CHICKENPIE.All the papers.
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Original artwork, personal stories and things worth keeping. Browse by topic, format or a little curiosity.
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66 papers in design work
Your website isn't finished. It's just online.
Before accepting a website handover, check the customer journey, account ownership and the work hidden behind the launch screenshot.
Open paper
Wix, Squarespace or build it yourself in 2026? Think past the first year.
A practical look at Wix, Squarespace and custom builds: subscriptions, renewals, control, portability and the work that stays after launch.
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Design trends October 2026: warmth needs proof
Three design signals worth testing: physical craft, expressive typography and brand behaviour. Chickenpie asks what survives beyond the launch presentation.
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91% of Designers Use AI Now. That's Exactly Why Your Hand Matters More.
91% of designers use AI weekly now. That killed AI as a differentiator and made texture, typography, and a visible human hand the new premium signal.
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6 AI Art Tool Tips That Stop Your Marketing Images From Screaming "AI"
6 quick tips for using AI art tools like Nano Banana and Gemini 3 to make marketing visuals that don't scream "AI" — prompting, texture, consistency, and a pre-publish check.
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Five Design Quotes From This Month That Actually Mean Something
Five named quotes from real designers this month, decoded — with the Chickenpie stance on each and the one thread connecting all of them.
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Stop Hardcoding Colors: Build a Real Design System with Figma Variables
A hands-on 9-step tutorial: wire a Primitives, Semantic, and Brand variable system in Figma so your whole file updates from one place, light mode and dark mode included.
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The Design Industry Agreed AI Kills Junior Designers First. The Data Says Otherwise.
The consensus says AI automates juniors out first. Figma and Autodesk data say the real contraction is hitting mid-level production roles instead.
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How to Art-Direct AI Images So They Stop Looking Like AI
Nine steps to art-direct AI image generation like a photographer, not a wishlist — light, texture, junk tokens, and the two spots (hands, signage) that always give it away.
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I Tried to Build a Clickable Lottie Squeeze Toy. It Took Three Tries to Feel Right.
Watch three failed attempts to build an interactive Lottie squeeze toy — from a dead mousemove hack to a broken freeze-frame click, to the segment-based fix that finally feels tactile.
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Three Design Trends Are Actually Real This Week. Two Are Cope.
Five design trends made real waves this month. Three have data behind them. Two are aesthetic cosplay dressed up as a movement. Here is the breakdown, trend by trend.
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Everyone's Buying "Imperfect." Almost No One's Earning It.
The design internet agreed on "imperfect" this week. A graded, honest read on all five 2026 design trends — and which are already a Midjourney preset.
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How to Composite a Product into Any Background Using Photoshop Generative Fill
Drop a product into any background in 10 steps using Photoshop Generative Fill — with matching light, shadow, and zero obvious AI tells.
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The '10x Designer' Story Is Half True. That's What Makes It Dangerous.
Everyone agreed: AI makes designers 10x more productive. Here's the half they didn't say out loud — and why it matters for your career right now.
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Make Anything Scroll Into View with Pure CSS (No JavaScript)
Four lines of CSS. No JavaScript, no npm, no IntersectionObserver. Here's how to build scroll-reveal animations that run on the compositor thread and work in every major browser.
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The Static Artifact Is Dead. You're Just Not Designing It Yet.
Four brands proved the same thing in July 2026: the logo, layout, and UI component are default states of behavioral systems. The artifact is no longer the deliverable.
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Your Figma File Is Already a Website. Here's How to Publish It in 8 Steps.
Stop waiting for a developer. Here's an 8-step walkthrough for taking your Figma design into Framer and publishing a live website today — no code required.
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I Made 4 Predictions Since May. Here's My Honest Score.
Three months of industry calls — Adobe/Claude, AI handmade presets, variable fonts, Figma Config. Scored honestly: one wrong, one nailed early, two partial.
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Sketch to Vector: Build a Logo in Illustrator Without the Pen Tool Trauma
9 steps to turn a napkin sketch into a print-ready SVG logo in Illustrator. Start with shapes, not the Pen Tool.
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The "Anti-AI Aesthetic" Is Already Slop
Everyone's calling it the year design got its soul back. But the anti-AI aesthetic movement has already been packaged into Figma plugins and sold back to you. The rebellion lasted eighteen months.
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I Tried to Keep My AI Character Consistent Across 10 Scenes. Here's What Actually Broke.
Most tutorials skip the step that makes --cref actually work. Here's what failed first, what failed second, and the gotcha that kills most reference image attempts.
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Figma Had Its Best Config Ever. Your Client Already Shipped Without You.
Config 2026 shipped real things. But the post-Config consensus is watching the wrong fight. The real shift isn't at the tool layer — it's at the client relationship layer, where Claude Design and AI prototyping tools are disintermediating the brief before it's written.
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I Tried to Keep an AI Character Consistent Across 5 Scenes. It Took Three Attempts.
Everyone promises AI characters can stay consistent. Technically true. Here's what nobody shows you: attempts 1 and 2 before the approach that actually works.
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Before Config Buries Everything Else, Four Design Signals That Actually Matter
Figma Config opens Tuesday. Here are four design signals it probably won't cover — characters are back as strategy, blanding has a name, the most important design system was built by a developer, and motion is now brand infrastructure.
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7 Photoshop Tricks That Save Solopreneurs an Hour Every Week
Generative Fill, batch actions, Smart Objects, Layer Comps — the seven Photoshop workflows that replace tedious manual work with systems that actually scale.
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Six designers on what AI actually changed in June 2026
Six industry practitioners — from Stripe, Anthropic, Landor, and Pinterest — on what AI has actually changed for working designers in 2026. The burrito test, the craft rebellion, and why the middle of the design market is the disrupted zone.
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How to Draw a Flat Vector Character in Illustrator (10 Steps, Start to Finish)
A step-by-step guide to building a clean flat vector character in Illustrator — from silhouette to export. No tablet required. Just the workflow that actually sticks.
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Analog Is the New Stock Photo
The design industry has converged on the handmade, imperfect aesthetic as your moat against AI. Canva just made it their headline 2026 trend — for 260 million users. Here's the counterpoint.
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How to Build a Two-Mode Color System in Figma (Light + Dark, No Crying)
Build a proper Figma Variables color system from scratch — primitives, semantic tokens, and light/dark modes that switch in one click. Real steps, no hand-waving.
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The Machine Made It Look Easy. Now What?
Four design trends moving the industry in May 2026 — two real signals, one overclaimed, one underrated. Chickenpie's verdict on what's actually happening and what the meta-trend says about where design value is going.
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I Tried to Design a Logo Using Only AI. It Went Badly.
Three AI tools. Three attempts. Four days lost. Here's what Midjourney, Ideogram, and Adobe Firefly actually do — and don't do — when you try to build a production logo with nothing but AI.
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Four Design Signals From This Week (One Is Getting More Coverage Than It Deserves)
Four design industry signals from late May 2026: human-made craft as brand strategy, the Figma report's buried AI stat, kinetic typography's credibility crisis, and why calm interfaces is being oversold.
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6 Adobe Firefly Prompt Tricks I Wish I Knew on Day One
Most people are prompting Adobe Firefly wrong. Here are 6 counter-intuitive tips — from the Exclude field to Precision Flow early-stop — that change your output overnight.
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Six Designers on the One Question Nobody's Asking Right
Six designers from across the industry answered the same question this week. None of them knew they were answering it. Here's the thread connecting Graham Sykes, Hugo Macdonald, Anniina Koivu, Charlie Beeson, Jake Albaugh, and Jenny Nguyen.
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The Loop That Actually Loops: Make an Animated Sticker in After Effects
Most After Effects loop tutorials skip the one step that causes every stutter. Here’s a 9-step walkthrough for building a perfect looping animated sticker — from comp setup to Lottie export.
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The Handmade Rebellion Is AI in a Linen Jacket
Everyone says designers are staging an authentic resistance against algorithmic aesthetics. The evidence says otherwise — and the punchline is that the rebellion is fully producible by AI.
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