Reading: spring 2025

The quarterly reading list, more or less on schedule. Six things, mostly not from the design press.

Reading the Comments by Joseph Reagle. From 2015. The clearest book I have read on what comments sections actually do, why they so often fail, and what the alternatives might look like. Unexpectedly relevant in 2025, with most platforms now scrambling to redesign their comments after years of neglect.

Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. Recent. The premise (do fewer things, on longer timescales, at a more natural pace) is not new. The framing is useful. The studio’s own working pattern in the last year has shifted in roughly this direction, partly under Newport’s influence.

The Bookseller is the trade publication for the UK book industry. Subscribed to it last year on a whim. The view from inside a different creative-services industry has been quietly useful for thinking about the studio’s own work.

Maggie Appleton on AI and the indie web is the most thoughtful writing on what generative AI is doing to the personal-site internet. She is not a doomer. She is also not naive. Worth subscribing to.

Robin Sloan’s notes keep being the publication I send to other designers most often. The recent piece on “what websites are for” should be required reading for anyone building one.

Frank Chimero on writing again after a quiet stretch. The recent posts read as if he has been thinking about something specific for a long time, which is the kind of writing the open internet is producing less and less of.

A note on the format. I have been writing these reading lists once a quarter for several years. They are the post the studio gets the most direct feedback on, by a substantial margin. The feedback is usually one or two sentences from a friend or a former client, recommending another book in response. Several of the entries on previous reading lists came from this loop. The reading list is, partly, a piece of correspondence with the people who read it.

If you are reading this and have a recommendation, send it. The next list lands in summer.