Linear's Flip-Dot Matrix

The other day when I signed up to my workspace in Linear I noticed a nice loading component that consisted of an animated flip-dot matrix inspired by those vintage airport flight status displays. It looked something like this:

I thought it was amazing and it offered a lot of possibilities since it could basically display any pixel art you wanted and scale. Doing a bit of research, I found out that the creator was Linear’s founding designer Adrien Griveau, who posted about it on this X post.

I’ve always felt inspired by little UI touches like this that bring back retro aesthetics or the feeling of the early internet. They add a layer of nostalgia and personality to otherwise modern, minimal interfaces, and I think that’s what makes them so charming.