Google Design

Google UX Director Margaret Lee on redefining design leadership and inclusivity in the workplace

In this episode, host Travis Neilson interviews Margaret Lee, a UX director at Google, about her journey to leadership. Lee shares personal vignettes—including the career stories of her immigrant parents, and stewarding the opinionated nature of her young daughter—to discuss her own path to becoming a “reluctant leader.” Listen in to hear how Lee found a healthy balance between meeting performance expectations at work and being her authentic self. Want to learn more about the journeys and creative decisions of designers at Google? Subscribe to the Method podcast on Google Play, iTunes, RSS, or Spotify.

Newsfeed

Google is FastCo’s Design Company of the Year

“We have world-class designers across key areas… There’s alignment around shared values and approaches but diversity of thought and opinion.” — Sundar PichaiWhen Google was incorporated in 1998, it was synonymous with technology and search engines. But design? Not so much. Today, Google is Fast Company’s 2018 Design Company of the Year. Clearly, a lot has changed over the last two decades. In a new interview with Sundar Pichai, our CEO discusses Google’s design evolution, challenges, and legacy—revealing how we landed the first Fast Company award recognizing high-quality, ambitious design work in an organization.Read more over at Fast Company

Google Fonts launches Japanese support—and makes loading large fonts even faster

Japanese fonts are both complex and very large—spanning well over ten thousand codepoints across four writing systems. This poses a unique challenge when it comes to the web, since downloading a Japanese font as a single “block” would make page load unacceptably slow. Google Fonts' innovative delivery system circumvents this problem by splitting the large fonts into roughly 100 “slices” based on an analysis of online language patterns. This intelligent approach was first used earlier this year for Korean fonts, and is now extended to support Japanese text with six web fonts for designers and developers. Try all six fast-loading Japanese kanji fontsWant the latest fonts first? Join the Google Fonts Early Access Program

Announcing SPAN Helsinki, 1 Nov 2018

This year, our annual design conference is heading to Helsinki. Join 250 makers and technologists for a a day of thought-provoking talks, hands-on workshops, and experiential sessions in Finland’s capital city. We’re thrilled to host world-renowned speakers and Finnish designers working at the intersection of AI, art, and design for a single day of diverse programming. Registration is now open, please visit design.google/span2018 to learn more and follow #SPAN18 for updates on the speaker lineup (and more) in the days ahead.Tickets are free, but spots are limited! Register now for SPAN 2018

Open call for 2018 Material Design Award nominations

A design system only comes to life when it’s used to create meaningful experiences. The annual Material Design Awards celebrate these experiences, showcasing best-in-class designs from our talented community.Are you working on a product that exemplifies Material Design? Nominate yourself or your team for a 2018 Material Design Award and help us highlight what brings the Material Design system to life. This year’s categories for nomination: Expression, Experience, Adaptation, and Innovation. We’re looking for products that push the boundaries of Material Design and incorporate its expressive capabilities to create brilliant, meaningful experiences, no matter the platform. Start by filling out an entry form—and if you need some inspiration, take a look at the 2015, 2016, and 2017 winners. The deadline for nominations is August 31, 2018 and Material Design Award winners will be announced on Google Design in October.

Featured Collection: SPAN

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Explore our annual conference on design and technology with this month's featured collection of articles, guides, and video.

A behind-the-scenes look at our SPAN 2015 reader

Guide to SPAN LA

Watch all the talks from our LA conference and learn more about the speakers, including Peter Shire, Jessie Kawata, and Frances Anderton

Guide to SPAN Tokyo

Watch archived video from our Tokyo event and get to know each of the speakers, including Deyan Sudjic, Mariya Suzuki, and Keiichi Tanaami

Explore the visual, virtual, and written culture of Tokyo and Los Angeles through the work of our SPAN 2016 speakers

SPAN 2015: London

Learn about conditional design, privacy, VR, and emerging design tools at our London conference

SPAN 2015: New York

Watch conversations on talent, interaction design, and collaboration from our New York conference

FORM 2014: San Francisco

Experience our first-ever design conference on the intersection between design and technology

SPAN 2016: Los Angeles

Explore everything from Processing and robotics to production design at our Los Angeles conference

スパン SPAN 2016: 東京 Tokyo

Our Tokyo conference featured talks on machine learning, start-up culture, ikebana, type design, and more

Robots are creatures, not things. What is the verb of architecture? Does data have a blind spot? These are just some of the ideas we explored at SPAN Pittsburgh

The New Industrialists

Mapping the intersection of tech and design in Pittsburgh

Revealing the Invisible

Using design to reshape how we experience data

Designing SPAN 2017

An inside look at how we design and evolve the branding of our annual design and technology conference

Design Notes, Episode 4

Talking Turing Tests and gamifying education with Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of DuoLingo

Design Notes, Episode 6

Designer and professor Molly Wright Steenson on lessons from the early foundations of AI

Design Notes, Episode 8

Deeplocal CEO Nathan Martin on punk rock and authenticity

Design Notes, Episode 11

Design researcher Madeline Gannon on taming robots and reinventing the ways humans and machines interact

SPAN 2018: Helsinki

Experiential sessions, hands-on workshops, thoughtful conversations. Our design and tech conference travels to Finland on 1 Nov 2018. Learn more and RSVP

SPAN Helsinki: Meet Our Speakers

Learn about the technologists, artists, creatives, and companies excited to share their knowledge at our upcoming design conference

Listen to the Best of SPAN 2017

Highlights from our Design Notes podcast recorded live from SPAN Pittsburgh last year