I apologies for the background colour of this post if you’re reading this on the SubStack website!
I’ve linked to Studio Yorktown’s Color Town Hall before: https://studioyorktown.github.io/coloryorktownhall/, because it’s a well put together site with a pleasing collection of colour palettes.
And because I trust Bruce’s taste in all things colour, I’ve adopted the background colour (#ece3d0) from over there when putting together quick web projects.
This is all pre-AI and the bazillion various takes on palette-websites that have suddenly and miraculously popped up over the last 6-12 months.
So…
# “How to steal my work”
“Last month I found out a human used AI to rip off one of my Instagram posts.”
Last week Anna Lucia posted over on SubStack…
…which is a great read, and includes this…
“I found out because someone made a reel about this tool, and I immediately recognized one of the outputs as derived from my work.
…
On the file that is based on my work, the last commit message reads “Sampler: a new default palette”, timestamped several hours after I published my video, which is interesting, because the palette was one of the distinct features that made me recognize the image as a rip-off immediately and without doubt.”
Where it’s been changed from a nicely balanced set of colours to bleh.
I’ve always loved the palettes Anna uses for her work, you should check them out, they’re so well put together and intentional in a way that looks like it should be simple, but when I try I always manage to somehow fuck it up. HOW IS IT SO HARD TO GET COLOURS TO LOOK RIGHT!!
I’ve often found my eye-dropper tool hovering over the work of Karel Martens too for similar reasons. I mean these mono-prints are delicious.
Anyway, one part of Anna’s post that caught my eye, and made my heart sink…
“Although the website doesn’t mention it was created using AI, the whole UI reeks of it. The cream colored background, the bland font, the presence of features no one really needs, and the absence of any distinct design choices give it away easily.”
…so I guess I’ll have to pick a new background colour for my website tools now.
# “everything runs in your browser”
Every tool runs in the browser.
Nothing is uploaded and nothing
is stored. Exports are yours.
Another ‘tell’ that has me side-eyeing sites is “everything runs in the browser”.
I get sent pen plotting tools fairly often, and tbh, I don’t really have anything against vibe-coded pen plotting tools that are fairly general - turning an image into a plottable spiral or a flow field is fairly benign - and I don’t think it matters a huge amount if you wrote code to do that by hand, or used AI, the results probably make good gifts.
Here’s the latest, which tbh, looks better than most.
Cream background, too many sliders, the stilted AI way of writing “Tone on a laser comes from pattern. Each row is real tool output: a grey ramp and a lion's eyes.” 🤷♂️ most importantly…
Photos never leave your device
runs in your browser, so photos are never uploaded
the drawings and files you make, are never uploaded to us or to anyone else
the photo nor the files you export are sent to us
None of this is sent anywhere
All appear on the site, because AI knows we hate having our work uploaded somewhere where it can be train on with AI.
Again, I don’t really have a problem with people using AI to build tools that help people, but, in the same way a developer with years of experience of coding will wield the tools far better than someone who doesn’t; given the choice between two or more similar AI vibe-coded tools, I’ll be more inclined to use the one that’s been refined by both a UI/UX designer and a copywriter, and the bar feels pretty low.
# A NICE STAND - FAX MACHINES
Shortly after the last newsletter, I decided my type-handwriter needed a good stand. Mainly because the aim this month is to ‘play’ DOOM on it. Something that’ll take about 6-7 hours for the first level. In a vague attempt at ergonomics (and to keep the index cards in place for shooting time-lapses), I figured an angled card holder would be good, and so…
…this happened…
Since then I’ve had it sitting on my desk next to me, replacing Kitty’s pen plotter. Kitty now uses this to write my to-do lists, and various notes, postcards and lists throughout the day.
I like that it’s not flat, and I didn’t realise just how much I’d enjoy that. It now feels like a thing that belongs on the desk rather than something that’s taking up room.
It also made me think back to a blog post written by Matt Webb about twenty years ago, and I think the ghost of this was always in my mind.
“If my desktop printer understood the lessons of social software and Web 2.0, it wouldn’t be attached just to my computer or local network. It’d be accessible by my closest family and friends, too, regardless of where they lived. These people are my primary network, the folks for whom I’d put my neck on the line, and of course I’d let them use my paper and toner, just as I’d happily leave them with my house keys.
My close friends would send me sketches,
The social letterbox printer sits on the wall so that when it’s finished printing, the paper falls to the desk with a satisfying thump. It prints slowly, because it’s often going to be working when I’m not there and there’s no hurry. The paper is probably cheap, perhaps thermal paper.
This is because the new social interactions around the printer now influence its form.”
Which was a precursor to the Little Printer: https://nordprojects.co/projects/littleprinters/
The idea being that you had this cute little printer on your desk, and people you’d given access to could send messages, photos and similar to it.
Now I don’t have the automatically replacing the index cards part working yet, but I do have the drawing on an iPad or reMarkable tablet part working (see Instagram for more)
So it feels like I could set up an invite-code website, where my friends have the code and they can write messages and doodles and sketches which then get queued up, so when I am around I can let the plotter draw them all out for me.
A sort of pen plotting fax machine.
# THE END
I’ve been stressed the past two weeks, and probably the next two, such is life!
So tell me, what would you do with a desktop pen plotting fax machine?
Next newsletter will be Thursday 29th October, oooooooh, spooky!!!
Love you all
Dan
❤️
PS. This looks new
https://bantamtools.com/products/handwriter
https://bantamtools.com/products/fontmaker