Posts tagged design

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Coding

I just finished moving the source code for two components (react-inner-image-zoom and vue-inner-image-zoom by) into a monorepo. The goals were to simplify code sharing, centralize GitHub notifications, and eventually add support for new frameworks. A few observations from the process so far:

• webpack-dev-server is a very effective tool for creating development sandboxes for multiple frameworks when you don’t need a full web app.
• The release-it package has cured a lot of my publishing anxiety. I’m always worried about bumping packages accidentally or messing up tags and the dry run functionality really offers peace of mind. My monorepo needs are pretty specific so I’m using it on the command line instead of with a CI/CD but I’ll probably try to figure out a better integration later.
• If you, like me, use nvm to manage Node versions and want to use npm link to test a new package, make sure that both the package and test project are using the same Node version. Also, if you’re testing that a package installs correctly, it’s not a bad idea to delete node_modules and add a console.log just to be sure. And if that fails, this is a helpful Medium article on how to temporarily rollback and NPM package.
• This is awesome: BrowserStack offers free access to test open source projects and I’ve found it invaluable for QA on Microsoft Edge and Android devices. Plus, the application process is quick and easy.

Like most normal people, sometimes I’ll see an animation on TV or in a game and wonder if it could be re-created in CSS. Over at CodePen, I’m giving the some segments from the Severance season finale credits a try. I only have the desks animation so far but I think the elevator and some of the abstract line art could also be possible. I’ll probably do a full post if I finish those. In the meantime, check out this YouTube video for the source inspiration.

Design & Fonts

Got out at the L train Grand St stop for the first time since the pandemic and the mosaics there are fantastic. “Gratitudes off Grand” by artist Glendalys Medina is colorful and abstract and generally made me happy walking by.

Photo by Osheen Harruthoonyan from the MTA website

My font recommendation last month was Beauty Glitch by 177Studio. I love the distortion effect here to make the font look glitch-y. It can be downloaded for personal use at FontSpace or purchased on Creative Fabrica.

I also spent some time reading up on the fonts in Severance on the Severance Wiki Typography in Severance article and on Fonts in Use.

Books

Revisiting a few books I read last year since our reality now includes things like presidential memecoin rug pulls and cryptocurrency reserve quid pro quos propping up scams.

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman. Had to pick this up as a huge fan of both the OC and Gotham. It’s informative and well-researched but also super readable with an interesting side narrative around moving into journalism as an actor.

Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux. This book hits a little harder. It covers a lot of ground, you get an overview of various scams and shady characters, the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, and a lot of silly jargon. But what sets it apart is the deep dive into real world consequences in places like El Salvador, the Philippines, and (especially) Cambodia.

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute by Zac Bissonnette. This book, along with Dan Olson’s classic video Line Goes Up – The Problem with NFTs, is all you really need to understand the NFT craze.

Podcasts

As a supportive spouse with no preexisting connection to any sports team, I’ve become a Mets fan out of household solidarity. And now I’m also a fan of Hits Different, New York’s only anti-math baseball podcast. What makes this the best sports podcast? The first episode of the season just came out and it opens with a discussion of the film Uptown Girls. The Mets are mentioned once in the first nine minutes and that’s while discussing the Olsen twins vehicle New York Minute.

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Fonts & Design

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I mentioned last time that I was looking forward to the Zoom lecture Design Pioneers: African American Graphic Designers You Should Know (recording at link) and it was great. I’m a hobbyist when it comes to graphic design so my historical knowledge is pretty basic and all the information was new to me. Since I’m a sucker for all things vintage, my favorites were Georg Olden, Thomas Miller, and Emmet McBain and I’m hoping to do deeper dives in the future.

Tried out one new tool, WhoCanUse, a site that shows how different colors may be perceived by users with visual impairments.

In font related news, I finally released something new! Tuper Super is a playful font made up of hand-drawn shapes with diagonal shading in the overlaps. Try it free for personal use or commercially for $15.

Recommended Independent by Lemon Studio Type. This geometric font has a sci-fi movie title card feel and can be downloaded for personal use at dafont or purchased for commercial use at Creative Market.

And read a really fascinating essay. The hardest working font in Manhattan by Marcin Wichary came out on Valentine’s Day which feels appropriate since it’s basically a love letter to a typeface. A long read full of gorgeous photographs and diagrams, it traces the history of Gorton across centuries and once you read it, you’ll see Gorton everywhere. As a side note, I want a Leroy lettering set so bad.

Books

Picked up Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac and couldn’t put it down. This book is essential reading if you want to understand how DOGE (not a real department) is currently destroying the US government. It’s not just the same incompetence, malice, and egomania, they’re using the exact same tactics as well. At some points the cringe is hard to handle; there are meeting scenes that feel more uncomfortable than the UK Office. All in all, it’s a real page turner even if you don’t usually gravitate towards business books.

No Elon Musk low in Character Limit surprised me too much because I’d already read its spiritual predecessor Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors by Edward Niedermeyer. If you’ve ever suspected that Tesla is a monorail and Elon Musk is con artist Lyle Lanley from the Simpsons pumping a meme stock, this well-researched book will confirm your wildest misgivings. If I ran a bookstore, these two would be on an end cap together.

Podcasts

Tangentially podcast related, as a fan of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, I signed up for the virtual event The Great Chatbot Debate with co-host Emily Bender on March 25th. Should be interesting.

Otherwise, I’ll be honest, the only new podcasts I added to the mix last month were recapping the reality TV show The Traitors. But if you’re a fan, Rob Has a Podcast and First to Breakfast are both good.

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Coding, Fonts, and Design

This section features affiliate links, meaning I’ll earn a small commission (at no cost to you) if you decide to click through and make a purchase.

I had to set up a cookie consent management platform this month and it was a big “Google really is getting worse” moment for me. Maybe I’m romanticizing the results of a few years ago, but I swear the first two pages of a search like this used to be full of articles comparing the costs and features of major providers. Today, I found one neutral source (Top 12 Consent Management Platforms (CMP)) but it’s mostly ads and fake posts by the companies surprisingly ranking themselves number one.

The information shortage probably isn’t helped by the fact that a lot of platforms are tightlipped about pricing and really want you to do sales call. I eventually went with CookieYes because I appreciated their transparency and so far so good. It was easy to set up with Google Tag Manager. Integrating with Segment required a little more work but this repo saved me. 

My sister asked me to help her find a font she saw in an Instagram ad that could best be described as thick or blobby cursive. Although I couldn't find an exact match, I recommended a few from the search: Klangfarbe by Mysterylab Designs, Blank’s Script by Billy Argel (also available free for personal use), and Guava by Meg Burk.

Tried a couple new tools that I’m pretty happy with:

• After using Material UI for years at work, I decided to give Mantine a try on a personal project and my only real complaint was their color generator. Luckily, Shadowlord exists for generating different tints and shades.
• I don’t know how it took me so long to find an extension to take full page screenshots instead of doing it manually. Now I’m using the Chrome extension GoFullPage and it’s made my life so much easier.

Looking forward to these free online events in February:

• Letterform Archive is hosting a Zoom lecture called Design Pioneers: African American Graphic Designers You Should Know on February 11th.
• From February 25th to 27th, Deque’s axe-con 2025 will be online covering topics around digital accessibility in development and design.

Books

Finished Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech by Sara Wachter-Boettcher at the end of December. It’s a little jarring to run across the line “I don’t know what the United States will look like by the time you read this book, and in fact I’m anxious it will look even bleaker than I can yet imagine” in a book about inequity and homogeneity in tech published in 2017. Things definitely are bleaker today, with companies like Facebook taking a vocal stand against diversity, but I think that makes this book a more interesting what could have been. Also the chapter on the illusion of the meritocracy hits really hard.

Reading Technically Wrong, I was reminded of a book I’d previously read, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil, so it wasn’t surprising to see it referenced midway through. Weapons of Math Destruction examines how algorithms can exacerbate inequality by reinforcing the biases of their creators. With AI (or what we call AI right now), the risks of delegating decisions around school, work, health insurance, etc. to unaccountable black boxes seem even more obvious.

Podcasts

Speaking of tech’s rightward lurch, as a big fan of Ed Zitron’s Where’s Your Ed At newsletter, I started listening to Better Offline when it premiered last year but, it feels appropriate that I’m posting about it at a time when the industry deserves even more anger. At this moment, it’s especially cathartic to hear that you’re not imagining what he calls the “rot economy”, products getting worse (thanks Prabhakar Raghavan), bubbles preparing to pop (thanks OpenAI), and a general malaise engulfing the industry. 

System Crash is a new podcast by Paris Marx from Tech Won’t Save Us and Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine (which I just got from the library). The format may evolve over time, but for now it’s a good weekly wrap-up discussing events in tech from a skeptical perspective. 

And for something completely different, 99% Invisible’s episode on the history of the typeface Fraktur is an interesting listen. I usually post positive font content so this is a bit of a departure. 

Videos

He deserves worse as an out and proud fascist trying to destroy America but I still enjoy YouTubers realizing that Elon Musk is a fraud and a poser who lies about everything including his video game prowess. A lot of good content out there but my entry point was Elon Musk Fraud Gamer Situation is Pathetic by penguinz0.

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One thing I like to do when national politics have me spiraling into a panic (or, shockingly, when they have me feeling optimistic) is volunteer with Tech for Campaigns. If you have experience in engineering/product/design/etc. and want to help build websites or run email marketing for smaller campaigns, it's a great way to connect with talented, like-minded people and feel like you're actually helping.

As part of that, I've seen a lot of campaign websites this cycle. Sometimes the candidates recommend designs they like. Sometimes I'm out looking for inspiration. Since the content on these sites is generally very similar, it's interesting to see the different design approaches.

So, in no particular order, here's my partisan, totally subjective, and very non-exhaustive list of the best political website designs from 2024.

Elissa Slotkin for Michigan

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This one is my favorite. Love the color palette, the background textures, and (most of all) the triangular decorative elements.

Lisa Blunt Rochester for U.S. Senate

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Nice use of background photos. The transitions in the issues and latest updates sections are worth visiting the site to check out.

Bryon Best For Congress

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A different approach to background photos that creates a very cool overflow effect.

Haley Stevens for Congress

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The colors here pop and they've managed to create a really eye-catching layout just using overlapping rectangles.

Madeleine Dean for Congress

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A little more muted but everything about this site is so clean. The opaque design flourishes are subtle but keep things from feeling boring.

Josh Harder for Congress

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Mostly included for the timeline on the Josh's Story page but the homepage layout is good too.

Tanya for Congress TX 27

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A lot to like here! The Texas flag as a book logo for a teacher, the ribbon/bookmark motif, and the angled backgrounds complementing both. It all flows together really nicely.

Sydney Kamlager – For Congress District 37

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Another example of an angled background pairing well with a logo.