The Journal by Ainur
Ainur Design is where Ainur's designers share what they know about product, design and motion, as part of Ainur's mission to make the web a better place.
Featured
What static mockups and decks hide, what a CEO decides better with a working app in hand, what prototypes cost, and how we keep them cheap enough to throw away.
What Apple's Liquid Glass design changes in your app's structure, why the opt-out key ends with the iOS 27 SDK, and how native and React Native teams should respond.
Latest from the Journal
How spring physics works, why it handles interrupted gestures better than duration and easing, and the exact parameters to use in SwiftUI, Compose and Reanimated.
Inside Ainur's review loop: prototypes that run full-screen on the client's own phone, feedback pinned to the exact screen, a clear decision per version, and what we've learned from running it.
The checks we use for a dark theme that feels designed rather than inverted: surfaces, colour, contrast, assets, system bars, launch flashes, charts and testing.
Why every tappable element needs a pressed state in the first frame, which treatment to use where, and the small haptic vocabulary iOS and Android give you.
A screen-by-screen teardown of what breaks when an Android app targets API 35 and 36, from the status bar to the keyboard, with the Compose and React Native fixes we use.
An honest account of how we use AI tools in research, copy, prototyping and imagery, the jobs we keep for people, and the four rules we work by.
Browse
Long reads, quick checklists and things you can try with your thumb.
Interactive
Some ideas only make sense in your hands. These run live, right here.
How spring physics works, why it handles interrupted gestures better than duration and easing, and the exact parameters to use in SwiftUI, Compose and Reanimated.
Read the articleWhy every tappable element needs a pressed state in the first frame, which treatment to use where, and the small haptic vocabulary iOS and Android give you.
Read the articleThe designers
Four bylines for the people who design at Ainur: product, design engineering, motion, and research and accessibility.
Elin runs research and accessibility at Ainur. She sits in on client reviews, checks every flow with a screen reader and large text, and keeps our designs honest about who they are for.
3 storiesJonas works where design meets code: design tokens, component libraries and the runtime that lets clients open a design like a finished app. He likes systems that stay boring under pressure.
4 storiesMira leads product design at Ainur. She turns fuzzy briefs into flows a CEO can hold in their hand, and she cares most about the moment a design meets real data and real thumbs.
4 storiesSana designs how things move and respond: springs, press states, haptics and transitions. She tests every interaction on a real phone before it ships to a review.
4 storiesMira, Jonas, Sana and Elin are house bylines (personas) for Ainur's design team, not individual employees. The work and the sources behind each story are real.
Mission
To us a better web means interfaces that everyone can use, that respond the moment you touch them, and that tell you the truth. Every story in the Journal works toward one of those three.
Contrast, text size, screen readers and the laws that now require them.
Press states, haptics and springs: interfaces that answer the moment you touch them.
No dark patterns: clear paywalls, safer sign-in and plain words about what tools do.
About Ainur
Ainur designs and builds apps and websites. The people who write here spend their days on real products: flows, design systems, motion, research and accessibility. The Journal is where they write down what they learn, with the sources, so you can check it.
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