I wasn’t going to do a post today. I did a quick look at what I had collected, and the next thing I knew, I had a good batch. Sometimes things flow. In non-link news, my app, Strategery2 is live on the Apple App Store. It’s already on version 1.6. I recently added a new ‘unfair’ mode that gives computer opponents even more advantage. It also includes some tweaks and bug fixes. I guess I’m a product owner now–the updates will never end.
History
A Brief History of the Dust Jacket
Slip cover, dust cover, or dust jacket — whatever you call it, and whether you’re the type to trash or treasure them — have you ever wondered what purpose they serve and when they were invented?
Tools
A visual explorer for Unicode. Browse the character set, discover related glyphs, and learn more about the scripts, symbols, and shapes that make up the standard.
The Most Wonderfully Overstuffed App For Enjoying Your Downtime. Organize your collections, track your shows, play your podcasts, plan your adventures, and remember it all.
ASCII editor for art, video, live cam, and WebGL exports
Work
I have to regularly evaluate portfolios, so I have developed my own opinions on what stands out. Still, every reviewer is different, and what works can vary.
To go beyond my own view, I asked designer friends what they look for, what grabs attention, and what turns them off, looking for patterns that feel more universal. This document is the result of that effort. It is a collection of practical insights meant to help students think more clearly about how to structure and present their portfolio, focusing on what actually matters when someone is reviewing their work.
The New Designer/Developer Collaboration
There’s lots of ways to build a website. Most of them involve designers working in one tool, developers working in another, and a painful handoff process somewhere in between. We recently used Intent to build and ship a well-crafted website in about three weeks, and the collaboration model that emerged shined a light on how things could (no, should) be.
What Claude Design actually changes for designers
The handoff problem is finally getting solved — and it’s happening faster than most of us expected.
Design isn’t dying. It’s shifting left
When the model is the new medium, shaping how it behaves in humanistic ways is design
Data Visualization
This new website is like Spotify Wrapped for your tax dollars
Tax Wrapped will show you exactly how the government is using your hard-earned cash.