Via Austin Kleon’s newsletter: Overdrive/​Libby, a digital service that lets you take books out from your local library electronically, has been banned in Mississippi for those under 18. (The age of consent is 16, if you’re wondering.)

Texas is next.

If any Canadian politician tries this, I will write so many letters and make so many phone calls they won’t be able to ignore me.

“Think about the children” continues to be one of the finest sentences ever constructed for the purposes of advancing fascism.

Yesterday, PRS introduced two long-rumoured Telecaster-style guitars: the NF53 and the Miles Kennedy model.

The NF53, to my ears, is the better sounding instrument. The Nearfield pickups sound very much like the single coils they’re voiced after. PRS has said the guitar is based on a vintage 1953 instrument in Paul’s collection (read: Telecaster). There’s a clarity in this guitar’s sound that is pure and intoxicating. I’d love to trial one.

From other videos (see the Peach Guitars one below), this thing really starts to roar once it gets a bit of gain. It’s the classic Tele sound.

The Miles Kennedy model is extremely interesting. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think it sounds great for Miles’ needs in Alter Bridge, where he’s competing with Tremonti’s very beefy rhythm tone. The features are cool: a 5‑position pickup selector with split and humbucking sounds, as well as a push/​pull tone knob that PRS says cuts the high frequencies in half in pickup positions 2 – 5 for high-gain rhythm sounds.

To me, the MK model sounds a little closer to a Les Paul. Out of the gate, I’m not sure I’d want one, but it seems like their pitch is that this is a guitar that cuts in a mix in a band situation. So does a normal Telecaster, but clearly they’re pushing the MK towards those of us who would otherwise gravitate to a more traditional dual humbucker body. I’d love to try one.

That NF53, though… oh boy. 

As usual, Peach Guitars has put together a terrific demo of both instruments:

The elephant in the room is the price: in Canada, it’s $3900 for each instrument. That’s more than I paid for my Ultra Luxe Telecaster, which was laughably expensive.

I don’t get to use my camera gear a lot anymore — the days before COVID when using my camera felt like a near-daily part of my work are very missed — but I am grateful to hear that Gear Patrol has acquired DPReview, and the site will live on. 

Much digital ink has been spilled about DPReview in the past months, and I won’t add much more to it here, save that the site has always been invaluable. It’s not just about gear. It’s about learning technique from the good people in the forums, too. Losing DPR would have been like losing Sound on Sound for music production — unthinkable. 

Gear Patrol is new to me. I hope they steward DPReview well.

I’ve always found the work of design to be difficult. 

When I started working as a designer, it was difficult because I didn’t know what I was doing. I was tripping and stumbling in the dark, messing around in Photoshop and InDesign, trying to lay out magazine ads and technical manuals proficiently. I don’t think the work was particularly good; I may have had good taste, but I lacked the required skills to get there. 

Now that I’ve been working as a designer for over nine years — ten in October! — the primary challenges are different. As I get older, the blank page becomes more daunting, probably because I don’t want to repeat myself. I’d rather be like George Carlin and come up with new material for every project. But even once we get passed the blank page (try pen and paper first), the middle — the process — is hard. Design is not a straight line.

Good design resources about the process are scarce. I assume every designer struggles with this (especially post-COVID, when so many work alone from home with less immediate feedback), but none of us share the struggle in the messy middle. We just share the beautiful end results in our portfolio. 

In that respect, design is an odd creative field. Authors love to write books about their writing process. Filmmakers make documentaries exploring their craft. Musicians release demos as bonus tracks. But designers don’t share the process. We hide it like it’s some trade secret. Even Dribbble, ostensibly a platform where we can share ​“what we’re working on,” is mostly used to share work we’ve finished.

The process is ignored.

My favourite video on the internet is Aaron Draplin taking on a logo challenge from Lynda (now LinkedIn Learning). I watch the video every time I get stuck, so I’ve seen it a few times: Draplin makes jokes, draws freely, zips around Adobe Illustrator and, most importantly, talks about all the cool stuff he has lying around his workspace.

The first several times I watched the video, I was amazed by the amount of junk Draplin collects (and worried that a key part of success as a great designer would involve becoming a pack rat). But I eventually realized that Draplin isn’t collecting these knickknacks; he’s noticing them. That act of noticing – of focused observation – is his process.

I think we as an industry could do a better job sharing how we work. A few years ago, I audibly groaned when a friend who was new to the design industry asked if I preferred Sketch or Figma. (I was kind of a jerk, I know. Dear friend, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry.) That question isn’t particularly interesting to me, although I think the evolution of our tools and the impact they have on us is worth watching and considering.

The questions that I think are most important: how do we do the work? How do we create focus? Where do we get our inspiration from? How do we survive the middle?

For years now, we’ve heard new conventional wisdom from all the creative gurus: ​“the tools don’t matter. You have everything you need to make what you want to make.”

It probably won’t be surprising to long-time readers of this site that I feel the opposite is true. The tools reveal the process, or at least imply our process. There is no right or wrong tool, so much as there are right or wrong tools for us.

No tool makes you better at your job, but the good ones make your job better. If you do high-end work with computers, a fast computer will always be a good tool. The right kitchen tools make cooking easier, or at least more fun. A good desk chair literally saves your body. Any tool that motivates you to do more of the thing you love has value.

George R.R. Martin does all his writing (very slowly) with a DOS word processor. Specifically, he uses WordStar 4. That looks something like this. One could make an argument it’s not the best tool for the job. But it’s his process. The tool merely reveals his priorities.

On the other hand, tools that get in the way have no value at all. I recently auditioned Sketch for the first time in years. Since 2019, I’ve used Figma with all my clients. In 2019, these apps were quite similar, but since then, Figma has completely leapfrogged Sketch. Things that used to take me ten minutes to do in Sketch take ten seconds in Figma. This audition was incredibly revealing of how the tools have changed, how my process has changed, and how my work has changed.

But it got me thinking: does the tool change me? Does it change my output? Are all my designs just huge Auto Layout demos?

Constraints breed creativity. What do the tools breed in us?

Copywriters have something they call a swipe file — a place they store bits of marketing and writing material they want to refer to later for inspiration. Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist Journal includes its own swipe file.

Commonplace books have a similar idea: it’s a place to store your favourite stuff other people make. H.P. Lovecraft kept one. Ryan Holiday called his ​“a project for a lifetime.”

You have to make your own wells of inspiration.

For many years, when I saw designs I liked and wanted to save for later reference, I would use Pinterest to save it, or simply take a screenshot and stick a copy of it in my Mac’s hard drive somewhere. (The latter is a much better solution than the former.)

Of course, a screenshot isn’t really enough. A good swipe file tells you where your inspiration comes from. It should include notes. Maybe even a full taxonomy. At that point, your basic file browser ain’t going to cut it. There’s no way to serendipitously discover things in the Finder.

These days, I like using Eagle, a macOS app that does a great job organizing all the visual media it saves. With support for everything from pictures to videos to full webpages, I think the app is a godsend. I was suspicious of it at first, mostly because it seemed to good be true, but it has survived three computers and a silicon transition without losing a single image, so I’m pretty confident in it these days.

It’s unfortunately Mac only, but it’s a darn good Mac app (if you like Mac-assed Mac apps). If you’re a Windows person or love your iPad for this sort of thing, I can’t help you. But I’d love to hear what you use.

I’ve been so busy with work since COVID that I haven’t had time to update my portfolio. I’m trying to make time to fix that now.

The newest case study in my portfolio is about One Story, a website I designed and developed about a church curriculum for kids and youth. It’s chalk full of images and details about the project. Check it out here.

Richard Rutter shared an idea for limiting typographic widows with CSS. I love the simplicity of his proposal and would be thrilled if something like this were implemented as part of the core spec.

Twelve years ago felt like a golden age for indie bloggers. Shawn Blanc had just gone full-time independent and was writing up a storm. Austin Kleon posted the slides that ended up becoming *Steal Like an Artist*. The Great Discontentposted their first interview (with Dan Rubin). The Verge was still called This is My Next. John Siracusa was still writing 50,000 word macOS reviews.

The community was growing behind the web, too. Frank Chimero wrote a lot more then, and eventually a lot of what he wrote became The Shape of Design in 2012. Also in 2012, Kai Brach crowdfunded the first issue of Offscreen Magazine.

Maybe this is nostalgia. In 2011, I started freelancing and was actively seeking my tribe. For me, it was a magical time to be online. TGD was how I heard of all the designers I count now as inspiration. It gave me the confidence to explore my path. And Shawn Blanc quitting his job to blog full-time was an aha moment for me. Austin Kleon shone a light on how to do your best creative work (and continues to do so; he’s the best). Frank and Kai proved that there was still space and interest in sharing something deeper and more philosophical online.

Is there a community of people like this in 2023? Who is today’s Shawn Blanc? Who else is shining a light like Austin Kleon?

The newest additions to my list of must-read bloggers are Matt Birchler and Nick Heer. But I’m still looking for the next generation of creative pros and artists who remind us why we get up every morning and make stuff.

Who’s making food for the creative soul?

Before the Apple Silicon transition, it was always the case the biggest MacBook Pro was the most powerful. That’s no longer the case. These days, 14″ MacBook Pro can be specced out to be just as powerful as its bigger sibling. 

Without considering the implications of this, I purchased the 16″ MacBook Pro last year — the biggest one available — out of sheer habit.

Next time, I’m getting the 14″. I want as much power as I can get, but when I’m portable, I want as much portability as possible.

When in doubt, the answer is simple: reduce, reduce, reduce.

Didn’t Dieter say the best design is as little design as possible?

Probably still true. Probably true of words too.

(Edited for brevity.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing more often — doing something like what Austin Kleon does, or what he used to do: frequent updates about what I’m working on and thinking about, giving away whatever knowledge I have for free, and linking it all together with some sort of meta-textual awareness.

Post-Twitter, it seems like the best sort of thing to do with a personal website: write personal thoughts, sometimes using more than 280 characters, and link them together. Sometimes add links to things outside of this site too. Share it all for free, in the tradition of the open web (none of this paid newsletter stuff, lest suddenly I do this as a job and begin to despise it).

Of course, as soon as I thought about it, I started thinking about the forever-unfinished state of this redesign. Despite starting work on it during the early days of the pandemic, I never found time or motivation to finish it. It felt too much like work, and I was already up to my ears in work. I assumed that it would slow down at some point, but it never did. (An amazing predicament to be in as a freelancer.)

And so the site sits unfinished, and I feel unable to participate in my own work as I once did.

I don’t like Wordpress. It’s open source, but it also lacks direction, and I disagree with almost every direction it’s taken in the past half a decade. I’d prefer something Markdown based, so I can write on my computer, run a quick script from the command line, and be up and running. But I also want the flexibility to create complex structure if I need it. (I keep thinking I may one day want to share my photography work on the site, and that would require its own design and post type, so I do want to some flexibility.)

Some options:

• Grav
• Statamic
• Craft CMS (I think Craft is the best CMS in the world right now, but I wouldn’t be able to use flat files at all if I took this approach)
• Kirby
• Ghost

Leaning towards Craft or Kirby at the moment, but neither of them really match what I’m looking for. Obviously I could use Jekyll or any of its descendants, but something about that approach holds me back. I think it’s great they support plain text so well, but my site may end up being more rich than mere static text would allow.

In the meantime, I’d like to keep writing here. The work of the site is the text itself, not the container surrounding it. As much as the web designer in me hates to admit it, carrier pigeons have delivered more important words on paper with much less ​“design.”

I was saddened to hear about layoffs at Sketch. No company deserves to suffer layoffs, and certainly not a company that has done so much for its industry as Sketch. If you’re hiring, it sounds like the 80 people they’re letting go would be great for your team.

After Adobe bought Figma, I suggested to a couple different teams I freelance with that we could try Sketch again for our workflows. I’ve been impressed with their marketing efforts since the Figma acquisition (sadly it sounds like the marketing team is who they’re letting go of), and I miss using a Mac-native design app. 

Sadly, I think this ship has sailed. None of these developers are in love with Figma, and all of them hate Adobe, but Sketch being Mac-first immediately ruled them out for the teams I’m on. I wish Sketch took the Affinity route: build an amazing Mac app, and then build out native Windows and iPad versions. That could have made Sketch an unbeatable proposition in an increasingly tool-agnostic world.

It’s Figma’s world now. And in Figma’s world, it’s hard to beat ubiquity.

Over two years ago, I wrote about how I was going to redesign my personal blog. I did not intend for it to take two years. I thought it would be a minor thing I worked on in my spare time during COVID lockdowns.

Unfortunately, I have had no spare time. In those past two years, my work has exploded, my wife and I bought our first house, and we had some health concerns that required our attention. (We’re fine, don’t worry.)

So I’ve spent a grand total of 15 hours working on the redesign in two years, which is a paltry amount of focused efforts divided into a hopeless amount of working days. I’ve not been very successful.

What I want to share today are some failed designs. I think sharing the failure is as important as sharing the successes. Rather than share dozens of art boards, I’m cropping many of them to be around the same aspect ratio as most laptop displays.

In over two years, I haven’t gotten past some basic wireframes for this site. I’d be ashamed of my progress if I hadn’t worked on so many other projects in that time (I have yet to update my portfolio with any of the work due to a lack of time).

But what I have is terrible. These designs have too much white space, or too little white space. They lack any sense of coherency or purpose. What is the point?

I overthought everything to such an extent that my website started to look more like a portfolio than it did a simple blog. I already have a portfolio. A few months ago, I asked my wife what her thoughts were, and she told me what I already knew: I’d entirely overthought my goals here. Somehow, I’d stopped making a blog and started making a résumé.

What I want to make remains simple: I want a place where I can share blog posts or title-less, tweet-length updates. I want a place I can share some personal images (not client work). Maybe one day I’ll share my film reviews too.

In short, I want to lessen my dependence on third-party social media and make a small home for myself on the web. I do not care if this home houses my work. That’s what my portfolio is for.

When The Verge rolled out their new redesign, I realized they’d already done what I want to do: they have mixed status updates and lengthy blog posts in one feed. Their new site’s design is not entirely to my taste, but its function is closer to what I wanted to do two years ago.

Sometimes, when you’re working on a project, you drift away from your intended purpose. You become so enamoured with all the possibilities that you forget why you started in the first place. One must say no to all these ideas if they are ever to accomplish their purpose. Assuming the stated purpose is good, and assuming the intent is there, then the designer’s goal is to remove distractions. The designer must say no to a thousand new ideas that distract from the statement of the original.¹

That doesn’t mean some ideas don’t have merit. I have become fascinated with indented margins and side notes. Hanging margins are nice because they allow for left-aligned metadata that can float to the left of the article. Side notes are nice because it’s easier to find footnotes in place while reading an article. (Klim’s blog posts are the first place I can recall seeing this online, although side notes have existed in the marginalia of books for longer than anybody’s living memory). I plan on using side notes on my portfolio blog, where I already incorporate indented margins. Every idea has its place.

In the meantime, I’m throwing all my designs for my personal website out the window, and I plan on making something radically simpler. I know what it needs to look like. Now all I need is some free time.

Well, here we are. The inevitable future of our draconian Adobe overlords is here: Adobe has bought Figma for $20 billion.

For some reason, this caught me off guard. I really like Figma, and I work in it every day. It’s a great tool. I also have a Creative Cloud subscription for Lightroom, Photoshop, some XD usage (for some clients), Illustrator, etc.

The Bloomberg report claims that ​“Figma will continue to exist as a standalone product,” which is a puzzling statement because it implies Adobe doesn’t want to bring Figma into Creative Cloud.

So with that, I have a number of questions about this deal. I asked some of these questions on Twitter, but there are some new additions as well:

1. At some point, is Adobe going to make Figma part of Creative Cloud?
2. If they do, does that mean that Adobe will build a native Figma app for Mac and PC? Because that could actually be a plus side of this announcement. It would be great if Figma supported local saves, along with my local backups, my local typefaces, etc.
3. If Adobe brings Figma into CC, how do they plan on integrating it into the rest of their CC tools?
4. If Adobe brings Figma into CC, will they kill off XD? Or do they simply integrate the two tools? I can’t see both co-existing in CC. (This might be the reason Figma exists as a separate tool.)

If the report is accurate, the solution to all these questions might be simple: Figma stays how it is and is allowed to function as a profit centre for Adobe. Adobe does not integrate it into CC, and maintains XD in parallel.

XD has a lot of neat features, and it would be a shame to lose them. But you’d have to pry Figma from my cold, dead hands at this point, so I hope they don’t cancel it altogether. That would make me very sad.

There are some potentially good things that could come out of this, though:

1. People who use CC may not need to pay for a separate Figma subscription. I wouldn’t complain if this happened!
2. Figma’s collaboration tools are so much nicer to use than Adobe’s. There’s no comparison. If Adobe embraced some of their tooling, that could make Adobe’s crummy collaboration tools a lot better, and I’d appreciate that.
3. I’ll once again mention my desire for a native, offline Figma app with full support for my local font library. If Adobe wants to integrate Adobe Fonts support into Figma, that would also make my life easier.

For those among us who are philosophically aligned against Adobe, I guess Sketch is probably the only big option left — but it’s only an option if you’re a Mac user. Sour grapes to Windows folks who don’t want to support Adobe.

Personally, I’m saddened by this, excited by this, optimistic about this, and extremely pessimistic about this too. I’m a whirlwind of emotions. This whole thing feels like somebody punched you in the gut, and then hinted they might change their ways. (This is always how it feels to be an Adobe customer, though, so not much has changed