content
Raw size isn't enough
Content as value
A web of books
Rewarding Curation
An Article by Wesley Aptekar-CasselsSomething interesting about the design of Twitter is that it doesn’t have much of a way of rewarding curation, only authorship.
...I’m inclined to think that the mechanisms of distribution of information are very important, and I think figuring out ways to reward good curation is probably an important thing.
...I don’t really know what the solution is here, but I do think that finding and curating good links and bits of information is useful, and something that should be rewarded more than it currently is.
The McClusky Curve
An Article by Shawn WangHe coined this thing, which I call the McClusky Curve… So if you go first, you want to either be first in the cycle or you want to go later and add a very differentiated, deeper, in depth take that nobody else has where you’re adding value to the conversation.
But if you go anywhere in the middle, you’re just in the noise.
...I think this is the fundamental tension to staying relevant to the discussion, and therefore growing your readership. Your creation process needs to generate some mix of timely vs insightful, yet of course the worst of all is to try to do both and end up with neither.
Care for the Text
An Article by Robin RendleWhenever I’m stuck pondering the question: "How do I make this website better?" I know the answer is always this: Care for the text.
Without great writing, a website is harder to read, extremely difficult to navigate, and impossible to remember. Without great writing, it’s hardly a website at all. But it’s tough to remember this day in and day out—especially when it’s not our job to care about the text—yet each and every <p> tag and <button> element is an opportunity for great writing. It’s a moment to inject some humor or add a considerate note that helps people.
…These are the details that make a good website great.
All websites are just digital movie theaters now
An Article by Ryan BroderickIf I had to guess where this is all going, I’d say that what an internet platform is actually has already permanently shifted. Instead of apps trying to dominate specific features — a platform for video, a platform for expiring content, a platform for connecting social networking, a platform for livestreaming, a platform for resumes — we’ve already entered a new era of online networks where they all will essentially offer the same services and instead, focus increasingly on specific demographics.
Safari 15 isn't bad, just misunderstood
An Article by Jeff KirvinWhat I see in Safari 15 is the first steps into a new design language for iOS, one prioritizing adaptive, contextual interfaces. Ever since the move to the new “all screen” iPhone X design, content has been king on iOS, and Apple has been removing more and more user chrome. This is the next step on that journey.
Text for Proofing Fonts
The pernicious issue with pangrams
The far more pernicious issue with pangrams, as a means for evaluating typefaces, is how poorly they portray what text actually looks like. Every language has a natural distribution of letters, from most to least common, English famously beginning with the
E
that accounts for one eighth of what we read, and ending with theZ
that appears just once every 1,111 letters. Letter frequencies differ by language and by era — theJ
is ten times more popular in Dutch than English; biblical English unduly favors theH
thanks to archaisms like thou and sayeth — but no language behaves the way pangrams do, with their forced distribution of exotics. Seven of the most visually awkward letters, theW
,Y
,V
,K
,X
,J
, andZ
, are among the nine rarest in English, but pangrams force them into every sentence, guaranteeing that every paragraph will be riddled with holes. A typeface designer certainly can’t avoid accounting for these unruly characters, but there’s no reason that they should be disproportionately represented when evaluating how a typeface will perform.