Why We Crave Software With Style Over “Branding”

For this reason, websites like Craigslist and Are.na strike a chord: Their analog internet style and chunky buttons feel daring and intriguing in this modern context. Compared to the blasé, blue-branded modern tools we all spend so much of our time using today — and that contribute to that uniform sameness described earlier — these tools feel decid... See more

And yet, in so much modern software today, you’re placed in a drab gray cubicle — anonymized and aggregated until you’re just a daily active user. For minimalism. For simplicity. For scale! But if our hope is to create software with feeling, it means inviting people in to craft it for themselves — to mold it to the contours of their unique lives an

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