Designer Things

Spurs are the tiny projections that jut out from the curves of serif letters, and honestly, I never paid attention to them until a type designer pointed

I used to think passports were just… bureaucratic rectangles. Then I spent three hours in a Reykjavik airport café comparing the documents of seven

I used to think borders were just decorative. Then I started noticing how my eye would land on a framed photograph versus one pinned casually to a wall

I used to think impact investment funds all looked the same—sleek sans-serifs, globe imagery, that inevitable gradient from forest green to ocean blue.

I used to think line spacing was just one of those things designers obsessed over while the rest of us squinted at our screens. Turns out—and I mean this

I used to think film noir was just about venetian blinds casting shadows across a detective’s face, but turns out there’s this whole visual

I used to think video game interfaces were just menus with fancy fonts. Turns out, the visual language of UI design in games is this entire ecosystem of

I used to think cryptidcore was just another internet aesthetic—another -core suffix tacked onto grainy photos of moths and blurry forest footage.

Goblincore hit me sideways during a 2019 scroll through Tumblr, back when I still thought cottagecore was the final word in aesthetic rebellion. Here’

New Formalism isn’t exactly new anymore. I’ve been watching photographers wrestle with this movement for the better part of a decade now, and