Craft6 min read
The Second Draft Is Where the Work Starts
A first draft only proves the idea can exist. Everything that makes it good happens after you are willing to take it apart.
Mara Ellison
Read the pieceA journal about making things
Notes from the unglamorous middle of the work.
Short essays on design craft, product thinking, and the small decisions that quietly decide whether something is good. A few pieces a month, no filler.
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Layout5 min read
Whitespace Is a Load-Bearing Wall
Space is not what is left over after the content. It is the thing doing the grouping, the pacing, and most of the explaining.
Ivo Lindqvist
Product7 min read
Name the Thing Before You Build It
If a feature cannot be named in a few plain words, it usually means the team has not agreed on what it is yet.
Mara Ellison
Typography6 min read
A Typeface Is a Tone of Voice
Readers hear a page before they read it. The typeface decides which voice is doing the talking.
Ivo Lindqvist
About
Offcuts collects the parts of the process that usually get thrown away.
Most writing about design covers the finished thing: the launch, the case study, the tidy before and after. This journal is about everything before that. The second draft, the argument over a name, the spacing decision nobody will ever notice and everybody will feel.
Pieces are short by design, published when they are ready rather than on a schedule, and written by people who still do the work.