2025-04-30, Component libraries aren't design systems until people start caring. - [Out of order](https://blog.damato.design/posts/out-of-order): 2025-04-16, CSS does a lot these days, and I argue that it does too much. - [Less Gridless](https://blog.damato.design/posts/less-gridless): 2025-04-09, Maybe the industry has finally figured it out. - [Logical Optical](https://blog.damato.design/posts/logical-optical): 2025-03-27, You don't have to nudge, you can measure instead. - [Defending Tailwind](https://blog.damato.design/posts/defending-tailwind): 2025-03-06, I don't like it, but I get it. - [Avoiding tokens](https://blog.damato.design/posts/avoiding-tokens): 2025-02-24, The importance of disclosing the reasons behind decisions. - [Relearning line height](https://blog.damato.design/posts/relearning-line-height): 2025-02-13, Changing what I thought I knew about typesetting. - [Mixinimation](https://blog.damato.design/posts/mixinimation): 2025-01-30, An absolute mad-scientist method for reusing a collection of styles. - [Interoperable tokens](https://blog.damato.design/posts/interoperable-tokens): 2025-01-16, Exploring a way to make token importing similar in different contexts. - [Your first component](https://blog.damato.design/posts/your-first-component): 2025-01-10, The reason why it is almost always a button - [Two Typographic Tricks](https://blog.damato.design/posts/two-typographic-tricks): 2024-12-19, Modern CSS unlocks some wishful visual treatments. - [Clickable cards](https://blog.damato.design/posts/clickable-cards): 2024-11-08, Everyone does it, and we often do it poorly. - [Storybook iframe tango](https://blog.damato.design/posts/storybook-iframe-tango): 2024-11-01, Yo dawg, I heard you like iframes. Said no one, ever. - [Clarity 2024, Backstage](https://blog.damato.design/posts/clarity-2024-backstage): 2024-09-27, Behind the scenes in the making of Clarity 2024 - [The Hottest Box](https://blog.damato.design/posts/hottest-box): 2024-09-16, Considerations to take when making a layout component. - [Astro RSS MDX](https://blog.damato.design/posts/astro-rss-mdx): 2024-08-18, Showing more love for Astro, now that we can finally render MDX in RSS content. - [Testing is hard](https://blog.damato.design/posts/testing-is-hard): 2024-07-19, A case of libraries getting in the way, and how to find peace with it. - [Button width styles](https://blog.damato.design/posts/button-width-styles): 2024-07-05, Does each style of a button need a blog post? - [On being extra](https://blog.damato.design/posts/on-being-extra): 2024-05-29, Your T-shirt scale isn't scalable - [Screenreader only](https://blog.damato.design/posts/screenreader-only): 2024-04-27, Is this the exception to component-driven development? - [Unicorns on the web](https://blog.damato.design/posts/unicorns-on-the-web): 2024-04-19, Design Engineering is becoming very popular, according to domain registrars. - [Button size styles](https://blog.damato.design/posts/button-size-styles): 2024-04-10, There are lots of ways to size a button, but is there a correct way? - [Wireframe, Backstage](https://blog.damato.design/posts/wireframe-fm-backstage): 2024-03-26, Behind the scenes in the making of wireframe.fm - [The end](https://blog.damato.design/posts/the-end): 2024-01-10, If you take user experience seriously, this should inspire you. If you don't, this should scare you. - [Title goes here](https://blog.damato.design/posts/title-goes-here): 2023-12-20, A quick exploration of naming typography components - [Truly Semantic](https://blog.damato.design/posts/truly-semantic): 2023-11-07, Let us not throw this term around and pin down what it means precisely. - [DS Events, Backstage](https://blog.damato.design/posts/ds-events-backstage): 2023-09-19, Behind the scenes in the making of ds.events - [Hovercraft](https://blog.damato.design/posts/hovercraft): 2023-08-24, Barely noticeable design fun causes token explosions. - [Thanking you](https://blog.damato.design/posts/thanking-you): 2023-08-02, My journey in contributing with the community. - [Spicy specifications](https://blog.damato.design/posts/spicy-specifications): 2023-06-23, Making sense of several solutions for design decisions aimed to help our community. - [Token operations](https://blog.damato.design/posts/token-operations): 2023-05-31, Defining transforms into a specification. - [Dynamic Astro Collections](https://blog.damato.design/posts/dynamic-collections): 2023-04-10, Using framework magic in the pursuit of laziness. - [Low inspectations](https://blog.damato.design/posts/low-inspectations): 2023-03-01, You should be better than the inspect panel. - [Meaningless curves ahead](https://blog.damato.design/posts/meaningless-curves): 2023-02-07, Semantic nested rounding is systematically inconceivable. - [62.5%](https://blog.damato.design/posts/62-5): 2023-01-30, Humans don't like math so we use math to make the math easier, but at what cost? - [Classname soup](https://blog.damato.design/posts/classname-soup): 2023-01-17, The problem with a superfluous utility class approach and why I choose a different path. - [Ondark virus](https://blog.damato.design/posts/ondark-virus): 2023-01-12, While it might seem intuitive at first, naming your tokens this way is bad for your health. - [Close thy enemy](https://blog.damato.design/posts/close-thy-enemy): 2023-01-09, A recent bug turns into a realization that most close buttons across the web are engineered poorly. - [UX Engineer, a terminal career](https://blog.damato.design/posts/terminal-career): 2022-12-26, A role that is near and dear to my heart and why I can't call myself one. - [Big four oh](https://blog.damato.design/posts/big-four-oh): 2022-12-13, Taking a moment to reflect and excited to launch the new site design. - [Choose wisely](https://blog.damato.design/posts/choose-wisely): 2022-08-15, The act of making a selection is a critical part of user experience as it creates a path which we hope lands at a goal. - [Colors don't solve problems](https://blog.damato.design/posts/colors-dont-solve-problems): 2022-07-11, Color is one of the least important facets of user interface design. - [Feeding trolls](https://blog.damato.design/posts/feeding-trolls): 2022-06-28, They say that you aren't successful until people begin to criticize your work. - [Dynamic Storybook](https://blog.damato.design/posts/dynamic-storybook): 2022-06-14, A Storybook approach to visualize all my components' configurations and why its not recommended in Storybook today. - [No more modals](https://blog.damato.design/posts/no-more-modals): 2022-06-05, Please just make a new page. - [Against atomic design](https://blog.damato.design/posts/against-atomic-design): 2022-05-25, There's something about it that is more harmful than helpful. - [Tokens as intents](https://blog.damato.design/posts/tokens-as-intents): 2022-05-12, Naming your parts with purpose. - [Spacing solved](https://blog.damato.design/posts/spacing-solved): 2022-05-09, Shifting traditional approaches to something more semantic. - [Fetching web component definitions](https://blog.damato.design/posts/fetching-definitions): 2022-04-12, Passively requesting code once an element is discovered on a page.