In my newsletter every week I include a few interesting links with some commentary along with the article. If you want to be updated when I send those out, consider subscribing using the form in the page footer.

The Internet is Unusable

This young fella just having a good old rant about how rubbish the internet is now. Which is telling, given he may not be old enough to remember real good old days.

Marvel at Hundreds of Mathematician Max Brückner’s Remarkably Precise Models of Polyhedra

A truly astonishing array of handmade polyhedral shapes. Have a think about the time and care needed to make all these accurately by hand next time you're pumping out another design iteration on the 3D printer.

Metalworking: Bulk Forming

Thought you knew all there was to know about forgings? Well now you do. This is one of the volumes of the ASM handbook, available through the Internet Archive. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any other volumes, but if anyone does, I'd love a link to them.

The Complete History & Strategy of Hermès

A long (4hr) podcast on Hermès. The history is interesting, but the strategy I think is very important for designers to understand. Especially designers that want to build and sell their own designs.

History of the Paper Clip

I was surprised at the number and variety of paper clip designs that came before what we know and love today. Truly, everyone had a go at the design and many were successful.

Help, My Friend Got Me a Dumb AI-Generated Present

The AI vs art debate will continue for as long as both exist. This article raises a point that I touched on last year; there's a certain hollowness to AI-produced art that makes us feel cheated.

The Beauty of Everyday Things

An interesting insight into the perception and mindfulness of everyday things in Japanese culture. It goes more deeply into the relationship between handmade goods, mass-produced, and handmade mass-produced goods.

The Godzilla Meditation Series

Sometimes you just need to focus on crushing the work in front of you.

101 Design Rules

101 design rules by Brian Collins of Collins design agency. Worth the read, and leans very philosophical which I love. There's a lot of gold in there, but this one hits for me:

88: Do not worry about your competition. You’re not in competition with them anymore. You’re only in competition with the future itself. So don’t look over your shoulder. Look two, three, five years down the road and invent backward from there.

Free Mixed Media Art Supplies Compatibility Chart

An awesome resource for anyone that loves to get experimental with different art mediums. Designer Nela Dunato has created a spreadsheet detailing compatibility between various art mediums when layered.

How to Draw Webcomics

A YouTube playlist produced by Korean webcomic platform Bomtoon teaching you how to create webcomics. It covers manuscripts, world building, inking, colouring, and publishing. In Korean, but lots of subtitle options available.

Fontstruct, font builder

Fontstruct is a free font-building tool that produces TrueType fonts. Check out the gallery, it looks amazingly versatile.