The web as light as gossamer & the magic of small databases

Poisoned computer! Courtesy of Roxy, age 6

When I look back at my career (?) I’ve always been remixing, hacking and tinkering with the web. Trying to ask questions like "what does the web feel like?",  "how do you treat the web as a texture?" & "what can you do with the web?".

This one's very much of the web with three things:

1. Digital Bricolage

I've been using the term "digital bricolage" to cover my approach to building stuff on the web without ever really becoming a real programmer and I finally wrote up a post about what that idea means to me.

→ Digital Bricolage & Web Foraging: An ongoing journey in using the web in new ways 

I'm always excited about learning new ways to use the web in creative, small ways. It's why tools like Replit and Google Scripts are so appealing to me. What's your go-to stack for digital bricoalge?

2. The Magic of Small Databases

Small libraries, poetic collections and indie archives are magical things. You stumble across some personal archive or collection and it feels like a treasure trove. But publishing stuff to the web in the format of a collection, library or archive is still kind of hard? I wrote up a post about why this matters here:

→ The Magic of Small Databases: Notes on personal libraries, collections and small indexes on the web

There's a ton of options here but STILL none of them satisfy me. If you're building a collection or working on tooling for this space shoot me a note!

3. Figma Thinkers

I've written before about how Figma has completely upended my workflows. As a blogger, course creator and strategy consultant I find myself using Figma in all kinds of ways that are not strictly "design" but still benefit from working on an open canvas.

I deeply believe that Figma is a powerful and creative tool for non-designers so I'm working on a course with my friend Nate Kadlac to teach Figma to non-designers. We're building the whole thing in public, live streaming our weekly working sessions (we've done 4 so far!)

→ Learn more about Figma Thinkers and follow along here