Studio Missive 24: 1x speed

Hi friend,

Happy Friday! Here’s what’s happening in the studio this week.

What’s inspiring you?

1. I’ve been really enjoying Free Time by Jenny Blake. If you’re a freelancer or you run a small studio, it’s the perfect book to kick off your year. It’s filled with actionable advice on streamlining the operations of your business, which is something I’ve been working on for the past year or so and plan on investing heavily into this year as well. (My mentor and coach Shawn Blanc also talks about the same topics a lot, as he apparently pointed out in 2022.)
2. “Life happens at 1x speed.” This post is about slowing down podcasts and YouTube videos to 1x and consuming things with intent, but it made me think a lot about the limitations of the human body. We can only move at 1x speed. We can’t do two things at once. We can’t process our emotions any faster as we age (we get less time to process them, but it feels like we need more). We can’t work on seven projects, get to the gym for an hour every morning, and maintain our relationships (or raise our kids). Our body is like our time: it is finite. Although it is not necessarily a comforting thought on the face of it, we are finite beings. And there is something to knowing we’ll all die some day. The great lie of technology is that it makes us move faster than 1x. Not to start cribbing Oliver Burkeman, but if we only move at 1x, maybe it’s better to embrace our finitude.
3. Gus Mueller writes about John Mayer’s new guitar plugin, which simulates his don’t-ask-how-expensive-it-is Dumble guitar amp and 1964 Fender Vibroverb, all for the low price of just a couple hundred bucks. Mayer claims he can’t tell the difference in an A/​B test, and I believe him. This software is getting so good. I have a couple of the Fractal modellers in my studio, and I genuinely can’t tell the difference between the amps I own and their modelled versions either. This technology has reached a state where you can spend a couple thousand bucks of a modeller and get an entire collection of guitar amps that would otherwise cost you hundreds of thousands. What an incredible time to be a player.
4. I am a huge fan of Jen Schuetz’s new website. I love the paint swatch-like tiles for blog posts in particular, as well as the simple image shapes that reinforce the pattern throughout. A great example of a simple motif tying the design together.
5. A big challenge in brand identity work is making something that isn’t traditionally cool look… cool. Like energy companies, apparently. The new branding for So Energy by Studio Blackburn is fantastic. As I often do, I will point you to BP&O’s excellent writeup for the details.
6. I’ve been really enjoying Naz’s blog recently. First, it’s a gorgeous design (very Frank Chimero-esque, which I assure you is a compliment). Second, Naz is working on a new photo editor for the Mac, a project I am watching with great interest. His taste is impeccable, and I can’t wait to see what he and Latent Co. cook up.

What are you working on this week?

Deadlines, deadlines, and more deadlines. I am not sharing any work today; I am still in the throes of it. Hopefully there will be something to share next week.

In the meantime, I will leave you with something I’ve been thinking about.

Until next week.

Nathan