Linked List: June 7, 2022

Tuesday, 7 June 2022

WWDC 2022 Challenge: Pixel Perfect Design 

This is absolutely delightful:

Pixel icons have a rich history on the Mac. MacPaint was a raster graphics editor released as part of the original Macintosh in 1984, and its icons were playful, simple and recognizable to people around the world. Many of the defining icons for modern drawing and design tools — such as the paint brush, lasso, and hand tool — were originally created for MacPaint by Susan Kare, one of the original designers for the Mac.

Kare designed these icons with the monochromatic limits of the first Mac display in mind, using a grid-lined notebook to map out each pixel. While we’re no longer limited by hardware, you can explore those same design principles to help you create fun, interesting, and visually stunning icons. Begin the challenge

We’re inviting you to create an app icon at pixel level using only black and white colors on a 48×48 pixel, 32×32 pixel, or 16×16 pixel canvas. You may design for every size, for two sizes, or just one size. You can draw your icon on paper or using your favorite program; we’ve also provided a pixel grid for download.

Can’t wait to see the results.

Meet the Expanded San Francisco Font Family 

Here’s a neat little session from WWDC:

Meet the expanded San Francisco font family

Discover the latest additions to San Francisco — the system font for Apple platforms — and find out how they can provide more control and versatility when designing interfaces. In addition to weights and optical sizes, San Francisco now supports three new width styles: Condensed, Compressed, and Expanded. We’ll also take you through the linguistic expansion of San Francisco and learn more about the feature-rich Arabic system font families: SF Arabic and SF Arabic Rounded.

Wish I could say I predicted this but I have to credit my pal Craig Hockenberry.

The signage and badges here at Apple Park for WWDC are using these new variants, and they all look great.

Tim Cook at the Time 100 Summit 

I don’t have time to watch this now, but I sure will tomorrow.