Written by a human, not by AI

Dear Reader,

Last week, some of you were gracious enough to give me some feedback on the newsletter. (You can still do it at the bottom).

Someone left a review that said, "AI Slop" without any other context.

And it got me thinking...

You might be assuming that this newsletter is written by AI.

Today, I'll let you in on a little secret: I still write by hand.

And I plan to keep writing this newsletter by hand.

I'm not gonna lie, I tried to get AI to write the newsletter a few times.

The result always had hallucinations and so much "Claudelish" that I wanted to throw up when I read it.

I can hear the AI bros in the back going, "Well, actually if you just used this prompt and"--Imma stop you right there. It's not about whether I could make AI write like me. It's about whether I should.

Even if AI could write something completely in my voice, I would still prefer to write by hand. Because otherwise, I'll become a terrible writer, and if I can't write, I can't think.

That's something that's important to me.

Recently, I came across the "Not by AI" certification.

It's a certification system created by a graphic designer that you can add to works that you've done by hand.

It's not that I'm against using AI to write or create stuff. I just get annoyed when I can tell something has been generated by AI, especially when it could just as easily have been done by a human, even if imperfectly.

I prefer to read stuff written by humans, and maybe you do, too?

Mostly, I want you to know that I respect your time enough to write this stuff by hand.

So, I'm adding this certification to the newsletter:

From now on, you'll find it at the top and bottom of any newsletter that is written by hand.

How I use AI for this newsletter

I do use AI for some things related to the newsletter...so I thought I'd share exactly how I do that in a sort of AI disclaimer that would make even Ursula von der Leyen proud.

My main AI setup is a research agent in Hermes. Hermes is similar to OpenClaw (which I wrote about here and here) but with a much better user experience, and I highly recommend it for designers. My Hermes agent is powered by an AI model from MiniMax. Hermes sends me a daily research briefs where I source content for the newsletter. In addition to Minimax in Hermes, I use some search tools (Exa, Tavily, SearXNG) that I run locally on Docker on my Mac Mini. Importantly, the research briefs are set to only include stuff that has happened since the last newsletter to guarantee it's fresh. I check the sources of the research briefs and tag what seems interesting. Sometimes I also run one-off newsletter queries with a frontier model like Claude Opus if I want to deep dive on something. I also do my own, human-powered research throughout the week and add that as well. Usually, it's around 50/50: half AI-found and half human-found ideas. On Wednesday, I decide on what's going in the newsletter, re-read the sources, and write everything up in my email tool. Sometimes I use a hotkey for Gemini to fact-check what I've written in a separate window as I write. Finally, I use Languge Tool (similar to Grammarly), a browser plugin to find typos. Eventually, I hope to run everything locally.

TL;DR: I use AI for research, not for writing.

So if you see some typos or some weird-ass sentences, be gentle on me. I'm just a human.

And please, hit reply if you have thoughts on the newsletter.

I'm always grateful for feedback.

Just write it yourself. 😉

After 40 years, Illustrator adds a one-click center align button

There's no telling how long this sat in the "to-do pile" at Adobe, but it's actually here. Now you can align things to the vertical and horizontal center with a single click. Perfect. No notes, Adobe.

Woof, this one is intense, and it comes from a novel by Jonathan Foer called Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. This one will be floating around your head for a few days.

These ceiling chain pulls tell you which chain does what, and Reddit is going nuts over it. I feel like this should be on the cover of The Design of Everyday Things. Very UX-coded. 10/10.

The EU Right to Repair is now live

The EU Right to Repair is now live as of August, and it's set to change how manufacturers design electronics, even outside the EU. You should get easier access to parts and easier repairability overall. For example, smartwatches are required to be designed with changeable batteries rather than having them permanently glued in. This is meant to help customers repair rather than throw away, thus reducing waste.

Here are the main points from the EU:

• require manufacturers to repair products that are technically repairable, for free or at a reasonable price, and within a reasonable timeframe,
• extend by at least 12 months the legal guarantee of the product, when the consumer chooses to repair a product rather than replace it within the liability period,
• require manufacturers to provide easily accessible information about repair services, along with access to spare parts at a reasonable price.

Atlas lets you do that that slo-mo bullet thing from the Matrix

Atlas is a new "spatial intelligence" model from World Labs that will fill in missing details from your footage to allow you to do some truly bizarre camera work.

Here's a demo that an X user did with a three-phone setup:

I can't wait to see what people will do with this for VR games. Tools like this can help designers get more creative, spatially...even if the screen is 2d.

The Accessibility Prompt

​Source: Emily Stevens​

Talk to you in 2 weeks! ✌️

Jeff Humble ​Designer & Co-Founder ​The Fountain Institute

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P.S. Don't miss the event on Sep. 16th. Learn more here or use these links to save the event directly to your calendar: