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Frac/tured [TDU-01]

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This inaugural issue features some bad news (a fractured foot and redundancy) plus some good news (a healed foot, new work, side projects, vibe coding, ASCII, fonts, and a new camera).

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According to thousands of newsletter influencers I’m supposed to start this first email off with a positive introduction about what you’ll get below (and in your inbox in the future). Not only am I not following that advice (fractured foot, redundancy, etc.), I’m only just getting around to sending a newsletter many months after first asking you all to sign up. Best practice is to send something straight away. My bad. I tried to get around this by asking people to sign up again last week, so a few of you will be impressed to get this email right away!

In hindsight, I should have set expectations more clearly. When I said my newsletter would be “infrequent”, I was thinking maybe once a quarter. It’s now shaping up to be an annual thing.

Despite the best intentions of sending a newsletter the minute I set it up, I’m instead cutting it fine and getting one out before the end of the year. Insert indiana-jones.gif of him sliding under the door.

And finally, the last bit of advice from the influencers was to write something short and snappy… I haven’t done that. My justification is I’m fighting the constant stream of snack-sized-slop and instead have written a long update, so get a beverage and settle in. Somehow, the fracturing of my foot also provides an appropriate title for this email. It’s a fractured list of things from the year.

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LIFE

Earlier this year I took a tumble and fractured my foot. It had been a very long time since I’d broken a bone, and that was only a couple fingers playing cricket. I’d got off lightly growing up when it comes to casts and slings, so I wasn’t well prepared for what was ahead. Dealing with a cast in my 40s (and over summer) was not ideal, but spoiler alert, I’m fine. People break bones and end up in a lot more discomfort than what I experienced, so all things considered I got lucky.

The first thing everyone asked me was “what happened” and if I was doing anything exciting… the short answer is, no. I wasn’t skateboarding, I was visiting a good friend to learn about coffee. He’d setup his outdoor table with a wonderful arrangement of coffee gadgets and various beans to taste. I got distracted coming down the stairs to his coffee wonderland, I missed the last few steps onto the deck and before I realised what had happened I was on my back. At first I thought I’d been knocked out as I felt very nauseous. Turns out (as my doctor informed me later) that was my body trying to hide the pain in my foot! Part shock, and part preoccupied by coffee, I didn’t realise how bad it was, so I stayed and nursed my foot with an icepack. Enjoying the coffee and conversation, it was only when I went to stand up to leave I noticed I couldn’t put any weight on my foot. Also, when I took my sandal off, my foot pointed in the wrong direction!

I probably should have gone straight to the hospital, because after getting an x-ray, it was confirmed my foot was broken and I needed a cast. Then I was sent home with crutches, some powerful painkillers, and strict instructions not to stand on my foot and to keep it raised as much as possible.

One of the highlights of what was a mostly grim/boring time waiting for my foot to heal was getting a ride on a robotic chair to help me out of my house! If you’re familiar with Wellington, you’ll know it has many steep sections with too many steps. I live in one of said sections, and it was a challenge to get in and out. 22 steps in my case with a couple of paths splitting them up. They’d never been a problem previously, but kept me pretty much housebound while I healed. To get to one of the appointments at the fracture clinic in the hospital, I was helpfully strapped to the chair and it climbed up the steps with a paramedic guiding it. Felt very futuristic. It was kind of like a wheel chair with tank tracks. I unfortunately didn’t get a photo, but I did get one of my scooter I used to zoom around.

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Before I fractured my foot, a few days earlier I’d started the year with news that the startup I was working at was doing a round of redundancies. Not great, but credit where it’s due: it wasn’t before Christmas.

Having experienced it before, I tried to make light of this one and rebrand it as a RedunDANcy. Axiom no longer needed a Dan, but that just meant I was free to provide RedunDANcy to other businesses needing design. Laughter is the best medicine.

There’s no perfect time to get made redundant, or break a bone, so I tried to make the best of it. However, they say bad things happen in threes, so to complete the trifecta, Ada got sick and was on rest orders from the vet, which is a challenging thing for an active dog that loves the beach! We weren’t able to get to the bottom of what was wrong, but it was possibly a problem with a nerve or disc in her spine. Fortunately she’s doing better now after exhausting our pet insurance.

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While I was laid up waiting for the foot to heal I tried to use the time productively to think about my future. Having that time ended up being for the best, as I made some decisions about what I wanted to do next…

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WORK

A few folks have asked what I’ve been up to since leaving Axiom (Case Study). The TL;DR (previously posted on LinkedIn):

I’ve been helping a couple of startups out under the name DaaS (Graphics) aka Dan as a Service. Having a blast. I’m fully booked polishing pixels and arranging ASCII.

Most recently I’ve been working with the talented team at Loophole Labs. They’re getting up to some seriously impressive stuff.

It’s been loads of fun to work on their identity, branding, and design. Getting to define so much from scratch has been a unique and inspiring opportunity. Also, bonus points for getting to play with a new font (Commit Mono), and get up to my same antics with glyphs and grids.

Thus far I’ve been creating a design system for both Loophole Labs and Architect, their console application. One of the more interesting details is the logo marks can be easily typed out {∞} + /~\ as part of a flexible identity that’ll work in a CLI or on a t-shirt.

ICYMI you can see some of this work in these posts: Logo Specifications + ASCII Team + Architect Animation.

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While AI continues to come for everything in its path, it still hasn’t quite got to ASCII (and me). So I’m still designing, and working on some fun new projects. DaaS (Graphics) ended up being a nice excuse to define some personal branding to use across my sites and newsletter. Pixels, mono fonts, ASCII, lists, black/white, and highlighter lime/yellow.

What started as me making a joke, DaaS (Dan as a Service) has ended up how I’m going to work with companies/clients for the foreseeable. I worked on a site whilst the foot healed, but was fortunate to have people I’ve previously worked with referring me before I was able to launch it, so I was able to jump straight into several opportunities as I got back on my feet.

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FONTS

After spending a significant time looking at foundry sites throughout my career, and then making a neue one for Klim, I took an overdue break from fonts. It’s been five years now since I worked on the site with my mate Zak and a lot has changed. Foundry sites have become similar, and there’s so many fonts to catch up on!

Over the last few years I’ve been using various mono typefaces for work/clients including Berkeley Mono, Commit Mono, and Pitch Sans, as well as some old faithfuls Söhne and Untitled.

Some years I’ve ended up working at places where I’d use the same font. As someone who loves typography, thats often been a challenge, so I’m back looking for new fonts, and new ways to use existing fonts. A lot of this work has been ASCII and pushing how far I can use just a typeface (and glyphs) as that main element in the graphic language of the brands I’ve worked with.

For DaaS (Graphics) I’ve been using Departure Mono (a monospace pixel font), along with Adhesion (a blackletter pixel font), and Die Grotesk (Klim Type Foundry’s Helvetica). At some point, I’ll ship a site and you’ll see more than just a few GIFs on LinkedIn or Twitter.

My list of fonts I want to buy/use has got pretty unmanageable this year as I’ve gotten back into following foundries more closely. There’s so many great fonts and so little time. Some at the top of the list to use are Scenik Mono, System, and System Mono from Frost Type, MD System (confusingly another named System, but also not a system font), MD Thermochrome, and MD IO from Mass Driver; GD Octio and GD Gaio from GD Foundry; and Vanity and Sita from Order.

If you have other fonts you think I’ll like, send me an email. I’m collecting mono fonts and typographic inspiration on Cosmos, and have been thinking of doing some sort of font related side project. Speaking of side projects…

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SIDE PROJECTS

I’ve been working on a couple of vibe coded apps this year as a way to keep up with the insanity that is AI. Some of you will have seen a bit of them as I prompted them into existence. And of course they needed branding and domain names before starting. Yes, I do have ASCII logos and URLs for said side projects… STØNK$¥, T1M3ZØN3D, and (W)1CK3T5.

The interesting thing with all these projects is they started as ideas to solve minor problems with tools/sites I use. For example, my stocks are managed by Forsyth Barr and I don’t like their UI. No shame on them, it’s probably fine for a boomer. There’s just no ASCII and ticker… so I set about fixing that by making a scrolling ASCII stock ticker. That then led to some scope creep into a stock viewer for my portfolio!

With some trial and error STØNK$¥ now runs locally and connects to an API of stock data. I can check how things are trending, see gains (and losses) converted into my local currency, and a portfolio summary. For now it’s still manual to add stocks (via updating a JSON file/schema). I like the idea of it being manual and complementary to the ASCII style.

You can check STØNK$¥ out at http://localhost:8080 (jokes). If you think I should finish it up (i.e. you would like use it and pay me money), let me know!

Next up was T1M3ZØN3D. It’s pretty self explanatory: an ASCII map and a way for me to check the time for people I’m working with or to see when I can chat with friends overseas. There are so many time zone tools that I could have just used one of them, but nothing had the ASCII vibe I wanted. Needs a bit of polish like features to set your location and timezones you want to view. So far I’ve just hardcoded in New Zealand (and where friends, family, and clients are).

And lastly, I’ve struggled to make progress on my cricket app, (W)1CK3T5. This was the main idea for a side project I wanted to work on. I’ve always thought there’s a huge opportunity to make a better version of ESPNCricInfo. It’s a massive resource for cricket news, stats, commentary, and live scores. I just don’t need the bloat and want a simple ASCII version of the next fixtures, scores, and the Blackcaps (New Zealand) team stats. The hard part has been getting the data I need. Compared to STØNK$¥ where there are numerous companies providing APIs to use, its a bit wild and confusing how I’m going to solve this. For now, where I’m headed is basically Plain Text Sports for cricket.

As the year progressed, I got busier with work and all my vibe coded apps started to gather dust/bugs and fizzled out as I tried to spend more time outside with my camera…

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GF1 → X100VI

With the absurd acceleration of AI, for the first time in ages I’ve felt like I needed a proper hobby away from a computer. Something creative, and something active. I’m already a collector of cameras, and love photography, so I decided to spend more time out exploring Wellington taking photos.

Considering you can now prompt any scene into being, it also seemed even more timely to capture reality. What I see with my own eyes. Not AI. Not fake news. Just the beauty I find in what’s around me. I don’t travel much these days, so the nice benefit of getting back into photography around Wellington is seeing the city with fresh eyes after living here for many years. It’s also a chance to change the perspective and avoid all the bad news aka doom and gloom. The local economy is indeed bad, but there are moments of hope and charm around Wellington worth capturing and celebrating.

To get back into “proper” photography I decided to retire my GF1 (an amazing camera I’ve had since 2010) and I upgraded to a new FujiFilm X100VI. I love it. It’s a fixed lens and perfect for taking everywhere with me, similar to the GF1 with a pancake lens.

Despite my GF1 being 15 years old I took it out for one last wander around and ended up snapping one of my favourite photos. The shot (above) of the Point Halswell Lighthouse as a storm was coming in. I got very lucky with the birds matching the checkered pattern.

Using the GF1 for one more outing highlighted it’s not really about the tech specs of a camera, however, the X100VI has way better stabilisation and for the last few months I’ve been loving getting used to the built-in recipes and custom settings you can use to create film simulations.

For now, I’m going to keep snapping and someday will put together an exhibition of my favourite prints. Until then, you can check out more of the photos I’ve been taking on my X100VI on Instagram or Glass. It’s mostly black and white photos of Wellington (and the dog).

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Finally, thanks for signing up and reading this far! The only AI used to write this newsletter was Anoushka Isaac (AI). My editor and co-pawrent to Ada. I’ll try to send more than one newsletter next year. Maybe. If you want to encourage (or discourage) that, let me know what you think by replying to this email. As a bribe, you’re officially one of the select few #FansOfDan. This hashtag will be your discount code for some exciting things coming soon. Don’t hold your breath, but remember the hashtag/code!

And, happy holidays! It would have been wrong to sign off at this point without an ASCII Christmas tree…

Have a great break with friends and family. See you in 2026.

\m/

Until next time,
Dan

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You can get in touch by email, or follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter (RIP).

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