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Rune Madsen

@runemadsen.com
663 followers 375 following 36 posts

I explore code as a design material. Co-founder of @designsystems.international. Author of programmingdesignsystems.com. Former New York Times, O’Reilly Media and ITP NYU.

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Reposted by Rune Madsen
K.B. Spangler @kbspangler.com · 22/07/2025
“A source that cannot be verified or remain consistent is useless.” Shout this sentence from on high.
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METR @metr.org · 10/07/2025
We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers. The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.
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Nate Butler @nate.rip · 09/07/2025
If you design digital products, I beg you to read these paragraphs 🙏 From @designsystems.international's [Product Design is Lost] designsystems.international/ideas/produc...
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Communication Arts @commarts.com · 09/07/2025
‪@runemadsen.com‬ on the subtle ways design tools shape how we think and what we make. ow.ly/ntWU50Wn2C0
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Mike Brondbjerg @mikebrondbjerg.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
A good article from @runemadsen.com reminding us that our tools shape our creativity. "the growing monoculture in digital design where everything starts to look and feel the same, not because of shared intent, but because of shared constraints"
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Ash Guillaume @ashygee.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
"The goal isn’t for designers to adopt engineering practices, but to bring distinct perspectives through an interdisciplinary way of collaborating." I really appreciated this little piece from @runemadsen.com. designsystems.international/ideas/when-f... (1/6)
designsystems.international
When Figma Starts Designing Us / Design Systems International
The subtle ways in which design tools shape how we think and what we make
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Nate Butler @nate.rip · 04/07/2025
This is a much more eloquent way of what I've been screaming to anyone that will listen. Figma is siloing so many designers in to a specific way of designing, in a field who's lifeblood is exploration, creativity & expression. Our industry is so ripe for fresh, new (or a return to old!) tools.
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 04/07/2025
We've used Figma almost daily since the early days of @designsystems.international, and it's a core part of our creative process. Still, I've noticed that it's starting to change how designers work. I tried to unpack that idea in the piece below. designsystems.international/ideas/when-f...
designsystems.international
When Figma Starts Designing Us / Design Systems International
The subtle ways in which design tools shape how we think and what we make
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Things are disastrous, but we’re hoping that learning together, celebrating public knowledge + the gloriously noncompliant, can be ✨✊❤️‍🩹🌱. We’re hosting our first zoom info session this Friday at noon ET; sign-up @ the bottom of the page:
metro.org
Join Us For Misfits: A Fall Course From The Cross-Reference Coalition
We’re thrilled to share the Call for Applications for a fall course from the Cross-Reference Coalition: a new, interdisciplinary community learning project from the Metropolitan New York Library Counc...
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Andreas Refsgaard @andreasref.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Besøgte @marcelfard.bsky.social og @moltke.bsky.social i DRs radioprogram Prompt til en snak om AI og billeder. Lyt med her: www.dr.dk/lyd/special-...
dr.dk
Prompt | OpenAIs deepfake-maskine, digitale udrensning og tech-oligarkernes ønskesky | DR LYD
OpenAIs nye billedgenerator vender op og ned på nettet - den forstår både tekst og billeder, og kan manipulere dine egne fotos med forbløffende realisme. Det virker, som om det meste censur er skåret ...
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Matt Webb 🌸🌼🌸 @genmon.fyi · 03/04/2025
asked a bot whether it would prefer to fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses WELL
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
"The team spent countless hours scouring Google Maps, combing through the 40,000 islands one by one to find the studio’s geographical alphabet. Their efforts have resulted in a sculpted wordmark." This feels very Nina Katchadourian.
itsnicethat.com
Bond’s wordmark for the world’s largest archipelago takes its shape from island formations
The Helsinki-based studio’s destination identity for Saaristo pays homage to Finland’s wild landscape.
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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 10/03/2025
Since the start of COVID, the number of people reporting a disability soared. Yet the majority of the world acts like COVID is over, and Long COVID doesn't exist.
Chart: U.S. adults reporting a disability

The number of people reporting a disability soared. Many Americans struggled with long Covid and reported cognitive issues like “brain fog.”

Source: Census Here, adults refer to people older than 16.
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 01/03/2025
18F did some of the best digital work in government. This is so sad.
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
Those currently in power are “among the very worst human beings this 🌏 has ever produced—the most uncaring, the least intellectually curious, the most disconnected from their own humanity, the most gleefully malicious + deliberately destructive, with an all-consuming greed @ the ctr of their being”
the-reframe.com
The Worst and the Dimmest
It's not a coincidence that we're being led by the least qualified monsters available; it's a deliberate strategy. Facing the Worst - a series about directional alignment.
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 12/02/2025
I couldn't make up a better story to describe Microsoft than the fact that Azure Key Vaults (that is meant to store environment variables) does not support the use of underscore in variable names.
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 29/01/2025
I'm so sorry I can't stop laughing. OpenAI, the company built on stealing literally the entire internet, is crying because DeepSeek may have trained on the outputs from ChatGPT. They're crying their eyes out. What a bunch of hypocritical little babies. Cry more, freaks. www.ft.com/content/a0df...
OpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitor
White House AI tsar David Sacks raises possibility of alleged intellectual property theftOpenAI says it has found evidence that Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek used the US company’s proprietary models to train its own open-source competitor, as concerns grow over a potential breach of intellectual property.
The San-Francisco-based ChatGPT maker told the Financial Times it had seen some evidence of ‘distillation’, a technique used by developers to obtain better performance on smaller models by using outputs from larger, more capable models. This allows them to achieve similar results on specific tasks at a much lower cost.
OpenAI declined to comment further on details of its evidence. Its terms of service state users cannot “copy” any of its services or “use output to develop models that compete with OpenAI”.
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Alvin Chang @alv9n.com · 14/01/2025
The visuals in this piece are excellent. I'm sure the authors are hearing from all the dudes who think they're economically conservative and socially liberal. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
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Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Washington Post's traffic has gone from 22.5 million daily active users in 2021 to about 3 million in 2024, per Semafor. damn lol
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 30/12/2024
I am writing an essay on why rigid planning is bad for designers, and I stumbled on this excellent book. It’s interesting to see how an initial observation from computer science became a much more significant idea related to the humanities too.
A photo of the book “Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned - The Myth of the Objective” by Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman.
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 28/12/2024
Excited to dive into this during the holidays
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
Don't think there is a better illustration of AI-in-everything-whether-we-want-it-or-not than an AI bro buying an AI toy for his child who played with it for a bit and then seemed singularly unimpressed with the AI and turned it off. He keeps turning it back on, and she keeps turning it off.
Alex Volko @altryne
On the topic of our kids having AI friends (long)
I got my 6 yo daughter an AI toy for her b-day that arrived for Xmas instead. She unpacked it all excited, I explained that this isnt like the other toys, that this one has AI in it (she of course knows what AI is, seen the things Ive built and interacted with them, chatted with ChatGPT and Santa mode, knows that daddy is "doing AI" etc). So a very interesting experiment happaned after @magicaltoys reached out and fixed the issue referenced below (very quick turnaround thank you) So...she played with this Dino, chatted with it, and the..learned to turn it off, and doesnt want it to talk anymore. She still loves playing with it, dressed it up, it now has paper shoes and a top that we made together, but every time I ask her if shed like to chat with it, she says no.
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 16/12/2024
“The entire academic enterprise, as it’s currently constructed, depends upon reifying power differentials between ranks and classes, keeping people hungry to advance, […] manufacturing all kinds of tests and rituals and administrative labor to deem people worthy of advancement.”
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Places Journal @placesjournal.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
“A City Is Not a Computer” by @shannonmattern.bsky.social Small enough to fit in our pocket. Filled with big ideas about “smart cities,” the fragility of urban networks, and the algorithms, cameras & “other urban intelligences” that pervade city life: placesjournal.org/book/a-city-is-not-a-computer
Cover of “A City Is Not a Computer”
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 15/12/2024
We're investigating health insurance denials. If you want to share your insights, here's how:
propub.li
Do You Have Insights Into Dental and Health Insurance Denials? Help Us Report on the System.
Insurers deny tens of millions of claims every year. ProPublica is investigating why claims are denied, what the consequences are for patients and how the appeal process really works.
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Stewart @stewartsmith.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
I’ve been making incremental updates to my personal website: stewartsmith.io (And more to come.)
stewartsmith.io
Stewart Smith
Stewart creates virtual reality, quantum circuit simulations, and more in Brooklyn, New York.
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Andreas Refsgaard @andreasref.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Photo Booth of the Past shown last week at Kolding Light Festival. During three days 800 people tried the installation! Built using flux-pulid via @replicate.com #aiart #flux #interactive #dataart
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 09/12/2024
I am giving a talk titled "Placing Design at the Heart of Digital Business" on January 16th in Copenhagen. The spots are very limited, so sharing this link early for anyone who's in town and interested in coming. www.meetup.com/uxdx-copenha...
meetup.com
Shaping Up The Future, Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:00 PM | Meetup
An in-person series focused on helping product & engineering teams in Copenhagen bridge the gap between UX, Product, Design, and Dev, and to build better products faster, t
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Design Systems International @designsystems.international · 06/12/2024
Our design engineer Lucas Dino Nolte has embraced a practice of “letting code loose” through small, time-boxed experiments. He wrote more about the experience in a new article that we just published on our website. designsystems.international/ideas/time-t...
designsystems.international
It’s Time to Let Your Code Loose / Design Systems International
How embracing a beginner’s mindset can help to foster creativity and innovation
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 26/11/2024
I inherited this mechanic calculator from my grandfather. Even though it only does addition, I’m quite surprised by how useful it is even today.
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 25/11/2024
Early prototyping for a website that uses tiny SVG images with object outlines and image descriptions as a more accessible image placeholder. Generated automatically with Meta's SAML2.
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Antigoon @antigoon.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
New plotter-oriented SVG export library for @p5xjs by @golan.bsky.social! p5.plotSvg makes it easier than ever to generate vector files specifically tailored for pen-plotters like those from Bantam Tools. github.com/golanlevin/p... #creativeCoding #generativeArt #plotter #plotterArt
github.com
GitHub - golanlevin/p5.plotSvg: A p5.js library for exporting SVG files tailored for pen plotting.
A p5.js library for exporting SVG files tailored for pen plotting. - GitHub - golanlevin/p5.plotSvg: A p5.js library for exporting SVG files tailored for pen plotting.
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Winston from Oakland @winslowbay.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Just trying to make Bluesky more beautiful by sharing this
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 19/11/2024
15 years ago, I wrote my first Processing sketch in a Data Visualization class taught by @stewartsmith.bsky.social at ITP, NYU. I just cloned down the repo and ran it, and it works right out of the box in Processing 4!
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patricio gonzalez vivo @patricio.io · 18/11/2024
New here? made a starter pack of artists and tool-makers that uses code as an expressive medium go.bsky.app/CBAUvVU
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 18/11/2024
Some thoughts on the role of early functional prototypes as a vehicle for figuring out what the hell you’re building. designsystems.international/ideas/the-ca...
designsystems.international
The Case for Early Prototyping / Design Systems International
The business insights that come from code-based prototypes can make a world of difference
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 18/11/2024
We just created a Bluesky account for @designsystems.international! It doesn't have much yet, but it'll be a good place to stay up to date with our work.
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Rune Madsen @runemadsen.com · 17/11/2024
On the left is a Danish design icon: Arne Jacobsen’s coffee pot from 1967. On the right is Marianne Brandt’s coffee pot designed 43 years earlier right before she became head of the Bauhaus metal workshop. Everything is a remix.
A metal coffee pot by Arne JacobsenA metal coffee pot by Marianne Brandt
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Morten Skjoldborg Madsen @totallymorten.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
In a speech from 1994 @rbreich.bsky.social predicts the rise of Trump: "We are on our way to becoming a two-tiered society, composed of a few winners and a larger group left behind, whose anger and disillusionment is easily manipulated" www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnd0... #uspolitics
youtube.com
A Warning from 1994 of a Two-Tiered Society | Robert Reich
YouTube video by Robert Reich
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