Interface studies
Quiet layout systems, restraint as a feature, and the choices that shape a screen before any pixel is drawn.
- Status
- Ongoing
- Medium
- Figma, web
- Updated
- May 2026
An ongoing notebook of layout sketches, type pairings, and quiet interface details. Most of them never become products. They exist to keep the muscle of looking and noticing alive.
I treat these as exercises: what happens if I remove a column, change the rhythm, push the type one size smaller. The interesting answers tend to be the boring-looking ones.
01 · Notes
What I am looking for
Most product screens are noisier than they need to be. I am looking for the version that earns each element, where every line of type, divider, and label is doing real work.
When I cannot defend a thing on the screen out loud in one short sentence, that is usually a sign it does not belong yet.
02 · Notes
How it informs client work
The studies are where I rehearse decisions before they get expensive. By the time a problem arrives in a real product, I have usually already sketched a version of it here.
It also keeps me honest. It is much harder to defend a busy layout in client work if I cannot make a quiet one work in a study.
03 · Notes
Plates
Open questions
Open questions
- When does restraint stop being restraint and become emptiness?
- How do you keep a quiet layout from feeling cold?
- Which conventions are worth keeping, and which are habit dressed as standard?
If something feels off, start there.
Tell me what's going on and what a good outcome would look like. A short email is enough — I read every one and reply within two working days.