47points · 5h ago
What heraldry and Japanese mon can teach about visual-identity generators
benovermyer.com·by bovermyer·5h ago
Discussion 14 comments
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NickNaraghi·2h ago
There was a really cool project a few years ago from Area Tech that explored this - generative shields (with heraldry on them). https://shields.build/
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·1h ago
> Visual-Identity Generators
This makes me think of user-avatar scenarios, like systems that automatically make an abstract design linked to an anonymous user's IP.
If the possibility space is big enough, old heraldry rules could be applied the same way—though old families might not appreciate seeing "their" design randomly appropriated.
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·3h ago
Quick visual on some mon:
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·3h ago
Nice. I was craving more examples of this, as I'm not familiar with this tradition. "Cranes with Pine Branch" is my favorite on this list.
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·4h ago
Tangent, but I deeply appreciate the treatment of footnotes on this article, just floating alongside the text in the right gutter instead of at the bottom of the article. It seems so obvious (at least on desktop) but I haven't seen it before. It's so nice to be able to see whether it's something I want to read, or just a citation, without clicking and losing my place (yes, I know there's usually a link back to the article flow, but especially in the "sticky header" era we've been in for decades, that rarely works well).
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·2h ago
Tufte CSS[1] provides a style for this, I like the good use of the "wasted" space in the margins of most browsers.
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·4h ago
Thanks! Also, if you squish the browser down to mobile-size, they turn into end notes. It took me a bit of experimentation to get it like this!
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·4h ago
On my tablet (always in landscape, not lacking space), with "desktop site" mode on, the sidenotes are turned into footnotes anyway. (The text is unnecessarily large: perhaps what happened was like mobile device? -> make text big -> no room for side notes now.)
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·3h ago
I was slightly disappointed of them still being labeled as "side notes" even if they were at the bottom
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·3h ago
Heh. I guess one could have some fun with a ::before {content: "Side" or "Foot" } inside each breakpoint's media query.
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·3h ago
Yeah, there is room for improvement there.
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·2h ago
Can we all agree to system prompt Claude and open models to stop using the same exact Fraunces font everywhere (The Capital J looks like someone folded it backwards). I said open models because qwen and Glm and Claude produce the same design and font for the same “design a gorgeous website” prompt.
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·6m ago
This site is not LLM-generated.
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·2h ago
I chose this font myself, though. It was a human choice in this case. =/
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