(30 year) old dog, new tricks
learning is fun I fear
Floor Time
/flôr tīm/
noun
the 15-60 minute time period spent laying on the floor in the middle of the work day, typically as a relief from the soul-sucking reality of corporate America.
Hi friends! I’m back from my west coast romp and so much happened while I was away. The Rise of the Resistance and of Harris/Walz (one and the same?). The mess of an It Ends With Us press tour (and the heinous Blake Lively outfits that come with it). The demure takeover. The pole vaulter’s pole. The end of the Olympics!! The final season of the Umbrella Academy (how Klaus got his namesake). The new season of Emily in Paris. My discovery of the magical Wonderskin lip stain (thanks Annie). And my all-encompassing launch into the world of Figma *record scratch* wait HUH?!
Though we here at Floor Time HQ usually pride ourselves on being the escape from corporate drudgery, not the ones lauding it, I fear I may have to girlboss a little close to the sun just this once—no but actually, I looked back at past Floor Times and this is 100% the most corporate one I’ve ever written. But I hope you stick around as I’m about to make your life easier. Two weeks ago, I started working with a new client1 that exclusively uses Figma for all design. Though I’m familiar with the tool, I hadn’t made the switch from Adobe Creative Suite just yet. But I began to play around with it when a) I started seeing a lot of JD’s that list Figma as a good-to-know skill, b) my computer stopped opening Photoshop because it’s decrepit and needs [redacted]GB of storage-I-don’t-have to run it.
As a creative familiar with most design tools, I find Figma to be deeply intuitive in ways that Adobe sometimes isn’t2. At this point, I’ve been using Adobe Creative Suite for over a decade. I took a semester-long tutorial on Illustrator in college (in fact, even the Pratt design course I took in April was like a month-long crash course). I was an ambassador for Adobe Illustrator on iPad when it was released. All this to say, I should know Adobe by now. But I still struggle with the learning curve, after all this time. Cut to day one of using Figma, I felt like I’d been using it for years. And I was able to use it for free on my browser (Adobe could never?!) until I trusted the program enough to let the app take up RAM on the aforementioned decrepit computer.
I also love the collaboration element of it. I will never forget being scolded on a project for not uploading design files to Google Drive. My very reasonable pushback was that the file was still a “working file,” aka still being edited by relevant stakeholders. So I didn’t want to upload an outdated file to a shared Drive and confuse everyone, or have an unfinished version get presented to the public. With Figma, you can collaborate in real-time in the way you might with a Google doc—down to seeing where people’s cursors are. You get what’s most up-to-date, making the review process much more seamless. I’m also told their new feature, FigJam, is a more interactive way to collab (it gives me Miro vibes, but I have yet to try it).
And finally lemme say this, because I know many people reading this have come face to face with Canva at some point in their professional lives.
Personally, I…hate Canva. I know how to use it but I feel like the interface is poorly thought out, and I think many teams have leaned on it to “hack graphic design” rather than just hiring creative talent. I think it’s done some good in that people who don’t have a design background have been able to dabble with Canva. I would urge these people to move over to Figma. Figma is a vector3 program, and this helps with social asset creation where you need to resize images to fit different size requirements across channels. Like I said before, it’s collaborative, meaning you can get feedback quickly and post quicker, ensuring you don’t miss viral moments/trends.
Please excuse me if my corporate baddie is showing—I am just so excited to dive further into a new tool, especially one that seems to have answered many of my largest design headaches. If you’re not someone who will ever work in Figma (and yet you read until here?? good on ya!) then perhaps the bigger message to you is that it’s quite awesome to discover that we can still teach an old dog new tricks. This entire thirtieth year for me has been about education and betterment and I feel like taking the time to learn a new software has been a refreshing change of scene—and something I didn’t think I could still be excited about.
Something I Thought of in the Shower
How did I never realize Blake was a mean girl?
Something Pretty
I’m not even sure where to start because I spent the past two weeks in southern California, ending in British Columbia which I will never get over no matter how many times I go (like do people from BC ever get tired of the scenery?! how could they?). Here are just a handful of my favorite shots from the trip.
Something To Laugh About
^My feelings exactly about being a person of the internet this week. Anyway, here are this week’s gems:
IMO there are only a handful of brands / orgs that are doing social media REALLY well. Jacquemus is one of them. Away is another (post-reckoning Away). Then, there are public libraries. I’ve called out the Milwaukee Public Library before—they’re dominating with video content. And this week, I found this video by the City of Marion Libraries. You cannot tell me card-carrying members of local public libraries are not The! Coolest! Kids! In! Town!
I just found out from Eric Kim’s article that this cucumber guy is actually from Ottawa. Nice play, Canada.
This video of a mom giving her kiddo a spa day was just as therapeutic for me as it looks like it was for the little girl.
And this is how you a) do cultural appreciation and b) absolutely EAT at a trending sound.
Something for Clarice
Hey! This newsletter is free and I intend to keep it that way. That said, if you love it and want to show your appreciation, buy me a coffee :)
By the way…I’m reading this.
I read so many books while traveling! Lizzie recommended Talking At Night, which I started and finished on my plane back from Vancouver (which Shay Mitchell was also on, fun!)—great for fans of Sally Rooney (to be clear, not me), One Day, Love, Rosie, and The Notebook.
Now, I’m pretending I have a luxurious European trip coming up by reading Casey McQuiston’s newest book, The Pairing. As always, I started it yesterday and already read 50%. Their books are so digestible (pun not intended), quick, and ideal summer reads!
And I’m watching this.
I’m almost done with the final season of the Umbrella Academy, and then, I mean, what else—it’s Emily in Paris season 4.
Have a great weekend! I’m so happy to be back in NYC—planning to take advantage of the August Summer Streets, go surfing with my new wetsuit(!!) I got in Laguna Beach and impressively packed into my carry-on, and grab a real New England lobster roll after having a lackluster one in LA (I’m sorry, but the Californians can’t do lobbie rolls and that’s ok!! We get burritos!!!).
‘Til next time, corporate baddies. Your friend,
Clarice
huzzah! may my flop era finally end and long may my girlboss era REIGNNNNN
I do want to flag that Adobe is a past client who I LOVED working with, so not trying to knock anyone here
for those who don’t know, vector graphics are mapped out using mathematic equations that calculate where the edge of shapes are in relation to one another, while pixel graphics (aka raster graphics) are made up of tiny squares
Figma all the way 💪