Christopher Butler

I’m looking forward to the day when the word AI in a headline reads the way electric does now.

If AI’s design output keeps failing the fundamentals, the obvious fix is to teach it the fundamentals.

For many years, I have maintained a text file called “A Rubric for Website Design Critique.”

There is a pattern visible across the writing about AI this week, and it is older than the writing about AI.

Every technological cycle is really a cycle of power.

One of the more interesting moves in the writing about AI right now — visible across pieces from designers, researchers, and a critic of computers — is the rediscovery of the seam.

There is a fear narrative about AI that I think misses the most interesting thing happening.

There is a useful frame for the AI moment that has been quietly emerging in the writing of the last few months.

Introduction There’s a pattern emerging across disparate domains: the collapse of meaningful distinction.

There’s a piece of conventional wisdom about design leadership I’ve never agreed with.

We do not know what is going to happen.

Irreducibly Human There’s a story we keep telling ourselves about AI: that it’s racing to catch up with us, that any day now it will cross some threshold and we’ll be obsolete.

This morning went the way most of our mornings go, which is to say I barely noticed it.

Signals Something new here—a weekly signal from noise, or at least I hope so.

A growing number of design firms, publications, and professional organizations have declared outright bans on AI-generated content.

This is something I say in the course of nearly every conversation I have with every agency design team I consult.

I have a vested interest in the title of this piece being true.

Will what happened to the music recording industry happen to AI?

While I don’t doubt for a second that images like the one at the top of this page could be easily generated with AI, that they wouldn’t have been made by me predicts at least a million meaningful differences.

“There’s no viable garage startup path in AI anymore.”

Once basic needs are met—once you’re comfortable, secure, insulated from material consequence—wealth accumulation becomes divorced from survival or utility.

Second Story experimented on their own website with many things, creating an experience that defied the boundaries of the browser.

Lots of art time with the kids over the past couple of weeks has filled more pages!

This, from JA Westenberg, is well-put: “I’m going to argue that the pessimists have the best narratives and the worst track record.

I’ve been thinking about the science fiction novels that have stayed with me across years—the ones I return to in my mind even when I’m not actively reading them.

Over the last week, I’ve been setting up design-to-code systems that have had a profound effect on how our design team makes and ships things.

At long last — catching up here!

Several years ago, I created a new design for my website and attempted to alter my Blot theme to match it.

Can there be progress without disruption?

This is the reality of design work today.

The economy is both thriving and failing, depending on where you’re standing.

For our first wedding anniversary, I gave my wife a clock that measures years.

I am not allowed to set up a stand in front of my local Whole Foods and sell the eggs my chickens lay or the blueberries from our bushes.