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Fresh UK job market data puts average junior designer salary around £29,000, with Figma named in 63% of UX/product design listings. It's a useful reality check before you tailor your portfolio and CV.
uiuxdesignerjobs.com
Design writing outlets are increasingly covering async-first critique and documentation as standard practice for distributed teams, not just a remote-work workaround. It's a shift from live crit as the gold standard to written, asynchronous feedback loops.
smashingmagazine.com
Penpot is leaning into native W3C-aligned design tokens, contrasting with Figma's variables, which stay largely locked to its own ecosystem. It's a small but real signal that design systems are being built for portability across tools.
penpot.app
Penpot keeps pushing an open-source, self-hostable alternative to Figma, with native W3C design token support. Figma still leads on plugins and prototyping polish, so this is a growing niche play, not a takeover.
medium.com
MIT Sloan research argues AI's biggest gains come from restructuring entire workflows, not swapping in single AI tools. For junior designers, that means workflow fluency matters more than mastering any one AI plugin.
mitsloan.mit.edu
