"...the idea of a utopia, a perfect place, seems naive and hopelessly unattainable—unless we revise our understanding to imagine utopia not as an unreachable destination, but as a flexible foundation for thinking critically about the present."
"Une série d’impressions des caractères disponibles a ensuite servi de point de départ au dessin de caractères numériques, qui a leur tour ont servi de modèles pour des essais de découpe numérique. Les objectifs, à long terme, sont de pouvoir réhabiliter ces caractères et d’en produire de nouveaux, et de faire vivre l’atelier d’impression typographique." downloadable "tels quels" and licensed with OFL
this is about M:TG (obviously) but a lot of stuff here is relevant to designing, e.g., skill trees
"[T]he top panel of each piece... captur[es] the essence of her subject through narrative symbols and shapes... The middle panel riffs on the imagery established in the first panel, zooming in on particular forms to create a graphic pattern, inflected with Art Nouveau style... The third panel brings in Native imagery, often referencing Plains Indian culture, stories, objects, and motifs used in beadwork and leatherwork." gorgeous
"There’s a quote by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen that UX designers like repeating: 'Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context. A chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.' But none of the speakers at [the conference] chose to examine the larger context of the [generative AI] tools they were encouraging us to use."
"a tool for converting vector artwork to KiCAD PCB files that lives in your browser"
"Fully remote work combined with regular and easily-accessible video-conferencing mimics much of the hub-and-spoke workspace design. In some cases ways it works even better. Video conferences can handle arbitrarily small or large groups of participants without any conference room conflicts. For those of us with other needs — with ADHD, anxiety disorders, hearing or vision loss, or mobility issues — we are more free to create the kinds of workspaces we need without impinging on other people’s work styles or space. A brightly-lit but cramped office space, again with long desks but pushed close together."
wonderful manifesto + sketches on the topic of sustainable computing and graphic design. importantly: "permacomputing requires thorough consideration to prevent it from becoming a hobby for the privileged or glorifying and aestheticizing poverty"
"These systems exist to facilitate violence, and HCI researchers who have committed their careers to curl back that violence at the margins have considerably more of something in them than I have. I hope it’s patience and determination, and not self-interested greed."
practical, straightforward advice
"Doug Clouse explores connections between typography and tectonic crafts, those that build by the accumulation of similar units. Typewriter art, food cart signs, letterpress printing, type design, needle work, weaving, bricklaying, and mosaics reveal similar creative impulses that are not well understood."
lmao i have worked on teams where each of these dark patterns were explicit design goals
"I would not trust a large language model to... plan an itinerary in a new city, because I’m not a boring or unimaginative person who lets a cheap piece of plastic tell me to do the ten most common results for 'stuff to do in London.' [...] This latest push for AI is making the world lazier, less curious, harder to navigate, ripping people off, and creating a topic somehow more tiring than that year these people wouldn’t shut the fuck up about NFTs and then never brought it up ever again when the market imploded."
"Countless off-the-shelf office chairs, lounge chairs or car seats appeared in Star Trek productions. Here is a list of the models that we found, among them many design classics." incredible
"an open-source, privacy-first web font platform designed to put privacy back into the internet" with "a zero-tracking and no-logging policy" though it makes me nervous that there is no like... explanation of why they're doing this, and how they're paying for it, and how long it will last!
"nature inspired linoleum block prints" that I want in my house
an "archive of graphic design related items that are available on the Internet Archives", usefully opinionated, includes some interesting type specimen books
brilliant
"Despite late capitalism, despite all the things we’re going through, the internet already runs on dedicated volunteer labor."
"because the needs of these groups are devalued, that struggle is largely seen as a tolerable sacrifice, as the system more or less working, rather than a warning sign that something's wrong."
<3
'“What already works” is a fundamentally conservative and nostalgic lens through which to view cultural production. Looking at “what already works” rejects an idea or potential of progress, and instead narrows the scope of possibility of a medium to only be capable or remediating its greatest hits.' [...] 'People already famous from producing “works” are now focused on meta-work, their cultural capital gained from doing that work in the first place now refocused on producing content related to their strongest signifiers.' (but how do you distinguish nostalgia from maintenance and re-absorbing work into the commons?)
"... an experimental typeface that is carved into the bark of a tree. As the tree grows, it deforms the letters and outputs new design variations, that are captured annually"
good bibliography on medieval furniture. for some reason
some points on design and the right to repair
open source figma-alike?
fantastic resource for paper sizes (including photographs, books, envelopes, etc)
"While these languages are obviously not in common use today, we find it fascinating to think about the world that might have been. Even more surprisingly, it happens that many of these other options include features which developers would love to see appear in CSS even today."
could be fun to play with. "With the help of state-of-the-art deep learning models, Layout Parser enables extracting complicated document structures using only several lines of code. This method is also more robust and generalizable as no sophisticated rules are involved in this process."
"Submitted for your approval: my TOP FIFTY design decisions in WarioWare DIY."
such a fantastic career, so much amazing work
simple but effective technique
'Our leaders will blather on about the burden these programs put on "taxpayers" but they don't actually care about that, they only care that the solution feels sufficiently punitive. This pointless refusal to implement workable policies has been a catastrophe for society, directly costing billions to taxpayers and sucking literally trillions out of the economy in lost productivity and excess crime'
lovely CC0 mix-and-match character art illustrations (would be great for, e.g., prototyping Ren'Py games)
nice clean repeatable background graphics
Kyle Chayka: "the realm of coffee shops, bars, startup offices, and co-live / work spaces that share the same hallmarks everywhere you go: a profusion of symbols of comfort and quality, at least to a certain connoisseurial mindset. Minimalist furniture. Craft beer and avocado toast. Reclaimed wood. Industrial lighting. Cortados. Fast internet. The homogeneity of these spaces means that traveling between them is frictionless, a value that Silicon Valley prizes and cultural influencers like Schwarzmann take advantage of. Changing places can be as painless as reloading a website. You might not even realize you’re not where you started."
fantastic, provocative essay about how decentralized and p2p networks are not immune to exploitation
"Americans love design most when we’re afraid. Just as the Depression enabled industrial design to present itself as the solution to US manufacturing woes, the 2000 to 2002 dot-com crash and 2008 recession, with their long tails, have enabled the rise of a new embrace of design and a new broadening of design’s imagined jurisdiction. This time the specific fear is that the knowledge economy is coming for everyone. Bewildered and anxious leaders, public and private, have responded by throwing in their lots with the seemingly magical knowledge-work that is design."
originally read this as "Communist Portland"
"A simple resource for finding and trying variable fonts"
lots of detail and variation, this would be a cool set to make a map generator with!
these look really good (via https://dice.camp/@turtlebird/101394359086975879)