Freddie Harrison

Freddie Harrison

@freddiewrit.es

Writer and accidental marketer for @sketch.com, recovering tech journalist, dad, husband, fussy coffee enthusiast, etc.

183 followers163 following85 posts

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post like this! For our latest @sketch.com release — Copenhagen — I dusted off my CMS password and tried to condense many months of work, decisions and iterations into a grand tour of our new UI. www.sketch.com/blog/a-tour-...

ilo.imA guided tour of Sketch Copenhagen — exploring an all-new UI design · Sketch BlogOur Copenhagen release features an all-new design for macOS Tahoe — here’s how we’ve balanced a fresh look with functionality.

Freddie Harrison reposted

Friends at #WWDC — if you bump into @rafa.design, say hi! We sent him off with a bunch of Sketch stickers and pin badges. He’ll give you one if you ask!

Truly, this is both one of the most rewarding and challenging things of working at @sketch.com. As we close in on 15 years ourselves, continuing to iterate, introduce new features and stay true to the values we hold close isn’t easy, but I’m sure I’ve learned a lot more than I would elsewhere.

I can’t think of a better way to run a company than Panic has. Similarly, I can’t think of a company that VC money hasn’t ruined by some definition. That Panic’s setup is so unique now is kind-of wild, really.

Neven Mrgan@mrgan.com

I’m gonna allow myself a moment of pride in my workplace here and note that we are currently on the front page of The Verge with a game we’re publishing (Big Walk) and a handheld console we make (Playdate). Panic is a company of 30. We don’t have investors. We’ve been around for 28 years 🙂

Been busy managing @sketch.com’s socials all day, but I’m super proud of all the work that went into this release. It’s no exaggeration to say this is our biggest update ever. I wrote three metres of release notes for this one, no kidding.

Sketch@sketch.com

Remember when we said auto layout was coming to Sketch? It’s here. It’s called Stacks, and it’s part of our biggest release ever — out now. There’s a lot to cover, so buckle up and we’ll take you on a tour. Also, stick around for a surprise at the end of the thread. 👀 Let’s go ↓

Justin has articulated something I’ve been feeling a lot when using AI. Maybe we’ll get to a point where I don’t feel like its manager but we’re not quite there yet. I feel bad for people who blindly trust and run with whatever it spits out.

Justin Jackson@justinjackson.ca

The AI delegation trap: When I delegate to a human, they own the task. They dedicate their focus and attention to it. But if I use AI as my "assistant," I'm still responsible. I never get that mental relief of having someone else take care of it. Ultimately, the weight of the task is still on me.

This. 100% this. Every person so far who has written some inflammatory “you don’t need to use design tools” anymore nonsense has gone on to show off their vibe coding workflow where they build Bluesky from Temu based on a pre-existing design and ready-made components. 🤡

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There will be a day when AI does this brilliantly. Fine. But it’s still not there yet. Right now to believe it is you have to have a spectacularly low bar for quality and taste.

Freddie Harrison reposted

Despite our many advancements to do more with less, how do we spend our time saved? We bake bread. Build furniture. Play vinyl. Shoot on film. We choose to do some things the hard way because living is feeling the friction of the world around us.

This is hustle culture I can get behind.

Chris@cjdowner.com

A nice easy way to make a passive income is to sell stock photographs of a phone with a company logo, being held up against a screen showing the same logo.

The only reason I’m not mad about not being asked to star in this is knowing I’d have been faded out like @paulo.is was. (But for real, it’s a very nice end-of-year recap and we’ve done some lovely stuff!)

Sketch@sketch.com

What did we do in 2024? We asked @rafa.design (and a few friends) to show what we shipped… and… well… enjoy!

My Apple Music replay is heavily influenced by the fact that I exclusively listened to The Kills on a 6-hour round trip to Cardiff because I thought they were a support act at a gig but they weren’t. Also, I really got into live albums again?

Spent a lot of time faffing about with my personal website and keep coming back to Jekyll (I want to fully own my stuff, I use it for work etc) but I’m a shoddy developer at best. Realised I can just ‘direct’ ChatGPT to do all the development for me and it’s a game-changer.

It’s not perfect, sometimes stuff doesn’t work and it takes a while to debug. It often forgets previous solutions it gave me and needs reminding of them. But on the whole, it’s just a couple of steps short of pure magic for an idiot like me. I might even had a new site running before Christmas!

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My views around what makes a good release note have changed a bit since I wrote that Medium article, so I think it’s time for a redux. Maybe the need to write a part ii will give me the kick I need to finish rebuilding my personal blog…

Fast forward a few years and I found myself at @sketch.com writing release notes for most of the updates we’ve done in the last five years. I learned a lot putting my ideals into practice and broke a few rules I made in my Medium article.

Writing these at Sketch helped me get much closer to the product and informed a lot of our marketing around releases. As an async company, (almost) everything gets documented, so I could follow the history and thinking around every new feature and bug fix. It gave me a lot of important context.