#115 - Meditations
Hey everyone,
Welcome to issue #115, your weekly roundup of what’s happening in design, code and typography.
First up a few updates from me. We just launched a jobs board I built using Gatsby, Styled System and Netlify. It‘s still rather rough round the edges, but it’s live and working nonetheless!
On a separate note, I finally picked up a copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, so this week I’ll begin with two of my favourite reflections from this classic piece of writing, which was never intended for publication.
Thought provoking #
“Every hour of the day give vigorous attention… to the performance of the task in hand with precise analysis, with unaffected dignity, with human sympathy, with dispassionate justice.”
“The present moment is equal for all; so what is passing is equal also; the loss therefore turns out to be the merest fragment of time. No one can lose either the past or the future - how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess?” Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan. What the Amazon founder and CEO wants for his empire and himself, and what that means for the rest of us.
Design and Code #
Designer&Designer. A podcast from Joe Alterio & Brian Fling where they discuss life as designers and the challenges of being creative in an increasingly technical world.
UX Buddy. An awesome new side project from Better Web Type’s Mataj Latin, which helps UX designers create a portfolio, master interviews and find the perfect job.
Just Keep Coding!- A letter to junior developers. Roberto Hernandez shares his three most important factors in becoming a successful developer – self-motivation, self-discipline, and focus.
A good README not only informs people what the project does but also who is it for, how they can install and use it and how they can contribute to it. How to write a kickass README from James Scott.
Miriam Suzanne shares her thoughts with Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert about using Sass in 2019.
Typography #
Fontsmith launch an interactive variable font microsite. Try out and download 9 typefaces for free.
Variable Fonts: What web authors need to know. Jason Pamental on the latest evolutions in the CSS specifications, updates on browser implementations, and why we should be using the appropriate CSS attributes.
Accessible Dropcaps. Adrian Roselli with an incorrect, an accessible and an ideal approach to make a drop cap.
Fonts in focus: Decimal & Chill. In the first in a new series of font reviews John Boardley showcases Decimal, a font originally inspired by the lettering on watch faces, which features in Jonathan Hoefler’s episode of Abstract: The Art of Design on Netlfix.
The elements of responsive typography. Jessica Chan walks through the basics of sizing your fonts in CSS and look at a few different approaches you can use.
Something to watch #
Error rates correlate to the number of lines written, so omit needless words, write concise code and decrease the number of bugs. “Write less” is about building better, more robust software.
A few takeaways from The Return of Write, Less Do More, a talk by Rich Harris which takes a look at the future of JS frameworks.