#142 - Rethinking fear
Hey everyone,
Welcome to issue #142, your weekly roundup of what’s happening in design, code and typography.
Thought provoking #
“We’ll be in a better position if we can face possible threats with a calm mind, alert to our internal signals but not anticipating every possible bad thing that could happen.” Shane Parrish in Rethinking Fear.
“Creativity isn’t just something you practice now and then. It’s a calling, a way of life and a way of looking at the world. And it’s never been more important.”
How to be creative in ways that no AI can. Last week I shared a podcast episode with Jason Miller and here’s an excellent article from him in a similar vain, on committing to creative thinking.
Design and Code #
Modern CSS solutions for old CSS problems is a new series of articles by Stephanie Eckles. Steph also has a great video series called Learn How To Make a Website with Steph aimed at for new developers.
There’s a lot of love for Eleventy right now and for good reason. Beginner’s Guide to Eleventy is the first part in a new series by Tatiana Mac.
How to Build HTML Forms Right: Accessibility. A great read on how assistive devices such as screen readers read form elements and which are the preferred methods of implementation.
A definitive list of Designer Slack Communities from around the world.
Jamstack Functions. A growing directory of serverless functions for JAMstack applications.
Daniel Eden and friends launch Animate CSS v.4.
Typography #
“Every typographic decision — font, size, position, orientation, weight, colour, style — affects the reader’s speed of access, the rate at which the message is engaged by the nervous system.” From Micro-Typography: How To Space And Kern Punctuation Marks And Other Symbols by Thomas Bohm.
This font brilliantly subverts civil rights injustices. Redaction, by Forest Young, anticipates being manipulated—and embraces it. “It was always the hope to include bitmap grades of the font in order to reference the degradation of documents as they are reproduced through the legal process” says Young.
Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers. Another interesting look at the idea of font degradation, this time creating a bitmap font that looks like it’s from the 90s. The process is not as easy as you may think.
Group Font sees 37 very different creatives contribute a letter “Usually fonts are made of letters that follow a certain style,” begins Raissa Pardini of her mega typographic project, released today, but Group Font is different. This new rule-breaking typeface is purposely irregular, as each letter and number has been crafted by a different creative.
Something to watch #
Add a Donation Button to a Website Using Stripe from Jason Lengstorf may well be the simplest way to roll your own “Buy me a Coffee style” donation system.
Content (from me) #
Passing data to templates and tables in Hugo can be tricky. In this article I share some tips on working with table data and setting up front matter templates in Forestry to make data editable.