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Topic archive / 1,584 posts
Ethan Marcotte’s redesign
My good friend and web design hero Ethan Marcotte has redesigned his personal site for the second time in a little over a year, and it’s a thing of beauty. Every last bit of it is thoughtfully considered without being overworked, from the simple structure, to the inventive grid, to the elegant typography, to the subtle textural motifs. And that joyful splash of watercolor at the top! For the nerds, there are some clever implementations… See more →
Just You Wait
For his 50th birthday, my buddy Chris Shiflett wrote a lovely post chronicling the ups and downs of his life in technology. We participate in tech in different ways but approach it with the same spirit, so I found a lot to identify with, and I enjoyed remembering the euphoria of my own mental growth spurts and moments of discovery like what he describes here:
For a few years, I was learning faster than at… See more →
XOXO Explore
In its founders’ own words, XOXO was “an experimental festival celebrating independent artists and creators working on the internet,” and its final edition, which included Cabel Sasser’s charming tale of going all the way down the rabbit hole of a painting that caught his attention in a McDonald’s in Washington, took place in 2024. I attended XOXO in 2014 and 2018 and was impressed on both occasions with the extraordinary care that went into the… See more →
Why do people kick Uber Eats robots?
Within the first three weeks of the delivery robots’ arrival in Philly, videos emerged of people sitting on them, graffitiing them and eventually kicking one over.
And it’s not just Philly:
A quick web search produces a long list of examples of people being filmed or filming themselves attacking robots.
Buy why?
In Ouellette’s dissertation, “From Fiction to Friction: Abusing Autonomous Mobile Robots,” she created conditions to try and find out what motivated subjects… See more →
Endgame for the Open Web
Anil Dash makes the case that we’re running out of time to save the last vestiges of the open web from the big-tech robber barons’ multifaceted (but mostly AI-shaped) rampage, which probably isn’t news to anyone who actually understands what’s at stake, but his post does a good job of enumerating and describing the threats for those who don’t.
Creators who fight hard to stay independent are often choosing to make less money, to go… See more →
Weimar/Nazi/evangelical films
A watch list for progressive masochists from Becca Rothfeld’s “The MAGA Theory of Art” in Art in America.
Just as Weimar and Nazi films pandered to white-collar workers who refused to confront a new economic reality, evangelical films pander to a rural class that clings to an outmoded notion of small-town affluence—and thereby to a bygone socio-economic order. They present the rural as a refuge from modernity, a realm that economic history has happily bypassed. To… See more →
Claire Tabouret’s Stained-Glass Windows for Notre-Dame Divide French Society, with a Legal Threat Looming
A project has been in the works for a couple years to replace a number of Notre-Dame’s stained-glass windows with contemporary designs, which has unsurprisingly caused an uproar. While the arguments for and against generally take familiar shapes—whether historic architecture should accommodate modern expression, whether these decisions should be top-down or community-driven—one functional aspect of the kerfuffle caught my attention:
The windows’ light gray, non-figurative glass allows more light to enter the cathedral, achieved via… See more →
I was at a funeral today and felt all the appropriate funeral feelings but I also could not stop thinking about Coffin Flop
Loud Room
Jason Santa Maria’s new independent design practice has a great name and a great logo, befitting the quality and character of his work. And the site, an appropriately simple introduction, sports a fresh, fun, procedurally-generated color scheme every time it loads. Don’t miss his blog post with the backstory!
LEGO Bricks Transform into Letterforms in the International Design Project ‘A2Z’
How great is this project? Pedro Neves, a professor at UIC’s School of Design, invited 40 designers from around the world to create letterforms out of Lego, which were then made into letterpress prints. Despite working within the same constraints (a set of bricks and up to three colors from a limited palette), the variety of results on display is wild, and I especially love the many ways people made use of overprinting to stretch… See more →
Stars of the Lid Forever
A beautiful redesign for Beyond Tellerrand
Just in time for this year’s Berlin edition, Beyond Tellerrand has launched a beautiful new site for its 15-plus years of events. A real web treasure both visually and structurally, it succeeds as both a marketing site and a deep archive of hundreds of inspiring talks from creative speakers in design, tech, and beyond. I’m honored to have done a few projects with Beyond Tellerrand but sadly have yet to attend. Someday!
Lowriders & websites
Adam Stoddard recently found common cause with the enthusiastic craftsmanship of lowrider culture, and I found myself nodding along vigorously:
The thing is, this particular brand of “functional absolutism” that’s widely held in tech circles is a bankrupt philosophy. It leaves no room for beauty, no room for expression, no room for investing time and care in something for no other reason than you find it satisfying to do so.
Should every website be the subject… See more →
Megazoid
Look at this super-fun microsite Jason Santa Maria designed for DJR’s super-fun font, Megazoid!
Crafting Personal Alphabets: Calder Ruhl Hansen & C.C. Elian
This pair of presentations from Calder Ruhl Hansen and C.C. Elian examines the fascinating writing systems they’ve created at the intersection of typography, calligraphy, hieroglyphics, cryptography, and algorithmic art. Elian is known for Elian Script, which distills the Latin alphabet into simplified forms that can be combined into words in an endless variety of orientations, evoking the expressiveness of Eastern calligraphic traditions. Hansen’s works include an ingenious system of English syllabic pictographs and a means… See more →
Disasters, Invisible and Visible
What the folks at LA Taco, not the LA Times, figured out was that while it was impossible to have on-the-ground reporting from sweeps happening across a metro area as colossal as LA, we live in a time where most everything is documented and uploaded to social media in near-real time. They took to compiling these social media videos and reports into a vertical video Daily Memo that simply runs down where ICE has conducted… See more →
Stephen Miller’s Hypocrisy Is Right There in His Speech
Miller’s view, like that of his boss, is that America is even more divided than we think, and the only resolution to this state of affairs is for one side to subjugate the other.
I’m not looking forward to Erika Kirk’s continuation of her husband’s regrettable legacy, but I’ll give her credit for doing something evangelical Christians on the national stage so rarely do: what Jesus would do. Just days after the horrific murder of… See more →
Daniel Linssen’s Typing Challenge
A simple, clever, and stressful game that rewards quick typing skills.
Had a good cry reading this, from @Nina_Corcoran: pitchfork.com/features/after…
My favorite music venue in the world might be reopening, which is easily the best news I’ve heard since it shut down in 2019. My heart is racing! 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻 phillymag.com/news/2022/10/3…
Reading about the Parkland jurors literally crying because they didn’t get to kill someone. This fucking country. nytimes.com/2022/10/15/us/…
Everyone please continue making colorful geometric confections and I will continue admiring them. thisiscolossal.com/2022/10/dinara…
When you’re looking for a good read for the spooky season, and your buddy @_AndreaJanes is kind enough to write a new book for the occasion. 👍🏻 bookshop.org/p/books/a-haun…
I’m supposed to be en route to @OIAF_Animation right now, but had to cancel my trip last-minute. I’ve been sulking about it all day, but reading about draftees fleeing Russia really puts my stuck-at-home troubles in perspective. nytimes.com/2022/09/22/wor…
This punchline is too perfect. thenib.com/consolidated/
How it started: philadelphiaweekly.com/the-bitcoin-bo…
How it’s going: post-gazette.com/news/state/202…
Note the passive voice where the second article references the first: “In local media, Mr. Vo was championed as Pennsylvania’s cryptocurrency luminary.”
Both articles have the same byline. 😂
I love the smell of confirmation bias in the morning. washingtonpost.com/music/2022/08/…
“[T]he 24 states [banning] abortion fare worse on a broad range of outcomes than states where abortion will probably remain legal, including child and maternal mortality, teenage birthrates and the share of women and children who are uninsured.” nytimes.com/2022/07/28/ups…
something something design systems youtu.be/Ef7hQ35bfIU
Surrealist stop-motion woodworking tutorials are my new security blanket thisiscolossal.com/2022/06/omozoc…
Dueling new releases from @otobokebeaver and @sitenonsite (debut EP!) make this just my kind of bipolar Friday.
A wonderful story of a girl finding herself on the web, and another example of what makes personal websites so great. sailorhg.com/home_sweet_hom…
“This project isn’t just a missed opportunity; it’s a generational failure.” inquirer.com/columnists/phi…
This feels like a genuinely fresh take on Swiss modernism, and I’m here for it. creativeboom.com/inspiration/ne…
@otobokebeaver Reader, I gasped brooklynvegan.com/japans-otoboke…
Glad to hear these crypto dipshits didn’t get to buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution. Not glad to hear somebody else did. Who decided private ownership of these artifacts is OK? nytimes.com/2021/11/18/tec…
“‘Getting rich quick’ is less an American pathology and more the best bet for a stable life. The side hustles, as it turns out, haven’t been working.” motherjones.com/politics/2021/…
People do all kinds of shitty things and still manage to convince themselves they’re in the right. But I cannot understand how people who issue death and rape threats can live with themselves. inquirer.com/news/school-bo…
Here’s a beautiful essay from my friend @hotlixx about connecting with his dad through competitive air guitar. Included is a video for a great Hoodoo Gurus cover he recorded, featuring 30+ air guitarists, including yours truly. thebadcopy.com/features/loves…
Everyone responsible for this should be deeply ashamed. nytimes.com/2021/09/01/us/…
A @lynnandtonic launch day is always a good day 🎉 twitter.com/lynnandtonic/s…
Still thinking about this youtube.com/watch?v=TDHH0C…
“Massively negative sum investment schemes where for every one person who makes a return nine others lose money is not innovation.” stephendiehl.com/blog/non-innov…
“Work is the means of life; leisure is the end.” theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Now that I can actually do things outside of my own home, @criterionchannl’s unbelievably stacked July lineup doesn’t seem fair. criterion.com/current/posts/…
“Every family has its own trampoline. Meanwhile, the playground round the corner falls apart quietly.” earthbound.report/2021/04/08/eve…
A great long read from @MrDanZak on the unfunny joke that is the Maricopa County election audit. washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021…
Finally made my own batch of @kellianderson’s family fudge recipe and it was a very good idea. kellianderson.com/blog/2010/12/2…
If you’re in the Philadelphia area and concerned that unvaccinated seniors and others will be left behind when eligibility opens up next week, here are ways to help. whyy.org/articles/how-c…