Top all-time · #7696
Sam Solomon
Personal blog · solomon.io · on HN as samsolomondesignai
Sam Solomon's personal blog at solomon.io covers design and ai. Since 2014, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 51 times, most often “A Brief History of Clip Art”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this brief history of clip art, which one commenter found a good overview of how old designs keep returning, though they wanted more technical depth.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Designer and entrepreneur in Atlanta. Notes on building with AI agents, plus essays, photography and side projects from a decade and a half of making things.
Most-linked posts?
- A Brief History of Clip Art4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-11-13
- Designer News is dead2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-02-02
- Zen Hacker News2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-06
What Hacker News says?
I think there's something to be said just for reaching out to people. About 10 years ago I got one of my first gigs out of college by emailing someone I found here on HN. I just said "Hey, I'm interested in what you all are doing. Here's how I might be able to help. I'd love to chat." It was a contract position and only lasted a few months, but I probably would not be where I am without that experience. A couple yea…
Comment linking /portfolio-category/interviews/
on “Ask HN: How do you start a new career with minimal qualifications?”Submitted Designer News is dead as a story · 160 points
HN discussionEverything old is new again, and again, and again, and again... then, 40 years later (roughly 2 human generations) again and again... Just for fun I looked up the history of clip-art : https://solomon.io/brief-history-of-clip-art/ It's not quite as technical as I'd like, but a good overview :)
Comment linking /brief-history-of-clip-art/
on “Open Source Illustrations Kit”Submitted Why I'm Done With Social Media Buttons as a story · 159 points
HN discussionThere really is a ton of stuff you can do with Facebook ads. I got one of my first jobs out of college by running ads targeted to the types of companies I wanted to work for. https://solomon.io/how-to-get-a-job-interview-tomorrow-using...
Comment linking /how-to-get-a-job-interview-tomorrow-using-facebook-ads/
on “Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads”Submitted Websites are for Humans as a story · 18 points
HN discussionThat's pretty cool! A couple years ago I designed a similar 3x5 typeface for Salesloft's icon set. It was designed with a similar style—outer/inner radius, square terminals—as the icons. Personally, the centered descender on the Q is more clear with tiny typefaces. https://solomon.io/salesloft-icon-fundamentals/#alphanum
Comment linking /salesloft-icon-fundamentals/
on “Smallest Typeface”Submitted A Brief History of Clip Art as a story · 7 points
HN discussionWhen I moved into my role at an ad agency we went through a series of software to keep track of to-do lists. Things, Wunderlist and what seems like a dozen others. The problem for me was always that it is so much easier just to write something down on a piece of paper or in a simple text file—software isn't the best solution to every problem. EDIT: I have a very simple system for my tasks: - One sheet of paper each…
Comment linking /todo-list-framework/
on “The Search for the Perfect To-do List”Submitted Designer News Is Dead as a story · 4 points
HN discussion"It is critical for a designer to go all the way through the process. Even if they aren’t actually the ones shipping production code—that knowledge about how things work tightens the relationship between them and those they work with. Designers knowing how to code and talk to users cuts down on wasted communication. It creates a tighter connection with other teammates and ensures that design is part of the process f…
Comment linking /portfolio/cap-watkins/
on “Ask HN: How to get developers and UI designers to work well together”Submitted Better Markdown in VS Code as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis post misses that the primary benefit of an NPS program is not the metric—that's a nice byproduct—it's the dialogue with customers. As a single metric Net Promoter Score is OK. It's extremely easy for customers to answer. So there's volume in the number of answers. You can learn more by segmenting different ways—Users vs Admins, Enterprise vs SMB, Verticals, etc.. The company I currently work for puts a lot into…
Comment linking /understanding-net-promoter-score/
on “NPS doesn’t say anything particularly useful”Submitted The Experience Deficiency as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI think the issue is that's just the accepted path. Get good grades in high school, so you can get into a good college. Get good grades in college to get a good job. At 18 most people don't have a clue what they are supposed to be doing. College is an easy choice—especially the stigma around those that don't go to college. There's also that ridiculous fact about how much college-educated people earn over their lifet…
Comment linking /experience-deficiency/
on “Hard-Core Career Advice For A 13-Year-Old”Submitted Zen HN as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf anyone's interested in the process for doing something like this, I wrote about generating children's books at the end of last year. The most interesting part was using ChatGPT to target and tweak certain parts of the story and merge them back in. When trying to make edits to a very small part of the story it understood what I wanted extremely well. The most frustrating part was trying to get a consistent charact…
Comment linking /childrens-story-written-illustrated-ai/
on “Show HN: I “wrote” a kids book with ChatGPT and Midjourney”Submitted Zen Hacker News as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://solomon.io I’m a product designer who’s been blogging since around 2009. For several years I managed an online publication, Signal Tower. Then left it to become the host of the Designer News podcast. Some posts y’all might find interesting: A Children’s Book Written and Illustrated by AI https://solomon.io/childrens-story-written-illustrated-ai/ Improving Accessibility with Design Tokens https://solomon.io/i…
Comment linking /code-school-10-years-later/
on “Ask HN: Share Your Personal Site”Submitted Generative AI for Industrial Design as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://solomon.io/ I'm a product designer/UI engineer who's been publishing since 2009. I've probably got 200-something posts. — Some recent favorites: * https://solomon.io/improving-accessibility-with-design-token... * https://solomon.io/childrens-story-written-illustrated-ai/ * https://solomon.io/code-school-10-years-later/ — I've also been publishing my Year in Review for almost a decade: https://solomon.io/tag/…
Comment linking /interviews/
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted A Brief History of Clip Art as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAfter seeing how quickly Midjourney and Stable Diffusion improved, I figured it wasn't long before we'd see AI interface work. Can this create a similar set of screens based on a single previous prompt? Back in December I experimented illustrating a children's book with Midjourney. The most difficult part was getting a consistent character. Eventually I gave up and had images where his face was obscured, or not show…
Comment linking /childrens-story-written-illustrated-ai/
on “Galileo AI – Copilot for interface design”Submitted How Dashboards Become Product Feature Landfills as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Product Design in 2026 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Agents Are About to Change Software as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What We Can't Control (2016) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted 2023 Year in Review as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Emoji Prompts in Midjourney as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tim’s First Day of School: Written and Illustrated by AI as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
