tldr #005
w/c 20210524
Literally the best thing you’ll read this fortnight. But you’re back again, so you definitely knew that. Har. Har. Har. No but seriously. We’ve got something else to tell you…
We went through all our belongings, and found some things you might find useful. So we’re holding a garage sale. Okay, not quite.
What we’re really doing is putting some of our best, most expensive thoughts behind a pay wall for our biggest fans. This week we’re sharing our literal Figma files. You can snoop ‘em, sniff ‘em and bite ‘em by pressing The Files™ button. Sound like a dream? It’s cause it is. If LAM had a love language it would be Acts of Service. And we’re here, just acting in service of youuuuuuu. Click the button, get the things!
#graphic-design-is-my-passion
So, you’ve got The Files™, makes sense that we kick things off with a little #graphic-design-is-my-passion.
Boom. This is a really great read on optical sizing for dark mode. Something that one of our designers, Joe knows all about. He’s been trend watching.
D&AD happened at the end of May so there was plenty to sift through in Ecommerce and Digital Design. Lāne saw something cool in this Tim Flower portfolio site. This whole grid thing seems to be a bit of a vibe rn.
We were in a pretty Font-y mood this week, really digging ABC Gravity by Dinamo. Shit’s hot. We’re also feeling Crown Affair by Grilli Type.
Oh, and Fluff’s on SiteInspire. Flex.
#code-city
It all started with Derg and Lāne creating a shopping list (we’re updating our web templates, and we want the fanciest codes 💅).
Suggested fanciness includes this package for CSS media queries in React. No one was quite sure of what that was until we clicked on this link Lāne shared. Now we’re wondering if the devs are just making it up as they go?? Christian (still not sure who this is) shared a thread from Twitter, which seemingly cracks Twitter’s particularly complicated code.
Chad (also not sure who this is) showed us how to sell online without a website. Which basically removes the need for this entire channel. Thanks, Chad.
Finally, Adnaan found a bunch of fake Pokemon.
#vibe
Last tl;dr we left you with a bunch of questions, none more pressing than “will they keep the Fri-yay thing going while Flynn’s in NT?" Well...
Now that you’ve contended with another awful in-joke, let’s give you some real service, call it a vibe check. This week has been all about farshun. Seriously. Coming in hot, Comme des Garçons are getting into chest hair, albeit with a twist.
Hypebeast Joey Fraq has been keeping up with Paris Fashion Week, he’s into the Ricky backpacks, but thinks the proverbial boat could be pushed out further, Lāne had some ideas for how.
We’ve got some big bets for what’s really gonna pop-off over the next 12 months. We’re so confident in them in fact that we were thinking of putting them behind a pay-wall along with this gem.
Our intuitions:
Dr Martens are out, Hush Puppies are back, darl
Scene kids will return, but for one month only – galaxy Black Milk leggings will be here till next winter
Nothing says red flag like Ye Olde Pilgrim stompers - do with that information what you will
What the mullet is today, the David Beckham, circa 2001 mohawk will be in 2023.
Get on it. You’re welcome.
#processes-and-platforms
Adnaan asked about whether or not we’d ever used Crazy 8’s this week. We did, some years ago, working with Polaroid. And while we definitely took the sprinting ethos (and some amount of the methodology) with us, we left the exercise itself behind. While the decision wasn’t a conscious one, we think the reasons were, in no particular order:
1. technology, 2. accountability, 3. philosophy.
While part of the idea of Crazy 8’s is to get away from the screen (folding bits of paper and using markers), it was also built in a time where the best prototyping tool was Keynote or like, Google Slides(?) We used to do it on a whiteboard (we used to do everything on a whiteboard). But this was back in a time when people used to work out of the same room. This was pre Figma, or Miro, or Sketch living on the cloud. While understandably part of the idea is to create friction so that you don’t lean on old tricks or tired thinking, we think that part of it was actually the inverse; cramming 5–15 people around a single laptop and trying to make shit in Keynote created far too much friction. We know, we tried it a number of times. Now, everyone working on a single doc in Figma is easy, intuitive, and just makes way more sense. (Plug 4: to download our Figma files, which have all of our tricks and resources and best practices already baked in to them, go here.)
While it’s not like, hard scientific data, the output of a Crazy 8’s exercise often left us feeling like we’d done some shit, even if we hadn’t. There are plenty of articles and Ted talks about why you shouldn’t share your goals too early, and the psychology is probably roughly the same here; sharing an outcome and talking about how great the ideas are gives you the rush of dopamine and endorphins that satiate those involved. The prototype is so far from the actual outcome that it kinda gets a pass at being impressive/good in theory, without having to meet real-world problems in practice. So while you can have some great ideas, they just sorta stay as great ideas.
The stated goal is: “… to push beyond your first idea, frequently the least innovative, and to generate a wide variety of solutions to your challenge.” And we don’t agree with this idea on a pretty fundamental level.
Your first idea might not be innovative, but it is intuitive. And that should be a lot more valuable than it currently is in our circles. If it’s intuitive to you and your team, there’s a good chance it’s intuitive to the client, and also their audience. And if we’re looking to communicate effectively, we need to have empathy for intuitions, such that we can either exploit them (to deliver a deeper, bigger or more complex message in a shorter time or smaller space), or subvert them (to create something unexpected that draws attention by catching people off guard).
Our working hypothesis is the large amount of not-going-with-your-first-ideaism that happens in our industry is more a function of individual creatives wanting to feel like they’re different or special or original. It positions the creative’s contemporary as the target audience, not the end user. And that often requires references or rationalisations that are oblique, niche, and very much not available to your average punter. Not to mention the fact that it gets everyone thinking in first principles all the time, which is exhausting and often impractical.
As such, we believe that it’s better to run with your intuitions (or first ideas), look for ways to disprove them (before you get attached to them) and then spend as much time as you can looking for new and original ways to craft and augment them. This isn’t a golden rule; there are times when first-principles thinking is vital and changes the world. But it obviously doesn’t happen all that often, and also doesn’t need to. That’d be exhausting.
Oh also, Slack allows you to forward emails. https://slack.com/intl/en-nz/slack-tips/send-email-to-slack.
tl;dr
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