This Is Big Design
Big Medium helps complex organizations design for what’s next—and do it at scale.
We build design systems, craft exceptional online experiences, and transform digital organizations.
process
Ship Faster by Building Design Systems Slower
Successful design systems can and should move more slowly than the products they support—but a deliberate pace doesn’t have to create bottlenecks. Josh Clark shows how to reconcile the needs and speeds of product versus design system.
design system
The Design System Ecosystem
Brad Frost explores the landscape of a mature, end-to-end design system for big, complex organizations. Discover all the moving pieces and how they hang together.
What we’re reading
How Machines Are Taking Over the World’s Stock Markets
Use machine learning “to identify new theories, and once you identify a new theory, you throw the machine away, you don’t want the machine.”
Slack and the Decline of Bots
After customers found Slack bots hard to use, the company added traditional UI elements to bolster the bots’ simple vocabulary and hard-to-remember “slash commands.”
The Decade of Design
Figma interviewed a dozen experts, including Big Medium’s Josh Clark, to chronicle the rise of design in the past decade—and what comes next.
The Damaging Fiction of the Wellness Industrial Complex™
The unlikely pairing of capitalism and wellness has insidious effects, Liza Kindred writes. There are parallels for UX here, too.
Simple Plan Gets Millions Running
South China Morning Press tells the story of Couch to 5K, the running schedule created by Big Medium’s Josh Clark.
How Dotdash, Formerly About.com, Is Taking over the Internet
This may be the most successful design- and business-turnaround story Big Medium has been involved with. Fast Company tells the tale of Dotdash, the network formerly known as About.com.
Big Talk
design system
Is Atomic Design Dead?
Brad Frost explores today’s design system ecosystem and peeks into the exciting future of design systems. (Spoiler: Atomic Design is going stronger than ever, thank you very much.)
ai
A.I. Is Your New Design Material
Discover the opportunities to use machine-generated content, insight, and interaction as design material in your everyday work.
algorithms
Design in the Era of the Algorithm
Machine learning is technology’s new frontier, and designers have a crucial part to play. Josh Clark explores our new roles and responsibilities when we design for the machines.
physical ui
The Physical Interface
With a rich trove of examples, Josh Clark explores the practical, meaningful design opportunities for the web’s newly physical interfaces.
multidevice
Multidevice Mambo: UX Choreography Among Gadgets
Plan and craft UX that goes beyond the individual device and embraces the whole ecosystem of gadgets.
iot
Magical UX and the Internet of Things
Designing for the internet of things means blessing everyday objects, places, even people with extraordinary abilities—requiring designers, too, to break with the ordinary.
Big Medium is a digital agency specializing in big design. We help the world’s biggest companies level up their digital operations by building design systems, creating exceptional online experiences, and guiding the creative embrace of emerging technologies. Our team is led by digital luminaries Josh Clark and Brad Frost, who created the Atomic Design methodology.
We love an audacious challenge. If you’ve got one, let’s talk.