Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

The Subtle Art of the En Dash and Em Dash

2025-03-26

This article clearly explains the difference in usage between en dashes and em dashes, and how to efficiently insert them in Word and Google Docs. The author uses vivid examples to illustrate that en dashes are used for ranges (e.g., time range 7–10pm), while em dashes are used for emphasis, parenthetical asides, or abrupt breaks in speech. The article also compares these two symbols with hyphens and provides several shortcut keys and manual insertion methods to help readers avoid ambiguity caused by improper punctuation.

(www.lighthouseproofreading.co.uk)

Design punctuation

Kylie Minogue's Obscure Techno-Pop Anthem About a Font

2025-03-25

In 1997, pop icon Kylie Minogue teamed up with producer Towa Tei for the surprisingly catchy "GBI (German Bold Italic)", a song uniquely sung from the perspective of a typeface. This wasn't just a song; it was a creative font design experiment. Artist Hiro Sugiyama created the GBI font to accompany the track, included as a data track on Tei's album and available for download. The single and font design, a blend of late-90s techno and pop culture, remain relatively obscure today, but hold a unique place in design and music history, with occasional use by select artists.

(abcdinamo.com)

Design

The Innovation Plateau in Data Visualization: From Golden Age to Stagnation

2025-03-25

This article explores the reasons behind the stagnation of innovation in the field of data visualization. The author looks back at the booming development of data visualization around 2010, with numerous novel interactive charts emerging. However, a decade later, innovation seems to have stalled, with common interactive forms like scrollytelling dominating, leading to visual fatigue. The article argues that mobile-first reading habits, the demand for easily understandable content, and conservative investment strategies during economic downturns have all contributed to this phenomenon. Despite the slowdown in innovation, the author believes this is just a natural phase in the innovation cycle, and new breakthroughs are still to be expected in the future.

(www.shirleywu.studio)

Design

Nostalgic Colored Bar Paper: Web Simulation and History

2025-03-24

This article revisits the colored bar paper popular until the late 1990s, which used colored horizontal bars to aid reading. The author simulates various colors (including green, blue, yellow, and more) of bar paper effects on a webpage and explains how to mimic this style in modern software and web design. The article also touches upon the historical context and the different approaches to simulating this effect in different software and web environments.

(mw.rat.bz)

Design retro style printing paper

Modernist Revival of Reverse Painting

2025-03-23

By the early 1900s, reverse painting, or tinsel painting in its American iteration, had fallen out of favor, considered a feminine craft and outdated. However, starting in the 1910s, artists like Marsden Hartley and Rebecca Salsbury James revitalized the technique, expanding on traditional themes and exploring new color palettes, lines, and spatial approaches, giving a modernist twist to this old craft. This coincided with similar work by Janoszanka in Poland, showcasing the power of artistic innovation to reinterpret traditional techniques.

(publicdomainreview.org)

Design reverse painting modernism art history

Krita Region Exporter Plugin: Easily Export Canvas Regions

2025-03-22

This Krita plugin lets you export any region of your canvas, with optional resizing. Installation: Place the `region_exporter` folder in your Krita resources folder's `pykrita` subfolder. Place `region_exporter.desktop` in the root of your Krita resources folder and `region_exporter.action` in the `actions` subfolder. Usage: Use the Ctrl+Shift+E shortcut or the Tools menu. Enter coordinates, size, rotation, and layer selection options to export your image.

(github.com)

Design Image Export

Responsive Hexagon Grids with Pure CSS: A Float-Based Approach

2025-03-20

This article demonstrates creating fully responsive hexagon grids without media queries, JavaScript, or excessive hacks. By cleverly using `clip-path`, `float`, and `shape-outside`, along with CSS variables for size and spacing, a flexible layout is achieved. The technique is extended to create grids of rhombuses, octagons, and more. CSS Grid is employed for centering and overflow control, resulting in a responsive, adaptive grid system with customizable shapes.

(css-tricks.com)

Design Responsive Design Shape Grids

The Past, Present, and Uncertain Future of Desktop UI Design

2025-03-18

From Engelbart's 1968 'Mother of All Demos' to today's touchscreen ubiquity, this article traces the evolution of desktop user interface design. Examining iconic examples like the Xerox Alto and Sun Starfire, it explores visions for future UIs, including touch, voice control, and infinite canvases. However, the author argues many innovations haven't been true improvements, adding friction instead. The article concludes that the future of desktop UI might not be radical reinvention, but rather incremental refinement of existing designs, emphasizing consistency and familiarity over novelty.

(www.datagubbe.se)

Design User Interface Design

Liquid Shape Distortions: Free Psychedelic Animation Generator

2025-03-17

Liquid Shape Distortions is a free, browser-based psychedelic animation generator that creates psychedelic art using liquid motion, distortion, shadows, and light. Inspired by drum & bass/acid techno music and 90s rave posters, this tool can be used to create art for music videos, concert posters, stylized animations in creative projects, or simply enjoyed alongside music. Users can utilize hotkeys and a control menu for randomization, pausing/playing, screenshots, video export, music playback, and customization of canvas size, animation speed, patterns, and colors. The animation is created with WebGL shaders, resulting in unique art each time it's run. This open-source project is free for personal and commercial use.

(collidingscopes.github.io)

Design psychedelic animation

Our Flat Interfaces Have Lost Their Senses

2025-03-16

From punch cards to touchscreens, human-computer interaction has evolved dramatically. However, today's flat interfaces, overly reliant on text input and visual elements, neglect tactile, auditory, and other sensory inputs, resulting in less rich and engaging user experiences. This article advocates for redesigning interfaces to integrate multiple interaction modalities—text, visuals, sound, haptics—to create more immersive and efficient human-computer interaction. The author suggests combining voice input and gestures for multi-sensory collaboration.

(wattenberger.com)

Design

Kerning the Hard Way: A Tale of GSUB and Striped Fonts

2025-03-14

This article details the author's struggle and eventual solution to kerning a unique font featuring vertically striped letterforms. Standard GPOS kerning techniques failed due to overlapping letter parts. The ingenious solution involved GSUB lookups to split letters into left and right components, replacing overlapping sections with custom joiners. This complex process relied heavily on custom Python scripts using the fontTools and fontFeatures libraries. While the font is incomplete, the core kerning challenge has been overcome, offering a novel approach to designing unconventional fonts.

(home.octetfont.com)

Design font design

Hollywood's Unsung Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story

2025-03-14

The documentary "Hollywood's Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story" chronicles the life of Paul Revere Williams, the first African American member of the American Institute of Architects. Overcoming immense racial barriers, Williams designed iconic buildings like LAX and homes for Hollywood legends. The film not only celebrates his extraordinary talent but also highlights the lack of diversity in architecture and the importance of preserving his legacy, prompting reflection on racial equality and cultural heritage preservation.

(www.latimes.com)

Design architecture racial equality

AI-Powered Illustration Generator: Elevate Your Visuals

2025-03-14

Need eye-catching illustrations for your app, website, or social media? This AI-powered tool creates custom graphics for everything from app interfaces and onboarding screens to website hero images and social media posts. Boost your visuals with consistent branding across user guides, tutorials, articles, online stores, and educational platforms. Make your content more engaging and your brand more memorable.

(www.illustration.app)

Design AI illustration visual design illustration generator

Liu Jiakun Wins 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize

2025-03-14

Liu Jiakun, an architect from Chengdu, China, has been awarded the prestigious 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture's highest honor. His work masterfully blends seemingly opposing elements – utopia and daily life, history and modernity, collectivism and individualism – creating buildings that respect cultural history while remaining deeply connected to the lives of ordinary citizens. He prioritizes public spaces, cleverly balancing density and openness in crowded cities, integrating buildings seamlessly into the fabric of urban life as infrastructure, landscape, and public space all at once. His designs demonstrate a reverence for culture, history, and nature, incorporating elements of classic Chinese architecture with modern design sensibilities. Examples include the gently sloping eaves of the Suzhou Museum and the window walls of the Chengdu Egret Gulf Wetland Park, showcasing both tradition and innovation.

(www.pritzkerprize.com)

Design Pritzker Prize Liu Jiakun Chinese Architecture

Level Up Your Text Game: The Ultimate Font Generator

2025-03-14

Font Generator is an online tool transforming plain text into over 180 stylish fonts. Using thousands of Unicode symbols, it creates bold, underlined, cursive, and italic styles – perfect for platforms lacking native formatting. Simply input your text, choose a font, copy, and paste. From social media posts to documents, this tool adds flair and personality to your writing.

(fontgenerator.cool)

Design font generator

Skulls, Monsters, and Death: Re-examining the Mexican Printmaker José Guadalupe Posada

2025-03-10

As cultural critic Ilan Stavans notes, Posada's work transports us to a universe of gothic, grotesque, magical, and bizarre incidents, with death as a primary, not existential or painful, but irrevocable, social, and egalitarian theme. His world is filled with bats, griffins, skeletons, animal hybrids, snakes, explosions, pistols, demons, ghosts, and deformities. Instead of viewing these gruesome elements as a side note, we should consider their inherent significance.

(publicdomainreview.org)

Design Mexican printmaking death imagery gothic art

Hammershøi's London Triumph: From Wimpole Street to Critical Acclaim

2025-03-09

Vilhelm Hammershøi spent the winter of 1912 and spring of 1913 in England, culminating in successful exhibitions. His connection began with Leonard Borwick, a renowned pianist who, after discovering Hammershøi's work, championed his art. Borwick, a favorite of Queen Victoria, secured exhibitions at prestigious London venues, including the Guildhall and the Van Wisselingh Gallery. The shows were lauded by critics, with Hammershøi dubbed 'the find of the season' and his paintings praised for their 'reserve and cool'. Hammershøi's personal affinity for music, evident in his childhood sketches and his wife's accounts, likely informed his artistic vision.

(www.richardmorris.org)

Design exhibition Denmark

SVG: Scalable Vector Graphics for Web Design

2025-03-09

This article answers common questions about SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), covering its definition, image conversion methods, advantages over other formats like PNG and JPEG, sources for free resources, HTML usage, animation techniques, responsive design implementation, optimization, and editing tools. Web designers and developers alike will find practical information on using SVG.

(websvg.com)

Design

AI Art: A Dreamlike Silver-Haired Princess

2025-03-08

This AI-generated artwork depicts a princess with flowing silver hair and violet eyes, elegantly seated in a magically glowing pond, adorned in a stunning white and purple gown with floral accents. Surrounded by butterflies and petals, the image is exquisitely detailed, dreamy, and evokes a fantastical atmosphere. The intricate shading and lighting showcase advanced AI art capabilities.

(www.gentube.app)

Design dreamlike princess

Ancient Greek Art Duel Remixed: The Hardham Mural and the Illusion of Reality

2025-03-05

This article connects a 12th-century mural at Hardham church to the famous painting contest between Zeuxis and Parrhasios in ancient Greece. Parrhasios, known for his deceptively realistic curtain painting, tricked even Zeuxis. The Hardham mural uses this same trick in its depiction of 'The Deception of Adam and Eve', challenging viewers' perceptions of images. The article explores the nature and value of art and warns against being fooled by visual realism, advocating for a 'spiritual vision' to transcend the limitations of visible things.

(keithamcgowan.blogspot.com)

Design Painting Techniques Visual Perception

Avoid the 'Nightmare Bicycle': Systemic Thinking in Product Design

2025-03-05

This article criticizes the tendency in product design to oversimplify user experience. Using the 'nightmare bicycle' (lacking numbered gears, only having scenario-specific buttons) as an example, it argues that such designs obscure the underlying system's structure, ultimately hindering user efficiency. Good design reveals the system's structure, enabling users to understand and apply it; poor design replaces systematic understanding with superficial labels, ultimately limiting user learning and application. The author advocates against oversimplification, trusting users' learning ability – just like a microwave only needs time and power buttons, users can figure out how to cook.

(www.geoffreylitt.com)

Design systemic thinking

Indie Animation Triumph: Flow, Made Entirely in Blender

2025-03-03

The animated feature film Flow, a mystical journey of a cat and his companions, is a testament to Blender's power. A small, independent team, using Blender's EEVEE real-time renderer, overcame budget limitations to create a critically acclaimed film, garnering over 60 awards and Oscar nominations. Director Gints Zilbalodis details their streamlined workflow, highlighting the importance of speed and adaptability. The team's ingenuity and collaborative spirit, along with Blender's capabilities, showcase the potential for indie filmmakers to achieve remarkable success.

(www.blender.org)

Design Indie Film

Solarpunk: A Hopeful Vision for a Sustainable Future

2025-03-03

Solarpunk is more than a sci-fi subgenre; it's a socio-cultural movement encompassing literature, art, fashion, and activism. Central to solarpunk is the vision and pursuit of a sustainable future deeply intertwined with nature and community. Rejecting dystopian narratives, it embraces renewable energy, DIY ethics, and counter-cultural elements of punk like rebellion and post-capitalism. In stark contrast to cyberpunk's depiction of technological alienation and social injustice, solarpunk offers a hopeful vision of technology harmoniously integrated with nature. From literature and art to architecture and lifestyle, solarpunk is shaping a new cultural paradigm.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Design Utopian Fiction

Painteresque: Turn Your Photos into Art with AI

2025-03-01

Painteresque is a local mobile app that transforms your photos into various art styles like oil paintings, charcoal sketches, and colored pencil drawings in seconds. It offers multiple filters and customizable settings, with results varying depending on the photo content; landscapes and still lifes generally work well, while portraits may have mixed results. All features are free, with no ads or trackers; developers rely on optional in-app tips for support.

(apps.apple.com)

Design mobile app

The Death and Rebirth of Narrative in Art: A Timeless Struggle

2025-02-28

This article explores the internal and external imposition of narrative in art and the attempts to destroy narrative in 20th-century art. Narrative in visual arts like painting is often derived by the viewer, while literary arts possess inherent narrative. Avant-garde movements of the 20th century sought to break down narrative, but with little lasting success in time-based arts like literature and music. The author criticizes the imposition of authoritative narratives by artists or critics, arguing that artworks should possess independent aesthetic value. Ultimately, the article points to the dimension of time and intellectual experience as key factors in the development of complex narratives in literature, music, and cinema.

(medium.com)

Design narrative avant-garde

Frederick Monsen: Rediscovering a Lost Photographic Legacy of the American Southwest

2025-02-26

This article introduces the little-known photographer Frederick Monsen, born in Norway in 1865 and later immigrating to Utah. Monsen dedicated his life to photographing the landscapes and Native American inhabitants of the American Southwest. His work offers a poignant glimpse into the lives of people during that era. From 1886 to 1911, he captured images of the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, and other tribes, as well as pioneers, missionaries, and other figures, leaving behind a valuable photographic record. His photos not only showcase stunning natural landscapes but also invite contemplation on the lives and stories of those whose memories are now largely preserved in these images.

(cosmographia.substack.com)

Design American Southwest Native American

In Defense of Text Labels: Why Icons Aren't Enough

2025-02-22

This article argues for the importance of text labels alongside icons in user interface design. The author contends that relying solely on icons increases cognitive load, as many icons lack immediate clarity and require extra interpretation, especially in complex interfaces with numerous icons. Text labels efficiently clarify meaning, reducing ambiguity and improving usability. The article also highlights inconsistencies in iconography across different applications, adding to user confusion. Therefore, the author advocates for a combined approach, using both icons and text labels for optimal user experience.

(www.chrbutler.com)

Design Icons Text Labels

Stunning 3D Model of San Francisco's Sutro Tower Released

2025-02-20

A breathtaking 3D model of San Francisco's Sutro Tower, leveraging the latest advancements in Gaussian Splatting, is now available online! Created using drone footage, aligned in RealityCapture, trained with gsplat, compressed using SOGS, and rendered in PlayCanvas, the entire scene is surprisingly lightweight at just 30MB. Users can explore the model online, with mobile users able to engage AR mode for an immersive experience. Special thanks to Wieland Morgenstern and Donovan Hutchence for their technical contributions.

(vincentwoo.com)

Design 3D model Sutro Tower

Versailles: Power and the Absence of Soul in Design

2025-02-19

The construction of Versailles stemmed from Louis XIV's lust for power and envy of his former finance minister's magnificent gardens. The author uses this as a springboard to discuss the lack of soul in modern product design. He argues that, much like Versailles is awe-inspiring yet lifeless, many modern products prioritize superficial aesthetics and functionality, neglecting emotional connection. True design, he contends, should stem from the designer's emotional experiences, drawing inspiration from their own depths, like a gardener cultivating the soil, to create products full of life. The article uses architecture as an example, contrasting the feelings evoked by the Sagrada Família and a telephone exchange building, highlighting the importance of emotion in design.

(www.doc.cc)

Design Product

Configurable 3D-Printed Calendar in OpenSCAD: Zeller's Congruence and Beyond

2025-02-14

A developer created a highly configurable 3D-printed calendar model using OpenSCAD. Leveraging Zeller's congruence for accurate day-of-week calculations, the model automatically adjusts date offsets. Users can customize rendered months, column layout, layer height, add custom holiday markings, and even include magnet holes. This project showcases OpenSCAD's power in algorithmic implementation and parametric modeling, supporting multilingual features and multi-material printing.

(chrastecky.dev)

Design Calendar

Category: Design