5 things users never notice (but feel)
Music is a huge part of my daily life, both personally and professionally. This week I was reminded of a Spotify playlist I haven't heard in a while. It's Japanese Lofi and it's been the calming creative kick in the pants I needed this week.
I also just found a new YouTube channel called Yellow Cherry Jam, a "no AI lofi music" channel. The vibes are great, both audio and visual. Highly recommend this channel if you like your lofi more human.
In today's newsletter, I've got 9 articles for you, including:
- Designers and developers finally share the same workspace.
- AI interviews that actually listen to your answers and adapt.
- Invisible details that separate good design from great.
- And more...
Most Interesting
The hardest working font in Manhattan
Gorton is on every block in Manhattan: elevators, subways, ambulances, building plaques. Taylor, Taylor & Hobson built machines in 1894 to carve it for lens markings when no engraving solution existed. Since then, it's been the city's most common typeface for over a century.
Design + Development
ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering
Most ASCII renderers treat characters as uniform pixels and get blurry edges. This piece uses six sampling circles in a staggered grid to measure character shape as a 6D vector. The tradeoff: more math per character, but sharper boundaries without adding more rows or columns.
Small design decisions stack up into polish even when users never notice them. This is a collection of some of the best on the web.
Skills.sh is a directory of installable capabilities for AI agents. You add them with a single npm command and they work across different platforms.
Tech + Innovation
Pencil let's you design on canvas and land in code
Pencil is a Mac app that embeds a design canvas in Cursor or other IDE. Design files live in the repo next to code. This has incredible promise.
Apple Developing AirTag-Sized AI Pin With Dual Cameras
Apple's building an AirTag-sized pin with dual cameras and three mics. The hardware can run standalone but they haven't decided whether to sell it separately or bundle it with their rumored smart glasses.
The design team landed on gradients as Gemini's core visual language. They chose flowing color over static objects to show when the AI is thinking or pulling context together. This is a fantastic read/case study.
Work + Mindset
Junior Developers in the Age of AI
Companies are ditching junior engineers en masse. They'll tell you it's because AI writes better code. They're right...but also missing the point.
is an AI-powered career toolkit for UX/UI and Product Designers. It runs adaptive interviews that follow up on your answers instead of asking fixed questions. Designers practice explaining case studies and decisions, then get feedback on structure and clarity, not just portfolio polish.
