weekend links

• going absolutely feral over https://davidrudnick.org/ (and particularly his "inspo tumblr"). the latter is some of the sickest collection of designs i've seen in a long time and very closely captures my taste. i also really love his links page and wish more designers would capture the spirit of the old web even in their dayjob pages.
• I may have mentioned it once here but never actually saw the whole documentary of "White Right: Meeting the Enemy" by Deeyah Khan (cw neo-nazis and everything that comes with it).
  
  • one hell of a documentary, and pretty incredible reading it side by side with this article where it confirms that after she did that documentary, three of the highest neo-nazi leaders she interviewed defected and renounced their views. (do we know for sure? no, but it was public, which does mean they have skin in the game).
• "existing the vampire castle" is apparently an essay on the cancellation topic that was widely read in leftist circles circa 2013 (i almost want to say proto-breadtube circles lmao). i've never heard this before so YMMV. not always on point, but the fact i had to do a double take to make sure it wasn't written last year and not almost a literal decade ago was pretty telling.
• on a lighter note, this is the only good brave little toaster sequel song and will always, always give me devastating Feelings about computers, (not to mention the whole trope of old haunted things being abandoned? ah, chef kiss, nails me every time)
  
  • the comments section on this song uploaded in 2006 are pretty damn entertaining as an ongoing time capsule too
• in reviving my mediafire account (i trust it a lot more than gdrive in the 'no hoarding all my data' sense) i found a crapton of downloadables stashed for years, such as ...
  
  • i think these are some classic Loomis artbooks?
  • some newer gun + military sketchup files i recently converted to be compatible with sketchup 7 (aka 2013-era)
  • all of (FE) Path of Radiance's backgrounds, as well as Radiant Dawn's
    
    • man speaking about those two games i had the coolest dream the other night about the remaster looking like dragon age inquisition-level of graphics (without the weird oil slick shiny effect) where you could move around the characters "slightly" more freely, and you'd even see character climb over rocks and jump off ledges n shit ... i cannot wait until the tech gets there to record dreams, i love my video game dreams : P  ANYWAY -
  • FE4
  • FE12 lol, even if it's a pretty worthless game
• "A History of Leather At Pride" is a rly cool lived, and researched article about two topics that are frequently talked in a separate lense but never together. one of those rare articles that could be turned into a book rather than the reverse.
• have i mentioned archive.org and their related projects (that i still want to poke around is so cool) [ dreamily sighs ]

speaking of filesharing, when i get kubuntu working by end of year i think my next move is to get off the google ecosystem... gmail's going to be the toughie since i'm not a fan of fastmail (based in australia with some srsly sketchy privacy laws, even if i like the fact they've been around for a while) or protonmail (i don't do mobile apps, seems a bit clunky...). ehh will cross that bridge when it gets there! that'll be pretty impressive, considering my OS, social media, website, all major programs, and emails will be de-Microsoft-and-FAANG-ified. : o  better late than never!

design to extract

(a textedit musing i typed up while bored at work - think of it as an in-progress design manifesto? high chance I may save this for a zine at some point, but in the meantime... enjoy.) 

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design to inform vs design for aesthetics vs design to extract

most designers think they are doing the first when they are doing the latter.

the key is 'expectation'. if the institution or creator cannot survive without the audience giving money (company) or effort (volunteer/politics) -- then it is extraction by default. a gamecube (as something that falls under product design) is design by extraction by default as nintendo needs to survive, no matter how beloved the games are. a digital portfolio is a design to extract if there is the implicit expectation of "being hired" in the creation of the site. 

architecture and tradeshows are design to extract. brand and advertising by definition is design to extract, as well as cult recruiting propaganda. (the two are not as dissimilar as they appear).

most books are extraction (publishers making money), thus diluting their message at the root. zines are just about the only true design-to-inform textual medium as they do not care whether somebody buys it or not.

Road signs are another rare form of subsidized design to inform by the government.

true design for aesthetics, on the other hand, is incredibly rare - this is more along the definition of "art" than design. Lettering, calligraphy for pleasure, graffiti all fall under this bucket. you see the line blur here with illustrations and product design as a calling, rather than product design for a function.

posting something "through" a corporate platform almost always introduces some level of design-to-extract taint. expectation that you'll stay within the corporate guidelines, terms of service, "brand" as a collective ... and thus your design becomes inadvertently re-packaged for their own extraction ends even if the initial work was strictly aesthetics/inform. (eg, posting on deviantart vs posting on your own site). 

design for aesthetics tends to happen on an individual level (personal graffiti). design to inform tends to happen on a community level (zines). design to extract tends to happen on a collective/corporate level (instagram stories) - though there are many exceptions to all three.

design for aesthetics (and inform) also tends to be informally subsidized by extraction - somebody creating passion art via a personal studio being supported by a former career in advertising, or a day-job in UX. design for extraction is not inherently "bad" (call to action in political messaging against AIDS), but it must be used with balance and caution.

If design for extraction is left in-balanced or un-checked, soulless miasma may occur.