Things I’m Thankful For

The Design Edition

Aaron Cecchini-Butler
4 min readNov 24, 2022

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Photo that says “Thank you” in neon lights
Photo by Morvanic Lee on Unsplash

Listen, I’ve never been great at the gratitude thing. I’ve mastered “cynical,” but haven’t perfected “thankful.” So, in honor of the time of year where I’m forced to do my best, I’ve curated a list of things that I’m genuinely appreciative of.

Auto-layout

Example of changing text in a button and having to manually resize

It’s really hard to remember the days before auto-layout. But when I think really hard, I remember the days of changing the text in a button, and then having to resize the button to keep the padding consistent. I remember the days of typing text that wrapped, and then having to grab everything below that text and manually move it down.

It was a dark and scary time.

Design systems slack

This slack community is dedicated to design systems. It is also a generous and kind community. Designers range in their experience and areas of expertise, but everyone contributes in asking and answering questions, sharing resources, and supporting each other. Additionally, Jina Anne does an amazing job at enforcing a beautiful code of conduct.

(There’s even a bot that encourages gender-neutral language. Many messages that originally started with “Hey guys,” are reminded by the bot, and then edited.)

Fabricio Teixeira

I don’t know if this person sleeps. But I do know that I’ve written a number of articles, and he often puts in the time to leave comments. I have to assume that I’m not the only person who’s writing articles, which means he is doing a LOT of work.

If you want to learn more about him, I found this article interesting!

#3434F4

A block of color with the hex code #3434F4

I’m really digging this color right now. A strong blue with enough purple to be noticeable.

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Aaron Cecchini-Butler

Senior Systems Designer at Grubhub working on Cookbook (our design system) — as well as contributing to product design work.