📝 Issue #444: Temporality in UI Design, Emoji Year in Review, Designer’s Guide to Letter-Spacing, Make Money From Your Art, and more…

As humans our relationships with tools are complex, and meaningful; the familiar feel of a tool molded to your hand by use creates a different attachment than the cold, unbending UI of a digital product. Taner Olcay’s fascinating article looks at how we might begin to bridge that gap.

Modern CSS has numerous tools to help you improve the legibility of your text, from cutting edge technologies like variable fonts, to newly precise control of established properties. Edoardo Cavazza introduces some of his favorite tricks, with plenty of actionable tips for implementing them on your own sites.

We’re used to throwing out opinions onto the web, only for them to float away in the noise of social media. Calmpaper is a brilliant idea for anyone whose train of thought has more than one carriage. Write a whole non-fiction book, split into chapters, that readers can browse, follow, and comment on.

Prepare for a range of dynamic communication roles in Northwestern University’s online master’s program in Information Design and Strategy. You’ll build the in-demand skills needed to drive user interactions, like user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and human-computer interaction (HCI). Choose from specializations in content strategy, data science and analytics, and learning design. Learn more.

When it comes to established user experience, there are few techniques more universally established than tapping the back button to undo a navigation “mistake”. Despite this, 59% of sites still choose to break the back button. Christian Holst examines the main offenders in this must-read article for UXers.

Fonts are designed and constructed with certain use-cases in mind, and commonly optimized for print, which means they often need to be fine-tuned for use on the web. We take a look at letter-spacing, with a guide to best practices, and helpful tips on how to space heading and body text.

Feedback Fish is a simple widget for collecting information from customers. Add it to your site with five lines of code, and empower users to report issues, ideas, or any other feedback. You’ll find feedback in your inbox, or dive deeper into issues with the app’s dashboard. It’s free for the first 25 submissions.

With the economy struggling thanks to a certain pandemic, freelance creatives are bearing the brunt of the financial burden, but there are ways to earn a living if you know where to look. Darya Jandossova Troncoso explores the avenues open to you for selling artwork, and how to make a success of them.

Last Friday was officially World Emoji Day. At a time when we’re sending more text-based messages than ever before, especially to family and friends, this year’s pseudo-event was particularly significant. Paul Hunt reports on what was new in emojis over the last 12 months, and looks forward to 2021.

Command+i is a fresh new resource that combines beautiful landscape photos with carefully selected color palettes. Inspired by nature the color combinations have been carefully curated to evoke a unique sense of place. Currently Morocco, Scotland, Norway, Canada, and Hong Kong are represented.