From the desk
of Derek Torsani

kindness + humility

"Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live, and let's change the way we treat each other."
—Tupac Shakur, 1992

Table of Contents —

• Design &
• Music
• Drawing &
• Photo &
• Tools
• Practices

The redesign of the Codex icon library

Complete iOS26 Liquid Glass redesign of the Wikipedia app

T-Shirt designs for Codex and Wikimedia Hackathon 2026

Accessible diff styling in MediaWiki

Defining guidelines and designing for data visualization in MediaWiki

Shaping how the Wikimedia Product Design team works in principle

The expansion of the Codex color palette

Leading visual product design for Wikipedia and sister projects

Leading Wikimedia's federated design system

How we designed data visualization to be more visually accessible at Plaid using patterns, shapes, and high contrast colors

A peek inside how the design systems team operates at Plaid

Component for Workbench, Gusto

Component for Workbench, Gusto

Building tools for and collaborating with product designers on the Gusto design team

7 thoughts on designing systems to make the brain work as little as needed

Audible and visual spectrum translation technology

Featured in Sound Scene 2020 at the Hirshhorn Museum.

Building design systems at Oracle Data Cloud

Building design systems at Alarm.com

How discovering my Red-Green color blindness changed my workflow

Daily design prompt, animated

Various micro UI interactions

Various looping logo animations

Logo

Weaved yarn in paper

NPR Tiny Desk Contest performance

2026

Picture book, album, story

2025

Improvisations performed on piano, pigeon whistle, woodblock, doumbek, kalimba, and guitar

2025

Composition, poem

2025

Contemporary rnb

2022

With my good friend, the late Shelley Barnes

Protest jazz

2021

Distributed alternative collaboration

2021

NPR Tiny Desk Contest performance

2021

Debut ambient jazz album

2021

Pen on paper

2025

Pen on paper

2025

Wax pencil on paper

2025

Pen on paper

2025

Pen on paper

2025

Pencil on paper

2024

Pencil on paper

2024

Wax pencil on paper

2022

Acrylic on canvas

2022

Pencil on paper

2019

Charcoal on paper

2008

Photograph

2019

Photograph

2019

Photograph

2019

Photograph

2019

Photograph

2018

Memorial film for my grandfather

2014

Photograph

2013

Title sequence for a canceled web series

2010

Web-based drone instrument

2025

In order to provide an undertone drone while I play guitar, I built a simple drone instrument. It can be duplicated and layered to build harmonies.

Web-based tuner

2025

I just wanted a simple note reader so I can tune my guitar to whatever tuning I wanted. So I built one.

Audible and visual spectrum translation technology

2020

Featured in Sound Scene 2020 at the Hirshhorn Museum.

Calculated decision making template

2018

Manual budgeting app

2017

From Japanese ichi-go ichi-e and Italian attimo. The recognition that even continuous experiences never truly repeat — that each drop of water, each sound, each moment, is singular and unreturning.

2025–x

A brief, meditative yoga practice

2023–x

Elsewhere —

• LinkedIn
• Medium
• Unsplash
• Vimeo
• YouTube
• Codepen
• Dribbble
• Résumé

Website archive —

• v26.0.0
• v25.1.0
• v25.0.0
• v24.1.0
• v24.0.0
• v23.0.0
• v22.1.0
• v22.0.0
• v20.2.0
• v20.1.0
• v20.0.0
• v19.0.0
• v18.1.0
• v18.0.0
• v17.2.0
• v17.1.0
• v17.0.0