The next 53 days are the most important of our lives. For the pandemic, for civil rights, for ending the fillibuster and fighting the climate crisis, for sane gun control, for providing universal health care to everyone, for tax reform, and for so many other vital issues. However, the only way we can tackle these...

The pandemic has made a lot of things harder and so instead of setting up big meetings full of people to discuss design ideas, what I’m trying this week is something new: design vlogs. I’ve been making videos of myself talking through a problem, giving all the necessary context, and then showing the design I want to...

Baths released a new album called Pop Music / False B-Sides II and I’ve been listening to it non-stop this week. My favorite song at the moment is Sex because the moment I hit play it drags me screaming back to my college dorm when I listened to Baths for the very first time. I find myself today in a similar place...

Clint Smith writes about the overwhelming tragedy that is the money-bail system here in America, where defendants are required to pay money in order to get out of jail before their trial takes place. These are innocent people treated as if they’re guilty simply because they’re poor. Smith begins his piece with the...

It begins with a crash; spiraling, hurtling, spinning, dragged in every direction at once. From inside the escape pod you look up and see through the small window at the top, back at the battleship, just at the very moment where it explodes into a million fragments. You brace yourself for the shockwave but it...

Krissy Howard: In 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake tore through northeastern Japan and triggered a devastating tsunami. Together, the events destroyed the country, causing more than $300 billion in damages and resulting in the loss of more than 15,000 residents. Some survivors are still grieving over the loss of...

Aaron E. Carroll: Too many view protective measures as all or nothing: Either we do everything, or we might as well do none. That’s wrong. Instead, we need to see that all our behavior adds up. Each decision we make to reduce risk helps. Each time we wear a mask, we’re throwing some safety on the pile. Each time we...

I find myself longing for something new. When it comes to writing, I mean, and I’m not sure what that might be. For the past year I’ve been beating the same drum—there’s no progress, no sense of momentum or drive in the work. I look back on everything I’ve written and, well, I’m not impressed with myself. It’s not...

Someone gave me some great feedback in the moments when I’m struggling with a design: “Don’t draw the UI, draw the priority instead.” What they meant by this is that I should go away and write a humble list of priorities for every project: most important info at the top -> least important info at the bottom. So...

My pal Lucy Bellwood just launched a new project: The Right Number is a gentle, noncommercial space where your only job is to be yourself. Upon dialing you’ll be connected to a voicemail box and given a brief prompt. You have three minutes to answer however you’d like. The Right Number is also an experiment. Future...

Matthias Ott has made some notes about the upcoming leading-trim CSS property which is the best intro I’ve read of this thing so far: The spacing between individual elements of a website and, in particular, the vertical spacing, has been a regular matter of debate between web designers and developers. Designers...

Eric Bailey on the radium craze and the harmful effects of applying one technology to everything: Blanket-applying radium to everything created horrific outcomes, some that we’re still being affected by today. Bottles of radium-infused beverages still show up in antique stores with some frequency. If they’re...