Hello, I’m Ste Grainer.
I’m a designer and developer from Richmond, VA. I design, code, and write with a focus on clarity, usefulness, and delight.
Work
Here are a few of my favorite projects
Writing
About design, development, and other whims
On UXcellence …
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Jul 27, 2019
Make Time to Play: How Breaks, Hobbies, and Boredom Can Improve Creativity
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Jun 27, 2019
Automation for Designers: Starting with Email, Photoshop, and Sketch
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Jun 12, 2019
How to Build a Handy Portfolio Filter
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May 29, 2019
Automation for Designers: An Introduction
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May 22, 2019
Nice Touch: Sharing Podcast Clips in Overcast
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Mar 11, 2019
Organizing Design Work for Your Team (and Your Future Self)
& on my journal
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My 2020 Theme: Explore.
The name of the game for this year is exploration!.
Jan 3, 2020
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2019 in Review.
Revisiting what worked and what didn't in the Year of Rebuild..
Jan 2, 2020
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I Started a Web Comic.
About design and making things for people.
Sep 20, 2019
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My Favorite Podcasts.
Or what I enjoy listening to regularly.
Jun 18, 2019
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One Magical Moment.
In which I remember a visit to Notre Dame.
Apr 15, 2019
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My 2019 Theme: Rebuild.
This year, I’m getting back to building the things I’m passionate about..
Jan 22, 2019
Want to follow along?
Once a month, I share new articles I’ve published on UXcellence alongside a broad collection of great resources on design, development, research, writing and more from a diverse set of creators. Occasionally I also give sneak previews of new projects I’m working on.
Sweet Links
Helpful tools, techniques, & things made by others
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Lazy Campaign Template.
A Notion template for documenting D&D campaigns
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RPG Tools.
A great collection of tools for randomly generating various things for D&D campaigns
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Style Stage.
A modern CSS showcase styled by community contributions, like the CSS Zen Garden of yore
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Design System Checklist.
An open-source checklist to help you plan, build and grow your design system
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Transparent Textures.
Great collection of transparent textures that layer nicely atop background colors
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Custom Shape Dividers.
Nifty tool for generating custom SVG shapes between sections of a site
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Heroicons.
Free set of beautiful SVG icons in small and medium sizes
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Clean Code JavaScript.
Principles and concepts from Clean Code adapted for JavaScript
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Vangogh.
A search engine for color palettes
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Recursive Sans & Mono.
A flexible variable font with axes for monospace, casual, weight, slant, and italics
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Learning Music.
An interactive course on making music
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macOS Catalina Apache Setup: Multiple PHP Versions.
Great guide to setting up Apache and PHP on Mac
Recent diversions
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5 stars. Wow! A thought-provoking space epic that wrestles with identity, choice, and motivation in brilliant ways.
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3 stars. Entertaining enough, but it undid a lot of the potential of The Last Jedi with a rushed storyline and a mixed payoff.
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4 stars. A fast-paced end to the series with great twists and turns.
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3 stars. Not quite as enthralling as the first book in the series but still very entertaining.
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4 stars. A page-turner about a futuristic society organized into castes that kept me enthralled to the last page.
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4 stars. A good mix of science fiction and thriller in a story reminiscent of a good Michael Crichton book.