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October 8, 2019 — No Comments

Introducing: I Love Your Work

“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.

Juno Calypso - The Honeymoon

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.

Doug Kenney and Chris Miller

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.

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October 2, 2019 — No Comments

Parpaillon

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.

Read full blog­post…

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September 23, 2019 — No Comments

Atkinson Dithering Machine

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.

Read full blog­post…

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August 12, 2019 — No Comments

Elsewhere

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

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July 30, 2019 — No Comments

Pyrenees

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.

Read full blog­post…

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April 30, 2019 — No Comments

Here we go again.

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.

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