Best of 2014

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2014. 105 posts.

Design & UX
91

Bezier Curves and Type Design: A Tutorial

[2026/09/14]: This article became the most popular I've ever written. Since it was written a long time ago, I decided to rework it: polishing the wording to facilitate comprehension, fixing dead links and typos, and adding interactivity. Still, it remains faithful to the original — a lot of people discussed it and…

94

Let’s Make a Bubble Map

My previous Let’s Make a Map tutorial describes how to make a basic map with D3 and TopoJSON ; now it’s time to cover thematic mapping in the form of a proportional symbol map. The simplest symbol is a circle, or bubble , whose area is proportional to the associated data. In this tutorial, we’ll make a bubble map of…

99

Designing game narrative

Imagine one day you are struck with a flash of inspiration: freshly seared onto your mind is a story, one that is undoubtedly the greatest tale ever conceived by Man. It has all the elements of a great narrative: a gripping plot, nuanced characters, and an evocative setting.