Duck Pics, CMYK, and Expensive Knobs
Things I can’t afford, free public domain art, a fun halftoning tool, and games to feel old and nostalgic about.
Expensive Knobs 🎛️
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 🐢
