Category Archives: Design

A charming BTS for Apple’s “Friends” holiday spot

Design

There’s almost no limit to my insane love of practical animal puppetry (usually the sillier, the better—e.g. Triumph, The Falconer), so I naturally loved this peek behind the scenes of Apple’s new spot:

Puppeteers dressed like blueberries. Individually placed whiskers. An entire forest built 3 feet off the ground. And so much more.

Bonus: Check out this look into the making of a similarly great Portland tourism commercial:

Fried chicken, product obsession, and Richard Feynman

Design

Passion is contagious, and I love when people deeply care what they’re bringing into the world. I had no idea I could find the details of fast-food chicken so interesting, but dang if founder Todd Graves’s enthusiasm doesn’t jump right off the screen. Seriously, give it a watch!

I’m reminded of Richard Feynman’s keen observation:

More tangentially, this gets me thinking back to my actor friends’ appreciation of Don Cheadle’s craft in this scene from Boogie Nights. “I could watch that guy pick out donuts all day!” And even though I can’t grok the work nearly as deeply as they do, I love how much they love it.

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

Forgotten design: The Africar

Design

“If you’re into weird cars, forgotten history, and stories that don’t end well, hit that subscribe button.”

I found this piece really interesting, not least because my wife & I are headed to Africa for the first time next week, and I’m eager to learn what kinds of vehicles & roads we’ll experience. Seems like something like the Africar would make a ton of sense in many places:

On classic cars & the feeling of craft

AI/ML, Design

John Gruber recently linked back to this clip in which designer Neven Mrgan highlights what feels like an important consideration in the age of mass-generated AI “designs”:

I think that was what mattered is that they looked rich, they looked like a lot of work had been put into them. That’s what people latch onto. It seems it’s something that, yes, they should have spent money on, and they should be spending time on right now.

Regardless of what tools were used in the making of a piece, does it feel rich, crafted, thoughtfully made? Does it have a point, and a point of view? As production gets faster, those qualities will become all the more critical for anything—and anyone—wishing to stand out.

Stay frosty, UI

Design

Splice (2D/3D design in your browser) has added support for progressive blur & gradients, and the results look awesome.

I haven’t seen anything advance like this in Adobe‘s core apps in maybe 20 years— maybe 25, since Illustrator & Acrobat added support for transparency.

On an aesthetically similar note, check out the launch video for the new version of Sketch (still very much alive & kicking in an age of Figma, it seems):

The explosive titles of “Your Friends & Neighbors”

Design

As Motionographer aptly puts it,

Director John Likens and FX Supervisor Tomas Slancik dissect existential collapse in Your Friends & Neighbors’ haunting opener, blending Jon Hamm’s live-action gravitas with a symphony of digital decay. […]

Shot across two days and polished by world-class VFX artists, the title sequence mirrors Hamm’s crumbling protagonist, juxtaposing his stoic performance against hyper-detailed destruction.

Rive introduces Vector feathering

Design, Illustration

I really hope that the makers of traditional vector-editing apps are paying attention to rich, modern, GPU-friendly techniques like this one. (If not—and I somewhat cynically expect that it’s not—it won’t be for my lack of trying to put it onto their radar. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Lego Interstellar is stunning

Design

Wow—I marvel at the insane, loving attention to detail in this shot-for-shot re-creation of a scene from Interstellar:

The creator writes,

I started working on this project in mid-2023, and it has been an incredible challenge, from modeling and animation to rendering and post-production. Every detail, from the explosive detachment of the Ranger to the rotation of the Endurance, the space suits of the minifigures, the insides of the Lander, and even the planet in the background, was carefully recreated in 3D.

Interstellar is one of the films that has moved me the most. Its story, visuals, and soundtrack left a lasting impact on me, and this video is my personal love letter to the movie—and to cinema in general. I wanted to capture the intensity and emotion of this scene in LEGO form, as a tribute to the power of storytelling through film.

Side by side:

Sigma BF: Clean AF

Design, Photography

Refreshingly simple design!

Is it for me? Dunno: lately the only thing that justifies shooting with something other than my phone is a big, fast zoom lens, and I don’t know whether pairing such a thing with this slim beauty would kinda defeat the purpose. Still, I must know more…

Here’s a nice early look at the cam plus a couple of newly announced lenses:

Titles: Severance Season 2

Design

Building on the strong work from the previous season,

Berlin’s Extraweg have created… a full-blown motion design masterpiece that takes you on a wild ride through Mark’s fractured psyche. Think trippy CGI, hypnotic 3D animations, and a surreal vibe that’ll leave you questioning reality. It’s like Inception met a kaleidoscope, and they decided to throw a rave in your brain. [more]

Microsoft opens 13 new AI + Design roles

Design

If you or folks you know might be a good fit for one or more of these roles, please check ’em out & pass along info. Here’s some context from design director Mike Davidson.

————

These positions are United States only, Redmond-preferred, but we’ll also consider the Bay Area and other locations:

These positions are specifically in our lovely Mountain View office:

Reinterpreting classic instrument clusters in the age of CarPlay

Design, User Interface

“Tell me about a product you hate that you use regularly.” I asked this question of hundreds of Google PM candidates I interviewed, and it was always a great bozo detector. Most people don’t have much of an answer—no real passion or perspective. I want to know not just what sucks, but why it sucks.

If I were asked the same question, I’d immediately say “Every car infotainment system ever made.” As Tolstoy might say, “Each one is unhappy in its own way.” The most interesting thing, I think, isn’t just to talk about the crappy mismatched & competing experiences, but rather about why every system I’ve ever used sucks. The answer can’t be “Every person at every company is a moron”—so what is it?

So much comes down to the structure of the industry, with hardware & software being made by a mishmash of corporate frenemies, all contending with a soup of regulations, risk aversion (one recall can destroy the profitability of a whole product line), and surprisingly bargain-bin electronics.

Despite all that, talented folks continue to fight the good fight, and I enjoyed John LePore’s speculative designs that reinterpret the instrument clusters of classic cars (from Corvettes to DeLoreans) through Apple’s latest CarPlay framework:

Uizard & the future of AI-assisted design

AI/ML, Design

Uizard (“Wizard”), which was recently acquired by Miro, has rolled out Autodesigner 2.0:

We take the intuitive conversational flow of ChatGPT and merge it with Uizard generative UI capabilities and drag-and-drop editor, to provide you with an intuitive UI design generator. You can turn a couple of ideas into a digital product design concept in a flash!

I’m really curious to see how the application of LLMs & conversational AI reshapes the design process, from ideation & collaboration to execution, deployment, and learning—and I’d love to hear your thoughts! Meanwhile here’s a very concise look at how Autodesigner works:

And if that piques your interest, here’s a more in-depth look:

“Top Billing,” huge egos, and the art of title design

Design

99% Invisible is back at it, uncovering hidden but fascinating bits of design in action. This time around it’s concerned with the art of movie title & poster design—specifically with how to deal with actors who insist on being top billed. In the case of the otherwise forgotten movie Outrageous Fortune:

Two different prints of the movie were made, one listing Shelley Long’s name first and the other listing Bette Midler’s name first. Not only that, two different covers to take-home products (LaserDisc and VHS) were also made, with different names first. The art was mirrored, so that the names aligned with the actors images.

One interesting pattern that’s emerged is to place one actor’s name in the lower left & another in the upper right—thus deliberately conflicting with normal reading order in English:

Anyway, as always with this show, just trust me—the subject is way more interesting than you might think.