Here's a rather interesting video on how to control a crowd. It's longer than 20 minutes, but I highly recommend watching it.
There are generally two types of crowds: A "competitive" crowd and a "cooperative" crowd.
A competitive crowd is one where everyone is rushing for something, like a limited supply of 200 game consoles on release day or fighting to get good seats at a concert. These crowds usually have a higher risk of leading to a crowd crush.
A crowd crush happens because the people at the back want to push forward, but there's not much space for those at the front to move forward. As a result, the people near the front or center start getting crushed.
To make matters worse, once the crowd density reaches a high enough level, there's nothing anyone can do anymore. At some point, the crowd behaves more like fluid dynamics than anything else.
Fortunately, most crowds don't end up in a crowd crush, and this is because they're more "cooperative" than "competitive." Imagine that a fire broke out. You would think this would lead to chaos and panic, but in most cases, people behave cooperatively.
Yes, everyone is "competing" to survive, but it's not like it's limited to only 200 people, so there's more incentive to help others. Also, identity plays a crucial role in how well a crowd cooperates. The greater the shared identity, the greater the cooperation.
Consider a common anecdote—on a normal flight, people barely talk. They’ll sit shoulder to shoulder with their fellow traveler for four or five hours without even acknowledging their presence once.
But as soon as a flight gets delayed, that changes. People start talking, they start problem-solving, they get friendly, they’ll even share food.
If the flight gets canceled, this cooperation often extends further and those that were complete strangers just minutes before might decide to work together and share a rental car to drive to their destination instead.
Crowd psychologists have noticed the pervasiveness of this anecdote, and they think they have an explanation. It’s all about identity.
When ambling around the airport, there is little shared identity beyond traveler which is weak since it is shared by so many.
But when a flight gets delayed, the identity shifts and concentrates: now it’s distressed traveler—a unique identity shared only by the unlucky few.
What researchers have found is that, the greater the degree of shared identity, the greater the degree of cooperation among a crowd.
[...]
In the 2005 London underground bombings, researchers interviewing victims observed a through-line of perceived unity among the victims in the moment, and countless examples of selfless, cooperative behavior even at the risk of personal peril.
This is observed in almost any disaster—there is always a high degree of crowd cooperation, far beyond what might often be portrayed in fiction, that typically leads to rather orderly, crush-free evacuations.
[...]
But another curious anomaly in crowd crush statistics is that it is quite rare for them to occur during civil unrest—during the very activity that defines mob mentality.
[...]
In riots, though, there is little competitiveness—there’s not a particular something to be gained or lost, and therefore there is little incentive to push and shove. Not only that, but there is typically a strong shared identity—before tensions escalated, a group of people gathered together in support of a particular cause.
Therefore, riots feature two of the strongest predictors of lowered crowd crush potential, explaining how some of the least organized events manage to avoid the worst.
Today, I saw someone riding a bicycle and going rather wobbly while carrying a huge sack. It was on a small road in the countryside, and being in a car, we had to cut to the other lane to overtake him.
I didn't think much of it, but a while later, it reminded me of something I deeply regretted many years ago. For context, I was an employee, while the other guy was a contractor.
The guy was riding his bicycle, carrying a piece of heavy-looking equipment, a rather expensive tool. He stopped in front of me, and as he was stopping, he almost fell.
"Hey, be careful!" I said.
He managed to recover safely and didn't fall while holding tightly on the equipment. Looking relieved, he smiled and said it was okay.
I, on the other hand, followed up with the worst possible response: "You could've damaged the equipment."
The moment those words left my mouth, I regretted them instantly. Here was a guy who could've gotten hurt, and yet, I was more worried about the equipment than his well-being?
From his perspective, it reinforces the idea that he's expendable and that the staff at the company (i.e., me) care more about their money and material assets than the people they hire to do the work.
How horrible is that? Even I was shocked by what I've said! And before I could say anything, he already left.
So, I guess this will haunt me for the rest of my life, and I'll be reminded of this anytime I see someone carrying something big or heavy on their bicycle.
An amateurish illustration of someone riding a bicycle while carrying a huge sack.
When designing something, how do we pick the right colors? One way is to learn color theory and how to choose a color scheme. I don't recommend it simply because it can get pretty overwhelming.
Another option is to use a color palette generator like Coolors or Realtime Colors. Play around with a few color combinations and see what works, and you will likely end up with a few passable designs.
But if you want to get good at choosing colors, perhaps the best way is to learn by example. Try following a few artists or designers you admire and see how they choose their colors. Given enough time, you'll eventually develop an eye for color. After that, learn color theory to better describe the colors with words.
In real life, everything around you is a gradient. There's no such thing as an object with one flat and consistent color, and this is because no object is perfect and because of how light reflects differently.
So perhaps this is why things look so plain when we use a flat color for everything. You might be surprised by what we can improve with a little gradient and subtle shadow effects.
Plain design with flat colors.Plain design with simple gradients.Plain design with shadow effect.Plain design with simple gradients and shadow effect.
I think pretty much all of my posts are purely text-based. While that's not inherently a bad thing, it's just hard to talkaboutdesign without using any visuals or illustrations. It's probably a good opportunity to start using them, but the problem is, how do I do this whole "illustration" thing?
The first thing that comes to mind is to learn Figma or some visualization tool, and then I can practice using pictures to talk about things. Perhaps do it in the style of Wait But Why (I'm a big fan of that blog, by the way).
Perhaps I could also pivot and make comics instead? Something like a comic-style lesson learned or insight followed by some explanation text? That sounds pretty good, so I think I might try it later this week and see where it takes me.
It's pretty interesting to see how websites changed over the years. In the early '90s, websites generally look pretty basic, and if you're old enough, you would probably remember GeoCities and all their flashy icons and animated GIFs. These days, most websites look a lot more polished and cleaner.
Take radioshack for example. Below are some links to how their website looked like in the past, in 3-year increments. Try not to visit all the links at the same time, there is a small chance you might get blocked if you do, like how I was.
Good designs generally have good contrasts and emphasis between different elements. Contrast creates a visual hierarchy and lets us emphasize certain elements over others. The title is one example, and so are the highlights or quotes sprinkled over those long-form articles.
Good contrast between elements helps guide the reader through the content, whereas having good color contrast between the text and the background helps improve readability and make the design more aesthetically pleasing.
There are several ways of improving contrast, and the most obvious is by using bigger font sizes and thicker font weights. The less obvious is to reduce the contrast of the surrounding elements so the element we want to emphasize stands out more.
For example, use a lighter shade of gray for the caption so it doesn't draw the reader's attention as much. Icons, accent colors, and whitespace are also tools for improving contrast.
Perhaps the quickest way to make a good design is to iterate a lot. Design is way more of an art than a science, so keep at it until you develop your own sense of style and taste.
Anyone who has tried to design a good-looking page or website will understand how hard it is to choose a suitable font.
Most of the time, you don't even know what you're looking for! Try browsing through some of the fonts in Google Fonts and decide which fonts to choose. To make matters worse, it's not just how the font looks by default. You also have to consider how the font looks in italics or bold, and how it pairs with the rest of your website or page layout.
As a general rule, try to use thicker or bolder fonts for your title and headings. Headings should be large, have tighter letter spacing, and have a shorter line height compared to the body text. Aside from that, try to choose a popular font (it's popular for a reason, right?) and copy the fonts from your favorite websites.
It feels easy to intuitively sense whether a design is good or bad, it's way harder to deliberately design something that looks good. Typography is probably something I'll need to slowly develop an intuition for. Hopefully, I'll be able to make this site look prettier in due time.
Lately, I find myself drawn to good design and typography. There's just something about it that screams artistic eloquence and captivates me in so many ways. Perhaps you've experienced something similar before, a poster or a website so beautifully crafted, you can't help but admire it.
And yet, I can't seem to design anything pretty. All my designs were plain and mediocre, and while I'm proud of how this website currently looks, the layout and typography still feel rather amateurish.
I know I'm not a designer and don't currently have the skills, but I want to be able to design something like this. It should be an achievable target, right? The design is simple, yet elegant. Notice the font variations, the color scheme, the little flower icons, and how everything fits together so nicely.
Note: The next few posts will be about design and typography.
I realized at some point that I had lost the ability to write. It wasn't always like this. Just a few years ago, I was churning out post after post almost daily. These days, I'm hardly able to write much.
A part of me thinks this is because my mental well has run dry, that I'm all out of ideas, but we both know that's not true. Perhaps it's the burden of living up to this blog's name. An insight a day. What counts as an insight anyway? Is perfectionism so paralyzing that I can't even post something simple?
No more, I've decided. Starting tomorrow, you can expect a new post a day (or every other day). Just lower your expectations while I work on getting back my writing groove.
