{"id":7830,"date":"2026-01-06T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/?p=7830"},"modified":"2026-01-06T00:44:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T08:44:39","slug":"weekly-design-links-01-06-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/weekly-design-links-01-06-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Design Links \u2013 01\/06\/26"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here we go again. Out with the old, in with the new. I\u2019m currently hard at work on several fronts\u2014nothing new there. Between these weekly posts, the\u00a0Skate Book Club\u00a0newsletter, my magazine (Tails Of…), and the full-time job, my plate is full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my personal life, however, I\u2019m trying to do the opposite: simplify. 2025 pushed me hard toward a “paring down” mission, and I\u2019ve been shedding books, clothes, and electronics to find my essentials. But here\u2019s the creative\u2019s catch-22: the things I “need” are the things I use to make more<\/em> things. I\u2019m still working on the solution for that one. Happy New Year!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Architecture<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Rechtswissenschaftliche Bibliothek Z\u00fcrich<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The library of the Law Faculty of the University of Zurich comprises around 200K books and 700 journals and 500 workplaces. It is housed in the inner courtyard of a building from 1908, designed by Hermann Fiertz. Designed by Santiago Calatrava, the new building opened in 2004 and has a 30m high atrium. Six lens-shaped galleries offer research spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ATLANTICA T.O.W.<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Atlantica is a fully customized tiny house designed in collaboration with its owner. Completed in 2023 and set in a pine forest, this off-grid retreat is designed for a family of four. A large covered porch extends the living space outdoors, making Atlantica a perfect nature retreat, ideal for extended stays in any season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Industrial Design<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Erwan Bouroullec disguises Samsung speaker as an abstract sculpture<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

For the speaker’s gently rounded body, rendered entirely in either black or white, the designer looked to vinyl records, subwoofers and music notes in a bid to capture the essential shape of sound itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marc Newson and Ressence Reimagine Time With the TYPE 3 MN Watch<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

At its core, the TYPE 3 MN showcases Ressence\u2019s proprietary co-planar surface with mechanical display module, the patented Ressence Orbital Convex System (ROCS 3). Beneath a domed sapphire crystal, the dial appears to float within a sealed chamber filled with 4.15 ml of silicone oil \u2013 an ingenious solution that cancels light refraction, eliminates glare, and creates a magnified, almost holographic effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graphic Design, Branding, Wayfinding, and Typography<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Dalziel & Pow Designs Guinness Wayfinding and Branding in London<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Rather than treating wayfinding as a functional afterthought, Dalziel & Pow approached the project as a storytelling system. The guiding idea, Discover the Unexpected, is expressed through a playful, character-driven visual language that feels unmistakably Guinness while responding to the energy of Covent Garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Letterforms Are Containers for Ideas in \u2018Alphabetical Playground\u2019<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

A recent frontier in typeface development pushes into exciting new territory: what if we viewed the alphabet as a container for countless graphic design systems, conceptual ideas, and endless play?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

font.fish<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

A browser based tool for exploring thousands of fonts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEGO Bricks Transform into Letterforms in the International Design Project \u2018A2Z\u2019<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Once the designers had created their pieces, they returned digital templates to Neves so that the compositions could be set up using physical bricks and run through a large press in the UIC print lab. The process involved over 8,000 bricks and more than 27,000 hand-operated printing passes that took Neves eight months to complete alongside the project\u2019s producer and publisher, Amira Hegazy, and graduate student assistant Shannon Morrissey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Web Design<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Size of Life<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

By Neal Agarwal & Illustrations by Julius Csotonyi<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You Can’t Opt-Out of Accessibility<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Accessibility is so fundamental that this shouldn\u2019t even be a post I feel compelled to write, yet I feel like some fanatical obsessive whenever I have to try convince someone to do something as simple as care about their fellow humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photography<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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What an unprocessed photo looks like<\/a><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing that happens when you adjust the contrast or white balance in editing software that the camera hasn\u2019t done under the hood. The edited image isn\u2019t \u201cfaker\u201d then the original: they are different renditions of the same data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here we go again. Out with the old, in with the new. I\u2019m currently hard at work on several fronts\u2014nothing new there. Between these weekly posts, the\u00a0Skate Book Club\u00a0newsletter, my magazine (Tails Of…), and the full-time job, my plate is full. In my personal life, however, I\u2019m trying to do the opposite: simplify. 2025 pushed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7860,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[70,16,11,13,14,10,18,65,19],"class_list":["post-7830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-links","tag-accessibility","tag-architecture","tag-branding","tag-graphic-design","tag-industrial-design","tag-photography","tag-typography","tag-wayfinding","tag-web-design"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/font.fish_.webp?fit=1194%2C818&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7830"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7873,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7830\/revisions\/7873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}