#code and canvas

[codeandcanvas]

Lieblingsstücke Bücherregalglitch

[codeandcanvas]

I asked ChatGPT what it knows about me, Part 1

Here’s what I actually know about you—nothing more, nothing less:

Basic profile

You’re 43 years old

Your name appears to be Mario (from your account name)

You’re likely based in Germany (around Böblingen, though that can be approximate)

Your work & interests

You’re a graphic designer

You think a lot about:

design tools and workflows (WordPress, plugins, layout systems)

typography and writing style (you referenced The Elements of Eloquence)

artistic process and organization (tools, studio setup)

You also explore:

philosophical ideas (Taleb, Jung, symbolism, archetypes)

creative systems (generative/parametric design, journaling)

automation & tech setups (Huginn, RSS, feeds, scraping)

Your style (from how you interact)

You like precise, practical explanations (step-by-step when needed)

But you also enjoy conceptual depth when the topic invites it

You iterate: you refine ideas rather than settling for first answers

You prefer things that are useful, not decorative fluff (you even said your tools became “decorative stationery,” which clearly annoyed you)

What I don’t know

Anything sensitive (health, finances, private life, etc.)

Anything outside what you’ve explicitly shared or implied here

Your exact location, beyond a rough estimate

If you want, I can also tell you what patterns I see in how you think/work (that’s usually the more interesting part).

[codeandcanvas]

Consolidating my note‑taking software

I’ve noticed an issue with software lately: I always have around three programs that are so similar in what they do, I find it difficult to work with any of them at all. Case in point: my note‑taking setup consists of OneNote, GoodNotes, and Notability.

Confused? So am I.

So, instead of asking myself which “suit” I should wear to work today, I’ve ditched all but OneNote—for one good reason: it does what I want it to do. Since I take notes for my own education and do not plan on sharing or presenting them, I don’t need my notes to look pretty. I just need them to be my own, so I can think on paper—even if that “paper” is actually a glowing screen.

As a graphic designer, I’m done with confusing myself. This is a kind of follow-up to my previous post. These days, I just want modularity in function, as if I’m plugging in some hardware when I need it, and unplugging it when I don’t.

As a test, I imported one of my study files (a PDF) into OneNote as a page, and I can easily add my own handwritten notes to it. That is all I need.

There are people out there who use a baker’s dozen of note-taking programs, and if you ask me, I consider myself lucky to have stopped before it got any worse.

Written in Sublime Text on a Europatastatur.

[codeandcanvas]

Index post

Welcome to my first index post of ongoing threads on tumblr.

Below you will find threads grouped by theme and content, linked to persist context, using the reblog system. Each post below this one links to an individual thread, with a short description explaining what kind of content you can expect from each thread.

This is the first time I am applying this logic to tumblr, so I will see how this works out.

Might just be the right thing.

[codeandcanvas]

The absolute truth about creativity

You do whatever the fuck you want, and you donʼt give naming it a second thought.

And then you move on. To the next thing, or you drop out because you did whatever you wanted, and now you donʼt because you want it that way too.

The people who want to be a painter, a singer, a whatever it is called, they are just following in someone elseʼs footsteps, and oh boy, is there an industry for that.

Do whatever the fuck you want. You will be the best at it because youʼre the only one who does it.

There is nothing else.

[codeandcanvas]

Basically fixed my life.

hey @radiantmorningstar I am starting my first session of Ironsworn tomorrow.

Also have my eye on some really old Das Schwarze Auge RPG box from the 1980s, in part because of the dark fantasy revival of the last 5 years, which has been recently released in a remastered edition.

But since I am cursed with double-nerdery, I am also staring at the illustrations inside of this box and finding some sort of inspiration there as well.

Decided to tag this as code and canvas as well, since I particularly blame my lifelong interest in graphic design on two things:

CD albums

RPGs

I am delighted to be alive. Also, I am in excellent health, and a very good swimmer.

[codeandcanvas]

In which I announce that I should learn Photoshop

Coming back from a couple of days of trying out many setting in Photoshop and my Wacom, I have concluded that I need to actually learn using Photoshop.

Luckily, I have come prepared, and already have just the right book for that.

I want to make a note here about how strange it is that using something like Photoshop first requires treating it like a whole workplace in itself.

Like nesting dolls, I have setup my laptop workplace inside my larger workplace, and now I have to setup the Photoshop workplace inside of my laptop.

Plus, I have invested in Lazy Nezumi Pro, because brush smoothing in Photoshop is f*cked since 2019.

I don’t even want to talk about it. I’ve spent many hours on trying to fix this issue, only to do like everyone else did: turn off Smoothing (not just put it to 0%, turn it off), buy Lazy Nezumi Pro.

Trying out another system for scheduling, I think my timezone is basically dead on Tumblr. Went UTC between 6pm and 12am for this.

[codeandcanvas]

You are not from around here, right?

You mean from this town?

No, Earth.

I love this exchange. Half remembered, expletives omitted.

As I write this using a German keyboard layout on a tablet device I do not use half as often as I would like, summer is going out of season.

Here, where I am, that means when it rains, it pours.

I want to reconnect with where we last heard from each other, tell you what I am up to right now, and these last few weeks.

I used a lot of ChatGPT to complete projects which I had on my mind for years, but knew that I would never finish them.

And I am currently working through the gaps in my graphic design education, because Plain Text 1 by Plain Form talked a lot about type design, experimental type design even, and I saw that what I knew, what I was taught, did not cover that at all.*

Shot from Plain Text 1, Type as Labyrinth, by Benjamin Dumond.

Type design? I learned which type to choose to make things look a certain way, read a certain way.

Experiments? There was the one during our first semester where we made our own grids and used that grid to make some letters. Not a whole alphabet, much less than what a typeface covers. And after that?

So reading this zine I understood my need to become a graphic design generalist as much as I can: why should I stop at what I know when there is so much to learn, do, make?

So that is where I am right now: reading pages of that magazine, made by typographic outlaws from France, who talk about asemic writing, about FontLab and Glyphs, about computational type design, and if knowledge is a country, these are the cities I want to visit. I do not want to be a user of software, like an interface worker who pushes assets around a canvas. My apologies if that sounds rough, but I need the distance from my core studies. I need a little punk here.

And what I need is to get that next level of control, so I can reach the next screen, again.

*I had to order the out of print volume 1 from a different store, cahier central, but you are a smart kid, you will find your own source for it