Just got back, it was fun and another landmark in my long string of trips down there. The drive bakc was great. The sunset coming down the 90 was very intense, augmented by a nice Annie Lennox channel on Pandora. I broke down and gave Nancy my pristine new Moleskin which she proceeded to fill half of up with her flowers and letters and clouds. Oh well, it kept her happy. Maybe she’ll be an artist, but lately she’s been saying veterinarian and singer so we’ll see.
Busy day coming tomorrow.
You truly are a digital artist when you understand what a point is. I still don’t.
Responsive design means narrowing your viewport to see if you can still understand the content.
I finally finished a working version of a Figma plugin I’ve been tweaking for years.
Figma is one of the coolest pieces of software I’ve ever used, and makes up the majority of my coursework these days.
When COVID hit, my students were forced to work from home on whatever computers they had access to. I hoped at the time that Adobe – until then the primary tool used in my classes – would release a free license for students. The monthly subscription fee was more than I felt was fair for students, especially for those who were barely able to afford the costs of higher education.
Figma was a godsend; I was able to transfer my assignments’ requirements easily enough, and students could work anywhere. And it was free.
What really attracted me to the platform, however, was the presence of a community of developers who could easily contribute plugins and other resources to be shared among all Figma users. This is something that WordPress does so well, and as someone who has contributed for as long as I have, I set out to publish on Figma’s community.
Easier said than done. While Figma plugins are based on languages I’m familiar with – HTML, CSS, and Javascript – the process was vexing. I had written a basic color picker app that worked in the browser (see https://codepen.io/empireoflight/pen/eYYgGjL) I just could not get it working in Figma’s plugin development environment. I gave up after a while, and used the project as a basic learning tool in my color theory lectures.
Enter AI. From the minute I saw the capabilities the LLEs had for generating code, I’ve been flying through old projects like Schemarama and bringing them back to life. This morning I cracked open my old Schemarama repo and rebuilt it using Cursor, and just finished submitting it to the Figma plugin review team.
Fingers are crossed that it gets through, but the learning experience is worth it no matter what the outcome.
Here’s a sneak preview:
Editing this article to discuss general icon design standards, which I believe are needed. Icons should down-rez gracefully to small sizes, with vertical and horizontal edges aligning to the pixel grid at sizes as small as 9 pixels. A 3×3 sub grid should be adhered to when designing icons.
[codepen_embed height=”265″ theme_id=”1″ slug_hash=”EvqZQZ” default_tab=”html,result” user=”empireoflight”]See the Pen <a href=’https://codepen.io/empireoflight/pen/EvqZQZ/’>base-8 grid icons</a> by Ben Dunkle (<a href=’https://codepen.io/empireoflight’>@empireoflight</a>) on <a href=’https://codepen.io’>CodePen</a>.[/codepen_embed]
As you can see in the last icon, the 3×3 subgrid isn’t honored and some edges get blurry:
The speakers are good, but it is hard to sit still for hours at a time. I like workshops much better.
Urinals are cool. I want one in my house.