Aug 18, 2023 3 min read

You Should Read - Aug 18

Just One Thing

The Dieline Michael Bierut On Design Before and After The Computer and Why AI Might Not Be So Bad After All

⇛ This is one of those rare articles that actually made me pause and reconsider my thinking. Michael Bierut is a true giant of graphic design and I often find his perspective on the practice to be refreshingly pragmatic and unpretentious. There is no art, design, or creativity without technology. Paint is technology. Brushes, pens, and pencils are technology. Chisels and stone are technology. I began my work life in the old graphic design world he describes, physically cutting and pasting layouts. So, even if it seems I've forgotten, I know first-hand how radically technology can change things.

Regardless, I'm really disappointed to see Bierut has given into "design guru" glasses frames. ;-)

Collected Ephemera

Apollo Open Access Image Libraries – A Handy List
⇛ I love that so many museums have digitized their collections and made them available for reuse under Creative Commons or similar open licenses. When I've used content like this in my past personal projects, I've had to hunt through pages and pages of search results to find open collections. Despite heavily skewing towards Western institutions, this list will be a great shortcut.

MIT Technology Review The Rise of the Tech Ethics Congregation: In a world where tech has become a transcendent force, people are always looking for guidance.
⇛ A profile of the All Tech Is Human community.

Kyle Lambert Who Has the Credentials to Deliver Design Feedback?

I’ve been reading several posts from designers: “If your portfolio isn’t great, I don’t trust your feedback,” and “If you don’t have real-world work to show, I don’t want your feedback.” Essentially: “Show me your credentials before I consider your input.”

Harvard Business Review The Radical Promise of Truly Flexible Work: Organizations designed to support neurodivergent and disabled employees demonstrate how work can “fit” people — not the other way around

DOC Why Do Users Prefer Certain Design?: Insights from the landscape theory

Our Present Dystopia

Foreign Affairs The Antiliberal Revolution: On the American right, there is a growing intuition that the problem with liberal democracy is not just the adjective. It is also the noun.

The point of liberal values—the ones embraced by many progressives, classical liberals, and mainstream conservatives alike—is not that they are timeless or guarantee happiness. It is that they rest on the one thing in social life we can all be sure of: that we will encounter other individuals, different from ourselves, with their own preferences, ambitions, and worldviews. Put aside the complicated metaphysics and speculative theology, and what is left is human beings struggling to patch a ship already at sea: to find ways to live together peacefully—and even prosper—in a changing, plural world.

The Register Maker of Chrome Extension With 300,000+ Users Tells of Constant Pressure to Sell Out: Anyone with sizable audience in this surveillance economy is invited to stuff their add-ons with tracking and ads.

Variety Hollywood Is Taking the ‘Wrong Lessons’ From ‘Barbie,’ Says Randall Park: ‘Make More Movies by and About Women,’ Not Films Based on Toys

source 80% of Bosses Say They Regret Earlier Return-to-Office Plans: ‘A lot of executives have egg on their faces’

“Many organizations that attempted to force a return to the office have had to retract or change their plans because of employee push-back, and now, they don’t look strong,” says Kacher, the president of Career/Life Alliance Services. “A lot of executives have egg on their faces and they’re sad about that.”

⇛ “And now they don't look strong.” LOL. Because, as workers knew all along, this was never about productivity, efficiency, or creativity, but about how CEOs look to other CEOs.

The Wabbit Hole