What it is

A reading list for people learning design: the one I actually send students, instead of a bookmark folder with four hundred links in it.

Ordered by where you are in learning, not by topic. Beginners do not need "Typography / Colour / Layout"; they need "start here, then this".
Everything in it is something I would hand to a specific student for a specific reason. If I cannot say who it is for and when, it is not in.
No account, no email capture, nothing gated. A resource list behind a signup is a lead magnet wearing a teacher's clothes.
A static page that loads fast on a bad connection, because plenty of the people I wrote it for are on one.

Why it is short

The value is what got left out. Forty resources someone finishes beats four hundred they bounce off in a week. A link dump looks generous and is the opposite: it hands the hardest part of the job, deciding what is worth your time, back to the person least able to do it.

What needs work

The hard part is maintenance, not building. Links rot and tools get bought and ruined, and a stale recommendation costs more trust than a missing one. There is no review schedule on this yet, and there should be.