andrew tam

Shape morph thinking state

Simple homepage shader orb

Trace tree animation

Casual-use personal software just feels so much more seamless to make, and serious solo projects have exponentially greater scope now.

Economic implications aside, agentic ("vibe") coding with Claude Code is simply just very fun.

Playlists are so good at succinctly capturing snapshots of life

Looking through your friends’ playlists on Spotify is such a beautiful experience. It’s like looking at diary entries that you can viscerally understand without having to read much at all.

Good design also helps support and differentiate a brand, which is crucial these days for standing out in a crowded software market.

There’s an old world belief that design doesn’t really matter for B2B SaaS (or just needs to be an afterthought), but I’d argue that it does serve clear business goals by improving psychological safety on the user level.

Something that gets a little overlooked is that good design, beyond just making things look and feel good, also helps establish a sense of trust, security, and quality.

Paraphrased from here: synthhistory.com/post/interview…

Similarly, one recipe for great art is to incorporate a little bit of the zeitgeist, a little bit of something timeless, and a little bit of something unique to your taste.

I will never forgive the tech world for absolutely butchering the usage of the word "taste"

Two approaches to making products, from a college lecture a few years ago:

@father_mihai Sort of, but no algorithmic feeds, much higher signal to noise ratio, and contains a system of channels and blocks that link between users. I find it to be a very natural discovery process, sort of like using YouTube in the early days.

@drewtam I checked it out for a bit, but was very confused. Is it kinda like Pinterest?

Are.na really is one of the best places on the Internet. My favorite type of escapism.

@chairs44 I actually was only using private channels but I just made some of them public: are.na/andrew-tam/cha…. One channel that I really liked recently was this one: are.na/valerie-matsue….

@drewtam That is actually cool. Do you have any others? Or link to your block on arena?

To add onto this, I am truly grateful for all of the artists, designers, and tastemakers out there who showed me things that I didn’t know I could love.

There are so many beautiful things in the world that 99% of people will never see or appreciate

@chairs44 I'm not sure what your particular tastes are, but one deep cut is this game from this artist I really admire: priztats.itch.io/aurora-memoria…. She makes some really incredible “y2k” inspired visual art and music as well (dv.dvihypermedia.net).

@drewtam Can you share one?

@BachtellDesign Sorry man, just had to provide my gratitude to the world for this one

@drewtam Shhh gotta gatekeep this bro.

@enbaoc Yes! Was in a big rut yesterday and going to are.na helped me both practice the act of noticing and appreciate the people who do it well

@drewtam i return to arena when im exhausted and it never lets me down