the will to have nice things
When you believe the work before you is the single piece that will forever define you, it’s difficult to let it go. The urge for perfection is overwhelming. It’s too much. We are frozen, and sometimes end up convincing ourselves that discarding the entire work is the only way to move forward. The only art the world gets to enjoy is from creators
... See moreCeline Nguyen • Everything I Read in February 2025
Obsess over perfection.
If you are designing something that a customer is going to use or that will represent us in public, it’s not good enough unless it’s flawless and extraordinary.
Especially in software, many situations have winner-take-all dynamics due to network effects and switching costs. Being the winner means being in the
... See moreJoe Lonsdale • Lessons from Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel
We got these phone booths (a K6 from the 1930s, and a KX100 from the 1990s) for the @stripe lobby, as a reminder that there are always two paths in everything we make: something that elevates and makes you smile, or, well, whatever the thing on the right is. https://t.co/OREBUJElp6
There's a freedom to working with people who trust and value design because you do not need to rebrand aesthetics as function or measure their outcome in order to justify them. I think beautiful things are valuable in their own right.
https://t.co/kXNX0YJoeT https://t.co/NRXdZpjvsP
Ben Leonardx.com
I encourage the viewer to slow down, and interact, and don’t worry that we might lose them if the information they think they want isn’t immediately presented. I’ve realised the most successful sites I've made are the ones my children (5+3) enjoy playing with – and believe adults want the same fun interspersed in their day of closing cookie popups... See more
Welcome to New Possibilities
I once sat in a room with a bunch of machine learning folks who were developing creative artificial intelligence to make “good art.” I asked one researcher about the training data. How did they choose to operationalize “good art”? Their reply: they used Netflix data about engagement hours.The problem is that engagement hours are not the same as... See more
A contractor said something during this project which I thought was both compassionate and the sign that he was a skilled professional, and I thought I’d share:
Scene: My mother, who has some mobility challenges, is sketching out what she wants in her kitchen. He listens.
Patrick McKenziex.com