Hi 👋. Hope you had a nice break, and you’re feeling recharged and re-energised. Thankfully I am. Full of hunger and curiosity for 2024. Hope you are too.
"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this."
Henry David Thoreau
culture // the new romantics
There's lots of reasons to be happy today. You’re alive for starters. But if that’s not enough, here’s 177 ways the world got better in 2023. Things can improve though, no doubt. It might start with putting down our f’ing phones and reclaiming our brains. A reasonable hope for 2024. Some think an upheaval is here, and a quiet revolution is underway. That the zeitgeist is changing, as a romantic backlash to the tech era looms. A rejection of empiricism, and a revolt against big tech, algorithms and smartphones, replaced with spirituality, art and a life lived fiercely offline. Maybe “the modern creative class, beleaguered enough, barraged by two decades of digital technology that has radically cheapened music, television and cinema, is ready for combat”. Hope so. The Luddites were misunderstood. Viva la revolution.
brands // collabs
This is the most collaborative period of human existence. Brand collabs too have become invaluable. Brands can highlight shared values, borrow equity, or increase reach. And as outlined in how to pull off a successful brand collab, there’s also offering something new, or unique. Collabs can be promotional and short lived, like Doritos and Netflix Stranger Things 4 collab which offered a live-streaming event (increased sales by 11%). Or bigger, like Dove and Nike who’ve teamed up to launch The Body Confident Sports Program to boost girls’ body confidence in sports. A huge commitment. Better together probably. Or highly strategic, like struggling Peleton who’ve partnered with TikTok to create “#TikTokFitness Powered by Peloton.”. A new hub featuring short-form fitness videos, live classes, content from Peloton’s instructors and collabs with TikTok creators. VERY smart. Smart partnerships FTW in 2024 🙌.
creativity // resolutions
Have you made some resolutions ? Nice if you have. Hope they help. But what about your elevating them, inspired by some of humanity’s greatest creative minds. Here’s a great list to ponder, and here’s the supporting article (full list of 16).
Søren Kierkegaard: Resist Absentminded Busyness
Rainer Maria Rilke: Live The Questions
Susan Sontag: Pay Attention To The World
Bertrand Russell: Make Room For “Fruitful Monotony”
Ursula K. Le Guin: Refuse To Play The Perfection Game
John Steinbeck: Use Discipline To Catalyze Creative Magic
Martha Nussbaum: Heed The Intelligence Of The Emotions
Friedrich Nietzsche: Walk Your Own Path
Martha Graham: Embrace Your Divine Dissatisfaction
Kurt Vonnegut: Celebrate Enoughness
Too often our resolutions are all about succeeding, instead of living a better life. Reminds me of a David Hieatt story. His friend asked him about resolutions. He reeled off a list of grand goals he wanted to achieve. When he asked his friend, they simply replied “I want to be able to canoe to work”. Makes you think.
technology // consequences
We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about consequences. We're too excited by potential, to think about the suffering consequences. Yes, it’s amazing that we can get anything online on Amazon, that’s good enough, and have it instantly. But that's created a world where everything is made poorly. And while cheap foreign products helped Amazon take over the world, it also might also be their eventual obsolescence (as Shein and Temu eat their lunch). Yes, AI has such enormous potential, like discovering new antibiotics. But it also means Google fires 30,000 employees after AI success. And yes. the promise of micro-mobility is amazing, but when it doesn’t make money and credit runs out, and its nightmare to deploy and mange, you get RIP Bird, RIP Superpedestrian and an entire industry on the brink of collapse. I’ll say again, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
five random (ish) things:
Canva’s 2024 design trends 🎨 .
The next decade of tech OMG report 🤖
100 tiny changes to transform your life 😀
A library of visual frameworks 𐃎
Nice list of makers & mavericks 🦸🏻♀️
watching // i want a big life.
I haven’t watch the show (yet) but this clip from The Marvelous Mrs Maisel finale on Amazon Prime had the kind of energy we should all bring to 2024. She says “They say ambition is an unattractive trait in a woman, well maybe but you know what’s really unattractive, waiting around for something to happen. Staring out a window thinking the life you should be living is out there somewhere but not being willing to open the door and go and get it”. Lovely stuff.
Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser