After a year of being a full-time dad, I'm looking for what's next. With a career in fintech, SMB and dev tools. I've built products, shipped code and managed teams as both a designer and director. I'm looking for small teams with conviction to be profitable. Building low and slow. jonathontoon.com

After a year of being a full-time dad, I'm looking for what's next. With a career in fintech, SMB and dev tools. I've built products, shipped code and managed teams as both a designer and director. I'm looking for small teams with conviction to be profitable. Building low and slow. jonathontoon.com

Lately I've been struggling to get inspired by the design of most modern marketing websites and landing pages. They’re either super vague, saying little, or too complex with visuals and animations, leaving me overwhelmed. Just me?

I reckon AI design is close to having its Bootstrap.css moment. Clean and functional results that all look the same. As new technology raises the floor for "good enough", distinctiveness becomes the new moat. Weird beats optimal.

In 15 years as a product designer, I've seen early-career designers struggle with the gap between tidy processes and messy, real work. Inspired by this observation, I recently gave a guest lecture to design students at the University of Canterbury about navigating this gap, read on about it below.

One of my many hobbies has been trying all sorts of logic puzzles, followed by learning the mechanics of how they can be algorithmically solved. So to scratch my own itch I finally wrote my own library for generating/solving Sudoku. github.com/jonathontoon...

"Steve Jobs would've never..." Ya'll need to let go. Seriously.

Nothing ground breaking or revolutionary happened in the interface design world today, right?

ChatGPT will remember this.

This is how it's mean't to be, and how it was from the beginning, with institutions like Bauhaus. The downside of software is designers have delegated too much. And instead we have focused heavily on the intangible (facilitating process) rather than the tangible (learning through building).

I STILL can't get over how Dropbox at one point had one of the best mobile email clients around, killed it, and THEN decided to pivot harder into Enterprise. Makes no sense...

Designers need to move on from Jobs and Ive imo.

I wonder if Jony Ive ever tried to refund an angry customer on Stripe.

I'm over design frameworks 1/5 🧵 It's about time we see as an industry that we have over-indexed on trying to distill an inherently variable and chaotic sequence of events into a predictable, easy path to success under the guise of a 'UX framework'.

graphic design is my passion

The harsh truth about product design portfolios in 2025 is that cookie-cutter case studies just won’t do. Hiring managers want more. To support junior designers with such challenges I'm now offering 1:1 sessions to help them stand out. Don't get overlooked, book a call now. cal.com/jonathon-too...

The website of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is a vibe.

Surviving the first 100 days as a new parent makes me feel like I can do anything.

I'm fortunate enough to be giving a talk to a cohort of product design students in the coming months. I'm keen to impart some wisdom about our industry that goes beyond basic education. What’s something you wish you knew earlier that you only learned after working as a designer?

I can't believe it has taken so long for me to have seen Hypernormalisation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T...

There's no better feeling than recklessly closing several browser windows, each filled with numerous open tabs.

More work today, now with a name – encryptanyfile.com. Deployment done, now testing interactions: mostly quirks on mobile web and the different types of prompt responses. Next is file processing and encryption via web workers. Feedback welcome! #yearoftheterminal

When you have a newborn...

Holy shit, Deafheaven is dropping a new album. Which is going to be a return to form by the sounds of it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h_W...

Made some great progress in the last week on a prompt-driven interface for a new app idea. Inspired in-part by @internetstudio.bsky.social's sacred.computer and @emilwidlund.bsky.social 's ponderings.

Since moving to Cursor, designing in Figma just feels like a drag. Creating components, variables, styles, and prototypes is all just busy work keeping me from something tangible. The only value I see is easily comparing multiple ideas side by side. Surely I'm not alone here?

Cursor continues to be my favorite tool for realizing ideas. Be it for creating APIs, interfaces or even games in #PICO8. The possibilities are now endless.

I'm happy to have discovered the relaxing power of working on pixel art.

I will never not find installing software updates and 'restarting' TVs strange. Can't manufacturers make it feel more like a seamless piece of hardware and not a 55-inch smartphone?

Parents, what books did you find educational, useful or eye-opening in the early years of your child's development? I'm keen to build a list.

Comparisons like these highlight for me that, despite all the talk of craft in design, the focus remains overwhelmingly on the visual—often neglecting deeper, less tangible aspects.

Became a father today. What a beginning to a wild ride.

It's a privilege for many not only to have US citizenship, but also dual citizenship. However I made a decision earlier this year to renounce my US citizenship for a number of reasons. After today's turn out I don't regret it one bit.

building the nuts and bolts of a simple terminal interface for a side project has so far been very rewarding. especially once i was able to run synchronous blocks of code for arbitrary prompts.

figma has become so hostile for any small organisation or freelancer. im going back to kidpix help.figma.com/hc/en-us/art...

In August, I had the honor of mentoring 7 designers. Discussing topics from cultural perspectives on design to planning growth experiments. After a break I am resuming sessions in October. So if you know anyone looking for guidance I would love to help. adplist.org/mentors/jona...

When I'm done with this it's over for y'all.

Bath time.

Tend to agree with a lot of the ideas expressed in this article.

While doing it informally over the last number of years I've decided to dedicate more time to providing mentorship. Feel free to sign up for a session with me on http://adplist.org.

Solid evening. 🚵

shenmue / dreamcast sega am2, 1999

Happy to be here.