similarselection

Artistic vision has taken a backseat to franchises and reboots. It’s wearing thin for a growing audience.

A critical look at “tech detoxes” and their similarity to the conservative ideal of the pastoral.

Far from being a relic, the blog is a structurally sound format for thinking and publishing.

Python script that uses OpenStreetMap data to create minimalist customizable city map posters for any city in the world.

Patreon supported online motion design/video editor. Works locally. No source files are uploaded.

I’m not a big skeuomorphic guy, but I LOVE the idea of a generative color picker designed to look like a hardware synth.

Liz Bucar: “But maybe—and I’m genuinely asking—maybe we need to take seriously what religions have always understood: Imagination isn’t frivolous. Hope requires training. Trust needs practice. The capacity to envision and organize toward futures you cannot yet see is a skill, not a personality quirk some people are born with.”

“When people know they’re taking a mythologized substance with decades of counterculture mystique, outcomes improve dramatically. Strip away that knowledge through rigorous blinding, and the magic fades.” / A good deal of mental health is literally a mind game.

“CARI defines a consumer aesthetic as a visual movement unified by overarching attitudes and themes that survived long enough or became popular enough to be appropriated by capital.”

Sam Valenti IV argues against obsessing over inputs in favor of “ use[ing] our disdain to foster more critique and a keen desire for greatness.”

Web, app, and most other design increasingly looks the same.

A story of small scale, non-radical, user-centered innovation that’s had a massive impact on the internet at large.

Molly White: “The industry that promised it would free us from captured institutions has captured them itself. The anti-establishment rebels are now the establishment, their survival dependent on the very centralized power structures they once claimed to make obsolete.”

“An organizing toolkit and ongoing learning series to introduce mutual aid organizing—from starting a group to sustaining it for the long haul.”

“A collection of found cassette tapes from all over the world.”

“A dream of being known without being challenged. But without friction, there is no true dialogue, no true understanding, no true consensus, and no ideological encounter pushing us to new ideas. No fun.”

Remembering Ken Donnie of The Black Dog.

A book of hand drawn patterns by Katsushika Hokusai.

“I’m just trying to breathe and concede to not needing much”

“There was nothing here, really. The only thing there was electricity. I took the risk because I thought in my gut that there was something to be done.”

Taking my cell service and phone number with it. The CEO allegedly failed to pay T-Mobile for its network, then fled to Brazil. Update: No fleeing. Just incompetence.

“It is undoubtedly a rap album. however, to truly understand it, one must approach the album as if it were blues”

How grocery store layouts manipulate our shopping behavior.

Five people improvising live techno for seven hours.

Beautiful font (with a perfect name) based on SF Muni destination displays.

Practical advice.

Leah Reich: “Do you want to be inventory? Or do you want to be a human being?”

Talking about brand design is awkward - Doubly so when that brand sets out to be counter-cultural.

Jeffery Zeldman ponders the moments of inspiration, the hours of plodding, and the ultimate mystery at the heart of a creative career.

“That sounds nice, but how is a tiny software company supposed to compete with huge and well-funded companies?” The answer is that you don’t really have to. You just have to get an understanding of the proper pace and scale of whatever your endeavor is.

“[The web] used to mostly consist of little things made by people, and that was pretty cool! You would see more than four websites in a day. Websites would have colors!”

There’s a lot of web out there, it’s just gotten harder to find it…

How do various AI models perform when prototyping in real design contexts?

Frank Chimero: “I want to carve out a small creative place for myself in everything that is happening. Is it possible?”