The term “vibe coding” has been popping up in my feed for almost a year now in social media, podcasts I listen to, and even chats with friends. Most of what I saw looked pretty bad, so I assumed you couldn’t do anything decent with it. Sure, you can make something run from scratch, but it all looked like a train wreck.

Only after I saw two or three good-looking, working apps made by people I know did I decide to try it. This is not a tutorial. It is a personal story about using AI to write code for tools I want as a designer, plus a few things I wish someone had shown me earlier. After I posted my results, a bunch of designers I know started testing things too. Maybe this nudges a few more.

I have also uploaded this video on YouTube if that is more convenient.

Another occasional sweep of things I find interesting, surprising, and worth bookmarking and coming back to. As usual, it’s all design related: from books, websites, and print ephemera to artifacts and the kinds of interfaces you find only by getting lost. From a Babylonian customer complaint to a camera that pretends to be film, from a Portuguese educator’s archive to Victorian classifieds that bend type into pictures. Enjoy. 🍬

An early “May I talk to a manager”.

The oldest known customer complaint is a clay tablet from c. 1750 BCE (Old Babylonian). A buyer named Nanni wrote to the copper merchant Ea-nāṣir being unhappy with the copper he received and worse service. It’s in cuneiform script but reads like an email. The tablet currently housed at the British Museum.

Paulo de Cantos: A Cantos Compendium

Paulo de Cantos (1892–1979) was a Portuguese publisher, educator, and graphic designer known for his innovative approach to book design and printing. His work, often self-published, was highly experimental and forward-thinking in terms of blending typography and avant-garde layouts. The book, that was released in 2023, contains 4 essays that expand on the life and work of Cantos in the context of Portuguese and European design and pedagogy, followed by visual essays of his work.

What’s super nice is that in addition to the printed volume there’s an online archive at cantosverso.org that serves as a digital repository of Cantos’ publications and work.

Paulo de Cantos: A Cantos Compendium
Published by Barbara Says… , 2023
ISBN: 9789893332566

Malaproject.com

I’ve been saying for years that many businesses, restaurants included, no longer need a website. As long as they’re listed on local social platforms, food reservation and delivery apps, and Google Maps, there’s little reason to invest in one. When was the last time any of us saw or designed a dedicated restaurant website?

Until you stumble upon a gem like malaproject.com by Jingqi Fan, and suddenly, I am proven wrong. The entire vibe of this Brooklyn-based Chinese restaurant’s website is just too good! The abstract homepage video syncs perfectly with sound (!), the copywriting mimics the aesthetics of subtitles, and the art direction of the photography is absolutely stunning. The web can still be beautiful and this website is a proof.

Creativity under constraints, 1874.

A scanned page from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Monday, April 6, 1874. What fascinates me is how advertisers tried to stand out inside a sea of small-type text with almost no tools. In the upper-right you get “Trimmed Bonnets & Hats” (among many others), composed in the same type as the rest of the paper, but arranged into shapes and letter puzzles that read louder than any headline. No color, no new fonts, barely any scale, just layout doing the work. A nice lesson in being inventive when the constraints are absolute.

Size matters

In Japan, food packaging images cannot mislead about what’s inside. The Consumer Affairs Agency enforces the act against Misleading Representations, which forbids photos or layouts that create an overall impression of better quality, quantity, or appearance than the product actually delivers. The Food Labeling Act also requires “proper” labeling that helps consumers make informed choices.

That is why snack makers tend to keep images close to reality, sometimes adding “actual size” or “image is for illustration” notes. There is no rule that every candy photo must match the item exactly, but images that materially overstate size, shape, or amount can be treated as misleading under the advertising law.

Here’s a quick video I once came across on Reddit that illustrates this design treatment.

Recapture the joy

Pretty interesting attempt to recapture the joy and meaning of analogue photography with a digital camera. Yashica, a Japanese camera brand, introduced the Y35, a manual-style digital camera. Side note: The relationship to the original Yashica company is a bit muddy for this product.

The camera looks and behaves like a fully manual film body. Instead of regular film, you load a hardware cartridge that looks like a 35mm roll, called “digiFilm.” Each cartridge sets its own color treatment and an ISO, similar to choosing 200 or 400 speed film, and some cartridges also change the aspect ratio.

Staying true to the film metaphor, you have to wind the lever after every shot. There is no rear screen to preview photos, which means no deleting, or as Yashica puts it, “no hiding from mistakes.”

Here is the strange part. If you follow the metaphor closely, you would expect files to save onto the digiFilm itself, maybe with a fixed number of exposures (for example 36 photos per cartridge). Instead, images are written to a separate SD card that has nothing to do with the cartridge you inserted.

In practice you end up carrying the camera plus a handful of digiFilm cartridges to swap styles and ISO. The experience might feel clunky and a little cumbersome, but I appreciate the attempt to make digital more tactile.

After watching several YouTube reviews, I got the impression that the image quality is terrible and the camera itself feels very poorly built. But again, I find it fascinating purely from an interaction standpoint.

This gentleman subscribed to this publication from every single screen he has. Just FYI.

I am a designer first and foremost. Not a historian and not a researcher. But as a designer I have always wondered about the origins of design. Over years of reading I realized that the “start” of design depends on how you define both the word and the activity of designing. Another recurring issue: design history is often folded into the histories of architecture, fine arts, and craftsmanship. Depending on who you read, you will see different dates set as the beginning of “design.” In this article I summarize the most frequently cited origin stories.

Renaissance Italy: disegno as the birth of design

One strong claim says design begins in Renaissance Italy, when planning and drawing split from making. Before that, in artisanal practice, the same person usually designed and executed the work.

Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) is the pivot here. In his treatise De re aedificatoria he defines lineaments as “the precise and correct outline, conceived in the mind,” and says you can “project whole forms in the mind without any recourse to the material.” He also draws a line between the person who designs and the person who builds, calling the on-site craftsperson “no more than an instrument to the architect.”

Modern historians explain the shift in plain terms. Mario Carpo puts it like this: “the Albertian architect does not make buildings; he just makes drawings of buildings.” Drawings become instructions. Others build from those instructions.

A little later Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) gives this idea a name, disegno, and ties it to the three arts. In the preface to the 1568 edition of Lives of the Artists he writes that disegno is drawing understood as intellectual conception, “originates from the intellect,” and is the “father of our three arts, architecture, sculpture, and painting.” With Vasari, a working term used by artists becomes a public principle: design is the mental act that precedes and organizes making. In 1563, Florence founded the Accademia del Disegno under Cosimo I, at Vasari’s urging, which formalized this separation of conceiving and executing in training.

Quick clarity note. In that period disegno could mean a drawing and also a compositional scheme and several other things. It sat inside painting, sculpture, and architecture, so it does not map perfectly to how we use “design” today.

Some historians say the break is not that clean. Marta Ajmar argues that scholarship has often “overemphasized the separation between design and execution,” noting how workshop practice kept thinking close to materials and tools. Others point out that planning and execution were already split in parts of the Middle Ages. Master masons planned and directed teams, and the thirteenth-century Villard de Honnecourt portfolio shows plans, how-to notes, and geometric methods well before Alberti. Even within the sixteenth century the priority of disegno was not universal.

1750–1770: Industrial capitalism and the Wedgwood system

Some historians place the start of design in the second half of the eighteenth century, when making things for markets became a planned function inside industry. Adrian Forty in Objects of Desire (1986) puts the claim clearly: “design came into being at a particular stage in the history of capitalism and played a vital part in the creation of industrial wealth.” In this frame design is part of how factories decide what to make, how to make it, and how to sell it.

Josiah Wedgwood is the cleanest case study because his papers show the decisions in his own words. He set up his ceramics business in 1759. Ten years later he opened a purpose-built factory called Etruria in 1769. He set clear briefs and treated product development as a program. In his Experiment Book he wrote that he aimed “to try for some more solid improvements, as well as the body, as in the glazes, the colors & the forms of the articles of our manufacture.” He then focused on neoclassicism, hiring artists like John Flaxman to model reliefs for vases and plaques, the DNA of jasperware (fine-grained, unglazed stoneware developed by Josiah Wedgwood in the 1770s).

Wedgwood built repeatability. The factory ran on pattern books and shape numbers so teams could repeat forms and decorations across runs. He was blunt about hand painting, writing in 1769 that he would “rather … have to do with a shop of Potters than Painters,” because hand decoration was so inconsistent. To lock things down he adopted transfer printing, first through the Liverpool printers John Sadler and Guy Green and later brought printing in-house. When results varied he told the Liverpool printers he did not trust their “taste,” adding they had promised to “offtrace & coppy any prints … without attempting to mend or alter them.” The point was exact reproduction, not interpretation.

He also designed demand. After supplying Queen Charlotte in 1765 he named the line “Queen’s Ware,” telling his partner that “a name has a wonderful effect.” He was frank about the mechanics of taste: “Fashion is infinitely superior to merit.” Those are marketing rules written by a maker who knew how to place products and move volume.

Some scholars argue this is not the birth of design but a powerful phase in a longer craft-industry continuum. Holt and Popp read Wedgwood’s letters and experiments to show that craft knowledge was still central rather than being displaced by a distinct “design” function. Several elements pre-existed or were shared. Transfer printing came from Liverpool printers before Wedgwood used it. Furniture makers were already circulating designs via pattern books such as Chippendale’s Director (1754); and even Wedgwood innovations like pearlware look incremental when you scan the field.

1851, London: design reform after the Great Exhibition

Some historians say design begins when it becomes a modern reform effort. The date is 1851, London’s Great Exhibition. Writing decades later in Pioneers of Modern Design (1936), Nikolaus Pevsner argued that many exhibits showed “ignorance of that basic need in creating patterns, the integrity of the surface” and a “vulgarity in detail.” In his reading, the shock of 1851 makes the case for big reforms: standards, education and better models. You can check out the catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851 online.

The reforms are concrete. Henry Cole, a lead organizer of the Exhibition, helped found a Museum of Manufactures in 1852, with objects purchased from the show. That museum became the South Kensington Museum and later the Victoria and Albert Museum, with a clear mission: collect strong examples, teach with them, and raise the quality of British manufacture.

On the teaching side, reformers published manuals. Owen Jones issued The Grammar of Ornament in 1856, setting out principles for color, geometry, abstraction, and pattern. He also shaped teaching for the Government School of Design, the program that eventually became today’s Royal College of Art.

1851 is a trigger. It launches museums, manuals, and a system for teaching taste and method at scale. If you define the start of design as the moment a field names its problems in public and builds institutions to fix them, this might be the origin. Yes, British design education predates the Exhibition. The Government School of Design was founded in 1837, but it was drastically reshaped by the Exhibition era.

Alexandra Midal shifts both date and definition. She places the origin of design in 1841 with Catharine Beecher’s domestic manuals, where the kitchen and home are organized as systems to reduce women’s labor and advance a social program. Beecher writes that house planning should begin with the “economy of labor,” that every tool in the kitchen should have “a place appointed,” and that the day should be arranged to “promote systematic and habitual industry.” In this frame, “design” is not a museum-school response to bad goods in 1851. It is the intentional organization of everyday life a decade earlier, articulated in plans, workflows, and plain-language instructions.

Early 1900s. Design as a profession

Some historians mark the beginning of design when it becomes a named job inside industry. John Heskett is direct about the timing: “the profession of industrial designer emerged in the twentieth century,” as part of the growing division of labor in large-scale industry.

A clear European anchor is Peter Behrens at AEG, a major German electrical manufacturer founded in Berlin in 1883. In 1907 AEG hired Behrens as an artistic adviser. He coordinated company design in one place: products, advertising, graphics, the logotype, and even factory buildings.

At the same moment Germany created a wider platform. The Deutscher Werkbund, founded in 1907, was a national association of artists, artisans, architects, and industrialists. Its goal was to raise the standard of design for mass-produced goods and modern architecture by linking creative practice to industry.

In the United States the job solidified a little later. Jeffrey Meikle frames 1925–1939 as the window when the American industrial design profession takes shape, with named designers mediating between engineering, business, and users.

Taken together, this is the moment design becomes a career: titled roles, clear job descriptions, coordinated company programs, and networks that hire and train.

Design as a human activity

Some writers widen the lens and say there is no “start” at all. In this view design is what humans do when they plan and change things. Herbert Simon puts it in one line: “everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” Victor Papanek in Design for the Real World (1971) makes a similar claim: “All men are designers. All that we do, almost all the time, is design, for design is basic to all human activity.”

Victor Margolin’s World History of Design starts in prehistory and looks worldwide, not from any single exhibition or factory. The book’s scope is explicit: a “definitive” account of design “from prehistory to the end of the Second World War,” across regions and cultures.

Personally, this is my least favorite view. If everything we do, all the time, is design, then why even have a word for it? I write all day (emails, texts, comments). That does not make me a writer.

All in all, these are the most common “design birthdays” for design I’ve encountered in the literature over the years. To me, they feel like milestones rather than specific start dates for the profession. One thing had to happen before the next, and it took time for the concept of design to shift, take shape, and evolve into what it is today. In any case, I hope someone finds it helpful.

Sources:

• Leon Battista Alberti. On the Art of Building, Prologue and Book 1 (1443–52).

• Mario Carpo. Craftsman to Draftsman. The Albertian Paradigm and the Modern Invention of Construction Drawings (2013).

• Cara Rachele. Seven Facets of Architectural Disegno.

• Marta Ajmar. Mechanical Disegno (2014). From Special Issue “When Art History Meets Design History”.

• Adrien Forty. Objects of Desire (1986).

• V&A. Wedgwood: An introduction.

• V&A. Wedgwood’s ceramic manufacturing archive.

• Nikolaus Pevsner. Pioneers of Modern Design (1936).

• Owen Jones. The grammar of Ornament (1856).

• Alexandra Midal. Design by Accident (2019).

• John Heskett. Industrial Design (1987).

• Elizabeth M. Merrill. Peter Behrens, Turbine Factory.

• Readymag special issue Peter Behrens. The first Designer

• Jeffrey L. Meikle. Twentieth century limited : industrial design in America, 1925-1939 (1979)

• Herbert A. Simon. The Science of Design: Creating the Artificial (1988)

• Victor Papanek. Design for the Real World (1971).

What do medieval chat bubbles, a 24-hour movie, and a battery capacity tester have in common? Exactly nothing. Except that they all found a way into this issue of Re:View.

Medieval Speech Bubbles

This was totally new information to me. The concept of speech bubbles, as the way to visualize conversation (like in comics or manga) dates back to the 1300s.

This medieval illustration depicts a group of travelers conversing in English. Though not quite the speech bubbles we know today, the visual representation of dialogue was already in use.

Before printed books, scribes used banderoles—scroll-like ribbons that allowed figures on the page to “speak.” These decorative banners often flowed from a character’s mouth, creating a strikingly modern effect, much like today’s speech bubbles.

In some manuscripts, direct speech was written floating in mid-air, completely unsupported by a banderole or bubble. Scribes carefully positioned the text so it appeared to flow from the speaker’s mouth, an early take on visualized dialogue.

The Clock (2010)

I'm obsessed with the topic of Time, and what I saw earlier this year at MoMA completely blew my mind. 🤯

There was an installation on view called The Clock (2010) by Christian Marclay. The installation is a 24-hour film, an insane montage composed of thousands of movies and television clips only referencing clocks and other references to time. James Bond checks his watch at 12:20 a.m.; Meryl Streep turns off an alarm clock at 6:30 a.m.; a pocket watch ticks at 11:53 a.m. as the Titanic departs.

The artist meticulously sifted through vast amounts of footage to find precise time references across the full 24-hour cycle. Yet the timepieces aren’t shown continuously for a full minute; between them, other scenes and film clips are intercut, weaving a loose narrative.

What surprised me most was that the film syncs with local time. When I entered the dark screening room at 5:05 PM, the film was showing all the scenes referencing exactly 5:05 PM. This made me wonder how I could watch segments from nighttime hours, since the museum is clearly closed. Well, we can only rely on this article by someone who spent 24 hours watching the entire film.

There are a few videos on YouTube from museums and institutions that have shown The Clock over the years, along with some sneaky phone recordings from visitors. While it’s not the same as seeing it in person, they give a good sense of what the piece is like.

IDEA Issue 344: Karel Martens

IDEA Issue 344: Karel Martens Seibundo Shinkosha Publishing, Jan. 2011

I’ve been a longtime admirer of Karel Martens, so much so that I even had the chance to visit his studio in Amsterdam back in 2017. Over the years, I’ve collected almost every book he’s ever published.

That includes this special issue of IDEA Magazine (Issue 344), dedicated to Martens’ work. I remember picking it up back in 2011 at a Japanese bookstore in Dumbo, one that, unfortunately, has long since disappeared.

As I was taking photos of the magazine, I also dug up some photos from my visit to Karel Martens’ studio in Amsterdam back in 2017.

Arecaceae

An experimental site in every sense, created by Xingshan He, is dedicated to the Arecaceae family, commonly known as palm trees 🌴. While I’m not particularly interested in palm trees, the interactive experience, where different sections of the article appear as signs on a pole, is quite fun. See for yourself.

Die With Me

Another update from the corners of the internet. I just learned about an app that only works when your phone battery is below 🪫 5%. It’s called Die with Me and built by Dries Depoorter & David Surprenant. It opens up a chatroom with random strangers whose phones are about to die too, because nothing brings people together like the shared misery of impending shutdown. Think of it as a digital support group for the battery-drained, where you can exchange your final thoughts before your screen goes dark.

A Hidden World of Stationary Design

While browsing Are.na I came across an image of a strange device. I assumed it was a concept piece in the best traditions of current design trends, but it turned out to be a real tool for checking battery capacity. An example of form driven directly by function (see Form (Un)follows Function). I couldn’t find the original designer, but these devices are easy to find on Amazon.

From there I went down the rabbit hole. Who would have thought there’s great design happening in the world of stationery. Designers all have the same cliché desk items (you know the ones), but I’ve never seen anyone showing off a label printer.

Look at these two TEPRA Pro label printers from a Japanese company called King Jim, which has been around since 1927. They look like something Teenage Engineering could have designed. Both have the vibe of products from the ’80s or ’90s, but no, these are relatively new models. The SR550 (the black one) costs $291.

And lastly, look at this beautiful CASIO scientific calculator (fx-991SP CW). When I saw it, I thought it had to be old; after all, people use smartphones for these kinds of tasks now, right? But when I checked the Casio website, I was surprised to find that it’s relatively new, and Casio currently offers 62 🤯 different scientific calculators. Clearly there’s still strong demand for these devices. And I’m happy they still look this good.

Here comes the next issue—a mix of things I’ve found in the corners of the internet that inspired me or something I stumbled upon in real life. From obscure websites, books and overlooked design artifacts to thoughts on how to stay cozy at home. This installment has a bit of all that—and maybe something more.

Design Quarterly #133 & April Greiman

Design Quarterly was a highly influential publication produced by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from 1954 to 1996, exploring design, architecture, and visual culture.

In 1986, Robert Jensen and Mildred Friedman invited designer April Greiman to guest author issue #133: Does It MakeSense?, showcasing her innovative career. This issue became iconic for its experimental approach and focus on emerging digital technologies. Instead of a standard bound magazine, Greiman transformed the issue into a folded, double-sided poster measuring two feet by six feet. The poster featured one of the first all-digital collages featuring a life-sized self-portrait surrounded by video captures, digital photos, bitmapped type, and illustrations. Using early design software like MacDraw, she utilized all 32 pages of Design Quarterly to make up the total image.

Recently, MoMA in New York added this legendary issue to its design collection, and I had the chance to see it in person a few weeks ago.

If you’re curious to learn more about April Greiman, Readymag has an entire issue dedicated to her work.

Yuichi Yokoyama

I’m a huge fan of Yuichi Yokoyama (横山裕一), the contemporary Japanese manga artist and painter known for his avant-garde, highly stylized comics packed with motion and surreal storytelling. His work has been a major inspiration to me for years—even though I wouldn’t call myself a typical manga fan. I own a few of his books, but I always feel a twinge of envy when I see a certain Reddit user who claims to have collected every book he’s ever published.

Last year, I was browsing a Japanese shop in Brooklyn when I spotted a used copy of "New Engineering"—a book I’d always wanted. The store doesn’t even sell books, just various home goods from Japan, but it seems like the owner (or someone else) occasionally brings in used magazines and art books from their collection. The price was fair, about the same as what you’d find on eBay, so I picked it up to check its condition.

To by astonishment,. hidden on the back of the dust jacket was a massive signature and illustration by Yuichi Yokoyama himself! It was clear the store employees hadn’t noticed, as the book was priced just like the unsigned ones. I took it straight to the register, paid for it, and only then asked if they realized it was signed by the artist. They were just as shocked as I was—but by then, it was too late. The book was mine!

xiachengan.com

Portfolio by designer XiaChengan (夏诚安) It's just so intense! 🤩 xiachengan.com

Hanten and the art of staying cozy

I’m an absolute sucker for warm clothing. The moment I see something padded or quilted, I want it. I’m usually freezing when everyone else is totally fine. And every time I see an old man in Barcelona wearing a wool jacket in the middle of summer, I think, “Yep, that’ll be me one day.”

Until recently, I had no idea how I’d lived my whole life without knowing what a hanten is. Last year in Tokyo, I went to a suburb to photograph a specific building and stumbled upon a regular home goods store selling blankets, bed sheets, and pillows. On the storefront, they had what looked like a warm, padded kimono. A second later, I was inside, trying one on and attempting to communicate with a lovely store owner who spoke no English.

A hanten is a traditional Japanese jacket, padded and made of durable cotton, perfect for staying warm during colder seasons. They often feature simple patterns and were historically worn by commoners for daily work and warmth. Over time, they’ve become a casual, practical, and versatile garment.

Naturally, I bought one immediately. It took up half my luggage, but I dragged it back to New York. Now, I basically live in it until full-on spring. It’s so worn out now that this year, my friends gifted me a new one for my birthday 😘. So yes, I now have a backup for holidays and special occasions.

If you’re someone who always craves coziness—or you know someone who does—a hanten makes for a gift they’ll cherish for a lifetime.

Here’s the link if you want to read about it more

Public Domain Assets

I’ve noticed a growing trend among designers finding beauty in public domain images. Last year, I came across an art book entirely composed of license-free images from the public domain. On one hand, the visuals were undeniably beautiful; on the other, I couldn’t help but think, “Well, that’s a clever way to make money on an art book without paying any artists for their work.”

Recently, I stumbled upon public.work—a site that lets you browse hundreds of thousands of public domain images from sources like The Met and the New York Public Library. It’s well-designed and quite useful. But don’t be fooled 😉—it seems to be a clever promo for yet another mood board creation platform, similar to are.na or sevee.it.

The Bic Cristal 1991 Update

We’ve all seen this pen a billion times. The Bic Cristal is an inexpensive, disposable ballpoint pen—and one of the masterpieces of modern design. Originally created by inventor Marcel Bich in 1950, it went on to become the best-selling pen in history.

But there was one major design update that happened in 1991. The cap’s streamlined design was changed by adding a small hole to the tip. It was done to reduce the risk of suffocation if swallowed. 🙄

This New Yorker cartoon offers a glimpse of reality.

But despite how many meetings you had this week, you can always subscribe to future posts from this corner of the internet.

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Welcome back to another round of design fragments, overlooked gems, and curious finds—basically, the kind of stuff you’d dig up at a garage sale hosted by a designer with too many tabs open. None of it is particularly new, and most of it didn’t just launch last week—but it all made me pause, bookmark, or smile.

Twelve Persons in Graphic Design Today Vol.1-3 (1968-1970)

12人のグラフィックデザイナー

I first came across this book set while in Japan last year. At the time, my carry-on was already full with with other books, so I couldn’t justify adding these to the haul. Instead, I added them to my wish list and started keeping an eye on eBay. In December, I finally found a great deal for all three volumes and could stop me from grabbing it.

Published between 1968 and 1970, this three-volume collection documents a pivotal modern renaissance in Japanese graphic design, showcasing the work of artists who later became legends in the field. The set is beautifully designed and impeccably printed. Each volume highlights four designers, covering 12 influential creators in total:

• Akira Uno

• Kazumasa Nagai

• Shigeo Fukuda

• Gan Hosoya

• Kiyoshi Awazu

• Mitsuo Katsui

• Ikko Tanaka

• Makoto Wada

• Yoshitaro Isaka

• Toshihiro Katayama

• Tsunehisa Kimura

• Tadanori Yokoo

Fungal Page

fungal.page is a mesmerizing website that mimics a Wikipedia article about Hypha—the long, branching, filamentous structures of fungi. The longer you leave the page open, the text and other elements begin to "grow" like hyphae, extending and weaving across the layout in a mesmerizing display of fungal growth.

Created by Raphaël Bastide

Henry Dreyfuss and the first User Experience

Quite amazing “design thinking” from 1925 by the legendary Henry Dreyfuss, who was just 21 years old at the time. An aspiring Broadway theater designer, he was sent to Sioux City, Iowa, to improve a struggling theater that was losing audiences to its competitors. An excerpt from from User Friendly by Kliff Kuang:

It was 1925 and Henry Dreyfuss, wearing his trademark brown suit, stood vigil in front of the sparkling new RKO theater. He was there to solve a problem that had bedeviled the theater’s owners back in New York: They’d invested a tidy sum in this new showplace and no one was coming in. The location was good. This was a prosperous stretch of downtown Sioux City,” Iowa, and the RKO theater hosted popular traveling vaudeville shows and newer, better movies. Yet the happy families and farmers mostly scuttled past the theater’s twinkling new marquee and the plush red carpet blanketing the sidewalk on their way to the shabby competitor down the street. Dreyfuss was standing around so that he could just watch them, and see if he might understand them.

In an era before marketing consultants or business strategists, Dreyfuss had gotten the job simply because he seemed to know something about theater design. He was, at the time, just twenty-one, but already known as a wunderkind designer of Broadway shows. His success had allowed him to start styling himself more as an engineer of consumer demand. When Dreyfuss first arrived at the theater in Sioux City, he lowered prices, ran triple features, and gave away free food—still, none of it worked. After spending three days just observing, he ventured into the theater lobby to eavesdrop on what customers there were saying. Then he overhead someone say how afraid they were of messing up such rich carpet with their muddy shoes. Dreyfuss looked back at the slick tongue of carpet lolling in the theater’s glossy maw and saw how intimidating it must have been to the “farmers and workmen.” The problem he’d been sent to fix—a theater design that wasn’t drawing crowds—ended up not being the problem at all. It wasn’t that the theater wasn’t nice enough. It was rather that, having been conceived on some drawing board in New York City, the theater was too nice for the practical and unassuming Iowans.

Just a few years later, in 1929, Dreyfuss founded his design firm, Henry Dreyfuss Associates (HDA), in New York. He went on to create iconic designs such as the Western Electric 302 telephone (now featured in museums like MoMA), the Honeywell T86 thermostat—affectionately called "The Round" that looks like an ancestor of the Nest thermostat—and the streamlined 20th Century Limited train, a symbol of Art Deco sophistication.

Bar Sign

Striking (literally) bar sign design in Kyoto, Japan. I spent quite a bit of time trying to track down the original creator of this illustration, but had no luck. In a Reddit thread, someone pointed to a Behance project that may be the source—but it’s still unconfirmed.

WinAmp Skin Museum

WinAmp Skin Museum — a tribute to a time when listening to music was personal.

I have nothing against streaming services. In fact, I’ve been using Spotify since 2007, back when it was in private beta and their office was just down the street from where I used to work in Stockholm, Sweden. But I do have one issue.

A friend of mine—an audiophile—recently asked me, Who are your favorite artists right now? And to my surprise, I could barely name two or three, even though I listen to music for hours every day. Most of what I’m listening is new to me, but the sheer ease of discovering music now means I barely register the artist, the album, or even the cover art. When I hear something I like on Spotify, I simply add it to a playlist. I might listen to the track hundreds of times, but I still won’t know who made it—because I did nothing to actually discover it beyond paying a monthly subscription.

Before streaming, finding new music took effort. I had friends recommending artists based on my taste. I’d listen to entire albums to decide if I liked them. I’d check out record labels where my favorite bands were signed and explore other artists on the same label. I knew the album names, the track order, which records came before, which artists collaborated—because discovery required engagement.

The journey of discovering music gave me a lot of knowledge. When there’s no journey anymore, and things are not even a click away but rather automatically stream after the playlist is over, that knowledge is gone—at least for me. Basically, it looks to me as I just want a button in Spotify that says “Stop Recommending.”

Pocket Astro Boy

A gem brought to me as a present from Shanghai. Chinese edition of "Astro Boy" (14) by Osamy Tezuka. 1983.

Apparently Books Update Now Too

LOL. Besides updating every single app and piece of tech that I have, I now need to update books too. What a life!

When the clients ask how our layouts will look on screen sizes larger than 1920 pixels, this is the user that comes to mind.

No matter what resolution you’re reading this on, you can always subscribe.

I’ve always had reservations about sharing other people’s work or sources of inspiration on social media like Instagram or Twitter. To me personally it felt like it blurs the line between what I create and what I admire. And honestly, the format of social media today feels chaotic and all over the place (or maybe I’m just getting old).

Still, I often come across things—books, obscure websites, unexpected design artifacts—that I want to share. To create an outlet for that, I started a public Telegram channel earlier this year as an experiment. Alongside my own work, I post things that inspire me on a daily basis. But I’m also well aware that Telegram doesn’t have the broadest reach.

I thought it made sense to start sharing some of it here on Substack as well. That’s what this new section, Re:View, is for. From time to time, I’ll publish a Re:View post collecting design-related references that resonated with me personally or I found very inspiring. These may include:

• Design and art books I discover, both in person and in online archives

• Unusual and interesting web projects and apps

• Crazy and obscure interfaces (Intrafaces)

• Things I read on the topic of design including books, articles and research

• Tools, videos, and other bits worth saving

Most of what I share won’t be new or just-released. In fact, much of it surfaces from the quieter, weirder corners of the internet. Looking at the list I’ve gathered so far, it feels a bit like digging through a garage sale hosted by a designer. Hopefully, you’ll find something useful—or at least unexpected.

I’ll still continue writing essays here. In fact, one called “Designing That Doesn’t Begin with a Goal” is almost ready and should be coming soon.

Are We to Read Backwards?

James Millington’s 1884 publication, Are We to Read Backwards?: Or, What Is the Best Print for the Eyes?, by the Leadenhall Press in England, is a fascinating early exploration into readability research. Millington posed an interesting question: could reading be made faster and more efficient if text followed a snake-like pattern? In this arrangement, the reader’s eyes wouldn’t need to jump from the end of one line back to the start of the next. Instead, the text would flow continuously—left to right → on one line, then ↩︎ right to left ← on the next one.

What if this approach had been proven superior? Imagine how our reading experiences—and interfaces, such as the iPad Books app—might look today. I made a mockup of Apple Books app just to illustrate that.

The Origins of Opening Title Sequences

While reading Digital Design: A History by Stephen J. Eskilson, I came across an interesting story about the origins of opening title sequences in film. I’ve always known Saul Bass’s iconic title sequences from Hollywood, but I hadn’t realized he was the first who turned intro titles into a “thing.” And as obvious as it might sound, the idea came from animating one of his movie poster designs—essentially bringing it to life as a dynamic sequence to be shown before the film.

"… Dawes soon discovered the stunning work of Saul Bass, who is largely credited with having made the first movie titles intended to be viewed by the audience. In 1952–55 Bass was working with film director Otto Preminger on some illustrated graphics for the new movie The Man with the Golden Arm. At some point in the process, Bass and Preminger hit on the idea of animating the print graphics and turning them into something that could set the stage for the film itself. The Man with the Golden Arm was a film about heroin addiction starring Frank Sinatra, and Bass’s flat drawing of a jagged arm, a reference to the physical act of injecting drugs while also alluding to a Pietà-like suffering and martyrdom, became emblematic of the film. Bass had managed to distill the essence of the story in a way that caught the attention of Hollywood and launched his new career as a title designer, whereby he famously produced work for Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese."

Airbrush Art In Japan 2

There’s an amazing bookstore in Kailua called Bookends that I visit every time I’m on Oahu. The store specializes in second-hand books and old titles from the Honolulu library, all at very affordable prices. It also has a great selection of Japanese books and magazines. This January, when I was there last time, I scored a fantastic find—Airbrush Art in Japan Volume 2 (1986)—for just $14.

The introduction to the book is also amazing:

No one will suspect that currently the airbrush technique of Japanese illustrators have been counted on the fingers of a single hand in worldwide. Not only technique, their keen sense toward design, vivid touches, superior coloring are all amazingly progressed. Continued from the previous edition "AIRBRUSH ART IN JAPAN" in September 1984, in respond to many requests to publish its part 2, this book includes more recent works by 23 talented illustrators and fine art painters.

Shade Map

shademap.app is an amazing website that simulates the sun's movement over maps, accurately rendering the position of shadows cast by buildings and mountains. Super useful for planning photography, especially when exploring a new location.

Christoph Hänsli “Mortadella”

One of the coolest books on my shelf is this piece of work by Christoph Hänsli, a Swiss artist and painter. "Mortadella" is a series of 332 small paintings, each depicting a life-sized slice of sausage.

Published by Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich, 2008.
ISBN 978-3-905509-71-7

General Magic (2018)

If you’re looking for something inspiring—especially if you’re interested in interface design—I highly recommend the documentary ”General Magic”, currently available to watch on YouTube.

The documentary General Magic tells the fascinating and inspiring story of a little-known Silicon Valley startup from the 1990s that developed groundbreaking technology far ahead of its time. General Magic was a spin-off from Apple, and its team included some of the most brilliant minds in tech history, such as Tony Fadell (creator of the iPod), Andy Hertzfeld (one of the original Macintosh team members) and more members that went on and founded tech companies that we all know today.

The company’s ambitious goal was to create a handheld personal communicator, which essentially envisioned the modern smartphone decades before it became a reality. They developed revolutionary ideas such as touch screens, emojis, app stores, and wireless communication—concepts that would later become the backbone of today’s mobile technology.

Pacific (1978)

Since I got a record player a few years ago, I’ve come to know all the vinyl shops around my neighborhood in Brooklyn—and there’s no shortage of them.

This January, I found an incredible record in perfect condition: Pacific—a 1978 album of instrumental compositions by Japanese musicians Haruomi Hosono, Shigeru Suzuki, and Tatsuro Yamashita. It’s the perfect soundtrack for cold winter days. It’s also available on Spotify.

Imagine a world where there’s no “undo” button.

But you can always subscribe to this journal and undo it any time you want.

If design were a religion, its first prophecy would be "Form follows function." As a designer, I’ve heard this mantra countless times, but I never really questioned its origins or context. I assumed it came from the Bauhaus or somewhere in that era. But form follows function isn’t just about design being dictated by purpose—it also implies that if form follows function, the result is inherently "good design." If not, it’s "bad design."

Where Did "Form Follows Function" Come From?

The phrase itself wasn’t born out of postwar manufacturing. It was first coined by Louis Sullivan in 1896 in his essay "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered." Sullivan, a pioneer of modernist architecture, argued that a building’s form should be shaped by its function rather than by historical styles or unnecessary ornamentation.

But design historians argue that Sullivan wasn’t the originator of this idea. Horatio Greenough, an American sculptor and theorist, had already been making similar arguments 50 years earlier. His multiple essays, particularly "The Doctrine of Beauty" and "American Architecture," were compiled posthumously in 1852 in Form and Function: Remarks on Art, Design, and Architecture.

Greenough criticized architects for blindly imitating classical styles rather than designing with purpose. He believed that an object’s form should be determined by its function, not by tradition or excess ornamentation. He was particularly fascinated by fast ships of his time and wrote:

"The beauty of a ship or a flower lies in the economy of growth. Every stick of her timber is exactly where it is wanted. The shape of her bow is the shape that cleaves the water best.”

This illustrates his belief that functional needs should dictate design and beauty was equated with functionalism.

Design historian John Heskett offered a nuanced critique of the form follows function ideology in his book Industrial Design (1980). He argued that Greenough oversimplified the relationship between form and function, treating it as a direct cause-and-effect when in reality, multiple external factors—economic, political, and technological—shape design outcomes. My favorite critique relates to the very ships Greenough admired. He was obsessed with clippers—fast, early 19th-century sailing ships. Heskett writes:

The clipper ships were certainly among the most beautiful creations of their age, but Greenough tended to ignore the degree of scientific calculation that went to determining their form, and the particular functional objectives for which they were designed. They were built for the opium trade with China, in which speed was necessary to evade government patrols and pirates alike; … Calculations concerned with speed thus dictated the form of the hull, overriding optimum requirements for the inner working-structure and organization of the ship, and in this secondary area, function had to be adapted to form.

So, while the hull followed function (speed), everything else on the ship had to fit around the hull, meaning function had to follow the form.

Sir Henry Cole’s "Chamber of Horrors"

Interestingly, the debate around form and function was already active when Greenough was writing. In Designer, Maker, User, I read a fascinating story about Sir Henry Cole, a British designer and educator who played a key role in shaping design education and industrial innovation in the 19th century. His advocacy for practical, well-designed objects laid the groundwork for later movements.

In 1852 (the same year Greenough’s essays were published), Cole had a great idea! He set up a display at Marlborough House, London, to educate the public on "good design." He split the showroom into two sections:

• "Good design" section: Featured carefully crafted items, including Kashmir shawls, Turkish knives, Tunisian pistols, floral wallpapers, and Axminster carpets.

• "False Principles in Decoration" (nicknamed the "Chamber of Horrors") section: Displayed poor design examples like scissors shaped like a stork, a flowerpot imitating reeds, and an opal glass goblet, for which 'the transparency of the material was sacrificed to imitate alabaster'.

Charles Dickens mocked Cole’s museum in a December 1852 Household Words article, commissioning Henry Morley to write "A House Full of Horrors." The satire follows Mr. Crumpet of Brixton, who enjoys the exhibition—until he realizes it exposes his poor taste. Ironically, Cole admitted bad design attracted more interest than good, noting:

"This room appears to excite far greater interest than many objects of high excellence."

Frank Lloyd Wright: "Form and Function Are One"

Sullivan’s ideas later influenced Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), his student, who expanded the concept of form follows function into something more organic. Wright believed that form and function should exist in harmony, rather than one strictly dictating the other. His take:

"Form and function are one.”

However, critics argue that Wright often prioritized aesthetics over practicality. Many of his visually stunning buildings had leaky roofs, poor insulation, and impractical layouts. He was known for ignoring client needs and budgets to pursue his artistic vision. His Usonian homes, for instance, were expensive to maintain and lacked attics, basements, and storage space, frustrating homeowners.

It's ironic that Wright, despite being a student of the person who coined "form follows function," often swung dramatically in the opposite direction.

Le Corbusier’s Love for Ocean Liners

Le Corbusier (1887-1965) extended Sullivan’s philosophy to urban planning and architecture, famously stating:

"A house is a machine for living in."

Like Greenough, he praised the transatlantic liners as examples of pure functionalism. He admired the ships for their efficient use of space, high organization, functional zoning, and modern engineering, seeing them as a model for modernist architecture. In his book “Towards a New Architecture” of 1923, he added photographs of liners with enthusiastic captions, such as ‘An architecture pure, neat, clear, clean and healthy’.

Heskett, once again, challenged this idealized view of ships as pure functionalist design:

The great age of the liner began in the 1890s, and to many architects and designers, these ships were the epitome of the modern age: sleek, functional and beautiful. … However, the element of commercial and national rivalry led to the development of many features which cannot solely be explained in the terms of utility. The imposing superstructure built amidships, and the size and number of funnels, were deliberately designed to create a powerful impression of grandeur.

Many first-class areas on ocean liners were highly decorative, featuring Art Deco interiors, grand ballrooms, and elaborate lounges, directly contradicting the idea of pure functionalism. Even more striking, Titanic’s fourth funnel served no functional purpose at all—it was added purely for aesthetic balance and to create the illusion of greater power and speed. As Heskett points out, ocean liners were locked in fierce competition over speed, luxury, and grandeur. Ships were often equipped with additional funnels simply because they made the vessel appear more powerful and advanced—regardless of actual necessity.

Bauhaus and the Evolution of Functionalism

The idea of form follows function took center stage during the Bauhaus movement (1919–1933), which emerged in post-World War I Germany amid economic instability and industrial expansion. Founded by Walter Gropius, Bauhaus sought to reconcile art, craftsmanship, and modern industry, believing that design should serve society by being simple, functional, and accessible. Form follows function was not just a theory but a practical design approach that reflected the needs of its time, applied not only to architecture but also to furniture, typography, and product design.

A wealth of functional and beautiful artifacts emerged from Bauhaus, many of which designers still cherish today. But the movement was not without controversy. One of the more striking debates was over the elimination of capital letters.

IIn 1920, German engineer Walter Porstmann published Sprache und Schrift (Speech and Writing), advocating for the exclusive use of lowercase letters—a practice known as Kleinschreibung. Porstmann argued that removing capital letters would enhance writing efficiency by simplifying typesetting, reducing the number of letterforms, and minimizing typographical errors. His reasoning was grounded in practicality and economy. He even acknowledged that capital letters serve as visual anchors in text but saw their benefit as minimal compared to the efficiency gains of a single-case system.

Porstmann's ideas resonated with Bauhaus designers, who embraced typographic simplifications as part of their broader design philosophy. Many took the lowercase-only concept to heart for two main reasons: one was technical efficiency (as Porstmann proposed), and the other was ideological. Bauhaus aimed to create a universal visual language, stripping away historical conventions they saw as arbitrary or elitist. Eliminating uppercase letters was viewed as a move toward democratization and accessibility, aligning with the school's ideals. By abolishing capital letters, they symbolically abolished unnecessary hierarchies.

In 1925, under the influence of designer Herbert Bayer, the Bauhaus school officially eliminated capital letters from its communications. Bayer convinced Walter Gropius to implement the change, reinforcing the school's principles of simplicity and functionality. The official Bauhaus letterhead proudly proclaimed:

we write everything in small letters, as we save time.
also: why 2 alphabets, if one achieves the same?
why capitalize, if you can't speak big?

One could argue for the rejection of superfluous hierarchies through lowercase-only writing. But the lack of capitalization created issues—proper names, last names, and geographical locations became harder to distinguish. Even designers of the time recognized that capital letters at the start of sentences improved readability by clearly marking where one thought ended and another began. This became an instance where form prevailed over function rather than following it.

Even Gropius, the Bauhaus director, agreed to the lowercase-only approach, but not without reservations. In a 1926 lecture, he described the fight against capital letters as a movement led by "extreme friends of standardization", referring to the change as "the hobbyhorse of pupils".

Here Comes Digital

In today’s digital age, many designers resist comparing digital products to physical ones. Yet, the notion of form follows function, originally rooted in designing physical artifacts, has seamlessly migrated into the digital space.

In the world of UI/UX design, Jakob Nielsen has been a major voice in advocating function-first principles. He famously stated:

"Users don’t care about design for its own sake. They just want to get things done and get out."

As I write this article on the Substack platform, a notification pops up with an exclamation mark (!) warning me: "Post too long for email"—a polite nudge to adapt my writing to whatever constraints the email system allows. But I dismiss the notification and continue writing because I refuse to shape my form to fit this arbitrary function. 😂

The hard truth is that digital designers have to follow form far more often than one might think—and not in the way Nielsen suggests. Having designed digital experiences for over 20 years, I’ve lost count of how many times clients and organizations have been shackled by outdated infrastructure and legacy databases that someone set up years ago and are now too expensive to overhaul. Whether it’s a media publication, a financial institution, an airline, or a museum—any organization that has existed for years has its own legacy "monster" that everyone is afraid to touch.

In these cases, whether you like it or not, designers are often forced to follow the functions dictated by the constraints of these set in stone legacy systems—much like how 19th-century engineers had to fit the inner workings of a clipper ship into its narrow hull. Yes, there are workarounds, ways to build on top of a system that doesn’t support the features you want—but these solutions come at a cost, adding complexity to everything. You get the idea.

In no way did I write this article to critique minds far greater than my own. Despite the contradictions in the form follows function mantra, every figure mentioned here played a crucial role in shaping the world we live in and inspiring generations of designers, architects, and artists.

My curiosity about this topic wasn’t to challenge these principles but to explore their origins and evolution. The ongoing debates about form and function that we engage in today are far from new. History has shown that pure functionalism doesn’t always hold up. Whether in ships, buildings, or everyday objects, function is often shaped by cultural, aesthetic, and economic forces. Even designers who strongly adhered to form follows function—such as Max Bill—acknowledged this reality, proving that design is rarely as rigid or absolute as theory suggests.

• References:

  • Sullivan, L. (1896). The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.

  • Greenough, Horatio (1852). Form and Function

  • Heskett, John (1980). Industrial Design.

  • Le Corbusier (1923). Toward a New Architecture.

  • Porstmann, Walter (1920). Sprache und Schrift

  • Newson, Alex (Design Museum) (2017). Designer Maker User

  • Mijksenaar, Paul (1997). Visual Function

  • www.bauhaus-bookshelf.org

About two months ago, I envisioned a speaker that could read aloud a physical book you already own when you place it inside the device. Over a weekend, I visualized the concept and shared it online. I’m not an industrial designer, nor am I in the business of creating new services. This was purely an exploration, driven by curiosity about whether interactions with digital products can feel more tactile. That’s all there is to it. The idea is simple: you take a book from your shelf, place it into the device, and it "recognizes" the book, then begins reading it to you. Would this require a subscription or access to audiobook services? Maybe, maybe not—that’s beside the point. The focus here is solely on testing the interaction with technology.

The motivation behind this concept stems from my sense that digital products have become too similar. Booking a hotel, for instance, feels visually and interactively no different from checking a bank account—and there’s a clear reason for this. Tasks that once required dedicated hardware are now condensed into apps on a single smartphone. Before the era of smartphones and apps, every piece of technology had its own dedicated device. Need to do math? You’d use a calculator. Want to listen to music on the go? You’d grab a Walkman. Taking photos? You’d reach for a camera. Recently, I even discovered that Wikipedia had its own standalone device called the WikiReader, released in 2009 and discontinued in 2014.

Let me be clear: I’m not advocating for a return to having a separate gadget for every task. Owning ten devices to perform ten functions feels impractical today—and it’s far from environmentally friendly. However, it’s also disheartening that just two smartphone companies largely dictate how we interact with nearly every digital service available. Remember the phrase “form follows function”? We seem to be doing the opposite now. The form—defined by Apple or Google—dictates the function, and we cram every imaginable feature into their predefined shapes. Smartphones have become a "one-size-fits-all" device, and with the prevalence of "best practices," few companies dare to break away from this mold.

Last year, we caught a glimpse of efforts to rethink how we interact with technology, particularly with the emergence of AI. Take, for example, the much-discussed Humane Pin and Rabbit R1. While both were criticized for overpromising and underdelivering, the most common public reaction was, “This could have been an app.” And yes, perhaps it could have. But I still credit both companies for at least daring to look in a different direction, exploring whether there might be something more beyond the app-centric status quo.

When thinking about making digital interactions more tactile, two examples come to mind that I found particularly compelling. One is a concept called Tiles, created by designers Kay van den Aker, Oscar Olsson, Emile Chuffart, and Tobias Ertel. Their work explored how a tangible interface could transform music listening into the rich, sophisticated experience it was meant to be.

Another example I greatly enjoyed is Lazy Pen by Nicolas Nahornyj. When we type on digital devices, our writing appears uniform, but when we use pens, our handwriting is uniquely our own. This project is a practical attempt to merge the individuality of handwriting with computer-based word processing. A moving palette under the user’s wrist captures arm movements and pressure, distorting the font while typing. As a result, two people typing on the same device produce distinct outputs. Personal movements and habits shape the typography, creating a unique, individualized writing style.

The truth is, there are countless physical products I genuinely enjoy using, but I can’t say the same about digital ones. While some digital products solve immediate problems, they rarely inspire any real affection and I have absolutely zero desire using any of them. For example, I’m perfectly fine listening to music on Spotify, but I also own a record player and regularly buy records I love. Why? Because the interaction required to play a vinyl album offers something unique—a tangible, deliberate experience that digital platforms stay away from. To me, that interaction has value. I also believe that people, when exposed to more tactile interactions, often respond positively. I don’t own AR glasses, but I completely understand their appeal. They bring a more tactile, physical dimension to engaging with digital technologies, and that resonates with people.

Returning to the Audio Book Speaker concept, I posted it on social media and received responses that were largely expected. Most people felt content with the audiobook apps already installed on their phones and dismissed the device as unnecessary. On some level, I don’t disagree. Many also compared it to Yoto, a small speaker for kids that I had come across before—primarily because Pentagram handled its branding—but had long forgotten about. While both concepts are standalone speakers for audiobooks, my idea differs in that it relies on physical books you already own, sitting on your shelf, rather than purchasing customized cartridges. Interestingly, a smaller group of people liked the concept, and a few even reached out, expressing interest in prototyping it.

Another concept I explored in 2019 wasn’t strictly a digital product but still examined the interaction between humans and devices. Called the Stick Lamp, it was a portable lamp inspired by the ancient ritual of rubbing wooden sticks to create fire.

To light it, you’d rub the stick with both hands—the longer you rubbed, the longer it stayed on. To turn it off, you’d simply hold the stick as if extinguishing a flame. The idea was to merge tactile interaction with a playful nod to tradition, creating a functional object that felt both intuitive and symbolic.

The journey of exploring tactile interactions with digital products is less about replacing what works and more about imagining what could be. Physical, tactile interactions can offer a richness and depth that digital interfaces often lack—a way to connect with our devices that feels more human. As technology continues to evolve, we shouldn’t be afraid to question the dominance of screens and uniformity. Whether it’s through reimagining everyday tasks or experimenting with alternative forms of interaction, there’s value in exploring paths that stray from the well-worn “best practices.” In a world of endless apps and identical interactions, perhaps the answer lies in creating digital products that we not only use but love—because they touch us in ways that go beyond the screen.

If you know of any great examples of interactions like these, I’d love to see them—please send them my way!

I often think of design tools and skills as a "vocabulary." The more diverse and expansive your vocabulary, the more versatile and effective you become as a designer.

Options and Solutions

Before we dive deeper, I want to clarify something: as you likely already know, there is no single "right" solution to a design problem. Design is fundamentally about exploring multiple options and selecting the one that works best under the given circumstances. For example, could I create the most beautiful and user-friendly solution, even if it costs a billion dollars? Probably. But would that be the optimal solution for a product with a budget one hundred times smaller? Definitely not. Similarly, could I design the simplest checkout flow even if the client’s outdated backend can’t support it? Yes, and I’ve done so many times. But is that the best solution when the organization doesn’t have the resources to overhaul its tech infrastructure? Likely not. In an ideal world, we’d change everything necessary to achieve the perfect design, but reality is often at odds with what we want.

A key responsibility of a designer is to explore multiple solutions to a problem and then choose the most optimal one. However, to do that effectively, a designer must first truly explore a range of possibilities. While this may sound straightforward, many designers fall short. Too often, I see only a single solution presented—perhaps with a minor variation, like a button being centered versus left-aligned—followed by a desire to user test these as “options” to determine which performs better. While there’s nothing wrong with testing small adjustments, this isn’t the same as offering two or more distinct solutions. It’s simply one solution with a minor tweak.

The less experienced a designer is, the more options they need to explore—and naturally, this takes longer. That’s perfectly normal. As designers gain experience, they become quicker at evaluating options, often sorting through them mentally. This is because “experience” isn’t just a vague term; it’s a collection of solutions that designers have tested over the years, along with a deep understanding of what works and what doesn’t in different situations.

When you examine the work of an experienced designer, you'll often notice that they genuinely search for various solutions, experimenting with drastically different approaches. And here’s the interesting part: the best final result is rarely just one solution chosen from five. It’s typically an intricate blend of different ideas—something no designer could have arrived at without first exploring those multiple options.

Design Vocabulary

It doesn’t matter what problem you're solving—whether it's designing a checkout flow in your app, enabling users to filter products, visualizing information, or defining the look and feel of a project. As a designer, your responsibility is to explore a range of potential solutions.

As you expand your design vocabulary, your potential solutions broaden as well. For instance, imagine you’re working on the onboarding process of an app that needs to guide users in pairing a hardware device with their smartphone. You could rely on the most basic design tools at your disposal—typography, text, composition, and layout. But could the same information be conveyed using photography? Perhaps a video could walk the user through each step, one by one. What if 3D elements were incorporated? Maybe strong copywriting combined with motion design could solve the problem. Could sound add value to the solution? Or perhaps a well-designed pictogram or schematic is the most effective approach. My point is, tools are just one aspect of expanding your design options.

I know designers who can envision all these potential solutions without ever having worked with those disciplines. I envy them because I’m not like that. I need to spend time learning new tools—or at least gaining a basic understanding of how they work—before I can add them to my “design vocabulary.” Then, the next time I face a design problem, I can mentally sift through those tools, picking them one by one to see if the solution lies within.

Pick up photography, and once you understand how to capture a great photo that tells a story, you’ll have added a valuable skill to your design vocabulary. Learn 3D, and you’ll find moments where it becomes the most optimal and user-friendly solution. Explore motion design, and you’ll realize that some concepts can be communicated far more effectively through motion than with text or icons alone.

You don’t need to excel at everything—you just need to be aware of the options, understand how they can be applied, and be proficient enough to create a first draft or prototype. After that, you can hire specialists in video, 3D, motion, sound, and other areas to deliver the final high-quality result. Or, if you prefer, you could handle it yourself. But if you don’t explore these possibilities, your solutions will always look the same, and you’ll never know if they’re truly the best because you haven’t tried anything different. As the saying goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.

Whether you present all these options to your team or to a client depends on your process—that’s up to you. But first and foremost, this exploration is something you, as a designer, do for yourself.

Personal Journeys

The fact that there are multiple right answers to the same problem is, for many, an intimidating part of design—but for me, it’s what makes it beautiful. After 20+ years of experience, I still get excited each time I’m faced with a visual problem to solve. As soon as I identify the problem, I immediately envision 20 potential solutions. About half of them won’t work—whether due to inefficiency, cost, or limitations—while others might be too complex. But there are always 3 or 4 that could be the most effective. And once I start visualizing them, they inspire me to create another idea I hadn’t thought of at first. This is my process, and it’s what makes design so thrilling.

A few years ago, Google approached us with an exciting challenge: how to visualize time on their new device, the Google Nest Hub—a smart speaker with a tablet-like screen. When the device is in standby mode, it needed to display the current time. But how should that look? Sure, there are traditional ways to show time, like digital numbers or clock hands, but we wanted to explore beyond the conventional. What else could time look like?

During the concept phase, we developed 38 completely unique watch faces, each using different metaphors and tools to represent time (digits, typography, 3D, photography, abstract motion, infographics, even Google Maps …). Of course, not all of them were shown to Google—it would’ve been overwhelming to present so many options. Instead, we curated a selection, with less than a third making it into the presentation. From those, Google chose five designs to develop further and prototype, and eventually, four of them were built and launched with the new device. You can read about it more in our case study.

Here’s another example from just last year. In the fall of 2023, I decided to explore Spline, a tool that enables 3D directly in the browser, to see if it was something I could incorporate into my design process. But when I’m learning a new tool, I always need a project to focus on—it helps me dive in. So, I started looking for inspiration and tutorials.

Just a few days earlier, I’d stumbled upon a small, Japanese-owned shop in Brooklyn that occasionally sells used Japanese books and magazines. There, I discovered a secondhand copy of New Engineering by Yuichi Yokoyama, an experimental Japanese manga artist. Without hesitation, I bought it, and it ended up becoming the spark for my project. The idea came to me: what if I created an abstract 3D comic in the browser? That’s when the concept of an obscure hotel took shape, where each frame of the comic is a 3D room, and the main character moves from room to room, searching for a way out.

Over the course of several evenings, I slowly built out the scene in Spline, crafting different rooms, modeling, and rigging a character to bring the story to life. As with any new tool, much of the time was spent watching tutorial videos on Cinema and Spline, figuring things out piece by piece. In the end, I created 11 unique rooms, arranged in a vertical layout reminiscent of comic book frames, where users can scroll up or down to explore the entire hotel.

The result? Surprisingly interesting. You can check it out here. Did I master Spline in the process? Not exactly. But I gained enough understanding to see how it could be useful in the future. Ultimately, it was just an experiment—a way to test new ideas and explore the possibilities.

A couple of months later, I was working on a portfolio redesign for our development partner, Astroshock. Their website was outdated and in desperate need of a complete visual overhaul to showcase their work in a fresh, unexpected way. I remember trying countless options, but nothing felt right. I started with traditional portfolio layouts—grids and lists of projects—but those would have made the company blend in with countless other sites. I even experimented with a design that mimicked a chatbot to highlight their focus on development, but it turned out to be too complicated. No matter what I tried, nothing clicked.

Then, it hit me—what if I adapted the concept from the Hotel project I had worked on earlier? The idea of scrolling through floors had something magical about it. Of course, it couldn’t be a one-to-one replication, but there was potential in applying that concept. A couple of hours later, I had a first draft and a quick prototype that immediately convinced everyone it was the right direction.

The final result wasn’t built in Spline, of course. Instead, we used custom code to create a 3D-like effect. It’s a simple concept with a big visual impact: each "floor" of the tower represents a project, stacking up to form a larger structure that showcases the company’s work. At the base of the tower is the company itself, with their About section forming the foundation. I never would have come up with this solution if I hadn’t first explored a new tool and discovered the possibilities it offered.

In design, there’s rarely just one right answer. The real value comes from exploring different possibilities, stepping outside the usual approaches, and experimenting with new tools. Expanding your design vocabulary gives you more options to consider and keeps your process interesting. Whether you're a seasoned designer or still learning, it’s the willingness to try different things—even if they don’t always work—that leads to better, more thoughtful outcomes.

Thank you for reading.

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Quite often, I hear photographers say that the gear is not important for capturing great photos; it's all about how you take pictures. This is true to some degree. You can potentially use any type of camera to get a great shot one way or another. But in my case, the gear is super important. It’s not about the megapixels, the brand, or having the latest and most robust version of the camera. It’s about having a camera you genuinely enjoy using.

I believe it's better to have a camera that you love as an object. You like how it feels in your hand, and the grip feels just right for you. Its controls make sense; pressing buttons, changing aperture, and adjusting shutter speed all feel intuitive. Just using this object gives you pleasure. Over time, you develop a "feel" for the camera and how it reacts to different lighting conditions, to the point where you do not rely on automatic settings. It’s a camera that you want to always have with you and use all the time. If you own a camera like this, there's a high chance you'll always have it with you and frequently use it, ultimately increasing the likelihood of capturing great photos. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Leica, an old film Canon, a medium format Hasselblad, or an iPhone—as long as it's a camera that you love.

I remember going on a trip once with a brand new camera that boasted all the megapixels in the world. It was the latest and greatest model the camera store had to offer. However, I rarely used it because I didn't enjoy using it. Something—or rather, everything—felt off about the camera. It just didn't feel right. Each time I went for a walk, I left it behind because I didn’t feel like taking photos. I regretted not bringing my older camera that I loved, because I knew I would have taken it with me everywhere and ended up with much better shots.

For me, gear is not just important; it's a huge source of inspiration. I have a friend who feels the same way. He once told me he bought a second-hand plotter, even though he had no idea how he would use it or how often. Just having the plotter opened up possibilities for ideas that necessitated one. I completely understand that feeling.

Last year, I bought a printer. While I occasionally needed to print documents or shipping slips, which was always a hassle, I opted for a larger color printer instead of a small black-and-white one. This decision opened up new possibilities for me. I started printing books and artoworks, and found myself constantly coming up with ideas for them. This is one of the reasons the Time Stretched, an ongoing project I am invested in since 2022 was even born.

And it didn't stop there. With this new capability "unlocked," I kept coming up with projects to print. While not all of them were great, each one led to something else and sparked new ideas that I later worked on.

Yes, tools can be expensive, and I can't afford some of the things I want. However, there's also the second-hand market. In the US, this means Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. I buy most of my tools, including cameras and lenses, second hand. Some things don't have to be brand new. And once a tool is no longer inspiring for you, sell it and pass that inspiration on to someone else.

Get a pen that you love, and you'll find yourself always writing.

Inspiring tools can also be digital. Several years ago, I discovered Notion, which inspired me to document my process more, record ideas, and organize them. I began writing down things I liked and why. The fact that I am writing this story right now is largely because many of these ideas originated from my notes in Notion.

Here's a short story, that I find very inspiring, about a digital tool that helped make Frank Gehry the star architect he is today. If you've ever been to Barcelona, you probably noticed the large "fish" (El Peix) structure in the Olympic Marina right on the beach.

Back in the early '90s, in preparation for the 1992 Olympics, the marina was completely rebuilt. Frank Gehry, who was not yet a star architect at that time, was commissioned to design a sculpture that would reflect the city's Mediterranean and maritime identity. The main challenge was creating technical drawings for the "streamlined" (curved) design Gehry envisioned.

Before computers, accurately annotating streamlined curves by hand was a daunting task. Imagine the number of points needed in three dimensions—X, Y, and Z—to describe such a shape. It would take an enormous amount of time to produce each section with detailed notations for every point, ensuring a smooth curve when finally built. If a person couldn't do that in a reasonable amount of time, maybe a software could.

Frank Gehry's office contacted McDonnell Douglas, a US plane manufacturer known for using 3D software to design and specify streamlined surfaces, like airplane wings. However, this lead didn't pan out. A friend of Gehry's, the head of architecture at MIT, connected him with Dassault, a plane manufacturer in Paris that used their own 3D software called CATIA to design Mirage fighter jets.

CATIA was the very first CAD/CAE/CAM software created back in 1977 as a surface modeler to assist in designing the Dassault fighter jets. It could theoretically solve Gehry's problem: preparing technical drawings using splines in 3D for streamlined architectural surfaces. The catch was that the software was so complex and not user-friendly, only Dassault engineers could use it. After some convincing, Dassault agreed to simplify the software and adapt it for architectural purposes. This allowed Frank Gehry to design and build "The Fish," which became renowned for its innovative design achieved using 3D software. Something that nobody has ever done before.

Gehry liked the software so much that he copyrighted the simplified version of CATIA for architecture, calling it "Digital Project". He founded a separate company, Gehry Technologies, to distribute the "Digital Project" software to other architectural firms needing spline modeling. He used the same software to design the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in 1996 and in all his subsequent projects.

This story is significant because technology, particularly software, defined Frank Gehry's career as an architect. Of course, he was a talented architect, but his career might have been completely different if he hadn't discovered that software and become so invested in it. The software enabled him to create the curved facades of so many buildings he designed. It’s a story where software is a defining element not only of someone's success but of their style itself.

Love your tools.

While regular books tended to be one-time reads for me – once I got the story, that was it – encyclopedias held a different allure. I found myself picking them up regularly, flipping to a random page, and getting lost for hours. Another weakness of mine was illustrated atlases. Now that I reflect on it, it feels like my first encounter with graphic design, even though I didn't really know what graphic design was back then. The way information was laid out and presented felt utterly captivating and almost magical.

At this point, I'd like to clarify the distinction between "infographics" and the showcased encyclopedia spreads. In simple terms, infographics are about visualizing data – taking the numbers from a spreadsheet and representing them through charts, graphs, or on a timeline or map. It's about making the data visually accessible. The examples and layouts I'm talking about, on the other hand, are more about visualizing/illustrating content. The visuals and text are intricately woven together and laid out perfectly to make sense. You can't just swap an image and hope for the best (like in 99% of layouts), and you can't just throw in an extra paragraph or two expecting the text to spill onto the next page. These are custom-made to work seamlessly just once. The designer could have easily dumped all the text on one page and all the images on another, and it might have somewhat worked, but it wouldn't have the same impact.

In many ways, I believe it's dying format of delivering information. I have a few theories about why this might be the case (although I could be mistaken). Firstly, these layouts are challenging to execute. They demand a unique skill set to effectively organize information in this manner. Secondly, when books undergo translation into other languages, the intricate balance of visuals and text often crumbles. We encountered this issue ourselves when working on our book, which originally was designed for English version and later published in Japanese. Lastly, there's a prevailing inclination towards simplicity, favoring an uncluttered approach and a general aversion to density. When was the last time you presented a client with a densely packed information layout and received an immediate approval? Don't get me wrong—I'm all for simplicity. However, the notion that everything we do should always be simple strikes me as peculiar. The information that wasn't considered dense by people a century ago now seems unbearable today.

One of my all-time favorite designers, Mitsuo Katsui (1931-2019), left an indelible mark not only through his impressive graphic designs for clients like Issey Miyake but also through his work on encyclopedias. Among his grand undertakings was a six-year international collaboration with 20 designers on the Kodansha Encyclopedia—a massive English-language volume encompassing a broad spectrum of Japanese topics. What captivates me the most is that his own retrospective book, "Visionary Zone: Mitsuo Katsui" (published in 2004), is intentionally crafted to resemble an encyclopedia, complete with layouts featuring dense visuals. I find myself reaching for this book from my shelf ten times more often than any other.

Take a look at this Apple Macintosh print ad from 1984. Notice the striking resemblance in layout to the examples found in the encyclopedias above, where images are meticulously intertwined with text to convey Mac's features. The moment I stumbled upon this last week, I found myself dedicating a good 10 minutes to scrutinizing its details.

Today, when Apple wants to highlight a set of features in a static, non-interactive environment, they turn to what designers are currently raving about—the "bento box." The crucial difference lies in the increased dynamism of the "bento box," facilitating easy interchangeability of images and text to exhibit features for different products, a strategy actively employed by Apple. Yet, the core idea of introducing a semi-custom layout with dense information gained significant popularity within the design community.

Of course, this type of layout isn't groundbreaking. For those old enough to recall, there was a Sprint website back in 2008 that showcased the "bento box" layout, which, of course, now appears outdated by today's standards.

Regardless of how the Sprint website appeared in 2008, I appreciate the effort. That allows us to smoothly transition into the digital space, which occupies much of my focus.

The "visual encyclopedia" style layouts never quite transitioned into the interactive medium. There were scattered examples, particularly in the realm of “long-reads”, which appear to be another fading format. During the initial introduction of the iPad, there were hopeful expectations for a new era of "digital publishing," prompting some of the earliest magazines to invest time in making their high-density layouts interactive. Another notable example that comes to mind is the demo titled "A Next-Generation Digital Book" by Mike Matas, showcasing an interactive version of Al Gore's book "Our Choice." However, any further attempts seemed to stall at that point.

There are evident technical constraints that hinder the creation of layouts like these. When the iPhone debuted in 2007, the web began its shift toward "responsiveness." Designing such layouts is challenging from the outset, and introducing breakpoints and mobile versions exponentially complicates the task, demanding a substantial amount of time. Not impossible, but hard and expensive. Developing a front-end is no walk in the park either. Ensuring everything renders smoothly across various browsers, given the stubbornness of developers who can't agree on operational standards, is a time-consuming (and costly) endeavor. Additionally, those conducting user testing groups would often return with feedback that users found such layouts confusing and “hard to digest”. I am not suggesting that everything should adopt an encyclopedia-style, but out of the billions of digital experiences launched in the past five years, was there no room for it anywhere? I doubt it. We are afraid of complexity.

Moreover, crafting something like this necessitates having the content thoroughly prepared before the designer initiates the process. When was the last time that actually occurred? Presently, there's a widespread expectation that anything digital can be constructed in a modular and flexible manner, allowing the incorporation of any content at any time. This, in my view, is the primary reason behind the prevalence of "basic" and "templated" solutions seen across the spectrum.

Lastly, I believe the widespread accessibility to video content these days has its own influence. I actually think that this entire story would have performed 100 times better if it was a video on TikTok.

Nevertheless I keep trying to at least take some inspiration from that forgotten medium. During our collaboration with M+, a newly established museum of contemporary Asian visual culture that opened in Hong Kong right after the pandemic, there was a noteworthy attempt on my side. Within the myriad sections and pages of the website we designed for user-friendliness, there was one section dedicated to the actual building of the M+ museum, designed by star architects Herzog & de Meuron. It felt like the right place for such a visual layout.

We received a cross-section schematic of the museum directly from engineers, which took me some time to simplify and make usable. This technical drawing offers a sense of the museum's size—a significant 11-story building on the waterfront of Hong Kong, that we wanted to convey to the users. Its technical appearance also aligns with the content on this page: interviews with architects, insights into design and construction challenges, and more. From a layout perspective, the cross-section plan sits in the middle of the page, surrounded by six call-to-action buttons that open overlays with additional information. It took a lot of effort to figure everything out, but in the end, this entire layout works seamlessly on mobile, supports three languages (English and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese) and the content is driven by the CMS (content managements system). While comparing it to the examples from the beginning of this story is painful, considering all the constraints, it is at least an attempt.

In December, I made the decision to update my personal website, repponen.com, which, in contrast to client work showcased on Anton & Irene, serves as my personal "encyclopedia" of visual experiments. There, you'll find an array of projects—some realized and launched, while others remain at the conceptual stage. Serving as an almanac of my design obsessions, the content spans across design, architecture, photography, furniture and contemplations on the abstract concept of time.

Built on the Cargo platform, the website faces its own array of limitations. However, it was more manageable to maintain everything there than to build a custom website from scratch. When contemplating the home page design, my initial idea was to have a full-screen image gallery flicking through featured projects, a solution seen countless times. Instead, I opted for a dense, somewhat chaotic, encyclopedia-type layout to communicate my background. As mentioned, the platform I use has limitations in terms of assembling such a layout. Notably, I lack the ability to control a different number of columns on desktop and mobile for the same page. Consequently, the current layout isn't really mobile-friendly. I launched the site and kind of forgot about it.

Despite these limitations, to my surprise, the website gained significant traction and was widely shared, notably on SiteInspire. I frequently come across screenshots of this homepage in various tools that people use to collect inspiration. This surprises me because I often hear people express a preference for the opposite—clean, uncluttered, easy-to-digest layouts. This layout is none of that.

The essence of this narrative, I suppose, is to encourage embracing visual complexity when it is fitting. If anyone reading this has good examples from the digital space, please send either a screenshot or a link to repponen@gmail.com. I am actively collecting such material. Additionally, if you enjoy this story, I would be grateful if you could share it.

Meanwhile, I find myself appreciating these types of layouts in print, particularly in the 2528-page "Elements of Architecture" by Rem Koolhaas, brilliantly designed by Irma Boom. Much like in my childhood, I frequently revisit this book, marveling at its contents.

This year, I found myself in a European hardware store looking for work gloves (don’t ask me why). Admittedly, I’m no expert in this field; as a designer, my selection process was purely aesthetic. My eyes were drawn to these green gloves with obscure technical information printed right on them. They looked very modern, cool and not overdesigned. The graphics on the upper side conveyed a sense of seriousness, almost as if the gloves wouldn’t function without them. Had Balenciaga crafted gloves like these, people would not shut up about it. However, these aren't Balenciaga; instead, they hail from a German company called Uvex (a brand that I have never heard of).

It was only upon my return to New York that I started asking myself the question: What do all these symbols on the front of the glove actually mean? Visually, the graphics exude a technical and cool aesthetic, a feature of their design that particularly captivated me in the first place. However, drawing from my experience collaborating with technical companies like the lighting manufacturer Zumtobel in Austria and the 3D printer manufacturer Markforged in Boston, I've learned that these symbols aren't merely for show. Behind each symbol lies a specific meaning—a coded language understood by professionals in certain industries but a complete gibberish to me.

I snapped a photo of the glove and forwarded it to my friend, a seasoned construction worker, inquiring if he knew what any of those symbols meant. His response was swift and decisive—he had no idea. So maybe not for fellow designers who are interested in why things look the way they look, but for my one friend who has been in construction for 20-something years, I decided to go down the rabbit hole of deciphering all this information. I won't deny it—I briefly felt like Indiana Jones, deciphering ancient hieroglyphs on a weathered wall for a few moments last week.

Behind each graphics printed on the glove is a larger than life story of love, heartbreaks, drama and betrayal… I wish. Instead, it's a narrative woven with the intricate threads of regulating bodies, individuals establishing standards, numerous meetings, compromises, committee formations, paper pushing, and a myriad of other events that elude my complete comprehension.

Concealed within the symbol that follows is the initial encrypted message. Do you think it’s a "Like" button? Far from it – it symbolizes a hammer striking a tested object. The graphic is composed of two distinct sections: the text at the top (EN 388) and six alphanumeric characters positioned beneath it.

The EN 388 stands as the European DIN standard employed to assess mechanical risks related to hand protection. Gloves boasting an EN 388 rating undergo third-party testing, and their performance is subsequently graded. Each test outcome is meticulously recorded with alphanumeric characters beneath the primary pictogram. The inclusion of "2016" signifies the year of the standard's latest update. Originally known as EN 388:2003, the preceding version mandated only four tests (corresponding to the initial four characters). However, with the ongoing advancements in technical materials, the methods for testing and classifying these products required refinement, prompting the addition of two more tests (accounting for the final two characters out of six). On November 4, 2016 the EN 388 standard was updated, hence the 2016 mark.

From a design standpoint, the "2016" identifier might seem useless. If you observe only four characters (4X24), it may indicate adherence to the outdated standard. On the other hand, the presence of all six characters (4X42CP) signifies that the glove adheres to the latest testing requirements.

Now what are these six tests?

Abrasion resistance 4X42CP

The initial digit in the sequence indicates the glove's rating on a scale of 1 to 4, reflecting its resistance to abrasion. In essence, the glove material undergoes a test wherein it is placed on a specialized machine equipped with standardized sandpaper that rubs the material in circular motion counting cycles. The rating is determined by the number of cycles required for the machine to create a hole in the material. If, for instance, a hole emerges after just 100 cycles of rubbing sandpaper against the material, it receives the lowest rating, denoted as "1". Conversely, the highest rating, designated as "4", is awarded when the material withstands 8000 cycles before succumbing to wear.

Cut resistance (Coup Test) 4X42CP

To assess the blade cut resistance of a safety glove, the glove material is subjected to a circular cutting blade, maintaining a consistent velocity and pressure. The number of cutting cycles is counted, and the higher the count before the material succumbs to cutting, the greater the assigned rating, ranging from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).

Why the abrasion level highest score is “4” and cut resistance is “5” is a mystery that I will leave for others to uncover.

Furthermore, the presence of the letter "X" instead of numerical ratings from 1 to 5 required more digging. If the tested material causes the blade to dull during the assessment, the conventional test is substituted with the new cut resistance test (ISO 13997). In such cases, the letter "X" replaces the numerical rating, signifying a shift in evaluation methodology.

Tear Resistance 4X42CP

Conducted by yet another dedicated machine, the tear resistance test initiates with a small cut inflicted on the glove material before it is secured onto the apparatus, which then exerts force to pull it apart. The applied force is quantified in Newtons, and the rating level is determined by the magnitude of force needed to tear the material apart. The scale ranges from the lowest rating of "1," (10N required to initiate tearing), to the highest rating of "4," indicative of a substantial tear resistance (75N required to initiate tearing).

Puncture Resistance 4X42CP

The glove material is being stretched between two discs and inserted into yet another specialized machine equipped with a standardized nail (4.5 mm thick). This nail descends, incrementally increasing pressure until it punctures the material. The force exerted, measured in Newtons, dictates the rating, following the same principle as previous tests: the higher the force required to create a hole, the superior the rating. On the scale, "1" represents the lowest rating, requiring 20N, while the highest rating, denoted as "4," demands a formidable force of 150N

Cut resistance (TDM test ISO 13997) 4X42CP

So this test is new and was introduced in 2016. It’s a higher cut resistance test that gives more accurate measurement of a cut resistance test than the one above (second character). Remember we got X because the material dulled the blade, so we need a new test that got added as a separate character.

In contrast to the circular blade used previously, the updated test employs a straight blade, similar to a knife. The glove material is affixed to a device, and the blade moves linearly, mimicking a cutting motion (the way you cut bread). After each pass, the blade is replaced, and the process is repeated with increased force. The force applied is measured in Newtons, with a higher force requirement correlating to a superior rating,

Now the best part! Instead of rating ranging from 1 to 4 (or in one case 1 to 5) the regulatory bodies introduce new scale. It is now A to F, and surprise, “F” being the highest rating. You can also sometimes see letter X there, but in this case it means that the material has not been tested for higher cut protection. Which is confusing, because previously letter “X” meant that the material not only passed it, but required a much harder test instead.

Impact resistance 4X42CP

What if a hammer were to fall on your hand? Would the gloves effectively absorb the impact? This test draws inspiration from the assessment method for motorcycle gloves (EN 13594). The material is affixed to a novel device featuring a "striker" that descends onto the material with a designated force. If the average force transmitted through the glove is 7 kN (kilo Newton) or less, the test is deemed successful, and a "P" is awarded. If there's no numerical representation or if the letter "X" is present, it signifies that the material either hasn't undergone testing or has failed the evaluation.

One aspect that left me truly astounded is the sheer volume of specialized equipment all of which need to be designed, engineered, produced, shipped, personnel trained solely to facilitate these tests. It's nothing short of mind-blowing! While I've delved into how each device operates on YouTube, I'll spare you the details to avoid any unnecessary boredom.

And clearly there are way too many questions on why each rating has different scales? Why the more superior rating is not “1” or “A”. Would’t it be better to see a cluster of 1s and As to communicate (in however flawed way that already is) the better glove to the customer? The juxtaposition of digits and letters is confusing—why not settle for one or the other?

Consider a scenario on Amazon where, instead of the familiar star ratings for price, value, quality, and customer satisfaction, you're presented with something akin to “V34XnY”.

If you are still reading this, then you must be as weird as me. Because we now have another pictogram to decipher. Let’s talk about safety gloves tested against thermal risks, shall we? It’ll be quick.

The European standard DIN EN 407 lays down the essential requirements and specific testing methods for safety gloves in addressing thermal risks such as flames, heat, or molten metal splashes. Originally updated in 2004, you might encounter the notation EN 407:2014 at times. The standard encompasses six tests, each graded from 1 to 4, with "4" signifying the highest rating. An "X" denotes that the glove hasn't undergone a particular test.

A quick look at our glove reveals that it has undergone only one test, specifically the Resistance to Contact Heat, earning the lowest score represented by the number "1". The multiple "Xs" indicate that the glove has not been subjected to the remaining tests. In this scenario, the entire symbol appears somewhat redundant, offering limited insight. Essentially, it conveys that the glove is somewhat below average in shielding against intense heat, and not much more. But what are the tests anyway?

Resistance to Flammability. The glove undergoes a 15-second test with a gas flame. Once the flame extinguishes, a timer starts to measure how long the glove would burn. A shorter duration indicates a higher protection value.

Resistance to Contact Heat. The glove is positioned on a device generating heat between 100° to 500° Celsius. The test measures how rapidly the temperature inside the glove increases by 10° C. A longer duration signifies a higher protection value.

Resistance to Convective Heat. The glove undergoes testing with a gas flame, measuring the time it takes for the temperature inside the glove to rise by 24° C. A longer duration translates to a higher protection value.

Resistance to Radiant Heat. The glove undergoes testing in front of a heat source, measuring the time it takes for the heat to penetrate the material. A longer duration indicates a higher protection value.

Resistance to Small Splashes of Molten Metal. The glove is inserted into a device where molten metal drips onto it. The count of drops required to raise the temperature inside the glove by 40° C is tallied. A higher count translates to a higher score.

Resistance to Large Splashes of Molten Metal. Molten metal is poured onto the glove, and the total weight of metal (in grams) required to damage a patch of simulated skin inside the glove is measured. A higher quantity of metal needed results in a higher score.

For some reason, the consistent ratings from 1 to 4 in this test, without the use of letters, bring me immense joy!

Now, onto the final two symbols for dessert:

1. The initial symbol, "CE," indicates that products available in the EEA (European Economic Area) have undergone assessment to meet stringent safety, health, and environmental protection standards.

2. The second symbol signifies "consult instructions for use," as though everything we've covered thus far isn't quite exhaustive.

If, millions of years from now, aliens stumble upon our planet and discover one of these gloves buried in the ruins of my home in Brooklyn, I hope they can use this blog post as a "Rosetta Stone" to decipher the symbols and unravel the messages we, as humans, were communicating with each other.

In my experience, the individuals who can effortlessly comprehend the significance of every pictogram and associated number are usually the manufacturers themselves, not necessarily the end customer. Otherwise, there wouldn't be numerous YouTube videos where individuals painstakingly explain each symbol on various protective gear. I am all up for standardization and regulation, especially in matters of safety, it's evident that this process needs to harmonize with designers who can contribute to making this information more comprehensible for everyone involved.

The concealment of important messages behind numbers and codes resonates with the error states I frequently encounter when using digital products, ranging from Zoom to Illustrator to trying to add a lightbulb that I can control with my iPhone.

In other words, if you enjoyed this article, feel free to rate its informativeness on a scale of 1 to 17, with 17 being the highest rating. Gauge its ease of understanding on a scale from A to K, where J is the superior rating—because why not? Lastly, evaluate its engagement level with an "E" if it was engaging, an "X" if you prefer to abstain from testing its engagement, and a "P" if your current craving leans toward pizza.

The story begins with a person who noticed one of these houses in Illinois in the early 80s. They became obsessed with it and eventually bought the exact house in the 90s, placing it in their backyard. The name for this peculiar-looking house is "Futuro house." At this point, I had to Google it to see what this house actually looked like.

This is where I thought I had seen this thing. I instantly had a clear memory of seeing a UFO-looking house back in Estonia in the 90s when I was a kid. I even remember my dad taking a photo of me in it. But then I thought, this cannot be that exact design. Perhaps someone built another UFO-looking shack in the middle of Estonia just for fun. I quickly Googled "Futuro house Estonia" and to my surprise, I found images of it! And yes, it is that exact design. I texted my mom and asked if we have a photo of it somewhere.

There was another way to test my theory. In the late 90s, I came across a music video by Jimi Tenor, a Finnish music producer known for releasing albums on UK-based Warp records. In 1999, he released a track called "The Year of the Apocalypse." As a kid, I remember watching the video on TV and being astonished to see that it was filmed in my own neighborhood, Lasnamäe, a grey suburban area in Tallinn. I could actually see my own house in the video, and I couldn't believe it.

The two men hanging around my house in Lasnamäe was only half of the video. The other half featured Jimi Tenor arriving in a UFO that looked exactly like the Futuro house I remember seeing as a child somewhere in Estonia. He walks out of it wearing a crown, and then everybody starts dancing around the yellow flying saucer.

At this stage, I had no doubt that I was looking at one of the original Futuro houses that I had seen as a kid in the 90s. And now, here I am, reading about it 30 years later in a design book in New York.

The house itself has an interesting story. It was originally built as a vacation house for a friend by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. He never intended to mass produce them. However, a Finnish company called Polykem saw the potential of Futuro houses and started manufacturing them in 1968. Leonard Fruchter, a Philadelphia developer, obtained the American licensing rights and began marketing them in the US the following year. The houses started gaining attention, with an article in the New York Times on the day of the first moon landing announcing the arrival of the Futuro in America.

The person mentioned by Phil Patton in his book, who saw a Futuro house in Illinois and ended up buying it, became obsessed with them and started a website futuro-house.net (last updated in 2005). The website aimed to track all Futuro houses around the world. According to the website's estimates, there are approximately 60 Futuro houses in various conditions worldwide. Surprisingly, the highest number of Futuro houses were found in New Zealand. The country is home to a dozen of them. There’s a great article on Designboom titled “Extremely rare 1960's futuro UFO house hits the market in New Zealand” that has more photos of the house.

Interestingly, the Futuro house was a genuine attempt at pre-fabricated housing. It was made of polyester plastic and fiberglass, and in the US, it was sold for $12,000 - $14,000. It was one of many experimental plastic houses of that time. When purchased, it came in 16 pieces and could easily be disassembled and transported in one truck.

Besides Futuro, a futuristic UFO house, Matti Suuronen designed another prefabricated house in 1971 called Venturo. It was the last building in the Casa Finlandia series made of fiberglass-reinforced polyester plastic. Originally intended as a weekend house or bungalow, Venturo was also conveniently repurposed as banks, kiosks, cafés, filling stations, and more.

It is fascinating to observe the emergence of designs from the 60s and 70s for prefabricated houses and compare them to what we see today. One example is the designs coming from AirBnB's Samara project.

This morning, I awoke to a text from my mom containing a photo from our family album. In this particular snapshot, my brother and I are captured inside the iconic Futuro house in Pärnu, Estonia, dating back to 1997. Amusingly enough, we are both sporting matching shirts in the picture.

I guess thanks for the “Flashback” Phil Patton. Both the article and the memory.