After last week’s announcement of a freemium business model for its UX tool Adobe XD, the design software giant makes another big move towards the web design industry. In fact, Adobe will acquire Magento Commerce, a key player in the eCommerce field.
With this acquisition, Adobe is aiming to add another essential tool to its Experience Cloud ecosystem. While the amount announced seems very high, it’s worth noting that Magento is a leader in its industry with over 250’000 platforms developed with its cloud solution, which generate an average of 155 billion dollars in annual sales.
On the practical side, Magento’s current CEO, Mark Lavelle, will stay in charge of operations in the new branch at Adobe. He shared his excitement of working with Adobe in a recent blog post. The Magento community, which represents 300’000 developers who will probably be happy about the news.
Jules Forrest discusses some of the work that her team at Credit Karma has been up to when it comes to design systems. Jules writes:
…in most engineering organizations, you spend your whole first day setting up your development environment so you can actually ship code. It’s generally pretty tedious and no one likes doing it, but it’s this thing you do to contribute meaningful work to production. Which got me thinking, what would it look like to make it easier for designers to design for production?
That’s what Jules calls a “design environment” and she’s even written a whole bunch of documentation in Thread, Credit Karma’s design system, for designers on their team to get that design environment up and running. That’s stuff like fonts, Sketch plugins, and other useful assets:
These problems have certainly been tackled by other teams in the past but this is the first time I’ve heard the phrase “design environment” before and I sort of love the heck out of it. Oh, and this post reminds me of a piece by Jon Gold where he wrote about Painting with Code.
If you’ve been working with Vue for a while, you may have come across this way of rendering your app — this is the default in the latest version of the CLI, in main.js:
new Vue({
render: h => h(App)
}).$mount('#app')
Or, if you’re using a render function, possibly to take advantage of JSX:
You may be wondering, what does that h do? What does it stand for? The h stands for hyperscript. It’s a riff of HTML, which means Hypertext Markup Language: since we’re dealing with a script, it’s become convention in virtual DOM implementations to use this substitution. This definition is also addressed in the documentation of other frameworks as well. Here it is, for example, in Cycle.js.
Really, you can think of it as being short for createElement. Here would be the long form:
render: function (createElement) {
return createElement(App);
}
If we replace that with an h, then we first arrive at:
render: function (h) {
return h(App);
}
…which can then be shortened with the use of ES6 to:
render: h => h (App)
The Vue version takes up to three arguments:
render(h) {
return h('div', {}, [...])
}
The first is type of the element (here shown as div).
The second is the data object. We nest some fields here, including: props, attrs, dom props, class and style.
The third is an array of child nodes. We’ll then have nested calls and eventually return a tree of virtual DOM nodes.
There’s more in-depth information in the Vue Guide here.
The name hyperscript may potentially be confusing to some people, given the fact that hyperscript is actually the name of a library (what isn’t updated these days) and it actually has a small ecosystem. In this case, we’re not talking about that particular implementation.
Hope that clears things up for those who are curious!
Today
we’re catching up with six incredible artists from Hong Kong, home of incredible history, a bustling skyline, and the talented people of East Asia. I
asked each artist how
their country and culture inspired their work, and they delivered great
responses.
Panyeung Chan
Panyeung is a designer and illustrator from Hong Kong. Full of culture and dynamic scenes, his work reflects his real-life experience as an artist living in this energetic city.
Living in Hong Kong, the most fascinating thing is definitely its multi-cultural environment. When you walk down the street, you can
easily find everything in your surroundings, from architecture, to food and language—all hugely influenced by different cultures.
Hong Kong is such a small place that people are living here in a crowded
condition so most buildings along the main avenue
combine their list of functions. Inside one building alone you could find
that there is a wet market, a library, a gym room, or a gallery separated on a different floor. Those crowded and detailed images stay deep in my
mind and I’ve always wanted to reflect this kind of impression in my work.
Many internationally well-known galleries create their branches here in Hong
Kong. That is really good news for any art lover! Although art is not a mainstream industry in Hong Kong, people interested in art can really
enjoy living or visiting this city.
Even though I’ve been here for only five
years, to me it’s still very exotic and I find it incredibly
interesting. I love the way the traditional culture spills out into the street in Hong Kong. It’s not uncommon to see
offerings of oranges and incense sticks nestled in and around the feet
of skyscrapers.
In the village near my studio, there are mini street
temples with little green tiled roofs, and I really
love watching the older generation going about their daily lives with woven wicker hats, sampan and even hanging
fish out to dry.
I’m passionate about folk-art and ethno-cultural art forms. Hong
Kong has really beautiful folk arts and crafts, and my favorite
time of year is the Mid-Autumn festival. The colors are so inviting and
cheerful—it’s really magical to me.
I also came across embroidered bags
woven by the Miao and Hmong tribes in Northern China, Laos and Thailand
being sold in the markets here. That introduced me to a whole other world of
amazing inspiration and I really fell in love with the motifs and
traditional dress. Hong Kong is such a great place that just sets you off on a new journey of inspiration.
The art community here is small but vibrant. In the studio where I work, there are textile artists, ceramic
artists, graphic artists, and oil painters. We
all sort of influence one another back and forth, and I’ve also met some
lovely illustrators on Instagram. It’s quite hard to socialize or find other like-minded creatives in such
a business-oriented place. But yet we thrive!
Dixon is a talented graphic designer based in Hong Kong. His work features fantastic graphic design work with stunning visuals of design packages and more.
I love that it is always convenient to get around here and that nothing is ever too far away.
I get so spoiled sometimes that I once felt a 20 minute walk to a live house was too much when I was touring with other bands in Taipei.
Like a lot of Hong Kong kids, I was taught it’s
better to be as multi-talented as possible. So I like trying out different
styles, tricks or gimmicks here and there in my design work.
In the area, there are mostly busy colors, overloaded
neon signs, too many adverts everywhere, and color themed subway stations. So I guess it’s in my subconscious to
use vibrant colors.
The art community is pretty small here, I think, but closely knit. There are lots of
indie or small scale collaborations between people of different fields
and disciplines. It’s a nice little self-sufficient scene.
April is an artist who creates whimsical illustrations in Hong Kong. With a specialty in watercolor paintings, her work is delightfully unique with many pieces dedicated to fairy tales and yummy cuisine.
I love the convenience of living in HK. Everything is so accessible
as the transport system is very efficient. Also the food in HK is simply
amazing. You can find all sorts of different types of cuisine here.
I draw my inspiration from what I see and experience daily. Hong Kong is
a very lively city where the Eastern and Western cultures truly blend.
There are always new discoveries to be made when you walk on its streets
and experience the energy and colorful life of the city. It also
has a very unique cityscape filled up with skyscrapers. So both the culture
and the urban street scenes serve as a source of inspiration for me.
Apart from the
increasing number of international art shows and exhibitions being held
in Hong Kong, there are regular open studios, events, and weekend art markets for
independent artists to showcase their work and to connect with other
independent artists.
Our next amazing feature is Kitty, a traditional artist living in Hong Kong. With a fondness for the beauty and skill of pen and ink illustrations, her work spills into elaborate swirls of unique compositions.
Hong Kong has such a strong mix of Chinese and Western culture that it
shows in everyday living and provides open minded thinking. We may not
have the best environment for creativity and opportunity, but it
certainly has room for those who strive to be persistent as creatives.
In the past 20 years, I’ve worked with many talented creative
people and launched fantastic projects in top international advertising agencies. Hong Kong’s mix of culture provides constant stimulation and
collaboration. So having new ideas is everyday practice. I only started creating four years ago and I’ve already had tremendous opportunities while having a full time
marketing job in a new cultural destination.
In Hong Kong, like-minded artists become close and form collaborative projects, and art is very subjective in a way. But it’s a global market and
platform for many galleries, auction houses, and exhibitors. So international art events have been stimulating public interest in
the recent years.
Our last artist is Ophelia, an imaginative illustrator living in Hong Kong. Her simplistic use of color and texture is absolutely intriguing, as she creates charming illustrations of the world around her.
I love that Hong Kong is such a compact place where doing anything is very convenient.
We have food and cuisine from around the world and all types of services are just fast and efficient.
People work hard and play hard. It is a city that never sleeps.
I admire Matisse, Egon Schiele, Van Gogh, as well as Chinese artists such as
Qi Baishi and Wu Guanzhong. I myself learnt
Chinese sumi painting when I was small and then Western watercolor and oil painting
when I grew older. My artistic styles are influenced by all of them.
Many thanks to the artists who took time to answer my
questions and share a bit about themselves and how their country and/or culture
has affected their work. You can check out more of their work in the links
below:
For this month’s SPECTRUM profile, we talked with London-based Creative Director Rheea Aranha about her studio’s work in Film UI, strategies useful to women in the game, and being a good creative leader.
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