My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech.

Hey and welcome to Creativerly 374 👋

Last week I wrote about how the design landscape is shifting with the fast development of AI, and asked myself the question what it truly means to be a designer today. I would like to touch on that topic once again, since I get confronted with it literally every single day, and it is tiring, it drains my energy. The conversation around AI in design often fixates on speed, output, and productivity, 10x this, automate that, ship faster. But what if we are missing the point? Design, at its core, is not about the deliverable, it is about the thinking. It is about the questions, the iterations, and the moments of insight that lead to something meaningful.

I do not want to linger around with that topic any longer, because if I do, it drains my energy even further. And I can see how this is already affecting other areas of my life, which means, it is time to dive into some other stuff, restructure my focus, spend even more time outside, and soak in all the stuff that actually gives me energy.

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Fresh Updates & News

Former Pinterest team members introduce 'Extra' – a new email client →

BuildForever is a consumer technology company founded by former Pinterest designers and engineers. The first product they just introduced is called Extra, which is an email client that ditches subject lines, folders, and tags of an inbox organized around your life, bringing everything important into a single, actionable overview within its 'Today' tab.

Extra analyzes and understands every single email to know what to do next. All your emails get automatically sorted into smart categories, so you can check news, packages, shopping, receipts, or anything else in a dedicated focused view. Additionally, Extra knows what you never open what is actually worth keeping, so it helps getting your inbox lighter every day you are using it.

TinyStart is a tiny and fast launcher for macOS, focused on the essentials →

If you are feeling overwhelmed by Spotlight, Raycast, or Alfred, TinyStart is definitely work checking out. TinyStart, built by Niléane, is a lightweight, fast, and simple launche for macOS focused on the essentials. It displays results instantly on every keystroke. As you use TinyStart, it learns your favorite apps over time and prioritizes them while you type. Besides that, you can use TinyStart to insert emojis, add your frequently used URLs for quick access, save your favorite folders and open them quickly in Finder, run shortcuts, add your own web search engines, and a lot more.

It is fast, simple, and beautiful. You can grab TinyStart for €5 as a one-time purchase.

Logseq is splitting into two versions →

Logseq has been one of the most popular local, file-based knowledge management apps for some time now, reaching its peak during the PKM hype a couple of years ago. However, it became a bit quiet after that, until now, as the team shared a big update: Logseq is splitting into two versions, which means there will be Logseq OG (the file-based version), and Logseq (the database version).

With this change, Logseq is putting its og version into maintenance-only mode, without even reaching version 1.0. It will no longer receive new features, but rather security and Electron upgrades only, which is quite the bummer.

Mental Wealth

❯ AI as a Fascist Artifact – “Our world and our access to it is increasingly structured through technological mediation: Digital platforms and systems are a massively important aspect of not just our work environments or our interactions with government entities or “the media” but also our individual interactions with one another. Our world is built around technological infrastructures that define what we see, who we can talk to and what information gets presented to us.”

❯ Why we need shared private internets – “Once upon a time all conversations were private. Two people in dialogue. A small group in a debate. What was said only left the room if someone decided it should. For all of human history until two decades ago, private communication was the default. Words traveled as far as our voices could carry them. Or, if we chose, we wrote them down in formats with the intention of distribution.”

❯ It’s a lot to process – “… everything. I need to know less, but I know more. Trying to cultivate a life which allows me to know less while still participating in society requires me to know more and do more than simply laying back and passively allowing the unending flood of information to drown me. Please note that we are all being drowned.”

❯ AI & Alignment – “Raw coding speed isn’t the bottleneck. Alignment is the bottleneck. That seems to be a zeitgeist-y theme lately. If you’re using AI to code, maybe you’re feeling it. You can code more and faster. And clearly a boatload of other developers are doing that too. But software doesn’t seem to be exploding in quantity or quality broadly. Maybe it’s a little? But if AI is 10✕ing our coding, we’re certainly not seeing software get 10✕ better.”

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Appendix

❯ ICYMI

You’ve saved 500 articles, 200 videos, and 100 podcasts, promising to revisit them ‘someday.’ But will you? Explore the ‘save for later’ paradox: why we hoard digital content, the illusion of productivity, and how to embrace (or break) the cycle in an age of AI-generated overload.

❯ Quick Bits

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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