Weekly Design Links – 3/11/25

Where to begin this week? March is one-third over. I still haven’t written that 2024 books post that I’ve been meaning to get done. I’m going to stop right now and get back to work. Enjoy the links.

Typography

The hardest working font in Manhattan : It’s hard to believe today that there was a time before I knew of Gorton and all its quirks and mysteries.

Web Design/UX/UI/Motion

Making Motion Design Accessible to All : How the global brand team at Otto imagined, designed, and built a web-based rapid prototyping tool, empowering anyone to create branded motion in an instant.

Measuring Design System Adoption: Building a Visual Coverage Analyzer : How much of our product actually uses our design system?

designtokens.fyi : From Design Systems House

Art

Rui Sasaki Encases Spectral Flowers in Intimate Glass Assemblages : Sasaki places collected specimens between two sheets of glass and fires the piece in a kiln. The plant turns to white ash, leaving the impression of petals, leaves, and veins.

Industrial Design

The touchscreen backlash and the power of buttons : We live in a world of buttons, or at least we did, until touch came along. Now, a touchscreen backlash brewing, Clayton takes a look back at the history of buttons with help from button expert Rachel Plotnick, author of Power Button

SkLO Pushes Boundaries of Glass With the Join + Field Tables : The Join and the Field table series push the boundaries of hand blown glass, expanding on the possibilities of the storied material in furniture.

Graphic Design/Branding

Eventbrite Rebrand : With a renewed mission to “Bring people together through live experiences,” and the role of product to “maximize the enjoyment of gathering,” Eventbrite places real-life, meaningful connection at the heart of everything they do.

Desing Thinking

Rethinking the canonical design process diagram, and a call for beauty : Any attempt to illustrate a robust creation process must capture the iterative aspect of making and learning — whether you’re engaging in an artistic endeavor or inventing new technology.

Random

The Games of a Lifetime : Think of this tome as video game time travel. I’m going to take you back to specific times and places and explain what it felt like to be there.

Garbage : A funny thing happens when a Snickers bar goes from whole to eaten — the wrapper transmogrifies from useful to toxic.

404 Magazine : 404 Magazine explores the intersection of UX writing and poetry.