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Christopher Butler

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The Empty Heading For many years, I have maintained a text file called “A Rubric for Website Design Critique.” It is...
a week ago
0

The Empty Heading

from Christopher Butler [alt+shift+b] in design

a week ago
For many years, I have maintained a text file called “A Rubric for Website Design Critique.” It is relatively short, but used nonetheless; I’ve returned to it, off and on, for most of my career, referring back, adding things, removing things, adjusting. Its purpose is to...
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An Old, Restless Wish We do not know what is going to happen. This is a hard truth; we desperately want to believe the...
2nd Jun 2026
1

An Old, Restless Wish

from Christopher Butler [alt+shift+b] in design

2nd Jun 2026
We do not know what is going to happen. This is a hard truth; we desperately want to believe the opposite. And so the most successful corners of the modern internet have been organized, very deliberately, around that desire to convince you that someone, somewhere, knows what is...
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Signals #001: The Politics of Naming Signals Something new here—a weekly signal from noise, or at least I hope so. Connections drawn...
25th May 2026
1

Signals #001: The Politics of Naming

from Christopher Butler [alt+shift+b] in design

25th May 2026
Signals Something new here—a weekly signal from noise, or at least I hope so. Connections drawn between things I have encountered… Something strange happens when we put a name to things. The moment “cassette futurism” or “Corporate Memphis” enters circulation, it stops being...
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Earning Attention This is something I say in the course of nearly every conversation I have with every agency design...
6th Apr 2026
1

Earning Attention

from Christopher Butler [alt+shift+b] in design

6th Apr 2026
This is something I say in the course of nearly every conversation I have with every agency design team I consult. I remind them, over and over again, that marketing is two kinds of persuasion: FIRST, persuading a person to actually pay attention, and THEN, persuading them of...
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Replication Is Not Innovation AI’s efficiency gains don’t justify trillion-dollar valuations. The economy is both thriving and...
2nd Feb 2026
1

Replication Is Not Innovation

from Christopher Butler [alt+shift+b] in design

2nd Feb 2026
AI’s efficiency gains don’t justify trillion-dollar valuations. The economy is both thriving and failing, depending on where you’re standing. The stock market remains strong, driven almost entirely by the valuations of seven companies. Meanwhile, most people experience a daily...
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Fifteen Clocks On clocks as interfaces to time, and a decade measured in rotations of a single hand. For our...
31st Jan 2026
1

Fifteen Clocks

from Christopher Butler [alt+shift+b] in design

31st Jan 2026
On clocks as interfaces to time, and a decade measured in rotations of a single hand. For our first wedding anniversary, I gave my wife a clock that measures years. It’s called The Present, created by Scott Thrift, a designer whose work I’d followed for some time. I’d invested...
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The Fundamentals Problem Anyone can make something that looks designed, but that doesn’t mean that design has happened. A...
3rd Nov 2025
14

The Fundamentals Problem

from Christopher Butler [alt+shift+b] in design

3rd Nov 2025
Anyone can make something that looks designed, but that doesn’t mean that design has happened. A few months ago, a client was reviewing a landing page design with my team. They had created it themselves using a page builder tool — one of those platforms that integrate content...
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Doing (and Directing) Great Design Requires Detail Obsession Every great design has one organizing detail that unlocks everything else, and the best design...
15th Aug 2025
66

Doing (and Directing) Great Design Requires Detail Obsession

from Christopher Butler [alt+shift+b] in design

15th Aug 2025
Every great design has one organizing detail that unlocks everything else, and the best design leaders never stop looking for it. Every good piece of design has at least one detail that is the “key” to unlocking an understanding of how it works. Good designers will notice that...
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If This, Then That, Except for When... I’m not saying that “Agentic AI” will “never” replicate all tasks that workers are currently paid to...
3rd Jun 2025
31

If This, Then That, Except for When...

from Christopher Butler [alt+shift+b] in design

3rd Jun 2025
I’m not saying that “Agentic AI” will “never” replicate all tasks that workers are currently paid to complete, but I strongly suspect that current agents have an extremely limited task scope. As exhibit A, I submit this podcast episode, in which Agentic AI is sold on the basis...
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We Cannot Talk About AI Without Talking About Capitalism, Fascism, and Liberty Let me begin with a disambiguation: I’m not talking about AI as some theoretical intelligence...
2nd May 2025
38

We Cannot Talk About AI Without Talking About Capitalism, Fascism, and Liberty

from Christopher Butler [alt+shift+b] in design

2nd May 2025
Let me begin with a disambiguation: I’m not talking about AI as some theoretical intelligence emerging from non-biological form — the sentient computer of science fiction. That, I suppose, can be thought about in an intellectual vacuum, to a point. I’m talking about AI, the...
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