Richard MacManus’s Cybercultural I’ve mentioned as a must-read if you want to explore the history of the web. And today, Stephen Judd showed a collection of links, among which was this 2017 entry by Amy Hoy, ‘How the blog broke the web’. Hoy traces the origins of the blog back to a web diary (web […]
Category: design
Graphic, web and industrial design.
Weekend thoughts: farewell, Ian Crawford; online disinformation; Alibaba and Amazon scrapers
It was sad to read of the passing of Ian Crawford, the former TV producer, whom I got to know through Lucire in his post-Crawfords career. I never pressed Ian about Crawford Productions and preferred to keep things on topic about his Pacific resort. It was out of respect as I had the sense (rightly […]
Some of the feeds are frozen
It looks like Feed Informer (formerly Feed Digest) is frozen, though this is not a complaint. When someone offers a service for free for years, and hasn’t enshittified, then being down once a year (the last time was January 2024) for a few days is hardly worth getting upset about. Last time it was out […]
Über gives up rides, website now specializes in puzzles
Every once in a while I try this Über thing everyone’s talking about. I’ve never been able to get the “app” to work but you can theoretically use the website. Except I believe Über is no longer doing rides and is now principally a puzzle website. Trying to get one for my partner from a […]
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The creative sector adds the most value, and we should be proud to say so
After sitting on a panel to approve a bachelor’s programme for one polytechnic, I was dismayed to read right after that some of the courses were being cut. I alluded to a disinterest in learning about design in an earlier post, but I was put right by some young people who said their courses were […]
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Why AWS is terrible for most businesses
I know, if you search, you’re bound to find an opinion that matches yours, and pretty quickly, too. Bhagwad Park (in either Ontario or Florida—I assume one of the addresses on his site hasn’t been updated) happens to agree with me about AWS, except he breaks things down far better, being an expert on web […]
We need great design and brands—now more than ever

It is disturbing to think that design, which you’d instinctively think is an evergreen profession with constant demand, isn’t capturing young people the way it did for me. In New Zealand at least, educators are telling me there’s less demand for graphic design courses. If people are enrolling, they’re often in-house crews in big companies […]
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Substantial drop in site: results at Mojeek; is Ecosia now Google?
I’m told by Mojeek that this should not happen but it has. In October 2023, it had 3,103 results for a site: search for the original Autocade website, beating Google at 2,910 and Bing at 2,170. Mojeek is meant to build on its index but earlier this year, it dropped into the 700s. Currently site:autocade.net […]
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How the search engines fared with a new site
As Autocade World is a relatively new site, it has been interesting to see how some of the search engines have fared. It is a Wordpress site, which experience tells me presents a set of issues when it comes to search. Mojeek: barely anything. Four links to date, though an interesting mix of the home […]
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Get your brand right and make it famous
There’s a lot of where advertising, marketing and tech have gone wrong on this blog, so what’s the right thing to do when you’re trying to sell your product? There’s the basic stuff we need to answer. We want people to buy our product, to solve a certain need, and they will do so because […]