Looking at these ridiculous images that the US Dept of Labor is posting over on X and questioning how to teach graphic design anymore
design at florafauna.ai brooklyn
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Looking at these ridiculous images that the US Dept of Labor is posting over on X and questioning how to teach graphic design anymore
What do u think the prompt was cuz this is literally soviet propaganda DNA
“Bad taste. I don’t even think there is such a thing anymore. I think what used to be called bad taste is now American humor.” — John Waters
confuser interface
sex recession
who doesn’t matter anymore, only how
she slayed www.cnbc.com/2025/08/29/b...
this site is bad! it's going to fail! its user base has plateaued! it's not making any money! nobody here is smart except for me! everybody here is stupid! nobody is having any good discussions! i don't like being here! ok that's it for now. be back in 90 minutes
whoever did this, I would be absolutely thrilled to buy you a drink. seriously - dm or find me, I'm the only Cyd Harrell on the internet. I'm good for an excellent beverage & a civic tech rage session. americabydesign.fail
New US digital government service seems to be like German universities after expelling non-Aryan academics. They can't mention how much is already known and was done by all those DOGE-sacked staff. All that historic design theory and work by the 'wrong' people.
sosumi.aiff
Tech isn't about innovation, it's about power and networking chokepoints for power. You can innovate all you want, if you don't control or neutralise existing chokepoints your innovation will almost certainly fail to garner any real market success. Silicon Valley is about moats not research.
no
leave by example
leave by example
confuser interface
The problem with calling products or service magic or magical is that magic is always a trick. A moment of delight in being conned. That’s consensual when entertainment but what is it in everyday life?
speedruning the precession of simulacra
“Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time. It’s the feeling that nothing is permanent anymore. It’s the reaction to changes that happen so fast that we can’t absorb them. It’s the premature arrival of the future.” hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/fblrvqes
“If the designer is to make a deliberate contribution to society, they must be able to integrate all they can learn about behavior and resources, ecology and human needs; taste and style just aren’t enough.” — Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Fonts for wireframing – @chriscoyier.net | h/t @sarasouedian frontendmasters.com/blog/fonts-f...
"The machines behind the prompt box are remarkable tools, but they’re not meaningmaking entities" - designing AI tools for critical thinking vaughntan.org/aiux
my title for this @newyorker.com essay is: Labubu C'est Moi www.newyorker.com/culture/infi...
the performance of a system’s parts is downstream of their performance as a system
“A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.” — Gilles Deleuze
“A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.” — Gilles Deleuze
a good portfolio is not about your most interesting work – it is about making your work interesting
a good portfolio is not about your most interesting work – it is about making your work interesting
designers will say “i cooked” and it’s a hotpocket
designers will say “i cooked” and it’s a hotpocket
opinions are not ideas
“To a great extent, it appears, our crisis of the humanities is a crisis of academic leadership — a crisis of will, not capacity.” www.chronicle.com/article/they...
Any time anyone brings up whatever new shit Meta is up to, I think it's important to remember this is the evolution of a system created to non-consensually compare the relative attractiveness of teenagers. Everything follows from that.
opinions are not ideas
something to think about
Both UX and Human Centred Design are dead when SV is just pumping all its money towards a technology that is both context and intent free. Not generalised, just untethered.
“Over the past three decades, design as a discipline simply hasn't evolved fast enough to keep pace with rapid technological advancements. (1/5)
the brain that can see a face in a wall outlet was always doomed to hear the voice of God in a markov chain
Good behaviour more often emerges from rituals and habitual patterns of behaviour, not rules. By focusing on interactions, we build systems resilient in the tail, where most disasters lurk thecynefin.co/the-limits-o...
Who cares. These things aren't evil or good, they're transformer-based models that generate what is the most likely thing you want based on what you tell them. This is getting so tired. What am I meant to be excited about here?
I hate modem documentaries. I hate the 2.5 minute pitch at the start, I hate the recaps, I hate the Music of Rising Tension that triggers anxiety, I hate the way they presume you're stupid and the presenter pretends they're stupid too. The pitch alone - no trust you'll follow them in. Miserable.
I kinda think the way people use ChatGPT is sort of aspirational because it seems to emulate the way rich people have sycophants lying to them all the time until they lose touch with reality and also their entire minds
know what doesn’t have shareholders? html
“A moral point of view is a poor substitute for understanding in technological matters.” — Marshall McLuhan
know what doesn’t have shareholders? html
“A moral point of view is a poor substitute for understanding in technological matters.” — Marshall McLuhan
“…given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. Which is all right. In low doses, right? But if that’s the basic main staple of your diet, you’re gonna die. In a meaningful way, you’re going to die.” — David Foster Wallace
“…technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it’s gonna get easier and easier, and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen…”
The interesting thing is that u can draw a straight line from the way domestic violence rewires children’s developing brains to state violence. Anyway.
Now with Large Ambiguity Models provided by AI
Ambiguity…
stop being comfortable with ambiguity, start being comfortable eliminating it
“Just as we now try to control atom-bomb fallout, so we will one day try to control media fallout. Education will become recognized as civil defense against media fallout.” — Marshall McLuhan (1964)
"The reality is that reorganisation is a blunt instrument that tends to deliver far less than promised" www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/blog/how-gov... "Systems thinking is a really powerful tool for making wise spending decisions"
floppy disk
I…worked on that book for five years…and…they just…they TikTok bro’d it out
all these ai products are in the wordpress theme business and they don't even know it
In an industry once known for cushy perks, some founders are now asking staff to commit to a 72-hour weekly schedule. You’re either in or you’re out. Read more: wrd.cm/4lJMRIX
indeed; the thing about "efficiency" (bracketing the whole "efficiency for what" question) is, past a certain point of removing genuine dead weight, efficiency comes only at the cost of robustness
New on constraint.systems: Ghost - capture the difference between two moments in time. Try it at ghost.constraint.systems
lately the website has changed. it twists facts to fiction, reality to rubbish, gold into dirt. it is increasingly present, demanding you meet its gaze in the plazas and side roads of the internet. it demands your attention, your worship. why, it seems the website has its sights set on becoming god.
“It became evident to me that she didn’t want balance. She wanted me to know my place in her emotional hierarchy. Her grief had to come first. Mine required a disclaimer.”
tomorrow
i'm pretty sure the big challenge to creating usable 'futuristic' spatial interfaces is how to balance between algorithmic layouts (which can operate at scale and look cool) and user edits to those layouts.
The Medium Is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore (1967, republished by Wired 1996)
no
no
📬 Out now: DD348 / Expertise as a status threat www.densediscovery.com/issues/348/
as the pixels left to push in design tools run out, so will the need for designers who can’t bring them to life let‘s see what the next generation of interaction design is beginning to look like
the truth that no one wants to accept is that ai slop is downstream from fan slop.
as the pixels left to push in design tools run out, so will the need for designers who can’t bring them to life let‘s see what the next generation of interaction design is beginning to look like
Love this era of computer company names & logos
came up to a girl in williamsburg “i love your titoks” she goes omg you do etc?! we talk for a bit about how talented i think she is & she’s like “that’s sweet! i’m actually not on tiktok, but it was nice to hear what you think of me :)”
didnt even get her real @
came up to a girl in williamsburg “i love your titoks” she goes omg you do etc?! we talk for a bit about how talented i think she is & she’s like “that’s sweet! i’m actually not on tiktok, but it was nice to hear what you think of me :)”
dumbassets
emotional safety is not “being comfortable enough to tell someone they’re wrong” emotional safety is making sure someone is comfortable enough to hear they’re wrong
emotional safety is not “being comfortable enough to tell someone they’re wrong” emotional safety is making sure someone is comfortable enough to hear they’re wrong
hyperslop
applied design
The interaction engine: Language in social life and human evolution. New book (Open Access) by Stephen Levinson doi.org/10.1017/9781...
applied design
The Browser Company of My Ass
The Browser Company of My Ass
there are two types of designers: those who are fucked and those who aren’t
I wrote more about Florida, how to think about naming, and big-picture strategy for pondering your own interventions to be sand in the gears of the many abominations we'll be faced with in the coming months and years.
I wrote something new! It’s a UI design history essay about Mac’s Control Panel, and it uses emulation in some… maybe new and maybe interesting ways? aresluna.org/frame-of-pre...
the fuckening
there are two types of designers: those who are fucked and those who aren’t
Adaptive Path was a sick name for a company
This industry gives me a headache sometimes.
Adaptive Path was a sick name for a company
simulation of theseus
frame is worth more without the canvas
frame is worth more without the canvas