SUBGRID

ISSUE 005

As we near the 52nd week of the year, macro questions bubble up to the top of my mind. What design future are we heading towards in the near term? From what I can tell at the intersection of where I work (technology + design), it feels like everything is happening all at once.

The technological era of the 2010s of apps and smartphones hasn't come to an end. Apple's services revenue (revenue Apple Inc. makes just from software, for e.g. iCloud+ or apps people pay for) last quarter was a record-breaking one. If Apple's revenues are any indicator, we are not in a post-screen world. Nowhere close. The world wide web is still expanding. There are new newsletters (incl. this one), websites and products every single week. Not to mention capabilities of web technologies like HTML & CSS get ever more powerful. Even in a post-Slack and post-Notion world, we are still getting more email than ever with no sight of inbox zero anytime soon, or probably ever (the irony isn't lost on me that you're likely reading this in an email).

Meanwhile, the growth of LLM-driven AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude is staggering. I suspect we are weeks away from ChatGPT hitting a billion users. That would be ~1/8th of the world. Imagine, a product that just turned three a few weeks ago. The core premise of LLMs is to push day-to-day interaction with technology one level up the stack (instead of visiting a website, you ask your AI of choice about a topic for an answer that scours and understands that website + 10 similar ones). Consumer-facing big tech is trying to capture this moment through experimental products like Disco from Google Labs.

At the same time, there is a hardware revolution just getting underway. Building nostalgic hardware that adapts to modern needs is a thesis lots of new companies are ascribing to. Small nascent ones are even going full-vertical, rethinking both the hardware and software. Some like ChatGPT are taking their breakthrough success in software and turning it into hype for an upcoming hardware product that doesn't have a screen but might always be listening and seeing? Cue in Greg finding Tom on a suspension bridge during a corporate retreat. Underlying each of these initiatives, whether from a firm with billions in funding or a tiny new upstart is an individual set of founding beliefs, most of which are some version of fighting capitalism with capitalism (see this week's Words & Views).

Beneath all of this, there is a lot of design. Design and your unique voice (not literally though, because that can be cloned too) is how you might differentiate when you can conjure up lots of good enough-seeming stuff at the tap of a button. This is why I never use AI to curate any part of this newsletter and never will – the fact that it's human, imperfect and written by me is my only edge.

As Benedict Evans keeps pointing to in his writing, in this segment of the shift, there are not a lot of answers, but a lot of questions. And my question this week is: are we approaching the mid 20th-century again with respect to the role design can play in our daily environment and lives, but with a lot more economic uncertainty, over-valuation aka hype, noise and over-connectedness? Or is it a more-than-usual longing for a simpler or happier past (i.e. nostalgia) that is proliferating in products and fashion while everything else gets rapidly commoditized?
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Even if there are no answers, asking questions helps us observe better.

Note: one more issue of the newsletter will go out next week on Christmas Eve, the last issue of 2025. Then, SUBGRID returns in January 2026.

–Siddharth

WORDS & VIEWS

From around the web.

​The benefits of building hardware​

"These ‘good for you’ defaults tend to fail on their own because in the short-term, they cost more than they’re worth to the people deciding whether or not to use them, namely developers and customers" writes Not Boring (the newsletter, not the iOS app publisher) author Packy McCormick. McCormick talks about healthier defaults and makes the point that hardware is a more effective way than software to get to healthier defaults. He's not wrong that it's very hard to exist as a #52 weather app or #66 meditation app even if you're a lot better because it's very difficult to get attention as a newcomer in the cacophony of the App Store (it was hard 10 years ago, it's much harder now).

​Tokyo for art lovers​

"This always-moving metropolis is also perfect for cultural digressions, and best discovered at an art lover’s leisurely pace." – writes Jason Farago of NYT. The artifacts the writer discovers in Tokyo while on a long layover offer a unique glimpse into the city's enmeshed cultural influences whether from a thousand years ago or modern European design.

​Cartography of Generative AI​

"What set of extractions, agencies and resources allow us to converse online with a text-generating tool or to obtain images in a matter of seconds?" – writes Spain-based Estampa that produced this detailed piece of cartography to map key elements of generative AI technology to human activities and territories. What are the connections between different entities that make all of this possible? It's kind of all in here in one giant parchment. Amazing stuff.

​Fine cinema posters of 2025​

A small collection of fine posters from the films of 2025, with the author's text narration. The art of designing a film poster involves pairing characters and emotion with typography, setting credits in the backdrop of release dates, accolades and associations. Balancing it all into the final product is an act of subtraction more than anything. See Product Discoveries for more.

PRODUCT DISCOVERIES

Things I observe, try or love in the wild from makers who seem to put care & thought in the design. Just personal recommendations and curiosities (no affiliate fees earned).

​Daylight Computer: This week's Words & Views includes a conversation inspired by Daylight creator. Pitched as a "computer designed for focus and well-being", DC-1 is a tablet with full-speed paper-like display. You can read, take notes, write, browse the web and use a limited collection of apps on it (thanks to it running a modified version of Android). At $800 it carries a hefty price tag for an e-ink tablet, more than some iPads, but it is essentially a full-fledged tablet computer that promises to nurture healthier screen habits by design.

​Stickerbox: Stickerbox lets kids speak into this tiny little printer and out comes a sticker with exactly that thing drawn. This is voice-to-image generation, powered by AI, for kids. Certified "kidSAFE" by a third-party, so it seems the data is encrypted and I'm not sure how strong the guardrails are, but this is a very neat idea. What's good is that unlike ATN from Succession, Stickerbox is not always listening, just when you press the button, so more privacy points for an AI-driven device for kids.

​Kodak Charmera: A tiny retro keychain digital camera in collaboration with Kodak. Charmera is a re-imagination of the Kodak Fling from 1987. It's a 35mm lens (F2.4), with USB-C charging and microSD storage, outputting 1440x1080 photos at 1.6M megapixels, this is a proper nod to point-and-shoot cameras at a super reasonable price. Another good instance of old-fashioned meets modern.

​Posteritati: Film posters are canvases that carry more than a crafted invitation to the film – they're a slice of the soul of a film. SoHo-based Posteritati in New York is an independent shop that also happens to be the world's leading dealer of vintage and contemporary movie art. On their website, you can browse through a lot of their collection and purchase.

THIS WEEK'S BOOK

A book from my shelf or one I aspire to own.

DESIGNER OF NOTE

People whose design portfolios I admire.

​Jonas Downey​

In Chicago-based product designer Jonas Downey's portfolio, I find a thread of simplicity, interaction design that feels obvious in retrospect, and just the right sprinkle of charm. Jonas' designs have powered familiar products from world-class companies. While working at 37 Signals for a decade, Jonas designed some of its big-ticket features including Basecamp's home screen and timeline, and later, a lot of the core features of HEY, the co's flagship email product. (In fact, since I covered Fizzy in Issue 004, I'll also mention that there are things in Fizzy that feel inspired by the design direction Jonas set in the co's earlier days.) That's not all – amidst leading design for some of the best-known productivity software, Jonas also makes Hello Weather, a weather app certified a favourite by blogger John Gruber.

ARTIFACT FROM THE PAST

A figment of design history.

~ That's it for this week's edition. Let's ask more questions. ~

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