Tootfinder

Canva launches a foundational design model that generates editable layered designs, expands Canva AI, makes Affinity free for all users, and more (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/30/canva-launches-its-own-desig…

Canva launches its own design model, adds new AI features to the platform | TechCrunch
Canva is launching new features like Forms and email design, and it makes Affinity free for all users.



Both Quikscript and Shavian were essentially the results of a design competition,
sponsored--posthumously--by playwright George Bernard Shaw,
who laid out the terms in his will.
Shaw wanted someone to create an ideal phonetic alphabet for English that trumped Pitman shorthand.
British designer Ronald Kingsley Read, a finalist in the 1960s competition, designed both Quikscript and Shavian, the latter being named in Shaw's honor

Here are 50 Different Written Languages. Can You Tell Which are Fake? - Core77
Below are examples of 50 different written languages. Unless you're Indiana Jones, I doubt you'll recognize more than a handful. However, of these 50 scripts, five of them are contrived 20th Century creations. Two of them are shorthand-style phonetic alphabets designed for English; one of them is an ideographic writing

Okay, here's the promised follow-up with more authors I respect who didn't make it onto this list. I won't do deep dives but I'll list at least one work per author:
YA novelists:
- Randi Pink ("Girls Like Us")
- Louisa Onomé ("Twice as Perfect")
- Emery Lee ("Meet Cute Diary")
- Robin Benway ("Far from the Tree")
- Angela Velez ("Lulu and Milagro's Search for Clarity")
Children's book authors:
- Jacqueline Davies ("Bubbles Up")
- Freya Hartas ("Slow Down in the Park")
Novelists:
- Rimma Onoseta ("How You Grow Wings")
Graphic novelists:
- Linda Medley ("Castle Waiting")
- 🖋️Magsalene Visaggio 🖌️Paulina Ganucheau ("Girlmode")
- Ursula Vernon ("Digger")
- SJ Sindu ("Tall Water" w/ Dion MBD)
- Hope Larson ("Be That Way"; "Salt Magic" w/ Rebecca Mock)
- Lily Williams Karen Schneemann ("Go With the Flow")
- Maia Kobabe ("Gender Queer")
- Kay O'Neill ("Tea Dragon Society")
- Marjane Satrapi ("Persepolis")
Mangaka:
- Kaoru Mori ("Young Bride's Stories")
- Ryoko Kui ("Delicious in Dungeon")
- Natsuki Takaya ("Fruits Basket")
Anime writers/directors and/or Japanese light/fantasy/SF novelists:
- Nahoko Uehashi ("Moribito")
- Sayo Yamamoto ("Michiko & Hatchin"; "Yuri!!! On Ice")
- Mari Okada ("Ano Hana: The Flower we Saw That Day"; "Toradora!")
Game designers/programmers:
(Upon review I was pretty remiss in skipping over a few of these people, some of whom I wasn't aware of but most of whom I just didn't remember when writing my short list. Subconscious misogyny in action. Short & Thorson probably would have squeezed out some of the YA authors I included, although I have no real regrets.)
- Junko Kawano ("Suikoden")
- Elizabeth LaPensée ("When Rivers Were Trails")
- Momo Pixel ("Hair Nah")
- Zoë Quinn ("Depression Quest"; narrative designer on "Solar Ash")
- Kellee Santiago ("Cloud"; "Flower")
- Tanya X. Short ("Moon Hunters")
- Kim Swift ("Portal")
- Maddy Thorson ("Celeste")
- Andi McClure @… ("Jumpman")
Note: I haven't included composers or artists here, but there's a deep bench.
Games journalists/steamers:
- Tanya DePass @… (#/INeedDiverseGames; twitch streams)
- Anita Sarkeesian (Feminist Frequency)
Game/play scholars:
- Mary Flanagan ("Critical Play")
- Tracy Fullerton ("Game Design Workshop")
- Brenda Laurel ("Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System")
- Janet Murray ("Hamlet on the Holodeck"l
- Susana Tosca ("A Pragmatics of Links")
- Jichen Zhu ("Agency Play: Dimensions of Agency for Interactive Narrative Design")
- Magy Seif El Nasr ("Design patterns to guide player movement in 3D games")
- Kate Compton ("Causal Creators"; also "Spore")
P.S. upon consideration I've decided not to include any authors who are men in this coda.
There are definitely others who probably deserve to be here that I'm forgetting...
#GsmeDesign #Authors

BeMarket: Begegnung von Design und Handwerk https://weddingweiser.de/bemarket-begegnung-von-design-und-handwerk/

Großes Update für Canva, Affinity wird kostenlos
Das Grafik-Tool Canva bekommt mehr KI, besseren Video-Schnitt, Marketing-Werkzeuge, Mail-Designer und Formulare – zudem trägt die Affinity-Übernahme Früchte.
https://www.…

Noem says deportation operation decisions are hers amid case over flights to El Salvador (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/noem-deportation-operation-decisions-flights-el-salvador-rcna246531
http://www.memeorandum.com/251130/p10#a251130p10

On Friday, Judge Boasberg ordered the administration to submit declarations by December 5
from all officials involved in the decision not to return the flights to the U.S.
He said he will then decide whether to seek testimony from witnesses.
The declarations should detail the officials’ roles in the decision, the judge said in the brief order.
Justice Department attorneys had urged him to abandon the probe,
but Boasberg said he must determine whether Homeland S…

Trump officials face contempt probe over migrant flights
A federal judge in Washington has relaunched his contempt probe of the Trump administration for failing to turn around two planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Friday ordered the administration to submit written statements by December 5 from all officials involved in the decision not to return the planes to the U.S. Boasberg wants to determine whether the Republican administration flouted his order to turn the flights around. The sta…

With Critical Decisions Ahead, Netanyahu Faces Mounting Pressure (David M. Halbfinger/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/world/middleeast/israel-benjamin-netanyahu-decisions.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AVA.ohbD.BkYw9szn3V7m&smid=url-share
http://www.memeorandum.com/251229/p31#a251229p31

U.S. halts all asylum decisions, pauses visas for Afghan nationals (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/11/28/asylum-decisions-pause-trump-immigration/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251129/p3#a251129p3

Kevin Hassett on ACA subsidy extension rumors: "Sometimes people leak pre-decisional things" (CBS News)
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/kevin-hassett-on-aca-subsidy-extension-rumors-sometimes-people-leak-pre-decisional-things/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251130/p42#a251130p42