Design

I still have sketchbooks full of perspective and figure-drawing practice, experiments with comic book layouts, shading, endless sketches of my feet and hands.

But somehow I never decided to just study how light works in a water droplet? This post from Apple design alum Michael Darius about the influence of Wes Modes’ “Anatomy of a Water Drop” on the Aqua design of Mac OS X has a fun scan to pore over.

Sometimes the internet delivers you a portal to a world in which someone is deeply overthinking 24 packs of crayons and like, hell yes. Hell yes.

After a period of beta testing, NASA rolled out an updated eighth revision of its website last week. The modernized image layouts and text look fine, even if I’m a little nostalgic for the seemingly-ancient previous version that was last updated in the mid 2010s. (The Internet Archive shows even earlier revisions, like 2007’s v5.0 update.)

This new version of NASA.gov is also launching ahead of a full NASA App revamp and NASA Plus video on-demand streaming launch later this year, promising an “ad-free, no cost, and family-friendly streaming service,” with live coverage plus collections of original video series and a few new series.

The Formula One racer has a futuristic new helmet — designed with the help of Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama — that makes him look a bit like a robot, or like a long-lost member of a certain French electronic musical duo.

Car and Driver noticed that the blue oval emblem found on the new 2024 Ford F-150 has been redesigned. The slightly larger white script and removal of the outer chrome ring are subtle changes, but significant when placed on America’s bestselling vehicle since, well, forever.

iOS 17 is moving the end call button as it brings in the Contact Poster, but where would things end up with a more significant rework?

John Gruber notes that Microsoft announced Aptos, a new default font, without actually showing all the characters at standard sizes. And like a true font nerd, he could not let that stand.

So I took matters into my own hands, and created rudimentary specimens for each of Microsoft’s five new typefaces (and Calibri to boot). A–Z in upper- and lowercase, 0–9, and the most common punctuation marks. Then a paragraph of sample text at 11 points. Dear reader, you really owe me for this one, because I had to use the web app version of Word, by way of Microsoft 365 to produce these PDFs. To describe this software as brutal and frustrating is an understatement. Herewith, the PDF specimens, and my brief comments.

I don’t care, I want them. More on this $1.3m 19-units only Diablo restomod from Eccentrica Cars at Autoblog.

The Washington Post has an interesting, interactive article on how different typefaces can influence how legible something is and how fast you can read it. It turns out there isn’t any one perfect typeface for everyone — lots of factors come in to play to determine which is best for you.

For me, I read sans-serif styles the fastest, but when I want to get into Serious Book Mode, I’m probably choosing a serif typeface.

(And yes, it’s typeface, not font.)

It’s hard to pick a favorite bike build at The Q YouTube channel. The split wheel one? Square wheels? The bendy, locky one?

For the intersection of people who love engineering, bikes, and ASMR. Go watch.

And instead of showing off the rumored production version of the much-loved N Vision 74 concept and its hydrogen fuel cell hybrid powerplant, Hyundai chose to restore that car’s inspiration — the “retro-futuristic classic” Pony Concept Coupe from 1974.

Gas-powered via an 82-horsepower 1.2-liter 4-cylinder engine, I think the Pony concept pulls off the angular styling better than the Cybertruck, and the slide controls in the dash are still better than any in-car touchscreen display. Bring those back too.

It’s fascinating to me how independent Beats still is. Nearly nine years after Apple announced its acquisition of the brand co-founded by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, today Beats released a design video for the Studio Buds Plus. In it, you hear this:

“Our proprietary chipset makes them super simple to use. It offers a host of native features to both Apple and Android users. In fact, we’re the only company to offer this.”

This is an Apple-owned business highlighting that it’s not using the same silicon as AirPods. (I love how Beats illustrates the point with a vinyl record.)

It’s one of the hottest concept cars in years, and now a report from Korea’s Money Today says a production version will hit on May 27th (via The Drive). Please be real!

The Finnish games studio, best-known for classics like Alan Wake and Max Payne, has updated its logo for the first time in more than two decades. As with most modern logo refreshes, Remedy’s new look is much more streamlined — but it also seems to capture the elusive and unsettling quality of its most recent creation, the supernatural thriller Control.

LoveFrom, Ive’s design firm, has a custom typeface called LoveFrom Serif. It was revealed on the agency’s website a couple years ago, but I just found out about it today when looking at the Steve Jobs ebook, which features this note at the end.