March 2015

The Billionaire’s Typewriter

Matthew Butterick’s scrutiny of Medium reveals it to be “a form of hu­man frack­ing”:

In “Death to Type­writ­ers,” Medium in­sists that the type­writer is its “sworn enemy.” In cer­tain ty­po­graphic de­tails, maybe so. But as a de­vice that im­poses ho­mo­ge­neous de­sign, Medium still has a lot in com­mon with the typewriter.

In fact, its ethics are ac­tu­ally worse than the tra­di­tional type­writer. Why? Be­cause Medium’s ho­mo­ge­neous de­sign has noth­ing to do with lim­i­ta­tions of the un­der­ly­ing tech­nol­ogy (in this case, the web)… it’s a de­lib­er­ate choice that lets Medium ex­tract value from the tal­ent and la­bor of others.

Convenience always has a cost.

Jake Archibald: Building SVGO’s Missing GUI

SVGOMG is a wonderful example of how to build a web app in a responsible and accessible way. I asked its creator, Jake Archibald, a few questions about how he designed and developed this native-feeling SVG optimisation app.

Briefly Berlin

Before going freelance, I decided to take some time off during February. Part of this included spending a few days in Berlin.