Jony's obsessive caring
I'm in New York this week. 23 degrees outside, but the city still runs hot. You feel it on the sidewalks—everyone moving with somewhere to be, something to finish, someone to meet. It's always contagious.
Anyway, I've got 11 articles for you this week, including:
- Notes on Jony Ive’s obsession over invisible details
- A new AIGA NY identity reaffirming and strenghtening its place at the center of creative community
- How AI is slowly killing regional tech hubs and communities
- And more...
Most Interesting
AIGA NY unveils new identity
The largest chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts has launched a new identity and strategy designed to strengthen its role as a civic space for design and reaffirm its place at the centre of New York's creative community.
Design + Development
10 usability heuristics & AI principles
Ten usability heuristics for interaction design based on research by the legend, Jakob Nielsen.
Notes from an interview with Jony Ive
Jony Ive on the invisible details that signal care—like finishing the inside of a drawer no one sees or obsessing over cable packaging so someone unwrapping it thinks "wow, somebody gave a shit about me."
A cruel reminder for all designers
Most designers land on the same solutions because we're all working from the same playbook and the same approval chains. Real shift can only happen when you go deep instead of wide, learn how money actually moves through a business, and stop chasing the metrics.
Using CSS to fix the irradiation illusion
White text on black looks thicker than black on white at the same weight. That's the irradiation illusion at work. Variable fonts have a GRAD axis that lets you shift perceived weight without changing the actual glyph size, so you can dial in dark mode without breaking your layout. Useful if you're shipping across themes.
Tech + Innovation
For $15, ProperPrompts hands you a ready-made image prompt library, including 15 lighting setups, 11 lenses, 17 camera angles, and more. Copy-paste them straight into Midjourney instead of spinning your wheels for hours.
Local tech scenes have changed
A contrarian take on how AI has gutted the competitive advantages that made regional tech hubs viable in the 2010s. It walks through the mechanics: higher opportunity costs for staying local, solo-founder economics replacing team formation, and status games that no longer reward ecosystem building.
Turn your thoughts into text instantly. Private, offline, and punctuation-perfect. The dictation tool macOS should have had.
Work + Mindset
A breakdown of how AI and shifting incentives are killing the apprenticeship model in tech, and why that's creating a gap most people aren't preparing for.
A reflection on how modern replacement cycles are eroding our connection to durable, permanent objects. The piece argues we're losing more than craftsmanship; we're losing the relationship between people and the things they own.
Estimating AI productivity gains
Anthropic breaks down research from 100,000 real Claude conversations to estimate AI's impact on US productivity. The team found current models could add 1.8% annual productivity growth, roughly double recent rates. They also mapped which occupations and task types see the biggest gains from AI assistance.
