America by Design Fail

Well that's a hostile web design with its poor choice of fonts

For people outside DC:

18F [1] was the government’s design group, and did incredible work to improve the level of visual, UX, and UI design as well as usability across federal government websites. They created standards, led trainings and workshops, and were a go-to resource for people in and outside of the government.

You may have heard about the US Digital Service, but 18F were equally rockstar-level in the local community. Highly dedicated civil servants who were very good at what they did and very good at communicating it to others.

In May, DOGE unceremoniously gutted the department and shut it down.

Thankfully, they’ve archived their guides on an external site [2]. I didn’t even work for the federal government but I used to use these all the time when I was a product manager.

If you happen to see a resume come across your desk from someone who worked at 18F, jump on that. You’re lucky.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/18F

[2] https://guides.18f.org/

It's a caricature of https://americabydesign.gov/, which makes similar choices.

Except not a caricature, because the gov website is even worse.

Looks very "rage-vibe" coded. I like the "©2025 The American People" at bottom right.

its TDS, I had a spell of it in 2016. I believe at least some are trying to get it into that catalog of mental health disorders. The actual feeling I can recall is very similar to when I was really down on my luck, no car, and I had my bike stolen. I can understand and am empathetic to fellow sufferers, being a victim of folks who mean you harm for whatever reason is never fun, but at least with TDS you are surrounded by millions of other victims so you have folks to commiserate with.