Logbook 2026-10-22

Today I came back to the canvas after a few days away. I was very much a fan of the new direction, and I left comments all over it to push it further.

The logo didn’t need to be the site’s name: the small 2×2 avatars made of cells, used on the cards, could do the job. The elk came back, not as a symbol this time but as one of the objects the illustration tool draws, and its default one. Over photos, the cell pattern should stay in a few corners and spread organically, without covering the picture.

Those avatars can come in an almost endless number of variations, which gave me another idea: put them on the faces of a die that rotates, and make it the AI mascot, with states such as idle, thinking, searching, building and wrapping up. The first die was too realistic. I asked for something sober and brutalist, flat faces with thin straight black lines like the rest of the symbols, then for line weights that stay consistent from one size to another.

Typography took a round of its own. The serifs proposed didn’t convince me, so we looked for open-source ones close to the New York Times or Playfair. I like the character of Google Sans and its code companion, but wanted alternatives that aren’t Google’s own, and I brought back Karrik, a typeface I had used on www.cmdncmds.com, another site of mine. After comparing them in context, I settled on a trio: Handjet for titles, Figtree for interface and text, DM Mono for data and for the glyphs inside the cells. Handjet, set aside a week earlier, was back in the lead.

Late in the evening I asked to try another mascot as well: a simple, organic shape made of the same cells as the illustrations, animated by state. It started with too many cells, so I asked for four to eight, animated by cells appearing and disappearing, and above all by the glyph or pattern inside them changing. Then I asked to stay with a square of four. Idle should stay still, so it doesn’t distract, and each state should keep its own family of glyphs, so they don’t all look alike. That’s the version I prefer, and I especially like its tiny form without glyphs.