Keyword blurring

Manuel Moreale, I love reading your writing. He recently proposed the concept of hiding specific web topics, and while I agree that scaling such a solution would be challenging, keyword blurring could be a potential approach.

Users could define personal keywords to blur at the browser level, where it would be most effective. I would, totally randomly, choose to blur terms like AI, Trump, Growth, you get the idea.

Rather than completely removing content, the browser extension would apply a CSS blur filter to the parent block containing specified keywords, making them less visually intrusive.

Type, More Menu(s)

In what could only be described as a shameless love letter to Things’ iconic ”+ New List” button (hey, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best), we added two fresh menu items to Type.

One for importing notes from other apps – because apparently some people write outside of Type

With Type’s limited screen real estate. So naturally, we added a contextual menu for managing notes, rather than cluttering each note item with options.

And yes, keyboard shortcuts included, because we’re not monsters.

A Quick Paywall Redesign

After experimenting with a pay-to-try model, Nicolas was exploring a new paywall design for Type. He had the essentials in place - features, pricing, and basic structure - but wanted to test different approaches.

Nicolas had nailed the essential content structure with clear feature descriptions and pricing. But we saw an opportunity to make it more compelling with some thoughtful tweaks.

we improved the grouping, added user reviews, refined the visual hierarchy, and introduced a lifetime pricing option.

Make sure to give a try to Type if you haven’t already.

Anatomy of an icon

In late 2022, Nicolas was really getting into his side-projects, Type, a note-taking app for the busy mind. He reached out for some help, and designing an app icon was a fun and different challenge from my day-to-day work. It was something I hadn’t done in a long time.

The process was relatively short. Here are most of the steps that led to the final Icon.

Quick sketches

Starting with quick sketches helped us align on the different directions we liked and disliked. Without much doubt, the idea of a keyboard key made more sense than any other idea.

Playing with the key

The first few high-fidelity keys had a retro feel but were kind of bland. I tried a couple of alternatives with tints or combination of more than one key.

More substance

A key by itself wasn’t strong enough but surrounding the main key with other keys made it feel more “realistic”, keeping the focus on the main key “T” was our final decision.