Have you tried all the Zoom backgrounds? Have you opened TikTok yet? Are you baking bread? Are you working out?
Maybe you’re just surviving while eating in front of your computer (perhaps now, on a plate, it’s something). You no longer go to meetings, they come to you via Hangouts. Everything changes and everything remains: strange.
The universe is reborn, spring has arrived, and so has summer time. The swifts have returned. One out of every 16 days is hot. These are strange days, but not that strange: like this post: hopefully we’ll bring a little sunshine to your home.
Managing Uncertainty
It’s something we’re used to. We lived through the expansion of the internet, the dot-com crash, the 2003 crash, the 2008 crash. We learned Flash and forgot it. HTML in tables and forgot it. Fireworks. Mad Men? Million-dollar budgets? What are those?
“Live in each season as it passes; Breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
Thoreau | Walden
We’ve said hello to Netflix and HBO. To social media, online marketing, Google, AdWords. Hello to Sketch, Adobe Cloud, Figma, InVision… Hello to generative brands, fast brands, startups, video conferencing, Slack, remote work, libraries, free and paid resources. We’ll adapt to everything that’s happening today.
Just as meetings are moving into our living rooms, so is inspiration. Narrative, branding, or pure fantasy. Reading, community, reflection. A project in itself or part of a larger whole. We hope they’re bubbles for your brain; fingers crossed.
Love letters in newsletter format
UI From Mars
A newsgroup, a community, courses, a blog. Only quality content: relatable, to the point.
Behind it all is… Cris Busquets, All the praise is well-deserved. If you want to lend a hand and have access to pro content, Patreon.
Dense Discovery
Design miscellany. Tools, resources, references, interviews… Food for thought.Kai Brach , editor of Offscreen Mag (technology and humans).
Honos
“A personal reflection on design, culture, and philosophy.” A selection of resources on strategy, branding, typography…of Máximo Gavete, Brand experience designer at Soluble Studio and mentor at UXer School.
ITramontana Institute | Interaction Channel
“The concepts, ideas, frameworks of understanding, and codes with which we design the artifacts that mediate our human relationships.” She writes Javier Cañada, Director of the Tramontana Institute, formerly behind the Vostok Program. Essential (and, an anomaly, not free).
Flecha
A fantasy of Carmen Pacheco, vVariation and growth of the summer experiment Ola “A magic letter I send to your mailbox every other Saturday, with recommendations, texts, and treasures I don’t share anywhere else.” It wasn’t all about design.
Pulling the thread on Twitter: miscellaneous
Iván Leal She talks about storytelling, UX writing, and design. Her entire timeline is fantastic. Don’t miss her articles on Narrative UX Crew, Intelligent analyses in perfect balance between theoretical and mundane about how humans communicate with the world.
Pedro Torrijos rEvery Thursday, he shares a long thread about unimaginable yet real territories. Micro-histories of improbable architecture. Stories in themselves, pure enjoyment, grouped under #LaBrasaTorrijos. Plus #LaBrasaLite, a short-format spin-off, perfect for those post-lunch conversations on our Sundays in lockdown.
Pablo Stanley just launched Blush Design, A customizable illustration repository that… sit down because it’s going to make you dizzy. Relevant, useful, carefully curated, coral, royalty-free. Incredible. Her previous project, the library Open Peeps, I already suspected all this was coming. The Design Team, Reflections on design and design in comic book format.
César Astudillo He talks about narrative, design, technology, the future. A bit of psychology. Maybe philosophy too. Or sociology. Indescribable, really. All at a brisk pace, pay attention to his very intelligent trucos de discurso.
Rocío Quillahuaman, The counterpoint. Not for all audiences. She illustrates and produces videos, short pieces, and micro-format content. Brutally honest. Pure acidity.
Bonus track
En instagram, Mónica F.-Aceytuno It speaks of nature and the everyday. Beautiful images and lovely words. If swifts also make you shudder, this is the person for you. She’s written a bestseller dictionary, by the way.
In the App Store and Google Play, Crímenes Ilustrados,
A project by Modesto García and Javi de Castro. The 21st-century Clue game has moved from Twitter and Instagram to an app. The stories and illustrations are simply fantastic. If you enjoy solving mysteries, you’ll have a great time.
And that’s all for this ray of sunshine in apocalyptic times. I hope you enjoyed it.
Back to the real world
If you’re looking to illuminate a brand or are working on an identity, if you want to communicate in unexpected formats, if you need to make a corporate video or work on your strategic marketing… In Salago we’re just a hop, skip, tell us.
