On this episode, Jan Six, Staff Product Designer at Github and Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz, CEO at Penpot, chatted about Design Tokens and Systems. Jan's open-source project on design tokens caught our attention and we realized that he loves anything to do with bridging the gap between design and development, just like we do at Penpot! So we invited him to our second episode of Penpot Open Chat! Watch and enjoy.

(More info about Jan here: https://jansix.at/ )

Can designers contribute to Open Source? How? In our latest Open Chat with Penpot episode, we explored how designers can make meaningful contributions to open-source projects with researchers Nimisha Vijay (user experience designer at Nextcloud) and Eriol Fox (open source product manager at Superbloom, as well as a PhD researcher at Newcastle University). Through a two-way interview format, we discussed findings from their research "The Secret Life of Open Source Designers" such as: the unequal power dynamics between designers and developers within open source communities; the often slow pace of the design process; the isolation designers may experience due to insufficient feedback; and the challenge of unclear project priorities.

Blog post available here: https://superbloom.design/learning/blog/the-secret-life-of-open-source-designers/

This is the first of a series of interviews with professionals we admire within the tech arena.

Open Chat with Penpot is born with the goal to share the conversations we constantly have with members of our community and learn from them together. Learning about the intersection between Design and Code and how designers and developers work together, as well as other topics that matter to us at Penpot, such as Open Source and open standards. And we hope you find so insightful as we do!