mastodon 4.6.9Design History and Class Consciousness
they say vibe coding for designers will be such a superpower and lemme tell you, having done this exclusively for 2 weeks… vibe coding is absolutely dreadful. instead of drawing and thinking, you’re now just constantly wiping the LLM’s rear while catering to stakeholders who think they now can demand 10000 outlandish things at no cost
2016: type is cultural monument, mass influence, social progress activator…
2026: TYPE DRIVES BUSINESS
UI slop is inevitable not because of AI but because of the emergent chaotic qualities of tech company decision-making under capitalism. UI slop are quasi-forms that “kinda” implies what their function “look like it could” be, and we’ve been doing this to people way before LLMs
Dinamo’s ABC Schengen is potentially my typeface of 2026. Such bland shapes, but such ideological cunning
Striking and incredibly sad that given enough time, all the famous “tastemaxxing skeuomorphism craft” design figures all end up at openly fascist companies. Bold of some of us to assume style has no political connotation…
What AI has done to software product design is the same as what in-house type design has done to type foundries
One of the most ideologically controversial moves I experienced at Notion was the website background color changing from cream to full white
No wonder architecture is suddenly about data centers now… turns out AI data centers are being financed by debt, and debt is being packaged 2008-style to be sold as credit default swaps again
Wow, the Czech Winter Olympics team’s uniform references Vojtěch Preissig’s designs!
Design criticism should not be consumer buying guide
I was at work today being asked to draw up some “fake designs” to train the company’s AI so that it can generate “great web design”. I need to draw training materials in the styles of “Modern Corporate”, “Quirky” and “Editorialized Agency”. An overwhelming sense of existential dread engulfed me
My suspicion is that the foundries saw the amateurish work done at web3 startups in-house and thought, we gotta catch up and sell basically more polished versions of them… an inward-looking industry clientele, met with an inward-looking way of artistic practice
Children IKEA is best IKEA. Cheap mass-produced with a bit of pop (aka the high modernist ethos without the exorbitant price)
Revolution is black market that got too big
Wong Kar-Wai’s movies are always about modernity coming onto somebody
The paramilitarization of police
The paranationalization of corporations
High fidelity design receives low-level feedback
Low fidelity design is reprimanded for not having worked hard enough, turned into high fidelity design, then receives low-level feedback