April 2024
Last updated: May 1, 2024
Categories: updates
My last few Aprils have had the same two important events: the quizbowl national championship—run by ACF—and the design production cycle for Sine Theta’s second quarter issue. This was an April of a few firsts and a few lasts: my first Sine Theta issue as the art director (and therefore also my last as an individual print designer), my last year being on the board of ACF (hopefully I will actually commit to this—quizbowlers love to say they will stop doing some quizbowl activity and then go back on that), and my first work trip to Los Angeles.
I visited LA last year to do some user research, but it was a mostly solo trip, whereas this time I was able to meet and work with some of my teammates. It was fulfilling and delightful and I was so tired by the end of it all that I slept for 14 hours straight after it was over.
The weather’s been getting better. Like taxes and email, this is a topic I found horribly boring as a child, but now that I’m 23, I find myself wanting advice on how to do my taxes, commiseration on the difficulty of managing an inbox, and please, for the love of God, sunnier, more moderate weather. I went on a walk through Wave Hill, which was gorgeous, and enjoyed the colorful bursts of tulips in Madison Square Garden at a mahjong party. I’m excited to start buying herbs for my balcony again.
I also caught up with a few friends, battled my dislike of crowds to swap zines with someone at the Barnard Feminist Zinefest, battled it again to attend my first NY Art Book Fair, and discovered during a 4-hour wandering through Central Park that I continue to be directionally challenged.
What I read
Paul Ford’s 38,000-word interactive essay “What Is Code?” is proof of the Internet’s potential to be a multimedia wonder of communication and storytelling. This essay could not be done justice in print. It’s richly narrative, filled with the sort of niche hobby drama that I love, and written by someone who is clearly a programmer, knows a lot of programmers, and is really, really passionate about programming. I’d love to read a “What Is Design?” essay in a similar vein, instead of Medium article “What is design thinking?” #19324. (I know, I know—be the change you wish to see.)
Chia Amisola’s digital essay “Domain Naming” is fantastic, thoughtful, and great eye candy. Chia’s work as an Internet artist and designer is overall something I’ve really enjoyed. Their essays are unabashedly online and unafraid to describe the ways the digital world has shaped their life, which I find comforting in a society where many people believe the Internet is a terrible “sad machine” and we should all just log off forever. I could certainly stand to log off more. I don’t want to log off forever. The spaces I’ve carved out online and the relationships I’ve built here are a cardinal part of who I am. I live here as much as I live in New York.
At 127 pages, the InVision Design Engineering Handbook is a short, accessible read on the profession of design engineers. I read it mostly because I am interested in coding more, although I’m not interested in it comprising the majority of my job and so would probably not be a design engineer myself. It’s an illuminating read and I liked how seriously and thoughtfully it discusses the overlap (not gap!) between design and engineering.