Raise your hand if you remember when Photoshop was the de facto standard for creating UI. Before Adobe XD, Figma, or Sketch — UI Designers had to endure creating concepts with a piece of software that wasn’t really up to the task. A piece of software thats roots go all the way back to 1990, with the release of v1 on the Apple Macintosh. The clue was right there in the name, the whole time — Photoshop. It was for photographers, graphic artists and retouchers. Cropping, adjusting levels, sharpening soft images — that sort of thing.

It was very good…

My first foray into gaming wasn’t entirely fruitful. At the age of 4, in a small room decorated with the best ‘80s decor had to offer, I noticed an odd looking device with large, chunky keys. It appeared to have a cassette deck attached to it, and looked rather serious. A contraption that your Dad used to calculate household heating expenditure. Spreadsheets, charts, formulae — that sort of thing. Black, monolithic, far too many buttons.

The more granular details are fuzzy now, but I do remember the word DATACORDER embellished with a spectrum of colour behind. …

“<sigh> yet another effort to point out the charging port on the bottom of the Magic Mouse 2. This time a lengthy history on Steve Jobs, Apple and all the mouse-esque devices made…” — A now hidden respondent on Medium, who shall remain anonymous

Last week, I published my most successful article on Medium. The title, Are Apple Capable of Designing a Usable Mouse, was immediately accepted by a publication, and over the course of a few days it was shared hundreds of times.

I was delighted. I still am if I’m being entirely honest.

With success however, comes a…

Hey you, reader. Yes, you. The world outside is desolate, the weather bleak. You’ll catch your death of cold out there, so come on in and warm yourself up by the fire. Come on, there’s nothing to be afraid of. The ale is flowing and there’s plenty of pork belly for all. We’re sharing tales. Yes, they’re scary tales, but a reader like you can handle it, right?

It is spooky-season after all.

For horror buffs, now is the most wonderful time of the year. You can expect Halloween themed Twitter handles, people sharing tales of doom and gloom, and…

When I say the word Nintendo, what comes to mind? Is it Mario? The original NES? Maybe it’s the Virtual Boy. There are so many incredible products and games, it can be difficult to sum up the Nintendo experience with just one of their works. However, for me, it’s the quintessential handheld experience that sums Nintendo up perfectly.

The original Game Boy.

I quit Twitter.

Enough was enough and I didn’t care for what most people were sharing. The whole experience was making me miserable. My 11-year-old account had been tailored around my career as a designer, and as such, my tweets and the tweets of those I followed were, for the most part, design-oriented. I primarily used the account to learn from those I admire in the industry. All lovely people, I should add. All incredibly talented in their respective fields, and I have no doubt learned so much from them over the years.

Regardless, I inevitably felt the need for…

On the 12th of March 2020, Jason Schreier of gaming website Kotaku published a damning insight into one of my favorite game developers, Naughty Dog. In his piece, he would go on to reveal a culture within ND aptly called, “Crunch.” These are long, extended periods of time in which employees are expected to forego their existence outside the confines of the office walls and work relentlessly to meet set project goals.

How old are you when you start making that sound? You know, the one you make whenever you bend over to pick something up or make the effort to get up from the sofa. It’s the sound those around you have become accustomed to (while not saying anything for fear of offending your fragile sensibilities). It’s just one of many quirks I’ve noticed as I creep through my 30s and into my 40s — although it’s not the quirk I think about most often.

Another reality of life at my age — especially speaking as a father of three —…