Ilse Renko — Writing
Visual concept preview of the Portfolio Solo template's Writing page: A writing index: the three most recent notes, what they tend to be about, and no list to join. The sections below are a non-interactive composition of open-registry blocks.
I write to work out what I think, then publish it in case it is useful to somebody else. Mostly type, design systems, and the parts of front-end work that never make it into a conference talk.
In reverse order, dated the day I actually finished them rather than the day I started — there is often a year between the two.
Why I set body text before headlines, and what happens to a hierarchy when you build it the other way round. Includes the scale I have used on every project since 2022.
Three hundred screens became nineteen components, and the audit method that got me there. Mostly a defence of spending two weeks counting things before drawing any.
On the states nobody specifies: the empty list, the slow network, the row somebody deleted while you were reading it. Ten examples, redrawn.
Typography and reading, mostly: measure, scale, and the quiet decisions that make a screen easy to be on. Then design systems, because that is where most of my paid hours go, and the unglamorous half of front-end work — empty states, focus order, forms that survive being used badly.
Occasionally something about working alone: how I quote, how I say no, and what seven years of invoices taught me about scope. Those get the most replies, which tells you something about how many of us are out here.
There is a feed and that is the whole distribution strategy. If a note was useful, tell me — the replies are reliably the best part of my week.