In 2001, the late management consultant guru Richard Normann, best known for creating the idea of corporate “missions” in the 1970s, wrote the book Reframing Business: When the Map Changes the Landscape. This book has become known, at least in Service Design circles, for creating a vocabulary for certain phenomena…

The 100 Best Pens, As Tested by Strategist Editors by Karen Iorio Adelson and Lauren Ro At its most basic, a pen has to do just one thing, but there are so many reasons to choose one over another. Does it glide along the page, or does it drag? Does…

Not going to lie: Like 2020, 2021 was another terrible year for my reading. Nevertheless, 20 books. Not quite as bad as the (ugh) 10 books I read last year (twice as good in fact!), but nowhere near my pre-Covid reading goals. Fiction The Sympathizer: A Novel, Viet Thanh Nguyen Klara…

Some of you after reading this headline might be like, wait, they’re still around? Others of you, over 100 million of you, are current Flipboard users. Many of you remember Flipboard as the best iPad app for reading news and articles when it came out in 2010, winning several design…

Note: I didn’t really want to write this article, but am doing so at others’ urging hoping it’ll give other job hunters some hope, some insights, or at least a laugh. There’s an idea held by many that the more experienced you are, the more accomplished you are, the better…

There are three great design themes: making something beautiful, making something easier, and making something possible. Design is the art of the possible. Design isn’t just about problem solving; it’s about creating a more humane future. The purpose of any design is to make a hole where the future may…

All links go to Spotify. #9 Fake It Flowers, beabadoobee Hey kids, do you like 90s female indie artists? How about one from 2020? #8 Flowers of Devotion, Dehd Spiky, catchy. #7 Women in Music Part III, HAIM Ok, I give. This is fun. #6 Introduction, Presence, Nation of Language Inject…

A list of the 10 books I read in 2020. Usually, this list is 30+ books long but 2020 was such a shitshow, I just couldn’t focus. So the list is pretty pitiful. Modern Romance, Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg My Sister the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite Rising Strong, Brene Brown Why We’re Polarized, Ezra Klein Crazy Time, Abigail Trafford Research for My Novel Unnatural Rebellion: Loyalists in New York City during the Revolution, Ruma Chopra

The 10th annual (!!!) collection of the best articles nominally about design that I’ve found this year, alphabetical by author. I’m not sure if the list is shorter this year because less was written, or because I saw less, or because those of us in the US are facing a…