Hello everyone,

 

I typically structure my newsletters like this: 

Before I kick off, I realised that this week marks my second anniversary living in New York. It has been a totally insane two years that feels like 2 months. Plenty of people warned me it would take this long to feel settled and they were right. Shout out to everyone here who I have met since arriving. And to all those back home, I miss you!

 

Here we go.

 

Nick

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I cut my teeth on interfaced design in 2009 when I needed to design a website for my first business. Customers would email saying “I can’t find the submit button”, and I would open Illustrator, make the button bright green, and send the file to our web developers. Genius!

 

A few years later, I was doing that kind of work for clients. Both start ups and corporates. Drawing buttons and text fields and menu icons, watching ‘users’ click and poke them while they tried to get something done.

 

Then a thought appeared in my head which was like a kind of ego death or something…
 
“These people don’t care about my buttons at all!”

 

In the vast majority of cases, people didn’t care about the corner radius or the drop shadow or whatever styling we had chosen. They were on a mission to complete a task. Book a taxi, pay a bill, whatever. The interface was helping them yes, but ultimately, it was sitting between them and their final objective.

 

In this period, the book The Best Interface Is No Interface came out and it quickly became a kind of bible for me (I’ve mentioned it many times).

 

The author, Golden Krishna, protested the idea that every problem needed an app and an interface. (Unlocking your BMW with an app vs. a car key was always the example that stuck with me).

 

While not a blanket rule, I began to really believe that not all problems required complex interfaces. In fact, it was actually best to try and solve the underlying problem for people first without defaulting to a screen.

 

Maybe the best current day example of this is actually the Apple feature called ‘Express Transit Card’. This is where you can pre-select a debit/credit card in your phone wallet that the NY subway system will charge when you put your phone near the reader. You do not need to unlock your phone or double press to activate your card.

 

There is exactly zero interface and zero interaction (aside from pulling out your phone).

 

Anyway, I could and would love to talk about this for hours, but to bring this to a point…

 

AI is changing how we interact with computers in ways that mean the interface as we know it is starting to vanish or at least change.

 

Today, I watched this ~30 min lecture by Michael Grinich on The Death of UI. The first 10 mins provides an excellent history of the interface which I think almost everyone here would find interesting.

 

The later two thirds gets a bit AI-pilled for my liking. Lots of talk of agents and robots. A topic for another time.

 

If you are any kind of designer I think this topic and video is relevant. What happens to brands when people no longer visit brands websites? What happens to hotel or airline booking interfaces when it’s all done with Claude or whatever?

 

This is a tad future thinking and there are lots of structural reasons why interfaces are not going anywhere right away, but these are good things to start thinking about.

 

In fact, during my two most recent client conversations, I was asked if I had began exploring ways for people to engage with them without a branded website. Hype?! Maybe. But it’s interesting nonetheless.

 

Last night in NYC, Betaworks are hosted an event on this exact topic called “Beyond Text”. I went and ate the free pizza. There were lots of interesting experiments, but nearly everyone was working on interfaces of some kind.

💌 If someone forwarded you this, you can click here to subscribe.

I'm pretty happy with this mix. If you've listened to anything I've recorded before, this will sound very different.

I chose 10 tracks that I have been listening to a lot recently. More textural, wavy, and darker. Less disco, house and lighter.

For those interested, I used zero effects or filters here. Tired to do it all just with the levels.

Here is the track list:

A couple of weeks ago, one of the partners from a famous VC fund in Silicon Valley claimed that no 'great men of history' spent any time reflecting on their lives. He said therapy was a waste of time and only the kind of thing that losers did. Then Elon was like, "Grok will never go to therapy". And all the worst people you know chimed in  and were like "yes, finally, permission to not reflect on my own behaviour and psychology!"

Anyway, some clever person on Twitter shared what is really a sad video of William Shatner trying to reflect on his experience in space with Bezos, who literally cannot even pretend to care and interrupts him to pop a bottle of Champagne.

There are two types of people in this world, those who are moved deeply by going into space & question their humanity, and everyone else.

Video on twitter, Shatners reflection piece ($)

I love the album. There is a NYT piece on her too. Link

Alex Naghavi (ex-cd of Josephmark) launched the website I always wanted to. It's a site that features original artwork for sale and everything is under $1500. The design is really lovely and work is beautiful! Thanks, Alex! Link

Why? Link

Action Bronson & Mayor Mamdani Have Lunch
A cool side project would be to make a Google Maps list of all the places in NYC that Action Bronson has eaten at on his show. Anyway, this episode if very wholesome. Zohran just really appears to be a normal, nice guy. Link

Schick Toikka launch Edict
A new font from a great foundry. I love this. Do we have enough fonts already? Idk and I don't care. More fonts for me please! Link

Touch Grass Guys
idk anymore... but I guess... new type of guy just dropped? Link

Right. This is the link of the month for sure. If you are Australian, please just let me give everyone else background for one second.

In the mid-1960's Australia had a Prime Minister (like the US president) named Harold Halt.

One summer's day, he went swimming in the ocean with friends and DROWNED.

Rumours were he was captured by Japanese submarines, but really he just got caught in some big waves and didn't make it out.

If the leader of your country died tragically, how would you honour them?

One idea is that you could name something after them. Like a library or memorial walk.

You could also name a public swimming pool after him, you know, the places where people drown.

Anyway, so we did this. I actually used to train at The Harold Halt Swim Center in high school. I didn't understand the irony then.

Funny story right?

Well, here is the ever funnier part.

A genius (and I don't use that term lightly) who goes by @james.haha.nice, is recreating the entire Harold Halt Swim Center in 3d modelling software from scratch while narrating the life of Harold Halt (who he appears to hate).

Each IG post is a video of a different part of the pool and a different part of Halt's history.

I've been following for months. He's nearly complete.

It might be the best thing that has been on the internet in years.

For years, the best and most considered newsletter on the internet has been Kai's Dense Discovery.

In the most recent issue, Kai highlights a terrifying report on the state of billionaires. Sigh. Link

"The Hyphen That Never Ends" by Sona (S. Scheherazade) Rehman
Sometimes people will say to me "I can't believe you still use twitter!". But if I had left when a lot of other people did, I would never had met my very, very, smart and impressive friend,  Sona.

She recently penned an essay that I found incredibly moving, insightful and straight up courageous.

The subtitle is reads:

On Blackness, Belonging, and What America’s Racial Hierarchy Costs the Rest of Us.

An insight into what it is and has been like to be a brown, Muslim person living in a post 9/11 America and living in a racial hierarchy that I hadn't considered this deeply before.

and finally...

Do you remember All Birds, the woollen sneaker company?

I never understood the appeal:

1) The sneakers looked shit (form)
2) They were made of wool which doesn't sound very durable for walking (function)

Anyway, a bunch of VC's pumped them up and for many years everyone in tech wore them, presumably to let everyone know they had taste.

At their peak, they were valued at $4bn, they sold recently for like $40m.

But then! This week they announced they are transforming into an AI infrastructure company!

Are we in a bubble? I have no idea.

Does this sound like a headline that AI came up with as a joke. Yes!

Does anything matter at all any more? Who knows!

You should just give your number to the cute person at the bar this weekend. Tell someone you love them. Buy the expensive coat or vase or sunglasses. It's all up for grabs!

If All Birds stock can jump 520% by pivoting to AI, you too can change your life!

Here is a proper analysis from Matt Levine at Bloomberg ($).

...

Thanks for reading x