Notes

Collected bits and pieces I’ve noticed this month.

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve compiled one of these, here goes.

First things first – pour one out for Skype, we’ll miss you.

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Some interesting points here about design tokens, and how the wcag/figma/salesforce/design community thinks of them – "Avoiding tokens"

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Sir Ive has been in the news lately, here’s a different kind of interview with him on BBC-s “Desert Island Disks” podcast. Some nuggets that stuck out to me:

• People need time to understand and react to new things, if the rate of change is too fast, it creates problems.
• Products need to be right for the time and market – products can be great, but not right.
• Adding a handle to the iMac made an unfamiliar thing instantly more approachable.

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Linear always publishes thoughtful pieces on their blog, this time about the relationship between AI and UI:

One way I visualize this relationship between the form of traditional UI and the function of AI is through the metaphor of a ‘workbench’. Just as a carpenter's workbench is familiar and purpose-built, providing an organized environment for tools and materials, a well-designed interface can create productive context for AI interactions.
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AI doesn’t replace the workbench, it's a powerful new tool to place on top of it.

“Design for the AI age” by Karri Saarinen

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Also on the topic of UI-s, Sebastiaan de With from Lux (makers of the excellent Halide camera app) imagines what direction the rumoured redesign of Apple's OS interfaces might go.

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Glad to see that Jason Santa Maria is back writing on his blog – welcome back! Instantly added to the blogroll.

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A list of individual dogs on Wikipedia.
via Frank Chimero on Bluesky

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A typeface I’ve been keeping an eye on to possibly use on a project – Atkinson Hyperlegible – has recently been updated.

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For browsing visuals that don’t try to sell you something, here’s public.work from Cosmos
via Sidebar

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I’m not maybe a fan of the roof construction itself, but I do like the idea – a set of buildings under one roof.

Collected bits and pieces I’ve noticed this month.

In “Rethinking the startup MVP: Building a competitive product” Linear co-founder Tuomas Artman argues how it’s more and more unlikely your MVP has to prove an idea, but rather that it has to execute an idea better than the others have.

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Legendary car designer Marcello Gandini has passed. He was the designer behind for the iconic Lamborghini Countach, an even more shard-like Lancia Stratos Zero concept car and played a part in shaping one of the most beautiful automobiles, the Lamborghini Miura.
via Wallpaper

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“The job is not to invent, but to curate” says Josh Clark from Big Medium in “The Most Exciting Design Systems Are Boring”. Design systems should take the boring, the mundane off your (and your colleagues) hands so you can solve some new problems instead.

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In more sad news, Tiny Letter was shut down. I miss Pome.

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And in even more sad news, A Book Apart also closes.

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Chris Coyer shares his thoughts on what’s going on with CSS Tricks post selling it to Digital Ocean. I learned so much from CSS Tricks and the tone of the site was so friendly and approachable, what a bummer.

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And wrapping it up with CSS, Richard Rutter rebuilds a Creative Boom article page with no media queries, just fluid type. Cool.