LMNT

I don’t understand the value of AI summaries compared to traditional truncation. While some headlines are indeed long, summarizing them will always remove context the original publisher thought was necessary. (The same is true for personal messages, but that’s not what this is about.)

Headlines are already shortened versions of entire articles. It serves seemingly no purpose at all to summarize them. If Apple wants to—for some reason—further limit the amount of text visible in a stack of notifications to three lines, the better solution is to simply show three truncated headlines, not the Apple Intelligence semicolon-separated summarized headlines.

As it stands, a lot of Apple Intelligence is poorly designed. “Beta” or not, this is irresponsible, especially coming from a company with this much power and influence.

One of the reasons we have mobile screens that are the entire front face of a device (that is, without buttons) was so we wouldn’t be so limited to display all the necessary information alongside the UI for the visible content.

Why is Apple so averse to users just scrolling? What’s actually wrong with a scrolling list of notifications? If a headline needs the full size of a notification, so be it. Scrolling is effectively infinite. The Lock Screen serves almost no other purpose than to display notifications. What space are they actually saving?

I don’t like how the viability of Star Wars is under constant threat from people who Star Wars can never appease. Some fans—primarily men—have gatekept Star Wars for too long.

They like Star Wars, but not Return of the Jedi. They like Star Wars, but not the Special Edition. They like Star Wars, but not the prequels. They like Star Wars, but not the sequels. They like Star Wars, but not the animation.

Many of these fans—again, primarily men—who claim to like Star Wars actually don’t like most of it.

I don’t mind if people don’t like all of it. That’s fine. But some of the reasons for disliking the things they dislike continue to deeply trouble me.

If a Star Wars film or TV show has an increased amount of visible queer people, people of color, or women on screen with actual dialogue, the result will be an obnoxious amount of negative reviews, actresses will be harassed on social media, and some of these bozos will make three-hour-long YouTube videos about how bad Star Wars has become.

Frankly, I think Lucasfilm needs to publicly disown that very specific variety of “fans.” The best example of how this has been done correctly was from Ewan McGregor. He used his his power and influence to denounce this vile segment of the fanbase, by saying, “You’re no Star Wars fan in my mind.”

Star Wars posted his video on Twitter directly, which I think was one of their smartest social media moves.

For Star Wars to grow beyond what it has already been, it needs to stop trying to appeal to fans who are almost never satisfied. Lucasfilm should proudly produce films and shows that specifically appeal to new crowds.

The original film represents all of what Star Wars can be. Science fiction is not its genre, it’s the setting. It’s an adventure, a thriller, a drama, a Western, a romance, a comedy, a tragedy, including elements of horror, mystery, and gangster films.

By dialing up one or more of these genres, new Star Wars media will inherently appeal to different people. The magic of Star Wars is that ability to adapt its classic antifascist story to fit any genre and any blend of genres.

Therefore, new iterations of it may not appeal to certain crowds who liked previous iterations. They have to be fine with that, and Lucasfilm has to be fine with that. That’s our only hope for it to grow beyond.

My tolerance for the vast majority of the web is so small now. It nearly completely eroded over the last decade. My trust, patience, and willingness to put up with the absolute hostility of modern websites is at an all-time low.

Just about every website and every app has seemingly given up on the goal of being actually good. Maybe designers don’t have the power they once held, ceding it to businesspeople who entered the industry only to squeeze it dry. Maybe there’s nothing left to solve and everyone’s moving things around for the worse.

To me, a core attribute of being a designer or an engineer is making things in service of the end user. But we know that most major companies in this arena are openly exploiting users and their vulnerabilities. Designers and engineers who facilitate that are accomplices.

But it’s not just the major companies. Individuals are following in those footsteps.

Personal blogs are now littered with newsletter popups before you’ve read a single article. Even small online shops you’ve never visited before put notification badges on icons while chatbots float in the corner. Login walls are being presented before any justification is made for doing so. We’ve fully lost the plot. Everyone has subscribed to proliferate this awful version of digital life.

I don’t believe this constitutes a necessary evolution, but it is unfortunately a very predictable outcome. What once was done purely for the love of it from the people who cared the most is now done by everyone in the whole world for the hopes of being wealthy or famous, even if for a moment.

I’m grumpy. I know. I’m becoming an old man at the young age of 36. But I know the web and software can be much, much better than this.

I have to say this out loud because I want to hold myself to it: I have no interest in that style of digital life. I do not want to push a mailing list or login before allowing someone to read my blog because I want everyone to be able to read it. I do not want to require subscriptions to access my downloads because I want everyone to be able to download them. I do not want to host my files on platforms I don’t control. I don’t want to operate a store via a third-party website. Because I don’t trust those things at all. I don’t trust any company to at some point not become totally awful.

It’s really sad we all know that to be true. Every company seems doomed to turn against their own principles when it becomes financially beneficial to. Designers and engineers who work at those companies have abandoned their own principles when they contribute. I’ve seen how many people are willing to make that trade, but I am not one of them.

So if I have a resolution for 2025, it’s this: I will learn how to do more things to become more independent.

The web can be better. But it will depend on people who don’t just reject its current state, but do something about it. We can spend lifetimes wishing. Or we can spend it making what we know should exist. I’m going down that path.

A lot of yearly online recaps focus on the consumption and engagement we’ve had in a year, like what music we listened to. But I want to highlight what I’ve done this year, because I’m really, really proud of it.

2024 was the first full calendar year I’ve lived completely in Japan. I didn’t travel outside the country, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t have an itch to travel anywhere. I felt pretty content being exactly where I am with the life I have around me.

I started the year with a blog post—one of my most popular, I suspect—Make a Damn Website. This post resonated with several people and I’m really happy it did. My followup later in the year How to Make a Damn Website prompted people to actually do it, and I got several emails from those who did. I’m not just proud of myself for motivating anyone to do that, I’m also proud of those people for doing it. As a side note, I love receiving email. It’s awesome.

I wrote a lot of other blog posts, too—more this year than ever before. In fact, this is the 94th blog post I’ve made in 2024. Surprisingly, that doesn’t include blog posts that were for icon or wallpaper releases, sketchbook posts, or photo entries. These 94 posts were primarily for writing. This is a direct result of finally making a website for myself that I want to continue building. I’m really happy to have done that.

I made several new sections to my website, really fleshing it out. Photos, Sketchbook, Favorites, Media Art, Shop, Yellow Pages, Projects, Colophon, and Features.

I finally, meaningfully broke away from social media and have a clear idea of how I want to use it going forward, which is as syndication for my website. Now that I realize I have full control over my website, I just want to point people here instead of posting among the noise anywhere else. No one else writes for my blog, and there are no ads around my words. It’s just me and how I choose to express myself. For now, social media is a means to let everyone know there’s something new on my website and answer an occasional question.

I created 13 wallpapers this year. Some of them were updates to older wallpapers, in which case I redrew them almost entirely or gave them a significant upgrade in color or resolution. I’m particularly proud of Meditation, which resembles one of the save points in Star Wars: Jedi Survivor.

I drew over 450 downloadable macOS icons. That’s so much. For a couple years, I didn’t release any icons, and even when I had in previous years, it was usually only a few sets, setting aside when I worked at the Iconfactory and was doing that as part of my day job. But in January this year I just felt compelled to render out these cute train station clocks at Maihama and kept rolling with it.

Some sets were related to living in Japan, like Hamorebi, Tokyo Subway, Tokyo LED, Tokyo Tiles, and Nobori. Some were about Nintendo, like Super Mario Bros., Nintendo Controllers, and Marufuku Nintendo; or video-game-themed in general, like Famicom Tetris and PlayStation Controllers. Of course there were lots of Apple-related things, like iPod mini Drives, Volume 3 of Ive Drives, Forstall Folders (Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3), Finders Keepers (Halloween, Volume 1, and Volume 2), Infinite Loop, and iPod Socks. I can’t believe on Christmas Day I released two different icon sets, just because I was in such a groove. It felt great.

I really love making icons. It’s not just my job. But speaking of work, at Parakeet we made a bunch of really nice new app icons for our clients—with many more yet to be revealed. We drew beautiful logos for new products and companies, and—perhaps most importantly—we have a new portfolio website that is home-grown. Just like my personal site, it was made from scratch, ye olde way. I hand-coded it and I’m so proud that it has almost our entire portfolio on it, which includes over 5000 individual pieces. It took so much work but I am now so thrilled to be able to direct people to it, to specific projects, and even host some of our Just For Fun icons on it. I wrote all about making it in a blog post called Parakeet Portfolio. Luka continues to be the best person I can imagine working with, and I’m excited every day we get to do something new for a great client.

As for Junior, I continue to experiment with making new cards and games, but nothing to show yet. For Crown, I am working on an all-new website that aims to make showcasing my fonts significantly better and make purchasing licenses more direct. I’m also creating a new font with Ender, and I can’t wait to show you more.

All of this was in one year, and looking back at it, it’s a little hard for me to believe. There have been entire years in the past where it felt like I worked so hard but had nothing to show for it, but now I’m glad that usually only happens for just a day or two now. I feel such a strong urge to create and don’t find myself stuck as often anymore.

There’s still a few more days left in the year, so there’s a good chance there will be something else new, but in the meantime, there’s a fun, small thing I want to share with you for reading all the way to the end: my RSS feed is now also a podcast. A few people emailed me this year to say they liked when I narrated my posts and provided that audio, and I realized it was just a few extra lines of code to add to my XML file to make it compatible with podcast players. If I can easily do it, I’ll work on adding it to catalogues in the future. But as of now, you can manually add the same feed to your favorite podcast app and listen to any blog post that I’ve narrated so far.

I put links at the bottom of all my posts about donating or buying something from my shop because that really does help motivate me. Sending cash because you like what I do, because you smiled at an icon I made, or because you’ve used one of my wallpapers for the last 10 years—that money directly funds more of it. And buying a font, some t-shirts, or my playing cards does as much for you as it does for me. You get something pretty and nice, and I get to keep doing what I’m doing. Win / win.

Thank you for reading my blog this year, and—as always—feel free to reply via email.

In my entire life, I’m sure I only needed to read one post about a lost remote control. After that, they all seem the same. The “unpopular opinions” that resonate with thousands of people are actually popular opinions. Does anyone gain anything from social media posts complaining about gasoline prices or traffic? I don’t think so.

Almost two decades ago, when microblogging gained its initial popularity, many of us posted exactly like people do today. We shared what we were eating or doing, the tiniest details of our lives, a shower thought, or some internal monologue.

However, as we enter our third decade of social media, I’m not certain we’ve solved the biggest problem with it: almost none of this is interesting at a global scale. By bringing the entire world’s population together and connecting each other, the result is not just incredibly noisy; it’s also dreadfully stale.

Throughout the day, every day, millions of people feel the urge to blurt out anything and everything that comes to mind. Because it’s so effortless to post, everyone does it without thinking much of it. Very few people are engaging meaningfully. Superficial posts are followed up with drive-by replies. And no one likes that, I’m fairly certain.

I’m not immune to this. I’ve been doing exactly this for as long as I can remember. But last month, I decided to stop posting on social media, because I realized that if I want to say something, I’ll write a blog post about it. If I lack the energy to go through that process, then it’s not really worth sharing.

I wonder if everyone would be just as satisfied if they typed something into a box, hit post, and it went nowhere at all. How much of the reason people instinctively post is just catharsis? Is it just that we need somewhere for those thoughts to go so we can let go of them? And if so, is there a nowhere place we can send them instead?

There’s this thing that Eddy Cue said during a meeting when I worked at Apple that I keep meaning to write about. I can’t reliably quote him, but it was something like this:

The iTunes Music Store doesn’t just compete with CDs, and apps don’t just compete with other apps. Everything competes with everything.

This thought has lingered with me for over ten years.

And it’s not just money. Our most valuable resources are time and attention. Just like how we can’t re-spend $10 on something else, we can’t go back two hours to watch a different movie or split our attention between a book and a podcast. We necessarily have to make choices about what deserves our time and attention.

I am becoming more selective about what I end up giving my resources to, because I want that energy returned. Not everything does that. Doomscrolling on social media drains me, whereas a good movie energizes me.

So I’ve come to realize it isn’t just competition among all media and products—it’s also about competition between all of that and what I value.

Looking at everything through that lens, it’s easier for me to pinpoint what’s draining those resources and eliminate them so I can focus instead on what I love doing: drawing icons, writing my blog, and making software.

“Privacy” is not a new buzzword, but it should be the most scrutinized buzzword in every industry.

Whenever a new service, site, or app launches—especially when the words “private” or “privacy” are used—I check the privacy policy. What I find is often truly awful. Data collection, retention, and sharing. Go check one yourself.

Companies will often claim they’re “not in the business” of selling your information (even in the privacy policy itself). But then they will say they use your personal information for “corporate events” (why?) and that they’ll share it with their service providers. You didn’t make an agreement with their service providers, so who knows what they’ll do with it.

I think it’s really worth asking whether the free-for-now-but-pay-for-it-later model—so frequently used by Silicon Valley startups—is really worth the cost of your personal and private information. And it’s worth a follow-up question of whether the information you provide is solely your own anyway. Your friends’ contact information? That’s not yours to share.

I’m worried that we are doomed to suffer the same consequences, over and over, forever. Each of us that gives up our information in exchange for services that we undoubtedly later are required to pay for—due to a decade-long bait-and-switch—have no real recourse. We have no way to recover the information once we’ve given it up, especially if it makes its way to third parties, whether or not a company “sells” it or not.

Calling any of that “private” is wrong. It’s private only in that it’s not public. But this is not binary, and there are more open doors than closed ones in many privacy policies. I once signed up for every new thing, but in the last 10 years, I find myself rejecting every transaction of my data for access to the service. In almost every situation, I’d much rather not use it at all.

It’s once again time to consider the Trolley Problem.

The classic version is a trolley is barreling down the tracks, about to kill 5 people. You can flip the track switch and kill one person instead. The implications, of course, are that you are actively participating in the death of that one person if you flip the switch, but you’re implicitly responsible for the deaths of the five people if you don’t.

We’re going to have to meaningfully address this dilemma. We’re going to have to come to terms with violence being the answer to oppression. It seems widely understood at this point that we can’t negotiate with anyone who has already decided they’re comfortable with killing us. And I know it’s a terrible paradox, but we have to be comfortable with killing people who are killing people.

If we had a time machine, I’d guess many of us would say we’d go back and kill Hitler before he committed atrocities. But here’s the dilemma—hindsight 20/20: If you knew Hitler would kill millions, when do you act? When he’s a baby? During his rise to power? How many people would you let die first?

If we’re willing to kill Hitler in the past, how do we apply this lesson to the present and the future? When we see warning signs, can we afford to ignore them?

If anyone makes an argument that killing even one person is bad, how can they justify the people they condemned to die by letting that one person live? If we’re not comfortable with killing even one person, then how do we let someone live to kill much more than that?

I don’t like the death penalty. I’m not an advocate for it. (Primarily because I don’t have much faith in our justice system, but also because I don’t want anyone to have to die.)

Then again, I can clearly see the case for guillotines, because I’m not keen on oppression. I don’t like seeing anyone suffer while those with extraordinary means are allowed to sit idly. But I know that not everyone is there yet.

If governments would never consider someone like the UnitedHealthcare CEO a murderer—or even an accomplice or accessory to murder—despite his company being responsible for effectively harming and killing thousands of people, then is it just that we don’t have a proper legal definition for what constitutes murder that reflects our morals?

If our laws say someone can’t go out and kill one person who is responsible for thousands of deaths, then how can we let someone be responsible for thousands of deaths to begin with? Shouldn’t that have stopped well before now? How do we ever end up here at the trolley switch anyway? It feels preventable. And if it’s not, then—as an entire society—we have to become very comfortable with flipping that switch.

I know that no one wants to answer these questions because it makes us uncomfortable, but is it really nobler for us to stand there and let people like that continue to harm others at that kind of scale?

If one person’s decisions lead to thousands of deaths, how can we justify inaction? Or—even better—why do we?

Once again, the topic of designers learning how to code has come up. It doesn’t matter what the reason is this time. It is the same message I’ve heard so many times before. Put simply, I think this discourse has run its course.

I’ve been at this a while. I’ve been designing and making art for 20 years. And in that time, people around me have told me a bunch of things that I “should” or “shouldn’t” do that I determined were not in my interest, but rather in theirs.

In college, I was told by a professor not to accentuate the silhouette of objects in my drawings too much. She said I should instead focus on the form. And while that may be good advice if my intention is to draw forms, what if my intention is to draw shapes?

That year, I quit college to pursue my career as a designer. In the last 10 years, I’ve drawn shapes for Nike, Instagram, Messenger, Twitter, Dailymotion, Patreon, and Notion.

In some of my earliest years as a designer, people told me that illustration was going away, and that I should start learning 3D. I put in a small amount of effort before realizing it was not enjoyable for me. I preferred drawing shapes, and wrangling 3D models was simply not fun.

But I kept getting illustration jobs. I’ve made over a hundred app icons—more if you count alternates and variations—and I don’t think any of them use 3D models. On occasion, I’ll use a rudimentary 3D model of a basic shape as a guide, but it rarely goes much farther than that.

So many times over the years, people have told designers—including myself—that we should learn to code. And over the span of the 20 years I’ve been using my computer to draw things, I have sometimes tinkered with code. I have written HTML and CSS, sure, but I’ve also poked around Xcode and made small modifications to codebases I’ve belonged to.

But I don’t think this capability is particularly valuable in terms of understanding limitations of the medium. How do I know? Incredible engineers who have worked for 40 years run into walls that they couldn’t have predicted. My casual learning how to code is not going to give me much insight to reduce the amount of conversations I have with engineers. As it turns out, sometimes we just have to work things out by working together.

Over time, everyone’s intuition will improve. Designers don’t have to learn how to code to understand how to work with engineers any more than engineers have to learn how to design to work with designers. And though I hear designers should learn to code so often, I almost never hear that engineers should learn to design.

If there’s one thing I’ve personally learned in my career, it’s this: do what you want to do. It’s your life. It’s your work. It’s your life’s work. Do what satisfies your brain, and if it makes you money, great.

If you want to learn how to code, do it. But don’t do it because someone else told you so. Do it because you think it’s worth your time. Do it because you’re curious. Do it because you want to.

I’m not bothered if an engineer asks me how I want to do something. I’d actually prefer it to the alternative, where an engineer thinks their surface-level knowledge of design is sufficient. I live it. I breathe it. They don’t. That’s fine.

Both parties can understand the other’s limitations without learning how to do it themselves. And—in my opinion—you can more easily push the limitations without learning it.

Engineers love to tell me the things I want to do are impossible or difficult to implement. And if I took them at their word, we’d not even try. But because I don’t think it’s impossible, then we get to work it out together. Often, it’s not a technical limitation that stood in our way, but rather a misunderstood assumption. Learning to code doesn’t make this easier. But talking it out often does.

If you choose to gain additional perspective by learning it on your own, go for it. My advice is only to do what you want to do and not let others tell you what you should and shouldn’t do. You know you best.

The term “green bubbles” is used when referring to SMS messages that are sent and received between an iPhone and a non-iPhone. But beyond the literal meaning, it really refers to the stigma of not using the most popular communication app for your social circle.

I saw a remark online that Japan is immune to the green bubble / blue bubble debacle entirely, but I think the more accurate way to look at it is that LINE is the most popular communication method. In Japan, LINE is the “blue bubble,” and everything else is the “green bubble.” You won’t be ostracized for not using LINE, but it is expected—just like WhatsApp in Europe.

There’s a huge disconnect when you meet anyone that doesn’t have or use the same communication app you do. When your only option to reach someone is through an app you rarely use, you’ll rarely reach out.

SMS exists on all cell phones. It’s not just a built-in app, it’s a built-in service through your telecom provider. It’s default functionality on a network level. Therefore, it is a great fallback from RCS or iMessage. LINE, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, and Signal do not function this way. If you don’t use one of those services, there’s no fallback. iMessage isn’t lock-in, but the others absolutely are.

Not everyone has cell service, so SMS is not universal. But for most users of the aforementioned apps, it’s still a widely available fallback. It’s just not a fallback offered—or made available to—these other apps.

Hyper-regionally, in individual social circles, there are fewer run-ins with incompatibility. But on a larger scale, matching up your social circles with the communication app of the region can feel like a burden.

To be sure, LINE is not a great app. It’s fine—like the rest of them. With complete market saturation, LINE doesn’t need to improve. LINE is an unchallenged monopoly, and it can exert monopolistic power by stagnating or even worsening its services. Though there are many alternative forms of communication, when an app like LINE or WhatsApp reaches de facto saturation in the market, I think it needs to be regulated.

I believe communication apps should be interoperable. (And so too should social networking services.) I understand there are difficulties with doing that, but they could all provide a base level of interoperability not unlike iMessage having an SMS fallback. If each communication app was interoperable but had extra features when all users in a chat share the same platform, I think that is much more reasonable competitive field to be playing in.

These companies should compete on the merits of their respective approaches to the problem. Users shouldn’t feel forced to pick the same app everyone else has or risk being left out of the conversation. That removes their individual choice. That is a result of monopolistic power. The relative popularity of any communication app should not be the reason any person has to be locked into it too.

Chat apps should win users with quality, not dominance. It should be a choice, not a consequence of coercion.