Un Swissroll

“Friendship, has always depended on a certain irrational generosity. A willingness to waste time together magnificently. To listen to the same anxiety for the fifth time. To sit through silence. To remain available without agenda. And perhaps this is why adult friendship feels increasingly radical. It resists the transactional logic modern life rewards everywhere else. …

Currently enjoying The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a book that poetically defines emotions that we all feel but haven’t had the words to express—until now.

“For years now, I’ve just been bored, bored, bored, with evil,”… “It’s just not interesting.” “Evil wears a top hat and it has tap shoes and a cape and it’s on stage and it’s hollerin’. And goodness is always backstage, sort of waving, but [evil] takes up all the energy because it is nothing.” – …

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” “Hope is not wishful thinking. It’s the dogged determination to do what is in our power to make the better …

Loving these Eclipse Viewers from 1932

You have felt it. Entering a grand cathedral, a skyscraper lobby, or a cavernous train station. A sudden sense of awe, of smallness, of being dwarfed by something larger than yourself. Entering a different building: a small library, a cozy café, a well-proportioned home. A sense of calm, of protection, of being held. The feeling …

It is a small oversight. It happens in homes ranging from sprawling suburban estates to compact city apartments. The window treatment is chosen, and it is lovely. The fabric is beautiful, the color is perfect, and the craftsmanship is excellent. And yet, the room feels somehow off. The mistake is not in the fabric or the …

Designers rely on feedback. It is the primary way they improve their work, validate their decisions, and align with client expectations. But there is a fundamental flaw in this reliance: people say one thing and do another. They will praise a design in a meeting and then scroll past it in real life. They will …

There was a time when serif typefaces were considered the only appropriate choice for serious communication. Books were set in serifs. Newspapers were set in serifs. Formal documents were set in serifs. Sans-serifs were for display, for advertising, for the kind of communication that did not need to be taken seriously. This has changed. Sans-serifs …

An error message is a moment of failure. The user has tried to do something and failed. The system has tried to process something and failed. The interaction has broken down. How you communicate this failure determines whether the user feels helped or blamed, supported or attacked. Most error messages feel like yelling. They are …