Upstatement

Why cute lil apps are the future, by Mike Swartz

Update: Sam has bowed to my pressure: https://lnkd.in/eXciieng Cc Upstatement

Scott Dasse was way ahead of the WSJ on type trends https://lnkd.in/gJpZvRUQ

Mike Swartz weighs in on the ongoing em dash crisis—are they embarrassing and wrong, or are you? *—*

One of our biggest clients found us by asking ChatGPT who they should hire. Mike Swartz explains some #GEO best practices for brands and why you have to start with a good brand or else!

In 2018, the grandfather of UX Don Norman emailed us his review of our MIT.edu redesign. He did call it "disconcerting" at first 😬 but his critique was so thoughtful we wanted to share it here. The observations about user habits are especially relevant today as AI changes how we design for and use the internet.

We were lucky to host legendary type designer and educator Tal Leming for a process share and learned why he indoctrinates students against Futura and how typography carries hidden cultural meanings. Here’s an excerpt: Type is inherently a nostalgic thing. When we pick a typeface, we're doing it for nostalgic reasons, whether we know it or not, because a typeface can't not be nostalgic. Otherwise it will be illegible. We accumulate all these associations over our lives, like what a tech logo looks like, because sci fi movies in the 70s used one style and then tech companies started using it. And now if you want to say tech, you just flatten out the top of a curve. But if we're crossing international boundaries, that doesn't always work. What we think of as classical or warm isn't what someone in Japan might think. Evoking times or experiences are how you make people have feelings when they see a typeface. My typeface United is an example. There's a sans and there's a serif. College sports teams use the serif. Professional sports teams use the sans. It’s the weirdest thing. There's nothing inherently college about the serif. There's nothing inherently pro about the sans. Collegiate lettering kind of came from 1800s baseball jerseys. It was a standard signpainter slab style. But you can take that same lettering and put it on a texture that looks like old paper, and suddenly you're in the Wild West. It’s just different associations. If I had another 50 years in my career, I would try to better understand these associations. Like Helvetica being seen as clean and corporate. There's nothing clean about Helvetica. Helvetica is an ugly typeface. It is a sloppy typeface. It doesn't work well small. I refuse to watch the documentary because I know too many people in it. So maybe they talk about how it's a really bad typeface. Futura is a horrible typeface. One of my students, Doug Thomas, ended up writing a book called Never Use Futura, because when I taught type design at MICA, I would start the class by having the students bring in a sample of a typeface that they loved and a typeface that they hated. And then I would basically tell them the history of that typeface. One student brought in Mistral as the one he hated. Mistral is actually one of the most beautiful typefaces ever made. The digital version is garbage, but the metal version is remarkable. It's one of the most amazing technical achievements in the history of typography. Somebody else brought Futura. And when I said it was terrible, the students were like, “But it's used everywhere.” I made everybody sit down at a computer and open up Illustrator, and using Futura, type in S and zoom in on it. And they all did that. There was a collective gasp across the room. It's so lumpy. And just bad. It's been that way since the beginning. It was always bad. And it doesn't matter.

Are you killing your own brand? What happens when optimization replaces brand identity

Our work for Matter spotted on Fonts in Use 👀https://lnkd.in/eG8pej5z

Our work with our friends at Mozilla was named a finalist by The Anthem Awards. Builders is a community-driven hub for engineers who want to use AI for good. Help them win with a vote here: https://lnkd.in/eszkKuDu