About
Hello, I'm Jess Ruefli.
I'm a digital product designer living in San Francisco with over two decades of experience helping companies create useful digital products and technologies. I'm fortunate to have designed for Autodesk, Apigee, Microsoft, Nike, Viacom, Macromedia, Behr Paints, BEA Systems, and General Motors.
I created this site because I wanted a space where I could work through thoughts on the future of CAD and designing -- a space I've been working in for the last decade.
I think there's a great deal that we can learn from the history of computers and how the things we not take for granted came to be. It's my hope that you'll find these stories as inspiring as I do.
I'd also like to work through some thoughts around designing. So much of the discourse around what it means to design and what "good" process is doesn't fit with my experience of being a designer. I'd like to pull on some threads to see what comes out.
About This Site
Content Management
This blog is built using Astro, a static website generator. Static website generators essentially build out a set of static HTML pages which you can then host on a web server. This keeps the site simple, pages load faster, and there's less to maintain in the long run.
Authoring
The writing and illustrations are my own. Any AI generated images will always be labeled.
I use Astro Editor for composing the content, which offers a streamlined writing experience. The text is written in Markdown. The custom Astro components I've made for inserting richer content can be invoked with simple markup.
Construction
I used this project as a way to learn about AI assisted coding tools. I used Anthropic's Claude for generating a quick proof of concept to ensure that Astro would support the kinds of customizations I had in mind. I designed the site in Figma. Detailed build out was done with the help of Cursor. Learn more about how this site was made.
Typography
I'm fascinated by computer history and typewriters and wanted a type treatment that reflected this. Headers and image captions are set in IBM Plex Mono. Body text is set in IBM Plex Serif.
Illustrations
The site's illustrations are created with Adobe Illustrator and drawn on a Wacom Cintiq pen display. Lines are drawn with a round brush tool, fills are created with the blob brush tool. Think coloring book.
Sources of Inspiration
Maggie Appleton
I'm inspired by the way that Maggie Appleton manages to combine beautiful illustrations with thoughtful essays. I like how her website is a tool for developing ideas and can support different kinds of content, from essays, to notes, talks, book reviews, podcasts, etc.. Her colophon page helped me find Astro and her site gave me the confidence that Astro would be able to support the different kinds of content I was hoping to feature on this site.
Craig Mod
I'm inspired by how Craig Mod has built a life through the website, newsletters, and books he's created through his ability to code. Mod made me realize that I wanted to have the same control over my site. I'm also inspired by his storytelling skills, which are so formidable that I question whether I'll ever be good enough.
Fabian Sanglard
I became aware of Fabian Sanglard through his work on understanding how ID Software's Doom is structured. I love Sanglard's deep dives on technical topics he cares about and he often covers complex topics over a series of posts. He seems unafraid to follow his curiosity and share what he learns along the way. Sanglard's site feels like the original web, which I miss.
“The Memex Method” by Cory Doctorow
The original inspiration for this site came from prolific author and activist Cory Doctorow's essay on how he uses his blog as a kind of public notebook that allows him to form connections over time. These connections eventually become source material for his book writing, and put him in touch with a wider community of like-minded people. I'm hoping that this site will perform the same function.