cool stuff i found #33
designing and life, aesthetics of the Qur'an, japanese retro pop, alicia creti
it's the 33rd edition and the 75th newsletter/essay i've written. lately, the majority of my time has been a mix of design and dev work. i've been redesigning the chai and vibes landing page. i'm hoping to extend it to be a much more robust project. my goal is to have my own rsvp and event-ticketing service. matter of fact, today's essay will be what i've learned thus far in designing and how i think i've gotten better. i've been learning and applying a lot of practical and meta lessons that i'm hoping to explore and share.
anyways, without further adieu
designing and life
i'm in my weird cooky-hacker era, i suppose. i have this sort of uniform that i've been rocking with my dark-blue corduroy button down. i rock it like a doctor wears a white coat to work. it's been helping me just focus on what's in front of me. i have a system going and it helps me just "work."
disheveled and crusty-eyed, i'll get out of bed to shower and come back to my work station. the oversized button down fits into earthy system. i cycle through one of four different types of pants that is a week at a time. shirts and essentials are changed everyday. and my hair, well, that's always in a state of chaotic frenzy. but the dark-blue, essentially, overcoat remains constant. i've lost all shame around it for better or for worse.
at the work station is my Rollbahn graph paper notebook with a Muji 0.5mm black ballpoint pen right next to it. there's a bunch of German on the cover of the Rollbahn that i'm sure reads something to the tune of "we've made the mercedes benz of graph paper notebooks."
in my notebook, i typically have the following breakdown.
[today's date]
[3 things I am grateful for]
I am grateful for...
I am grateful for...
I am grateful for...
[Morning Pages]
morning pages is where i try to write 2 pages front and back. they can be about anything, but it's mainly there to provide structure. on days when i don't have the "juice," i have a series of prompts i'll ask myself:
What's the thing you're most scared of doing today?
How are you feeling?
Reflect on how the third-century crisis in the Roman Empire demonstrates the importance of stable leadership and adaptable policies in maintaining a vast, diverse empire.
you know, normal questions to get the day started.
it took me a while to notice how many patterns there were in my day to day. on the days i feel like crap, i feel like it's total chaos and i've lost any semblance of routine. but in actuality i've slipped into a pattern of what a crap day looks like for me.
i don't think that realization is obvious, at least for me. i recognized it because i've been going down a rabbit hole in trying to become a better designer. i never noticed the structure to my mundane chaos. that all of us have structure to our mundane chaos whether we like it or not.
one of the limiting beliefs i implicitly held about design was that it was about the ~feels~ about the v i b e z. that great artists just kinda knew in a sort of divine way that what they were doing was right. and i just assume i didn't have that ability or that it was in someway a binary.
a lot of things changed that perception. it'd be easy for me to quote Rick Rubin here. i mean yeah, he was a big help! but what changed that perception was watching how professional designers. i watched countless hours of designers on youtube utilizing grids, hierarchy, and color palettes to bring life to a page full of fancy squares.
in the practical sense, it allowed me to design our most recent flyer using grids. i now wasn't second guessing where i was placing my text, how big the text should be, or where to place the logos. in a larger sense, the contrived structure of a grid-like framework offered my a breath of fresh air.
i've come to realize that applies to life as well. you don't abide by a really rigid structure in life and framework for the thrill of it. no, you do it because it should unlock you some level of freedom. when you're applying frameworks, be it design or life, it should in many ways serve you. the narrowness felt by constraints should drive you in a direction, and hopefully a direction of your choice.
the nuance that i think many people miss is that you're always in a framework. the question is whether you're consciously or subconsciously abiding by one. bringing it back: when i'm having a crap day, i'm abiding by a framework that i've naturally developed. so then it's really up to me if i want to adjust that framework and for what purpose.
anyways that last paragraph was my conclusion. i don't really have a clever way of wrapping up this short essay, but i hope it was helpful to someone! if not, well, that's why i write these so that it'll eventually be useful. til' next time!
Exploring the Aesthetic in Quranic Hermeneutics by Fahd Ahmed
apologies for non-Muslim readers, but this was at the top of my stack for my reading recently.
the explain like i’m five version of this is the following: it’s as important, if not more, to be able to read the Qur’an with some level of ambiguity much like one would read any other piece of literature and poetry. this is as opposed to treating the text as literal and unchanging text.
i hate and love this essay. i hate it because it had a lot of big words for elmo (me), but i love it because it made me excited to read something academic for a change. but let’s cut to the chase as to why this is at all important for anyone to read. fahd takes this sort of meta stance that we basically cannot afford to live in a world without beauty. and to live with beauty is to accept ambiguity. which is paradoxical i suppose because if im like everyone else, i sure as hell love beautiful things and i sure as hell hate ambiguity.
japanese retro pop and vintage textures
chai and vibe mobile redesign WIP
i discovered alicia creti while i was stealing perusing the colorsxstudio website and i came across their playlist. alicia’s vocals caught me from the jump. i haven’t heard vocal riffs like this that had me stop me dead in my tracks.
i mean when i tell u she had me like
Thanks for reading this edition. Share this with your friends, your grandma, or your neighbor. And if you made it to the end of this essay and you didn’t just scroll, dm me the words “ramadan kareem” on either twitter or instagram. or leave a comment! As always,
Sincerely,
Haroon
P.S. Check out my previous newsletter if you’re curious: Cool Stuff I Found #32