Join 59,600+ subscribers to the weekly Dan Mall Teaches newsletter. I promise to keep my communication light and valuable!
Want your brand to reach 59,600+ designers that are growing their careers, businesses, and lives?
Give to take.
Winning with content.
Let’s talk flowers.
Two are better than one.
An unlikely catalyst.
Turn their fear into an opportunity for both of you.
It’s back.
The ups and downs of 2024.
Are you doing something you shouldn’t be doing?
Practice professional bravado.
Do you need me?
See yourself in a whole new light.
Keep it clean.“
A big blocker for collaboration.
Culture. Shock.
Design is deciding.
Stack your ways to get ahead.
A special trip during a special time of year.
Take the hard way out.
As of today, applications are officially open!
Work with and for me.
The key to an empowered team.
A trip to the Canadian wilderness with 20 entrepreneurs.
The opposite of covering your butt.
You don’t have to take their word for it.
An all-too-common conflation.
The 3-step framework I use on every project.
Stop this toxic practice now.
The one thing I didn’t see in any of the discussion.
Opportunity or exploitation?
I’m looking to hire someone to help me with some design and web development needs.
Unearth the adventure.
For 10-year old Dan.
Prioritize “important” and “creative.”
Bring it all together by documenting the dream and how you’ll get there together.
Make it work for them and you—in that order.
Make more money by thinking and talking about their dreams, not yours.
Take your client service to the next level.
A surefire way to move up.
Think about this before you start something new.
What are you scared of?
Three is better than two.
If not now, then maybe later.
Mid-life crisis abounds.
Build enough trust to influence change.
Pick a typeface like a pro.
Use your superpowers to set others up for success.
The greatest power move is compassionate service.
Increase your percentage of getting what you want.
Help your team move forward.
Use specificity to lead to action.
A story of when I walked away from a good project.
Choosing to have imposter syndrome can help.
Take the scenic route.
The art behind creating portfolio pieces that convince.
Turning over the hill, looking over some hills.
A surprising answer for how long good design takes.
How do you know when to stop?
Once you do, then they will.
Maximize the mentorship.
The ups and downs of 2023.
If you don’t, why would they?
Dream a bit together.
There’s a narrow window for effective design system work. It sits squarely in the center of a spectrum that’s too easy to slide towards one end or the other.
It’s different now than it has been in years past.
Setting up a DSLR as your webcam.
The story of a small project I did earlier this year.
When “yes” or “no” doesn’t work.
It might be simpler than you think.
Do as much as you can on purpose.
A special trip during a special time of year.
A few quick takes and hot takes about design.
Make change without approval.
Make better decisions about what to say yes and no to.
We need better structure for design system roles and responsibilities.
It probably doesn’t look like what you’d expect.
How designers, engineers, writers, and DesignOps contribute to a design system effort, by the numbers.
How can we normalize rest as a crucial part of our work?
Look like a million bucks.
There’s a better leading indicator.
Get paid what you’ve earned.
More context to understand money more accurately.
A little extra friction in a conversation can unlock a lot more confidence.
The story’s always being written.
What’s really special about in-person conferences.
Is manual work worth doing? Skip it or face head on?
Get more of what you want.
Noticing the feelings before putting something new into the world.
What I rely on AI for—and what I don’t.
When should you work for free?
I have two modes of working with people.
Help without doing the work.
How to establish ownership of most situations.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from both my teachers and my interns: let them finish.
How to evaluate the job and success of a consultant—especially if that consultant is you.
The simple process I use on every project.
Are you suited for design system work, and is it suited for you?
Are you suited for design system work, and is it suited for you?
Being intentional about learning.
How do you decide?
Get better feedback.
A 5-minute ritual.
Three easy steps.
6 different types of design systems.
The ups and downs of 2022.
Accountability between “yes” and “no.”
Exposing and flattening power dynamics in any relationship.
You shall receive.
A starting point for design system contribution.
A starting point for design system contribution.
A starting point for design system contribution.
A starting point for design system contribution.
A starting point for design system contribution.
A starting point for design system contribution.
A starting point for design system contribution.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
I’m shutting SuperFriendly down.
The idea of “foundations” is one of the biggest threats to creating a design system people use.
Part 2 of a conversation between Amy Hupe, Nathan Curtis, and Dan Mall.
Avoid design system graveyards by capitalizing on patterns that are already in use.
A conversation between Amy Hupe, Nathan Curtis, and Dan Mall.
How much of a page should be made up of design system components?
A decade in business!
The ups and downs of 2021.
SuperFriendly’s worst year to date and one of my biggest professional failures. Time for a big change.
The moment where a design system proves its value most.
Lessons about design systems from Harry Potter.
Beginner-level guidance on design tokens.
How to hack starting from scratch to make something great.
How to hack starting from scratch to make something great.
What should you do when you feel like your projects are going slower than you’d like?
What should you do when you feel like your projects are going slower than you’d like?
Our new design token manager is now officially open to the public.
Defining and examining 10 different ways people learn.
Wake up to bedtime.
The ups and downs of 2020.
A look back at SuperFriendly in 2020.
Bringing modular design practices to email.
An intentional way to teach web design and web development from scratch.
A daily routine for a COVID-19 world.
More people will use your design system if it’s easy to browse.
Is making your design system public worth the effort? In short: yes, it is.
Stepping up quality for video calls.
The ups and downs of 2019
Looking forward to a new kind of year for SuperFriendly by looking back at the past few years.
A counterpoint to “Should You Use Bootstrap or Material Design for Your Design System?”.
Weighing the pros and cons of rolling your own design system.
A better way for designers and developers to truly work together.
A rundown of the kind of work I want to see awarded in this year’s competition.
My review. Major spoilers included.
A typographic system that optimizes for guessability.
A play-by-play.
A play-by-play.
Recapping our Philly workshop.
What are the first steps?
The ups and downs of 2018.
Celebrating clients over the years.
New leadership for SuperBooked.
A video series in partnership with InVision.
An opportunity for someone who might not have it otherwise.
Tell ’em exactly what they want to hear before they even ask.
A real view into at what collaborative workflow looks like.
Reflections from a speaker about doing a new (kind of) talk.
What makes a design system better than any other?
A simple brand exercise that speaks volumes.
A skill that separates the amateurs from the professionals.
There’s nothing new under the sun.
Pilots are a great way to start a design system.
A simple framework for effective storytelling.
Design systems make deciding in the browser much easier if you have the right ingredients.
Using an investment framework to help evaluate what’s worth doing.
Measuring Trump against the Bible’s criteria for leaders.
A 3-step formula for accountability between yourself and those you interact with.
Announcing SuperBooked, a service that helps you find work with a little help from your friends.
An inventory of the most popular design systems out there.
A fantastic solution to bridge the gap between opportunity in tech and those in need of change.
A fantastic solution to bridge the gap between opportunity in tech and those in need of change.
A fantastic solution to bridge the gap between opportunity in tech and those in need of change.
How to convince your boss that a design system is a good idea.
Death to “full service.”
Death to “full service.”
Death to “full service.”
Embracing the difference in pattern types is the key to making a modular design system infinitely more scalable.
Don’t believe anyone that tells you otherwise.
That magical phrase that gives you permission to brush off the things you really want to do.
What’s the minimum amount of time we should be working per week?
Dealing with creative block.
The time has come for me to step away from Businessology.
Like magnets and archaelogists.
How to start charging for your work.
Learn about the business of design in person.
A primer on creative direction as compared to art direction and design… and what they all mean in a digital context.
Some speaking advice from Jeremy Keith.
An event that challenged 3 teams to build a website for a non-profit organization in 24 hours.
Wikipedia for typefaces.