Tilde is a totally customisable canvas for video and audio collaboration. You can add images, documents, sticky notes or videos to the room’s background or sketch out some ideas together on a drawing board. What’s nice is that you don’t need to sign up – just create a room, share the URL and start chatting.

Working on media collateral together in a team where not everyone is equally design-savvy can be challenging. Projector wants to make it easier by providing a simple interface and a template-based approach for generating social media posts, GIFs, videos and presentations.

Basmo is an (iOS only) app to help you keep track of the books you have read and want to read, set reading goals, journal your reading experience and save your favourite excerpts. It’s Goodreads without the social network.

Darius Kazemi wrote this wonderful little guide on why and when you should (and when you should not) run your own social network. He covers technical details as well as topics around community management, rule enforcement and project funding. A great read if you’re thinking about starting an online community.

Meaningful Stuff →

Design that lasts

Really curious about this new book on designing products that not just last longer, but remain desirable for longer. “By what perverse alchemy do our newest, coolest things so readily transform into meaningless junk? ... Chapman shares his vision for an ‘experience heavy, material light’ design sensibility. This vital and timely new design philosophy reveals how meaning emerges from designed encounters between people and things, explores ways to increase the quality and longevity of our relationships with objects and the systems behind them, and ultimately demonstrates why design can – and must – lead the transition to a sustainable future.”

Primary Paper →

Photography magazine

Primary Paper is a beautifully designed and tightly curated indie photography magazine that offers a unique perspective on a single topic every issue. The theme of the latest issue is ‘human’ and it explores the many ways in which our humanity has been challenged and celebrated, especially in the last year of pandemic life. Friends of DD enjoy a 20% discount. Become a Friend to access specials like this.

What a wholesome essay on the many ways Tokyo does transportation differently to other big cities. I also learned a lot of insightful little nuggets, like: “Helped by the fact that on-street parking in Japan has essentially been outlawed since 1963, Tokyo’s neighbourhood streets tend to be narrow and slow, and distinctly humane as a result. These on-street parking restrictions are accompanied by proof-of-parking laws, in which prospective car owners have to prove to the police they have off-street parking sorted before purchase.”

What a great story about the bizarre world that crypto-bros are trying to create in order to escape from laws, taxes and ethics. “Using their own money, they funded the first attempt at a single residential seastead, in the form of a floating white octagonal box 12 nautical miles off the coast of Thailand. Elwartowski and his girlfriend, Nadia Summergirl, lived there for two months in early 2018, until the Thai government discovered the seastead’s existence and declared it a threat to the country’s independence, possibly punishable by life imprisonment or death.”

My good friend and Offscreen co-editor Kieran O’Hare interviewed my publishing buddy Craig Mod about how he organises his long walks while writing more books and newsletters than you can shake a walking pole at. “Rather than having a singular set of goals that I try to reach, I have one, main ‘horizon goal’. To stick within the walking metaphors: the horizon is something you’ll never reach, no matter how long you walk – it’s something you keep moving towards. The horizon goal I’ve been moving towards for the last thirty years is bookmaking.”