All posts by jnack

HBoooookay

Design, Typography

“A few weeks ago,” writes John Gruber, “designer James Barnard made this TikTok video about what seemed to be a few mistakes in HBO’s logo. He got a bunch of crap from commenters arguing that they weren’t mistakes at all. Then he heard from the designer of the original version of the logo, from the 1970s.”

Check out these surprisingly interesting three minutes of logo design history:

@barnardco “Who. Cares? Unfollowed” This is how a *lot* of people responded to my post about the mistake in the HBO logo. For those that didn’t see it, the H and the B of the logo don’t line up at the top of the official vector version from the website. Not only that, but the original designer @Gerard Huerta700 got in touch! Long story short, we’re all good, and Designerrrs™ community members can watch my interview with Gerard Huerta where we talk about this and his illustrious career! #hbo #typography #logodesign #logo #designtok  original sound – James Barnard

How to change your eval ways (baby)

AI/ML

As much as one can be said to enjoy thinking through the details of how to evaluate AI (and it actually can be kinda fun!), I enjoyed this in-depth guide from Hamel Husain & Shreya Shankar.

All year I’ve been focusing pretty intently on how to tease out the details of what makes image creation & editing models “good” (e.g. spelling, human realism, prompt alignment, detail preservation, and more). This talk pops up a level, focusing more on holistic analysis of end-to-end experiences. If you’re doing that kind of work, or even if you just want to better understand the kind of thing that’s super interesting to hiring managers now, I think you’ll find watching this to be time well spent.

Photoshop integrates Flux, Nano Banana

AI/ML, Nano Banana

I’m so happy to see Adobe greatly accelerating the pace of 3p API integrations!

Show your work, AI edition

AI/ML

Microsoft VP Aparna Chennapragada, who recruited me to Microsoft after I reported to her at Google, recently wrote a thoughtful piece about building trust through transparency. Specifically around AI agents, we want less of this…

…and more of this:

I agree completely. Having some thoughtful back-and-forth makes me feel better understood & therefore more confident in my assistant’s work.

And feel here is a big deal. As Maya Angelou said, “People won’t remember what you said, or even what you did, but they’ll remember how you made them *feel*. Microsoft AI leader (and previously DeepMind cofounder) Mustafa Suleyman totally gets this.

Conversely, I just saw a founder advertising his product as “visual storytelling on autopilot.” I get the intent, but I find the phrasing oxymoronic: would any worthwhile “story” be generated by autopilot? Yuck.

When apps try to do too much with my sparse input, seeing the results makes me feel like Neven Mrgan did upon receiving AI-generated slop from a friend: “I was repelled, as if digital anthrax had poured out of the app.” I don’t even want to read such content, much less share it, much less be judged on it.

So yeah, apps: ditch autopilot & instead take the time to show interest & ask good questions. “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast”—and a little thoughtfulness up front will save me time while increasing my pride of ownership.

Google Flow adds Nano Banana

AI/ML, Google Flow, Nano Banana

In addition to adding support for vertical video & greater character consistency, the new Veo-powered storytelling tool now includes direct image creation & manipulation via tiny, tiny fruit:

Google introduces “Learn Your Way”

AI/ML

This paper seems really promising. From textbooks it promises to make:

— Mind maps if you think visually
— Audio lessons with simulated teacher conversations
— Interactive timelines
— Quizzes that change based on where you’re struggling

More details:

Vibe Coding at Google: Prototyping the all-new AI Studio

AI/ML, User Interface

Check out these interesting insights from the former head of design at ElevenLabs, who recently joined Google to help build their AI Studio:

In today’s episode Ammaar Reshi shows exactly how he uses AI to prototype ideas for the new Google AI Studio. He shares his Figma files and two example prototypes (including how he vibe-coded his own version of AI Studio in a couple of days). We also go deep into:

— 4 lessons for vibe-coding like a pro
— When to rely on mockups vs. AI prototypes
— Ammaar’s step-by-step process for prompting
— How Ammaar thinks about the fidelity of his prototypes
— a lot more

BFL’s Flux hackathon kicks off

AI/ML

Prizes include $5,000, an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, and $3K in FAL credits. Check out the site for more info.

“Ruining” art with Nano Banana

AI/ML, Illustration, Nano Banana

But, y’know, in a fun & cheeky way. 🙂 Check out this little iterative experiment from Ethan Mollick:

As a longtime Bosch enthusiast, I’m partial to this one:

Reminds me of the time in 2023 (i.e. 10,000 AI years ago) that I forced DALL•E to keep making images look more & more “cheugy”:

The Phantom Superbad

AI/ML

I never want to get used to just how transformative the latest crop of AI-powered tools has become! Check out just one of the latest examples:

Nano Banana is coming to Photoshop—officially!

AI/ML, Miscellaneous, Nano Banana

“Yes, And”: It’s the golden rule of improv comedy, and it’s the title of the paper I wrote & circulated throughout Adobe as soon as DALL•E dropped 3+ years ago: yes, we should make our own great models, and of course we should integrate the best of what the rest of the world is making! I mean, duh, why wouldn’t we??

This stuff can take time, of course (oh, so much time), but here we are: Adobe has announced that Google’s Nano Banana editing model will be coming to a Photoshop beta build near you in the immediate future.

Side note: it’s funny that in order to really upgrade Photoshop, one of the key minds behind Firefly simply needed to quit the company, move to Google, build Nano Banana, and then license it back to Adobe. Funny ol’ world…

Beautiful new AI mograph explorations

After Effects, AI/ML

Check out this new work from Alex Patrascu. As generative video tools continue to improve in power & precision, what’ll be the role of traditional apps like After Effects? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AI Lego Redux

AI/ML

Back when DALL•E 3 launched (not even two years ago, though in AI time it feels like a million), I used it to delight friends by rendering them & their signature vehicles in Lego form.

Now that Google’s Nano Banana model has dropped, I felt like revisiting the challenge, comparing results to the original plus ones from ChatGPT 4o.

As you can see in the results, 4o increases realism relative to DALL•E, but it loses a lot of expressiveness & soul. Nano Banana manages to deliver the best of both worlds.

Barber, gimme the “Kling-Nano Banana…”

AI/ML, Nano Banana

And yes, I do feel like I’m having a stroke when I type our actual phrases like that. 🙂 But putting that aside, check out the hairstyling magic that can come from pairing Google’s latest image-editing model with an image-to-video system:

Demo: Perceptual superpowers at TED

AI/ML, AR/VR

I’d seen some eye-popping snippets of the Google XR team’s TED talk a few months back, but until now I hadn’t watched the whole thing. It’s well worth doing so, and I truly can’t process the step change in realtime perceptual capabilities that has recently arrived in Gemini:

Behind the scenes: Photographing Giuliani

Photography

A recent Time Magazine cover featuring Zohran Mamdani made me recall a super interesting customer visit I did years ago with photographer Gregory Heisler. Politics aside, this is a pretty cool peek behind the curtains on the making of an epic image:

As for the Mamdani shoot, it sounds quite memorable unto itself—for incredibly different reasons:

[Via]

Conversational editing—and greater AI transparency—come to Google Photos

AI/ML, Google Photos

“Coming first to Pixel 10 in the U.S., you can simply describe the edits you want to make by text or voice in Photos’ editor, and watch the changes appear. And to further improve transparency around AI edits, we’re adding support for C2PA Content Credentials in Google Photos.”

The team blog post goes on to say,

Because this is an open-ended, conversational experience, you don’t have to indicate which tools you want to use. For example, you could ask for a specific edit, like “remove the cars in the background” or something more general like “restore this old photo” and Photos will understand the changes you’re trying to make. You can even make multiple requests in a single prompt like “remove the reflections and fix the washed out colors.”

Spin me right ’round, Illustrator

3D, AI/ML, Illustration

I’m excited to check out this rather eye-popping new Illustrator feature, and I’m installing the beta as I type:

Another cool example:

Try Flux Kontext right inside Photoshop

AI/ML, Suite Development

A couple of weeks ago I saw Photoshop trainer Rob de Winter experimenting with integrating ChatGPT’s image model into Photoshop, much as I’d been quietly colluding with Christian Cantrell to do three years ago using DALL•E (long before Firefly existed, when Adobe was afraid to do anything in the generative space).

I suggested that Rob try using Flux Kontext, and he promptly whipped up this free plugin. Check out the results:

From Rob’s site:

This custom-made Flux Kontext JSX-plugin lets you create context-aware AI edits directly inside Photoshop, based on your selection and a short prompt. Your selection is sent to Replicate’s Flux Kontext models (Pro or Max), and the result is placed back as a new layer with a mask, keeping lighting, shadows, and materials consistent.

Quick tips on Ideogram face swapping

AI/ML

Watching the face-swapping portion of Jesús’s otherwise excellent demo above made me wince: this part of Photoshop’s toolbox just hasn’t evolved in years and years. It’s especially painful for me, as I returned to Adobe in 2021 to make things like this better. Despite building some really solid tech, however, we were blocked by concerns about ethics (“What if a war criminal got access to this?”; yes, seriously). So it goes.

Maybe someday PS will update its face-related features (heck, for all I know they’re integrating a new API now!). In the meantime, here’s a nice 4-minute tour of how to do this (for free!) in Ideogram:

Higgsfield introduces (checks notes) “Steal”

AI/ML

Wow—well, you sure can’t fault these guys for beating around the bush: video creator Higgsfield has introduced a browser extension that lets you click any image, then convert it to video & create related images. For better or worse, here’s how it works (additional details in thread):

Google Photos adds GenAI features

AI/ML, Google Photos, Photography

The app promises to let you turn static images into short videos and transform them into fun art styles, plus explore a new creation hub.

I’m excited to try it out, but despite the iOS app having been just updated, it’s not yet available—at least for me. Meanwhile, although I just bit the bullet & signed up for the $20/mo. plan, the three video attempts that Gemini allowed me today all failed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Safari: Shake a Tailfeather

Photography

To be honest I’ve never taken a more than passing interest in most birds, and certainly in photographing them, but the insane diversity of those in southern Africa was too much to resist. Here are some of my favorites we spied on our journey through Zimbabwe & Botswana:

Meanwhile we enjoyed visiting Painted Dog Conservation and learning about their tireless efforts to preserved & rehabilitate some of the 6,000 or so of these unique animals that remain in the wild—and that often fall prey to poachers’ snares. Tap/click to see a rather charming little vid:

Here’s a bit more about their work:

Childhood drawings brought to life through Midjourney video

AI/ML

Even though I got absolutely wrecked for having the temerity to use one of my son’s cute old drawings in an AI project last year (no point in now digging up the hundreds of flames it drew), I still enjoy seeing this kind of creative interpretation:

Gemini enables image-to-video

AI/ML

Man, am I now gonna splash out for another monthly subscription? I haven’t done so yet, but these results are pretty darn impressive:

To turn your photos into videos, select ‘Videos’ from the tool menu in the prompt box and upload a photo. … The photo-to-video capability is starting to roll out today to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in select countries around the world. Try it out at gemini.google.com. These same capabilities are also available in Flow, Google’s AI filmmaking tool.

Safari: Big Mouths & Small Spots

Photography

Hey friends—we’ve made it home to Cali after a whirlwind trip to Zimbabwe & Botswana. I’ll try to post some observations about the state of photo editing these days, and I’d love to hear yours. Meanwhile, while my body still tries to clue into where & when the heck I am, here are a few small galleries I’ve shared so far:

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A post shared by John Nack (@jnack)

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A post shared by John Nack (@jnack)

Gone (lion) fishin’

Photography

D’oh—before heading to Zimbabwe & Botswana with my wife to celebrate our 20th anniversary, I neglected to mention that things will be a bit quieter around here than normal. We plan to return to the States next week, and I might share a few posts between now & then. Meanwhile, check out some new friends we made this morning!