Illustration by Tala Safié

There are more forums for conversation than ever before—Podcasts! Social media! Slack! Secret Slack!—and while it’s great that everyone is getting all limbered up by regularly exercising their freedom of speech, sometimes it can feel like maybe some of us should take a rest day. We’re not saying that you shouldn’t speak up just because someone (or many) might find you obnoxious (I mean, maybe consider it); the point is, the room is big and it can get very loud, so we’re here to cut through the noise on Design Twitter, because for all the half-baked ideas, nonsensical logo-bashing threads, “criticism,” and other dumb comments literally no one is asking anyone to make, there is actually—sometimes—a real design discussion taking place, if you know where to look. We don’t expect you to comb through your feed to find it (for your own sanity, we advise against it), but it’s already part of our job, so let us forge the path and bring you a rundown of what happened on Design Twitter this week.

If you only read one tweet this week, make it this one. It’s a perfect summation of how capital-D Design failed in the face of actual news, side-by-side with the kind of thread you’ve no doubt become inured to at this point: a bunch of designers ganging up on a basic bit of design that is actually perfectly fine.

But more on that first point. This week we were all accosted by a “font” that’s “inspired” by the handwriting of the world’s only hope, Greta Thunberg. Of course, designers would take one look at the climate crisis and think, “I know just what to do!” Give a designer a problem, and if they can’t solve it with a logo, they’ll solve with a new typeface or a poster. This time we got a two-fer.

Right on cue, they chimed in with their environmentally conscious font critiques, namely how the large x-height will require more ink to print and is therefore more wasteful:



Thankfully, not everyone’s head was stuck in the ground:


And while we’re on the topic of font critiques that don’t need to exist, we bring you this from the sparkling social media mind of Erik Spiekermann—because the most egregious thing about this Brexit warning is that the font used to display it isn’t British:

For more fonts-in-use nitpicking, American singer/songwriter Tinashe felt the wrath of Design Twitter this week after posting her homespun flyer for a London listening party, causing many to *scream in graphic designer*:

An onslaught of “graphic design is my passion” memes naturally ensued, causing a bemused Tinashe to invite her followers to design her next flyer for her:

Turns out Twitter’s not such a bad place for calls for spec work:

Though many saw the tweet as a chance for more memes:


And others as a reminder of the importance of fair compensation over the promise of exposure:

Meanwhile, we’re wondering who got paid to design the Mitt Merch that nobody—not even Mitt Romney—wanted. Famously short-lived White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci launched MittRomney2020.org in an apparent attempt to cyber-bully Romney into running for president. Scaramucci’s selling T-shirts on the site to “test demand” and, um, the graphic design is not bad.

Or maybe even further back…


But let’s not split hairs. The point is, the concept is well-thought out, the design meticulously executed.


And the copy is on point.


But yes, it’s better than what we’ve got.