Responses by Victor Ginsburg Müller, designer, Grafik+Program

Background: Shame Plane was a way to turn personal anxiety into work anxiety, so I and developer Dennis Mårtensson could frame it in processes and methodologies that were easier to cope with. It was never really intended for anyone but us. After a few days, we felt intrigued when we read a dire climate report because it added another puzzle piece to our calculator. I read the conversation between environmental activist Greta Thunberg and politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The Guardian a few days ago, and Ocasio-Cortez said something that I hadn’t been able to put into words: “Hope is not something that you have. Hope is something that you create with your actions.”

I’m not a great singer, poet or painter. Design and especially interactive design is my medium to explore, process feelings and make sense of the world. We haven’t made any efforts in driving traffic to Shame Plane; we just showed it to a few friends, but I guess a lot of people thought it was good enough to pass on. It’s less important to us that people are using it than it was to learn more and process how we felt about the results.

Design core: Design is all about making sense of something, trying to display information in a frame that users will be able to understand through all the pollution and noise. We didn’t care about any of that when we built Shame Plane, though; we just wanted it to make sense to us. The visual design of Shame Plane is the result of me trying to finalize a typeface, and I wanted to place it in challenging situations in order to improve it. When I’m not working with clients, I tend to use my own typefaces and work from a basic color palette. That keeps me focused on the function and gives me full control over every component.

Favorite details: I haven’t thought about that; I guess pride isn’t a feeling I associate with design. When I’m done with the typeface, I hope I’ll feel proud!

Challenges: Not caring about what others think and leaving out things that would typically be included in a commercial project. For a long time, I debated on adding social sharing buttons, but I hate social media and am a strong believer that it only makes people unhappy.

Technology: The site has no back end; it’s 100 percent HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Anything else? Thank you, Netlify, for a great service.