San Francisco
fromMission Local
3 hours agoColin Hutton's Video Wave makes an old format work
Video Wave is the last standalone video rental store in San Francisco, thriving through personal customer connections and a vast inventory.
In a world where audiences are flooded with content, cutting through the noise requires more than visibility. Organizations increasingly invest in storytelling and narrative strategists to shape everything from brand voice to internal alignment.
I'm heavily inspired by radical print design, particularly of the 70s after the birth of the Xerox, such as Shrew and OZ Magazine as well as protest banners and zines. I love the fast-paced, imperfect, tactile feeling and I try to emulate this through physically editing my work.
Static images don't show motion. You can't inspect real product structure. You don't see how interfaces evolve over time. You rarely understand what actually works in production. So I decided to go deep. I reviewed every major design reference platform I could find - not just the popular ones - and analyzed how they actually help in real-world work. The conclusion?
We've both fought against needless promotional content before and lamented that frontier AI platforms are falling into the same pattern. As designers and users, we've learned that "free" usually means putting up with interruptive, slightly creepy ads that feel more like a tax than a benefit - a frustration tax that now colors how we approach free‑tier services and now AI tools.
A graphic designer that isn't limited to working in 2D, Ward Goes has been working in aluminium of late. His recent solo show in Rotterdam, Literally Anything, was full of things that moved beyond the screen or printed page, including some wonderful metal signage and archival storage. The exhibition at Alley Space was the result of the designer's decision to pursue more tactical investigations alongside his commissioned work at the start of 2025.
I would listen with awe and think, 'That must have been a real challenge. It must be exquisitely crafted and probably a little bit groundbreaking too.' So it feels slightly absurd to admit that my last typeface, Nave, also took around ten years to complete. Not because I spent a decade polishing outlines or expanding the character set, but because I took so many wrong turns trying to chase a vision I hadn't properly defined.