Studio Missive 33: Falling in love with the process

Hi friends,

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

What’s inspiring you?

1. Sam Henri’s post about the MacBook Neo has been making the rounds. Reading it, I was reminded of the profound joy I had as a child and teenager of pushing the boundaries with the tools I had. I remembered trying to draw logos for the publishing company I wanted to start (so I could publish the books I wanted to write), and trying to figure out how to get the computer to bend to my will. (I also remember writing complete books, actual several-hundred-page-long fantasy tomes, which will never see the light of day.) Sam’s essay is tremendous. I was thinking about it earlier this week, when I had InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, and a few hundred browser tabs open. I was flitting between all of them, working on the task at hand, and saw that my MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM had suddenly used up 50GB of swap, and realized that I really should have bought the 128GB model. Then I grinned, because I saw the edges of the machine, and felt the boundaries, and thought of Sam’s essay. ​“The reviews can tell you what a computer is for. They have very little interest in what you might become because of one.” 
2. A couple really cool and highly interactive websites this week. Sleep Well Creative explains the benefits of sleep for creative work. A Journey Through Infertility is an interactive story about IVF told from the perspective of the parent and the child.
3. Love the custom typeface Grill Type made for Adyen, which is really lovely work.
4. It’s very interesting to me to see what Canva thinks the design trends of 2026 will be. This was published in December, but new to me, so I’ll be curious to see if they’re right. (A lot of these ​“trends” just seem like good design elements one could use on any project.)

What are you working on?

I love this time of year. Specifically, I love Daylight Savings Time. The sun stays out later, and crucially, begins to rise earlier as well.

In the summer, I can work out when I wake up, because the sun rises at 5am and my body has already been exposed to light even while I’ve been asleep. In the winter, the sun rises shortly after I do, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t successfully work out in the mornings. I need at least three or four hours of sunlight before my body performs well in the gym.

But I love a morning workout. It clears my mind in a way coffee does not. On sunny days (which have been frustratingly infrequent thanks to a chronic crap ton of rain), I can work out in the morning and start my day off right for the first time since late October. Since I bought my rowing machine and started rowing two years ago (I can’t believe it’s been two years), the act of rowing has become as critical a part of my process as any of the work itself.

I was thinking about this today because the critical job of a designer (and probably most self-motivated professions) is to fall in love with the process. Designers talk a lot about ​“design thinking” and ​“design process” because we like the idea that creativity can be organized. It’s something we can blame our failures and claim our successes on. It’s also the only way to stay sane in an open-ended creative project. 

But you must leave room for experimentation.

This was a week of experimentation, and the messy middle. I am in the middle of several processes right now. Processes I would love to fast forward through. But there is no fast or easy path forward, most of the time. 

I continue to collect and amass inspiration for MHBC’s stylescape. (If you’re new here, Mount Hamilton Baptist Church is a local church — the church I attend — and they asked if I would help them rebrand and redesign their website. I agreed to do it, on condition I could make a multi-part YouTube documentary about the process.) I have started working on logo directions and textures and colours for the stylescapes, although I feel like I am swimming in it right now. The messy middle is called such for a reason.

Inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson’s screen tests for Phantom Thread, I have rearranged my studio two or three times this week while filming test footage for the B‑roll for the MHBC documentary. I have reviewed that footage, considered it. Tested different lighting. Tested different camera angles. Considered each and every option at my disposal. Thanks to that work, I now have two sets. (I do not have as many options as Paul Thomas Anderson, which is both disappointing and probably for the best.)

I have also started redesigning my own logo. I have experimented with typography, bull iconography, and dragon iconography. The bull is overplayed. The dragon, so far, looks like I run a video game company instead of a design studio. I am closer to the finish line only because I have ruled out some available options.

For each of these projects, I am in the messy middle. I do not see an end. I do not know when I will have something more concrete I can share with you again. I do not enjoy this part of the process.

But all I can do is embrace it.

Until next week,

Nathan