This post is part of a series I started after reading “Notice, Collect, Share” by Russell Davies. I’m more inspired than ever to get back into the habit of…noticing, collecting and sharing. As part of that return to habit I’m going to try and find five things that interest me every week, and share them here on my blog. 5 things per week, for 20 weeks, equals 100 Interesting things. Maybe one of these things will inspire you. Maybe one of them will inspire me. We’ll all learn something along the way.
#26 More On “The Overview Effect” I work for a marketing agency called Major Tom, and the name is a reference to David Bowie song “Space Oddity'“:
“This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today”
The song was written in 1969, at the height of the space race. Astronauts were seeing the Earth from orbit for the first time and were coming back with a profoundly different view of our planet. This feeling was so common that it was given a name: The Overview Effect.
The image above is of Bruce McCandless on the first untethered spacewalk.
Most astronauts, or people who go into orbit, come away with a feeling of the importance of life and the fragility of our planet. William Shatner, famous for playing Captain Kirk on Star Trek, had the exact opposite reaction after his opportunity to visit orbit:
“But when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold … all I saw was death,” Shatner wrote. “I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness.”
We place a huge emphasis on curiosity, research, and analytics at Major Tom when we work on client projects. Our mission is to Find Clarity In Chaos.
I’ve always thought that “Action At A Distance” would make a great name for an ad agency, which comes from how Einstein referred to
That’s probably partly why I love this font called “Spooky Action” developed by Stewart Smith. He created it by using the pathways at the Yale Institute’s New Haven Green, which was originally created by Puritan settlers in the 1600s.
#28 Family Values Wallet Design I don’t have much use for a crypto wallet these days (though just writing that always makes me shudder knowing that I bought Bitcoin at around $30 back in the day and sold at around $60). What I do have use for, and love for, is thoughtful blog posts about design.
What I love about this write-up is that the author lays out the core principles they wanted to follow for their app (Simplicity, Fluidity, and Delight), then follows those principles to explain how they followed those principles in their actual work. That’s right: even the write-up is a piece of art that is Simple, Fluid, and Delightful.
#29 The Graceful Exit Of Design Studio HAWRAF Agency life is hard. Starting one is even harder, andon the topic of agencies being transparent with their process I am grateful that HAWRAF documented all the work they put into trying to make their design shop work. They’ve made public all the folders and documents they used to run and pitch their business. Something about it reminds me of an earlier era of the interent.
#30 We Are Deep In The Trough Of Disillusionment For AI I think that an earlier version of me, a younger version of me, would have been all-in on generative AI. I think I would have thought it the next greatest thing. But the current me, the more mature me (the more jaded me?) is firmly in the trough of disillusionment with the AI hype. Sure, it’s giving people a lot of tools that they didn’t have before, like creating images and writing. But not a lot of it is good.
This week’s photo is again taken from NASA”s photo of the day: A remnant of a supernova.
