Illustration by Tala Safié

It was the best of #DesignTwitter, it was the worst of #DesignTwitter, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of trolling for LOLs. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen both the dark side and the bright side of everyone’s favorite social network. We’ll start with the bad.

“Public design critic” Eli Schiff, whose incendiary comments have long stoked outrage and debate within the design community, finally crossed line with Twitter last week with a racist screed about Uber and Lyft drivers. Shortly after it was posted, Twitter suspended his account.

Schiff is a known entity on Design Twitter, and his banning did not go unnoticed.

In fact, it was widely celebrated.

Yet out of the ban, “Eli’s Intern” has spawned. The likeness is….striking.

Perhaps it is just a matter of time before someone pops up to fill the void. For now, we can celebrate that the bad guy got banned in the end.

And on that note, the good news:

In its best (and fleeting) moments, Twitter does, in fact, fulfill the idealized rhetoric of its founding principle to connect people. This week on #DesignTwitter we saw Jonathan Hoefler embrace the platform’s promise with one of his impromptu type clinics, where he offers free advice to type designers looking for a little guidance in their work.

When we say a little guidance, we mean a full-on crit, as Hoefler undertook with a designer stumped by the (admittedly imperceptible) problems with the connection between an E and T.

Not to be all sentimental, but we love to see people coming together for the greater typographic good. Especially if those people happen to be the “lone type fanatic in an organization,” as Hoefler so eloquently put it.

But not all advice is solicited, and that, too, can serve a purpose. As winter slush turns into spring sun (anytime now, please), another ritual is on the horizon: year-end portfolio reviews. Professor Mitch Goldstein happily and helpfully doled out a whole thread of advice for students looking to up their portfolio game:

Grooming tips included…

And just when you thought you thought school was the last time you’d be taking a test, we caught this long thread of the concept of “design take home tests” that some employers give to potential hires as part of the interviewing process.

Many shared the opinion that a take home test is asking for free work and the same things could be gleaned through a portfolio walk-through.

Others said it depends on the level of the designer, and how much of their work you have to go off of.

Then we learned that Square is covertly collecting knowledge on teleportation…

In conclusion, #DesignTwitter has been a lot lately. We’ll leave you with some lovely accidental images and the reminder to get offline at some point today.