Designer Things

I used to think brand logos were just pretty shapes until I spent three months watching a design team debate whether their swoosh should curve 12 degrees or 13.

I used to think grids were boring. Then I spent three months staring at Piet Mondrian’s “Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow”

Typography’s vertical space—those little stalks reaching above the x-height—controls reading tempo in ways most people never notice.

I used to think reducing art to its essentials meant stripping away personality, making everything cold and geometric. Then I spent an afternoon in a small

I used to think vintage travel posters were just pretty pictures of beaches and mountains. Turns out, the visual language these designers created between

I used to think typography was just about picking pretty fonts. Turns out, there’s this whole technical rabbit hole called modulation—basically

The diagonal leg of a letter—that slanted stroke in an ‘R’ or ‘K’ or ‘A’—does something weird to your eye. I’

I used to think diplomas were just fancy pieces of paper universities handed out at graduation—pretty, sure, but basically interchangeable.

I used to think glitches were failures. Then I spent an afternoon in a dimly lit gallery in Brooklyn—this was maybe 2019, before everything went sideways—staring

I used to think emotional design was just about making things pretty—you know, slapping on rounded corners and calling it a day. Turns out, the philosophy