Issue 4

Hello

Welcome to the fourth issue of Rounding Third, your favorite once-a-month email that's actually worth reading. We kid. But seriously, we do hope this newsletter breaks into your top-five soon. 🙂

Inside Baseball

September Update

September is coming to a close (and so is Summer, boo), and we’re looking forward to focusing on useful new features related to time tracking and project planning. Check out what went live this month as we continue to improve Ballpark. - Calvin

Water Cooler

Move Fast and Break Things is Not Dead

I agree with the author of this post that a better mantra than "Move Fast and Break Things" is "Move Fast and Learn Fast", or in other words, if you break it you should figure out why you broke it and fix it as fast as you can. - Calvin

Moneyball

Change your team structure to scale your agency

As the owner of a growing agency, I can say for certain that the staffing needs of a five, versus ten, versus twenty (or fifty) person agency are very different. In this article, Karl lays out a fundamental system for the way many agencies can approach healthy growth from a staffing perspective.

Tools of the Trade

A Better Way to Create Typography Design Systems

Martin Oliver walks through his new tool, Archetype, for building typography systems quickly and efficiently. - Andrew

Hello, Vapid.

Vapid is a new CMS that has "only a few core concepts and a handful of content types" so that you don't spend all your development time buried in documentation. Vapid promises a straightforward, semantic codebase that is basically HTML, and also gives you the option to add a dashboard for your clients to use. Eager to try this out. - Calvin

Pushing the Pixels

Why Being Too Polite in Web Design Is a Bad Thing

Forget the "handoff" - better products are made when designers and developers collaborate while the work is in progress. In this article, Ian Frost explains how getting this push/pull right can save time and deliver more effective results. - Matt

I Reviewed 573 UX Designer Portfolios as a Design Chief, and This is What I Want to See In Yours

In the end, you realize it’s mostly an ad for their product, uxfol.io, but that doesn’t make any of it untrue. There’s solid advice in here from how to make it easy to browse to making each piece meaningful and informative. - Patrick

Git Push, Git Paid

What makes a good frontend developer?

Writing good code is a mark of a good developer, sure, but what I like about this article is that it highlights what else is important. "The experience we provide matters more." Empathy, communication, and design all play into what it takes to be a good developer. - Caitlin

Improve Website Speed and Performance with Smart Design Choices

Many factors contribute to slow websites, but one that is rarely talked about is the site’s design. Designers can sometimes make decisions without considering the performance implication of those decisions. Let’s change that. - John

Inspirational Things

Rebrand 2018 - Uber

Uber has a new logo (again), and a clever, thorough system built around it. - Andrew

The Design Genome Project by InVision

We've included this link before, but it's worth revisiting already. Great design is in the DNA of this microsite from InVision about the DNA of design-forward companies. Stunning illustrations and subtle touches of animation elevate the reading experience. - John

Coder

Scrolling animation on this marketing site for Coder is 🔥- Andrew

Closer

That's it for September! If you have a friend or twenty that you think would enjoy this newsletter, give us a shoutout on Twitter or send them to subscribe here.

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See you in October!