Plus Equals #4, December 2021
In which Rob takes a deep dive into isometric projection and then gets generative with it.
Tags: zine
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Tuesday, January 4th, 2022
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021
archives.design
All of these graphic design books, magazines, and type specimens are available for perusal on the Internet Archive.
Friday, May 29th, 2020
Increment: Frontend
This month’s issue of Increment is all about front-end development. There are feaures from Lea Verou, Chris Coyier, Chris Lilley, Safia Abdalla, and more.
Wednesday, February 26th, 2020
The Markup
A new online publication from Julia Angwin:
Big Tech Is Watching You. We’re Watching Big Tech.
Saturday, February 15th, 2020
The Map of Mathematics | Quanta Magazine
An absolutely gorgeous piece of hypermedia!
Data visualisations and interactive widgets enliven this maze of mathematics. Dig deep—you may just uncover the secret passages that join these concepts together.
Friday, November 22nd, 2019
Print To CSS by Dan Davies
A series of really nice CSS grid demos based on two-page magazine spreads.
Monday, August 6th, 2018
The Man Who Invented The Web - TIME
This seventeen year old profile of Tim Berners-Lee is fascinating to read from today’s perspective.
Wednesday, April 18th, 2018
The Untold Story of Jaime Levy, Punk-Rock Cyber-Publishing Pioneer
This excerpt from Claire L. Evans’s new book Broad Band sounds like Halt and Catch Fire, but for real.
Many people saw the web for the first time in Jaime’s loft, on a Mac II her hacker friend Phiber Optik set up with a 28.8K internet connection. As avant-garde guitarist Elliott Sharp performed live, and another friend, DJ Spooky, played house tracks, Jaime’s guests gathered around the Mac’s small screen. At the top of 1994, there were fewer than 1,000 websites in the world, mostly personal home pages. These converts would call themselves the “early true believers,” counting the year of their arrival online as a mark of status, the way the first punks claimed 1977.
Monday, March 5th, 2018
Offscreen Magazine Interview — by Craig Mod
Craig talks about reading, writing, books, publishing, and Amazon:
Kindle and non-Kindle book sales account for less than two percent of Amazon’s market cap. The Kindle could disappear tomorrow, and Amazon would not be materially affected. Even from a branding perspective, I don’t think AMAZON = BOOKS anymore, certainly not to younger consumers. AMAZON = PRIME. PRIME = A 3D PRINTER on a one-day time-delay that deposits anything you can imagine on your doorstep.
There’s also this about the double-edged sword of working at scale:
Does affecting one hundred lives turn you on? A thousand? A million? A billion? Why? What does it mean to have a positive impact on a life? How intimate does that connection need to be? Understanding your scale — the scale that moves you — is critical to understanding with whom and how you should work, how you should live.
Saturday, December 23rd, 2017
Zines are the future of media
So maybe we need to look at the whole package and create an… oh, I don’t know, what’s the phrase I need… an “indie web”?
Monday, October 2nd, 2017
When the news goes sideways – James Donohue – Medium
The BBC has been experimenting with some alternative layouts for some articles on mobile devices. Read on for the details, but especially for the philosophical musings towards the end—this is gold dust:
Even the subtext of Google’s marketing push around Progressive Web Apps is that mobile websites must aspire to be more like native apps. While I’m as excited about getting access to previously native-only features such as offline support and push notifications as the next web dev, I’m not sure that the mobile web should only try to imitate the kind of user interfaces that we see on native.
Do mobile websites really dream of being native apps, any more than they dreamt of being magazines?
Saturday, September 23rd, 2017
Visions - A Literary Science Fiction Magazine
This forthcoming sci-fi quarterly publication looks intriguing:
Each issue contains a part of a previously untranslated novel as well as essays looking at the world through the lens of different writers.
I’m loving their typeface. It’s called Marvin. It was specially made for the magazine, and available to download and use for personal use for free.
Marvin gets its distinctive voice not only from its Art Nouveau vibe but also from its almost geometrically perfect construction. Its roundness and familiarity with Bauhaus typefaces shows its roots in geometric sans serifs at the same time.
The story of its (re)construction is fascinating. (Thanks for the heads-up, Jason.)
Saturday, November 19th, 2016
Unfathomable
A marvellous piece of writing and design. The family drama of two brothers who revolutionised the world of diving and salvage, told through beautifully typeset hypertext…
…which for some reason is rendered entirely using client-side JavaScript. Unfathomable indeed.
Friday, April 8th, 2016
Scroll Magazine, Edition 1
I wrote the foreword to this inaugural edition of Scroll Magazine which was published for the Respond conference down under. You can get your digital edition here, featuring interviews with Karen, Ethan, and Sara.
Foreword to Scroll Magazine: Respond Edition
First published in the April 2016 issue of Scroll Magazine.
I remember.
I remember when I was trying to make my first website. I was living in Germany and playing in a band. We decided the band should have its own little corner of the World Wide Web. I said I’d give it a go.
I remember finding everything I needed. It was all on the web. Designers, developers, webmasters …whatever you want to call them, they were selflessly sharing everything that they had learned. I lapped it up. I learned the lovely little language of HTML. I learned about using tables for layout and using 1 pixel by 1 pixel blank .gifs for fine-grained control. I even learned some Perl just so that people could fill in a form to contact us. Before long, our band had its own website.
I remember showing the web to the singer in my band. I showed him fan sites dedicated to his favourite musicians, sites filled with discographies and lyrics. I remember how impressed he was, but I also remember him asking “Why? Why are these people sharing all of this?”
I suppose it was a good question but it was one I had never stopped to ask. I had just accepted the open flow of ideas and information as being part and parcel of the World Wide Web. When I decided to make a personal website for myself, I knew that it would be a place for sharing. I use my website to share things that I’ve learned myself, but I also use it to point to wonderful things that other people are sharing. It feels like the hyperlink was invented for just that purpose.
One section of my site is simply called “links”. I add to it every day. The web is a constant source of bounty. There seems to be no end to the people who want to share what they’ve learned. “Here”, they say, “I made something. You can use it if you like.” I try to remember just how remarkable that is.
This spirit of generosity has even spilled over into the world beyond the web. I remember when Web Essentials was the first conference outside the US dedicated to sharing the knowledge and skills of the web’s practitioners. Later it became Web Directions. It served as a template and an inspiration for people all over the world.
It’s hard to imagine now in this age of wall-to-wall conferences, but there was a time when the idea of a web conference was untested. Without the pioneering—and risky—work of the Web Directions crew, who knows where we would be today?
A good event reflects the best qualities of the web itself. Designers, developers, UXers …whatever you want to call them, they conquer their fears to get up in front of their peers and share what they’ve learned. “Here”, they say, “you can use this if you like.” I remember how intimidating that can be.
I remember how honoured I was to be asked to speak at Web Directions in 2006. A decade can feel like a century on the web, but my memories of that event are still fresh in my mind. Not only was it my first trip to the Southern hemisphere, it was the furthest from home I had ever travelled in my life. I remember how warmly I was welcomed. I remember the wonderful spirit of sharing that infused my time in Australia. It reminded me of the web.
And now that same spirit of the web is spilling over into these pages. Designers, developers, baristas …whatever you want to call them, they’ve written down words for you. “Here”, they say, “you can read this if you like.”
I try to remember—but sometimes I forget—to say “thank you.”
I try to remember to say “thank you” to those early pioneers on the web who shared their experience with me: Steve Champeon, Jeffrey Zeldman, Molly Holzschlag, Jeff Veen, Eric Meyer, and of course, John Allsopp. I try to remember to say “thank you” to anyone who has ever put on an event—it’s hard work (just ask John). I try to remember to say “thank you” to the people who are making the web a better place for all of us through their incredible work: Ethan Marcotte, Sara Soueidan, Karen McGrane, and so many more.
And when I’m filling up the “links” section of my website on a daily basis, I try to remember to say “thank you” to everyone who has ever shared anything on the web.
I never did come up with an answer to that question my bandmate asked. “Why? Why are these people sharing all of this?” After all these years, I don’t think the answer matters. What matters is that I don’t forget how remarkable this spirit of the web is.
I remember.
Thursday, November 13th, 2014
Space sector magazine: space:uk
The UK Space Agency has a magazine called “space:uk” and you can download PDFs of back issues.
Thursday, September 25th, 2014
Lillian Karabaic: The Indie Web is the new Zines
I really like this comparison:
As a zinester and zine librarian, I see the Indie Web as a pretty direct correlation to 1980’s and 1990’s zine culture. The method of production may be completely different (photocopiers and direct mail vs web posts and servers) but the goals are almost identical – controlling the way in which your message and identity are displayed, crafted, and stored while avoiding censorship that corporate media might impose. The end goal of both zine and indieweb technologies is ownership of your own identity without a filter.
But there also challenges:
The key issue right now for diverse populations utilizing the Indie Web is accessibility. As long as the tools for creating & controlling your own identity online are still relatively obtuse & technical to implement, we won’t have great diversity within the Indie Web.
Wednesday, August 20th, 2014
Jeremy Keith on the importance of creating products that last | netmag | Creative Bloq
I was interviewed for a feature in issue 257 of net magazine.
In this interview, I pause. And continue.
Saturday, February 1st, 2014
Kyle Bean - Whistleblower
If you picked up the Guardian this weekend, you’ll have seen some brilliant work by Kyle on the cover (and inside) the magazine section.
Saturday, December 21st, 2013
WarGames Magazine Identified By Michael Walden
Now this is what I call research:
Through the use of my knowledge of computer magazines, my sharp eyes, and other technical knowledge, I have overcome the limited amount of information available in the video content of WarGames and with complete certainty identified the exact name and issue number of the magazine read on screen by David L. Lightman in WarGames.