People I read, books I return to, films and shows that stuck, music that scores my evenings, processes I steal from. Pruned every quarter so it stays honest. Hover any row to preview the page.
The mid-career design book. Most of how I think about hierarchy is downstream of it.
Reread every two years. The chapter on signifiers is the one I keep stealing from.
Short enough to finish on a flight. Bias for action, kept me out of bigger orgs at the wrong time.
The product management book most fintech designers will recognise on first read.
The case for long, uninterrupted focus blocks. Most of my best design work happens in the first two hours of the morning because of this book.
Skills beat passion. The argument I needed early in my career to stop optimising for the wrong thing.
Still the shortest book on web usability that matters. I hand it to every junior I onboard.
Cognitive principles named and indexed. Useful as a vocabulary to defend a decision in a critique.
The reference I open when I need a name for a pattern I have been using on instinct.
Reread the chapters on the Mac and the iPhone development whenever I lose faith in opinionated product calls.
The Nike memoir. The book that taught me what a brand actually is, and how much of it is decided in the first three years.
A creative-life manifesto from a brutalist designer. Short chapters, big arguments. Permission to ship.
On the value of mistakes in creative work. The book I reach for when a project goes sideways.
120 lessons from the man who put the Esquire cover on the map. Best read one chapter at a time, before opening Figma.
Pentawards yearbook. I leaf through it before any branding project to recalibrate the eye.
Patron saint of bootstrapped product. Read his stack notes when you want to ship a side project this weekend.
The clearest writing on what design leadership looks like inside a product org.
PM-coded, but every senior designer should read it. The fintech episodes especially.
Old-school designer blog, still teaching me about taste a decade later.
Color, fog, glass. The reason I shoot at f/2 and through windows.
Self-portraits in reflections. The street work that taught me to wait.
Color before color was a thing in photography. Permission to find the suburban interesting.
Slow-burn psychological character study. My favourite show on television.
Office design as horror. Watch the production design as a Figma file.
The TV show that taught me a plot can be production design, casting, and a beach.
Charlie Brooker's anthology on what the next interface does to us. The product brief I rerun before any AI feature.
Alan Ball at his slowest. The finale is the best last episode in television.
Miami palette, monster protagonist. The first four seasons are a masterclass in tone control.
Sam Esmail framing every shot off-center on purpose. The closest thing TV has to a fintech anxiety dream.
Channel 4 original. Yellow as a colour grading manifesto. The original is non-negotiable.
M. Night Shyamalan's Apple TV+ chamber piece. The whole thing happens in one Philadelphia townhouse and it works.
Blue-grey palette so consistent it counts as a character. The Marty Byrde stare is also a design principle.
Argentine prison drama from Sebastián Ortega. The best Spanish-language thriller of the last decade.
The film that made me believe diagrams can be cinema. I rewatch the rules scene whenever a flow needs a rewrite.
The film I do not pretend to fully understand and rewatch anyway. Every frame a colour reference.
Yellow tracksuit as branding. The film I cite when someone says a single colour cannot carry a product.
The Burton film that goes for warmth instead of weird. Pulls me out of a bad week every time.
Horror in broad daylight. Proof that lighting is a genre decision, not a craft one.
Symmetry as dread. The Overlook hotel as the most influential interior in cinema.
The 2018 remake. Choreography, Berlin, Thom Yorke's score. Rare case of the remake earning its title.
Single-location thriller about time on a beach. Not his best, but the conceit alone is worth one watch.
One room, one premise, ninety minutes. The cheapest film on this list and the one I most often recommend.
Background for evening work. Paco de Lucia, Vicente Amigo, the slow stuff.
The cheat sheet I rerun before any handoff. Good design is as little design as possible.
People do not want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole. Used it to scope the spend product.
Design is thinking made visual. The line I keep above the screen.
Five design links a day. The only design feed I have not unsubscribed from.
Pattern library for mobile fintech. I use it before opening Figma on any new flow.
Daily identity critique. Trains the eye.