Blog

• Who is responsible for the impact of innovative products?

  7 December 2023 ∙ 10 minute read

  And why is it designers?

• Are design ethics useless?

  26 November 2023 ∙ 7 minute read

  If you're not redesigning design, it's not going to do much for you.

• The most important question in design: who’s gonna pay me?

  9 November 2023 ∙ 5 minute read

  If you’re good at deciding who you work for, it can avoid some serious worrying about other decisions.

• Businesses don’t hire designers for their good work

  9 November 2023 ∙ 4 minute read

  They hire designers to grow.

• Your job defines you

  9 November 2023 ∙ 4 minute read

  You better pick the right one!

• Organizations are ant colonies

  7 October 2023 ∙ 4 minute read

  Every time I see leaders mess something up, I think of the ant colony.

• How to make digital business cards and share them via QR codes

  11 June 2023 ∙ 12 minute read

  1990s tech finally has become useful. And maybe it’s better than the yet-to-be-released NameDrop?

• You're making me buy a new phone

  6 February 2023 ∙ 8 minute read

  I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one.

2022

• How to make volunteer-driven open source projects successful

  24 November 2022 ∙ 6 minute read

  Free and open source projects could be much more successful for you and your users!

• Why is open source software so badly designed?

  24 November 2022 ∙ 11 minute read

  It’s not just a matter of developers acting friendlier or designers acting less egoistically.

• The future of blogging

  10 November 2022 ∙ 6 minute read

  Good things are coming to the web!

• Blogging or posting on social media—what's better?

  30 October 2022 ∙ 8 minute read

  If you were to start sharing ideas today, what channel would you pick?

• Design and art

  24 April 2022 ∙ 13 minute read

  How one phone call made me give up my dream of becoming an artist and made me see twenty-five years later that design and art aren’t that different.

• I sold Big Timer

  19 April 2022 ∙ 5 minute read

  Did I make the right choice selling my side project?

• The new heroes of design

  22 February 2022 ∙ 3 minute read

  They’re not larger than life. Sometimes I disagree with them. I don’t even like some of their work.

2021

• A not so gentle intro to web3

  31 December 2021 ∙ 11 minute read

  Pyramid schemes, scientology and Tamagotchi

• New Year's resolutions are silly

  27 December 2021 ∙ 4 minute read

  Here’s the template I use to get to achieve what I want instead.

• I designed a Christmas gift

  10 December 2021 ∙ 1 minute read

  You can get this sustainable gift too!

• Do you really need to set a theme color to color Safari's UI?

  11 October 2021 ∙ 6 minute read

  Probably not, but you may want to do it for Android users.

• Bringing markers back to UI design

  8 July 2021 ∙ 4 minute read

  Here’s something to make Figma play nice with paper freehand sketches.

• There are no individual contributors in design

  3 June 2021 ∙ 2 minute read

  It’s time for this term to join ‘outside the box’, ‘big data’ and ‘hit the ground running’ in history.

• How I replaced doom scrolling with productive media routines

  13 February 2021 ∙ 3 minute read

  The best way to stop a bad habit is to replace it with a new one.

• Here's how I maintain healthy media routines (most of the time)

  11 February 2021 ∙ 4 minute read

  Developing good routines can be more important than stopping bad habits.

• Breaking unhealthy media habits in six simple steps

  11 February 2021 ∙ 5 minute read

  Here’s what I did to lay off habitually checking news feeds.

2020

• 10 Reasons why bicycles can't replace cars

  28 December 2020 ∙ 5 minute read

  Reasonable people have reasons for not to using their legs to pedal and using a car instead.

• Making semantic sidenotes without JavaScript

  12 October 2020 ∙ 3 minute read

  Sidenotes can make a plain text richer. Here’s how you can implement them with HTML and CSS alone.

• Design better by avoiding your cognitive biases

  30 September 2020 ∙ 9 minute read

  Can you outsmart your brain? Seven biases that mess up your designs and what you can do against them.

• Making a multilingual website with Jekyll collections

  8 August 2020 ∙ 6 minute read

  A foolproof and flexible way to add translations to a Jekyll site.

• Getting to know utility-first CSS

  30 July 2020 ∙ 5 minute read

  The atomic approach to writing CSS is awesome—with caveats.

• The pandemic, racism and climate change: Let's fix everything

  23 June 2020 ∙ 5 minute read

  I don’t want to go back to normal.

• Mass surveillance won't stop corona. What can tech do though?

  29 March 2020 ∙ 7 minute read

  Mass surveillance is not useful to stop the corona virus pandemic. We can prepare ourselves for the next pandemic though.

2019

• Semantic sidenotes for the web

  10 November 2019 ∙ 7 minute read

  Sidenotes have been around for ages in print, but they’re surprisingly hard to do well in HTML.

• The dangerous mix of optimism and innovation

  7 November 2019 ∙ 5 minute read

  Does optimism make you dumb?

• A guide to implemen­ting dark modes on websites

  28 September 2019 ∙ 7 minute read

  Don’t just add a dark mode because iOS 13 supports it now.

• This website is now monetized

  15 August 2019 ∙ 3 minute read

  Don’t worry, I didn’t put up ads.

• Adding comments to my static website

  9 August 2019 ∙ 3 minute read

  How I choose a commenting system

• Can we improve products by making them less efficient?

  25 July 2019 ∙ 5 minute read

  I think so!

• Picking up longboarding as a grown-up

  3 July 2019 ∙ 4 minute read

  It’s fun.

• Recommender system basics: Part 2

  27 June 2019 ∙ 7 minute read

  What designers should know about recommender systems

• Recommender system basics

  27 June 2019 ∙ 5 minute read

  What everyone should know about online recommendations

• User-centered versus user-centric design

  27 April 2019 ∙ 6 minute read

  This is bigger than modernism versus post-modernism.

• What is design?

  27 April 2019 ∙ 9 minute read

  What is design, in one sentence? Thinking about the moral responsibilities in design, I need a precise definition.

• 6 Questions all experienced designers should be able to answer

  30 March 2019 ∙ 3 minute read

  6 Questions I don’t have an answer to

• Dark mode design con­sider­ations

  31 January 2019 ∙ 7 minute read

  Implementation is easy, but how to design a dark mode?

• Do I have to add a dark mode now?

  31 January 2019 ∙ 4 minute read

  Reasons for and against adding a dark mode to an app or website.

• Why color discussions can be so frustrating and 3 things you can do about it

  10 January 2019 ∙ 4 minute read

  Win all arguments about color! Or: why you may actually not want to.

• How we all see colors differently—Color theory in design

  10 January 2019 ∙ 3 minute read

  Do you see that color in your mind the same way I see it?

2018

• Multi­dimen­sional respon­sive design: 5 tips

  28 November 2018 ∙ 6 minute read

  About layouts that are responsive to more than just horizontal breakpoints.

• Making custom fonts: how and why

  19 October 2018 ∙ 5 minute read

  Creating a custom font was easier then I thought it would be!

• Replace social media with blogs and RSS?

  25 August 2018 ∙ 3 minute read

  Three reasons why I like that idea.

• Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, UXPin or InVision Studio: which one?

  16 August 2018 ∙ 11 minute read

  I did a detailed comparison to find out what screen design tool is best for what.

• Four ways screen design tools can be improved

  10 August 2018 ∙ 4 minute read

  Because bad tools can lead to bad design processes.

• Interoperability between UI design tools

  6 August 2018 ∙ 1 minute read

  I’m in the process of comparing UI design tools: Sketch vs Figma vs Invision Studio vs Adobe XD. When considering to migrate from one to...

• Brutalism is not great for looking relatable

  2 August 2018 ∙ 2 minute read

  Last time I wrote about how brutalism is the only design movement in which personal websites play an important role. Brutalist architecture, however, is mostly...

• Broken or brutalism: personal websites in 2018

  30 June 2018 ∙ 7 minute read

  About modernism, capitalism, brutalism and finding my personal online identity

• Hey Koos, do you still recommend WordPress?

  29 June 2018 ∙ 1 minute read

  My website is falling apart. Not what you see right now though, although it may look like it. I mean the previous version, that is...

• Things I learned from doing a side project

  20 March 2018 ∙ 5 minute read

  I have a job as a designer at BCG Digital Ventures. There we create new businesses: we find out about problems that people have, then...

2017

• Why side projects fail

  31 December 2017 ∙ 7 minute read

  So, my side projects fail! Let me first describe what I would consider a successful side project. A side project is something: That is fun...

• Vue is a great JavaScript framework for designers

  25 September 2017 ∙ 4 minute read

  I’m building something for the web (a big countdown timer) and found out about a JavaScript framework that is great for a designer who does...

• What is color?—Color theory in design

  14 April 2017 ∙ 7 minute read

  Choosing colors depends often on the designer’s taste. This can lead to tough discussions with stakeholders that do not share that taste. Everyone has gut...

2014

• How I design ‘mobile first’

  10 February 2014 ∙ 4 minute read

  Some things I wrote way back when mobile first were just buzz words.

2013

• New design pattern: Drag To Tag

  10 September 2013 ∙ 2 minute read

  Working on a new platform for keeping annotations, I came up with a new way of tagging items!