Links / Design
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I recently stumbled upon Dropbox's (new?) brand guidelines, and the site they've put together for it is incredibly well done. Every chapter has its own interactive elements, the animations are perfectly executed, and none of it is overcooked. Impressive!
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Quality is a trap
№ 59Eric W. Bailey explains why the term “quality” keeps popping up in the design industry and shows how malleable and variable a term it is.
“Pride in craft is always important. Just be sure that the craft is serving objective and constructive concerns.”
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Elliott Jay Stocks, who I've followed ever since he did 8 Faces, shared a great few nerdy typographic nuggets in his talk at Config 2025. Product Designers, take note.
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Taste at speed
№ 55As I was finishing up writing a talk for Adyen's Studio Day (on designing and writing with attention and intention, on quality and craft, on taste, and on AI tooling), an email arrived in my inbox. In it was the latest post by Carly Ayres, writer, and previous co-founder of HAWRAF, and it reinforced the line of thinking I'd been on.
She writes about taste, speed and AI and how, while AI may lower the bar to get to a decent first draft of whatever it is you're creating, speed doesn't always indicate progress. Progress may just be movement.
Tools produce polish, but not perspective.
I see many people writing about this at the moment. About how perspective and taste are what can set a good designer apart. About how creative constraints and thoughtful revision are key to an outcome that's good, and not just finished.
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"This site explores the graphic design of Penguin book covers, with a focus on series editions. […] The covers presented on this site are all from my own collection of about 1.400 Penguins, which have been chosen for the beauty or interest of their cover designs. They span the history of the company all the way back to 1935 when Penguin Books was launched."
What a collection—beautiful.
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Honor The Material
№ 39
An older read, tweeted by its author in response to a thought on the advancement of technology and personal computers, and the [in my opinion] seemingly boring solutions we design and build using them.
"Some things are easy to do and others are difficult. Move with the grain, and you can unlock amazing experiences. Cut against the grain, and you will struggle with even the most basic tasks. It's common for young designers to propose designs that are either impossible or too costly to build. It's okay—you're learning the grain."
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Thinking Is Work
№ 33“It is entirely reasonable to set a schedule so that in 24 hours, 8 hours are spent sleeping, 8 hours are spent working, and 8 hours are spent living. Any work that can’t be achieved in 8 hours can—must—wait until the next day.”
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Thank you to Nat for bringing this to my attention; a very thoughtful handbook created by the folks at Fictive Kin, on how you can transform your website into an "ROI-generating money machine".
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Eames Institute
№ 24
The Eames Institute enlisted Instrument to "co-create a digital platform to unveil their vast collection to the world". A dream client if there ever was one, the folks at Instrument asked themselves: can a website have a soul? The answer is a resounding yes, and the accompanying case study documents that work beautifully.
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The New York Review of Software. I'd subscribe. (Though reading the sentence that mentions revisiting software a few years later served as a sad reminder that a lot of software wouldn't survive until the revisit.)
