Design, Holistically

September 2023's Curated Ingest

Selected images from September (after Alex’s visit)

Intro

Hi everyone! Sending you all a short update this month -- I found some links I wanted to share, relating to 'design' more generally. I have found myself excited to learn more about great design recently - more on that below - and playing games like CS2 and Mortal Kombat 1, and watching 90 Day Fiancé!

I am stoked to race the half marathon I have been training for this Sunday! I am also eager to learn more about coffee in a Roasting Masterclass I am enrolled in next week, and potentially host a coffee popup in my apartment with some friends a few weeks after.

Work has been going smoothly. I am working on quite a few projects, relating to live sports on the legacy WarnerMedia 'TNets' (TNT, TruTV, TBS), the legacy Discovery ATVE brands (Food Network, HGTV, TLC, etc.), and of course the new product we are working on behind the scenes :). It is becoming easier navigating my 'work persona' in the office and am glad I feel I can at least be a little bit more like myself with my immediate team.

Important Links, Ranked

1. Charles and Ray Eames Design Q&A (1972) honestly the last answer is so clever... can't believe I haven't seen this before. Becoming a bigger fan of the Charles and Ray Eames the more I learn about them :^)

2. This is probably my favorite space featured on the NTS channel - been revisiting their videos. I think it is incredible how you can see his style so clearly throughout the space, and I admire how fine tuned the space is to his needs.

3. Are.na board titled 'life is weather, life is meals'

4. Thought this profile on Maya Man was interesting - more current aesthetics.

General Links & Notes

• New paper analyzing the results of over 3,000 antitrust lawsuits by the DoJ brought forward between 1971 and 2018. They found that the suits increased economic activity... interesting context to Lina Khan's recent suits.

• Andrew Yeung's '10 things from 27'

• The Nation Op Ed on how we've watered down 'gentrification' to a near meaningless point.

• Reading

  • I finished Ben Bernanke's 21st Century Monetary Policy recently and have mixed feelings about it. I thought the way he walked through the Fed's last 80 years, adding his own commentary and opinions, was enlightening, but thought the conclusion and broader message at the end was a little weak.

  • I also recently finished Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem (thanks for the rec Nick) and liked it a lot - it's being turned into a Netflix movie soon. I am midway through the second book and for a while felt like I was reading a sci-fi, more 2020 modernized Murakami novel, which is a good thing for me!

  • Julia Watson's Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism has also been very fun to read, there are some great illustrations that help visualize what she's talking about.

On AI rn…

I was talking to Eric about how disappointing we have found many AI products to be in our own usage so far. Naturally, given the hype, I tempered my expectations, but still feel like many applications of the technology haven't been placed where they can hit their stride. The 'falling behind' (FOMO-adjacent) culture in Western technology companies has furthered the hype and lazy adoption of AI tech even more.

I think it is honestly worth giving Apple credit here. They have seemingly been slow to add AI features, at least as of now. But, looking back, they have been consistently adding many subtly applied AI features where it actually ads utility to various parts of macOS and iOS for the last few years. Those are my two cents for now at least ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ do any of you have any products you especially enjoy so far? I have personally found tools like Careful Words to be more useful than many AI editors... but maybe my intentions are different than what AI copy editors mean to provide... (less sales driven). While I understand why, I still think it is sad that AI is being explored in such a profit-ingrained way. I feel that a more imaginative and explorative purview could create much more exciting designs.

Conclusion

That's all for now... for the next edition, expect some more in depth writing on *camera bodies*... 😉

Take care everyone!

Andrei