3D Typography Building Letters as Objects
Good 3D typography comes from treating letters as physical objects. Chrome letters reflect their environment. Glass letters refract light. Concrete letters absorb illumination. The material matters. The lighting matters. The edge detail matters.
Grunge Design Returns Distressed and Deliberate
Torn edges, scratched surfaces, typography that looks photocopied fifty times. The aesthetic came from 1990s Seattle music posters – Nirvana, Pearl Jam, underground clubs where lo-fi wasn’t a choice but necessity. Cheap photocopiers, limited budgets, DIY production.
Nagai Hiroshi and The Infinite Reproduction of Nothing
In his Tokyo studio, Hiroshi Nagai still uses an airbrush. He applies blue acrylic to canvas, adds white mist from the horizon upward, layers more blue on top. The process takes hours for a single sky. No Photoshop gradient tools. No AI prompt. Just compressed air, paint, and a hand that learned this technique in 1975.
The Technical Craft Behind Hyper-Bloom
A rose the size of a building. Petals that blur into clouds. Meadows that stretch into infinity with depth that shouldn’t exist in a photograph. Colours so soft they feel airbrushed but so saturated they glow.
How Gradients Got Rough
Instagram’s logo is a rainbow. Spotify Wrapped bleeds colour across the screen. Apple’s marketing materials glow with soft pastels. Open any design portfolio in 2025 and you’ll see gradients everywhere – but they don’t look like the gradients from 2015, or 2005, or 1995.
Ivy League or Open University: Adobe vs. Canva and the Battle for Design’s Soul
A designer’s meditation on prestige, access, and what we lose when everyone gets a seat at the table
Which Type of Designer Are You?
Understanding the seven designer personalities—and why finding your archetype could transform your career
The Aesthetics of Eye Candy: An Abstract Meditation on Beauty in Graphic Design
The term “eye candy” carries with it a dismissive connotation, as if visual pleasure were somehow frivolous, a sugary indulgence divorced from serious function. Yet this dichotomy between aesthetics and utility represents one of design’s most persistent and damaging myths.
The Evolution of the GIF
The “Graphics Interchange Format” was created by Steve Wilhite at CompuServe. In an era where every byte mattered, the GIF format was a way to display colorful images when dial up modem speeds struggled to hit 2,400 bytes per second.
David vs. Goliath: Small Studios vs. Design Giants
Design is full of its own “giants” with endless financial resources, creative teams that number like Roman legions and a who’s who of clientele. For the small studio owner these giants can feel just as intimidating as Goliath must have seemed to young David.