Josh Brewer

This is huge. Don't sleep on what this team is building.

I'm back with a new pocket guide - 10 principles for better design critique. I've sat in hundreds of design crits over 30+ years as a designer. These are tried and true. Hemeon’s Pocket Guide to Design Critique 01 / Same Team, Same Goal Critique is not a courtroom. It’s a shared effort to make the work better. The enemy is unclear thinking, weak craft, and lazy solutions. If it feels like combat, the culture is broken. 02 / Safety Is the Container People don’t risk honesty when they feel exposed. They perform. They defend. They shrink. Strong critique only happens inside trust. Tend the room before you touch the work. 03 / Honesty Without Harm Truth matters. So does delivery. Say the real thing, cleanly. You can be direct without being destructive. If people leave wounded instead of clearer, the moment failed. 04 / Critique the Artifact, Not the Human The work is not the person. The draft is not the designer. Speak to flows, clarity, and decisions. The moment feedback touches identity, growth stops. 05 / Don’t Break the Good, While Fixing the Bad. You can’t improve what you don’t yet understand. Naming strengths is not politeness. It’s precision. It tells the designer what to protect while they evolve. 06 / Taste Without Reason Is Noise “I don’t like it” is not critique. It’s mood. Real feedback anchors to users, goals, systems, constraints, or craft. If you can’t explain why, it’s preference. 07 / Turn Reactions Into Direction “Confusing” is a feeling, not feedback. Do the extra work. Translate reactions into requests. Direction moves the work forward. Vibes do not. 08 / Context Comes Before Solutions If you don’t understand the intent, you’re solving the wrong problem. Ask first. What’s the goal? What’s fixed? What’s fragile? Critique without context is theater. 09 / All Notes Are not Equal. A bug demands attention. A preference does not. When you label feedback clearly, the team can prioritize without emotional confusion. 10 / Many Voices, One Owner Choose a clear owner. 
Without ownership, critique becomes endless discussion. Thank you for reading. Drop a comment on the best tips you have for running a design crit. Would love to hear your ideas!

Pretty impressed with how fast Cursor is shipping. This is a huge step forward for designers cursor.com/blog/browser-v…

@lauradang0 Where is the evidence to back this up? Curious how you came to this concussion.

You can’t learn taste. You’re either born with it or not.

This is the craziest model you'll see this week! This model powers Figma. It's also behind Wayfair and a bunch of major e-commerce retailers. This model is a PIXEL-PERFECT image editing model. Literally, "pixel perfect". The model is capable of modifying one image while keeping everything else untouched. It's a model designed, developed, and deployed by the research team at Jasper. This beats OpenAI models, Nano Banana, and every single general image model I've seen so far. It's up to 100x less expensive to run, and up to 10X faster. I recorded a quick video to show you how impressive this is. There's a ton of research behind this model. I'm adding two links below so you can read about how this model works, specifically about "Latent Bridge Matching" and "Flash Diffusion".

Brand Transformation of the Year!!! I couldn't be more proud of the team @heyjasperai 🙌

@hemeon Agree to disagree. Massive issues with accessibility and legibility. Some cool details but overall, feels like they missed the most important job: make it easy to read and interact with.

I’m sorry. But this a so damn good. As screen resolutions and devices continue to get more powerful, it makes sense we’re going fluid dynamics with our UI.

Book me here 👉 intro.co/joshbrewer

Trying something new with @useintro! I’m opening a few spots for 1:1 mentoring to help founders & Design leaders with: • Scaling Design teams & workflows • Building & launching products • Designing user-first experiences • Fundraising strategies • Founder mental health

@LukesBeard @NotionHQ Holler!

@krea_ai 👋

announcing Krea Editor. our new editing tool feels like magic. who wants beta access? 👇

@developedbytoby Congrats on all the hard work. Love the approach and esp the "rules" - nicely done!

@ptr So much love and respect for you. Thank you for sharing ❤️

It has been a busy few months! Somehow, I find myself with one more bit of news: I am transgender, and I'm in the middle of a gender transition. 🏳️‍⚧️ I am changing my name to Tess (she/her). I am out at home and at work and now you know, too. That's the gist. If the story interests you, more below. [If you are having a 🤯 moment, that's totally normal! I'll wait. :)] Alright so... this is news for most people in my life, but it isn't for me. It's something I have struggled with deeply for over 25 years, mostly in denial of what it was and what it meant. As a kid I struggled with shyness and social anxiety. I learned to hide parts of me and fake others so I could fit in. Not just thoughts about gender, but also things like being a nerd, anything I worried made me weird or strange or unlovable. It's a kind of mask that I wore, consciously at first, but increasingly invisible even to me. As I approached 40 last year, I found myself gaining the bravery to interrogate these feelings, educate myself about them, and take steps to be happier, calmer, and more present for the people who matter most in my life, starting with my amazing wife and wonderful kids. I don't know exactly what untangled this web of thoughts for me. My best guess is I got to a point in my life where I could breathe and reflect and for the first time ever, worry less about achieving in the eyes of others. I have gained a lot of strength over the last many months. In spite of all that, the truth is that writing this, and posting it here, is an incredibly scary thing. I've come to see my professional network as a kind of consolation prize for suppressing parts of me I thought the world might judge, things that would prevent me from achieving a career I was proud of or building a family I could love and care for. The thing with consolation prizes is they mean you didn't get what you were hoping for, and I realize now that the thing I missed out on was being myself, openly and without fear, or at least with courage and bravery. In the back of my mind in nearly every social interaction in my life has been this lurking question, "What if they knew?" Would they still like me? Respect me? Want to work with or for me? I hid from the answers to those questions. That path served me for a time, but the healthier path, the one I am choosing, is to say: Be who you are. Let people come into or out of your life of their own accord. These days I don't have to ask "What if they knew?" anymore around the house or at work or with my friends, and by telling you all, I don't have to ask that here, either. It's a special kind of peace I never thought possible. It's going to be hard to believe this, but I promise, it's true: while the news sounds huge and life defining, it's quite the opposite. I carried this inside me and I'm finally setting it down. Yes I look different, and that will play out more over time. Yes I am changing my name. But the thoughts were always there, the secret strain on my life was always there. I'm free of that, now, and with that comes a lightness that far exceeds the awkwardness you might imagine I feel. Truly, and I mean this: things are easier for me now. As complex as this whole thing seems from the outside, it is deeply, profoundly simplifying on the inside. I am at peace. Thanks for listening. If you made it this far, I'm flattered. I write all of this partly for catharsis, but it serves another more important role. Product Management, and especially product leadership, has near zero trans representation. At times I wonder if seeing others like me live openly would have helped me when I was suffering. Perhaps I would have figured myself out a bit sooner. Regardless, I feel compelled to speak up and out and to be that representation for others. Living openly and showing people like me that it is going to be okay helps me forgive myself for many years of confusion, fear, and shame. And if this note resonates with you in any way and you want to talk about it, my DMs are open anytime. Hang in there; it gets better. 💜

@acroll @lennysan @EnjoyTheWork @jlowenhar A little biased ;) And a still a big +1.

@lennysan The team at @EnjoyTheWork and particularly @jlowenhar. Consistently the best-rated speaker at every event I’ve run where he has taken the stage.

Say I were to run a 1-day IRL conference. Who would you love to see speak?

Simple, but genius: the Assist Rule.

• Making things and exploring different ideas can lead to personal and professional growth Listen to the full episode: • YouTube youtube.com/watch?v=H2Jlt3… • Spotify open.spotify.com/episode/1jhQxF… • Apple podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pix…

• Developing business acumen is valuable 4 designers 2 understand the broader context of their work • Financial literacy is important for designers to navigate the business side of their work • Being true to oneself & embracing unique perspectives can bring value to any role

I had a great time talking about the winding path of my career with @chrisabad for his new podcast pixelatedpath.com. Chris is a great host and we covered a lot of ground. Some key takeaways...