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Ugh, I’d hoped to get this out way back in February and really lost my motivation after missing Valentine’s Day. I guess the day before the 4th of July will have to do.

The Paper Hearts font now has improved kerning and three new variations: outlined, color, and color outline. The color files are OpenType SVG and work in all browsers and programs that support that format. Get it here.

It also seems worth mentioning why these updates were taking so long and the lessons I learned. A while back, I switched to the Glyphs App but, after years of using much older software, I hadn’t explored a lot of its features. So I was trying to outline each heart shape manually and taking ages on every character while also not getting the consistent look I wanted. But it turns out there are easier ways! The tutorial How to make a monoline font goes over using the Offset Curve filter to apply an outline to an entire instance and the forum post Apply strokes to all glyphs explains how to use mekkablue scripts to add the same stroke settings across the board. I used the latter for this font and it saved so much time. 

Look out for even more outline options! Maybe I’ll do Horseshoes next.

It’s a new font you can download! La Jefa is short, scrawl-y, and very loosely based on a card I received from a former boss (hence the name). 

Commercial licensing is $15 and includes additional language support and a webfont kit but you can try it out for free. If you have any issues with installation or notice anything odd, please let me know!

Shift + 2 has completely changed my relationship with Figma. Zoom right to whatever object you have selected. No more tediously zooming in and out and scrolling back and forth trying to center.

Thank you Figma shortcuts.

I have big plans in the works to overhaul a few projects and, to prep for that, I’ve been doing a lot of reading up on different approaches to publishing JavaScript packages. These are a few resources I’ve found particularly useful and informative.

• How to Publish an Updated Version of an npm Package – Cloud Four - I’ve used different tools to automate releases in the past but had no idea what they were doing under the hood. This article walks through creating a release and publishing to npm and Git with detailed explanations at every step. It’s a great starting point since understanding the manual process makes evaluating different automated strategies a lot easier.
• Automate npm publishing with GitHub Actions, proper changelog, and release notes - I'm looking for a solution that includes independently versioned monorepos so this guide isn't a perfect fit. However, using GitHub Actions to manually trigger a release and enter the correct version bump (major, minor, patch, etc.) is a really clever approach.
• Release Workflow | Yarn - Package Manager - Yarn's release workflow for monorepos is an experimental feature so I’m holding off for now but I hope it pans out. The section on deferred versioning and record keeping is especially intriguing.
• Tools! Trying to figure out which of these options would best serve my needs:
  • semantic-release - My current tool of choice. semantic-release depends on commit messages that follow Angular's commit message conventions for versioning. Unfortunately, it doesn't play nice with monorepos (for more details, here's a little extra credit reading The chronicles of semantic-release and monorepos).
  • Auto - Intuit - Automates releases based on pull request labels. I used this at a previous job and appreciated that it didn't require linting commit messages or any extra effort from contributors. The downside, Lerna is a must for use with monorepos.
  • Release It! - This seems promising. A CLI tool that can be used in interactive or continuous integration mode. The big appeal for me is a Yarn workspaces specific plugin.

Finally, recommendations are welcome so here’s my brief. I want to combine multiple packages that currently live in separate repos into a single monorepo using Yarn workspaces. Ideally, I’d like to independently version the packages without adding Lerna and use GitHub Actions for CI/CD. If you have a similar setup, let me know what's worked for you.