How about a creative little challenge this weekend? We might have just the right one for you! Design a desktop wallpaper for November and get featured in our upcoming wallpapers post next week. 🧡

↬ Join in: smashingmagazine.com/2015/12/deskto…

We can’t wait to see what you come up with! 🎨

🎲 In design, we obsess over consistency, grids, and alignment. So where does randomness actually fit? Through a bunch of playful demos, @utilitybend shows how the new CSS random() function brings a little imperfection to the web without JavaScript libraries or generating mountains of static CSS: smashingmagazine.com/2026/10/embrac…

Our Person of the Week is a Design Technologist focused on design systems, motion, and accessible UI. Please give a warm round of applause for... Carmen Ansio!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear @carmenansio! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

Our Person of the Week is a CTO, author, and coach with over 20 years of experience building software and leading teams. Drumroll, please, for... Milan Milanović!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear @milan_milanovic! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

Our Person of the Week is a self-taught designer thriving in the gray area between design and development. Please give a warm round of applause for... Matej Latin!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear @matejlatin! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

Our Person of the Week is a design and innovation leader focusing on agentic experience design, GenUI, agentic commerce, and agentic transformation. Drumroll, please, for... Tommaso Nervegna!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear @Nervo! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

Wallpapers are calling! Would you like to be featured in our upcoming October wallpapers post? We’re still taking submissions, so feel free to join in. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

🎨🖌️ Join in: smashingmagazine.com/2015/12/deskto…

Have you spotted our Person of the Week yet? Please give a warm round of applause for... Ruby Pryor!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear Ruby! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

Our Person of the Week is a front-end architect and design systems consultant passionate about helping teams build scalable design systems. Drumroll, please, for... Stuart Robson!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear @StuRobson! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

Our Person of the Week is an early green web pioneer exploring ideas on how we can move toward a better world for everyone. Please give a warm round of applause, for... Tom Greenwood!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear Tom! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

Our Person of the Week is an AI consultant focusing on closing the gap between AI’s promise and what organizations can actually deliver. Drumroll, please, for... Tey Bannerman!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear Tey! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

📊 Data visualisation sits at the intersection of data and design. Many dashboards are technically correct and communicatively inert. They show the right numbers but still fail to lead to a decision or a change in thinking.

↬ Meriem Benhabiles explores how structured UX into insights that actually land: smashingmagazine.com/2026/08/rethin…

Would you like to be featured in our September wallpapers post next week? We’re still taking submissions, so please feel free to share your design with us. We’d love to see what you come up with!

🎨🖌️ Join in: smashingmagazine.com/2015/12/deskto…

✨ Websites often peak on launch day, then slowly drift out of date. Autonomous websites, continuously optimized by agents after launch, aim to change that. But there’s a catch: almost nobody wants their site changing entirely on its own. Pierre Burgy shares what they learned building for full website autonomy and the deeper design problem they uncovered along the way: smashingmagazine.com/2026/08/why-we…

(Article supported by @fimoai 💖)

Our Person of the Week is a content marketing expert passionate about helping others master the art and science of great writing and marketing. Drumroll, please, for... Ryan Law!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear @thinking_slow! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

Our Person of the Week is an environmentally focused tech generalist advocating for a more sustainable internet. Drumroll, please, for... Chris Adams!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear @mrchrisadams! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

🔍 The EU has published new guidelines on the transparency of AI systems. Here’s why AI sparkles alone aren’t enough, when AI labels are necessary, and what the rules mean for AI-powered features and products: smashingmagazine.com/2026/08/eu-gui…

✨ When building a highly interactive, tactile web experience, the architecture should serve the art direction. Alexey Kopytin explains how they built a digital stress-relief squeeze toy game without a single line of WebGL or Matter.js, using Lottie animations, DOM events, and distance-based math to maintain absolute control over the designers’ intentional motion: smashingmagazine.com/2026/08/buildi…

(Article supported by @IsadoraAgency 💖)

Our Person of the Week is a research leader, educator, writer, and UX research expert with over a decade of experience. Please give a warm round of applause for... Maria Rosala!

Thank you for everything you do for the community, dear @maria_rosala! 🧡

#smashingcommunity

🌐 Most of us install a dependency once and never look at it again. It does its job, the tests pass, and we move on. But the web platform keeps moving too, and a surprising number of the libraries sitting in your package.json today are now built into the browser.

Here’s a practical guide by @JoubranJad to auditing your dependencies and replacing libraries with the platform where it makes sense: smashingmagazine.com/2026/08/how-ba…