Inbox Brief #2

Welcome back to Inbox Brief, the newsletter by Goodbrief.

In this issue: A useful design tip, a fun resource, a source of inspiration, and a custom design brief. Read to the end for a one-question survey.

Design Tip

Rounded corners make shapes feel softer and friendlier, but when nesting multiple elements, it’s important to keep the corner radii concentric to prevent them from looking awkward or disjointed.

An image showing two elements. One has the same outer and inner radius, while the other has concentric radii.

If you just keep the corner radius the same for the outer and inner elements, they wont be concentric. Luckily, there’s a simple formula for calculating the correct radius.

A diagram showing the three values we need, the outer radius, the inner radius, and the distance between them.

You’ll need one starting radius and the distance between the edges of the two shapes. Once you have that, calculating the other radius is easy:

A diagram showing the three values: Inner radius is 50px and the distance is 70px, so the outer radius is 120px

With this simple formula, your shapes will always have perfectly nested corners!

Tools and Resources

Public Work is a search engine for public domain images. It pulls copyright-free images from a variety of sources like The MET and the New York Public Library.

You can search by keywords, and clicking on any image will show more with a similar vibe. The free-form scrolling can make it seem like there are more results than there actually are, but it is quite fun to pan around and fall down deep rabbit holes searching for the perfect image.

Inspiration

An account I recently found on Bluesky which shares interface design inspiration. Check them out at @interfacedesign.bsky.social ‬

Today’s Brief

In Issue #1 I included a long design brief with lots of detail—similar to the kind of research-based document you would put together with a client. For this issue, I wanted to try something slightly more concise and open-ended, but still more detailed than the generated briefs on goodbrief.io

Please let me know which you prefer! Do you want to see more longer briefs like the first one, medium-sized briefs like this one, or something else entirely? I would appreciate it if you answered this one-question survey:

Survey! How long should practice briefs be?

Thanks for reading this issue of Inbox Brief. If you’re enjoying the newsletter, I’d appreciate it if you shared this issue with your friends too.

I want to know what you think! Reply to this email and tell me your thoughts, feedback, and suggestions.

Until next time, happy designing!

Manu

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