This site runs best with JavaScript enabled.

Maggie Appleton

Creates visual explanations about design, anthropology, and programming.

UX designer, anthropologist, illustrator & mediocre developer at egghead.io

The Digital Garden

A consistently tended collection of half-baked notes, research, and sketches.

A Picture Worth a Thousand Programmes

Making Programming Visual, Graphical, and Learnable

Plebian Programming with Keyboard Maestro

What I'm Doing Now

Natureculture, Moral Purity, and Cultural Boundaries

Paleolithic Nostalgia

Visit the Garden

Illustrated Essays

How to Draw Invisible Programming Concepts - Part One

Meat Planet: The Illustrated Notes

Building a Second Brain: The Illustrated Notes

Illustrated notes on the Building A Second Brain system by Tiago Forte

A Shelfish Starter Guide to Databases

The absolute minimum you need to know about data storage.
Read More Essays

Illustration Projects

See More Illustrations

Library Notes

A past and present reading collection. Complete with very loose and opinionated notes.

Browse the Library

New Dark Age

James Bridle
Sep 09, 2021

Mind in Motion

Barbara Tversky
Aug 15, 2021

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking

Daniel C. Dennett
Jul 28, 2021

Join the newsletter

For weekly notes on visual thinking, ethical technology, and cultural anthropology.

Maggie Appleton © 2022