The friction is where the letters change

Kottke points to a piece on AI and type design that lands a line worth keeping: “A tool that shields us from the friction of the work is compelling, but if we don’t experience the friction, we will never change the work.” Letterforms are the example, but the argument is general. The shapes we read have been worked and reworked by human hands for a very long time, and the reworking happened precisely because making them was hard.

That’s the part the “removes all the friction” pitch tends to skip. Friction isn’t only a cost to be optimized away; in creative work it’s the surface where you notice what isn’t right and are forced to do something about it. Sand it all down and you get output faster, but you also stop discovering the next move — the tool ships you fluent copies of what already exists.

We think about this a lot in a studio that cares about type and craft. The useful question about any AI tool isn’t whether it makes the work easier, but whether it leaves you in contact with the part of the work that actually teaches you something. Some friction is waste. Some friction is the whole point. Telling them apart is the skill.