Weeknote: 42/2023
“This isn’t a time for “products”, or product launches. It’s not a time to toil in secret for a year and then reveal what you’d made with a shiny landing page. Rather, I believe it’s a time to explain as you go. Our “work”, in an important sense, is to get into each other’s heads; to blast out cosmic rays that might give rise, in other minds, to new ideas.”
Verbs
Reading: The secret formula for Apple’s rounded corners
An incredible exploration of the design principles of Apple with a weirdly captivating look at all the round edges, squircles, and corners and what they mean about Apple’s design philosophy, as well as how human beings relate to the objects in their lives. I might seem like either a dull subject, or a niche of a niche, but the attention to detail that Apple (often?) bestows is renowned, and understanding the way in which the human form and psychology impact design choices is fascinating.
Listening: EarthFM
A simple web app that lets you roam the globe to listen to incredibly rich and vibrant recordings of the natural world. It’s really engrossing to listen to the natural world across different nations and biomes but I have also loved listening to recordings from the areas around where I’m from in the UK (the garden of England!). Hearing familiar birdsong and the sound of rain on trees in the woodland I’ve walked has a tinge of nostalgia and a deep, comforting sense of connection.
Watching: The Great S3
We’ve enjoyed the hell out of Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult (who are both incredible) in the brilliant, biting, and bawdy The Great. We’re not into the final season and I’ve read that there’s unlikely to be another. I think that’s a great shame, as the show is full of verse and vigor and does a lot of really interesting things with comedy, pathos, and character. That said, the way Season 3 is shaking out, perhaps it’s a neat and fitting place to bring things to a close.
Studying: Aaron Draplin takes the Logo Challenge
I’m not a graphic designer, but I’m incredibly interested in graphic design and Aaron Draplin is someone that I’m particularly a fan of. I love his style, I love his approach to design, and I really like listening to him talk through his process and chat about what he does and how he does it. It’s only a simple logo challenge in this video but there’s some really great content on YouTube featuring Draplin and showing his stuff, his designs, and the cool design space he’s built for himself in Portland, Oregon. Most importantly, he seems like a very cool guy.
Thinking: We don’t have free will
I’ve yet to read Robert Sapolsky’s book on free will just yet - it only came out yesterday - but I am very keen to get to know his take on this perennial philosophical question. The LA Times article about him and the book that I’ve linked to gives a good outline of his stance though, and it’s one that I’m pretty amenable to. Sapolsky seems to be taking a pretty materialist view, with a strong reductivism, and I’ve often felt that really there’s not much other tenable space in this debate. No free will? Well, does it matter? I always ask myself, and would ask my students - how would things be different either way? How could things be different? I’ll be really interested to see how Sapolsky handles the issue.
Words
There’s been lots of very different things going on this week, so it’s been a bit of a ‘plate spinning’ sort of time. There’s been lots of behind-the-scenes work with SWUX and getting the course offerings finalised, polished, and available. I’ve also been working on the 5 one-day workshops I will be delivering next week and the week after. Along with developing the designs, there are lots of logistical and administrative considerations as we’ll be working with close to 100 people, all of whom will be accessing things remotely, from across Romania. Much of the work is being handled by the project partner who is running the whole thing but there’s lots to communicate and align on still. There are two blog posts this week, one about stretching out and thinking on a bigger scale and one about going back to basics and remembering to trust the process. There are other rumblings and movements featuring potential projects and possible partnerships but they’re all pretty early on in the pipeline right now.
We’ve also just taken receipt of our new car. Everything seems great with it so far and I had enormous fun driving it out of the dealership, through the big giant doors they have on the front. It felt like I’d won a prize on a game show and they were letting me drive it away at the end of the show. Even just in the 6 or 7 years since we last had a car, when we were still living in the UK, it’s incredible the way in which technology has advanced. Even a relatively inexpensive car like ours now has a whole slew of sensors, cameras, screens, and technologies and, from what I’ve seen so far, they all do seem to make the experience of driving better, safer, and more enjoyable.
Whilst God gives with one hand, with the other he has decreed that my two wisdom teeth must be removed. Thankfully I’m not in much pain right now, but the x-rays have confirmed that they’re wise only in name, and might more accurately be called uncooperative mouth bombs. It was interesting to navigate the appointments and process here in Serbia, and I was really reassured by some fantastic medical staff and dentists who worked really hard to ensure I was clear on exactly what the situation was and how things would need to progress. As ever, there was the crawling shame of being a useless Brit who barely holds a grasp on one language. It seems to be such a natural and accepted thing in so many other parts of the world that languages are excellent things to learn and I’m ever thankful that lots of the people I need to interact with have English up their sleeves.