Pentagram’s work on St Paul’s Cathedral is my favourite brand release this month.

The work hinges on close collaboration with stonemasons to create a bespoke typeface with some lovely archaic flourishes. That and I’m a sucker for a monogram. Exceptional work.

2) UFO Bean! 🛸

Turkish agency Venore went full flying saucer with this coffee packaging concept that’s unlike anything else on the shelf.

But it’s not perfect, to be honest. The physical shape is doing the heavy lifting here, and I’d be interested to see how the typography could have been pushed further. Think 1950s sci-fi — lots of room for expressive type that would double down on the fun factor of the unique shape.

That and concerns about sustainability, as it looks like a lot of plastic for transporting fewer beans than the recyclable bags I’m used to.

3) AI Microwaves

A quick shout-out for anyone that didn’t see my thoughts on generative AI from a few weeks ago. Essentially, you can be sure that these emails are going to celebrate human creativity and not add to the “Design is dead!” narrative that stresses us all out.

4) The one everyone’s seen already 🌳

FutureBrand’s destination branding for The Brazilian Amazon was everywhere in April. A brand identity created from actual river shapes.

However, I feel obliged to highlight the contradictory nature of FutureBrand also working for Nestlé, a company that really struggles with not being evil.

5) In the cloooob 🕺💃

Sophia Carey’s club photos are siiick, m8. The Manchester-based photographer captures the kind of images that evoke feelings, not words — something Carey explains in their deeply reflective Substack essays, if you want a longer read.

The silhouettes, grain, and two-colour palettes feel very screen-print-like, and reminiscent of the moodboards with Olly Moss work plastered over them by students a decade ago.

6) Trains 🚄

If you know me personally, you’ll know that I’m a train enthusiast, in part due to the extensive design systems associated with them. BUT WAIT, please keep reading.

I noticed a track ID marker while waiting for a train, and appreciated the bold sans-serif Rail Alphabet treatment of the information. And immediately thought about how it would look as a poster. Lo and behold, I turned it into a poster.

Thanks for reading.

Six creative things! Hopefully at least one of those left you with the desire to make something :) As always, feel free to reach out if you spot something cool for next month.

Best wishes,
Tom 🐢

There’s an AI-generated poster pinned to my village noticeboard.

I don’t know who made it, or more accurately, prompted it. It’s perfectly fine. I now know there’s a food market next Sunday at 11am. But every time I walk past it, something in me sinks a little.

That sinking feeling is my position on generative AI as a substitute for human creativity.

Before you jump to conclusions, I’m not a staunchly analogue artist, protesting change simply because it’s uncomfortable. I was a day-one ChatGPT user. I’ve tried a new tool almost every week for the last few years, genuinely looking for ways to make my life as a designer better. But I’d be quite happy if we could go back to the before-times, and here’s why I think that:

In the 1960’s, microwaving food was revolutionary. Magical. But in 2026, ‘microwaved’ is about the most damning insult that we give to restaurant food. Nobody brags about their microwaved baked beans in the way people brag about their ‘microwaved’ AI designs on LinkedIn.

What bothers me the most, in design specifically, is the way that generative AI’s skipping of the creative process is reframed as some kind of victory.

“Prompt to poster! Prompt to website! Ship 10x faster!”

But are we actually winning? Design requires connection, and connection requires someone to actually think through something. To make weird, intuitive, biased, imperfect leaps. To try a terrible approach and learn something new.

I keep being reminded of neuroplasticity; if you stop doing something, your brain will get worse at it. Not immediately, but quietly over time. I’ve noticed places in my life where I’ve offloaded my thinking to AI.

I think that a lot of people are starting to feel something similar. “Clankers” (the Star Wars slur getting a second life as shorthand for AI-scepticism) feels like another term added to the lexicon of collective unease, alongside brainrot and doomscrolling.

Virginia Dignum puts it well in The AI Paradox:

And that’s before we get to the energy. The environmental cost of running these models at scale goes beyond the internet’s already staggering footprint — and is largely invisible to the people celebrating the output.

The stock market and LinkedIn echo chamber may disagree, but I think people will start craving things made by real, talented, weird, fallible humans. And I hope that by the time generative AI’s ‘creativity’ is as mundane as microwave cooking, I won’t have quietly forgotten how to be a creative — because somewhere along the way, my thoughts, mistakes, and instincts weren’t profitable enough.

LoveFrom — Sir Jony Ive’s design firm — spent five years working with Ferrari on the interior and interaction design for the upcoming Ferrari Luce. And daaaaang. No giant glass slab with digital controls; just obsessively refined tactile surfaces.

A wonderful example of what happens when a team refuses to stop at “good enough”, and has five years (and a Ferrari budget) to prove it.

Free Art! 🦆

A rare two-in-one feature — I discovered Artvee, a massive repository of public domain artwork, mostly historical.

I found this painting of The Victualling Office, Plymouth from the 19th century, and used that for the next section: a free CMYK halftoning tool.

A Free CMYK Halftoning Tool!

Photoshop's built-in halftoning is pretty meh, and I sadly don't have easy access to a screen printing setup anymore. This free online tool from Daniel Petho gives you excellent control over an authentic CMYK halftone emulation — proper dot patterns, per-channel angle control, all the nerdy details. I plopped the Victualling Office painting into it and used it as the basis for a quick fictional alcohol-free beer label from Fictional Brewery.

Clicky-clacky-flippy-flaps 📋

I’m only seven years late to noticing Vestaboard, a massive flippy-tile board for your office, home, or… airport lounge? Something about the mechanical clatter and deliberately limited colour palette oozes snooty design restraint.

The kind of object that makes you feel things.
The kind of price tag that makes you feel other things — don’t look it up.

Fuzzy JPEGs 😶‍🌫️

Jonas Hejduk specialises in producing artwork using very low-resolution imagery — blocky, pixellated, almost aggressively lo-fi. Perfect if you need an €8,000 rug that makes your living room look like an early 2000s video game.

Early 2000s video games 🎮

Noclip.website lets you explore the maps of many classic video games with unrestricted camera controls. An immediate rush of nostalgia, and oddly meditative. (As much as it pains me to acknowledge that Mario Kart Wii is now ‘classic’.)

Thanks for reading.

There y’go! That’s it for April.
As always, feel free to reach out if you spot something cool for next month.

Best wishes,
Tom 🐢

Apologies for skipping January’s edition; I was unwell. But it did allow for much scrolling of arty and designy things, personal projects, and producing a much longer Shell-Out than normal.

Here’s some cool stuff that I’ve found during the aforementioned period of blurgh 👇

Greyhounds as pets

The typical “IP mashup” campaign doesn’t usually hit as hard as it used to, thanks to everything having a multiverse Fortnite tie-in and Disney owning everything. But New Zealand agency Special teamed up with The Simpsons (so… er… Disney…) to create an adorable set of billboards for Greyhounds As Pets, a charity encouraging the rehoming of ex-racing snoots.

My long-nosed dog bias shows here, but it’s such a powerful use of recognisable Simpsons art — and for a worthy cause that doesn’t ask me to buy crypto or drink sugar water.

A Blackberry… in 2026? 👴

I’ve noticed that the ‘dumbphone’ movement continues to gain momentum, with people (including myself) getting really fed up with our attention being ripped from our psyche in the form of Reels and Tiktoks. One excellent (but hardcore) approach is to swap your phone out for one that’s less exciting. I swapped my ‘pro’ phone to an iPhone 13 mini and felt instant relief thanks to the little screen and small battery killing off any doomscrolling.

But Clicks, makers of popular phone keyboard cases, announced the Clicks Communicator last month — the best take on a modern Blackberry I’ve seen so far. It nails the essentials but sucks at watching four-hour YouTube documentaries about Disneyland.

Of course, it hasn’t actually launched yet, but I’m watching this closely.

Jomo & Habitkit 📱

January is over; the time of year when many people think about goals, habits, and achievements. Often, these end up falling flat and bring feelings of sadness, frustration, and shame. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can make my own goals and habits more meaningful in 2026.

One big ‘problem’ that I’ve been working on for a while is my screen time, which has dropped over the last six months (thanks, little iPhone!), but ultimately it’s still a form of distraction that compounds over time. JOMO is a blocking app that you can configure to lock yourself out from apps and websites, be it for a set period or banning yourself from scrolling LinkedIn on your phone for good.

Another discovery I’ve been enjoying is HabitKit, a simple app that visualises my habits (both the ones I’m building and the ones I’m breaking), with home screen widgets that remind me to keep on track. I enjoy reading Sebastian’s insightful Substack posts about building apps as a solo developer, too.

Disclaimer: both JOMO and HabitKit have provided me with review copies of their software, but these are genuine recommendations.

I found someone’s list 🛒

It’s a steadfast Tom rule: always read the contents of a found piece of paper. This one had some particularly nice handwriting.

If this is your kind of thing, you’ll probably enjoy the r/FoundPaper subreddit.

A moodboard

There’s an art to making a good moodboard, and not just collecting similarly themed images. This one from freelance designer Harry Cresswell nails the aesthetic. Maybe every freelancer should have a moodboard on their site? I definitely understand what this designer likes now.

Thanks for reading.

Hope you have a lovely February, and I hope you enjoyed a slightly wordier edition of this email. As always, feel free to send me anything cool you’ve seen recently — just send a reply to this email.

Until then,
Tom 🐢

Here are the projects, tools, and visual delights that my eyes and ears enjoyed over the last month 👇

Even more wibbles

Corridor Digital drew my attention to WAVE, a wonderful experimental film that goes wobble. A great example of using AI as a tool, as the motion was created by hand and fed into the image generation to produce the distortion effects. The moments where the generation breaks down into a noisy intersecting mess are especially striking.

Medieval cryptocurrency 🏰

Ragged Edge won a Brand Impact Award for their rebrand of Solflare. Blackletter is a tough aesthetic to pull off in tech, but it serves as a bold differentiator to the techy or unserious meme culture look you’ll see elsewhere in crypto.

Dome, Sweet Dome 🎶

The Royal Albert Hall (that’s our Carnegie Hall, for readers in the USA) rolled out a fun rebrand from Brandpie. I love the archway/dome imagery in the new masthead, with that interesting Victorian/Art Nouveau feel that firmly shouts the strongest part of the brand — the internationally recognisable name.

G’bye, Adobe 👋

I barely use Creative Cloud outside work, but when Adobe hiked my subscription earlier this year, cancelling meant losing those occasional Illustrator or Photoshop sessions. Until Affinity came along last month.

The first release combines Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign into one app… and it’s free. It covers most of what a casual user needs, so I’ll gleefully tell Adobe to piss off.

Touch Grass 🌱

The meme’s a little stale now, but someone made a screen time app that forces you to physically touch some real grass to unlock your doomscrolling apps. Heh heh heh.

Finally, white powder 🌨️

I mentioned Festivitas last year, a small app for your Mac that adds fairy lights to your dock/desktop. Of course, the solo dev behind the project has added beautiful customisable falling snow for 2025. Kitsch, cringe, and I love it.

Thanks for reading.

Crikey — that’s it from me for 2025. Thank you for being one of the people that opens and reads these emails. I hope you’ve had a year with some brilliant things to be grateful for amidst the chaos, and I’ll see you in January… probably.

Until then,
Tom 🐢

Hello! Happy November 👋

Here’s what caught my eye in design, product, and tech this month 👇

The Badger and the Crocodile 🦡🐊

It’s graduate job-hunting season, and with that comes the annual Arts Thread Global Creative Graduate Showcase. I found the incredible work of Isaac Meardon, an illustration graduate from Nottingham Trent University.

The delicate, purposeful lighting and inventive typography elevate every composition. Isaac’s entry, “The Badger and the Crocodile”, is a strong graduate piece, and an immediate Instagram follow from me.

Brutalist Botanicals 🌿

I love a mashup of two seemingly incompatible themes in design, seen in UnitedUs’ work on “WildWorld”. On the nature side, organic, hand-stamped botanical fieldwork is merged with industrial, bold sans serif type, structured design systems, and high-contrast linework, all adding up to a utilitarian sensibility that feels more like a field guide than a cushy-cute lifestyle brand. Plus, there’s a tiny hidden mushroom tucked into the W 🥺

Confusing Blend Modes

Some slick motion design by BUCK for the hipsters at Nothing, makers of cyperpunkesque technology. The ‘digital mixed media’ aesthetic (with layered blend modes) looks fantastic. As is the sound design, which is too often forgotten in motion work. Bonus points if someone can explain what it’s about, though. Something something AI.

Shifty scammers 🕵️‍♂️

Con McHugh produced these shadowy film noir illustrations with Upperquad for Scam Spotter, complete with boiling lines and noisy gradients. The film noir aesthetic immediately signals shifty intent, but the animation style reframes scammers as opportunistic rather than menacing and cunning. It ditches the scare tactics and highlights the agency we have to avoid being scammed — refreshingly different from conventional government campaigns.

A stop-motion video game 💙

I’m highly excited for Out of Words, a stop-motion co-op video game from some Danish folks that consider important details like “I think it’s very good at hugging people because it’s got six lil’ arms!”

I hope that this labour of love finds success, because it feels important for us to embrace human craft, creativity, and making models right now. Or just embrace whatever the cuddly blue thing is.

Thanks for reading.

I hope you enjoyed that collection of things, and that you had a good Halloween if you partake. As always, feel free to reach out if you spot any cool things that could work in this newsletter next month.

I hope you have a great November,
Tom 🐢

Hello! Happy October 👋

Here is a roundup of my discoveries in design, product and tech over the last month 👇

Bose Butter Speaker 🧈

As someone that doesn’t use Instagram or TikTok, I missed the memo about this summer’s ✨butter‑yellow aesthetic✨ trend, but CNC agency (Coffee ‘n Clothes) cashed in with a viral marketing campaign for Bose. The foil wrap. The paper sleeve. I want to lick it.

Wibble-wobbles 〜

Check out this funky interaction design by frontend dev Jean Mazouni. I won’t spoil it. See it for yourself.

Jazz and Beauty 🥲

I’ve been sorting through my old camera roll photos, and came across this book that I saw in a charity shop many years ago. I’m thrilled to expose you to these horrors too.

Banana Milk! 🍌

As mentioned last month, I am an alt‑milk drinking, stubble‑faced, standing‑desk MacBook Man. So of course I love FatFaceStudio’s excellent work on… Banana Milk!

Notice the details — I love how the playful and retro aesthetic brings friendly warmth to the packaging, with some handwritten/wonky flavour names. The colour coding lets people distinguish the flavours, and the overlapping of the pattern and text differentiates the product when seen on a shelf.

Grug 🪨

Clients love overcomplicated briefs. Design manifestos often promise simplicity to solve this, but most fail. Then there’s Grug.

Grug.design is an LLM hooked up to a delightful set of design principles, all of which make for an entertaining read. Grug delivers everything in simplistic caveman speak, distilling complex frustrations into relatable and straightforward answers. Lovely if you’ve been dealing with a lot of business lingo recently.

Finally, turds 💩

While you’d think that toilet roll isn’t the best branding brief, it has all the components for something creative. Otherway’s work for Naked Paper looks like it was great fun to work on, and it contrasts the jazzy/bright branding you’ll see from competitors in the premium-butt-wiping category.

Thanks for reading.

I hope you have a wonderful October 🍂

Tom 🐢

Hello again, happy September 👋

It's been a while, sorry. I’ve had some health stuff over the summer, but I'm back now. Here are some design and product discoveries from the last few months 👇

Poolsuite 2.0 makes everything better 🌞

I've enjoyed using Poolsuite, the retro-inspired music service, for a couple of years now. It's wonderful to play some early '90s ✨poolside vibes✨ on a sunny afternoon.

Version 2.0 arrived this summer with curated mixtapes that I love for deep work sessions. The improved mobile apps bring that same energy; perfect for when you need some funk on the move 🕺🪩

I made free wallpapers for you 🌌

I hid from another European heatwave underneath a patio umbrella… and gave Turkish marbling a go.

You can download these wallpapers via the button below, with thanks to for the inspiration to share my work on Gumroad.

Download (for free, duh)

Fictional brand archive 🗄️

I discovered the Fictional Brands Archive via . It houses a large collection of brands used in TV, film, and games. I loved the study of Lumon Industries — and yes, consider this another unsubtle reminder to watch Severance if you haven't.

Pretty colours 🌈

While I find colour psychology a little reductive (as mentioned in the video, context matters more than colour alone), this animation by the studio Oddfellows is a gorgeous, blurry and noisy summary of colour within design.

Ableton’s music playground 🎼

When I hear "music theory", I'm reminded of endless (and boring) paper workbooks as a child. My limited childhood attention span struggled with it.

Ableton's interactive music production fundamentals shows how good UI/UX transforms learning. They've made complex concepts accessible and engaging to everyone. Poke buttons, hear beeps and boops, and understand why pop music sounds the way it does.

Doctor’s logos ✍️

I loved this fun experiment from Dave Officer featuring popular brands in 'doctor's handwriting'. Not far from my own handwriting, to be honest.

Thanks for reading.

After a summer hiatus, I'm back with a different approach. I'm voice-dictating these newsletters now — it keeps me from rewriting every paragraph a bajillion times and helps maintain the conversational tone I’m actually after.

The newsletter had become too polished and curated. Each edition felt like building a product rather than sharing discoveries with friends. Speaking aloud forces me to just talk about what I've found, hopefully without the perfectionist spiral.

The turtle doodles stay, of course.

Best wishes,
Tom 🐢

Hello again, happy June 👋

Aside from the existential horrors of AI learning to talk, here are the cool things I’ve found in the world of designual-technidoos this month. Yep, that’s the technical term.

Google admits everything's boring

Google decided to answer the “Why are phones so boring to use now?” question with Material 3 Expressive, announced at their IO conference last month.

Through 46 research studies with over 18,000 people, Google discovered that personality and ✨fun✨ in interfaces isn't just prettier — it's better. When design has character, like email apps with chunky "Send" buttons or funky typography on an alarm clock, users get to actions faster (and I’m going to guess they have more fun along the way, too).

With Apple also set to announce major UI changes at WWDC in a few days, there’s hope yet for not-boring software.

Eames Dreams 🪑

Illustrator Gabe Schneider created these gorgeous illustrations of iconic mid-century chairs, and they work brilliantly as a series.

Endlessly iterated and obsessed over, chairs feel like the ultimate ‘design object’, and proof that interior design obviously peaked at mid-century modern 🧐

1960s book covers 📘

Book designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray introduced me to the work of Tony Palladino. There's something magical about how these restrained 1960s covers remain so striking; that single lit window on a dark skyscraper tells the entire story.

You can explore more of Palladino’s work in the New York School of Visual Arts archive.

Design rules that work every time 📐

Anthony Hobday created a list of design rules that work every time. Rules like "avoid pure black and pure white" and "make buttons wider than they are tall" reassuringly describe things I do habitually during my workday.

This implies the dangerous possibility that I might be doing this whole design thing correctly. If indeed there’s a right way to design.

Gay Sheep! 🌈

I was unaware that roughly 1 in 12 sheep are gay, and these rams are typically slaughtered because they can't breed. Rainbow Wool buys them instead, using their annual wool shearing to create patches and shoelaces.

The branding by Hey Studio is brilliantly straightforward, with rounded semicircles that feel soft and approachable, and a rainbow palette that’s unashamedly joyful. Happy June! 🌈

That’s all for this month

Thanks for reading, and I hope you found something interesting in the mix.

I'm curious — would you prefer The Shell-Out to arrive on a set date each month, or are you happy with the current "sometime in the month when I've got cool stuff to share" approach?

As always, get in touch if you spot anything snazzy that I should know about.
Tom 🐢

Hello again! 👋

Happy April. Here are some of the cool things I’ve found and made over the past month. There will be no AI-generated Studio Ghibli images 👇

Sandwich Feels 🥪

The YouTube series SuprOrdinary follows designer Devin Mathews through the journey of rebranding their local sandwich shop, with beautifully crafted cinematography and storytelling. It’s a reminder that creativity is deeply human; a process rooted in emotion and personal connection.

Camera-holes of Calm 📱

Another project that turned many Design heads this last month was Aperture by Special Projects. The concept is simple — turn your phone into a friendlier and less addictive device by flipping your case around and using the camera cutout. A wonderfully simple idea, and surprisingly original, too.

It’s just a concept for now, as that’s what Special Projects seem to do best, but their execution is excellent and I’d try this immediately if it were real. It certainly beats spending $600 on a dedicated ‘dumb phone’ device.

The New(ish) Swiss Passport 🇨🇭

It’s been around since 2022, but everyone started talking about RETINAA’s redesign of the Swiss passport last month.

The standout feature is, of course, how it looks under UV light (amplified by sharp, atmospheric photography in the press kit). Neon contour lines ripple across the pages — a necessary part of the design that makes a passport secure, but also deeply tied to Switzerland’s landscape and identity.

Mirrors and Robots 🪩

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost twenty years since I started watching OK Go’s viral music videos, but their latest offering remains as creative and visually interesting as those that preceded it. Especially because it has robots and expensive camera gear.

Apple Man Says Things 🎙️

Sir Jony Ive, the industrial design legend and disembodied voice from old iPhone videos, featured in BBC Radio 4’s long-running series Desert Island Discs. To those that are unfamiliar with the format, it’s a gentle and uplifting reflection of people’s lives, set to their favourite music.

Classy Graffiti 🧐

I visited Prior Park in the city of Bath last month, and etched into the Palladian Bridge was a large amount of graffiti, some stretching back to the 1700s.

I especially enjoyed that the lettering was in serif — an aesthetic shaped by the chisels used to carve it, and one that stands apart from the forms we see in spray paint today.

Thanks for reading ☺️

That’s it for this month, and I’ll see you in May. I’m sure that you’re just as hyped for World Tuna Day as I am.

Finally, I’m interested in learning how many people like to listen to my narration for this newsletter — are you one of those people? It’s quite involved to yoink out my big microphone, so getting an idea of numbers would be great.

Best wishes,
Tom 🐢

Hello again, and a warm welcome if you’re new 👋

Here are the cool things I’ve found (and made!) over the last month 👇

Mood Camera 📸

As a MacBook-owning, oat-milk-drinking designer, it’s an inevitability that I love the aesthetic of analogue photography. But, with the greatest respect to those who shoot on film, it’s an expensive and time-consuming hobby. This is where mood.camera comes in, an app I’ve been testing daily this year.

It’s the best ‘film look’ photography experience I’ve seen on mobile so far. Rather than just applying a filter, it rewrites the image processing, injecting some much-needed charm and imperfection into the iPhone’s otherwise flat, evenly exposed images.

I was provided with a review code for the purposes of this newsletter feature, but I discovered the app independently and it’s a genuine recommendation.

Pixel Peepin’ 🌈

You might know Good Boy Ninja for their awesome After Effects plugins, but their latest project, ColorMatch, is a Wordle-style daily minigame where you match three random colours using a colour picker. I’m pretty smug about my score of 98.5% — can you do any better?

Rust & Type ⚙️

Creative Director Chris Clarke shared a fun typography experiment a few weeks ago, created by masking sections of a steel plate and etching it with chemicals. The rust/patina then reveals the letters beneath. Very metal 🤘

Printed animation 🖨️

FLASHING IMAGE WARNING

I came across this brilliant risograph animation from Ellis Tolsma of Studio Misprint.

Check out their behind-the-scenes look at how they sliced up the frames to create a richly textured, lo-fi halftone effect that highlights riso’s distinctive grain and misalignment.

Earlier this month, I interviewed Katherine Bjelke about designing emblems for space missions, which may interest you if you haven’t seen it. I’m experimenting with Q&A/interview content and would love your feedback — do you want more of this kind of thing?

And as a bonus after publishing the interview, David Mendes shared this space patch passion project by designer Patricia Klein with me, too.

Goblin Tools 🧙

Like with burritos, it’s hard for us to break stuff down sometimes; large tasks can often feel too daunting to start.

Goblin.tools is a suite of simple online tools, including an AI-enhanced app that breaks your to-dos into smaller steps with adjustable verbosity. Try it with a task you’ve been putting off, and it might just give you the inspiration to start.

Thanks for reading ☺️

I hope you have a lovely month filled with visual inspiration, exciting new ideas, and appropriately spiced meals. As always, get in touch if you have anything cool to share.

Best wishes,
Tom 🐢

(Apologies for the poor quality voiceover this month. I definitely didn’t record my MacBook audio instead of my audio interface for my microphone 😅)

I spoke with Katherine Bjelke, a Copenhagen-based visual designer with a similar love to me for space. They’ve designed a plethora of space patches, with my favourite being for the Alisio 1 cubesat. Here’s what they had to say about their practice:

I’m guessing you’re a huge space enthusiast like me — how did you land your first space-related design brief?

“Yes, I am! Funny enough, it all started because I wanted an Apollo 11 poster, but I couldn’t find one I liked (or could afford at the time). So, I thought, “Why not make my own?” That got me into a whole series of space-inspired designs. Eventually, other space fans noticed and I got approached by TEIDESAT—a student cubesat and outreach project—to help with their designs. From there, one thing led to another, and I started working with more space-related projects and other companies.”

What’s the process of designing a mission patch like? What challenges come with the medium?

“Designing a mission patch feels a lot like solving a puzzle. It's like trying to tell an entire story in a super tiny space.

I usually start by talking with the team to understand the mission’s goals, symbolism, and any must-have elements they want included. Once I have the pieces of my puzzle, I sketch out different layouts and ideas, without making the design too crowded and take it from there.

The tricky part is the size, patches are usually around 8–10 cm. On top of that, you’ve got to think about the practical side, like whether it’ll be embroidered. For example, lines need to be a certain thickness, gradients might not be possible, and some manufacturers even charge per color, those are things you need to discuss with your client first, some will only have their patch as a sticker and that will give you a bit more freedom.”

Space missions often have enormous teams behind them — how do you create a design that represents the collective work of so many people?
And is it a challenge to make it something that the average non-space-enthusiast can enjoy too?

“I always design with the team in mind first. They’re the ones putting in the sweat and tears, I want the patch to feel like a celebration to them, so I try to include their little inside jokes or some easter egg that maybe only the team and people close to the mission can understand, while of course making something that explains the mission, and resonates with a wider audience, whether you’re a space expert or just someone who thinks it looks cool and wants to support the mission and the team.”

What styles influence your posters and patch designs? I’m getting a mix of Art Nouveau and Retro Futurism?

“You’ve got a great eye, that's exactly right. I’m a sucker for Art Deco, Retro Futurism, minimalism, and anything geometric, but honestly inspiration comes from everywhere. I think I based the top part of the Auroras poster on a lamp I saw at a restaurant for example, so it's not too weird seeing me taking photos at random objects I see while Im out, from lamps to plants to any funky shape. But I definitely lean towards Art deco and geometric styles.”

Finally, if you could make a mission patch for any sci-fi space mission, what would it be, and how would it look?

“That’s such a great question! I haven’t thought about it in detail, and I think I would have trouble choosing, it would be fun to make something for Interstellar with the Endurance and the wormhole or the black hole in the middle, in a very minimal design, but would also love to do any of the thousand cool concepts from The Expanse or the Wayfarer Crew patch from Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series.

Not sure how they would look just yet though, I guess I'll have to make them all to figure it out.”

You can see more of Katherine’s work on their website.

Thanks for reading,
Tom 🐢

Here are some of the cool things I’ve found over the last month, mostly while digesting Christmas food and consuming large amounts of cheese 👇

Birbs 🐦

It’s January, and while you may not buy into the idea of resolutions, many of us start the year with aspirations to grow and change. Too often, though, we set ourselves unrealistic goals that leave us feeling disappointed or defeated.

For me, Finch has been the antidote so far. It’s a tamagotchi-like virtual pet that thrives as you care for yourself; small things like drinking some water, stretching, or taking a moment to breathe.

Without diving into a full UX analysis, my favourite thing about Finch is that everything you can do benefits you. This is a rarity in a world of time-sucking distraction apps, and especially so for an app that’s perfectly functional without upgrading to the premium subscription.

Cursor’s pricing page

Small interaction details make digital experiences special, and this will become even more important in 2025 and beyond. To give you an example, I love Cursor’s transition between monthly and annual pricing. The smooth animations aren’t essential, but they add a subtle polish that builds user trust and sparks joy — the exact feelings you want a user to have on a pricing page.

Social Impact Capital

The engraving-inspired illustrations for Social Impact Capital’s website are stunning. They remind me of the ballpoint pen doodles I’d make in the margins of my History classes, back when doodles were my main contribution to historical discourse.

I’m not a huge fan of how aggressive the smooth scrolling effect feels on desktop — it’s like you’re wading through a thick tangle of ornate engravings. But across all screen sizes, the scroll interactions and subtle intro animations make for a polished and satisfying experience.

Eastern and Western app design 🌍

Phoebe Yu offers a concise introduction to the cultural, political, and psychological factors shaping the dramatic differences in app design worldwide. They summarise a highly complex topic in an approachable way that encourages the ‘design for all’ mindset that makes us better humans.

Nostalgia Lucky Dip 📺

Finally, a website that serves up random, unnamed iPhone videos uploaded to YouTube before 2012 — small snippets of other people’s lives.

My personal favourites from a 5-minute browse include:

• Grainy Vampire Weekend concert footage.

• “This is Karl’s first sax solo!”

• Someone striking a pose next to a pizza, followed by, “No, it’s a video!”

💡 Do browse with caution, though: While I didn’t spot anything problematic, there’s always a chance an old, overlooked YouTube video with questionable content could appear here.

Thanks for reading ☺️

I hope you found something cool in that mix of things from the internet.

Expect to see some new article-style content arriving in your inbox soon. My main focus will still be this monthly round-up of cool things, but embracing some vulnerability and trying the occasional new thing seems like a good idea too.

Best wishes,
Tom 🐢

There wasn’t an email last month thanks to COVID, but it’s my party and I’ll delay newsletters if I want to.

Anyway, here’s a pretty packed edition of things I’ve found to round off 2024. And don’t worry — I won’t mention the Jaguar rebrand.

Pootone 💩

PANTONE has announced their Colour of the Year for 2025, and… it’s undeniably turd-coloured. These announcements feel more and more like a silly PR stunt — it seems that they can spin some post-rationalised nonsense about any colour at this point. Bah humbug.

An app that plants trees 🌳

A few months ago I mentioned Ecosia, the search engine that turns ad revenue into trees. Well, the same goes for Treeapp.

They’re a Certified B Corporation that plant a tree for every 30-second ad you watch daily. If you know your carbon footprint, you can even track how much you offset through your daily plantings.

AI chess experiment

Google Labs has a Gemini-powered experiment where you can design weird chess pieces and pit them against an AI-defined opponent.

In my epic battle of eggs vs bacon, Team Egg met an early defeat on Medium difficulty. While egg-bishops and bacon-knights are a novelty, being beaten by computers at chess is nothing new!

Cool buckets!

Yeah, I know, “Look at this bucket!” is fairly niche. But if you appreciate hand-made typography and curious objects, this one’s worth sharing.

From what I can tell (albeit with AI help), it’s marked with the Devanagari पानी, meaning ‘water’, likely for fire-fighting in South Asia.

But it would be far too simple to leave it there, of course! I used the bucket as a design prompt to experiment with motion design in the 2D animation software Cavalry.

Lastly, some festive fun 🎄

Festivitas adds a string of lights to the top of your Mac desktop, along with your dock. It’s ridiculously silly, and made by a solo developer over a few evenings. $4 well spent.

Thanks for reading

Thanks for reading the last Shell-Out of 2024. I’m still loving this project, and I’m so grateful to have a small crowd of people interested in what I share 🤗

I hope you have a lovely Christmas (if you celebrate it), or simply a great December. See you in 2025… probably.

Create exuberant,
Tom 🐢

This newsletter hit two milestones this month — turning a mighty one year of age, and amassing 200 readers.

To celebrate, I’ve made a microsite called Sketchy Replies: A Non-AI Image Generator.

While giant server farms burn through the planet’s finite resources to create AI images, Sketchy Replies is powered by… me (so mostly Pringles and bread).

That’s right — enter a prompt of your choosing, and you’ll get emailed an artistically dreadful doodle from me, like the ones that accompany this newsletter.

Try it out here. It’s free. Tell your friends.

Lovely free fonts ✨

Collletttivo is an open-source type catalogue, and every typeface or font is of outstanding quality. Apfel Grotezk and Ortica are my favourites. Here’s an example poster I put together with them:

If that’s not enough, Collletttivo also offers a fantastic collection of design resources, many of them also open-source and free to access.

Wibbly Wobbly Stuff ∿

Endless Tools allows you to mangle your images through a selection of customisable filters. See my before and after below:

While the results are often dazzling, the controls and customisation are reassuringly intuitive. There are four modes for you to play with, including some 3D effects too.

And sure, other tools may offer more precision, but with such a low barrier to entry, it’s perfect fun for anyone who loves distortion effects.

Amo’s crazy landing animation

If you were born before 2000, you’ll likely recall websites with 10-second Adobe Flash intros, accompanied by a cacophony of tinny sound effects. While it’s good that we’ve moved past the ‘skip intro’ era, I miss the creativity in those elaborate, gaudy designs.

Thankfully, the landing page for Amo, an alternative social media company, satisfies this craving. With smooth, mind-bending animations, it fully embraces the youthful, energetic vibe of their products — and looks fantastic on any device.

Thanks for reading

Hope you enjoyed this month’s little collection of cool things. I’m especially looking forward to doodling random stuff for you, and I’ll likely share a few of my favourites next month.

I hope you have a great October, and see you next time,
Tom 🐢

I hope you’ve had a pleasant summer (with apologies to the three readers from the Southern Hemisphere). Here are some cool arty and designy things that I’ve found this month 👇

Japan has amazing drain covers 🇯🇵

The clue’s in the title, really. This Flickr album contains a comprehensive overview of the decorative drain (manhole) covers you’ll find all over Japan.

The story behind them started around 50 years ago. Decorative designs based on local landmarks, emblems, or symbols adorned the covers of Japan’s new sewage systems (in an attempt to make them an appealing use of public money).

Design-wise, it’s usually the work of a local artist, commissioned by the municipality. Sometimes the decision is down to public vote, like Osaka’s sakura-laden design from 1994.

The final covers are often hand-painted with colourful resins, producing many of the bright designs you’ll see today. Check out the full album for more 🌸

Honk Beep Vroom Clack 🏙️

Trams! Buses! Trolleybuses! All these things and more are celebrated in the London Transport Museum, Covent Garden. While I know with absolute certainty that one person reading this loves trains and the colour yellow, there’s hopefully a broader appeal here, too.

Kit Studio refreshed LTM’s packaging by gathering the iconic symbols and patterns of London’s transport history and applying them to a modular, cohesive design language (pardon the buzzwords, there).

There's a strong sustainability push behind this kraft paper design, including removing plastic windows and lamination from the packaging. While single-colour printing could have been an interesting alternative, the vibrant spot colours undoubtedly make the packaging more enticing on a shelf. It's part of that tricky balance between eco-friendliness and visual appeal, and Kit Studio seem to have found a sweet spot that works.

Public domain inspiration 🪐

Public.work is a small project from Cosmos (it’s like hipster Pinterest). And as a little marketing offshoot, it’s absolutely fantastic! You can browse through a bunch of public domain images; mostly vintage and ‘museum archive’ in nature.

In yet another daring move of self-expression, here’s a poster I made from an awesome, free, and high-resolution illustration of Saturn.

I used AI to make the poster mockup, by the way. Gone are the days of paying for a 500MB Photoshop file to create a virtual poster. The future is now.

TinyPod 🎵

Completely ditching our phones seems unthinkable – they've become our wallets, cameras, membership cards, and even car keys.

So that’s what TinyPod aims to counter — it’s ultimately just a case for an Apple Watch, but it adds a nostalgic iPod-style click wheel. The concept is clever: stay connected to the essential services you use without the full functionality (and temptations) of a smartphone.

While I'm not personally endorsing an unreleased product (let’s face it, any cellular smartwatch could offer a similar experience), I do find the concept — and its flashy website — compelling.

But do we really need yet another thing promising to make life simpler? For me, I’d prefer to find ways to step away from tech, rather than adding yet another ‘fix’ to the mix.

Lastly, a mouse-wizard 🐭

This incredible piece of art was created by someone I know that says “I can’t draw” quite often. But honestly, it’s the darnedest most wizardy mouse I’ve ever seen, and I hope it brings you joy too.

Thanks for reading, and until next time,
Tom 🐢

When you’re faced with a design problem, a really useful technique for ideation is asking yourself: “What’s the worst possible solution to my problem?” Not only is it entertaining, but it quickly frees you from any pressure to succeed, allowing you to get into a creative mindset.

Which leads straight into the first cool thing of this month 👇

Satirical UI designs 👨‍💻

Soren Iverson is a designer that posts daily satirical UI designs. These are fake tweaks and features to popular apps that are often terrible ideas, but simultaneously genius. Below is a selection of my recent favourites, such as:

“A typing indicator that shows the length of the message”

Or what if LinkedIn had a Duolingo-style ‘unemployment streak’? 🥴

Of course, I thought it would be fitting to have a go too, so below is my vision of the Apple Books app, but with some unhelpful monetisation strategies.

Upcycled ocean waste 🧱

‘Debris’ is a project from Japanese designers Shoma Furui and Ken Kobayashi that uses beachcombed waste to decorate resin Jenga blocks. The resulting effect is strongly reminiscent of Terrazzo floors or Jackson Pollock’s work. The best effect, of course, is the simultaneous removal of polluting plastics from the ocean in the process 💪

Life imitates art… imitates life 📸🧑‍🎨

Speaking of Jackson Pollock — here’s an article from the BBC comparing some of Paris 2024’s iconic photographs to famous artworks.

Which one’s your favourite?

Avoiding the spiral 🌀

The odds are stacked against you, when it comes to YouTube. The algorithm crunches huge amounts of data to maximise the time you spend watching content you’re served. In many ways, it’s unsurprising that people find themselves watching four-hour-long documentaries about Disney theme parks.

Which is why I love UnTrap — a free browser extension that allows you to decrapify the YouTube UI precisely to your liking, removing much of the temptation to watch ‘just another video’.

Lastly, a celebration of the life of Sir Kenneth Grange, an incredible industrial designer and Pentagram co-founder who leaves behind a legacy of iconic, treasured designs.

Thanks very much for reading, and best wishes,

Tom 🐢

In a thrilling (and slightly nerve-wracking) first, I’m starting this month’s round-up with something I’ve made. Human connection! Sharing! Mild terror! 😱

Accidental Pizza Typography 🍕

I was on a walk to a pizza place and encountered the wonderful sign below 👇

It was like finding Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in a skip. The composition, materials, and colours were all accidentally beautiful, to me. Sorta like the Nando’s font, created from hand-painted lettering.

Soon, I was home, still recovering from a vegan ‘nduja and hot honey pizza. Picture me, eyes watering, nose running — not from emotion, but my embarrassingly low spice tolerance.

Riding the wave of chilli-induced delirium, the following designs flopped out of my brain:

First, the obligatory pizza box mockup. It feels like it just about avoids the ‘ransom letter’ look. Or ‘Chiller’ from Microsoft Office 2007 — if you know, you know.

Next, an enjoyably angsty album cover, if I do say so. It certainly would’ve passed as a university project if I slapped a hundred pages of ‘research’ on top. With thanks to Kuro for the vinyl mockup.

I’m not saying that these random experiments are flawless and beautiful, but it hopefully serves as a reminder that design inspiration really is everywhere. And when the moment strikes, take a second to snap the photo or make the sketch, begin a new creative experiment, and maybe send it to a hundred strangers via email.

Hand-crafted Election Coverage 📄

It’s election time, here in the UK. We’re all braced for swingometers, endless interviews, and elaborate virtual sets. It’s Nice That interviewed Chris Clarke, The Guardian’s creative director of editorial design, about this year’s election coverage illustrations. In an age where AI can instantly generate alternate realities, the reassuring tactility of the ‘rough and ready’ is an obvious, but satisfying approach.

Why shitty robots are the antidote to perfectionism 🪥

I’ve followed Simone Giertz on YouTube since her “shitty robot” debut in 2015. But I didn’t know back then that these ideas were fuelled by her fear of failure, and that lowering the bar was her way forward. It reminds me strongly of my performance anxiety during university, and that the best project I ever made was when I tried to make the worst outcome possible. I should probably write about that.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading — all 100 of you! 🥳

While it’s pretty common to have a few hundred Facebook friends or Instagram followers, there’s something really special about 100 people letting me unceremoniously plop myself into their inbox each month.

And while I try not to measure this project in metrics and arbitrary milestones, reaching 100 feels like I’ve graduated from ‘shouting into the void’ to ‘writing to a large group of friends’. Nice. Cozy.

Bestest wishy-wishes,
Tom 🐢

Hope you’ve enjoyed the last month. I’ve been training with new design tools, eating fancy pasta, and I even heard a duck do a fart — only the finest journalism in this newsletter 🦆💨

In an exciting accessibility revelation, this newsletter comes with full voiceover, too. With just a tap, you can listen to my vocal cords wobbling about, if that’s the kind of thing you’re into.

Alrighty. Here are the cool things from design and tech that I’ve found over the last month 👇

Swiss Museum of Games 🏰

The charming 13th century castle of La Tour-de-Peilz sits serenely on the shores of Lake Geneva. Inside, you’ll find the Swiss Museum of Games (Musée Suisse du Jeu), a celebration of all things ‘play’ since 1987. But in 2023, it was time for a fresh new look.

Swiss studio Hymn faced a big question: How do you celebrate thousands of years of games and fun in a way that appeals to everyone?

Without relying on dated clichés like chess pieces or playing cards, the new identity draws inspiration from the world of tabletop games. Simultaneously reminiscent of dice, counters, and tiles, the white building blocks feel like the universal language of games, capturing the spirit of play in its simplest visual form.

In true Swiss design style, you’ll find a beautiful grid system adorned with typography set in Ease, Helvetica Bold’s trendy rounded cousin. Overall, a great answer to a tricky brief.

Clicky-clacky noises ⌨️

In the world of software/UX, Mechvibes is a free and open-source app that adds custom sounds to your key presses. If you’re a mechanical keyboard enthusiast, I’m sorry for how offensive this idea seems, but…

• Adding audio feedback to ‘silent’ keyboards is great for accessibility.

• There’s an extensive sound pack library offering a huge selection of clicks, clacks, and meme noises (while impractical, the Isabelle Animal Crossing pack was hilarious).

More road signs 🚧

It sounds arty and pretentious, but one of the things I enjoy about typography is how often it can help creatives push beyond the confines of ‘everyday’ designs. From speedy tags to elaborate commercial pieces, graffiti has long been a source of experimental typography, with an aesthetic often defined by the environment in which it is constructed. Which is precisely why this design from Philip Rempel (or REZTOKIA) caught my eye.

And yes, I’m aware that this is the third time I’ve featured something to do with road signs. You just can’t argue against a good bit of infrastructure, y’know?

An art teacher would say:

“Rempel’s clear influence from the readymade and objet trouvé movement blends the subversion of expectation with known graphic standards.”

I’d say:

“Ooh. Road sign looks like graffiti, innit?”

Carbon-negative searching

I first used the eco-friendly search engine Ecosia in 2014. Back then, it suffered from being powered by Yahoo, and the lack of quality search results had me reluctantly trudging back to Google after a few days. But last autumn, the search engine improved significantly by integrating results from Google and Bing, allowing you to choose your favourite provider.

After using it this month, I found it to be an easy swap. It’s a privacy-focused service that’s good for the planet and provides near-identical search results. It’s already built into most browsers and phones as a search option, so try switching over. The Lorax will thank you 🌍✨

Conclusion

Thanks for reading — this month’s edition has been a little longer than normal, but there was just so much great stuff to share!

Whether it’s rekindled your desire to visit Switzerland, made your keyboard make clicky noises, or encouraged you to switch to carbon-negative searching, I hope you’ve found a spark of inspiration somewhere in this newsletter ✨

And I hope you have a wonderful June. Remember to exercise caution when standing behind bloated ducks 💨

Best wishes,
Tom 🐢

Generate your own AI songs 🎶

First text, then images, now catchy music. Udio is a service that allows you to quickly generate some impressively polished songs in a matter of minutes. To give you an idea, please enjoy my Pixar-quality animation below (sound on!):

And it’s not just weird jingles. I’ve successfully created rock, metal with weird time signatures, and 80s jazz-funk about Pringles. It’s completely free while in beta, so I’d heartily recommend having a play around with it, regardless of musical ability 🕺

Plants ‘n’ concrete 🌲⬜️

As the name would suggest, Brutalist Plants by Olivia Broome is, a book of plants… and brutalism! It reminds me strongly of Fuel’s Soviet Bus Stops, but with a lot more green. The raw, geometric forms of brutalist structures are juxtaposed with the soft, flowing lines of plants. It’s delightful eye candy, and I’ve been a fan of the publisher (Hoxton Mini Press) for years.

If you don’t have space on your bookshelf to lovingly place and admire this book, fear not. Olivia also runs a popular Instagram account with the same images.

Arc arrives on Windows 🖥️

Back in November, I sung internetty praises for Arc, a web browser with a fantastic interface design and beautiful aesthetics. Article below if you’re interested. The great news is that it’s now available on Windows 11 too.

Raise your glass to seagrass 🐟

Finally, London’s Boundless have designed a beautiful special edition bottle for Plymouth Gin. The bottles support the Ocean Conservation Trust’s Blue Meadows project, protecting seagrass in south-west England.

The swirly, warped appearance of the plants is a great decision, in my opinion. It feels like a delicate and considered tie-in that doesn’t detract from the main brand. An affectionate, fitting tribute to the ‘lungs of the ocean’ supported with each purchase ⚓️

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Shell-Out. I say edition with the cockiness of someone that now has an AI-generated theme tune. Feel free to reply to this email with any of your own musical creations — you don’t know that you’re a bagpipe drum and bass fan until you try it 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🔥

Best turtley wishes,
Tom 🐢