Mark Johnson

Product Designer at @ Clay 🎛 🔠 Noodling on writing 📝 Always looking for tater tots and chicken fingers. 🐔 🎨

[Justin Rands @jayrizpop]

our OOH campaign has been ROCKIN, from London to Austin to SF, we are buildinggggg

[Paul Jun @PaulJun_]

4700 word labor of love. I've seen all the patterns and heard every story about in-house brand/creative studio teams.

This is my vision for where brand teams can go (and why I joined @tryramp).

Brand systems that behave like jazz. Brand as software. https://t.co/T3s8uE1Lzq

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

8/8
Where our reach runs out.

We can place 14 foundries on the entire African continent, holding 28 typefaces between them.

Every foundry and designer we add makes this map more accurate than it was, and more representative of the field it claims to describe.

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

Where are typefaces being designed?

Explore the full study and its underlying visuals:
https://t.co/c9So29m2N5

1/8
Foundry count and output do not rank the same way. The bigger problem is the foundries we cannot place at all.

Where are foundries are located anywho?

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

7/8
Where designers studied against where they work now.

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

Taking a quick dive into classifications of type.
https://t.co/VXvwy67Ld1

[Paul Jun @PaulJun_]

NEW WORK 🚀

We recently shipped https://t.co/InkWw0KTLH. This is one of many launches that will build upon @tryramp's vision.

And if you really looked, you may have spotted some new brand elements.

Today, we’re sharing the first look at our evolved brand. We’re calling it Solar System because of our primary Ramp brand color.

The idea was simple: build a brand system that behaves like jazz. Why? Because the world is changing too fast. The speed at which we’re shipping at Ramp will only increase and the world will only get more unpredictable.

As we build this world, we realized we needed a new system — new ingredients, musical notes, and tools — that behaved more like software and nothing like the old way of brand building.

Most brands optimize for consistency: “We always look like this.”

We’re building for coherence: “We evolve, and you still know it’s us.”

Brand as software is the operating principle in this new AI era. A system that can move at the speed of culture, learn while we grow, without losing focus of our core purpose: saving companies time and money.

We built this first version in four weeks. We'll keep improving it out in the open.

I’m insanely proud of the heart and care this team put into the work. Personally this is the fastest I've ever evolved a brand, and it was only possible because of this group.

Massive shoutout to @diegozaks , @markweaver , Aodan Reddy, Nicholas Ano, Cristina Keane, Emerline Ji, @FonsMans , Roan Collom, @messybirkin , @jdreeves , Jack Beveridge, Silas Reeves, Kyla Arsadjaja, @ItsJonHowell , @bradleyziffer , Azeem Segraves, Claire Chen, Eleanor Ngai, @viktor, David Fetherston, John Mock, and Alex Chimienti.

Job's not finished.

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

Reassuring.

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

I started working on some studies for Typelol https://t.co/KuvtYONCqO.

I've been working on others studies like, Where is type getting made? What's the genealogy of type, and more!

Curious if this kind of information is fun to dive into or not.

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

@ItsJonHowell @lalizlabeth @tryramp @spc @ItsJonHowell dude. lol How!? You see who is next to me???

[Paul Jun @PaulJun_]

Every company I've worked at, product graphics were always a bottleneck.

They're important assets because they help sell the value of the product. But what happens when the product is constantly evolving?

I built a tool (inspired by what George Bugg started) where I turned all of out atoms/components into HTML so that anyone internally can create their own product graphics. Because we have amazing guidelines (shoutout Shivani and team) I was able to give it specific constraints, rules, and guidelines.

So much more potential for this tool, e.g, product animation or creating demos. I even got a Slack bot to generate graphics without me even touching the tool.

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

@PaulJun_ LGK!

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

Thanks for the love @kail_designs!

[Kailash @kail_designs]

Typography lovers will love this.

→ https://t.co/8IlNV1TA5u

Think Spotify, but for typography.

Discover typefaces from foundries around the world.

Also explore:

• a node-based graph of designers & foundries
• a globe of top foundries and typography activity

A beautiful way to explore type.

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

Incredible to see this come to life from little noodles to a full fledged application! A fun way to browse art and get inspiration. Paul is smart and you should check this out.

[Paul Jun @PaulJun_]

Okay, time to finally ship this thing.

The Tenth Muse (10M): an art discovery platform. Over 120,000 artworks from 17 museums and institutions spanning 5,000 years — searchable by feeling, mood, era, color, and medium.

95% are in the public domain. Every piece links back to the source, and for the works that are public domain, you can download the highest resolution image available.

https://t.co/2PatnVcK4e

More of why and how I built this below...

[Mark Johnson @markjohnsoncc]

If the typelol update wasn't enough, 📻 FontTV™ https://t.co/KcLo9zm5tc might help push it over the line.

Lean back and watch 500+ type foundry websites auto-play on a retro TV. Flip channels, tune into local (to the foundry) radio, and discover your next favorite typeface.