A few scattered notes:

Too much data

The whole idea of using a story-based building cycle got severely interrupted once I had a data set that seemed valuable, even actionable. What can you do with a list of 2000 startups in SF? Worldwide? How much data should I get? Where will I need additional data from?

All of these questions are good to think about, but nothing immediately connected to the workflows. Maybe it was worth a few hours of thought, but a huge distraction overall.

Writing vs. Doing

If I find myself particularly motivated, writing down and sharing the ideas (especially as I tend to go on for a while), I've noticed something. And I'm not the first to notice this, but it totally kills my motivation. I guess the prevailing theory has something to do tricking yourself into thinking the work has already been done. I have no solution for this.

A design thing

I'm starting to look at more references, and one thing that keeps standing out as interesting is the use of focused, sharp, mechanical elements in the foreground to contrast with blurry, more colorful reality backing them up. Maybe this is a well-established trend that I'm just now picking up on. And certainly film and print advertising (and hero images) have paved the way here, but I think something else is going on.

Maybe "material design" is on its way out a bit, and maybe that's just my taste. A paper world, where things fold and ripple for you was initially interesting to me (the page weight, speed and convention destruction (or dev time to re-implement them), I would argue, are not worth the effects).

But maybe what's compelling now is a blurry, confusing natural world, with clear markers on top. Order forced on reality. Maybe we're seeing something new and these are AR inspired interfaces?

I don't know if material design makes people feel powerful. And I don't know if "whatever I'm describing" makes people feel guided. In terms of pure visuals and page weight, I'm pursuing the latter path to the extent I'm able.

This comes without any love for the old skeuomorphic design. Without material design adding an experience to the flat, we're left some not too bright paint on neo-brutalist structures. If flat outlives material, and the web sees enough inspiration elsewhere, I think we'll be diving more into this aesthetic.

If this sounds like bullshit, feel free to stop reading, but I'm going to take a stab at a name for this thing, and a few characteristics.

Characteristics First

• Found Backgrounds
• Constructed Foregrounds
• Blurred images
• Tight, monochromatic line drawings
• Expanded, unfocused, and untouchable universe
• Minimal representation CTAs
• Arbitrary Colors
• Purposeful Colors
• No lines
• Purposeful lines
• A dog without your glasses on
• A comic dog, most serious and capable
• A mass of bodies at a cafe with a laptop behind them

Names

• Focal Design
• Blur Comic
• Wall & Glyph
• Zoom or Enhance
• Drunk & Orderly
• Flow & Vector
• Yarn & Ink
• Tonic & Orchestra
• Church & Steeple