iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Dear Anthropic, Just incase no one told you, these overlay components with suggested tasks are NOT typically called chips. Sincerely, A design systems practitioner who...

A design interface shows task suggestions, highlighting "not a chip" along with text discussing glossary and task management details.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

The result = the start of my first open source project, the design systems glossary, with a limited scope and a tight deadline.

A screenshot of a glossary definition website page for the term "script". It shows the definition with links to related terms, a table of examples, and a section on why it matters in design systems. The left side navigation shows a long list of terms under a category called language and linguistics terms.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

So what did I do? I used systems thinking and systems mapping to connect the dots. Started documenting it in markdown files to get Claude to help validate and keep me honest.

The sketch explores the connections between language, writing systems, orthography, and design systems using diagrams and notes.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

scraping old paint and caulking off of baseboards is my current oddly satisfying guilty pleasure away from my computer... What's yours?

Paint chips all over the floor next to a paint scraping tool

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

The tech gremlins have been pushing Google and Zoom meeting invites into my spam and junk over the last two weeks, but somehow this one makes it to the inbox? I certainly don't want to work with Mr. Wang, but I do need to get work emails from folks I've already been chatting with! 😂 WTF

An email from Mark Wang with a suspicious looking email address expressing eagerness to work together, received in the inbox amid junk messages.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

I should have guessed when Claude was on Struggle Street this week, they were about to push something big 😻 Opus 4.6 Cowork is checking Figma data (Anova plugin YAML), comparing it to my design token JSON files + ADR's, reviewing Radix open-source docs, and writing my component architecture docs 🤯

Dark-mode developer workspace (claude co-work) showing a chat-style assistant drafting "Generate IconButton component" docs, file list and progress sidebar visible.

Dark-themed workspace (claude co-work) showing a documentation editor with bullet-point notes on IconButton token fixes, file sidebar and a progress/file list panel.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Wanna guess which of these stats I'm the most proud of? 🙏 Top 10% of builders globally using Lovable is WILD, seeing as I started using it in Dec for SheBuilds, where I sent almost 200 messages in 48hrs. However, it's the 9/10 in the politeness score that made me smile. 🫶

Bright gradient card showing "My 2025" with stats: 9/10 politeness, 247 messages, 170K lines, title "Elite Vibe Coder" and 5.7K hours saved.

Dark gradient card proclaiming a politeness score: "Your politeness score is 9/10," with a note saying you say "please" and "thank you" more than 91% of builders.

Bold text declares "Elite Vibe Coder" over a colorful gradient starburst, with praise about astronomical code output and Lovable branding.

Bright gradient card showing "247 Messages" with supportive tagline about building your vision and Lovable app branding.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Thats a wrap on SheBuilds! I truly built something Lovable in 48hrs dispite being sick 🤒 Full rundown after I'm done being rundown 🫶

Dark gradient webpage titled "future friendly system map" with a central drop zone prompting "Drop your design tokens here" for uploading design token files.

Dark-themed browser window showing a visual system map with node panels, connecting lines, filter tags, and a small preview panel in the corner

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Home stretch starts now! 🫶 "What is the impact of replacing my typeface?" is now something that can be answered in just a couple of clicks. 🤯 This exact question would have taken 100x longer just 36hr ago.

Dark UI map showing connected nodes and panels labeled typography, font families and options, with a small mockup thumbnail in the corner.

Dark UI workspace showing a node-link design system map at left and a right-side pane listing typography tokens and properties.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Day 1 of SheBuilds 🫶 I lost 5 hrs of building today to wrap up facilitating my theming design systems workshop with @smashing_conf where I teach people how to build these kinds of systems maps as a way to think through their design systems scaling challenges MANUALLY.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

First 2.5 hrs of SheBuilds 👩‍💻 1hr Kickoff call - 1 hr chatting with Lovable to develop the plan and the 1st build, fixed a couple of minor issues and have my FIRST WORKING BUILD! 30 mins documenting my progress 😻

Dark themed web app (Lovable.dev) UI showing a left chat panel with debug messages and a right canvas displaying a hierarchical systems map of connected nodes.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Christmas came early in Figma ☃️ Looks like we can now import and export DTCG formatted design tokens as variables! Is it time to retire the Tokens ≠ Variables stickers? More testing is required! And no, this isn't an enterprise account. This is my freelance account on the Pro Figma plan.... 🙌

Dark Figma Variables panel showing a Color collection with two theme colors: Primary (blue #0D6EFD) and Secondary (gray #6C757D), plus import/export dialog.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

I got accepted to SheBuilds on Lovable Season 02! 🎉 Any guesses what I'll build? Wrong answers only 😜 #SheBuildsOnLovable

Smiling woman portrait centered on a colorful gradient background with "SheBuilds on Lovable" branding and "Accepted! Season 02" badge.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Did you know Systems Thinking is an academic framework backed by science? 🤔 Stoked to be teaching the FUNdamentals of Systems Thinking through a Design Systems perspective during my upcoming workshops with Smashing Conferences 😻 🔗👇

Dark themed slide titled "Systems Thinking Fundamentals" showing a circular design system diagram with labeled nodes (a–f), inputs, outputs, context and a feedback loop.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Design Tokens aren't enough. While they document WHAT was decided in your design system, you still need to document WHY it was decided. 🤔 This is where an Architecture Decisions Record (ADR) comes in handy!

Dark gradient slide showing a design system diagram linking design tokens to a document preview, titled "Architecture Decisions Records capture why it was decided."

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

It's almost 2026... Why can't I paste markdown into a Google doc and have it just work? 🤬

A screenshot of a Google doc with a header written as ## [pattern or decision] which should be formatted as an H2 header in the document if It processed the markdown paste correctly.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Curious about my upcoming Theming Design Systems workshop? 🧐 Here's a sneak peek at one of the collaborative workshop files where we practice systems mapping skills to think through the classic problem of "where should things live in my Figma workspace?"

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Nature's ombre 🍁 My favourite time of year to wander my neighborhood and take in magic of color changing skyscapes and trees.

A tree with leafs that are changing colors. They are mostly yellow with red and orange edges.

A photo of a neighborhood focused on
the sky at sunset with many trees that have leaves that are changing colors from green, yellow, orange and red.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Today, Anthropic made my dreams come true. MCP between Claude and Airtable is a GAME CHANGER! 🤖 I'm OVER using token management tools for reasons best discussed over a strong coffee or a negroni. My motivation is going to be for your benefit very soon. 🚀

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Today I discovered that Claude allows you to select a section of it's output and ask for clarification based on the selected part. 🤯 Up until today I've been describing these things in the chat (left side) only. 🙈 This is going to make things work sooo much faster!

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

I've got Claude trained up on my design token architecture and naming templates. Yesterday, it was creating tokens from open-source code files. 🤖 We are still struggling with referencing other tokens and using math, but I'm sure that's a prompting issue on my part. 🤯 Wild times

A screenshot of the claude ai interface with a json code file on the right showing several design tokens. The left side shows claude confirming the token type decisions based on the DTCG specifications, and additional instructions from the user to modify the JSON file to include descriptions from a reference website.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

TIL if you mute a channel in Slack, you only see the BOLD channel name (signal to check what's new) if you are @ mentioned. 🤯 As someone trying to limit notifications, this is a game changer! #ADHDdesigner

The slack interface is shown with the channel preferences open. The Get Notifications menu has the Mute Channel option highlighted. The description of the Mute Channel option says "Prevent this channel from bolding for unread messages and only receive a badge if you're mentioned"

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Coming home this week from Europe on the first day of Pride month had me beaming with pride to be a Canadian 🇨🇦 🌈 📸 YYZ - Terminal 1 Baggage Claim

The baggage claim at an airport showcases a mural behind it of three maple leafs, filled with the horizontal colors from the pride flag. A wavy ribbon looking element consisting of multiple lines in rainbow colors connects the three maple leafs.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Opened my laptop to see this surprise on the same day that WTF Figma Month starts on my calendar. Any predictions on how the rest of my day is going to go? 🙃 In all seriousness, stoked to be watching the Config keynote from home and excited to see what's new!

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Stoked about teaching tech and tool agnostic skills for how to think through scaling design systems in my upcoming workshop with @smashingconf.com ! 😻 Interactive learning in a cohort environment is my fav, I'm so excited with what I've got in store for these Design Systems Jedi's. 🔗👇

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Players, the time for talk is over. It's time to vote! 🇨🇦

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

The stream was awesome!! But it's confession time 🙈 I originally thought the stream was last week, because the chaos of moving scrambled my neuro-spicy brain. But the show must go on!! Thanks to @intodesignsystems.bsky.social for keeping me calm through the chaos so I could hang with y'all!

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Developers, engineers, and coders in my circle: How do you feel about emojis in component layers or properties? In my next blog called "Stop Using Emojis in Your Components and Other Icon Workflow Tips," I'd love to include some linked comments from y'all instead of just taking my word for it.

An illustrated representation of the author is featured in front of Figma UI Screenshots with "my bad" written in multi-colored crayon above its head. The character in the illustration is a caucasian femme-looking person with long blonde hair. Their arms are out to the side, eyes are rolled, and the shape of the mouth suggests the character is embarrassed and apologetic.   The Figma UI screens show two views; the far right view is labeled "dev mode,” and the view on the right is labelled "designer view". Both views picture a button UI component with its component properties featured, which include emojis next to the property names: ⬅️ left icon, ✏️ label, and icon ↪️ right.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

How it started vs how it ended. 🫣 I always start my brain dump on paper, it somehow helps the story come to life 🤷‍♀️ How my talk on Token Fails came to life, shared at Smashing Conf in Freiburg, NYC, + Into Design Systems meetup in Berlin. Check it out → samiamdesigns.substack.com/p/bridging-...

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

The beginning of something great... 📷 Also, @elgato.com is killing it in the sustainable yet delightful packaging department. Zero plastic and no impossible to remove stickers on the outer box so it's truly upcycle and recycle friendly! ♻️ If you know their packaging designer, connect me?

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

How might we meet our team where they are at so we can bridge the gap? The @tokensstudio.bsky.social team has been working hard to solve this problem! I got to showcase some of the solutions we've got in the works during my @smashingconf.com talks this past year. 👀 youtu.be/t6-SRdpkoxs?...

A comic book style rocket shows the author smiling through its window, person with long blonde hair and white skin. The rocket is pointing towards a group of icons representing various software including In Design, PowerPoint, Figma, Penpot, Blender, Framer, Style Dictionary and Tokens Studio. There is comic inspired speech bubble coming from the rocket, suggesting the author is saying "how might we meet our team where they are at?".

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

The scariest thing I did in 2024 was close a web development conference as a systems designer who doesn't code. Check it out → samiamdesigns.substack.com/p/bridging-... Big 🫶 to Jon Hoffman for capturing this moment of @vitalyf.bsky.social and me at @smashingconf.com

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

My @smashingconf.com talk, Bridging the Gap, One Token at a Time, is now online! 🫶 Spoiler alert: the talk isn't really about Tokens. I roast my past self + share a series of failures that led me to be a better Design Systems teammate by learning Design Tokens. open.substack.com/pub/samiamd...

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

What's something you are excited to learn in 2025? For me it's micro animations and the new design tools from @penpot.app and @tokensstudio.bsky.social 🫶 Can I make a mini design system with touches of motion for my videos using Design Tokens outside of my go-to workflow? We shall see...

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Today's doom scroll interruption brought to you by some of the most interesting and beautiful patterned mushrooms I've ever eaten. 🍄 ... P.s. I'm getting my alt-text reps in everytime I post these pictures in hopes I get better at writing them. Constructive feedback welcome!

Person holding large mushroom cap in the palm of their hand against a wood background.

5 large mushroom caps against a wood countertop

A large mushroom cap with cracked looking patterns sitting on a wood countertop

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

Just disrupting your doom scroll to share the gorgeous fall colors in Toronto this week. 🍁 Yes it's a monster city, and no, it's not purely a concrete jungle.

Trees in fall colors of red and yellow near sunflowers infront of a house.

Trees and shrubs in fall colors of red yellow and green in the front yard of several houses. Yellow fallen leaves cover the road.

A large tree sits above a brick building. It's leaves are mostly yellow with a bit of red and green. The sky is cloudy.

A grassy park with trees around the edges with leaves of green, yellow and red colors. People sit on the grass in small groups.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 05/11/2024

I couldn't tell you last week how I came up with my green gradient for my zombie graphic. 🧟‍♀️ Today I'm tidying up and realized this beautiful gift from my partner was clearly an influence.💿 Funny enough, the artists name is always my default placeholder in UI design and presentations. 💚 John Digweed

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 03/11/2024

Holy moly there's a lot of new friends over here! I guess its time to reintroduce myself. 👋 I'm Sam, a total nerd about design systems, and design tokens. I research hard problems in my niche and share what I learn with the community as open-source content. 🫶

The Figma UI overlayed with ghost graphics and text below to represent the authors style of open-source content referenced in the post.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 01/08/2023

I've been struggling on what to post on blue sky, so I think I'll try it as a place to share the things that inspire me while out and about. 😻 I spent 5 mins looking for an artist tag on this beauty with zero luck. 🎨 Street art hunting - Toronto 🇨🇦 📍Queen Street West x Brock

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 03/07/2023

Designers 🎨 What's the ideal price point for a UI component library if it had component level tokens applied? 🤔 Would you buy a smaller kit for less? Say Forms (inputs, controls, and actions + buttons). Thinking of releasing mine once the rebuild with new tokens/variables is done.

Figma file showing a CTA button component annotated with design tokens, a matrix of different button variants, and the detailed documentation on the component.

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 05/06/2023

"Let's have a little bit of fun now, I'll make one {site} out of two..."😜 Analog Information Architecture in progress to merge a web app + website📝 Anyone else start with paper?

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Sam I am Designs 🫶 🇨🇦 @samiamdesigns.bsky.social · 21/05/2023

Hello new friends in the sky! Looking to connect with like minded folks into 🎨Design Systems + Design Tokens 💡Figma pro tips 📝Airtable + Automations 🤖 AI + Agents for Creatives 🤯 Psychology 🌅Sky Chasing 👩‍🎨Street Art 🌱House Plants 🏡🎶House Music

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