I came across the reMarkable a few months ago, after seeing a video of it used –magnificently– by Pinot Ichwandardi on either his Twitter or Instagram stream (you really should follow both).
For those of you not nerdy enough or who actually had a social life for the last couple of years, the reMarkable is an 11-ish inch tablet running on Linux with an epaper display and stylus. Its only function is note taking and sketching. It doesn’t do (intentionally) much more.
“Introducing” might be a wee bit pretentious. Just a bit.
I Love Your Work is going to be a monthly collection of links to (mostly) design and photography work that I admire.
The kind of beautiful stuff that makes you feel both completely worthless and inspires you to do better next time.
In the first batch of links for this October:
The brilliant self portraiture of Juno Calypso, and some more about her work on the British Journal of Photography.
Zhenya Rynzhuk’s stunning portfolio site. Found via Val Head’s UI Animation newsletter.
Derry Birkett. UX Design and a very interesting collection of blog posts, both on the site directly and, later, on Medium.
Lucas Zanotto. Check his Instagram filters too!
Ian Howorth’s photography places south east England in a delightfully dark cinematic dimension.
While on the theme of creativity (risky word), in today’s era of mostly corporate-anaesthetized content, art, and censored nipples, it is worth to sit back and relive the amazingly chaotic creative process of the legendary National Lampoon magazine via Dough Kenney’s life story and the stories about the making of Animal House.
In particular order:
Fat, Drunk, and Stupid by Matty Simmons;
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon;
A Futile and Stupid Gesture, on Netflix.
On the way back from Corsica this summer, er route to meet a couple of friends to ride Furkapass, Grimselpass, Neufenpass, Sustenpass (aka the Swiss Rollercoaster), I took a small detour along a few gravel roads crossing the Alps.
The initial plan was to cross through Col du Parpaillon, then ride along the Assietta and proceed towards Susa. Sadly the Assietta is closed for work until next summer and I was able to explore just a very small section of it (just after the crest). The Parpaillon was open, and the sunny weather made for an amazing ride.
In the last couple of years I started being more and more obsessed by e‑paper displays. I partly blame my Kindle – by far my favourite and the best electronic device I own to date – and my love for 1‑bit graphics.
My first computer was a Macintosh SE and most of my early years in front of a monitor were spent experimenting with Hypercard: you tend to develop a certain (life-long) taste for black and white graphics.
Before summer I bought an Inky pHAT display and put it to use with a spare Raspberry Pi Zero W I had in a drawer in the office, and my old Playstation Eye camera.
The Playstation Eye works “out of the box” with the Pi: taking pictures with it is pretty straightforward. The next logical step for me was to display them as beautiful dithered black and white images on the small e‑paper display.
Assorted links from around the web for the first week of August.
Great, tidy, product design portfolio site:
Thiago Dalcin
Product related & general geekery:
The 8 point grid
Ambush (Digital Product Studio)
The Origin of HyperCard
Rhythm in design is everything,
I’m aware I’m clearly failing at it at the moment:
Vertical Rhythm in Sketch
Design ❤️
Venmo’s Identity Refresh
IBM’s Plex Typeface
New Identity for Correos (Spanish mail service)
Link – Idee per la TV (simply beautiful)
Scope Design Conference App
I’ve been an avid motorbike rider since I was old enough to ride legally (a few times before that too, but I digress). Sadly I’ve been riding less and less in the last few years. I’ve also never really enjoyed road-riding in the UK that much – well, mostly southern England to be honest.
Nowadays I tend to either spend quality time on track or traveling abroad when possible.
Riding back and forth within Italy and the UK, crossing the Alps in Switzerland, is a relatively common occurrence.
This Easter, with a friend we decided to board the ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao, cross the Pyrenees (weather permitting) and then point back to London.
I grew up online. I have quite an extensive digital footprint, I’ve also kept a blog (www.jnkmail.com) in glorious broken English from the early 2000s till I got sucked up, like many, in the first wave of social media – prey of short quips on Facebook and the like.
I grew up online. And then grew older (a grumpy old man) seeing this magnificent tool we had reduced to a cesspit.
I design digital products for a living today, and my activities online over the years sort of helped/shaped what my career is today and, to an extent, where I ended up living (the ever sunny London town).
Writing here is probably part detoxing from the aforementioned cesspit I cannot stand anymore (or recoiling back in nostalgia of the good ‘ol simpler days of the web – ‘member?), part having a space where to share, and keep archived, pet projects, discoveries, thoughts, rants – lots of rants, trust me – about design, digital, and (possibly) motorbikes… in better English this time.
Good night & good luck.