Use Unbounce. There's no learning curve and it's so quick to get something out

I loved this style! Surely David Carson deserves a mention in your blog post? Not really a tribal illustrative style but his experimental typography work in the 90s definitely rode that wave of rejection against the squeaky clean consumerist 80s style.

https://payload315.cargocollective.com/1/16/542391/8603415/DavidCarson_1340_c.jpg

+1 for zeplin. Saves an enormous amount of time since the spec & assets are generated from your designs. For more complicated things I would rely on a user flow diagram to show the overal journey + zeplin for the visual details.

I would agree focusing on process is more effective than feedback. Process is more easy to talk about across teams, whereas group feedback on specific work without knowledge of a project's constraints etc can be a bit of a waste of time. Better to focus on the commonalities between teams.

Why no bicycle?!

Probably a bit late to this conversation but one very useful advantage of designing with artboards is that you can see the whole story at a glance. Especially useful for goal-based products. I want to know how many steps I'm asking the user to make in order to see where it can be streamlined

It needs to be done with self awareness. As you say they’re often done without understanding constraints or context. I remember once receiving a junior designer’s portfolio in which he’d redesigned and rebranded google search, only the single most used page on the internet, without any sensitivity to that fact. The results were awful- better to focus on small discrete things rather than overreaching.

The heart shape works - its a nice idea bringing the warmth together with the hard-edged nature of data.

I'd say the text needs more refinement though, it doesn't quite gel with the image for me. The kerning could use some attention, and maybe "does" should not be capitalised for easier readability?

I would also visually anchor the text by making the height consistent with some key element of the heart, like the distance between the bottom of the heart and the point where the two top bits meet.

As others have said the colour contrast is a little low, particularly "data does" in the version on a white background, and I'd agree that the font choice is a little pedestrian.

here's hoping they add type styles to libraries also