Essays, case studies, and notes from Inky Design Works.

You've been there. Client sends over a gorgeous illustrated map as a JPEG. You need it as a clean, scalable SVG — for a print brochure, a web interface, a

I spent three hours last week cleaning up an SVG that an AI generated in four seconds.The logo looked fine at 100% zoom. The curves seemed smooth. The colors were

You open a design, apply the halftone filter, and the result looks — like a halftone filter. Dots in a gradient. Retro feel. Done.Except: the dots are fighting the type.

The worst thing that happens with Hyper-Bloom isn't that it looks bad. It's that it looks almost right — the florals are big enough, the blur is soft enough, the

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: the most valuable design skill in 2026 is learning to draw a crooked line.Not because AI can't draw straight ones — it

If your font folder looks like final-fonts-v3-really-final, you are already at the point where a font manager pays for itself. The best font manager helps you preview type faster, activate

If you've scrolled through Instagram, browsed a beauty brand's latest packaging, or walked past a hotel lobby in the last eighteen months, you've felt it before you could name it.

Hiring a graphic designer in 2026 isn't the same as it was five years ago. The tools have changed. The expectations have shifted. And yet, the same fundamental mistakes keep