Check out the highlights from the Automattic Design team this past year. 🖤

Henrique is one of the many designers working at Automattic who are helping to make WordPress a well designed space for creators. The themes he and the theme design team speak for themselves. One of my favorite parts of working on open source is the “patches welcome” mindset, meaning if you want to improve something, make something better. As Henrique puts it:

“WordPress isn’t just a platform to adapt to—it’s one you can help shape.”

Read the rest on automattic.design.

We launched a refreshed Woo brand today. All created and designed in-house! (I sometimes forget how rare that is or why you would want to outsource this type of work.) Proud of the four-person design team who made this happen. At Automattic we like to do things iteratively, so stay tuned for more. I’m especially excited for the animation work.

The Tumblr team at Automattic shipped Communities today. Check it out:

https://www.tumblr.com/staff/769680688183164928/tumblr-theyre-here-communities-are-finally

Revamping Michael Pollan’s Digital Presence

New work from our Studio 51 team, the design team that creates amazing sites for people with the goal to get 51% of the internet running on WordPress. (At the time of writing this, we are just over 43%.) The Studio 51 team works closely with the Special Projects group at Automattic and have a really cool site to learn more about the work they do.

WordPress 6.7 was released today. Lots of great details throughout and a brand new theme for Twenty Twenty Five. Really proud of the team for continuing to advance WordPress. Check out the release site, which is a lovely design as well.

We launched the open source WordPress Design System today! Really excited about this. This will allow more sharing of components across WordPress and all its products, creating a much better experience. It’s also speed up the time it takes create and ship designs. Available on both Github and as a Figma Library. Try it out and let us know what you think!

• Figma library. Join 1.3k others who have started using it.
• Github repo. If you’d like to contribute or have a suggestion.

New post from Filippo, a talented designer who recently joined Automattic for the second time. Some really great observations and I especially love this part:

Design quality

The quality of design work and thinking has gotten better than when I was here last time. All our properties look more sophisticated and polished. So are our internal communications and templates.

You can tell the extra care and attention that goes into everything. Seeing this quality of work drives me to pay extra special attention to the details. I want to meet and exceed the standard that’s being said. It’s motivating.

We’ve put a lot of work into improving the design quality over the past few years and I’m really happy its so apparent. Glad to have you back, Filippo!

Love how the new Taika site design came out. Great example of the work coming out of the design team at Automattic, showcasing what is possible on WordPress and WooCommerce.

Incredibly proud of the work we’re doing at Automattic to make the web a better place. Just as we did last year, we created a reel to showcase the highlights from the past twelve months. What a treat as I head out on a sabbatical. Love this team.