Murphy Trueman
@murphytrueman.com
⌘ Design systems. Product. Writing something, somewhere. http://murphytrueman.com
My very first photo of the moon! Can’t wait to experiment with this some more.
The question we hear most from design system teams right now is some version of: are we ready for this? This week's newsletter is about what being ready actually looks like, and why it has a lot less to do with the state of your system than you might expect. www.baselinedesign.com/posts/what-b...
What Being Ready Actually Means - Baseline Design
What Being Ready Actually Means – And why it has less to do with your system's polish than you might think
baselinedesign.com
Nothing is better than a long drive with Righteous Jams on repeat.
In this article, @murphytrueman.com identifies #designsystems contribution rituals that build momentum and strengthen adoption, such as office hours, credits, and design crits. 👇👇👇
zeroheight@zeroheight.com · 3mo agoMurphy Trueman just nailed something we've been thinking about for a while. Most design system contribution models have great documentation. Almost none have momentum. The difference isn't process. It's ritual. 💡 A great read for anyone working on design systems: hubs.ly/Q04dSNBz0
Most governance models get built before anyone's asked what they're actually for. Sometimes it's a fear. Sometimes it's just a feeling that a system at this scale should have one. www.baselinedesign.com/posts/govern...
Governance Without Gatekeeping - Baseline Design
Governance Without Gatekeeping – What a good contribution process is actually protecting
baselinedesign.com
How am I expected to function as a human being when this is the team I chose to dedicate my life to?
Like an evil, amorphous blob absorbing energy, I feel like I gain untold experience from reading @murphytrueman.com.
this place is like tumblr for people who work stay at home jobs
Ooh this is fun! Have Heart Guilt Trip Madball Kublai Khan State Champs H20 Neck Deep Nick Shoulders Terror Slapshot
Guy Segal@guysegal.com · 3mo agoIntroduce yourself with ten bands you’ve seen live Sonic Youth Viagra Boys The Breeders They Might Be Giants Butthole Surfers Sigur Ros Neutral Milk Hotel Pom Poko Guided by Voices The Bug Club
Some days you just need to lay in your dog’s bed between meetings.
Never in my days of playing Super Mario World on the SNES did I think video games would look like Forza Horizon 6. This is INCREDIBLE.
Trace your primary brand colour through your project. It's in the tokens file, the DESIGN.md, the AGENTS.md rule, a Figma Skill, and the Storybook manifest. Same decision. Five surfaces. None auto-derived. blog.murphytrueman.com/your-design-...
Your design system is fragmenting into agent files
AGENTS.md, SKILL.md, DESIGN.md, and where each one fits
blog.murphytrueman.com
"Teams that take #designsystems best practices seriously treat documentation as infrastructure, not a launch deliverable you forget about." In this post, @murphytrueman.com explores why docs often become a bottleneck and how to build maintenance into the workflow. Read it on @zeroheight.com:
Why your design system documentation goes stale (and how to fix it) - zeroheight
Murphy Trueman explains how to document a design system, why docs go stale, and practical steps to keep documentation current, findable, and useful.
zeroheight.com
I've started calling it design system archaeology. The work of reading a system you didn't build. You want to rebuild it. Don't. The mess is usually context you don't have. Yet. blog.murphytrueman.com/design-syste...
Design system archaeology
Reading a system you didn't build, and why the first 90 days look nothing like building
blog.murphytrueman.com
The 5th edition of the Design Systems Report is here 📔 Design systems are now critical infrastructure—but they’re getting harder to sustain. Buy-in is dropping. Teams are stretched. Adoption is still the biggest challenge. Explore the report → hubs.li/Q04774jK0
Calling a component Modal instead of Dialog feels like a stylistic preference. But the consequences are more technical than that. I've completed a full breakdown of four open-source systems and what their implementations reveal 👇 blog.murphytrueman.com/in-the-open-...
In the open: What the modal reveals
Four open-source systems. One component. What the implementation choices actually say.
blog.murphytrueman.com
AI tooling for design systems has matured. The operational work hasn't kept up. Token audits. Deprecation plans. Drift detection. Stakeholder briefs. I tidied up the Claude Code skills I've used for that work, and put them somewhere public. designsystemops.com
Design System Ops – Claude Code Skills for Design Systems Practitioners
The first Claude Code skill pack built for the people who run design systems – not just the people who use them.
designsystemops.com
Sometimes all it takes is someone caring enough to say something. I'm glad to be off Substack. Loving my experience with @ghost.org so far.
Guy Segal@guysegal.com · 5mo agoLast week I asked @murphytrueman.com if she’d be open to consider moving her design systems articles off substack. Not only was she open to it, but she already relaunched her blog on ghost! Thank you for being open to feedback and actually caring! Go read her excellent articles!