04 — Journal6 entries

Everything
we know,
given away.

Notes on what actually wins design awards — the rubrics, the failure modes, the parts of the craft nobody puts in a case study. No gated PDFs, no newsletter wall.

LatestJudging · 24 Aug 2026 · 11 min

The rubric, reverse-engineered

Design awards are not a lottery and they are not a conspiracy. They are a scoring sheet. Here is what is actually on it, and where almost every entrant quietly gives away the points that decide the result.

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The archive

The twelve-megabyte trophy

An entire generation of award-winning sites cannot be used on the devices most people own. We measured the problem, and then we changed how we build to avoid becoming part of it.

Performance30 Jul 2026 · 10 minRead entry →

Brutalism became a template

Thick black borders, hard drop shadows and a clashing primary palette are now the most conformist look on the internet. What raw design was actually for, and how to get back to it.

Aesthetics02 Jul 2026 · 9 minRead entry →

Type is the whole site

Strip out the imagery, the illustration and the motion, and typography still has to carry the page. Most sites discover too late that theirs cannot.

Typography11 Jun 2026 · 10 minRead entry →

Nobody scrolls sideways by accident

Unconventional navigation is the fastest way to win the innovation column and the fastest way to lose the usability one. The difference comes down to a single question.

Interaction19 May 2026 · 9 minRead entry →

Accessibility is the cheapest points on the sheet

It is a scored category on every serious rubric, most entrants fail it, and fixing it costs a fraction of what studios spend on a hero animation nobody remembers.

Craft28 Apr 2026 · 8 minRead entry →

Written by the studio, published without an editor, corrected in public when we get something wrong.