{"id":8705,"date":"2026-08-11T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/?p=8705"},"modified":"2026-08-11T10:58:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:58:42","slug":"weekly-design-links-08-11-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/weekly-design-links-08-11-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Design Links \u2013 08\/11\/26"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m not very good at juggling. The physical act, with balls\u2013no. But juggling projects, life, and work? I’m OK at that. It’s not easy, and I’m always looking for ways to help me manage the chaos. Lately, that’s been AI, but I still haven’t found anything that really makes it easier. I’ve made some progress on my project work and sub-tasks. The bigger, messier problem\u2013what do I work on when I have a free 15 minutes? No tool that I’ve tried has cracked that yet. The links, they keep on coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Industrial Design<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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This new robot centaur designed to save lives is pure nightmare fuel<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a market drowning in humanoids, this goat-headed monstrosity might just be the most honest robot we\u2019ve seen yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Industrial Facility Figures Out a Smart Way to Distinguish Unlike Contents Within a System<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Infiltrating or adjusting any system requires careful consideration and time. Instead of ‘adding’ things to the glass jar system (like stickers), we replace an existing part with a coded substitute in order to help the system function better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graphic Design\/Branding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Biabum designs Salva Bar as a chef\u2019s home away from home in Rio<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For its identity, Chagas turned to local design studio, Biabum, with a brief to capture that affection and everyday feeling without tipping into caricature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Web Design\/UX\/UI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The plateau of sad gray icons<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone wants to teach AI agents good taste. I just want them to stop filling every surface with icons in soft gray containers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AI Aesthetic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all makes me wonder what other aesthetics are being born out of this AI moment and how many will spread, take seed, and become part of common software interaction paradigms for years or decades to come?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The naked designer: What happens when you can\u2019t hide behind craft<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the naked designer. Not exposed by AI, but by what it made cheap. A thread pulled. When making something is no longer evidence you meant it, there\u2019s nowhere left to hide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Architecture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Art of Ice Cream Shop Design<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ice cream shop functions as an exercise in branding through playfulness in retail and commercial spaces, a small architectural gesture designed to draw people in off the street or across the park. From dense urban cores to quiet coastal towns, designers return again and again to color, materiality, and childlike curiosity as the primary tools for these spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regional Urban Renewal of Chengdu Pengzhou Longxing Temple Area<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The design harmonizes key pedestrian public spaces with layered landscapes offering changing vistas. A gently ascending aerial corridor surrounds a tranquil water surface, with building heights intentionally reduced in proximity to the water to enhance the visual experience. Landscape courtyards extend the connection to the water, while the historic “Longxing Street,” dating back to the Qing Dynasty, is preserved in its original alignment and scale through a sunken design approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tools<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Font Awesome The Icon Wizard 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Icon Wizard lets you build custom Font Awesome icons right on the site and save them to a Kit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dither it!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dither it! is a free website for dithering images, an image processing technique that reduces the number of colors used to render an image.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not very good at juggling. The physical act, with balls\u2013no. But juggling projects, life, and work? I’m OK at that. It’s not easy, and I’m always looking for ways to help me manage the chaos. Lately, that’s been AI, but I still haven’t found anything that really makes it easier. I’ve made some progress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8716,"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_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[16,11,13,14,49,21,20,19,30],"class_list":["post-8705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-links","tag-architecture","tag-branding","tag-graphic-design","tag-industrial-design","tag-tools","tag-ui","tag-ux","tag-web-design","tag-work"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/The-Naked-Designer.jpg?fit=1600%2C899&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705","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=8705"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8717,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705\/revisions\/8717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnfreeborn.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}