 This post dives deep into Alma - A side project which I built in 2022. It was nominated to Side project of the year at React Summit in Amsterdam 2023. My history with node-based user interfaces goes back to 2017. During my time as a Designer at EA DICE working on the Battlefield-franchise, I did some work within the [Frostbite](https://fr 

The architecture behind Alma – An experimental playground for generative graphics

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/alma-an-experimental-playground-for-generative-graphics

 ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a common character encoding format, but has also found its way into graphic design through a technique commonly known as &quot;ASCII Art&quot;. It&#x27;s essentially a way to use letters, numbers &amp; symbols to draw images. In this article, I will explain how to implement a simple ASCII renderer in WebGL. You will be able 

The secrets behind rendering anything as ASCII

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/the-secrets-behind-rendering-anything-as-ascii

In April 2014, I received an email. Cool things in your portfolioHey Emil, I've had a look at your portfolio, and I like what I'm seeing! I'm working at an EA Studio on titles like Battlefield, Star Wars & Mirror's Edge. Would you be interested in dropping by & grab a coffee? I had just finished high school in Sweden the year before, and was doi

Why a Design Engineer career is an investment for your future

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/becoming-a-design-engineer-is-a-career-investment

We developers & software engineers are all content creators. We often write code for other people through open source projects. But no platform which integrates your GitHub-endeavours with community engagement exists. Until now. We&#x27;ve been hard at work since October to pave the way for a new direction – shaping Polar to become a the go-to creator platform for developers. We&#x27;

Introducing a new kind of creator platform for developers

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/introducing-a-new-kind-of-creator-platform-for-developers

It's time for a new era in creative tooling. A paradigm which is shaped around exploration, prototyping & creative freedom. That's why I'm happy to reveal a new creative environment, built entirely open source – Bitspace. A platform which offers a wide canvas & building blocks for your creative endevours. Build experiments & idea

Introducing Bitspace – A new kind of playground for creative ideas

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/introducing-bitspace-a-playground-for-your-creative-ideas

This article was written as a "behind the scenes" of my very appreciated launch of "Harmony - A new kind of color picker". Feel free to check it out. Have you ever thought about color combinations – the way certain colors complement each other beautifully while others don&#x27;t? That&#x27;s something I&#x27;d like to deep dive into in todays post - by bu

A new kind of color picker - built with React & TypeScript

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/a-new-kind-of-color-picker-with-react-typescript

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/subscriptions

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/building-a-bezier-curve-editor-from-scratch

Polar gives open source maintainers a better and funded backlog based on what drives the most impact within their community. 

Polar – Pledge for progress

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/bitspace-reactive-graphs-with-rxjs

We launched donations over the weekend a bit in silence. It's also off by default - you need to enable it. Despite this, a few developers quickly caught on and have already received hundreds of dollars in donations within 48 hours 😍 Let's see what happens now that the feature is announced properly. We also can't wait to tell you about a few things it will empower in the near future.

Start accepting donations today ♥️

https://polar.sh/polarsource/posts/start-accepting-donations-today

In 2023, https://alma.sh was nominated to “Side Project of the Year” at React Summit in Amsterdam.

Here’s a deep dive into WebGL, Shader ASTs, MobX observables & Node UIs.  

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/alma-an-experimental-playground-for-generative-graphics

✨ Let's dive into the world of ASCII!

I've written a guide on a technique to render anything in ASCII. Feel free to check it out ❤️

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/the-secrets-behind-rendering-anything-as-ascii

Figma Plugin Developers! ✨

Want to offer paid features in your plugin? Sell License Keys & Validate them in your Figma plugin.

Polar for Figma Plugins: https://docs.polar.sh/guides/figma

Are you curious on the Design Engineer role? 

Let me tell my story, on how I made my way from a junior designer to a UX Engineer at Electronic Arts & how you can too.

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/becoming-a-design-engineer-is-a-career-investment

Today, we’re introducing Discounts for products on Polar 💫

https://polar.sh

Super excited to announce Polar as a new kind of creator platform for developers! We’ve been working on this huge update since I joined the team in October last year.

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/introducing-a-new-kind-of-creator-platform-for-developers

✨ Introducing Bitspace – A new kind of playground for creative ideas.

It's time for a new era in creative tooling. A paradigm which is shaped around exploration & prototyping.

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/introducing-bitspace-a-playground-for-your-creative-ideas

Want to know how I built Harmony & the magic behind triad, tetradic, square, analogous & complementary color harmonies? 

Here's a complete guide to the implementation.

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/a-new-kind-of-color-picker-with-react-typescript

https://harmony.sh

Designers apparently don’t want to code. Fine. 

Then I’ll just build a composable & programmable design environment for you then.

✨ The Bitspace Alpha will include 3D support!

Compose complex graphs & connect it with any kind of 3D primitive.

Support the project by subscribing to the Supporter-tier on https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/subscriptions – then you're first in line when the Alpha drops.

✨ Let's build a Cubic Bézier Curve Editor with React & Typescript!

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/building-a-bezier-curve-editor-from-scratch

It's a wrap!

A 9 year long journey which started in design and ended in engineering has come to an end. Thanks for the memories. 

Farewell EA! 👋

some kind of design machinery

join the waitlist
https://bitspace.sh

Happy to share that I’m moving over to freelancing since my departure from EA last week. 

Will kickstart my journey with helping the team over at Polar to fix open source funding. 

https://polar.sh

A technical deep dive into the world of ASCII will drop this weekend. 

You don’t want to miss it! Subscribe to my newsletter over at polar.sh/emilwidlund to receive it directly in your inbox ✨

It's been so much fun designing out these big new experiences at Polar these last few months.

Happy it's finally out the door!

What makes this possible?

Learn more about how I built the reactivity model in Bitspace. I'm also covering how LLM nodes actually works under the hood.

https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/bitspace-reactive-graphs-with-rxjs

We're really happy to announce Donations on polar.sh! ✨

A simple way to say thanks to your favourite creators & Open Source projects.

https://polar.sh/polarsource/posts/start-accepting-donations-today

✨ Added a simple timer node which emits sequential numbers at a given rate.

Perfect way to drive all kinds of computation - like complementary colors!

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