Mark Boulton / Reading

  • Fast · Patrick Collison

    Some fascinating examples of things done quickly. The example of Git caught my eye:

    Git. Linus Torvalds started working on Git on April 3 2005. It was self-hosting 4 days later. On April 20 2005, 17 days after work commenced, Linux 2.6.12-rc3 was publicly released with Git.

  • Frank

    Frank's new Frank website is beautiful. Subtle animations and transitions elevate the classic layout. Lovely.

  • BBC Sound Effects

    The BBC release 16,000 sound effects free for non-commercial use in WAV format. I mean, that's amazing, but what I did notice was the great meta data. For example:

    Two false starts, constant run, stop. (2 1/4 h.p. 4-stroke)

  • Paper Sizes

    International paper sizes in a rather fetching website. Unfortunately the aesthetic is somewhat marred by the Carbon ad unit.

  • The State of UX in 2020

    Lots of good stuff in here. I was slightly disappointed to see all of the 'things of year' at the end of the piece were industry self-referencing. How about book of year being from a tangental industry like architecture? If UX could do something next year, it would be to look outwards.

  • Söhne Collection · Klim Type Foundry

    Beautiful specimen for a beautiful typeface.

    Söhne is the memory of Akzidenz-Grotesk framed through the reality of Helvetica. It captures the analogue materiality of “Standard Medium” used in Unimark’s legendary wayfinding system for the NYC Subway.

  • CORE Principle and Marginal Gains

    Excusing the dated production values, and Team Sky's troubles in the past few years, this is the best video i've found of Sir Dave Brailsford's explanantion of his CORE Principle, and Marginal Gains. A lot of which isn't just applicable to elite sport, but to all management.

  • Start a newsletter

    When you have shipped a design system it's amazing how important communications around that system become. Robin has some fascinating insights into how a humble newsletter has increased the reach and engagement of the system at Gusto.

  • How the Financial Times is building mini-brands within the global FT

    Great piece on the FT. One standout for me was the simple calculation they use for defining engagement, which has always been a tricky thing to quantify and track. With this equation, it defines a customer score. Sure, simple enough for the board room but actually it could be a really useful metric.

    The key is something called RFV. That stands for recency, frequency, and volume, a measure of a reader’s habit and loyalty with the FT. More specifically, it’s made up of three variables: time since last visit (recency), number of visits in the last 90 days (frequency), and amount of counted content read in the past 90 days (volume). An algorithm uses those variables to score engagement. “We’ve seen double-digit growth in engaged subscribers for the last three years,” the company says.

  • Recursive Sans

    An amazing variable typeface under development. Not just a typeface, but a 'typographic palette for vibrant code & UI'. Another specimen that tells the features and benefits of the font through interactive and instructional design patterns. Continually inviting the user to get their hands on the typeface, rather than passively observing.

  • The Secret of Walt Disney's Creativity

    This is a great piece on Disney. What started off as traits of Walt, can be turned into three critical roles in creative business decision making.

    The Dreamer – the visionary who dreamt up ideas for films and business ventures. The Realist – the pragmatic producer who made things happen. The Critic – the eagle-eyed evaluator who refined what the Dreamer and Realist produced.

  • Opinion | Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain. - The New York Times

    Martin Scorsese on Marvel/Franchise films. Sound like modern web design to you?

    And if you’re going to tell me that it’s simply a matter of supply and demand and giving the people what they want, I’m going to disagree. It’s a chicken-and-egg issue. If people are given only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course they’re going to want more of that one kind of thing.

  • 11ty introduction

    An introduction to Eleventy from Jerome Coupe is well worth a read. Also in French.

  • Designing accessible color systems from Stripe

    Good stuff from Stripe on the accessibility of colour in their dashboard.

    With the existing tools we found, it was hard to create a color system that allowed us to pick great colors while ensuring accessibility. We decided to create a new tool that uses perceptual color models to give real-time feedback about accessibility. This enabled us to quickly create a color scheme that met our needs, and gave us something we could iterate on in the future.

  • Dark mode

    Jeremy's detailed walk-through of creating a dark mode stylesheet for his web site.

  • Startup finance pitfalls and how to avoid them

    Excellent presentation from YC Partner and CFO Kirsty Nathoo on the most common mistakes startups make with their finances and how they can prevent them.