San Francisco is great on all fronts but my personal writing. Objet n°2 is coming on Oct. 4th. If you want to embed memories into your clothing, RSVP here.
⏳ Since we’re talking about memories, handle them with care. Julia delivered a banger on Reboot: A Strange Kind of Memory.
Our brains can’t store every observation, thought or perception that passes through and that isn’t a bad thing. Constraints and selections are what allow us to stay sane in a world of complete sensory overload.
⏳ Real long-term thinking is so underrated. I’d love to find a way to teach this skill to both our kids. Bill Gates framed it quite perfectly a while ago: “most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.“. Kyle delivered a banger here. I felt invited to reflect on my own life while reading the piece: Decades.
Long-term thinking suddenly makes short-term thinking appear incredibly silly.
🎹 I’ve always loved a good brand story so when I received Waqas's deep dive on Teenage Engineering, I felt excited right away. Why Teenage Engineering is so Cool. This is exactly the type of opinionated company and brand we'd like to see more of. Which makes me wonder: why are there so few in the world? How can we empower more people to launch weirder and cooler things?
First and foremost, it's time to celebrate. I'm on my longest streak re: writing on this blog. I've been publishing every month since Sept. 2024, reaching a 13-month streak. The 2nd-longest was 'only' 11-month -I reached that mark twice in the past though. The best news still: I've no intention to stop. So I expect this 'record' to be beaten on a regular basis going forward -every month literally. What did trigger it?
🎨 We let disposable stuff put us -humans- in a state of disconnection and lack of meaning. Objects are evidence of human existence. This is why Ben’s piece Marks of Making resonated so much:
Objects that expose their “marks of making”, or artifacts of how they were constructed, are a reminder that everything is made. Nothing simply appears. In a time when most people are wholly detached from making anything they consume, it’s easy to lose sight of that fact. I’m not necessarily lamenting this disconnect, but I appreciate any design which reminds us (whether intentionally or not) that it was made.
🎨 Henrik struck again. Look at that opener 👇 I was hooked right there. The whole thing looks like a great -and wise- ‘lesson’ to pass on kids: everything that turned out well in my like followed the same design process.
If I look at things that have turned out well in my life (my marriage, some of my essays, my current career) the “design process” has been the same in each case. It has been what Christopher Alexander called an unfolding. Put simply:
I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people to find me, and then I hung out with them. We did projects together.
I kept iterating—paying attention to the context, removing things that frustrated me, and expanding things that made me feel alive.
Eventually, I looked up and noticed that my life was nothing like I imagined it would be. But it fit me.
It took Mathilde, Max and I, 4 weeks in San Francisco to gather 35 people to get a uniquely designed label with a chip inside sewn on their denim by local tailors; generating 200 taps during the night -playing a ‘tap them all’ game- which triggered 1,300 notifications total. Let’s unpack Objet's first soirée: La Première.
🪡 We threw our first ‘denim soirée’ in San Francisco last Friday and we can’t be happier. Stella was one of the local tailor. Learn more about her and how she’s doing some magic with fabrics since age 8.
👕 Shameless plug to start: I was stoked to meet and chat with Sophie about the possibility (or not) to regulate our emotional attachment to fashion. [if you can't read the article, let me know and I can send it to you]
If we don’t pay enough attention to what we want and why we want it, we just tend to crave for what’s next.
