Blueprint | The Gradient

Featured Stories

The GRADIENT

How Did This Get Approved?

Evergreen Content Is Over – The Individual Is The Only Strategy Left

Everywhere I look, the most interesting work in publishing and search is not coming from the big publisher titles. It is coming from individuals. Do individuals now hold all the power, and is the future of content to be found on Substack? When I spoke with Harry Clarkson-Bennett recently about publishers surviving AI, I put

5 questions to ask AI vendors before you buy anything

There are many ways to use AI in marketing, and it feels like for every smart initiative, 10 AI vendors have cropped up with a tool to address it. At the beginning of this wave, I took more calls and answered more emails than I do these days. Over time, I realized I was asking

Figma’s Loredana Crisan talks taste, last-minute decisions and the art of prioritisation

RA: When Claude Design launched, there was a lot of talk about what it meant for Figma. Do you think tools like this challenge your place in the industry? LC: We certainly believe that AI raises the floor. And we’re adding AI to Figma, but we’re adding it in a way that has a different

Google Search Hits All-Time Usage Record During World Cup

Nick Fox, Google’s senior vice president of Knowledge & Information, said that Google Search reached its highest usage ever on July 7, coinciding with Argentina’s comeback victory over Egypt at the World Cup. In the post, Fox wrote: “Google Search broke all prior usage records and saw its highest usage in history right after Argentina

How streaming World Cup creators built a new broadcast blueprint

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup nears its conclusion, a parallel broadcast has emerged alongside the official TV feed: creator-led livestreams from inside the stadiums and FIFA fan zones on Twitch and YouTube. This creator coverage isn’t color on top of the main feed — it’s a new broadcast layer built around community, drawing in

How to build a digital painting from the ground up using Photoshop and Blender

This illustration is a personal piece representing a queen out on a walk with her two beloved pets. I started this illustration in Blender to experiment with architecture and mood before exporting it to Photoshop to draw the different characters. I then started rendering, starting with the queen and creatures and working my way from

The Agentic Web Is Splitting Into Two Bets: Identity And Capability

The protocol layer of the agentic web is splitting into two bets, and most websites have already placed one of them without knowing it. The first bet is about identity: a file called llms.txt that tells AI models who you are and what your content covers. The second is about capability: a browser standard called

Minneapolis-Based Retail Media Veterans Launch Networking Nonprofit

A new nonprofit aims to fill an educational gap in commerce media. Commerce Media Meetup, which started as a casual get together in Minneapolis, has formalized as a nonprofit. The group organizes educational networking events for Minneapolis and Chicago-based commerce media professionals, with plans to expand to Atlanta and Boston. By forming a nonprofit, founders

The WebMCP Tools You Expose To Agents Can Be Used To Hijack Them

Add WebMCP to your website, and you hand visiting AI agents a set of named tools to call. Those same tools can be used to turn the agents against the people who sent them. Chrome’s developer site now carries the security guidance for WebMCP, and much of it is written for the websites exposing the

If your martech stack could talk, what would it say?

A typical CMO writes most martech postmortems from their own perspective. I’ve sat in those rooms for 30 years, and the story rarely changes. The platform underdelivered, the ROI never showed, or the vendor oversold the demo. The tools take the blame, but the stack never gets to answer. This time, I’m going to let

This browser-based generative tool allows musicians to create their own visualisers with trippy geometry

The Mlink Tool is chocker with simple features, such as randomising colours and shapes, affecting the speed of animations, creating shuddering rows of columns or melting blobs. It’s all got this really endearing early MS Paint feeling to it, with simple gradients and mischievous geometry. It’s like if the shape tool had an acid trip.

What CMOs Need To Prepare For Now

“What’s closing is the cheap part,” Shane Tepper told me. “The stretch where you can win position with work instead of budget.” Tepper is co-founder of Resonate Labs, and I’d asked him a pointed question. Everyone in SEO talks about a closing window on earned AI visibility, but the surface area of AI search keeps

Platforms’ AI dilemma: scale without sameness

Nearly every big platform at Cannes Lions said AI makes creativity faster. Some of them quietly acknowledged that might be the problem. As advertisers use the same AI tools to make ads at scale, platforms are seeing a new risk: automated content can begin to look and feel the same, destroying the authenticity that makes

Wowza, these runDisney shoes are over 40% off

The internet is going wild for another pop culture collab, and this one is surprisingly subtle. The runDisney X Brooks collection has a sale with a whopping 41% off right now, and was made for outdoor enthusiasts and Disney lovers alike. You’ll find kicks that sport iconic character designs like Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and

Google Business Profiles Showing Empty Review Dashboards

Google Business Profile owners are seeing a message in their review dashboards that reads “You have no reviews yet,” even when their public listings still show hundreds of reviews. Complaint threads began to rise in the Google Business Profile Community forum on July 9, as people reported that the reply panel shows zero reviews, while the

Uncertainty Grips CNN Ahead of Paramount Acquisition

Top of the Ticker: As Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery proceeds into extra time (to borrow a soccer phrase), staffers at CNN are reportedly approaching their potential new owners with extreme apprehension. This week, two features addressed the trepidation many CNNers are feeling, with Variety’s Brian Steinberg reporting that incoming executives from the

AI Visibility Rankings Aren’t Stable – New Research Shows It’s Mostly Statistical Noise

AI visibility tracking data isn’t entirely reliable. Because generative models often produce different responses, the citation shares and rankings on your dashboard are merely snapshots of a continuously changing target, not fixed facts. A difference between you and a competitor could be genuine or just fluctuation between measurements. A new IQRush paper due for release

AI adoption hits 90% as CX deployment paths diverge

Ninety percent of CX organizations are now piloting or deploying AI, according to Five9’s “2026 Business Leaders CX Report.” Overall, the report found that organizations are largely aligned on adopting AI, but sharply divided on governance, deployment strategies, and how to use it in customer service without creating new complexity or eroding customer trust. AI

The Weekend With Porto Rocha

Leo and Felipe let us in on what they are getting up to in their time off – from finding the best food spots in Rio to summer music festivals and the films on their watch list!

WordPress 7.0.1 Maintenance Release Contains 31 Bug Fixes

WordPress released a minor maintenance release, version 7.0.1, that addresses 31 bugs, including one that improves PHP 8.5 compatibility and another that fixes a security-related function. What is not found in this release: No security fixes. No new developer-facing APIs. No improvements to website performance. No changes to how WordPress works. Nothing of high importance

Join Our Newsletter

For more professional opportunities join our newsletter.