abdz—do - Thoughts on design, inspiration, UX career

Gabriella Marcella's Colourful Risograph Studio in Glasgow

alex — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 02:51:10 +0000

Gabriella Marcella's Colourful Risograph Studio in Glasgow alex April 20, 2026

Gabriella Marcella designed Risotto Studio in Glasgow as a vibrant risograph print space defined by industrial craft, flexible layout, and vivid colours.

Marcella, founder of Risotto Studio, transformed a 100-square-metre industrial unit at the Glue Factory creative hub into her risograph printing headquarters. The former screen-printing workshop had been her base since she graduated 14 years ago. Gaining the larger unit gave her the chance to translate her two-dimensional graphic work into three-dimensional form. The result is a studio built around the logic of the printing process: open, modular, and saturated with colour from floor to ceiling.

Inside the Gabriella Marcella Risograph Studio and Its Central Green Room

The defining feature of the Gabriella Marcella risograph studio is The Green Room, a stepped volume at the centre of the workshop. Modelled in SketchUp and built by designer and fabricator Alexander Garthwaite, the structure houses the risograph printers and paper storage inside, with outer surfaces used for displaying sculptural work. Its form recalls the interlocking tetromino blocks of the Tetris game, giving it a geometric presence that anchors the surrounding open floor.

Almost every other element in the studio sits on wheels, allowing the space to be reconfigured for workshops, commissions, or production runs. Bisley storage units line the perimeter, their wide colour range coordinated with salvaged terrazzo tiles and a bright-red ladder that accesses the tallest shelves. Flap curtains divide the printing room from the main floor, filtering light while acting as an acoustic barrier. An epoxy floor and white walls provide a neutral backdrop for the vivid furniture throughout. See the full project at Dezeen.

Monolith Studio: Tattoo Studio Web Design by Le:mma

abduzeedo — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:22:16 +0000

Monolith Studio: Tattoo Studio Web Design by Le:mma abduzeedo April 20, 2026

Le:mma Studio built Monolith — an Awwwards-winning tattoo studio web design combining editorial type, near-black palette, Cinema 4D 3D, and Webflow work.

The tattoo studio web design opens on a near-total black ground with the Monolith wordmark centered at a weight where individual strokes read as mass, not text. Scrolling reveals a full-width editorial grid where display type anchors each section before imagery appears. The typography system holds two weights — a heavy display cut for artist names and a lighter body face for copy. Each artist page in this tattoo studio web design delivers a magazine-style vertical scroll: name at oversized scale, work below, nothing competing.

Monolith Tattoo Studio Web Design: Art Direction and 3D

The 3D layer comes from Cinema 4D. Volumetric forms appear as part of the interface, not decoration, integrated directly into the Webflow build by Le:mma Studio — founders Okan Uckun and Oscar Akermo, with art direction by Artemii Lebedev. This tattoo studio web design earned FWA of the Day, Awwwards Site of the Day, and CSS Design Awards in the same cycle.

What makes this tattoo studio web design hold is that it does not explain its subject. The near-black palette, the display type at mass-weight, the 3D volumetric forms — each choice performs the same permanence the Monolith artists are selling.

wecircle Visual Identity by +Stüdyo

abduzeedo — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 12:40:01 +0000

wecircle Visual Identity by +Stüdyo abduzeedo April 20, 2026

+Stüdyo crafts a visual identity for wecircle, a 600,000m² private community in Turkey, where four geometric forms unite and close into a circle of home.

Fourteen years in the making, wecircle is not a typical residential development. Set on 600,000 square meters of private land in Muğla, Türkiye, it was conceived as a living experiment: a place for 1,000 people to share, produce, and belong. The soil carries centuries of memory. The scale demands a brand that holds that weight without collapsing under it.

Istanbul-based studio +Stüdyo took on the full scope — visual identity, illustration, editorial design, copywriting, naming, and motion graphics. The result is a cohesive system built around a single geometric idea that earns its meaning.

A Visual Identity Built on Four Pillars

At the core of the visual identity are four geometric forms. Each one represents a foundational pillar of wecircle's values: environment, organization, well-being, and community. Placed together, the four forms close into a perfect circle. The shape reads as both a diagram and a dwelling — a ring that doubles as a roof, a symbol of return and shelter. It is a rare instance of a logo that works conceptually without relying on visual novelty.

The custom logotype reinforces this warmth. Rather than defaulting to a cold geometric sans-serif, +Stüdyo introduced subtle humanist qualities into the letterforms. The type system signals that wecircle is a people-first project, not an architectural sales pitch.

Color, Illustration, and System Depth

The natural color palette grounds the identity in the landscape. Earthy tones drawn from the region's terrain prevent the brand from feeling corporate. This palette carries across every touchpoint — from print collateral to motion graphics — creating consistency without rigidity.

The department emblem system adds a practical layer of identity depth. Each department within the wecircle community gets its own emblem, derived from the master mark. This sub-logo architecture allows the brand to scale across a community of 1,000 people while preserving coherence at every level. The editorial layouts shown in the project photographs demonstrate how the visual identity system performs at full spread — type, color, and form working in balance across magazine-format pages.

Custom illustrations and icons extend the visual language beyond pure geometry. These elements introduce narrative — they describe life inside wecircle rather than simply naming its pillars. It is the kind of system thinking that separates a strong visual identity from a logo plus a font choice.

+Stüdyo's work on wecircle is visible at artistudyo.com. The project demonstrates how a visual identity system can carry genuine conceptual weight when the brief demands it — and when the studio is willing to engage with both the idea and the execution at full depth.

Art&Graft Evolves Gemini Visual Identity into a Living System

jeff — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 01:58:56 +0000

Art&Graft Evolves Gemini Visual Identity into a Living System jeff April 19, 2026

Art&Graft transformed the Gemini visual identity for Google DeepMind into a living motion-led system where particle behavior matters as much as the mark.

The London-based design and motion studio had previously shaped the Gemini 2.0 identity. Google DeepMind brought them back for Gemini 3. The visual identity needed to span a wider range of products, from mobile screens to large presentation environments, while reaching a much broader audience.

AI branding trends toward familiar tropes. Neural networks and abstract data streams carry baggage that Art&Graft Founder and ECD Mike Moloney wanted to avoid. The solution was framing Gemini not as a machine, but as a thoughtful co-creator: ambient, intelligent and always present.

How Art&Graft Built the Gemini Visual Identity Around Motion

The particle system at the heart of the Gemini visual identity draws from nature. Senior Motion Designer Gulya Voronova describes the metaphor as a shoal of fish: dot and pill elements that move together, change direction and respond to their surroundings while maintaining structure. In the ambient state, particles move quietly. When the user engages, the system shifts into active mode, with particles forming deliberate movements and shapes.

Colour development proved demanding. The Gemini brand relies on a four-colour gradient, and keeping those tones clear required extensive testing. Particle behaviours also needed to hold at every scale, which led to the elongation detail: particles stretch as they travel and contract when they settle, giving the system fluid intelligence. Google Sans anchors the typography within the Google ecosystem.

Art&Graft delivered hundreds of assets alongside motion toolkits, templates and style guides, giving Google's internal teams discipline and creative freedom at scale. View the full project at artandgraft.com.

California 1 Reopens South of Big Sur: A Coastal Camping Journey

ibby — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 01:02:24 +0000

California 1 Reopens South of Big Sur: A Coastal Camping Journey ibby April 19, 2026

With California 1 reopened south of Big Sur, this coastal journey traces a return to the road—through redwoods, cliffside viewpoints, and thoughtfully designed camps from Big Sur to Malibu.

After nearly three years of closures, California State Route 1 has finally reopened south of Big Sur, restoring one of the most iconic drives on the West Coast. What returns isn’t just access, but perspective: open horizons of the vast Pacific Ocean and that quiet tension between scale and stillness that defines the California coast.

This trip wasn’t just about movement, it was about composition. Light cutting through redwoods, fog flattening the horizon, the road itself acting as a vanishing point pulling everything forward.

We started in Big Sur at Fernwood Resort, an easy 10/10. The setting feels almost designed: towering vertical lines of redwoods, soft diffused light, and the constant motion of water threading through the site courtesy of The Little Sur River. An iconic Big Sur location that we will certainly be coming back to again very soon.

From there, the newly reopened stretch of Highway 1 delivered exactly what had been missing for the past three years: continuity. The drive unfolds as a sequence of frames.

At McWay Falls, the composition is almost too perfect, a waterfall suspended between land and ocean. A narrow ribbon of water drops about 80 feet from granite cliffs directly into a small turquoise cove along the edge of Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. It’s one of the few true tidefalls in the continental U.S.—meaning the waterfall meets the ocean (or the beach at low tide).

A stop at Nepenthe offers a different kind of pause. Perched high above the Pacific in Big Sur, Nepenthe is as much about place as it is about pause. Built in 1949 from redwood and stone, the structure was originally commissioned by Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles, and designed to blend seamlessly into the surrounding landscape. Over time, it has become a cultural landmark celebrated for its open-air terraces and warm, natural materials framing one of the most iconic views along California State Route 1.

Further south is Ragged Point which functions as the southern gateway to Big Sur, a threshold that is as much psychological as it is geographic. Historically, it served as a definitive marker for travelers: the moment where the Central Coast gives way to a terrain more rugged, remote, and unpredictable. It is the point where the landscape shifts into something wilder.

Prior to the completion of State Route 1 in the 1930s, this coastline was definitively isolated. Movement between settlements required arduous inland detours or the navigation of primitive trails. Once the road was carved into the granite, Ragged Point became one of the first dramatic reveals showing exactly what modern engineering had made accessible.

The Ragged Point Inn & Resort, established in the 1950s, solidified the area as a considered pause point. It wasn’t merely about utility, but about the composition of the view. It remains a classic California landmark where the structure and the surrounding landscape are entirely inseparable.

Next stop: Avila Flying Flags Resort and Campground. Unexpectedly refined. The facilities are brand new, clean, considered layout, everything intentional.

A short walk leads to Port San Luis, where the harbor and pier offer softer compositions—muted tones, slower movement. Across the street, the beach is wide, calm, and family-friendly. We even caught a near glimpse of a SpaceX launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, a reminder of how surreal this stretch of coast can be.

We wrapped at Malibu Surf Outpost, still a favorite. No bad spots. Malibu Surf Outpost feels less like a traditional campground and more like a continuation of Malibu’s surf and roadside culture. Set along the iconic stretch of Pacific Coast Highway, the Outpost sits within a landscape that has long been tied to California’s surf identity, home to generations of surfers, beachgoers, and creatives who helped define the visual language of the coast. While the site itself is relatively modern, its ethos draws directly from that lineage: simple living, proximity to the ocean, and an emphasis on experience over excess.

What makes it stand out is its intentional restraint. The layout is clean and unfussy, letting the ocean and horizon do most of the work. The small on-site shop reflects this same thinking, less convenience store, more curated collection, with objects that feel aligned with Malibu’s design sensibility: tactile, local, and considered.

In many ways, Malibu Surf Outpost represents a newer chapter of the California road trip, one that blends camping with design, surf culture with curation, and nostalgia with a more modern, minimal approach to coastal travel.

Design Inspiration Weekly: OFFF 2026, Yazio, Claude Design

jeff — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 10:21:58 +0000

Design Inspiration Weekly: OFFF 2026, Yazio, Claude Design jeff April 19, 2026

This week's design inspiration covers OFFF 2026 Cultured identity by Uncommon, Yazio's rebrand by Koto, the Claude Design brand resources from Anthropic.

The biggest story in the design world this week comes from Barcelona. Uncommon studio unveiled the visual identity for OFFF 2026, built around the theme Cultured. Rather than designing in isolation, the studio harvested biometric textures and biological fragments from actual people during community events. Those organic materials became the foundation of a living brand system, complete with a custom typeface called Hyphae, drawn from fungal networks and Modernisme architecture. Artist Dasha Plesen, known as The Mold Queen, collaborated on bacterial imagery that gives the campaign its unmistakable texture. It is design inspiration that literally contains the people it celebrates.

Koto London brought a fresh visual identity to Yazio, the food tracking app used by millions. The rebrand moves the product into cleaner, more expressive territory, pairing confident typography with a palette built for digital screens. Meanwhile, creative developer Giulio Cuscito released a new version of his portfolio at theycallmegiulio.com, an immersive experience built around the idea that technology accelerates time while emotions slow it down. It is one of the more technically ambitious pieces of design inspiration released this year.

Design Inspiration Weekly: Claude Design and the Week Ahead

Anthropic also made moves this week with Claude Design, a resource hub collecting the visual language and brand guidelines behind the Claude product line. For designers working with or around AI tools, it offers a rare look at how a frontier AI company approaches brand identity. Keep watching the type and branding spaces as the spring release season continues to deliver standout design inspiration.

Bambu Lab X2D: Dual Extrusion for Every Designer

jeff — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 22:38:51 +0000

Bambu Lab X2D: Dual Extrusion for Every Designer jeff April 18, 2026

Bambu Lab X2D: A New Standard for Accessible Dual Extrusion

On April 14, 2026, Bambu Lab launched the Bambu Lab X2D, the successor to the X1 Carbon and the first X-series printer to feature dual extrusion. Starting at $649 (or $899 as the Combo with the AMS multi-material system), it brings a capability once reserved for high-end professional machines squarely into the consumer market.

Two Nozzles, One Toolhead

The Bambu Lab X2D uses a single shared toolhead carrying two nozzles. The left nozzle is a direct drive setup; the right is a Bowden configuration. That combination keeps the toolhead light while giving you the flexibility to run two different materials in a single print. The most immediate benefit: clean, easy dual-material support removal. You print supports in a dissolvable or breakaway material and just pull them off without post-processing damage.

Build volume sits at 256x256x260mm comparable to the X1 Carbon. The heated chamber reaches up to 65C, nozzle temps go to 300C, and the toolhead moves at up to 1000mm/s with 200mm/s auxiliary speeds. That is fast enough for functional prototyping workflows that previously required much more expensive hardware.

Dynamic Flow Calibration

The standout system-level feature is Dynamic Flow Calibration, real-time extrusion monitoring that adjusts flow rates on the fly. This directly addresses the main failure mode in dual-extrusion printing: inconsistent material transitions and ooze. Bambu Lab built this into the Bambu Lab X2D as a standard feature, not a paid add-on.

The printer integrates with MakerWorld, Bambu Lab's design community platform, making it easy to find profiles and designs optimized for dual extrusion out of the box.

For designers and makers who have wanted dual-material capability without the setup complexity, the Bambu Lab X2D is the most direct path there. Full details at Bambu Lab's official blog.

3D Print Home Office Essentials and Cable Management

kai — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 15:15:34 +0000

3D Print Home Office Essentials and Cable Management kai April 18, 2026

Five free 3D print home office models built on Dieter Rams' principles: less, but better. Cable management, riser, shelf bracket, two planters. All free.

The five 3D print home office models split into things you look at and things you live around. Underware by BlackjackDuck is the most Rams-aligned piece — a modular under-desk cable management system with no screws, clips into itself, infinitely reconfigurable without reprinting the whole system. Tom's topology-optimized shelf bracket removes every gram that doesn't bear load; the resulting web reads as engineering made visible, not decoration. Daniel López's monitor riser is four printed legs — you supply a 16–25mm wood board — which means the printed part is only the part that has to be printed.

3D Print Home Office Objects Worth Making

The planters close this 3D print home office list. h3li0's drift planter — 61,000 downloads on Printables — makes drainage geometry: the elevated drip plate reads as a decision, not an afterthought. @moldesgroot's minimal planter pot is the opposite: straight walls, no taper, no surface treatment. Its 1,111 makes against 4,900 downloads is the real signal — this is an object people actually want in their homes, not just a file they downloaded.

Yokō: Matcha Bar Branding Built Around Urban Stillness

jeff — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 13:52:12 +0000

Yokō: Matcha Bar Branding Built Around Urban Stillness jeff April 18, 2026

Yokō is a matcha bar branding project by Elen Chris that trades Japanese minimalism for bold color, flat illustration, and type that earns a second look.

The concept behind Yokō sits on a specific tension: a Japanese matcha café built for people who move fast through cities but still want to pause. That is a real behavioral brief. It shapes every design decision here. The brand does not lean on zen clichés or muted earth tones. Instead, Elen Chris reaches for something louder and more confrontational.

The wordmark does a lot of work. Yokō is set in a bold, rounded sans-serif. The macron over the final o is kept intact, a small typographic choice that signals cultural respect without turning the mark into a pastiche. Below the wordmark, Japanese kanji for matcha café sits at a smaller scale next to the English translation. The bilingual lockup reads cleanly for anyone familiar with the script or not.

Matcha Bar Branding That Earns Its Color Palette

Three colors anchor the system: deep olive-green, coral-pink, and pale chartreuse yellow-green. These are not safe choices for food branding. But the system commits to them fully. The logo inverts cleanly across all three backgrounds. The same palette carries through the menu design, illustrated sticker icons, cup sleeves, and takeaway bags. A set of hand-drawn flat icons featuring the chasen whisk, matcha bowls, and leaf forms adds warmth without softening the overall confidence. Street-facing poster mockups confirm the palette holds at scale. This is matcha bar branding built to hold attention on a busy city block.

Cal Sans UI Free Font: A Variable Typeface with GEOM Axis

marcus — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 10:10:20 +0000

Cal Sans UI Free Font: A Variable Typeface with GEOM Axis marcus April 17, 2026

Test edit