Flat design is a visual style that removes decorative depth, realistic textures, and ornamental effects in favor of simple shapes, clear typography, and direct hierarchy. Its roots run through Modernism, Mondrian, Swiss Style, early graphical interfaces, Microsoft Metro, and the sweeping redesigns that followed Windows 8 and iOS 7.

I first wrote about that history while using a Windows 8 laptop. Like many others, I hated it and thought it was the worst operating system since the not-so-distant Vista. With distance, though, it is easier to appreciate that Microsoft made a bold design decision that became influential even when the product around it was frustrating.

Your brand is critical to building a great culture with your team and a deep relationship with your customers. Custom branding helps people recognize the right process before they read a single instruction. In Process Street, cover images and emoji icons give workflows a distinct visual identity, while rich emails carry a consistent experience into customer and employee communications.

New employees, customers, and partners should always experience your brand in the best possible light. The goal is practical, not decorative. A clear visual system reduces hesitation, separates similar workflows, and reinforces which team or business owns the work. With a few repeatable choices, your workflow library becomes easier to scan and your outbound messages become easier to trust.

Customer experience design is the practice of deliberately shaping every interaction a customer has with an organization across the end-to-end journey. It connects customer evidence, service standards, and operational ownership so the experience works as intended.

Customers do not experience departments. They experience one brand across discovery, evaluation, purchase, onboarding, product use, support, billing, and renewal. CX design gives teams a method for seeing that whole system and improving the moments that matter.

Shape Up is Basecamp’s take on product development: fixed time, variable scope, and real work shipped in focused cycles instead of open-ended sprints. Reading the theory is one thing. Living it as a designer is another. So this interview is a follow-up to our primer on Shape Up, this time from the design seat: a candid conversation with Ivy, a Senior Product Designer at Process Street, on what the method actually feels like in practice.

Ivy walks through how Shape Up plays out day to day: what clicked, what didn’t, and the one phase the team had to add to make it work. First, a quick recap of Shape Up’s core phases so her answers land.

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Web design is more than how something looks. A good site has to communicate clearly, load correctly, guide the visitor, collect feedback, and survive the handoff from designer to client.

These free Process Street web design process templates give you repeatable checklists for the work behind that outcome: animation, social media images, usability testing, client onboarding, UX, brand identity, headers, logos, and launch QA.

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Steve Jobs did not arrive at Apple's design philosophy from one neat school of thought. His taste came from architecture, Zen Buddhism, Bauhaus, electronics, calligraphy, kitchen appliances, arcade games, instant cameras, early interface metaphors, and the counterculture around him.

These 11 profound influences explain why Jobs pushed Apple toward simplicity, craft, and products that felt obvious once they existed. The list is still useful because great design rarely comes from design alone. It comes from what a builder notices, steals, rejects, and obsesses over.

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Design processes and checklists turn subjective creative work into a repeatable system. They help teams capture requirements, review work, collect feedback, and ship designs without relying on memory or one person’s taste.

That matters because design is still business work. A strong design process connects user research, brand standards, approvals, and delivery so the final asset is not just attractive, but useful, consistent, and ready to perform.

There’s no better moment than the ‘lightbulb moment’.

The one where you finally figure out a solution to a tricky problem, or just come up with an ahead of the curve plan, scheme, or proposal. The euphoria is intense enough to make you get out there and shout about it from the rooftops. Or, do a song and dance on the street, à la Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

OK, perhaps the latter is a little hyperbolic. But the point remains that coming up with a great idea is a wonderful feeling.

The only problem is that, at some point in the relative future, more ideas need to be thought of. And for those working in creative fields such as advertising, design, and software engineering, ingenious ideas need to be generated on a regular basis. We’re talking daily, here.

So how can you and the rest of your team continually think of stellar ideas?

Through ideation.

That’s why, in this Process Street post, I’m going to spell out what ideation is, the benefits of ideation, 7 different ideation techniques to use, and what to do before undergoing ideation for the first time.

Read the following sections to get completely clued-up:

• The definition of ideation
• The team and business benefits of ideation
• The 7 best ideation techniques to use
• Undergoing your team’s first ideation session

Let’s not make this a song and a dance.

It’s time to get straight into it!
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Videos are a powerhouse when it comes to marketing, explaining your product, and much more.

Heck, when users are spending 88% more time on websites that have videos, you can see their power just in terms of retention.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to request or create effective videos if you don’t have experience in the field. Terms can be confusing, and video producers might struggle to act on the feedback you give if you don’t know how to communicate the message effectively.

That’s why it’s vital to know how to perform an effective video review; there’s an art to it.

At Process Street, we’ve gone through the hard work of learning how to review videos and give actionable comments. That’s why I’ll be showing you how to do just that., including:

• Basic video creation process
• Video editing steps
• What is a video review?
• Video review glossary
• The video review process
• Video review best practices
• Run your video review processes with Process Street

Let’s get started.
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The importance of the relationship between product and marketing is something that’s often overlooked.

But when the product and marketing teams aren’t on the same page regarding the product and the problems it aims to solve, chances are the marketing won’t match the product’s value proposition and in turn, will discourage potential users from signing up.

This could be detrimental to the success of a product organization.

So, what can you do to avoid these miscommunications and build a synergistic relationship between the two?

In this article, I’ll share some tips and information that will be critical in strengthening the relationship and performance of the product and marketing teams at your company to achieve success.

We will cover:

• What is product marketing?
• Understanding the product-first marketing approach
• Product marketing synergy
• Benefits of product marketing
• 3 Key elements to product marketing synergy
• How to use Process Street to strengthen product marketing strategy
• Product marketing synergy: The bottom-line

Let’s get started!
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