Weekly Links — 23rd September 2026

🕰️ Ten Minute Focus

• Whatever happened to “Download on the App Store” buttons? — Remember those ubiquitous ’Download on the App Store’ buttons? Yeah, they’ve vanished. Let’s dissect why.
• Please don’t stretch your app for foldables — Foldable phones aren’t an excuse for sloppy app design; stop stretching your UI like cheap taffy.

Branding

• Boreal Points North Through Stone and Scent — Boreal captures the essence of the North in its packaging, proving minimalist design can whisper volumes.
• Are you getting ghosted more than ever? You’re not alone! — Client ghosting isn’t personal; it’s a symptom of a broken business culture that needs a serious fix.
• Redken Bottles Up Its Vintage Lab Roots — Redken’s rebrand channels vintage lab vibes, giving haircare a sharp, scientific edge that demands attention.
• Inside Qiaoyu Liao’s Suuugar!, the clay-animated cheesecake disaster that shows what happens when you get distracted — This clay-animated short is a delightful disaster, proving distraction is the ultimate creative muse (and menace).
• Centers’s Latest Project Offers a ‘Riff’ On Box Meals — Chef Daniel Humm’s ’Riff’ meals promise fine dining convenience; one-pot wonders for the discerning home cook.

Design

• For the Designless — Losing cultural references in design at scale is a dangerous game we’re all playing.
• We are all Product Engineers now — The lines blur: in the software industry, we’re all becoming product engineers, like it or not.
• Aspen Search — Aspen Search: the elite matchmakers for top-tier engineering and research talent in finance and tech.
• LxL Creative — UK-based LxL Creative crafts integrated campaigns that make entertainment industry brands unforgettable.
• Who will taste the cherries? — The last row of a responsive grid is a design puzzle; complexity is the workaround, not the solution.
• WCAG Accessibility Guidelines Explorer — WCAG Accessibility Guidelines Explorer: making web accessibility standards interactive and understandable, finally.

Motion

• Motionographer turns 20 with Motion Plus Design New York: 20 seats for 20 years — Motionographer celebrates 20 years of championing motion design with a NYC event, honoring the creative community.
• She Just Looks Like Her Life: Zellweger and Maguire on Bridget Jones’s Diary at 25 — Bridget Jones’s Diary’s enduring charm lies in its specific, relatable details – a lesson for all character creators.
• Manifesto | SAGA — SAGA’s manifesto is a bold statement on the future of creative production.

AI

• Rethinking writing in the world of design and AI — Amidst AI’s rise, 100 design articles reveal the enduring power of human thought, friction, and foresight.
• AI nutrition facts — AI nutrition facts: an essential guide to designing interfaces between writers, readers, and artificial intelligence.
• Dario, please — The AI apocalypse hype is a distraction; focus on the real threat: corporations protecting their own monopolies.
• The 3 Roles of Context for AI Agents — Mastering AI agents means curating context: global, local, and ambient streams are key to true intelligence.

Misc

• Preserving Netlify Analytics Data Beyond 30 Days — Preserve your Netlify analytics data; don’t let valuable insights disappear after 30 days.
• The Four Tiers of Tab Importance — Arc browser, though moved-on-from, remains a usable gem; its tab importance tiers are still genius.
• Bottlenecks Get a Bad Rap — Bottlenecks aren’t the enemy; they’re essential constraints that manage flow and prevent chaos.
• Companies don’t make decisions — Stop attributing decisions to companies; they are constructs, not sentient beings capable of independent thought.
• The Avocadinator — The Avocadinator: a surprisingly functional gadget that makes avocado prep less of a chore.
• Do You Prefer Artificial? — Artificiality has its merits; from light to snow, embracing the ’fake’ can be incredibly practical.

Nerd Alert

• A decent custom checkbox pattern for until ::checkmark is ready — Until ::checkmark is ready, this custom checkbox pattern offers a decent, visually pleasing alternative.
• Movie mashups — Clearleft’s ’movie mashups’ ritual is a quirky way to end the week, fostering connection and creativity.
• Stalling installing — Being a W3C invited expert isn’t exclusive; it proves anyone can be involved in shaping the web.
• If coding is solved, what now? — If coding is ’solved,’ the real challenge lies in managing code quality, intuition, and human taste.
• Stop Treating CSS Container Queries Like Traditional Media Queries — Stop treating CSS container queries like media queries; they enable truly responsive, reusable components.