Whether it's a loading bar on the google play store, the metronome on a guitar tuner or the progress bar of an offline audio player downloaded from F-Droid... everyone seems to have adopted the squiggly line loading bar seemingly overnight, and I can't fathom why, as it can be really distracting at times to have multiple moving things on screen.

I can understand wanting to renew the look of an otherwise boring loading bar on the app store, but does a music player really need to have a progress bar with a wave animation? Is this a new trend or design choice in the tech world? It's driving me insane...

The European Central Bank is giving people the chance to vote on the design of future banknotes.

You can find more info and an overview of the designs on this page.

And you can vote directly on the survey here.

I'm quite touched that they picked birds for half of the designs. One design even has the migratory path, footprints and sonogram for each species, which I think is pretty cool. Not trying to sway anyone to vote for a particular design, just happy birds are getting some *more recognition :)

I’m having a problem finding landscape architects and designers who use watercolor in their plans. I’ve used several search engines and AIs. The problem seems to be twofold: the word watercolor in my search brings up results that use digital watercolor, and the word landscape brings up artists of landscapes. I’m looking for example work not just names of artists. I’m currently studying landscape design and am enjoying hand rendering plans. A friend gave me some watercolors to try after I complained about not really liking colored pencil or markers. My watercolor rendered plans look way better, but I don’t really know what I’m doing or what I’m striving for because I can’t find a lot of examples. Can anyone help me out? I thought I was good at search, but this has me rethinking that assumption :(

(Didn’t know what group to put this in)

I always loved magazines. Like, real paper magazines. Lately I realized that I can find digital versions or scans somewhat easily and it sparked a new obsession. I'm weird, I know. But there are so many beautifully designed magazines, such as the Japanese travel-related Transit or the men's lifestyle Brutus. Even their websites are beautiful and worth visiting. There's also this independent Brazilian retro gaming magazine called Jogo Véio that is almost like a love letter to the classic video game magazines.

I think I've been craving creativity lately, in a World of AI slop and "content" creators. So any magazines you like? What do you like about them?