The cubic and fourth roots work too of course, but this many similar sizes is usually a bad idea.

So in design there’s this concept called a Modular Scale. Basically simple procedural generation for font-sizes and other measures: ratio^x.

Using the golden ratio with it produces a nice set of sizes. It’s my favourite, but it grows too quickly: not enough small sizes.

Easy enough to add a few manually or use two scales side by side, but today I realised there’s a simpler fix: just use the square root of the golden ratio. Produces all the same sizes and more. https://www.modularscale.com/?1&em&1.2720196495

bad news everyone

Any Bsky users here who have migrated to Eurosky? If so, would you recommend it? Seems like it’d be a good way to take some distance to the absolute clown show in charge of Bsky.

This bit was nice to see too, although it wouldn’t be the first time a company has used Mastodon goodwill for marketing:

“Eurosky explicitly seeks integration between AT Protocol and ActivityPub as a way of moving toward an open social web that can serve everyone.”
https://eurosky.tech/faq/

If you’ve worked in design you know the answer. It’s because everyone *will* care, just not necessarily in a way that is visible to you or even conscious to them.

Everyone can *feel* a misaligned UI, a juddering framerate, a garish sound effect, or a bland story. They just may not be able to *pinpoint* it. What they are able to do is move on, assume the rest of your work feels equally bad, and tell that to their friends.

If you expand the topic of this video a bit you get a question that defines our current era. Why do anything properly, or make anything interesting, if not everyone will care? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2PMmW2xzGk

Tried making the UI super wispy for a laugh and surprisingly I don’t hate it? Minimal separation from the world, but still high readability.

Some of the artsier JRPGs have used this style now and then. Child of Light’s also leans into this direction. https://interfaceingame.com/games/child-of-light/

Loving this sort of UI prototyping as a part of the game design process.

Get annoyed by UI element → change mechanics so it can be removed → accidentally solve pile of completely unrelated design problems.

Speaking of outlined UI elements, take a look at Castle Away if you haven’t already. Easily the best example of applying this genre of art style to UI elements that I’ve seen. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4362480/Castle_Away/

Can’t be bothered prototyping it here, but the final shapes won’t be this pointy. Instead of rounding them I’ll try using cut corners. Inspired by Avona, the calligraphic display font I’m using for my logo and big bits of text elsewhere in the UI.

Doing some rough UI *styling* tests now. The little 1970s Swiss minimalist graphic designer living inside my head wants the plain black, but it’s probably too obtrusive. Outlined option feels a bit inelegant as usual, but I’m surprised how much the drop-shadows improve it. #gamedev

Ok fine, it wasn’t what I was asking about, but I’ll try DuckDuckGo again. I doubt it’ll go any better than last time.

Hmm, I publicly describe my AI policy as “abstaining from all generative AI use”. Not sure if that’s accurate since I end up looking at the Google search AI summary all the time. Should I word it differently?

Pondering one more game name option. Seems more sticky, but is also the name of a popular(?) anime character.

Ooh, treasure trove! https://logonature.com

Thinking about this some more, adding the kind of minute, unimportant detail like in the example above is exactly what AI would do. So in today’s world it would evoke the opposite handmade or traditional?

Seeing that these all look identical from across the room is making me think the answer is probably a)? And if the results is not evocative enough, another blindingly obvious but _separate_ element should be added? Like a huge splash of paint under the whole thing.

One thing I struggle with in graphic design is where to draw the line in abstraction and skeuomorphism.

If I want to evoke handmade traditional art a bit, is it enough to:

a) use a calligraphy-inspired font
b) make it a bit scrungly
c) add elements hinting at traditional art tools
d) make the elements obvious?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/117405530050775102

My top choices

lmao, the webdev toolchain Vite+ won’t let me through its setup process without choosing which AI agent I’m using, and there’s no option for “none”!

Hitting ESC just cancels the whole process!!

**** ***!!!