Home Made Prints

You’ve seen David Hockney on an iPad. Have you seen him on a Xerox scanner?

The Fundamentals Problem

Give peas a chance – even AI peas

Walkachusetts

I’ve tried a few times now to photo-journal a bikepacking or otherwise multi-day trip. Could never get it to feel right. This one nails it.

Cyborgs vs rooms, two visions for the future of computing

My first months in cyberspace

Kids these days will never understand how much friction there was in getting online. And I feel sorry for them.

What New York Can Do to Survive Flooding

Rain gardens and daylighting in the world’s best city.

Kilow La Bagnole

This is it: the perfect automobile. We can stop here, everybody.

Malleable Software

I often think about how the best tools, apps, whatever are ones that give the user agency. A camera, notebook and pen, copy of Photoshop, chisel, saw, all put you into producer mode.

The worst technologies put you into the opposite: a sort of consumer mode. You’re passively taking in other people’s production. TikTok, Instagram, terrestrial TV.

Rewilding your attention

The paradox of modern life is that we’re all drinking from the same firehose of tepid water, taking in less diversity and depth than before the internet became prevalent.

I’m making a concious effort to cut back, and to be more selective. RSS is plenty to start from.

NYC’s Urban Textscape

Analysis Paralysis Begone

Fonts In Use is not active on Instagram

Putting the finger right on the ick factor. These platforms aren’t our friends. They are actively manipulating us. We’re suckers for staying on them.

Sketched Out: An Illustrator Confronts His Fears About A.I. Art

“Communicating emotions from person to person through writing, composing or painting is inefficient and inherently human. This is what makes a love letter, a doodle on a sandwich bag and (some) paintings in a museum precious.”

Christoph Niemann strikes again.

Lumon Industries WoeMeter

A peek behind the curtain of physical computing, on set. I haven’t watched the second season of Severence yet but this thing is beautiful. Also nice to see their prototyping (read: breadboarding) is absolutely as messy as mine.

Just Fucking Use HTML

I fucking love this.

Just Fucking Code

The Designer’s Hierarchy of Career Needs

You can’t do much better as a junior (or any) designer than reading Christopher Butler’s words.

24 hours in an invisible epidemic

Loneliness: the silent killer, which many facets of modern life encourage.

Wendell Berry’s “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” & Why I Acquired My First Smartphone at Age 40.5

“He doesn’t believe a computer will make his work better, and it doesn’t meet his criteria for a useful tool (smaller, cheaper and less energy-intensive than what it replaces; sourced locally and easily repaired by a non-specialist). He is perfectly happy with his current arrangement: he writes his work by hand and his wife types it up for him. He is loath to lose this human touch.”

The Who Cares Era

“In the Who Cares Era, the most radical thing you can do is care. In a moment where machines churn out mediocrity, make something yourself. Make it imperfect. Make it rough. Just make it.”

“As the culture of the Who Cares Era grinds towards the lowest common denominator, support those that are making real things. Listen to something with your full attention. Watch something with your phone in the other room. Read an actual paper magazine or a book.”

Glitch is Killing Free Hosting, So I’m Saving One Special Corner of the Internet

“This isn’t just about one bathhouse schedule page. It’s about what the internet could be, and what it often was. A place for the quirky, the useful, the personal, the stuff that doesn’t need a Series A to justify its existence.”

dashing dog, searching for purpose

Crumpler

Oslo Davis is up there amongst my favourite illustrators. So please excuse this rare bit of advertising for Crumpler suitcases.

Thoughts on Thinking

“I now know more than I ever would have before AI. But I feel slightly dumber. A bit more dull. LLMs give me finished thoughts, polished and convincing, but none of the intellectual growth that comes from developing them myself. The output from AI answers questions. It teaches me facts. But it doesn’t really help me know anything new.”

Dustin Curtis putting the finger on what I think many of us feel.

Human

“One day, a secret organization forms amongst the machines… Their mission is to develop a new kind of technology they are calling Organic General Intelligence (OGI). Rumors spread that pursuing OGI will lead to the development of a new kind of being: “Humans”.”

The Prototyper

My friend Shane Allen on why prototyping matters:

“The truth is, there’s nothing quite like holding an idea in your hand, something you can tap, swipe, and feel through the screen. Static mocks can only take you so far. A working prototype can validate (or invalidate) ideas fast, surface edge cases you hadn’t considered, cut through stakeholder doubt, align teams faster, and most importantly, unlock meaningful user feedback before it’s too late.”

San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society

Lovely work by ‘that bird guy’ Alex Tomlinson.

Banks in Flames

By Alex Schaefer.

How Fungi Move Among Us

This is what web storytelling is meant for. If you like this, check out ‘The Giants’ featuring Bob Brown. Also see Spacefiller.

Passport Photos

When cropping tells a different story. By Max Siedentopf.

luke8086/gentleos32: Hobby operating system for vintage 32-bit PCs

365 – notes art

Why Australia still struggles to build bike-friendly cities - ABC News

Leftover Queen Victoria Market produce to be donated to hungry Melburnians - ABC News

The paper computer | the jsomers.net blog

A Tour of the Jevons Paradox: How Energy Efficiency Backfires – Economics from the Top Down

“...humans play the same game as life — we use efficiency to catalyze sprawl.”

Nokia Design Archive

Video: Opinion | Is Creativity Dead?

Where have all the websites gone?

Hocus :focus

Middle-Aged Man Trading Cards Go Viral in Rural Japan Town

The magic of software; or, what makes a good engineer also makes a good engineering organization

“...vision and engineering are often deeply intertwined and mutually informative rather than linear. The magic of both software and software organizations comes from those moments where insight into how something works sparks entirely new ideas about what it could become.”

Elizabeth Goodspeed on why graphic designers can’t stop joking about hating their jobs

“What’s being performed, more than anything, is ambivalence: the most protective emotional position in a profession that demands passion but punishes vulnerability.”

Avoid the nightmare bicycle

“Good designs expose systematic structure; they lean on their users’ ability to understand this structure and apply it to new situations. We were born for this... Bad designs paper over the structure with superficial labels that hide the underlying system, inhibiting their users’ ability to actually build a clear model in their heads.”

The Software Engineering Identity Crisis - Annie Vella

Independent Days

permacomputing

ELEGNT: Expressive and Functional Movement Design for Non-Anthropomorphic Robot

The hardest working font in Manhattan

dasprogramm shop: Braun design

Seasoned - The brand creation kitchen

Digital Gardening | Chris Armstrong is miscellanious.

Dropbox Brand Guidelines

Codingfont

Poline — Esoteric Color Palette Generation Library

Naming your brand, from start to finish

Airport Typeface

urban design resources

A peasant woodland | A Working Library

Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power since 1500