So, two things are going on right now that I’d like to share with you:

1. Event: How to self-publish a zine (and survive)

Surprisingly (or not?), after releasing the zine, quite a few people have shown interest in self-publishing and bringing ideas to paper (instead of a screen). Maybe it’s a print renaissance, maybe it’s nothing, but the last session I did with the amazing community of Sublime proved to be really good.

So I’m updating that talk with more stories and insights I’ve gained along the way. It’s basically about what it takes to produce, fund, print, and distribute an indie magazine.

This time it’s open to all, and I’d love to see you there. It will be niche and cozy.

RSVP here

Direct link for potential inbox issues: https://luma.com/pj9sss1i

2. The next Niche design issue

Niche design #2 is in the making!!!

Honestly, I didn’t really think about making this an ongoing thing. But as people reacted to the first issue and raised the idea of a next one, it made me realize this might be my thing. So I took a bit of time off to reset, and this month the plan has begun.

One realization, though, is that I can’t fully fund it again on my own. Producing this project by myself has been daunting, and if I want to make it more sustainable, I need sponsors.

So this is my ask from you: if you work at a company, or know people who might want to support an indie design publication, please send them my way. You can DM me, email me, or just reply here. Alternatively, we can also have a chat.

I’ve got three-ish sponsors so far, which is a great start. And while I’m going to make this issue anyway, more support would help me release it sooner.

—Itay

A while ago (at least when I first drafted this post), someone on Twitter asked me for good resources to break into design. Although a simple question, I kept thinking about it for quite some time: where do people actually go these days?

This prompt has made me think about my own path, which emerged more by coincidence than purpose, like many others: Anton went through architecture before landing at Fantasy Interactive; Pavel graduated with a physical engineering degree before starting to bring book design to screens; And Dave started in the music industry.

Yet I think observing my personal experience is worth sharing, given how much has changed from the days I used to hack Photoshop. (Also, does anyone even hack Photoshop anymore?)

I’ve got no formal design education, nor did I take any design-related courses. My parents once bought me an HTML book when I was probably still in elementary school, which, in loose translation from Hebrew, was titled in something like “Mom, Dad, I Built a Website.” Although I did dig a bit into it, it didn’t stick.1

I should note that the following lines would perhaps be better perceived by the ultra-auto-didactes who aspire to learn everything on their own. Or maybe not.

Find a community, any community

If I were allowed to give only one advice to a beginner, then it would be to find a community, and not necessarily a design one. As I lamented before, I used to spend a lot of my youth in many different internet communities—from torrents, to graphic design, and just local generic bulletin boards. However, only recently have I come to realize how deeply all of those experiences have shaped me, as I wrote in Niche design:

At the beginning of my journey, I heavily relied on established communities. Without their existence, I wouldn't have entered the scene. I would have probably never noticed it.

I was introduced to design by a local forum; I got paid through design contests; I stepped into the global design community by joining dribbble; I read the news on DesignerNews; and I joined Twitter to follow other designers.

Since I joined the internet, online communities have been the core of everything to me. They were the anchor point. In the pre-era of social networks, they were my favorite third places where I could learn new things, meet people, and discover the wild wide internet. The source for any rabbit hole I was interested in. And besides entertaining a teenager, they were also good for doing business, as Dave Gorum (Carbonmade co-founder) attests:

“I’d change the copy on the site [Carbonmade], and then literally see people copying it on del.ici.ous. I could watch it ripple through the blogosphere.”

Though my entry point to this world was slightly after the del.ici.ous moment, there were still many websites like dribbble, DesignerNews, and DeviantArt that introduced me to the design world at scale.

Coming back to the question I opened with, I feel kinda depressed. The examples mentioned above have stopped being useful a long time ago: either they became over-commercialized, faded with the rise of social media, or were acquired and eventually sunsetted.

If you look at the design community of recent years, the landscape of open and accessible communities has shifted towards tooling. Take Figma and its annual Config conference for example. Every year, its agenda is basically the same, asking what would best serve its business purpose and goals. It’s a natural business decision, particularly for a company that’s now public, but from a deeper human perspective, it feels misaligned.

Thinking of the early Photoshop days, communities were scattered—a byproduct of the not-so-old internet. This era featured websites (again, as I mentioned before) that were owned by for-profit business owners, yet they didn’t push so hard to dictate a culture that sanctifies corporate commercialism.

Communities should serve as a fertile ground for interaction, not only engagement in its shallow meaning, i.e., thumbs up, likes, or emoji spreading.

Here’s Dave again, reflecting on the early days of the design community:

We’d share screenshots and riff on each other’s ideas. I liked that because it revolved around project launches, which is how I’m wired—launch-driven, show-your- work energy. I was really into sites like SiteInspire and those old CSS galleries. That ecosystem of showing off your work in semi-structured ways was exciting.

Seeking communities anew

And it’s not that communities are dead; it’s the dynamics that have significantly changed. You can still gain attention on mainstream social media, but as one guy I met said to me: “There’s no such thing as organic traffic anymore”. This may be an overgeneralization, but that’s where communities have headed in recent years, due to the rise of social media. It’s no longer about our mutual desires, but our business interests, if any.

If you get deep into a very specific community, you’ll end up making friends, networking, and eventually working: paid gigs, side projects, and other collaborations. When I helped others launch and design their own torrent forums and discussion boards, I got noticed to help others, too.2

Aside from a seemingly strategic business perspective, becoming prominent in any community will allow you to develop a taste and specialize in anything you want.

As identified in the recently published Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era, new platforms are reviving this past-lost internet community idealism by building differently—upon a movement, instead of enshittifing business economics:

“These projects aren’t driven by nostalgia, or even growth. The point is that influencing the world today is not about creating scale; it’s about developing the conditions that determine how culture is created, distributed and monetized.”

Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era
Severin Matusek, Nick Houde and Paloma Moniz

In that context, it’s worth revisiting the early days of dribbble or DeviantArt. Tech and design culture were still in their infancy—often naive, imperfect, and certainly not the sole reason the internet evolved the way it did. Yet within those early creative communities, a different ethos was taking shape. Looking at the top-right quadrant of the Post-Naive era map, a few contemporary platforms stand out for how they revive that spirit. They’re not just focused on scale or optimization, but on nourishing a community—the kind of fan-only mode I like to see.

This is just an intro, but it shows that you can still be building a great for-profit company that relies on a community approach in a very literal way:

• Are.na’s is sustained by its community (+ early crowdfunding)

• Subvert gives musicians more ownership

• Metalabel serves as a distribution hub for creative practitioners

• Sublime was shaped early on by a deeply loyal community

Such dynamics make those platforms stand out above the surface, gaining attention by attracting those who seek alternatives to the current system of social behemoths, and make them likable to their existing audiences. And at least from the outside, it appears to be a more sustainable and healthier model.

Where might or should communities head

When I think about “design communities,” I don’t envision strictly more Slack/Discord channels or other discussion boards per se. What I’m longing for is more scattered blogs and publications that enrich the discourse.

There have been many community-based courses and other cohort-structured programs aimed at aspiring designers, while being very technical: entry-level Figma, design basics, etc. There is far less available for those in the middle ground, between beginners and seasoned practitioners.

As design evolves outside its boundaries, I feel there’s a lot more room for people to create spaces where knowledge and experiences are being shared—detached from corporate interests.

One good example is UX Collective. It has been running for many years, consistently curating and featuring a wide range of perspectives from across the industry. And despite Medium’s repeated turmoils, it has continued to exist and remain relevant.

Having said all that, I won’t resist for a new DesignerNews to emerge, a “design LessWrong”, or something like Read.cv that was recently shut down.

When I close up the community part of Niche design, I write:

Ultimately, what’s needed is a shift in the industry mindset. We need more communities, not tools. There are so many new tools for designers but so few communities. Tools make our job easier. Communities make us better designers.

Being an active part of Are.na or Sublime has made me good connections and internet friends. Thinking about those tools in this internet era, it’s not just about using the tool; it’s also about participating in its broader aspect. And that’s largely part of the community essence.

We, designers, won’t become better by attending the Figma conference each year to learn about the newest features promoting the latest business agenda. We’ll do it by re-establishing better, stronger, and humane communities.

Let’s move on, because the process is the goal.

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Product Identity is completely free. If you wish to support my work, purchasing a copy of Niche design, either in print or digitally, is the best way to do so.

Purchase Niche design

• Every app looks the same.

• Every website looks the same.

• Every process looks the same.

The rise of Tailwind, design system templates, and other dev frameworks has made it easier than ever to achieve visually appealing designs, often without the need for a designer’s hands. Out-of-the-box components, elegant icons, and ready-to-apply CSS are now within reach for whoever desires.

This abundance has made programming life easier while speeding up the design process, but it also appears to dull creative thinking. Alongside trends that come and go, sameness has become the default state. The spark of the past has faded in many aspects, far beyond the digital sphere: quirky tech brand logos have turned banal, social networks media wear the same interface, and web design is.. well, web design.

Furthermore, the authentic self might vanish soon, as we’re already in a prompt-of-a-button era, allowing us to create nearly identical outputs.

Above the surface, this reality might be only perceived by us, the designers. Design is ever-changing, a cultural byproduct shaped by countless variables.

However, to fully understand how we got here, it’s essential to look beneath the surface. Examining the final design output alone isn’t enough. We have to introspect into our own inner world—our own subculture.

We’re now making design harder with all these “rules” and unnecessary design tool features making it more difficult to understand basic design. We want to sound smart. Look smart. Now it’s just designers designing for other designers.

@DannPetty · Sep 10 2022

Design → ← Business

As design became a subset of the product-startup terra-firma, we’ve gone from cultivating taste to worshipping metrics. Data-driven culture, while useful for rationalizing business decisions, has skewed priorities away from craft and toward technocracy.

While metrics are important (although I might hold an unpopular opinion here), they’re not a universal North Star. We should seek to understand analytics, but with caution. Companies invest heavily in collecting data, yet analytics alone can’t fully reveal the secrets of art or guide the creation of something meaningful. There are times when taste and intuition should be prioritized.

In an era where anyone can create anything, cultivating taste is more crucial than ever. When everything starts to look the same, the value of opinionated design becomes undeniable. Like artists, designers should cultivate their own unconventional ways of seeing.

Follow your gut.
Follow your senses.
Follow your taste.

Design → ← Designers

Look at the average designer’s portfolio and you’ll see a common pattern:

This structure, shaped by tech recruiters, educators, and design veterans, has contributed to the diminishing value of the design role. The view of designers has been fixated on a supposedly narrow angle, which is figuring out how to solve problems.

Are we just “solving problems”? Are we just fixing things? I don’t view design as a plumbing profession. What we deal with goes far beyond only black-on-white areas; in fact, it’s mostly grey. Design evolves in countless ways, and reducing it to mere problem-solving is far too shallow.

The portfolios are too structured: “first define problem, then make personas, then you do this, etc”

It would help set students up better if they were set with a challenge more like “this expected design for this feature is needed in 2 weeks with x,y,z constraints”

@tsantsai · 8:30 PM · Aug 26, 2021

Moreover, the design process isn’t schematic. It’s a back-and-forth, forward-and-backward effort. It’s not a linear activity where things get built brick by brick in a harmonious way.

Although people and companies have tried for years to market a hyped cure for their own benefit, the truth is that there’s no such thing. Despite all efforts, design systems and other similar frameworks could never fully control or box in creativity.

Hence, I like it when designers take a different approach to showcase their work, and more profoundly, their personality. I find a personal website more effective than a traditional portfolio. It can be as radical as chaos or as super minimalist. It can be as creative as being “powered by a Google Doc” or using humorous copy as a way to be distinguishable.

It’s time for designers to look for ways to re-authenticate themselves. At times it will be noticeable, at others, completely hidden. It might turn out to be a masterpiece—or buried in your drafts.

Design → ← Craft

Nir Tibor AKA Dennis Lloyd is a generalist musician who writes, produces, and performs his own music. Early in his career, he moved far away from his home in Israel to the Thai capital of Bangkok, where he lived for an entire year, solely focusing on making music.

Thousands of miles away from his family and friends, Tibor wasn’t only isolated from people, but also from the world. In a podcast interview discussing those early days, he mentioned that he disconnected his small rented flat from the internet as a way to avoid outside influences.

This act was Lloyd’s way to find authenticity in his craft. For him, going off the grid was necessary so that he could express his true inner self, without being directed by trends and pop culture episodes.

This might sound radical, yet I think there’s something to be learned here.

We designers rarely work in silos; we mostly operate within teams, departments, and other structures. We also tend to be very close to our source—curating references in gazillion browser tabs, notes, and artboards. Personally, I find it extremely hard to design without an internet connection, restricted from the vast reference ocean.

The ways to extract creativity from oneself don’t have to be so extreme; however, cultivating the right environment is essential.

Our authentic self-expression often comes through a unique style and personal taste—elements that set each creative work apart. Without this focus, it’s easy to fall into the trap of imitation.

So, the challenge lies in cultivating taste—developing a discerning eye and a personal language of design. This process allows for a deeper connection to one’s creative instincts while still drawing inspiration in a meaningful and intentional way. With endless sources of inspiration available, the key isn’t to copy but to curate and reinterpret in a way that feels true to us.

Trends will always be here, undeniably, waiting for us to pick them up. Although it’s hard to reinvent the wheel once it’s already been invented, there might be ways for us to delicately reinvent small things.

Sometimes making something banal is just fine, but other times, it’s better to be elevated. This isn’t general advice to reinvent form factors from the ground up, but rather to find ways to make things more authentic, with a true purpose in mind.

“STRANGE, STRANGE OR BE FORGOTTEN
ABSTAIN FROM THE PASSING FASHION
IF FAME IS REALLY AN ILLUSION THEN
BE STRANGE, STRANGE OR BE FORGOTTEN”

Temples
Strange or Be Forgotten

This piece was originally published in niche design, a self-published magazine exploring where design flourishes in an age of sameness.

Now that the first batch of Niche design orders has arrived in the US and reached the first few dozen readers, I feel like sharing some updates.

But before I do that, let me republish the same preface I wrote for the zine. It’s part my personal journey, part reflection on the design community as a whole, attempting to distill the essence of why niche design exists at all.

I wouldn’t call it a manifesto per-se, but perhaps it does seek to manifest an alternative future:

Introduction to Niche design

Being a designer has meant a lot to me. I’m not sure whether I found design or it found me, but from a young age, it has been deeply intertwined with my identity. Through my youth and into adulthood, design has always been my thing.

Following the traditional path unknowingly, I landed in the tech world, which at first felt exhilarating. I can still vividly remember the smell of the first office I worked at and feel the energy that, at the time, seemed like a gateway into something different—into a whole new world.

For over a decade, I’ve worked at tech companies, which some would call startups. I worked as a full-time employee, as a freelancer, and joined early teams remotely, in shared offices, and in the notorious building rat holes. Some experiences were great, while others were merely decent.

During that time, I’ve seen the culture changing from the inside. Tech has eaten the world, including the design industry, and I realized that absorbing this bubble environment has made me develop my own fatigue with it.

Things have shifted.
The world has shifted.
And so have I.

What once was exciting became daunting. The anchor point, which has been the steadiest for me, started to dwindle. I began to feel disconnected, alienated.

What followed was a long unconscious research. I began exploring where design still feels alive—where it still flourishes. And by restarting my orbit, I started to discover small niches of those who have chosen to pursue the high road.

As a first step, I summarized my thoughts and feelings in a short blog post, originally called “Niche product design”. However, I soon realized there is a lot more to uncover.

For over a year, I’ve curated materials ranging from tweets to in-depth interviews with atypical designers and builders, and through them I’ve learned about unorthodox philosophies and work ethics across both the software and hardware worlds.

What you’re about to read is the outcome of that journey.

Niche design is an open call for those who seek meaning beyond metrics. It’s an invitation to rethink our culture through the way we shape it. It’s a contrast to the conventional tech-design playbook where clout is measured in fully booked calendars, hallucinated funding rounds, and inflated valuations.

Niche design proposes a different ethos—one that’s calm, intentional, and grounded in care. It asks not how big we might scale, but how deep we might go.

Get a niche copy

Some updates

1. I’m still figuring out the best way to ship orders to the European Union. Surprisingly, it’s been much harder to navigate than shipping to the US as a non-EU resident. That said, the path is (almost) made clear now. All it takes is just a little bit more patience :)

2. For my native Hebrew readers: I interviewed for the legendary Portfolio magazine! It really captures well the essence of the project and my perspective.

   (You can browser-translate it if you’re curious; it reads okay-ish).

• I’ve reached out to a few bookshops across Europe, and some have happily agreed to stock a few copies. More on that very soon.

• I’m still thinking about hosting an online (behind-the-scenes?) gathering. The thing is that I’m not sure how to structure it, so in case you find interest in the idea of niche design or in self-publishing a printing matter, including writing, printing, or logistics, please let me know. (psst, you can always also email me too)

And to close on an aesthetically pleasing note, here are a few really good shots, taken by my gifted sister-in-law:

Get a niche copy

What started as a post here has now officially turned into a longform printed matter.

Purchase Niche design

Preface

Niche design is a self-published magazine for designers and product makers seeking meaning beyond metrics. It invites you to rethink our culture through the ways we shape it.

As a contrast to the conventional tech-design playbook where clout is measured in fully booked calendars, hallucinated funding rounds, and inflated valuations, Niche design proposes a different ethos—one that’s calm, intentional, and grounded in care. It asks not how big we might scale, but how deep we might go.

In conversation with:

• Anton Repponen of Anton & Irene

• Pavel Kedzich of Argyle

• Charles Broskoski of Are.na

• Dave Groum of Carbonmade

& QA’s with:

• Piri of Kinopio

• Yatú Espinosa & Norm O'Hagan of USB Club

• Andy Allen of !Boring

• Herman Martinus of Bear Blog

• Vin Verma, Lucas Fischer & Kent de Bruin of Futureland

• Anjan Katta of Daylight Computer

• XH of mmm.page

• Joe Hollier of Light Phone

• Jesper Kouthoofd of teenage engnieering

• Sari Azout of Sublime

Colophon

• 14.8 × 21.0 cm paperback with sewn binding

• A colorful 104 pages

• Printed in Arena Rough 90 g / Arena Natural Smooth 300 g

• Typed in ABC Maxi and Diatype by Dinamo

• Shipping starts in a few weeks

The care that went into designing this thing went above and beyond, with nearly every page treated independently. It's been an insane project to produce on my own, but seeing it come alive is one of my proudest moments yet.

I want to thank all of the 70+ people who purchased this zine when it was still just a Google Doc. And to those who read the first drafts, left comments, or simply cared—your support, both mentally and financially, made this real.

Purchase Niche design

Ditch trends. Avoid playbooks. Reject boredom.
Embrace niche design.

I’ve long been intrigued by the journey of , ever since she announced Startupy a few years ago, which later became Sublime, a social knowledge management tool for collecting and connecting ideas.

I’ve had a few conversations with Sari in the past, but this time, I sat down to interview her about her perspective on business and life.

As we began our long conversation, the sound of the local produce vendor shouting beneath my apartment made for a fitting backdrop. We discussed what it means to design a sustainable and humble company these days, while still anchoring a big vision in grounded reality.

Excerpts of this interview will also be available in the Niche Design zine.

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Early days

Itay: Your path into tech has been somewhat traditional. You worked in VC, but you've since veered in a very different direction, building something outside the typical venture model. Plus, you live in Miami. Could you share a bit about your early days and what led you to go that way?

Sari: After college, I took a traditional investment banking job. It was my first role, and it allowed me to stay in the US. At that time, I was really just focused on how to stay in the country, not on what I personally wanted to do. So I did that and checked the box. Once my visa was sorted out, I started a company in New York.

What I mainly love about startups is that you can't hide behind buzzwords, as your ideas collide with reality. Writing about something is one thing, but when theory meets practice, it’s a different story.

After doing the startup thing, I worked in venture capital and ran a strategy team at a startup studio. I really enjoyed those roles because I got to see so many teams building interesting things. But the whole time, I kept thinking there’s so much bullshit in this world. I started to develop an allergy to hype and all that stuff.

Also, it became too much of a comfortable job. I could make PowerPoint decks in my sleep and craft compelling investment stories, but it felt hollow. I realized I was good at storytelling and condensing ideas, but I was tired of not being on the hook for implementing them. I wanted to work on something where I could still explore and write about ideas, but also make things. Moreover, feedback cycles in venture capital are so long—you can make a terrible investment and not know for 10 years.

So I embarked on a fuzzy journey to figure out what is me, and what I can do. And I’d say I’m still on that journey.

Itay: I remember you first appeared on my Twitter timeline with Startupy. You compared it to Roam Research, right when that whole tools for thought hype cycle was peaking. How did the first cycle of Startupy actually come to be?

Sari: Startupy really started as a side project, as I still had a full-time job at the time. The insight for starting it came to me while writing the CYP newsletter, as I had been curating a repository of ideas and insights for a while, in single-player mode, meaning only I had access to it.

Startupy is as if Roam, Wikipedia, Substack, and Product Hunt had a baby.

CYP – Introducing startupy.world

One day, I decided to sell access to it through the newsletter. I just said, “Hey, I have this curated repository of ideas”, and it did really, really well. That sort of awakened this thought in me that people are willing to pay for curation.

I then started wondering why people were paying for that, and I realized the main reason was because search sucks. You can’t find this stuff on Google—it’s too niche. The indie web isn’t indexed properly. The content on the internet’s edges isn’t SEO-optimized. Then it became clear there was real demand. But I also started asking why so many people are doing this work in single-player mode?

Startupy, to me, was an exploration of what it might look like to build a space where we all curate together.

You asked earlier about hype and buzzwords. It's interesting—there's so much of it, and there’s definitely a lot to critique. But I also think humans need to give things labels to make sense of them. Whether it's the creator economy, the experience economy, or the ownership economy, people throw around these terms all the time. It’s a lot easier to raise funding today if your deck talks about AI agents for example. A few years ago, it was all about building a D2C brand—try to fundraise with that today…

With Sublime specifically, I don’t care if it’s part of the current hype cycle, because I’m a lifer in this. To me, it’s a journey about finding a home for my ideas. Yes, they’re rooted in a feeling of aliveness, creativity, and sublimity—and yes, it’s about knowledge management, but more than anything, it’s about following what makes me come alive rather than following the labels.

Is that a venture-investable opportunity? Probably not—though maybe someday in the future. I’m not interested in “go big or go home”, but I’m also not opposed to scale.
I sit in the intersection of someone who genuinely loves technology but is also very skeptical of it. That makes me engage with it more thoughtfully.

A lot of people write about tech and criticize it, but my issue is that it’s hard to have a respectable opinion if you’ve never been in the trenches building something. For me, it’s about being thoughtful, having a writing practice, putting ideas out there, and also maintaining a solutions-oriented mindset. Not just critiquing, but proposing alternatives. That’s the sweet spot I want to inhabit—indefinitely.

Itay: I imagine your background helped with raising money for Startupy, but there’s this conflict between building a so-called “niche” product and the expectations of venture funding. How do you convince people to invest in something that isn’t centered around making a lot of money right from the get-go?

Sari: Our pre-seed round was mostly small checks from a lot of different people. That’s very different from having one lead VC who expects you to raise another round in 18 months, and then another after that.

We raised at a stage when it was less about hitting specific milestones and more about belief in the team and vision. I think we were lucky in the sense that we were able to convince people supporting us without feeling a gun to our head in terms of aggressive growth targets. We were also very honest about how we were going to build the company—we made it clear that this might be a one-and-done.

I think the binary of “bootstrapped” or “venture-backed” is inadequate. There’s a whole spectrum in between. We did need resources to start.

Are we playing the lottery? No. We’re trading scale and speed for freedom. That was a conscious choice. But I also believe there's a way to build a very valuable company slowly. If you look at someone like Brunello Cucinelli or other old-school luxury fashion brands, a lot of them took decades to build. I think we can compound slowly and still build something meaningful and valuable.

But it is atypical. We don’t fit into the classic venture-backed model, but we’re also not fully bootstrapped either. I actually think there’s a growing group of people who are building with sustainability in mind—people who are values-driven, who want to stick around for a long time.

A lot of VC funds have a fiduciary responsibility to return the fund, so they need to find those unicorns. But there are also a lot of people out there with different agendas. People who want to see amazing things in the world. Who knows, maybe in a few years, we knock on Patrick Collison’s door and say, “Hey, we’re building this thing, these are our values. Would you give us $3–5 million to keep going?” We’re not promising massive growth, but we are building something beautiful and enduring.

If were a high-net-worth individual, I’d be backing more and more projects like that. So, I don’t know exactly how it will pan out, but I know that we’re building to exist first.

Itay: Do you think those investments were kind of a gesture to you? What was the narrative that resonated with them?

Sari: Since we started the company, the big story was kind of twofold. The first idea is rooted in this long-term vision of building a human-curated search engine of sorts. If you're a writer, freelancer, designer, or any kind of creative professional and you're looking for interesting references or ideas, trying to see what thoughtful people are saying about X, Y, Z—where do you actually go online? That question drove a lot of what we’re building.

Sublime is a knowledge management tool where people connect things like their Kindle, Readwise highlights, and Twitter bookmarks—this is the kind of stuff you find on Sublime, which isn’t easily found anywhere else. We also embraced AI to make the search really good, and it became a very interesting, investable use case that got people excited.

The second idea is about how we can use the context in your library to power conversations and interactions with LLMs. The problem with generative AI is that it’s contextless—it’s mediocre by default. But if it understands my references, my taste, and my point of view—a lot of which lives in a personal knowledge library, then it becomes way more interesting.

You can pursue those ideas in a venture-scale way—we're just choosing to take a more artisanal path. I think people have to believe in how we're doing it, which is more bottom-up and community-forward. Like, the first 1,000 paying customers came straight from Substack, and I personally onboarded each one. Was it the “right” decision? I’m not sure, but it felt right for us.

I think more about what's the most me thing, or most us thing as a team that we could do. It’s about putting on blinders, closing your eyes, and asking: what’s the thing that doesn’t exist yet but really should?

That approach has already attracted a group of people who believe in it and gave us the capital we needed. Now it’s on us to keep compounding and turning that belief into something truly valuable.

Itay: And what’s your relationship like with those first investors? Do you just send them regular updates, or are they more in the background, being available if you reach out?

Sari: I’d say it’s more of the former. I have relationships with all of them, but it’s a mix. We have investors who gave us $2,000, $5,000, or $50,000. It really runs across the gamut.

Some of our investors are well-known newsletter writers, like or from Gumroad, who’s built an amazing, sustainable company without going the traditional VC route. Others are people like a small publication’s editor-in-chief. We have a lot of different kinds of backers.

Honestly, what I consistently hear when I send out investor updates is something like: “I’m just happy to be along for the ride. These updates are amazing, and I’m so happy to support you.” It’s an interesting spot to be in—we control our own destiny, and we have this amazing group of people behind us. It doesn’t mean we have guaranteed follow-on capital, but we’ve got plenty of runway, and we can build with freedom and values at the center.

I kind of have this book in my head about how I hope this journey ends, and I’d love for us to become a case study for how to build a company that doesn’t fit neatly into the existing boxes. I’m still very much in the middle of it, so I don’t have all the answers, but I’d love to live to tell that story.

Itay: It reminds me of something Anjan said to me. When he started Daylight, he thought smallness was an idea people were willing to build around. But over time, he realized that most people are more ambitious than staying small for its own sake. Can a company like Sublime exist in that middle space—something purposeful and sustainable, without having to scale endlessly to meet traditional investor expectations?

Sari: I definitely think some of our investors came in expecting a return. Also, I don’t view smallness as a badge of honor. It’s not like we have to stay small because going big is a virus. I actually think it’s admirable to build a company at the scale of Amazon if it works and delivers value to a lot of people.

Philosophically, I don't have anything against scale per se. What I’m against is taking shortcuts, and at what expense. Say I decided to take Sublime and start paying random influencers on TikTok to drive 500,000 downloads—I could probably do that. Then I could call it a VC play and raise money on the back of those numbers. But that would likely mean low-quality downloads, without returning customers.

There’s a kind of purity we want to retain when it comes to building a real business. A lot of people in VC don’t build real businesses. They just build them to have all the optics of being investable. That’s not what I want. I want to build an infinite game—a sandbox for creating extremely valuable things.

But I’m not dogmatic at all about size. Our investors should get a return on their investment, and Sublime should touch more and more people over time, as long as we get there in the right way. There’s a very easy way to artificially reach more people, but we’re not chasing just metrics; we seek real resonance.

head on the cloud; feet on the ground

Itay: I want to enter this topic of the “new” vs. “old” world. After years in tech, I’ve grown tired of the typical startup culture and its lingo. You represent to me the old-school founder archetype. You’re still using the classic language, but in a way that feels more grounded and intentional.

What’s your perspective on the tech-startup culture these days?

Sari: There’s a lot of status associated with saying you're a founder or that you work in AI, or whatever the trend du jour is. Years ago, graduating from college and going into investment banking was the cool thing. Now it's working at companies like Facebook, Google, OpenAI, or whatever’s considered “hot”.

Typically, when something confers status, it attracts people who are focused on winning short-term games. That inevitably brings a lot of noise, and maybe disgust is a strong word, but it does turn people off.

I’ve been in tech long enough to know that hype and status come and go. To me, it’s more about thinking about how to build something that stands the test of time.

To me, that path should be contrarian. It’s interesting because tech used to be about making bold, contrarian bets. Today, it’s more about fitting in, so going against the grain takes real courage. VC, especially what you see on Twitter and elsewhere, is mostly herd mentality. Most people have no idea what they’re talking about—they just look at who the big names are investing in and follow along.

You mentioned Anjan from Daylight before, and one of the things he said was that so much of what made Silicon Valley special in the past was backing the non-obvious things—bets that weren’t inevitable. If Anjan hadn’t started Daylight, it’s unlikely anyone else would have. Compare that to realtors selling real estate—if one doesn’t sell a house, someone else will. That shift, from making big bets to play it safe, speaks to a broader risk aversion in the industry. There are far less people trying interesting things. Many talented people are just optimizing ads on Meta.

So, you can choose to look at the bad stuff, or you can realize there’s not a lot of real substance out there, and decide to build something with longevity and sustainability. It’s not necessarily easy; part of the challenge is making it exciting enough for people to join in. But you do get to choose how you show up in the world. You can sit around and complain, or you can just build something real and great.

We’re definitely not building Sublime in a particularly popular way. It’s very old school: slow, steady, and hard-earned work with no shortcuts.

At the end of the day, humans run on stories. And while many stories have managed to cut through the noise, it’s up to people like you and me to offer alternatives—stories that are just as compelling.

Itay: Speaking of stories, when I look at Sublime’s homepage redesign, the way you articulate the story feels deeply vision-driven. Personally, I find it hard time think in vision. How do you craft a manifesto or communicate a strong vision without sounding overly dreamy or detached from reality?

Sari: I always say that we need to have our head in the clouds and our feet on the ground. We have to blend our aspiration with grounded utility. Our job is really to straddle that line very well.

If I think about the day-to-day at Sublime, most of the value we generate for our customers comes down to utility: Can I import my Twitter bookmarks and search them intelligently? Can I capture an insight from a podcast? Can I connect ideas in interesting ways? It’s very much about what we are doing, for whom, and how it makes their life better.

Genuinely, we make the people obsessed with Sublime better at their jobs. We make them more creative. These are practical outcomes. They don’t necessarily care what our vision is. We have to deliver on that grounded utility—having a grand vision doesn’t exempt us from walking the talk.

A lot of people make the mistake of being too dreamy. We try to stay grounded, but vision matters to a lot of things: it matters heavily for recruiting; it keeps the team aligned and excited over the long term; it helps with storytelling and top-of-funnel awareness; and it’s what wakes me up in the morning. The hardest thing in the world today is earning attention, and sometimes, utility alone doesn’t cut through, but a compelling story about the future can.

So it’s not binary—it’s about tastefully straddling the two, specifically in the PKM space, where everything tends to be so utilitarian and productivity-oriented.
I personally don’t feel alive or creatively energized by most of it.

What keeps me going is asking how we can bring the feeling of the Sublime into people’s lives. That’s rooted in feeling, and because of that, investing in some of these bigger-picture, fuzzier storytelling things really, really matters.

At the end of the day, it’s like: how do I want to be remembered? What kind of work am I making a sacrifice to spend so much of my time on, and why? As humans, I think we need that “why”.

Sublime isn’t a mercenary business opportunity. If it were, I’d be doing something else—there are far easier ways to make money.

Write and they’ll come

Itay: From what I’ve seen, you haven’t gone through the traditional “TechCrunch” coverage route—no big press splash, just appearing more in niche newsletters and podcasts. How do you think about marketing? And is the new podcast app an extension of that same approach?

Sari: When it comes to marketing, our main focus has been on writing. The more we write, share, and build in public, the more people are drawn to our work. That’s one thing we do consistently.

We also showcase how others use Sublime. We spend a lot of time with our community, learning how they’re using the tool, and sharing their stories. There has definitely been a lot of organic growth out of it. I believe if you build something beautiful and useful, people will share it—and we’ve seen that happen.

You brought up Podcast Magic. One of the big questions I have is: what’s the best way for a product like Sublime to grow? I don’t have the answer, but one we’re exploring is through creating these small, focused tools we call “drops”. Each one does a single thing well, and ties back to Sublime in some meaningful way.

Sublime as a whole is a pretty deep tool. It lets you collect things, connect ideas, explore them on a Miro-Figma-type canvas, and search across everything. It’s a big ecosystem, and it requires a bit of time and investment to understand and fully use. That means activation can be a little harder, but our retention is off the charts. The people who love Sublime are obsessed with it.

With something like Podcast Magic, it’s meant to be a lightweight, delightful entry point. For context: if you’re listening to a podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and you hear something interesting, you just take a screenshot and email it to podcastmagic@sublime.app. You get an email back with the transcript from that moment and a video clip you can share. We then connect that to your Sublime library, so you can go deeper and explore related ideas.

These kinds of simple, viral products are a great way to grow our top of funnel. So we’re going to keep experimenting, building things we wish existed for ourselves, and seeing what resonates.

Itay: I was actually surprised to see how much revenue comes through just from your Substack. You also produced two longform zines. Do you see them as part of Sublime’s growth and marketing strategy, or more as a separate creative outlet?

Sari: I’d say we produce the editorial work for two reasons.

First, our team is just a bunch of people obsessed with interesting ideas, so we genuinely enjoy making zines and publishing our own original editorial.

It’s also an effective acquisition channel. If you look at our revenue charts, the months when we launched the zines were the same our revenue grew. People share the zines, so more people discover Sublime, and more people become paying users.

Also, they’re structured to be cost-neutral. In fact, they’re revenue-positive. If it costs us $6,000 or $7,000 to make them and we bring in $15,000, then it’s essentially a customer acquisition funnel we get paid for. It’s not super scalable, and it’s not what’s going to pay our team the wages they deserve, but it’s a very Sublime way of growing the company—honest, and authentic. So, from a business perspective, it’s been the smartest use of our time and resources.

Second, at the end of the day, Sublime is a tool to enable people to produce and create amazing things. The point of the tool isn’t just to collect ideas—it’s to create new forms of knowledge and meaning. We don’t want to get so caught up in building software that we forget to actually make things ourselves.

One of the big shifts I hope Sublime can support in our customers is to change their ratio of consumption to creation. We want to pull people out of passive consumption mode into creation mode.

We’re not looking at what Roam, Tana, or Notion are doing. We’re asking: what do we want to build? What feels exciting and alive to us? If we follow that aliveness, I think people feel it. It’s magnetic.

Itay: You mentioned the community aspect earlier, and interestingly, I’ve met a few people through the Sublime Slack—people I’d say I have a stronger relationship with than many others I’ve met elsewhere (s/o and ). Do you have an idea why the Sublime community feels so engaged?

Sari: To be honest, I have no idea. But I love hearing that you’ve made friends through Sublime! What’s so interesting about software is that most of the time, we don’t even know these kinds of things are happening.

Just recently, someone tagged me in a Substack post where two Sublime members, one interviewing the other, talked about how they met through Sublime and bonded over their shared love for it. There’s something really powerful about meeting through a product, collaborating, and building a connection that way. I don’t really have a way to track it, so I rarely find out when it happens, but it speaks about the fact that we’re not just building a utility. Because we’ve been so explicit about our values, by proxy, there’s this beautiful side effect. By joining Sublime, you signal that you care deeply about creativity. You engage with ideas, and you have a more nuanced take on the world. You’re not interested in AI slop—you want to make something meaningful.

There’s something implicit that comes through in the way people engage with Sublime, and seeing that makes me so, so happy. It’s easy to get caught up in questions like: why don’t we have 100,000 or a million users? But at the end of the day, it’s really about how many people you touch. That’s a much more valuable metric than reach. The business and economics of the internet aren’t structured in that way, so on a human scale perspective, it’s a really nice reminder of what actually matters.

Itay: Do you have a sense of why so many people actively want to engage with you, like writing about Sublime or joining the Slack? Because with most products, people might use them, but they don’t often engage more broadly. There’s usually a gap there. But with Sublime, it feels different. People actually want to be part of it.

Sari: I don't know. To be clear, we don't really have a head of community who manages and measures how many people are active on Slack. It’s kind of like a help desk, and then people are going to find each other. It's very organic.

I would flip the question over to you: why do you think that is?

Itay: I guess it's because I see a lively community. I'm part of a lot of communities, but I rarely check in on them because they're kind of dead. But every time I posted something in the Sublime’s Slack community, people responded—both publicly and privately. So yeah, I don't know… but it's a good sign.

Sari: I love that. I’d really love to build more of that into the product itself. The things that are resonating with you—those really matter. If we can get more people to collaborate and create together, that’s something I’d love to enable in a more meaningful way over time.

Itay: Speaking of communities, you recently talked at a fabulous event in Stockholm. How did it come about?

Sari: One of the main people planning the event, , is an avid Sublime user. It was amazing because it was one of those surreal moments. I mean, Garry Kasparov, David Deutsch—all of these people were there. And I’m just here building this thing, still very much in spring/fall mode. It was amazing. I think it really speaks to how deep the love runs from people who truly get, use, and love Sublime. I’m just so grateful to Lauren—that whole experience was completely surreal.

Itay: I’m looking at the Sana website, and maybe I’m wrong, but at first glance, it seems like a product in a similar space to Sublime. How do you stay friends, not rivals, when you’re building something that feels kind of similar?

Sari: First of all, Sana is an enterprise knowledge management tool. It’s designed to help teams search and access their internal knowledge, more like an internal wiki. While we both care deeply about knowledge management and are excited about AI that lifts humans, I’d say from a product and customer standpoint, there’s basically zero overlap.

But I think your question goes deeper, and it's really about competition. Honestly, I don’t think about competition at all. Sure, there are alternatives, but if Sublime doesn’t work out, it won’t be because of them. It’ll be because we didn’t serve our customers deeply enough.

I actually think it’s riskier to spend too much time watching others. What helps us maintain a strong sense of identity is tuning that out and asking ourselves: what do we want to build? I didn’t set out to improve Roam or fix some other tool. I wanted to create something I’d fall in love with—a tool that helps me think better and engage more meaningfully with the world.

I think people worry too much about competition. Actually, one thing we’ve observed is that many people pay for multiple tools in our space. I really believe there’s enough room for all of us to win. Some people will love Sublime, some won’t—and that’s okay. There are so many nuances, whether you choose Notion, Readwise, or any other tool. Each one is designed for different kinds of people, and in fact, their existence helps shed light on the category and create space for us.

Personal niches

Itay: Before we wrap up, what’s a product, whether software or hardware, that you really admire for its design? Something that stands out to you as exceptionally well-made or thoughtful?

Sari: I appreciate how in the AI age, a lot of UX comes down to personality and feeling. When I think about Claude vs. ChatGPT, there’s an aesthetic sensibility in the former that stands out. It’s not just technically competent—it also feels cozy and intentional. That kind of personality and warmth in a tool really matters, and it goes beyond just the interface.

I also just got my Daylight in the mail a few weeks ago. With Daylight, what I admire most is the storytelling. Building hardware is incredibly hard (I’m sure subsequent versions will keep getting better), but the way they’ve crafted the narrative around it is what really impresses me. I believe people don't just buy products—they buy better versions of themselves. Using Daylight, I’m sort of stepping into a better version of myself. The fact that they've managed to build that is amazing

I’m also obsessed with Mercury. A lot of people in Silicon Valley, when Silicon Valley Bank had that run, were like, "leave Mercury and just go to a safe bank like Chase." And I was like, I can't give up this UX—it’s just too good. They've nailed all the details. I know where to find things, and it just works every single time. And I know how hard it is to make something feel that effortless. It's so delightful and continues to bring me joy.

Having said all of that, what mostly inspires me these days is experiences. Like this hotel in Stockholm called Ett Hem. Just the experience of walking in, how you feel, how they greet you, eating there… I don't think anything online remotely resembles that. Being in Stockholm recently and going into some of the stores, there’s this amazing Swedish brand I love called TOTEME. It’s so curated, beautiful, minimalist, and evocative. For me, it’s like walking into an amazing omakase restaurant, a hammam in Stockholm, or a beautiful retail space. That’s where I feel most inspired. It’s less digital these days.

Itay: Swedish design is something else. Everything that comes out of these Scandinavian countries is just so beautifully designed.

Sari: It's incredible, just the love of design there. You see it everywhere. There’s so much to learn, not just from the ideas, but from the experiences. For me, it was the way they savor meals, the slowness, the intimacy of small spaces. I was there for a tech conference, but what really stayed with me were the dinners—these 12-course meals that unfolded slowly, thoughtfully. It was nothing like anything you'd experience in the US. It was just amazing.

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Sublime is now out of beta and open to the public. Extract your favorite highlights from this interview and add them to your newest collections.

Find Sari on Sublime, Substack, and Twitter.

Since I’ve been interviewing other builders for the niche design zine, I've noticed a few recurring patterns. One is “building as gardening” which seems like a healthier way to build software in our age.

This is how Cab of Are.na described to me this approach:

You can be like “we’ve got to plant these here!” or “this is not working, let’s take it out!”.

But you can also choose the other way which is more like “oh wow, this thing is growing, that's really cool” or “let's see what else we can put here”.

It's a different kind of perspective.

And this, unrelatedly or not, how Herman of Bear Blog put it:

I’m trying to build a similar product with Bear Blog. Something niche but valuable. Something I can spend time on because I want to.

Being able to talk to, and interact with the people using my tools is fulfilling. Spending time meticulously improving subtle aspects of the product is enjoyable.

My product is my garden

I’m no poetic person, so I admit this metaphor was a bit hard to digest at first. However, after pondering on this perspective for a while, I suddenly could make sense out of it.

For the longest time, I’ve seen people building software like in a greenhouse mode: carefully controlling and forcing conditions to make something grow. That often means building more “necessary” features, paying people to participate in “research” surveys, committing early to investors, or rushing to catch the “right moment” in the market.

The common thread of this build-fast-break-things-pivot-repeat culture is the sense of urgency. There’s a collective pressure to grow something faster than it naturally would. Instead of letting things grow more organically, we’re forced to grow them more artificially. Then everything feels urgent.

But that's just one way to view this world.

Then there's the gardening approach, which is a different process; a different mindset. Walking this path isn’t about the classic solving problems mantra through countless plans, strategies, and checklists to mark. Nor is it about taking the hammer and knocking a few components and forcing them to fit together.

Gardening is rather about tending something slowly until it (or not) reaches any height, while giving it the necessary time to mature and evolve. It’s not about forcing a solution, but rather about allowing growth to happen more organically.

Building software is much the same. It’s not a science-backed formula—it’s messy, unpredictable, and resistant to being rushed. There are countless unknowns along the way, and just as many ways for something to take shape.

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On a personal level

I’ve been experiencing this gardening mindset with these words—my writings.

It didn’t take me long after starting this blog to realize there’s no way I’d keep up at a weekly publishing pace. Some writers find the “writing on a deadline” with more ease, but I just can’t force an idea to grow and mature on a schedule.

I rather find writing to be more of a musing process: lingering with an idea for a while, writing a few sentences here, thinking about a concept there, and sharing it with the void—until some emerging patterns reveal themselves.

In other recent news, there’s URList—a new project I’m working on. (tl;dr: it’s a tool for making lists by curating links of bookmarks, research, etc.)

The background story is that we planted the seeds and made the soil almost a year ago, but never harvested it. We ditched it even though it was nearly ready to be launched: life happened, and I got burnt out of making software, and so it sat in the dark for months, waiting to be revived.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, we took some time to fix all the small remains and released it to the world. What appeared has gotten me in a surprise. The attention this little thing got wasn’t expected at all. I’ve received some really nice DMs, emails, and even got mentioned in newsletters and blogs like The Verge Installer, Hulry, and Webcurios.

This might sound like a decent story, but it’s very much different than our history of building products. This time we’re not running to raise money, or going into the endless loop of meeting people and creating presentations with some grand plans. We just hope to tend it over time and grow it more naturally for whatever direction it may go. We’re also not trying to over-push it or set strict goals. The only thing that matters is that people actually use it.

Like writing this blog, I need to recognize there's only so much I can do. I can’t speed up the process—it will take the time it needs.

One small big caveat

I want to publish more so this blog would seemingly grow faster, which means monetization would be more feasible, but at the same time, I acknowledge it can’t be hastened as much as I wish.

And I also want URList to generate some income in the very near future.

This entire financial aspect is a constant frustration to me. I noticed my instincts have been to monetize everything I do, and I guess many would agree. It’s just natural to measure progress and reward effort with money.

I’ve been thinking forever about building a product from a strict business perspective: it needs to generate money, or at the very least, earn some public recognition.

Starting without big goals or a plan to make money might not sound like great business advice. But as they say, it takes time to build anything meaningful.

Neither Are.na nor Bear Blog started with big funding. Both have taken long journeys to reach where they are today. The former has been in the making for more than 13 years, while the latter has been for more than 5 years.

I think the hard thing about software nowadays is that the end goal tends to be the financial upside—an exit or an IPO.

But we’re actually just interested in working on our product. That’s our interest and it's the only thing that can sustain you over a long period of time.

Cab, the niche design zine

I’m not sure about my patience, but I keep growing my gardens—slowly but gradually.

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It was December 4 when I first heard about Deta Surf. I stumbled across the article in The Verge, at a time when I was still trying to fill the browser-shaped hole in my heart after The Browser Company announced that they were moving on from Arc, six weeks prior.

Even just from the two pictures shown in the article, I could tell that Surf would give me the opinionated design that I had found in Arc; an almost magical quality completely non-existent in Chrome. Surf’s website, full of colorful manga-style drawings, showed me that Surf was maintained by a devoted small team.

I looked up Surf, but there were almost no search results, which showed me that I was in on something early, made by a company that wasn’t necessarily trying to appeal to everyone.

When I first set Surf up two weeks later on an M1 iMac, it asked me if I would like horizontal tabs or vertical tabs, and light or dark mode. Coming from Arc, I was curious how switching back to horizontal tabs would feel, so I decided that I would try those out. The second choice was much easier for me. I’ve never been a fan of dark mode on anything, and so I chose light mode without even thinking about it. Personally, my favorite theme is cream-colored, or a warm off-white, like the option found on Instapaper and Pocket, two read-it-later services. Although Surf gave me choices, the design was still very much opinionated, arguably the most important quality in a well-designed piece of software, something apparent in Arc, and, as I realized, in Surf as well.

A few weeks later, I answered an email asking for user feedback and gave them half an hour of my time on a call with of of their design engineers, Felix Tesche. He was very friendly and happily showed me some features that I hadn’t previously played around with. In return, Su Durakbasa, a 2D Animator working with Deta, drew a manga-style portrait of me from a photo I provided:

Since then, I have had another call with Felix, and it really reminded me how exciting and fun it is to be involved with a niche software program.

Surf’s approach is one of its biggest differentiators, or more specifically, its contexts feature, which is core to the product experience. Contexts are basically sets of tabs, like groups of interests, that you can easily manage. You can organize a new context manually or use a feature called Smart Context that leverages AI to create and organize a new one.

But Surf’s AI capabilities go even further.

With Surf Notes, you can @-mention contexts, tapping into models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and even Wikipedia. If you follow the mention with a question, the AI will then give you a response based on the provided query.

Another feature, Ask, lets you chat directly with any webpage or context you're browsing. Interestingly, you can also take a screenshot and ask the AI a question based on what’s shown in the image.

This might lead to privacy concerns, but I wouldn’t worry about it. Surf does most of its processing locally. I’m by no means technical enough to know of all of the privacy concerns, but I trust Deta. After speaking to the team, I feel like there are real people behind it, who I want to trust.

Browsing the Arc subreddit, I get the sense that many people decided not to use Surf just because it is coded in Electron, which is not memory efficient. From my experience using Surf with 16 gigs of unified memory, it runs just fine. Electron shouldn’t be a reason to pass on it. Surf will run on macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows, and Linux, so there are no compatibility issues like there were on Arc, which for most of its life, was only available for macOS. Yes, eventually there was a Windows version, but it never matched the feature set of the macOS version.

Surf, to me, feels like a product that, even if its user base grows by orders of magnitude, will keep its niche design and small-company feeling. But then again—I can’t predict the future. At Arc’s peak, I thought it would be around forever.

Even now, in March, Surf is still little known. Aside from the occasional Reddit thread, and this icon mockup (which I absolutely love, by the way), Surf receives very little attention online. I wish more people knew about Surf so that they could enjoy it, but at the same time, I don’t want to spoil the nicheness of it, the same thing that happened to Arc—I want it to continue to flourish as a niche design product.

As Surf is still very much in its alpha stage, there is a waitlist, but it shouldn’t take too long to get in. When onboarding, I would recommend watching the Deta Surf Crash Course, a six-minute video made by Felix outlining the basics. Surf’s website provides some interesting content about how people use Surf, along with a video.

I’m excited to see how Surf compares to The Browser Company’s yet unreleased new pursuit, Dia, and Perplexity’s unreleased agentic AI browser, Comet. I’m waiting eagerly for both, but to me, Surf seems like a product that will stick around in my Dock for a while.

When I first wrote about the zine two months ago, it was primarily for showing progress to myself while signaling something to the outer world after intensely working and writing in silo for a few months.

This time, I wanted to push further—raising more awareness and generating more pre-orders to help fund the remaining work, which still has a long way to go.

So, if you aren’t familiar with the project, here’s a short blurb:

The niche design is an open call for designers and product makers seeking meaning beyond metrics. An invitation to rethink how we shape products and culture. It's a personal project but also communal—sharing philosophies and work ethics of people building atypical products and technologies, from software to hardware.

…

It’s odd, if I were to give an advice to someone else, I’d promptly suggest making a website. Everything on the internet should deserve its own place. But when it comes to my own things, I immediately face blackouts—it’s just me, stuck in my head, trying to figure things out. And because I haven’t found and settled on a style for the zine itself, it felt even harder; what conveys niche? what makes niche design tangible? I made this all up and I now I had to deliver some answers.

So I took a week (and a half?) to put something together. I found Maxi, a great typeface by Dinamo that felt natural for conveying the project’s weird perspective. It was also the first time in 15 years I allowed myself to purchase a commercial font for a personal project. Though I did compromise on a single weight, as fonts aren’t exactly cheap.

There’s something to be said about how detaching from the work itself makes the work actually WORKS. But that’s for another time—for now, I’d say that bringing the zine a bit closer to reality feels so much fun and rewarding, and I even got to use Cargo for the first time, which yields pleasant aesthetics.

nichedesign.press

Since the last update, I’ve had more people share their perspectives and work ethics with me—both in their personal and professional lives.

In addition to Pavel, and Charles, I got to interview on his journey on cultivating a unique and diverse practice: from growing up and studying  architecture in Estonia to the heyday of Fantasy Interactive in Stockholm, and moving to New York, where he now resides; and from opening his own studio, working with notable brands to teaching design in Barcelona.

Here are a couple of quotes I especially liked from our conversation:

• “Problem-solving is part of design, but it’s not the only reason we engage in the process.”

• “ If you want to follow all these web practices, you gonna end up looking like everybody else.”

(By the way, I have one last spot for an interview on the history of the design community—let me know if you have someone in mind!)

For the closing part of the zine, I decided to have a few short Q&A’s with some cool people I’ve been watching who build atypical stuff. And talking to them has opened my eyes, as each one introduced me to its own world:

I learned from Anjan of Daylight about many niche products I didn’t know; from Pirijan of Kinopio on building soulful software as a solo maker; from Andy of !Boring on the importance of playing with software; from Yatu & Norm of USB Club on bringing fiction into reality with USBs; from mysterious XH of mmm.page on the role of websites; from Herman of Bear on building an enduring blogging platform; and learned from Vin, Lucas & Kent of Futureland about their long and persistent journey building a cozy habit tracker.

This roster isn’t locked yet, so expect more to come! ++

So far this mini-launch has gone quite well. I’ve got some people sending me questions and saying positive things, which is very encouraging.

Oh, and the pre-orders have already covered the cost of Maxi!

Get your niche pre-copy

…

Although I won’t resist if you share this project with whomever you like, I’m also considering doing some press.

I’ve applied to Indiecon 2025 and learned that zine fairs are actually a thing! I’m still learning about this space, and I’d love to know about more cool events in that spirit.

Now I need to stay heads-down for another month or two to hopefully finalize it all and start shipping it!

…

Meanwhile,

Ditch trends. Avoid playbooks. Reject boredom.
Embrace the niche to rediscover authenticity.

This is the second part of a series on the identity of social networks:

• Part one: Looking for humanness in the world wide social

• Part two: Inside the dark forests of the internet

If you’ve been hanging for long enough in the tech-intellectual internet corner, you’re probably acquainted with The Theory of The Dark Forest of the Internet—which was published a few years ago by .

As it suggests, the internet has become a hostile place for its natives. When you swipe through a friend’s story only to be interrupted by an ad or receive likes and spam messages from bots, it’s no wonder many have minimized their social presence and gone silent. The meaningful internet has gradually moved into more private and hidden spaces: scattered dark forests, far from the public eye. As Yancey puts it:

In response to the ads, the tracking, the trolling, the hype, and other predatory behaviors, we’re retreating to our dark forests of the internet, and away from the mainstream.

The theory has made waves across the vast internet ocean, sparking interest and many riffs including the beautifully illustrated The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web by Maggie Appleton, and The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet, a collective book published by last year.

In fact, the original Yancey’s post itself was built on another idea: The Dark Forest Theory of the Universe.

Another related-unrelated notable post is The Extended Internet Universe where coined the term cozy web:

The cozyweb works on the (human) protocol of everybody cutting-and-pasting bits of text, images, URLs, and screenshots across live streams. Much of this content is poorly addressable, poorly searchable, and very vulnerable to bitrot. It lives in a high-gatekeeping slum-like space comprising slacks, messaging apps, private groups, storage services like dropbox, and of course, email.

I’ve been exploring the cozy web at length in the previous part, and now, as I write my own riff, I take these ideas further, asking:

What’s inside the dark forests of the internet?

Email

I’ve been using emails ever since I’ve had an internet modem. But if to be honest, I’ve never really thought about it as a resort from the public and noisy internet. To me, email has been strictly related as a private and very formal channel to mostly meet internet strangers—whether for professional or personal purposes.

Although I don’t think that’s a completely wrong observation, it certainly misses something, perhaps more profound. And I guess the fact that I’m not that email power user, chasing after the inbox zero mission has made me unconsciously neglect it for its healthier qualities.

But a few weeks ago I came across Craig Mod's musings on social media:

Me? I’m doing email. (And not the Substack kind.) I am SO GRATEFUL FOR EMAIL. Good lord. I love email. I love “stupid” email services. I love inboxes. I love it all so much.

I love that these systems don’t smash concentration (well, email, somewhat, sure; but nothing like an algorithmically activated feed of dingdongery) and support creativity and are DURABLE and sustainable (as proven by history).

This also prompted a self-reflection.

Reading those lines, I'm reminded that long before all the news feeds and mobile-software mania, there it was: a simple protocol for sending and receiving digital messages. Beyond its primary role of communicating with colleagues and friends, it’s where memes and PowerPoint slideshows first took off.

As a teenager, trying to increase my ratio buffer on torrent sites, I used to cold email remote hosting companies, offering to barter my design skills for server access. And before we knew what “likes” would have become, I remember times when I was nervously sitting right in front of my computer screen, waiting for emails to land in my inbox. Email was my first glimpse into online exchanges—and to this day it remains a primary way to communicate over the internet. I still use it to reach out to people, respond to newsletters, and connect people through intros (more recently, thanks, !).

However, the email interface isn’t a social gathering space; it’s more like a café meeting table—an intimate setting where conversations are intentional.

We’re so accustomed to thinking of social media in terms of MMORPG—always-on, and endless. But since email is more low-key and built for smaller interactions, it kind of lost its social vibe. As we moved away from 1:1 communication, email has taken shape as a more serious, private space, serving our real-world outie while social media has captured our innie’s lives.

As email solidified its role as an all-in-one personal and professional hub, it also became a target. The flood of SaaS platforms has turned inboxes into battlegrounds for attention, polluting them with dark patterns of unnecessary noise:

You might think you hate email. You don’t. You hate spam, and you hate work. I also hate spam, and I also (mostly) hate work. These things are not a necessary part of email - and with just a few good choices, you can more-or-less abolish them entirely.

The definitive guide for escaping social media (and joining the indie web.)

Invading our privacy (I’m looking at you, LinkedIn) has turned email into a never-ending unsubscribing game. For many, this has made email overwhelming—hard to check, and harder to navigate. However, and despite the abuse, email has been the most reliable and effective tool for leveraging the internet, outlasting all other “modern” social inventions, it likely has the largest amount of customers, more than any multi-trillion behemoth.

As Ryan Gilbert recently wrote in launching his new newsletter:

I couldn’t confidently tell you if Twitter will be around in its current form 6 months from now… but I know email will be.

That might be why some tech-savvy groups still use email the old-fashioned way. An interesting local example here is YACV (short for Yet Another CV), which serves as a job search and career forum for veterans of the IDF's technological units. It’s a private social network that runs entirely on Google Groups—via emails of course.

Most recently I also discovered Bits and Bobs—a weird breed of a weekly newsletter-blog, published in a shared Google Doc by Alex Komoroske. When subscribing to its Google Group, you get notified by email as well. And it magically works. Every time I check the doc I can see at least a few users lurking across the bullet points, and to be honest, I find it peaceful. It’s detached from any feed and engagement metrics.

The interesting part of this gdoc, from a social perspective, is that it doesn’t live only in a read-only mode. Viewers can also comment, and from the short time I’ve been following it, in a very thoughtful way, which leads to another social component that has long carried a bad reputation.

The comment-verse

Comment sections on public social and news media websites are arguably the most disreputable corners of these platforms—unfiltered, unrestrained spaces for people to spread anything but wisdom or positivity. In fact, some major media outlets have already disabled comments almost a decade ago as the chaos went out of control.

But once again, Craig’s words struck a chord:

Oh, and amidst the muck, Kottke’s comments section is a joyful haven.

Thinking of other blogs and communities that are more familiar to me—whether it's the design critiques of Brand New, the philosophers of LessWrong, or the sharp-tongued but engaged communities of Hacker News and Reddit—they all share the Kottke’s spirit.

As it turns out, applying the same dynamics to smaller, cozier spaces has the opposite effect of large-scale platforms—it cultivates meaningful discussions.

One example I particularly like comes from Brand New—where designer Emunah Winer started as an active commenter on the site’s posts and eventually became a speaker at one of its conferences:

5 years ago I started commenting on @brandnewbyucllc reviews to try to squeeze my way into a design world I did not think I belonged in. I snuck my way into the types of conversations I never had at design school because I never went to design school. I commented on projects from agencies I felt I could never work at.

This year we'll be speaking alongside some of those agencies at the 2023 Brand New Conference in Chicago. This is quite literally my dream come true.

Unlike social media and large media platforms, where words often get swallowed into the void, the cozy web thrives on intimacy.

This positive pattern extends to small-medium blogs like those of Cal Newport, Ribbonfarm (pre-retiring), Tom Critchlow, OM, , and many other self-hosted and blogs. It’s the long tail of blogs that yields a much better online atmosphere.

In PBS of the Internet, Laurel Schwulst makes the case for the need for “PBS energy” internet, wondering:

Who is the Mr. Rogers of today? Maybe “PBS of the Internet” is about curating existing influencers online and distributing this curation widely.

In many ways, these kinds of blogs and small communities share the same energy. Detached from the noise of public social media, they function much like PBS: free from algorithmic pressures and advertiser influence. Built on more modest incentives, they naturally invite deeper and more authentic conversations.

New Person, Same Old Mistakes

Dark forests aren’t strictly havens—not in public comment sections, nor in private emails. After all, you can’t separate human spaces from human nature. Depending on the forest vibe, conversations can feel like a battle, laced with cynicism and sarcasm. But more often, these spaces serve as fertile ground for diffusing a much needed positivity into the internet’s air.

In a high-rated capitalistic world, perhaps much like PBS, we’d all benefit from un-monetized online spaces where incentives are guided by human ethics rather than profit. Maybe there’s an infrastructure waiting to emerge—something that could make dark forests a little less dark.

One day we might all walk outside under the digital sun, experiencing the cozy warmth online vibes without feeling the need to hide from predators.

After all, no one owns the internet—we share it together.

What’s your dark forest?
—Itay

If you found this piece useful, feel free to share it in your favorite internet corners. Also, consider supporting my work by inviting me to a virtual coffee or subsidizing my gym membership.

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In case you missed the first part:

This is the first part of a series on the identity of social networks.

Social networks have shaped me since a young age. Growing up at the beginning of the millennium, I used to spend my time in phpBB and vBulletin forums. There, I befriended internet strangers, started my way into graphic design, and learned about torrents. Forums were my favorite third places—little corners on the web where I felt a deep affinity.

I can still vividly remember the joy and excitement while exploring those discussion boards. The sheer amount of knowledge and people I’ve met in those places could not be found anywhere else. To this day I believe these experiences have profoundly shaped the path I’m still walking today.

But when I look at the current form of social media, it all feels dumb: watching adults post nonsense or praise “influencer gurus” while doom-scrolling from dusk to dawn seems absurd. We should have had more important things to do with our lives, yet we’ve all gotten caught up in this utopian-dystopian era.

What once felt like home evolved into alienated spaces.

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The social archetype, once defined by its role in connecting like-minded strangers, gradually evolved into a space for staying in touch with friends and family. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have all initially focused on cultivating personal connections. However, this social identity grew into a behemoth over time—at a pace that now feels startling. With the rise of the new media model, social networks transformed from intimate bonfires into vast, crowded arenas while losing much of their original charm.

Like many others, I embraced the new social paradigm. But it wasn’t until I was deep into writing these lines that I realized just how detached I am from its very idea. I’ve long been inside the loop of social media—joining and lurking on new platforms, trying to play the game. Yet I’ve never truly felt part of the culture. If you look at my Instagram grid or Facebook wall, they seem pretty dormant. And I’m far from a chronic tweeter.

Interestingly, social platforms exist in a paradox. Despite negativity and declining discourse (at least in my view), they persist and evolve, each with its own premise. Whether driven by hypes, protocols, or ideologies—the ‘recent flocking’ news headlines often appear to describe the recent migration to Mastodon, Bluesky, Farcaster, Substack Notes, Threads, and others.

By now the TikTok-mania has taken over the majority of mainstream social-land. Every platform that embraced the aggressive recommendation model has transformed from a small town square into a big continent—and even beyond. Rather than following IRL friends and shared interests, we follow the algorithm, or shall I say, corporate desires. As Ev Williams recently wrote, social is no more social:

Social networks became “social media,” which, at first, meant receiving content from people you chose to hear from. But in the quest to maximize engagement, the timeline of friends and people you picked to follow turned into a free-for-all battle for attention. And it turns out, for most people, your friends aren’t as entertaining as (god forbid) influencers who spend their waking hours making “content.” In other words, social media became…media.

The trend has also spread beyond what we call social networks per se. Spotify has morphed into a taste guessing machine, promoting its business agenda over listener preferences through continuous and deliberate interface changes, as described by :

The uppermost menu now offers three options, each given equal real estate—Music, Podcasts, and Audiobooks—and the Music tab is filled with rows of playlists, autoplay “radio” stations, and algorithmically generated mixes. The only option for browsing full albums is a small item in the lesser Library column, to the right of yet more buttons for Playlists and Podcasts. With the upgrade, it became clearer than ever what the app has been pushing me to do: listen to what it suggests, not choose music on my own.

Why I Finally Quit Spotify

I still miss the days I saw what my Facebook friends were listening to.1

The same goes for LinkedIn. The professional social network, once connecting between co-workers has long joined the media gang. The intrusive “promotions as private messages”, and the useless notifications, along with the latest additions—games and even reels have made the platform far from being “professional”.

The pendulum has been swinging hard for the media side, but a core shift has been going underway. Amidst algorithm fatigue, ads, and other downsides, people seem to be gravitating back to the essence of old social networks—smaller, cozier spaces based on real connections and shared interests. There’s a reason why Instagram’s Close Friends has increasingly become popular, why an IRL photo-sharing app like Retro surges, and why Ev Williams just launched Mozi.

This regression feels inevitable as social media culture has grown out of proportion.

Although the human social dynamics from the past haven’t changed, the settings largely have—with a growing “building an audience” economics that made social spaces into one-man shows instead of collective jams.

Back in my forum days, I surely fired comments like a maniac to increase my message count to grow my ego reputation. But connections were formed more naturally. I didn’t comment on random posts with the intention of making friends—I formed connections through genuine activity. And often, those relationships were extended to private messengers like MSN or ICQ.

Miraculously, I wasn’t guided by algorithms—but through my curiosity as I discovered my own world.

In Here for the Wrong Reasons, Charles Broskoski articulates this very notion while referencing a social platform from the past—Soulseek:

There is this tendency to think about software, especially software that is more on the “tool” side as something that augments your ability as a human. What I keep coming back to is that I really don’t want that at all. I like feeling connected to things and unencumbered. I like feeling the humanness of things and my own human relationship to things. I want to be able to feel true attention, or at the very least, the possibility of it.

For Soulseek, the key is that it is just an environment that is made for the same kind of abstract actions that happen when you are surfing nodal points in the physical world: A person might turn you onto something — a band, a book, an artist, etc. — and later on, if that thing becomes a nodal point for you, it might lead you to another person and that person might lead you to another nodal point and on and on.

That shared love for the thing or the overlapping interests allows you to tune your radar for certain types of people. Similar to the idea of desire lines, agency is the key component. There’s the agency to move through abstract space guided by your own intuition. In the case of Soulseek, there’s nothing (other than your own intuition) that is influencing your path.

Software environments that take these types of approaches are attractive because they operate in a way that doesn’t make any assumptions about what an individual might want, at least in terms of content. There are no personalized suggestions or algorithmic rabbit holes to fall into. The content you are exposed to is only based on a network you’ve intentionally cultivated for yourself, guided by your own internal radar. The result is a kind of texture of a network that is both difficult to replicate and rewarding to traverse.

What Charles describes seems to be confined to the internet’s early days—to the previous incarnation of social networks. Nowadays there’s no chance the social media gods would allow you to follow your intuition. After all, that’s their lifeblood—they’ve got their own intuition (and intention) for what you should consume.

But Charles knows a thing or two about such software environments. For years he and his co-founders, have been building and nourishing Are.na—a platform that shares the same ethics as Soulseek. As I’ve already already written, when I step into Are.na I’m not seeking attention or competing for visibility. I simply follow my intuition, allowing my presence to resonate with those who share similar interests, even without a literal and direct engagement.

Such an atmosphere reminds me of old Dribbble. At its peak, the pinky website was just about showcasing design work. Before dribbblisation took over, designer’s presence served as living portfolios, allowing them to get noticed. The incentive of maintaining a profile also felt human—uploading work and sharing (shots) within the network, with little expectations.2

But a few years later, the common social chronic reached Dribbble too. As it expanded, it opened the gates by removing its invite system and eventually got acquired—then becoming more of a busy marketplace rather than a wholesome community.

All this to say that a social platform stays attractive as long as it maintains its cozy and human feelings—with real humans. As wrote about what makes her product Sublime:

On the other hand – the most valuable part of Sublime is the people.

Looking back at the design landscape, there’s one place that really stands out—a small social network called Posts. It’s kind of a mini version of Design Twitter, or at least what it used to be. What I like about Posts is that one doesn’t need a large following to overcome the void. For the most part, I receive useful and thoughtful comments, as its smaller scale allows for deeper interactions.

These platforms cultivate environments that optimize for mojo rather than chasing over-monetization. There are no artificial rules for posting. There are no formats or trends to be followed. There’s no pressure to post on a schedule. And there are no penalties. Rather than shouting into an endless void, there are just natural expressions. This allows for intimacy and shared, or at least, intersecting interests to be valued instead of going through endless and daunting content suggestion loops.

That’s a healthier form of online gathering.3

When I left my beloved forums scene, the internet had already started to change.

The world started to change.

How do you go to a party with 10,000 people? How would you notice someone on the other side of a stadium full of 100,000 people? This lack of affinity and belonging in crowded and chaotic platforms like Twitter often leaves me feeling uncomfortable. Though I’m very active there, it’s still a melting pot of countless interests, not to mention the bots.

While serendipity certainly occurs on the big platforms, the general motivation there is very different from small-scale places seeking humanness. The people I’ve met on Twitter are a fraction compared to the internet friends I made through small and cozy Slack and Discord communities—or even WhatsApp and Telegram groups.

Social networks began with the promise of forming meaningful connections while prioritizing authenticity over virality. I may get too nostalgic when reminded of my early internet days, but I guess I’m longing for more calm environments on the web—which is strongly rooted in those days. When I reflect on my somewhat long journey, the most profound insight I gain is the power of bonding and connection that early online social spaces used to create.

There’s no wish in me that things would go backward, but I appreciate the pendulum now swinging slightly sideways, moving closer to a more human environment.

See you somewhere,
—Itay.

Thanks for reading a draft and verifying this piece.

It’s finally time to break the recent silence here.

For the past few months, I’ve been putting my energies into an ambitious project.

In February I published Niche product design. The original idea of this post has evolved in my head for quite a few years. I first published it for myself in a cozy little social journal network Futureland—and about a year ago I posted it as a short tweetstorm.

However, the post wasn’t my greatest piece of writing by any means (and metrics). Examining “ugly” web design or writing about the increasing dumbness of our smart devices has been probably way more provocative and noticeable if you look at the archive.

Even though I’ve been digesting the niche thesis for a long time, I guess I had taken less time to refine and make it more coherent and appealing as an impressive essay. Yet I found it doing a good job as the ideas seemed to resonate with quite a few.
Also, the main idea will probably be forever dear to my heart.1

Over the past year, I’ve been trying to expand my creative-indie practice beyond the ordinary product design services. I’ve started to take writing seriously by writing this publication and I also launched a research service—which is still trying to find its purpose. But I knew I wanted to do more with my writing—and so I started tinkering with the idea of making a zine a few months ago.

In search of a topic, it quickly became clear that the niche post should take the spot. It might be the rough format in which I felt I could elaborate more and deepen the original piece into a larger body of work. I’ve had only loose expectations of what that experience would be—and as with any creative work, it turned out to be not less daunting than any other work I’ve done.

The consolidated zine—which still goes by the temporary name (or not?) ‘The Niche Design Zine’ is an extension of the original essay. If I were studying formal design education at some point, this would be my Master’s thesis.

I largely think this upcoming zine is the essence of Product Identity in many ways. It speaks the language of design but in a broader lens. Through essays, ideas, and conversations, it explores design from diverse perspectives, from the business world to the designer's inner world:

• What’s the Niche Design thesis

• An expanded brief of the design community culture

• Finding soul and authenticity in a sea of sameness

• The conflict between quality and growth

Going all-in into this project also invited an opportunity to chat with some of the most influential people on the project and myself:

• Pavel Kedzich on the other web and working as a designer:

  • “We’re not changing the world. Like everyone in tech, we’ve been absorbed by business and metrics. It’s pure capitalism, and that’s just the reality. I accept that, and I’m part of it—I don’t want to change it. I’m not a revolutionary. I’m just finding my way in different areas, whether it’s a small personal project or something for a friend. That’s the level I operate on.”

• Charles (AKA Cab) Broskoski of Are.na on growth at the right pace2

  • “I feel like Are.na could be any size as long as it gets there at the right pace.”

+ There’s still more to come!

The zine’s draft is still not 100% finished, but I think it’s more than ready to see the light of day on a greater scale.

Read draft v1

At first, I thought to put it behind a paywall, granting access only to supporters. But then I realized it would be an unnecessary restriction. I’ve been inspired by Metalabel which cultivates a unique practice of sharing work-in-progress with readers:

We’re sharing this as a work-in-progress Google Doc with comments turned on because we’re interested in including your point of view and wisdom.

Promotional Principles for Creative People

About 600 of you have signed up to read what I have to say. Ironically, that’s more followers (humans and bots) I've accumulated across all my social media accounts since the dawn of handle’s time.

I hope the first printed batch will be available by early 2025 once I’m done with all interviews and editing. I’m still offering a pre-order, but only so I can better fund the work and support myself. This will also give you:

• A hard printed copy (once available) + digital version

• A much-appreciated acknowledgement inside the zine

• Support my indie creative pursuit

Pre-order a copy

I’ve commented across the lines with notes and questions where I’m still unsure about things. While reading, feel free to add your input. You can also do it here in the comments section.

Read draft v1

Oh, and in case you’ve had a similar experience in publishing some printing matters, I’d love to get in touch—could you also warn me what not to do?

—Itay.

Thanks, Shachaf, Steyn, Piri, and Pavel for the early reading.

The sunsetting announcement has brought up some public mocking, calling out the fall of InVision. Either triggers a nostalgic emotion or just an evil schadenfreude to harvest engagement in social prisons, the story of InVision does involve common startup patterns. But this story will not live only to that. It does, partly, tell the rise and fall of InVision as a company, yet framing it solely into the startup “failure” narrative is a fatal mistake.

InVision might have financially collapsed and failed to build a product to last, but its contribution to the design community as a whole is invaluable1. From cult culture Clark from InVision emails to educating generations of designers—InVision already holds a place in the design industry's hall of fame, with a lasting legacy.

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With pink bittersweetness

Starting in the pre-historic Photoshop days, InVision has been among the original godfathers of the previous design tooling cycle. To an extent, it managed to survive the early rise of Sketch and later Figma’s takeover.

For the very first years, InVision has benefited from being alone in a rapidly growing market. It introduced a new superpower to the designer—the ability to prototype mockups with simple interactions. In a time when Axure and Photoshop Actions were peak technology, the InVision way was exhausting but seemed reasonable. Nowadays, the old experience of exporting images from Photoshop, uploading them to a website, and then manually linking between them to create a prototype feels so antique.

As a last-mile solution, InVision focused on a single aspect of the designer task, filling a gap in the design workflow. The emerging subset of tools with the likes of Zeplin, Origami, Abstract, or Framer (1st gen), have managed to create some great opportunities and at times lucrative businesses.

However, as the UX-UI-Product design discipline evolved, InVision discovered its risky position2. When Sketch came into the arena it integrated its own prototyping solution. Then Figma. The vacuum in which InVision has lived was slowly fading away. New emerging solutions were far better and efficient, making InVision questionable—and over time, irrelevant.

In pursuit of a different focus, InVision painstakingly tried to keep up with the industry and its trends, but without much luck. It built an inspecting tool to compete with Zeplin, a Sketch/XD competitor (Studio), a Design System Manager (DSM), and a whiteboarding tool (Freehand which later was sold to Miro).

In the world of startups, a behemoth often kills a smaller startup by absorbing its product into a larger feature set. But for InVision—that wasn’t the case. In fact, InVision might be considered a behemoth itself. At its peak, InVision generated $100M a year. Under its acquired belt you could find some renowned and nostalgic names like Muzli, Wake, and Macaw. But it seemed like in every strategic decision, InVision was always behind the curve—chasing others while transitioning from building one software solution to another.

In hindsight, competing in the red ocean of design tooling was probably wrong. But as Vinish accurately tweeted a few years ago, InVision might have gone far from tech-design mainstream, but it played a huge part in shaping its culture, long before we started debating whether ‘designers should code’.

Besides trying to navigate as a software company, InVision became a central learning hub. It might have failed to go places in the product world, but it found gold by producing authentic material through its blog and external collaborations3.

In the current sameness landscape where portfolio reviews and Figma tutorials dominate the public discourse, InVision shed light on things that matter—offering a glimpse into the lives of many design teams. With the release of Design Disruptors, it started a streak of making educational resources. It produced more documentaries4, handbooks and even launched an investment fund.

I feel like InVision seeded a necessary plant, but in a backyard garden—almost like a side project. I’m not pretending to foresee what a media future could have looked like for InVision, but it’s clear that such content is missing today.

That’s probably a total non-business perspective, but an untraditionally way to measure a company is by its cultural effect. Having a lucrative and profitable business is one thing, but making a genuine impact is a whole different thing—especially in the abundant sea of software.

When a company exceeds the sum of its parts, it transcends its product boundaries. A successful one establishes or cultivates a subculture (WeWork), creates a micro-economy (Notion), or even a cult (Roam Research).

In the design industry, I genuinely believe we need more communities, not tools. There are so many tools for designers but so few communities. Tools make our job easier. Communities make us better designers. And with the recent AI drama over Figma’s Config, this realization only becomes clearer.

InVision has fostered a strong community, not just around its product but around design as a discipline. Its influence extends beyond just offering tools and will forever be at the heart of many designers.

Maybe InVision could have saved itself by becoming a media company, or an education platform. And maybe not. Anyway, there’s no lesson to be learned here.

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As we planned our grand move, we toured IKEA (several times, of course) and gathered furniture along with family “exclusive” items to make our new place livable. The 60-something sq ft apartment wasn’t anything fancy. It was located in a building older than my parent’s place but had an extra room that invited an opportunity to upgrade my home office.

I had no big ambitions or a desire to purchase luxury items. But getting a new chair has been on my wishlist for a long time. As I researched the market, I realized how odd the industry is—you either get a low-quality chair on a small-medium budget or go extreme with a high-end one. It seemed like there weren’t many decent options in the middle. Moreover, I tried some expensive chairs here and there, but none felt worth the price.

If you've been in tech for long enough, or are just a workspaces fanboy, you're likely familiar with the Herman Miller chairs. The Aeron model, featured in HBO's Silicon Valley, has become particularly popular, conquering tech high society mainstream. Although the great brand PR, I never got attached to the Aeron or its siblings.
They all look just… ordinary.

At some point, I recalled a chair that appeared a few times on my Twitter feed1, the HÅG Capisco. A uniquely beautiful, strange chair. Crafted in cold Norway, it embodies the beauty of Nordic design.

I don’t know if the Capisco is the beloved chair of the design community, but it’s certainly very niche. I guess its unconventional aesthetics naturally attract creatives who seek taste and appreciate deep care for quality. Even Joe Rogan seems to be part of the gang.

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The Norwegian-based chair isn't a cheap choice. It’s a ~$1,000 unit, but compared to the Aeron, it’s much more affordable. At least locally, it’s nearly half the price. As befits to a so-called premium furniture, the shopping experience is as expected. The Capisco can be customized in various ways—from fabric, color, and finish. I probably spent more time than I should have at the store, self-debating how to design mine.

The Capisco (means 'I understand' in Italian) is renowned for its unique ergonomics. Designer Peter Opsvik, who was inspired by the horse riding saddle, designed the chair in a way that encourages sitters to constantly change posture.

According to Opsvik “every posture is wrong after 10 minutes”, a manifesto that might sound counterintuitive at first. When thinking about the qualities of an office chair, comfort is perhaps the most intuitive one. An "uncomfortable" chair isn't instinctively appealing.

But Opsvik suggests a different philosophy. What if a chair would be perceived more as a purposeful tool? Exploring the Capisco’s design mechanics reveals its genius, and why it’s so novel. Rather than a “tool to use”, the Capisco is a “tool to serve”.

It’s designed in a geometric curvature which creates a unique shape, and not just outwardly. This allows for unconventional positions—side, backward, and even half-standing besides the traditional way. Its backrest supports only half the back, discouraging prolonged postures. These all serve the chair's practical purpose, telling the rationality behind its unusual design.

However, the main reason I got intrigued by the Capisco wasn’t because of its ergonomics, but its style. Despite my wife joking that it looks like an orthodontist chair, I adore it. In pursuit for authentic design, the Capisco stands out—it has a soul and avoids cultural sameness. And if I spend $1,000 on a chair, it better be one I can cherish.

Dieter Rams once said that good design is a long-lasting one. Funny enough the Capisco was designed 40 years ago, but its futuristic aesthetics have made it appear in various sci-fi and media productions over the years.

Its futuristic aesthetic has transcended time, making appearances in countless TV shows set in the future, such as Star Trek and The Expanse, as well as Hugo Boss's Futuristic Milan Fashion Show Techtopia, where its sleek lines and avant-garde design evoke a sense of progress and innovation.

The HÅG Capisco: Celebrating 40 Years of Design Innovation
Richard Ferris

The Capisco undoubtedly passes the test of time and far beyond. It isn’t just functional furniture, it’s also an ornamental one. When it rests on my desk alone, it invites comments from intrigued guests. And like a piece of art, I enjoy sneaking glances at it even when I take a break from my desk.

—Itay.

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Workspaces by Rasmus Andersson and Rafael Conde:

Here we are at the peak of an eternal technology era.

AI agents are on their way. Driverless taxis are making a debut. 4G is an old fashion. We’re heading to a seemingly great utopia.

Perhaps the greatest invention of this era is the smartphone. The small pocket device has evolved into various shapes while computerizing many aspects of our lives. But once saviors, our smart screens have become a source of modern suffering. We have been hitting the wall too many times, and it seems we had enough.

We have arrived at a hard-screen diet era.

In The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok, Cory Doctorow shares his thesis of how platforms become useless by manipulating their audiences, each one at a time. First, they give massive attention for zero cost to newcomers; then they shift focus to their business customers; eventually, they turn against everyone to satisfy shareholders.

Search Amazon to find sponsored ads instead of what you’re looking for. Open Instagram to see what people you don’t follow are doing. Tweet an external link to be ranked as spam. Visit Facebook for a digital trip in a gigantic Times Square.

It’s a chain of deception—or perhaps the greatest scheme of the digital age. You don’t get what you search for. You don’t get connected with your friends. Your online browsing becomes aimless. Everything has become eshittified.

A similar, yet not identical trick is tied to what we used to call a cellphone.

Smartphones should have made us smarter. Or at least that’s what we thought. In the beginning, it was exciting. Suddenly heavy lifting became effortless in the palm of our hands: taking photos, exchanging emails, playing games, or turning on a flashlight.

What more could we ask for?

The rational mind has followed the linear path of progressive overload in tech for quite some time. Like in the gym, the more you work out, the heavier weights you lift to grow your muscles. But does using more technology over time yield the same results? As it appears, it only weakens our mental muscle. Pulling heavyweights of information is so exhausting that it hurts.

We indeed became dependent on our screens as our digital footprint increased. But after years of drowning in the ocean of allegedly tech advancements, there’s an emerging trend that might cross the boundaries of itself to become a positive, healthier norm.

In What’s the future of AI hardware? I wrote:

Yet sometimes it feels like things need to go back to basics. Reverse engineering culture to where it started. It seems when technology takes over, an urge to go backward appears.

As a way to improve our lives, we don’t strive to make our screens faster or smarter anymore. We want them better. And by better I don’t mean integrating fancy new features to maintain our ultra tech-savviness. I mean for a better relationship. Seeking a true purpose for our came-to-be hazardous devices.

This is what I call the Dumbification of our smart screens—and it’s gradually spreading.

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The concept of Digital Minimalism isn’t new. It’s been a long time since the borders between phones and computers have blurred. The mobile phone used to be called a ‘cellphone’ simply because it allowed us to make phone calls (duh). Now we do anything we can to avoid this HCI activity. I suspect many of us have reached a point of having more Zoom calls than phone calls in our daily lives.

Phones are computers and computers are phones. We send messages, shop for groceries, or surf the web from anywhere we want. With too many artifacts serving the same purpose, it’s hard to distinguish their essence.

Abundance has made us miserable.

So what do we do? we buy a dumbphone, grey out our smartphone screens, lock ourselves out of social media, delete or even exit them completely. We make our digital life dumber.

I’ve got 98 apps installed on my iPhone, yet I’m using only 10% of them on a weekly, not to mention a daily basis. According to my unofficial survey, I may be at a decent place in the middle.1

At some point this year I got sucked into Twitter so much that I decided to delete it from my iPhone. I wanted so badly to reclaim back my time, but it didn’t help much. It only made me delusional as I kept logging in through the mobile browser backdoor2. Making myself a hard time entering the feed’s gate was a dumber, less convenient way to consume the endless feed, but it felt necessary.

Yet through the same Twitter, I discovered Dumbify—an app that turns the iPhone home screen into a minimalistic app launcher. Similar to how the Light Phone screen is designed, there are no colorful wallpapers or shiny icons. Only boring titles on a solid background.

The tweet's ripple effect was widely felt and beyond my internet corner. The app attracted many newcomers, reaching the top of the App Store’s productivity chart.
It seems people are into dumbifying their pricey devices for $4.99.

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However, Dumbification goes far beyond a niche shortcut widget app.

Since 2014, The Light Phone has been making dumbphones from smartphone materials. Around the same time reMarkable started making a tablet solely for writing. Daylight is making an e-paper tablet. Boox is making a wide range of e-ink devices. Clearspace (ironically backed by YC) is an app that helps reduce screen time. There’s even a cool little blog3 about fighting screen distraction.

These ventures might still be within the realm of a trend, perhaps a rapid one. But they all help to shape a new reality where screens don’t dominate our lives. At least that's my hope.

In The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin ties the success of art to numerous factors. One of which I really like is the mood of the culture. A piece of art cannot succeed without suitable market conditions.

And it seems the mood right now is to run away from screens.

In April, Heineken and Bodega revealed the Boring Phone—a flip phone designed to prevent constant smartphone checks on nights out.

The 5,000-unit hipster dumbphone edition might be just a cool marketing campaign. Would it increase the sales of Heineken beers at bars? Nevertheless, I endorse such an initiative.

Unlike Eshittfication, which seems to be a one-way ticket, Dumbification doesn’t lead to a dead end. It’s rather a state where things start to shift gears but for the better. Whereas the former is an unfortunate result of mainstream corporate influence, the latter is still reserved for niche enthusiasts—whether (semi-)idealists or tech victims.

I don’t know if I’m part of a minority, but I prefer my desktop over my phone. I like to work on my computer for very defined tasks. Obviously, it’s way more easy to write and design on a laptop or external monitor. For me using the desktop is work mode.

One of my favorite writers on the internet, , says he doesn’t have a smartphone. Moreover, he only uses the computer at his workstation to surf the internet.

But for me, I’ve found it useful to only use the internet when I’m sitting in my study — as if I was going to the gym.

Internet: a user manual

Henrik lives on a remote island in the Baltic Sea, which probably helps. I live in a busy, tech-oriented city. I’m getting yelled at by startup jargon even at my neighborhood coffee shop. I want to sit and sip my coffee without hearing data metrics and foul language. Perhaps once I exit the big city chaos I’ll be able to reclaim more of my time and attention.

And Dumbification might be a mode of phasing out. As cliché as it may sound, it could help liberate us. Just as I like to work on my desktop, I’d like to work on my phone, but for basic needs like talking with friends and family, taking photos occasionally, or being able to respond to an email on my schedule. I certainly don’t want to juggle between multiple devices. Though, like most of us, that’s where I ended up.

I hope to see more dumb solutions for more “smart problems”. Some that would still keep me “smart”, but in a way that doesn’t completely unplug me. I’m still very much on the grid. Meanwhile, I silenced most notifications to wean myself off being overly online.

Dumbification might not win the ‘Word of the Year’ trophy. But it might be remembered as a seed of this year’s growing phenomenon.

Since the AI mania erupted, I haven’t made up my mind about the century's hottest topic. I’ve been experimenting with building “AI-inside” products1 for a year now, but I’ve cautiously tried not to form a strong opinion about it.

As a software native, the recent AI hardware discourse oddly seemed like a good starting point to get my head out of it. I even went to watch MKBHD’s reviews for the first time fully.

But just as I started to think I was getting somewhere, my mind flipped.

While many seek to discover a true purpose for AI in the hardware space, I’d like to take a step back and prompt a broader discussion. What’s the case for hardware these days anyway? I find it useful to observe the wide range of the spectrum beyond the artificial lens. AI may be the new frontier, but it faces a long road ahead.

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What are we doing here?

But first, how did we get here?

Numerous AI-integrated hardware and gadgets2 have been announced this year, but the Ai Pin and the rabbit r1 have undoubtedly made the news.

It was hard to ignore the hype around the Humane company over the last couple of years. Founded by ex-Apple veterans, the mysterious company attracted top tech talent and hundreds of millions in funding, generating tremendous hype.

In Humane’s shadow, another company called rabbit emerged, which apparently started in the crypto space. As befitting a company that partnered with Teenage Engineering, the orange-lower-case brand launched the r1, a Gameboy-like device. And much like the Ai Pin, the r1 is supposed to serve as a personal assistant.

Leveraging the AI tailwind, the two set high expectations.

Humane’s co-founder appeared in an eloquent TED talk, following a long marketing campaign which for a moment seemed like it was really about to "change everything". The rabbit debuted at CES 2024, showing off the r1's seemingly remarkable capabilities. And when it went on sale, it was sold out in 24 hours.

Yet, the backlash both companies faced was unsurprising. Meeting high expectations is never easy.

By giving whiz-bang demonstrations, the AI hardware devices create expectations, and that leads to ultimate disappointment.

AI Hardware is experimental & it’s okay!
Om Malik

So… what are we doing here?

This is a point MKBHD is trying to make in his r1 review. In an attempt to make sense of the seemingly mediocre device, the OG tech reviewer describes how the "fake it till you make it" culture dominates many industries. From gaming to software, and cars, the norm is to release products in half-baked mode.

Commonly in marketing landing pages, you’d often see a lavish screenshot representing an utopic version of the company’s product. A set of futuristic features that are unlikely to materialize in the short term, but it creates the desired hype.

As a coda, Marques asserts that new AI hardware will worsen before it improves.

To be honest, I'm pretty neutral over this prediction—AI hardware isn’t on my wishlist. However, this made me ponder how might we evaluate hardware nowadays. In my view, there are three main segments:

• Reinventing: creating new paradigms through new forms, while replacing existing models of thinking and doing.

  • e.g. TV, Smartphones, Laptops, GPS

• Improving: repackaging or wrapping a known experience into a familiar form.

  • e.g. Smart Watch, Bluetooth earphones, Smart Home Devices, E-readers

• Entertaining: creating new forms of experiences purposely to entertain, often while creating a new culture.

  • e.g. Tamagotchi, Game Boy, VR headsets

I would say the Ai Pin and r1 are a bit of everything. While the latter leans towards reinventing, the former is more entertaining. Maybe this claim can be used to explain the long way Humane has gone until launching an actual product. On the contrary, the rabbit chose a faster approach to deliver a product, by outsourcing the industrial design of its r1.

Delving deeper, it seems the Ai Pin aspires to achieve many things. Its laser projection, familiar mainly to fighter pilots using HUD systems, introduces a new concept for consumers. It aims to reduce smartphone usage, suggest a new type of wearable device, and seek to become a better AI-powered voice assistant. These features might all make sense, but perhaps it's all too ambitious.

Observing my rough Venn sketch, I fear the main issue with those new artifacts is that neither fit into a specific segment. As mentioned above, they are all just a bit of everything, which makes me think:

• How might AI hardware be fashionable yet useful?

• Is AI the true enabler of a new hardware era?

Naturally, we have more questions than answers at this point. Although it seems we’re in the rising moment of “hardware wrappers”, taking a step away from the raging scene opens the hatch for some more sensible artifacts. To keep things in context, the following will be explored through my Venn circles:

Let me entertain you

From the pre-electronic era of playing cards to Atari’s post-mortem of Gameboy and gaming consoles, consumers have been sought for entertainment.

In 2022, a modern look-alike Gameboy called Playdate was released by the company Panic. If the little yellow artifact design looks familiar to you, then you guessed it right—it’s another Teenage Engineering work. Similarly to its nostalgic inspirator, the Playdate is a tiny gaming console that offers a range of custom-made games and doesn’t provide any other features. The Playdate’s goal is to entertain customers with cool and (even hand-made3) appealing games. To add to its playfulness, the Playdate is designed with a crank to control the device, which resembles the iPod slider's novelty.

Another project that recently caught my eye is the USB club.

The USB was a breakthrough in computer data transfer, but today it’s the cloud storage that rules. The club project isn’t about inventing a new type of flash drive. Instead, it repurposes the USB core idea and turns it into a vehicle for a file exchange bazaar, or as its website says, “a social file exchange”. A virtual-physical network of people carrying files on small USBs, and sharing them with others.

In more topical news, Spotify announced the sunsetting of the Car Thing. The $100 artifact is about to become an acorn, which seemed to infuriate many of its owners.

I haven't had the chance to try it myself, but the “Thing” is basically a cool remote controller for the Spotify app. Indeed niche, and perhaps not the most purposeful, but fans seem to adore it. A simple device that makes listening to music enjoyable, whether on the road or at home.

Exhibit Tamagotchi

Like many others, I was reminded of the nostalgic Japanese toy after the comments on the Pin and r1 started flooding my feed. Back in the happy days when we were going outside, playing hide-and-seek, and riding metal scooters, we were also addicted to keeping our little digital weird creature alive.

If there was such a graph, I bet there was a time between the late '90s and early 2000s when toothpicks were used for reviving Tamagotchis of defeated children more than cleaning adult's mouths.

Despite being a passing fashion around the beginning of the millennium, the Tamagotchi really excelled at entertaining. There was no sophisticated tech inside the plastic artifact. No futuristic features. It was just a simple but delightful experience with a clear purpose: don’t let your digital pet die.

Waiting for something to become established and then working to improve it

Technology evolves in cycles. In the Maturity phase of the technology life cycle, new technologies are widely adopted, leading to increased competition. During this phase, established conventions allow builders to iterate and improve upon a set of artifacts.

Over the years, Apple has become the prime example of this improving philosophy. None of Apple's products in the last 20 years were pure inventions. The iPhone, AirPods, Vision Pro, and Watch weren’t the first of their kind to market. The iPhone came after years of trial and error by many other mobile phone manufacturers—a result of countless iterations and years in the making.

Yet sometimes it feels like things need to go back to basics. Reverse engineering culture to where it started. It seems when technology takes over, an urge to go backward appears.

An old-new trend that might be emerging right now is the dumbification4 of our screens, or at least making more sense of them.

Take the Light Phone for example. The dumb phones trend might be making a comeback, but the realization that led to the Light Phone occurred somewhere in 2014, ironically in a Google incubator that sought to find ideas for new apps.

The $300 “dumb phone” wasn’t set to improve the smartphone as a form factor. Moreover, it didn’t follow the expected linear advancement path of introducing new features or improving performance. It rather aims to improve a perception—by reducing screen time, instead of increasing it. It’s an intentionally closed garden.

In a natural transition, the space of tablets is now in the news.

First, there’s reMarkable, which is like a digital notebook, designed for writing and reading. Like the Light Phone, it uses an e-ink screen, and there’s no app store available. The opinionated device is powered by a custom Linux version and seeks to help people work without distractions.

But the Norwegian-based device might be old news already, with the launch of the Daylight DC-1. The new device is a breeding-like tablet of an iPad, Kindle, and reMarkable. Unlike the latter, it allows installing external apps while maintaining the e-ink feel with its Live Paper mechanism.

Modern reinventions

What does it mean to invent in a hyper-technological era, when it feels everything has been already created?

It’s hard to reinvent the wheel once it’s invented. But perhaps a modern interpretation of reinventing doesn’t have to be so literal. We’re past the Industrial Revolution and advanced technological leaps. Inventing new forms of mobility might not be necessary, and flying cars aren't on the horizon.

One noteworthy artifact in this context is the Raspberry Pi. There’s probably no need to introduce the Pi. The beloved device has become a unique device of its own—a customizable computer, serving pretty much any purpose, from education to entertainment. The Pi may not invented a new technology but it did transform many industries. It popularized new methods for student learning and teaching and significantly impacted the open-source community. In a way, the Pi reinvented some existing paradigms.

Back to Artificialand

Coming back to AI land reveals a few interesting projects I haven’t seen much in the spotlight, spanning across multiple areas of my Venn.

The “tell what I’m looking at” feature is one of the first “AI features” integrated into new AI wearables with cameras, including the Ai Pin and r1. Perhaps due to the popularization of modern home assistants, this feature feels natural. Many AI hardware are leveraging this function, but its practical usefulness remains unclear. Like Siri on iOS, voice assistance in new hardware may serve as an alternative interface control rather than a transformative feature.

But perhaps what’s lacking is focus. An interesting projects that utilize a camera with AI technology is the ASH, an internal experiment from the lab of FINH:

An Ai-Pocket Field Guid For ecology guardians ages 6 and up. It's like a Pokedex, except its real.

The Pokemon-inspired device is imagined to assist kids in exploring nature. Similarly to the Ai Pin and r1, the ASH uses a camera as the user points the device to scan the surroundings. But instead of being an all-purpose Swiss-army-knife device, the ASH is envisioned to be designed for a single purpose.

The ASH might not see the light of day, but it demonstrates a good case for how hardware might make AI useful. It might have been an app, but by packaging a learning experience into a standalone artifact, the ASH could potentially enrich the process of studying and leveraging “AI wisdom” without tantrums.5

From a small London studio to a global tech giant, the Smart Glasses collaboration began in 2021, much to my surprise. I’d assume a gleaming announcement, but maybe it went only under my radar, from my hidden internet corner. Compared to its first generation, the glasses have exceeded expectations. I wouldn't expect anything other than "tech glasses" from tech and eyewear giants, yet what they came up with feels novel.

The duo didn’t reinvent glasses but rather added a techy layer to Ray-Ban's existing models. Looking at the design fashion in the Wearable AI parade gives me the impression that companies are inclined to reinvent an artifact's shape just because it suggests "new capabilities". But do we really need a new type of artifact to carry? The Smart Glasses might prove the opposite. Repackaged in a known form, it doesn’t require entirely new development, nor suggests an addition to our "everyday stack”, which already feels bloated.

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The future remains to be unknown

As we continue to wander in this experimental phase, AI hardware will still be searching for an identity. What should they be served, besides riding the wave?

To this Malik’s prediction, I can relate:

AI will likely continue becoming a bigger part of tech gadgets’ marketing points, especially devices targeting those who are eager to own the latest and greatest but have varied understandings of what AI can do and its relevance for them.

There are times when AI can improve a gadget. But over the next months and years, I expect that more devices that aren’t necessarily better with AI integration will advertise questionable features related to the tech.

AI Hardware is experimental & it’s okay!
Om Malik

Hardware takes time to mature. It took a decade to get from the PalmPilot to the iPhone. In between we had Flip Phones, Blackberry phones, Nokia dumbphones, and many more. We might be in front of another decade before figuring out what AI hardware will become, if any.

I’m not sure AI is the true enabler for a new type of hardware. But maybe in the end it’ll become clear in which part of the Venn it belongs. If LLMs are currently best served as software, perhaps it’s just a layer many existing artifacts could integrate at some point. Maybe a future Pi model could include an AI layer, making working with LLMs fun and engaging, much like it does in other fields. Maybe the Smart Glasses is indeed a good idea for tech-savvy people.

Probably because I’m not the most tech-optimist, Wearable AI makes me cringe. Laser ink reflecting on my hand gives me cyborg connotations. And I can’t imagine myself talking to my dash, probably for the same reason I don’t understand TikToking in public. Even walking around outside and recording a voice note feels somewhat weird to me. But all of those experiments create a refreshing and innovative atmosphere. I claim inspiring and authentic design emerges from niches, and perhaps the evolving AI land will serve as a fertile niche ground until its full potential is realized.

I’m talking about Van Stapele Koekmakerij of course—where you can get one of the world's most delicious chocolate chip cookies. If not arriving at opening hour, it’s likely to find a long queue extending from the store’s doorstep through the street it resides. When I visited the city a few years ago, I watched the sensation myself: a nervous crowd awaited as the rumor of ‘out of stock’ cookies spreaded across the line.

The store, despite becoming a landmark for tourists, stands for an idea that seems to be forgotten in our culture: crafting for a single purpose.

In the tech scene where I’m coming from, and which you might too, this approach is often perceived as singular, and not in its positiveness. We’ve been taught to go big or go home—raise millions in funding, build a big company, hire more and more employees, and hope for the desired exit.

Anything less is considered a mind of a failure.

From a personal perspective I’ve seen this attitude in almost every branding session I ran with startup founders. Again and again, they struggled to distill their primary focus. Moreover, when discussing competitors, it often seemed their startup competed in every possible field.

In a way, that fear of committing reflects the human nature of FOMO—deliberately giving up on something(s) and experiencing the potential loss of other benefits.

This mindset has also seeped into our collective body of work, especially in software. A product, which often starts as a weird small creature, gradually evolves into a multi-arm octopus, which sadly became the norm for VCware1.

And so we’ve been left with bloated, bigger, and… worse software.

The idea of maintaining a small scope in product has already appeared in my writing in various forms; in niche product design I explored the effect of growth on design; and in defense of Twitter, I wrote about the bloated era of incumbent culture. But in between there seems to be a different attitude that not many choose to embrace, which like in Van Stapele’s case, seeks a real purpose.

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Going back to basics as a way to find purpose

In a tweet posted a few months ago, Jeff Sheldon described his renewed approach to photography after getting a new camera. It enlightened my eyes:

I’m not a professional photographer, and never been. But my beloved Canon 700D still serves me often while traveling. Besides learning about ISO and shutter speed settings, being familiar with the mechanics of a DSLR camera has also introduced me to the practice of shooting photos in RAW format, which means capturing photos at the highest quality level.

But the super heavy file format marks only the start of the process in modern photography. The rest belongs to the post-processing act: the daunting work of polishing, enhancing, and fixing images.

When I returned from vacation, I hoped to edit my captures. Then I noticed something weird. When comparing my photos to some stunning photos I saw online, it seemed like my camera output wasn’t as good as those shared photos. In doubt of my gear I then, again, noticed something I should have probably known: it wasn’t about the camera, but the editing.

I realized professional-made photos were overly edited, often detached from their original conditions. It appeared that what you see isn’t what you get.

I wondered, has photography become an art of photo manipulation?

To respectful photographers, this might appear like a false accusation. The time spent sitting in front of the photo editor is at the heart of many camera enthusiasts. After all, that’s why a camera is set to shoot in raw.

But this potential debate triggers a more profound question: what’s the purpose of all this thing, to find the perfect angle or color filter?

Despite being somewhat contradicting with modern photography philosophy, I find “going back to basics”, as Jeff described, to reflect the same spirit as of Van Stapele—a devotion to a very minded process. No editing. No over-complication. Working only in one mode, and for the sake of it.

At first glance, Van Stapele’s laser-focused outlook might seem detached from tech and other mass-production industries. But there’s a line that can be drawn between the Dutch cookie store to some other products which makes them all distinct:

• You can only read e-books with a Kindle.

• There’s no app store on the Light Phone.

• You’ll mostly find waterproof apparel in a Rains store.

• The Bic pen has remained untouched for almost 70 years.

• The design of Are.na remained the same for more than 12 years.

Whilst not every product mentioned above is hard-core focused like Van Stapele, the pattern is clear: an intentional commitment to a single purpose—either as a life philosophy, by using specific materials, or a deliberate design. And it also feels more appreciable when succeeding that way.

Some might call out a gimmick, while others appreciate the care for deep focus, which both are understandable. Finding the perfect recipe for the perfect cookie, and then committing to selling only that can be novel or a trick in marketing—depends on who you ask. But as I will stretch out from now on, I choose novelty.

We started with very minimal and basic products, aimed to serve only one simple job. A car to get from point A to B, a telephone to communicate with others, and a watch to check the time (perhaps the last analog device to serve human beings). But then many of our mundane artifacts have become more of a Swiss knife rather than just being exceptional in one form. We’re now drowning in oceans of product suites, both in the digital and physical worlds.

The bloated culture

In software, this trajectory is no different. Furthermore, it’s on steroids.

Despite “Do one thing well” being common advice for people building products in tech, it fails to hold water in the long run. Temptations are far too many to build and launch new stuff. Here’s Dropbox, a famous example of software turned bloated, in the words of DHH of 37signals:

Over the years, Dropbox has tried a million different things to juice upsells, seat expansions, and other ways to move the needle. There’s been a plethora of collaboration features (when all the collab I ever need is those magic links to files I can send over any wire!) and more and more pushy prompts to, say,  move pictures and videos straight from the camera into the cloud. Along with pleas not to store the files I have in the system on my local computers (presumably so the transfer costs they pay are less). It’s exhausting.

I just want to pay for the original premise: All my files synched between all my computers, with a backup in the sky. That’s a beautifully, simply solution to a surprisingly difficult problem. And Dropbox absolutely nailed it.

Finished software

Back in its heyday, Dropbox was simple. A classic piece of software. Its purpose was to allow people to store and share files on the cloud effortlessly—either from a computer or mobile device. It was straightforward. Even its homepage was simple. There were no bells and whistles. It was designed to serve… a single purpose.

But as with VCware, things have started to shift gears. Amid Google Drive's popularity, the “drop-to-the-box” identity started to blur as the product offering expanded.. and expanded. It seemed like Dropbox’s purpose became more generic and less focused.

Another resentment that ignited a storm in the design community occurred when the company announced a brand redesign a few years ago. In a way that act marked the shift in the company’s direction, bringing unclarity to its customers. The cynicism of Brand New's audience also made its review post one of the most popular that year.

The novel idea that was executed so well has followed the same growth patterns of the tech bubble—as I wrote in Niche product design:

As companies grow, they gradually move from a state of fan-only to a state of a product for everyone. During this transition, dramatic changes occur, as the drive to satisfy more audiences and increase revenue. But eventually, this shift harms the core of the product. It becomes scattered, and the brand turns into a gigantic octopus, leaving people questioning its purpose and values.

An email client, a note-taking tool, and a Photos-like app are only part of what Dropbox has been involved with over the years.

Today Dropbox is seemingly much more than a storage cloud service. It’s also a video reviewer (if there’s such a term at all), a Loom competitor, and a document e-sign tool. However, at its core, Dropbox is still a company selling terabytes on the cloud.

Yet Dropbox might be just a drop in the ocean. A symptom of a bloated culture in modern software. To better understand this bloat-mania, let’s look at one of its kingpins, and a company of which Dropbox is valued at 0.003%2 of its worth: Apple. And what’s a better example than one of its greatest products of all time, the iPhone?

Launched in 2007, the innovative touch-screen device had only essential features like phone calls, and text messaging among other luxuries like a camera, an internet browser, a weather, and a stock app. The peak of technology at the time.

In 2008, a year after the first iPhone release, Apple introduced the App Store, which was the catalyst for entering the smartphone era while unleashing a tidal wave of apps.

Fast forward to 2014, and the iPhone got an upgrade in the form of a multi-model release, with the launch of the iPhone 6 Plus. The trend expanded and Apple gradually added different shapes and names to the iPhone line: Plus, Pro, Pro Max, alongside other discontinued model names. This doctrine has been applied to many of Apple’s products—the iPad, Macbook, and Watch. Some got bigger, smaller, or faster. In a materialized world, I wouldn’t be surprised if the iPhone got bigger only to store more functions.

But perhaps the greatest archetype of Apple’s transition to bloated products was the iPod. The next-level MP3 (or 4?) essence was simple—to carry music on the road. Nothing more. But then Apple gave the iPod a life of its own, as it eventually became an iPhone replication, just without a SIM card.

The iPod (especially the non-touch model) is still dear to many Apple (non-)fansbois. The beloved product was designed entirely around the music experience. Before music streaming services took over the industry, people manually entered song metadata: the title, artist name, and of course—the holy album artwork. The hurdles of iTunes made this a daunting task, but iPod users found joy in this craft.

As a standalone product, disconnected from other functions, the iPod was a true single-purpose product.

In more recent times

What would happen if Van Stapele decided to add more flavors or open other branches? Probably nothing. Maybe its profits even increase. But the Valrhona3 chocolate-made cookie store icon will be losing its artisanal identity. Specialty and quality aren't determined by size.

In a more familiar case, we can look no further than the platform that hosts these very own words—Substack. Since the announcement of Notes, Substackers have shared concerns about the direction the platform is heading.

Substack’s original purpose, to some, was to highlight great writing while making writers a living. Now with the seeming transition for eyeballs and short-form content attention, Substack is being questioned whether modern social network dynamics are taking over it.

To close this social network loop—Twitter has been a good executer at designing for a single purpose until it wasn’t, largely by the decision of going for a longform direction alongside launching questionable features. For years Twitter sanctified the quirky 140-then-280-characters limit while establishing a new internet medium. Those recent announcements made by its new execs are ripping off its identity, slowly but surely. By adding more purposes to this platform design, Substack risks going down a similar path, jeopardizing its writer's soul.

Drinking beers and building businesses in Japan

If I were raised in Japan I may not understand what this turmoil is all about. The renowned business heritage in Japan is an oasis in the never-ending capitalistic desert:

Japan’s startup climate has often been criticized for being sluggish, perhaps because a culture that promotes business longevity also cultivates a fear of failure. Now, however, ‘startup’ and ‘atotsugi’ are words spoken in the same sentence, as today’s leaders finally feel permitted to apply entrepreneurial lessons to traditional companies to ensure their legacy continues.

Why Japan is home to the world’s oldest businesses

Japan is located on the other side of the earth, and its business culture values seem too. In a Western society of hyper-everything, which characterizes the move-fast-and-break-things startup ethos, the far island culture is way more cautious. Instead of financial logic, which might seem irrational, the ‘shinise’4 tradition cultivates sacred values such as continuous improvement, longevity, and care for quality. It’s an extremely long-term game.

In Japan, more than 52,000 companies are more than a century old.

Why Japan is home to the world’s oldest businesses

Japan is probably the largest home for centuries-old businesses, in varied fields from sake producers, to hotels and construction companies. This fact is much attributed to how generations of Japanese aspire to keep businesses running in the family5. But as in the words of Yusuke Tsuen, the current owner of Tsuen Tea6, the key to sustaining a shinise is to focus only on one thing:

“We’ve focused on tea and haven’t expanded the business too much,” he says. “That’s why we’re surviving.”

Why so many of the world’s oldest companies are in Japan, Bryan Lufkin

In The Price of Immortality concluded the same:

The conclusion of this little digression has been to find common grounds amongst the most long lived organisations, and turns out you need to be a particular type of company:

Extreme dedication to doing one thing well

But the Japanese business heritage isn’t the last and only resort from bloat-ism. The next time you drink beer, think about this:

Weihenstephan is considered to be the oldest brewery in the world, founded in 1040, more than a thousand years ago. And we don’t need to travel this far back. Other European breweries like Tuborg (1873) and Heineken (1864) are over 150 years old.

Van Honsebrouck, the brewery that produces the famous Kasteel Rouge was founded in 1865 and is still owned by the same family.

The brewery is still owned and operated by the family, now the seventh generation of van Honsebrouck brewers in Ingelmunster.

James Clay

Breweries have developed more tastes and flavors over the years, but they’ve been all operating for a single purpose for decades and hundreds of years: to craft beers.

What might come next?

A real shinise is rare in tech. Focusing on a single purpose often seems boring, a narrowed view, or a lack of ambition to some. But I find it invigorating. A long-lasting design can be timeless and unique.

Do we really want to carry our stress, depression, and fears everywhere we go? Don’t we want to feel disconnected from time to time? Then why the heck do we carry our mobile phones everywhere we go, even to entertain ourselves in the toilet? And not to mention the germs.

Would this all happen if we were using a cell phone that’s just designed to make phone calls? This is actually what the Light Phone founders realized a decade ago:

What does it do? Nothing. You put in a SIM card, press a few buttons, and make a call. There’s no browser. No games. No NFC. It has quick dial, which is nice, and it doubles as a flashlight.

The Light Phone Is The Anti-Smartphone, John Biggs

I may get carried away from the main idea of this essay, but that’s in part why I think designing for a single purpose is so important. The purpose of many products and artifacts has gone lost. Beyond the seeming gimmick, building for a single purpose reflects an understanding of what a thing is meant to be, and serve.

We’ve reached a point where focusing seems like spinning one's wheels, instead of appreciating the deep care of it.

And perhaps going back to basics is inevitable. When I’m reading on my Kindle I don’t get bothered by WhatsApp messages, or get interrupted by an incoming call. I’m not being tempted to do something else. I’m just focused on the act of reading.

As Devon tweeted a few years back: “When using my cellphone, I tend to become a passive consumer of the internet.” This also resonates well with the idea of this whole long text but from a slightly different angle. Using a multi-purpose product increases my distraction level, as I consume more things in the background.

Using a product that was designed for a single purpose brings back joy. It removes all the unnecessities and emphasizes an experience essence in a calmer environment, and with a real purpose.

Unlike photography, what you see is what you get.

Thanks for reading.
—Itay

Special thanks to for reading a draft and contributing to this post.

One last thing. If you find the above worth your time, consider supporting me with a coffee or sponsoring my gym membership 😎

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About the identity
Twitter, founded in 2006 by the team at Odeo, is a text-first social network. Over time, it became a cultural epicenter, particularly for intellectuals. In 2022 Elon Musk bought out the company, while marking a pivotal moment in its history.

What’s Twitter for you?

That's a long-lasting trend I often see on my feed when people praise the blue bird for getting them a job, introducing them to new people, investors, and all this and that.

What about me? I just wanted to get into dribbble — the then invite-only designer's social network which was at its peak at the time. When I realized invites were given away on Twitter, I set up an account and went on a hunt. Soon, the mission was accomplished.

For the next few years, I went on a radio silence. Like many others, I was lurking most of the time. Even today I don't tweet excessively. But Twitter has always been a town square of mine. Suited best for my interests, it’s been a place for belonging to Design and Tech Twitter for many years.

It feels a bit intimidating to write about Twitter. I don’t have a badge of honor representing my high social graph—my reach is barely going places. But as another person who consistently addictively checks Twitter many times during the day, it’s an exciting Pandora’s box to open. And despite all the recent noise since Elon’s takeover, I still view Twitter as a novel product. Like many others, I get horrified by some tweets from Elon’s gang, but luckily this isn't another (or at least a full) ranting post about the upcoming "death" of Twitter.

My hot take is an old one: Twitter is one of the most intellectual places on the internet. Sure, it’s also a fertile ground for toxicity to spread, but as a theme for this post, I choose to embrace serendipity approach:

But a well-curated Twitter feed is worth a lot of IQ points -- so I think it's worth doing.

Old Duck Twitter has been endowed with a special community and unusual design. It has been wearing many hats throughout the years. Although some cracks in its identity have arguably started to emerge, it’s still the king of short-form messages, capturing words of wisdom into bite-sized tweets.

The subculture of singing birds

Twitter is the most mainstream and niche place both at the same time, as counterintuitive as it may sound.

To put it adequately, I like how the team of Metalabel framed the crypto scene:

Crypto is a subculture. A self-contained universe, and a relatively small one.

Climbing Out Of The Rabbit Hole

Twitterverse has been forever understood only by its loyal citizens. And like in any subculture, it has developed its own unique language—an odd style of writing characterized by cynicism, rantings, and coaching rhetorics. The nuances, atmosphere, and vibes of Twitter are inexplicable to outsiders. In fact, it’s often perceived as a big black hole for newcomers. Again, a line can be drawn from Metabel’s crypto writing:

When crypto people interact with non-crypto people, the degree of devotion is especially stark.

Climbing Out Of The Rabbit Hole

But unlike in crypto, where most people are tech-savvy or idealists who share strong beliefs, the subculture of Twitter is more about “strong beliefs loosely held”.

It’s a diverse place as colorful as a rainbow: geeks, politicians, celebrities, provocateurs, and modern philosophers gather in a weird blend. Some come to debate fiercely, others lurk for insights, and some promote their products or services.

We all knew that we were going to change the world with this thing that no one else understood.

How Twitter Was Born, Dom Sagolla

What keeps Twitter still distinct after so many years? To me, it’s a mixture of its mechanics (which will be discussed later) and the subculture itself:

• A unique style of writing

• A text-first medium

• A channel for direct, two-side communication

Social networks come and go, serving as small Agoras for different niches and topics. But Twitter succeeded in creating the main modern Agora where everyone can come and share their perspectives and musings with whoever’s willing to listen.

The barriers are small to participate in this Agora—there’s no need for an invite, or permission to join a discussion. Sometimes I find myself surrounded by some meta-tweets of lateral thinkers, which I’m trying hard to understand, or by some gurus spreading “insightful” threads.

The Agora is crowded, but it has a place for everyone.

There are times I get frustrated, wishing my feed would display some more high-quality-better-intellectual content, but my overall sentiment for Twitter is positive.

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Identity on the verge

For nearly two decades the blue bird has dominated the medium of short-form text on the internet. Moreover, it shaped it. As a platform born from the SMS era's remnants, Twitter nurtured the form of short messages in its unique style. It seems birds prefer brevity in their conversations.

Although being a wasp nest for whatever you can think of—it oddly embodies the kind of serendipity I mentioned in the intro. It’s undeniably a home for public fights, brutalism, and harsh critique, but it always felt like a cosmic place. In the middle of all this mess, I could always find interesting discussions, discover products, and learn about new ideas.

In Twitter's previous life, there was Larry the Bird (Twitter’s logo, which itself has an interesting story)1, and an amusing lingo that has symbolized Twitter’s serendipity to me. MG Siegler's nostalgic analogy is a charming one in this regard:

You may not think of Twitter being just like a postcard, but in some ways it is — one that you can instantaneously send to many friends or acquaintances at the same time. And minus the cost of a stamp.

Even if Twitter wanted to cover up its appearance with blueness and cuteness, I couldn’t ignore the atmosphere its branding induced.

It’s been almost 2 years since the acquisition and Elon isn’t afraid to slaughter sacred cows, if someone needs proof at all. The launch of a new revshare (creator) program and premium model might meant to make Twitter more meaningful to the community while paying them back. Although it’s based on ad exposure in replies, I agree with the general idea of rewarding people rather than “using” them. Also, the new premium business model allows Twitter to become more sustainable which is rare in today’s online economy.2

But for other decisions, there might be more profound effects.

The decision to turn Twitter into X, from a branding aspect, turned serendipity into an undesired black hole. The newly grungy icon conveys the exact opposite to me. The thinking behind the "X" symbol could be anything. However, as elevated as it may be I can't tell any positiveness from looking at a broken glass. Weirdly or not, the new X icon sitting on my screen arouses “evil corp” vibes within me.

Larry was like the singing bird I heard from my window while writing these words. I’m not sure what X is.

Short-long form

Despite my emotional stance, the X mini-branding isn't the primary concern. Well, many refuse to call it X, but after having a good 16-year run, for better and worse—the backbone of Twitter’s product has been forever changed with the recent addition of longform features.

The quirky format of squeezing thoughts into a short 140-then-280-character message was Twitter’s identity in many ways. However, premium subscribers can now go up to 4,000 long tweet characters. To a great degree, this “improvement” has made Twitter brandless.

Moreover, if you've been paying attention lately, you might have noticed that publishing articles have arrived on Twitter too. So now paying subscribers can also write and publish Medium-style articles with some styling and formatting options.

Has the magic disappeared? Is the medium dead? I think it’s somewhat ruined.

A few years ago wrote that online text as a medium “is eating the world”, claiming the thread phenomenon is the most interesting one. Threaded Twitter isn't dead (yet) but what Rao might have predicted has gone the "wrong" half:

"There’s a 50-50 chance they will do something boneheaded to mess up the potential"

A Text Renaissance

Twitter was born and still lives in the medium of text. The ability to write longer tweets might make it easier to hit the publish button. It eliminates the cognitive burden of breaking the head over how to condense a tweet, but that’s the magic of threading, and tweeting in general.

The rules of Twitter’s garden are changing. Like with external links, the algorithm may favor longform tweets and deprioritize threads. Although I don’t think threads will vanish very soon, this could mark the start of a new phase for Twitter.

Not a bloatware empire

Twitter has been in the game for a long time. It became a gigantic company, went public, and then private again. But despite its enormous timeline, its voice remained distinct, unlike most of Big Tech. The capitalistic "hyper-growth” mode invectives companies becoming bloated corporate empires:

Facebook was born out of private messages, then added a news feed, and in-app games, then expanded to communities, photos (Instagram), instant messaging (WhatsApp), and whatnot. It even has been involved in building an internet infrastructure in Africa.

Google started as a search engine then went into building an ads platform, then launched Gmail, an operating system, invested in satellites for their maps platform, and so on. According to Google’s graveyard of products, 293 products were sunsetted over the years.

You know the drill—that's the world we live in.

Twitter isn’t innocent. It experimented with other online mediums like video and audio when it acquired Vine, and Periscope, or launched audio features like voice tweets and live spaces. But unlike other incumbents, Twitter somehow remained loyal to its roots. It even waited a long decade to increase its character limit for the first time.

Some could argue the need to expand and build an empire but to me, Twitter has been rare in the landscape of tech empires, preserving a sense of authenticity. It’s hard to think of a multi-billion-dollar company that owns a product with a relatively small set of features.

But the new articles feature could be a symptom. Alongside other whims like “a video-first platform”, Grok, and “the everything app”, Twitter might become a bloated platform in the name of corporate-ism, which already flocked many people away.

Mechanism of design

There's an old-ish concept in product design, which might be known by a more popular name called Why Mechanics Design. It was published by , former Quora's VP of Design, explaining his team’s doctrine when developing a product:

They are more like the rules of the product, conscious choices towards a desired behavioral end. This class of decisions is what our design team has termed mechanics design.

I like to think of a product’s mechanics as the leeway on which a product should act and perform. You can only go as far as in the boundaries you set.

In a follow-up post, Cole puts the concept into practice by analyzing Twitter's mechanics, describing the components that were driving Twitter's growth on the road to accomplishing its mission.

However, it’s been 8 years since the post was published, which is fairly old—especially in the lifespan of a startup. A few mechanics like Retweets, the character limit, and @mentions have survived the hardships of time while other features like Periscope live streams and Moments didn’t.

If I were to write another follow-up, I’d add bookmarks to the updated list. Although bookmarking as a feature isn't being leveraged or best utilized to some opinions, it has become a prominent mechanic in Twitter's postmodernism experience.

Engaging on Twitter is primarily a public activity. Likes, replies, and retweets are all shared in the subjectively collective feed. All of the mechanics outcomes are available to others. People's activity on the platform reflects their interests and whoever engages with their tweets “reveals” his identity. Or as in Dylan Field bio:

But since bookmarks were launched, Twitter got a bit of an intimate characteristic. There’s something in bookmarked tweets that makes them feel special while establishing a weird relationship between the OP (or OT?) and the engaging profiles.

Hitting the bookmark icon makes a tweet more special, as it’s being sent to a private, personal folder, waiting to be reminded or revisited. The anonymity of bookmarkers adds depth to a tweet, making it more meaningful.

When I see a highly bookmarked tweet, sometimes more than it was liked, I get the signal of a particular interesting content that’s worth watching, following—or even better, bookmarking.

Curation is a powerful practice that might be underrated to some degree, but in my opinion, bookmarking on Twitter still has a lot of untapped potential and room to grow. The bookmarks folder serves as a library of gems—what could be revealed if your highly curated tweets were available to others? There might be a whole new world of feeds to discover.

As a tool for thinking

Through the hype of Roam Research I first learned about Tools for Thought (known as TfT)—a concept usually refers to tools that encourage deep thinking.

In the past few years or so, TfT has become widely known in the productivity space. PKMs, note-taking, and network thought tools like Notion, Roam, and Obsidian have made their debut as TfT became a movement with die-hard fans.

But unlike most tools, Twitter isn’t a tool per se. Nor was it built to help people explicitly save or organize notes. To most, Twitter is rightly seen as a traditional social network. In this context, I like how Alan Kay defines a tool for thought:

A truly new medium [where] the very use of it would change the thought patterns of an entire civilization

Alan Kay – User Interface: A Personal View (1989) via Maggie Appleton: Tools for Thought as Cultural Practices, not Computational Objects

Observing Kay's articulation really echoes Twitter's raison d’être. And as much as I’m not fond of fancy mission statements, Twitter's official one (or at least what it used to be) is somewhat down-to-earth:

Twitter's mission is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers.

Why Twitter’s Mission Statement Matters, Justin Fox

To put that statement to a test, we can say that Twitter has become a new medium of itself. Tweeting has transformed into a culture and a mode of online interaction. That’s quite an achievement.

But it’s interesting to observe Twitter as a tool for thought. It might evolved to become one due to its native’s creativity, completely by accident. As with any other so-called tool for thought, there’s got to be a special mechanism that enables its magic.

If Roam has backlinks, and Notion has databases, then Twitter has Threads.

What started as a hack to bypass the character restriction has become a form of micro-blogging, enabling people to tell longer stories, and creating branches of interconnected topics.

For the masses, Twitter has become a place to “fart״ ideas and thoughts—often raw and unfiltered. But for a very few people, Twitter has become some sort of a public diary, largely because of the extensive use of Threads—a practice which to them became a form of art. Some might call it Memexing, or a canvas for writing and sketching ideas:

Maxim Leyzerovich (@round) has been memorizing tweets as images. He’s rigorously threading tweets of himself and others, which often seems like a note to self. He tends to revisit old tweets and extend them with further ideas and concepts—which creates an interesting timeline across the years.

Visa (@visakanv) might be the godfather of Threaded Twitter. By amassing more than 250k tweets, his feed looks like a public second brain, which serves as an inspiration for many. Through his distinctive style, Visa explores and develops ideas over time in almost any field. He even published a book out of his threads (of course he also made a testimonial thread). Visa’s habit of revisiting his own tweets and “updating” them with new findings, makes him the biggest retweeter of himself as Eli Parra once tweeted.

Ventakesh Rao (@vgr) is a well-known consultant-researcher-theorist-blogger. He has partially departed Twitter but as a former avid tweeter, he prompted the idea of Threadpalloza: a challenge to make 100-long tweet threads on any topic. The experiment went above and beyond, exploring various ways a thread can go.

The beauty of Threads is that it’s just a set of continuous tweets. It’s the same component, just assembled linearly. To a large extent, Threads have deepened Twitter’s content—a good thread can be a great source of information.

Using Twitter as a way for critical thinking probably belongs to the 0.01% but its social layer applies to all. It can become your own search engine, knowledge base, and guestbook altogether.

In Twitter’s playground

Besides Twitter's cultural effect, there has been another interesting phenomenon that has developed over the years.

Possibly because of its incapacity to extend its features further, a deliberate decision, or another underlying reason, Twitter has left some of its core parts unutilized. But its developer-oriented user base has found the way, thanks to the (old) API free access, to build their ideas on top of Twitter’s platform. From early on, enthusiasts realized the hidden potential in Twitterverse and started filling the gap.

To demonstrate its rich tooling community, here are some distinguishable examples:

Tweetdeck. In 2008 the app was launched to help people unify their social feeds in one place. After gaining massive success, it was acquired by Twitter and became solely a Twitter client. By customizing query-based feeds and displaying them side by side, people can follow their interests and cut through the usual experience noise.

Typefully. The lack of proper draft support yielded the well-known webapp. As the “creator economy” hit Twitter, many have started to plan, organize, and optimize their tweets. Twitter’s drafts system is (still) no more than an unintuitive tab, to say the least. I encountered pain many times when I was typing a long thread only to discover that an error had occurred and my effort went down the drain after I hit publish. The app has been built as a standalone app which removed that hassle, allowing people to write drafts with peace of mind—outside of Twitter’s interface. Since it was launched, the indie app found a loyal audience and expanded to more platforms and features.

Tweemex. This is probably my favorite. Twitter has built an extremely useful product that has become an important information hub for many. However, searching on Twitter is cumbersome. Although having built an advanced search mode, with lots of operands, it isn’t widely known. This is where Twemex comes in. Over the years I discovered Twitter as a better search engine than Google in many ways. The authentic, unpromoted content created by real humans made me rely on Twitter often whenever I’m researching different topics. Twemex leverages the advanced search functionality while making it accessible. Serendipity occurs in random ways, but using Twemex increases such moments.3

Threader. Another app that was acquired by Twitter itself. As a read-it-later app, Threader enabled people to save threads directly from Twitter and see them in one longform piece. Tweeters could also discover new threads within the app, enriching content discovery beyond Twitter itself.

Other niche tools and experiments. By now, I should have become familiar with the threads UX. But apparently, I'm not the only one who doesn’t. Paul Butler has built a little cool extension called Treeverse that turned any thread into a tree view—allowing people to explore thread branchings visually while keeping context, which tends to get lost in the original thread interface.

In addition, I particularly like Eli Parra’s experiments. His explorations surface food for thought for how to navigate through dense threads while presenting interesting solutions. Here’s Naval’s most famous(?) How to Get Rich (without getting lucky) thread at one glance.

However, Twitter’s playground has shrunk after it removed the free API tier and announced new pricey plans. Many small-indie apps like Small World were impacted and ultimately were killed due to this decision. The above-mentioned Treeverse was affected as well and has been retired.

For developers, the API storm demonstrates the risk of building on top of a platform, and for Elon, it might mean that the party is over. No more free or cheap rides. But the playground of Twitter was a unique place for creativity to spark. Twitter served as a source of inspiration, making people follow their curiosity. I don’t know whether this whole saga is a financially better decision. On the one hand, there are no more “free meals” but on the other hand, it means declining in the ecosystem which made many indie developers solid revenue streams, while cultivating a thriving community.

That was identity #6 of Product Identity. Thanks for for reading a draft for this post.

One last thing. If you find the above worth your time, consider supporting me with a coffee or sponsoring my gym membership 😎

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The approach of focusing on a product's functions, rather than beautifying it has been *then* very pragmatic to me. I’ve always strived to make my work pretty. For years, function over form had seemed to me like a threat to my design philosophy.

Have I trained myself, as they like to say—”to hone my craft” for nothing?

Since I first heard that saying I’ve designed a product or two. But I’ve been grappling with myself on the perception of form—particularly when making design decisions early in any project. I’ve had an ambitious desire to align between form and function as much as I could.

I feel pretty

I’ve grown in the field of graphic design, judging craft from a very aesthetically pleasing perspective: digital forum signatures, shimmering glitters, and other pop culture photo manipulation.

I used to assess the work of myself and others by measuring beauty. Aesthetics came first, then function and usability. The term design became a synonym for beautiful visuals to me. I was fixated on the belief design should be “pretty”.

Even when I grew up as a designer, my inner sensors for aesthetics were alarmed by flashy gradients, shiny colors, and bold shadows. I guess that’s the nature of a mind that seeks visual satisfaction and examines pixels with a magnifying glass.

Along the way I received critiques and pushbacks about my work in the spirit of “this is not pretty enough” or “make this website look like it is worth a hundred million dollars”. These comments have always felt out of touch with reality to me.

Probably in part of defending my work, I started re-evaluating what’s good design. I was questioning what pretty actually means and its importance in the creative process output. I became disgusted by using the word “ugly” to describe craftsmanship. Although taste is subjective, it became a plain word, aimed only to describe aesthetics.

A prime example of how “ugly” turns into good design is the niche of niches of so-called “the ugliest websites of the web”—those lightweight, text-heavy, old-fashioned, basic HTML-styled web pages.

Except for seldom wandering on Hacker News and (old) Reddit from time to time, I’ve never been an audience of such websites. However, their style always felt authentic.

World-popular like Craigslist, Hacker News, 4chan, and niche-famous websites like Bear, Margnilia, and McMaster-Carr are all part of a fraction of the giant internet sphere, which resembles a tiny special corner of the internet.

That’s why I like to call them beautiful ugly websites.

Jason Fried dwelled on the subject of whether good design can be “ugly” back in 2008. The essay feels timeless but in the nearly 14 years old comments section I found one that really strikes a chord:

“Put plainly, ugly can be an art form” — Patrick Algrim

Mainstream is mainstream, followed by trends. The culture we live in determines the beauty model. In a fast-paced trend-chasing world it’s only natural to ponder why those web 1.0-style websites seem to be frozen in time.

Of course, there are obvious reasons like legacy and personal taste for maintaining such style—like historic building preservation in the middle of a modern city.

In Niche product design I claimed that design flourishes far from the eye, often contradicting current design philosophy. Beautiful ugly websites can also be considered part of this concept.

Pledge your support

Function over form and form over function

Do aesthetics really don’t matter? I certainly don’t think so. But that’s a legitimate thought that might cross the mind when observing the popularity of some “ugly” websites.

The identity of some of those “ugliest” websites drips from its old-school-refused-to-be-redesigned position. They’re largely made of how they look. The clunkiness and heavy text favored over big buttons, drop-shadows, and full-width imagery resemble its special authenticity.

• Could Hacker News be more readable?

• Could Craigslist be more stylish like a “modern” marketplace?

Does it really matter?

The culture of over-designing websites has been parodied, creating even an amusing movement, but it reflects a chronicle of over-the-top design.

Does form always follow function?

A recent example that caught my eye was the launch of Amie's new homepage. I have much respect for the team—I’ll probably never be able to produce something like this. But I wonder whether it serves the ultimate goal of any software website which is obviously to sell a product.

Does a stunning animated parallax transition attract more customers? Does it make any difference to potential customers?

Beyond showcasing high-level CSS and web animation skills, does it serve a practical purpose, or will it sit in famous web design galleries for designer’s applause? While that’s not an entirely bad reason, I often feel the borderlines of form and function get blurred.

The reputed web 2.0 renaissance introduced new paradigms like parallax scrolling, sensational animations, and micro-interactions. It was a refreshing debut back in the day but I wonder whether it does the opposite effect today.

Have we reached a point where we’re so deeply in love with the idea of overdoing things?

Having said all of that I still think aesthetics are important. But I’ve gone from looking at Stripe's mesmerizing animations to inspecting some “boring” designs.

I remember when I first landed on Roam’s homepage reacting in the expected sense of emptiness and boredom. However, it was very distinct.

Indeed it was (and still is) a dull grey-themed website without any trendy big drop shadow buttons or cool animations. A single page, centered around text rather than a multi-paged structure with glamorous effects. Yet, I was intrigued. Something in its simplicity and straightforwardness felt mysterious—but in a good way. And it did the job by hyping me into the product.

In a way, it was a surprise to discover a sense of joy on the other side of fashionable design. Perhaps mixed with a change in self-taste and other preferences—my sense of ugliness has changed. There’s nothing wrong with any type of design, exaggerated or shiny, but it raises the question of putting the efforts in the right place.

Recently, I’ve noticed an interesting Twitter discussion on the new Campsite website. As I imagined, it’s a temporary version as Campsite goes through a different phase. However, the crowd was cheering, and it seemed to resonate with more people.

I remember also a couple of earlier examples.

Back in 2021, Dan Rowden launched a redesign for the ilo homepage, his popular Twitter analytics tool. It was centered mostly around text and even broke the holy CTA above-the-fold rule.

Semplice had also experimented with heavy-text homepages. Co-founder Tobias van Schneider even once tweeted a lost tweet with some testing results compared to more traditional versions.

Although these examples haven’t lasted, it’s still interesting that some modern, popular tools have been tested with much lighter, more minimal versions.

They evoke some more spartan times.

Maybe it was indeed easier to buy Bitcoin 14 years ago.

Thanks to members of the Are.na community and you readers who have engaged in the chat. You helped me to form my thoughts and research.

If you liked the above you might like my upcoming project:

nichedesign.press

As a designer, I’ve been following the herd for quite some time, as I used to observe the big-corps as role models. Whether I had to design a simple UI element, a marketing website, or search for inspiration—I've always returned to the same old and familiar places. Big Tech, best practices, pattern galleries. You know—the us(ual).

Popular products of tech giants we all know not only dominate the web, but they also stand as a dogma in the field of product design, serving as trendsetters.

Indeed tech has shaped our lives for a long time now. In the context of design, it played a significant role in forming the product design community as we know it today. The once-small community has grown into a genuine discipline: the importance of design has increased, designers are given a mandate in organizations, and we even got our title battles.

We should have reached our destination by now.

But once a culture matures, it starts to develop its bad habits. Throughout the years, some voices have criticized1 the state of the design community, claiming that it has lost its creativity: designers aim for eyeballs, and websites have become too predictable.

I share the feeling that our design tools, aesthetics, and communities have hit a plateau. The golden age of product design has faded, ushering in an era of boredom:

"The world of apps – once an exciting canvas for creative exploration – has become repetitive, predictable and… boring."

Andy Allen, No more boring apps

Standardization isn’t exclusive to the design industry. It’s an inevitable outcome in any emerging field combined with a technology seeking for a purpose.

When was the last time we got excited about a new smartphone?

When a new field emerges, experiments and ideas flourish. Innovation is at its best. But then it becomes dense, saturated with many of the same. Guidelines are being written, and conventions are being established. Excitement turns into boredom.

However, it’s been a couple of years since I've started to witness more and more products leaning in a different design direction. Often weird, distinct, and perhaps most noticeable, niche. I call it niche product design, and it usually reflects in products that are:

• Opinionated by design

• A small team/individual effort

• Niche focused

Like in The Dark Forest Theory Of The Internet, I feel I must escape from mainstream culture in my quest to find authenticity in design. The best gems are hidden in the remote corners of the internet galaxy.

Pledge your support

Growth pains

Why then do we need to travel so far away?

I find growth to be a significant force, limiting design at any startup pursuing scale. And while G-R-O-W-T-H is the holy grail in the industry, it has paradoxically become its Achilles heel.

The reality of common product design today is similar to the media industry. To reach a loftier number of audience (AKA rating), content is deliberately made simple and superficial, aiming to the lowest common denominator. As a result, the same trends, ideas, and practices are all over the place.

There’s this idea of smallness described by Ben Pieratt where he shared a retrospect on building his startup Svpply.

It has been stuck in my head ever since I stumbled upon it:

"We lost our soul and growth was slow and I failed to raise a Series A investment round and Ebay."

As companies grow, they gradually move from a state of fan-only to a state of a product for everyone. During this transition, dramatic changes occur, as the drive to satisfy more audiences and increase revenue. But eventually, this shift harms the core of the product. It becomes scattered, and the brand turns into a gigantic octopus, leaving people questioning its purpose and values.

The magic slowly fades away.

In a world that glorifies soaring revenues and celebrates the highest possible achievement of mankind—unicorns, it’s no wonder why generations of founders follow this path.

What if companies remained in the fan-only mode? I claim we would see not only great design evolve but also thriving small giants—businesses that aim for mojo instead of growth.

Where to look

Maybe it's just my perspective on the startup world that has substantially shifted, but looking at startups with more humble, realistic eyes has gotten me to discover the calmer world of tech. Bootstrappers, indie-makers, and even traditionally semi-funded companies challenge the status quo in product design.

It seems like businesses that pursue authenticity instead of growth at all costs are naturally in a position that allows a rare type of freedom. It’s the kind of freedom that lets, or even forces builders to break from corny design trends and patterns—where innovation happens.

It would be a shame to claim that established startups or large corporates don't invest in or aspire for exceptional design, but when decisions are influenced by financial considerations and stakeholder’s opinions, risk-taking, and innovation become constrained.

Builders who embrace the so-called indie/bootstrapped mentality remove themselves from the equation. Suddenly they’re out of the maniac race of competition, hypergrowth, and other famous startup evils.

Luckily, the World Wide Web is still Wide enough to discover new exciting stuff. And as designers, we don’t need to search far away. Our relative developer’s community is a great example of a thriving community where new technologies constantly arise, and open-source projects blossom.

Here are some of my favorite niche product designs:

• is building Kinopio: an opinionated mind-mapping tool

• mymind is a visual-based personal second-brain

• and team are building Sublime: a text-oriented second-brain tool/social network

• 37signals Hey email+calendar and Campfire products

• Are.na is a social creative research network/tool

• XH is building mmm: an opinionated website builder

• Futureland is a habit tracker social network/tool, serving a small community

• Diagram.Website is a unique map of internet interests built by and Elliot

• Teal Process & Company is always exploring, and its latest experiment USB Club is an offline USB-stick social network.

I also nourish a niche little garden where you can find more references.

What’s your niche?

Thanks for reading.

The niche product design is now becoming a zine:

Find me on Twitter or send me an email to itaydr@gmail.com