The Unraveling of Space-Time | Quanta Magazine
This special in-depth edition of Quanta is fascinating and very nicely put together.
Link tags: scale
56
Should this be a map or 500 maps? - by Elan Ullendorff
This is kind of about art direction and kind of about design systems.
There is beauty in trying to express something specific; there is beauty too in finding compromises to create something epic and collective.
My only concern is whether we are considering the question at all.
Web Development Is Getting Too Complex, And It May Be Our Fault — Smashing Magazine
The idea of needing a framework for everything has been massively oversold.
Premature optimisation is the root of all evil:
Trying to imitate their mega stacks is pointless. Some might argue that it’s a sacrifice we have to make for future scalability and maintenance, but we should focus first on building great sites for the user without worrying about features users might need in the future. If what we are building is worth pursuing, it will reach the point where we need those giant architectures in good time. Cross that bridge when we get there.
Vanilla JS doesn’t scale | Go Make Things
Every word of this is spot on!
I’m also very grateful to Chris for taking the time and energy to write this — a perfect example of Brandolini’s law in action.
Against Scale
Claire L. Evans has written a beautiful piece on the difference between growth and scalability:
Life is nonhierarchical, and it shirks top-down control. But scalability relies on hierarchy, on the isolation of elements stripped of history and context. It is predicated on the assumption that nature is little more than a raw material to be processed and commodified until it is spent. This is, of course, unsustainable — at any scale.
What I Want From The Internet - Christopher Butler
You can, today, still go back to the can-to-can structure that a personal website, an RSS feed, and a browser provide. It’s not perfect. It leaves an enormous amount of signal unheard. It requires more work to find things, and to be found.
But you can do it. And I hope you do, in some way.
“Craft at scale” is a white whale | Adam Stoddard
If you look at the available evidence, “craft at scale” is mutually exclusive with the kind of rapid and unending growth that’s the baseline expectation for traditional startups and public tech companies.
We’d say that’s obvious in other industries. Budweiser isn’t craft beer. IKEA isn’t heirloom-quality furniture. But we tend to treat software as immune to the typical relationship between quality and quantity.
Craft vs Industry: Separating Concerns by Thomas Michael Semmler: CSS Developer, Designer & Developer from Vienna, Austria
Call me Cassandra:
The way that industry incorporates design systems is basically a misappropriation, or abuse at worst. It is not just me who is seeing the problem with ongoing industrialization in design. Even Brad Frost, the inventor of atomic design, is expressing similar concerns. In the words of Jeremy Keith:
[…] Design systems take their place in a long history of dehumanising approaches to manufacturing like Taylorism. The priorities of “scientific management” are the same as those of design systems—increasing efficiency and enforcing consistency.
So no. It is not just you. We all feel it. This quote is from 2020, by the way. What was then a prediction has since become a reality.
This grim assessment is well worth a read. It rings very true.
What could have become Design Systemics, in which we applied systems theory, cybernetics, and constructivism to the process and practice of design, is now instead being reduced to component libraries. As a designer, I find this utter nonsense. Everyone who has even just witnessed a design process in action knows that the deliverable is merely a documenting artifact of the process and does not constitute it at all. But for companies, the “output” is all that matters, because it can be measured; it appeals to the industrialized process because it scales. Once a component is designed, it can be reused, configured, and composed to produce “free” iterations without having to consult a designer. The cost was reduced while the output was maximized. Goal achieved!
Designing a Utopian layout grid: Working with fluid responsive values in a static design tool. | Utopia
James describes his process for designing fluid grid layouts, which very much involves working with the grain of the web but against the grain of our design tools:
In 2022 our design tools are still based around fixed-size artboards, while we’re trying to design products which scale gracefully to suit any screen.
ongoing by Tim Bray · Bye, Twitter
I don’t like making unpaid contributions to a for-profit publisher whose proprietor is an alt-right troll.
Same.
I can see no good arguments for redirecting my voice into anyone else’s for-profit venture-funded algorithm-driven engagement-maximizing wet dream.
Fediverse
Despite growing pains and potential problems, I think this could be one of the most interesting movements on the web in recent years. Let’s see where it goes.
I’m getting the same vibe as Bastian about Mastodon:
Suddenly there was this old Twitter vibe. Real conversations. Real people. Interesting content. A feeling of a warm welcoming group. No algorithm to mess around with our timelines. No troll army to destory every tiny bit of peace. Yes, Mastodon is rough around the edges. Many parts are not intuitive. But this roughness somehow added to the positive experience for me.
This could really work!
Happiness Is Two Scales
The common way to talk about happiness is as a single scale: unhappy at one end, neutral in the middle, happy at the other end.
I think that model is wrong.
Instead, happiness and unhappiness are two separate, independent scales.
Fluid Type Scale - Generate responsive font-size variables
This is kind of a Utopia lite: pop in your minimum and maximum font sizes along with a modular scale and it spits out some custom properties for clamp() declarations.
Utopia - an introduction - YouTube
James and Trys have made this terrific explanatory video about Utopia. They pack a lot into less than twenty minutes but it’s all very clearly and methodically explained.
Applying pace layers to career paths | Clagnut by Richard Rutter
Yes, I’m a sucker for pace layers, but I think Rich is onto something here, mapping a profession onto a pace layer diagram.
Which color scale to use when visualizing data - Datawrapper Blog
A fascinating four-part series by Lisa Charlotte Muth on colour in data visualisations:
Design and long-term thinking
I like this mashup of two diagrams: Stewart Brand’s pace layers and Stephanie DiRusso’s typology of design thinking.
A/A Testing: How I increased conversions 300% by doing absolutely nothing
An oldie but a goodie. If you think you’re getting statistically significant results from A/B testing, you should probably consider doing some A/A testing.
In an A/A test, you run a test using the exact same options for both “variants” in your test.
Cultivating a sense of the galactic centre (Interconnected)
I love the idea of cultivating a sixth sense for the location of Sagittarius A.
(I bet Matt would get a kick out of Charlotte’s magnet fingers too.)
Quantum to Cosmos
Well, this is rather wonderful! It’s like an interactive version of the Eames’s Powers Of Ten.