Art plus technology equals magic.
Another Week of Design Stuff
In this issue:
Typography: Fontsmith Variable Fonts
More Typography: Hellvetica
News: No More Political Ads on Twitter
More News: Google Buys Fitbit
Resources: Line Awesome
Illustrator: Diana Stoyanova
Thoughts: Availability heuristic
This newsletter was originally sent on 11/04/2019
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Fontsmith Variable Fonts—Typography
A variable font is a single font file that behaves like multiple fonts. With some fonts, you can change width, thickness, and even effects. This technology offers an exciting invitation to rethink the way we create and speak with type in today’s digital world. You can try and download Fontsmith variable typefaces for free on our interactive variable font microsite.
I started learning how to create a variable font and realized you could use it on illustration, and that maybe you could use one of the axis to control emotions of glyphs. Noah Levin, from Figma, quickly pointed the fantastic stuff from Typearture, Arthur Reinders Folmer’s adventure in type. The possibilities are endless! If you want to play around with this stuff, I recommend trying out the Glyphs App.
Hellvetica—Typography
This font is just Helvetica, but with like, much worse kerning. It’s a concept for Halloween by Zack Roif. Kern in hell!
No More Political Ads on Twitter—News
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a tweet that the platform would no longer allow political advertising on its platform. “We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,” Dorsey tweeted, in a thread explaining the reasons why. This move comes a week after Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled on Capitol Hill as he defended FB’s controversial policy about not fact-checking most political ads.
Google Buys Fitbit—More News
Google announced it has purchased the fitness tracker giant Fitbit for a whopping $2.1 billion. I wonder what does that mean for wearables in general. If they pair them with the people who designed the Pixel, the Nest team, or the group behind their Home products, we’re going to get some fine-looking Fitbits (and maybe more affordable and an Apple Watch.) The move makes a lot of sense since I’m sure they want to catch up to Apple, which dominates the wearable market. And, as if they didn’t already have a ton of info on us, now they’ve got Fitbit’s 28 million users data. Not bad for a company that wants to be everywhere…
Line Awesome—Resources
Line Awesome allows you to swap your Font Awesome icons for new icons in one line of code. You can also just download the font and use it on your design tool. The 1380+ outline icons are open-sourced by Icons8 (an app that I secretly use a lot… just don’t tell anyone.)
Diana Stoyanova—Illustrator
Diana is a freelance illustrator and character designer from Sofia, Bulgaria. Her colorful and playful art is featured in Avocode’s landing page, and some of Marvel’s illustrations. Smash.Dat.Follow.Button!
Availability Heuristic—Thoughts
We use the things that come to mind quickly when trying to make a decision. Things that aren’t easily recalled aren’t considered and are at a severe disadvantage. We’re lazy by nature, so we use this mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to our heads when evaluating something in front of us.
As designers, we can use this to remind people of the purpose of the service or product they’re using, so it’s anchored in their memories! We also need to be careful of not working on a feature or request we just heard from a user. Since it’s something so fresh in our minds, that might make us feel it’s more important. Better to use data, or take a step back to look at the big picture before making a decision. Our brains are powerful, but also a bit averse to work.
“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”
― Ed Catmull, former president of Pixar, writer of Creativity, Inc.
👋🏽 I’m Pablo Stanley. I’m a designer who writes comics and shares tutorials. Every week I email this newsletter. I share a list of design-related gems, including inspiring work, cool typefaces, people to follow, articles to read, tools to try, and job opportunities. If you give me your email address, I’ll spam you every Monday with this stuff.
