The most influential thoughts about design, design checklists & more

Sketching for UX Newsletter Issue #33 - my favorite design resources I discovered in the last month (August, 2025)

Hey dear subscriber,

This issue is about

• The new format for sharing my design knowledge

• The most influential thoughts about design — the new sketch

• 10 +1 design resources I loved the most in August

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✏️ The new UX sketch format

Back in 2017, I started the UX Knowledge Base Sketches series. After the release of the 100th sketch, I changed the format to better fit Instagram’s carousel pattern (and I also liked how those 9 little sticky notes came together and formed a square-shaped design poster). I released the first one in 2020, and created 72 UX Knowledge Piece Sketches since then. These are the latest 9 put together:

Now I’ve decided that it’s time to change the format again. And after 8 years of using pen & paper to create these sketches, I’m going digital (iPad Air + Apple Pencil + Procreate). For now, I call it “.uxsketch” — like a file extension that indicates the file format :) Do you like this name? Let me know if you have an other idea!

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✏️ The most influential thoughts about design — Part 1

These are some of the thoughts, ideas that fundamentally shaped how I approach design. I'm going to explain what each of these means to me in an article, you’ll find it here soon.

How do you like this new format? Please let me know in the comments if you have some feedback!

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✏️ Favorite resources

Here are my favorite discoveries of August, 2025:

#1 Checklist Design by

George Hatzis

Checklist Design, a curated list of checklists ranging from website pages, to UI components, all the way to branding assets has just got an awesome new look.
It is available as a Figma Plugin, too.

#2 UXSnaps - Design breakdowns by Amish Gadhia
If you’ve been a long time follower, you know that I love knowledge bases that are about analyzing designs, e.g. Built for Mars, Growth.design or UserOnboard.
Btw. I’m also working on my own: a knowledge base that connects my 173+ UX sketches, the database of my favorite design links (600+) and my favorite design pieces I’ve saved over the years (1000+).
So I’m especially excited about this resource, it has great potential!

#3 Why designing terrible solutions makes you a better designer Jon Daiello
”“It’s not design if you only explored one option.” Let’s push it a bit further: it’s definitely not great design if all your options exist in the same narrow band of “acceptable.””

#4 BX Museum
An inspirational collection of brand artifacts, e.g. here are some of Netflix’s and Tupperware’s:

If you are interested in developing taste and how to get inspired by the offline and online experiences around you, check out the How to train your designer eye course:

#5

Elizabeth Goodspeed

on the importance of taste – and how to acquire it
”A common theme heard amongst iconic, tasteful creatives is how often they look outside their own field for inspiration: the architect inspired by nature, the clothing designer inspired by anime, the illustrator inspired by medieval tapestries.”

#6 From “how might we” to “at what cost” by Ida Persson
”Moving fast and breaking things is no longer acceptable and as designers, we need to start considering both possibilities and the responsibilities we hold.”

Related resource: Design for Real Life book by Eric A. Meyer and Sara Wachter-Boettcher (you can read it for free)

#7 Design inspiration

• Pricing pages by

  Finnian Sturdy

• 404 pages also by Finnian

• Social proof examples

• UI Live (you can copy the assets directly to Figma)

• Marketing examples

My article and sketch about Collecting and using design inspiration —best practices and resources

#8 How AI Is Changing Search Behaviors by Kate Moran, Maria Rosala and Josh Brown
”While generative AI does offer enough value to change user behaviors, it has not replaced traditional search entirely. Traditional search and AI chats were often used in tandem to explore the same topic and were sometimes used to fact-check each other.”
A related article: How AI Succeeds (and Fails) to Help People Find Information by Kate Moran

My sketches about information foraging and how users look for information: part 1, part 2.

#9 The History of Themeable User Interfaces by

Brad Frost

”Design tokens may be the latest incarnation, but software creators have been creating themeable user interfaces for quite a long time! As with all things, we can study history to learn from our past to inform our future.”

#10 Has efficiency killed beauty? A designer’s search for meaning by

MaximKICH

What a nice and well-illustrated essay! A perfect read for your coffee breaks :)

”Many great works became great precisely because their creators broke the rules of their time.” […] “Why try to lock beauty in a cage? If something strikes us as beautiful — maybe we should just let it be and not destroy the magic by over-analysing it.”

My sketch about the Aesthetic-Usability Effect

+1 Colonoscopy and candy drops: on crafting a good peak-end experience by

Urszula Kluz

”A gift that doesn’t match the perceived value ends up lowering the quality of the experience, instead of adding to it.”

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🔥 Deals & recommended products

My courses on Udemy (€12.99 each)

• How to train your designer eye

• Sketching for UX Designers course

• Be a better designer by understanding development aspects course

My free (pay-what-you-want) books

• Sketching for UX Designers Workbook 1.0

• The 100-Day Long UX Visual Library Building Challenge

Recommended design courses

• Supercharge Design All access by Andrija Prelec

• Master Gorgeous UI Design Course by

  Pablo Stanley
  & his team

• Figma Academy by

  Ridd
  (use the code SKETCHINGFORUX to get $100 off)

Other deals

Mobbin 2.0 is here with many new exciting features like flows, advanced search and an all-new library! Join with my link to support me with a couple of dollars, I’d really appreciate it!

☕ You can also support me by buying a coffee on ko-fi.com.

Thanks for reading my newsletter, I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know if you have any feedback!
Krisztina