Studio Missive 15: getting into video (and a status update on everything else)

Hi there,

Happy Friday! This has been a big week at the studio, as you’ll see below, so let’s dive in.

What’s inspiring you this week?

1. Erik Kennedy published a great article asking where the AI design renaissance is. And why aren’t more designers getting sacked because AI is replacing them? (And how can designers stand out when they’re competing with LLM-generated ideas?)
2. Did you know about the mathematical formula for creativity?
3. Some cool websites: I don’t love that Canva now owns Affinity, and I’m not sure how I feel about the new all-in-one, completely-free (what strings are attached?) Affinity Suite, but I love their new website. I don’t RV, but I love the Go RVing website (the trip guides are particularly good, but the whole thing is excellent). The Wondermake website might be old news for some designers, but I just stumbled on it this week and love it. 
4. Cool new brand work: Foreign Policy’s brand identity work for Big Send, a bouldering gym, is really good. Alec Tear designed a really great logo for Double Diamond Beer.
5. A few months ago, I wrote on my personal blog about how footnotes need a real HTML spec. Eric Meyer wrote this week about how he’s been using web components to build some pretty cool footnotes that look close to what I’d like to see as the standard. 

What are you working on this week?

First, allow me a moment to brag: I was delighted to see a bug I reported in Craft CMS almost a year ago was finally fixed in version 5.8.18. Contrary to the some people’s beliefs, small-peanuts people (like me!) can still affect change. As dumb as it sounds, this bug was painful for me for specific projects, and I feel like Frodo Baggins at the end of Return of the King: none of the people who know me will ever know about this accomplishment. (Unlike Frodo, my accomplishment is also very small.)

Secondly, after a couple weeks of promised, I finally published my first YouTube video BTS at the studio this week. I reviewed three websites submitted by business owner friends of mine. Here’s the link. (I also wrote a quick blog post about it.)

This took more hours than I am comfortable admitting, and I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning trying to get it done this week. I hope this is something I get faster at over time. I loved making it; it falls neatly into the intersection of things I’m into: cameras, editing, design (set design and lighting design in this case), and technology.

Next up: filming the second video.

Of course, there’s also the regular goings-on in the studio, but there isn’t a ton of excitement yet:

• I started work on building Bruce Mayhew’s website (in Craft CMS), which we wrapped design on a few weeks ago. Most of my clients are on weekly billing (see my About page for more information about my pricing structure), but Bruce is an old friend, so his payment structure (and thus his working schedule) are very different.
• I’m waiting to launch one project, which will result in two case studies. 
• I’m still waiting to share the work I’ve done with the startup, which, even though it’s live, I’m still not allowed to share yet. After that went up, they asked me to stay on and help with a few more initiatives that will keep me busy for the foreseeable future. Nothing else I can say right now, which is how this work goes sometimes.
• And I’m talking with three different prospective clients, which, if I got all three projects, would book me entirely until April of next year. (That’s a good problem to have.) The nice thing about these conversations is that the questions prospective clients have tend to inform marketing over the next few months, so it’s great for content planning.

All in all, it just means that I’ve been very busy, and burning the candle a bit at both ends this week. I’m excited for the weekend, mostly because it’s a chance to sleep in and catch a bit of a break.

Until next week,

Nathan