Tom Ayling

A frutiger aero style rework of the Substack app icon, in line with Apple’s new Liquid Glass design aesthetic.

POV: Apple acquires Substack ✨

A quick Liquid Glass experiment made with Apple’s Icon Composer Beta.

What app should I give the Apple treatment next? Drop your suggestions below 👇

#UI #Apple #WWDC

Marketing image of the new iOS 26 interface with a hand-written “Nope!” annotation.

iOS 7 was genuinely revolutionary. Clean typography, generous whitespace, and readable text became the foundation for every touch interface that followed.

iOS 26 feels like the opposite, and is accessibility hell.

#WWDC #iOS #DesignSky

Experimented with a ‘liquid glass’ look in Figma. It’s gonna take some getting used to, and makes Figma lag like crazy with all the effects! #liquidglass #WWDC #DesignSky #UI

45-minute experimental hero design on the theme of ‘*upside-down’* 🙃

Loved how the display type turned out — huge fan of Fontshare when I need expressive type in a hurry.

#figma #DesignSky #UISky #UIDesign #webdesign

Rust, Film, and Pixel-Peepin’ Discover the best film-look camera app, AI tools, space mission patches, risograph animation, and more in this month’s creative roundup.

📸🪐🖨️🎨✨
This month’s round-up of cool stuff features: a killer film-look camera app, more space stuff, printed risograph animations, scary chemicals, and more!

open.substack.com/pub/tomaylin...

#designsky #design #graphicdesign #newsletter #risograph

👋

This is great! Such a neat usage of Midjourney 💪

Nice to meet you! 🤘🤖

Howdy! 👋

The Shell-Out 🐢 | Tom Ayling | Substack Your informal monthly dose of cool stuff from the world of visual design and tech. Expect a light-hearted, turtle-paced journey through UX/UI, branding, and product design ✨. Click to read The Shell-O...

I’ve abandoned Instagram in favour of writing my newsletter (theshellout.com) - it’s just so painful having to fight an algorithm to get to people, so direct emails are the obvious solution imo.

Thanks - it’s one of the doodles from my newsletter. All my friends called me a turtle when I was growing up 🐢

(I had a long neck)

Well, that’s definitive! Thanks for sharing.

Hello there! 👋

Hey Delia. Nice to meet you 👋

Great job! Pinned ☺️👍

A doodled cartoon character exclaiming “Designers wanted!”

Who else is posting about visual/graphic/UI/UX design on Bluesky?
While some of Design Twitter has moved over, I’m really struggling to find the cool visual design stuff here on Bluesky.
If you make (or know someone that makes) cool visual stuff - leave a reply.

#designsky #UI #UX #graphicdesign

Still better than when everyone was using Poppins.

Wow, small world! Great job 😊

Love the rule-breaking overlaps and bold z-index choices from Vino Potable. A clever way to make the visuals stand out and pull focus to the product.

#designsky #UI #UX #figma #UIsky #webdesign #dev

Thanks, Todd! I aim to do a new challenge every week.

Back to the one-hour UI/UX design experiments! This time with keyhole as the prompt 🔑

Super pleased with how the light peeks through on hover, adding some anticipation for the user.

#designsky #UI #UX #figma #UIsky #webdesign #dev

Experimented today with offset looping patterns to portray circular economies/cities.

#designsky #UI #UX #webdesign

Virtual Pets, Nostalgia, and Engravings and satisfying micro-interactions

In this month’s round-up of cool design things:

• A website that looks like engravings ✒️

• Caring for yourself (through a birb 🐦)

• Silky smooth microinteractions 🥵

• Random pre-2012 iPhone videos 🎥

• How app design changes around the world 🌏

#designsky #UI #UX #UIUX #substack #newsletter

Love this pricing page interaction design from Cursor.

The little shadow/fade on the mask really sells it.

Definitely adding this one to my monthly newsletter of cool finds.

#designsky #UI #UX #webdesign

Hell yeah. Excited to push for more creativity this year!

I see loads of “CHECK OUT MY DESIGN!” posts. Instead:

• Give context: Client work, passion project, or experiment?
• Get people excited: What’s interesting or worth sharing? What does it mean to you? Why is it worth someone's attention?

So… what’s your latest design project about?

#designsky

Bespoke/interesting interaction design. Feels like the future.

Reminded today of these beautiful motion graphics by 4096
www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Df...

#designsky #motiongraphics #motiondesign #synthwave #motion #aftereffects

I think it’s a reasonable skill to start with if you don’t do 3D.

If VR/AR takes off, 3D experiences will become increasingly relevant.

But I feel like there will always be 2D planes to interact with, at the end of the day.

Same here! In the same boat when it comes to work. A shame not to share all the cool stuff I make 9–5.