
Plas Johnson and the Case for the Invisible Craftsman
You've heard his saxophone on the Pink Panther Theme a thousand times without knowing his name. What a legendary session player teaches anyone who builds under someone else's brand.
Read More →Notes on design, building, and the business of the web.

You've heard his saxophone on the Pink Panther Theme a thousand times without knowing his name. What a legendary session player teaches anyone who builds under someone else's brand.
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There's no recording of Buddy Bolden, yet he built the rhythmic move that turned marching-band music into jazz. A look at the Big 4 and what it teaches about building things that outlive your name.
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Miles Davis rebuilt the oldest form in American music by taking things away. A web builder's look at why subtraction beat complexity in 1959 jazz — and still does.
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How a Vanderbilt heir who could have done nothing instead discovered Billie Holiday, Count Basie, and Charlie Christian — and what his taste-with-courage teaches anyone deciding what to back.
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A twelve-second trumpet intro from 1928 still gets studied a century later. Here's what one recording taught a web developer about mastery, contrast, and doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
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Miles Davis walked into the studio in 1959 with almost no written music and made the best-selling jazz album ever. Here's why constraint and trust outlast polish.
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