This week was a bit of a forest fire... some rapid destruction that will eventually make way for new growth. One of those weeks that when you’re in it it feels like big setback after big setback — however at the end of the week I’m preferring to remain optimistic.

A quick project update...

Lumière took some lovely small steps forwards, slowly progressing along nicely. Looking forward to a site recce next week.

Polymath took a bit of a hit... our work so far has been incredibly adventurous (well I think so anyway) and this week we saw the client have what we hope is only a short wobble in confidence... I’m sincerely hoping we can get back to exploring some brave territories together really soon. There is so so much potential in this project, fingers crossed!

We had feedback from the client team on Canopy. I guess the headline is back to the drawing board but great to know the work was well received... just we’ve gone to far, to ambitious to fit the marketplace. Thanks to Sinead for the massive help on this. I’m sure we’ll smash it in the next round.

Kiosk has been going through leaps and bounds over the last three weeks. Seb has been jumping between paper model-making and AR prototyping, it is so exciting to see something turn from a sketch into something tangible… although I’m not sure you can call AR tangible?... exciting to see all the same. Over this last week I’ve had Seb mostly developing the app designs into a video prototype (btw Principle has been a revelation — thanks for the recommendation Ivo).

Overall Kiosk is really taking shape and I can see a dot on the horizon where we will soon be able to share the project with the world. Although ‘soon’ is a bit of a loose concept with our own R&D projects, this one has been on and off for five or so years. Note to self… there is no way this project can not get completed this year.

Lunar — another victim of natural selection this week... this is a project we hope to see surface in July 2020. We kicked off the project last year with a sprint that delivered a whopping 20 concepts... Earlier this year we developed four of these concepts to be higher in resolution... midweek one of those concepts came to a natural end this week... it was a location specific project where we were approaching the owner of the location as a project partner... unfortunately the partner passed on the project and it kind of fell apart without the location. I’m thinking about sharing this concept next week though… it’s a banger of an idea and I don’t think we get to show how we work in the experiential space enough.

Finally; we’ve been piloting the first of a few social experiments for Sjú this week... testing our art direction, story and tone of voice work for the startup... really fantastic to hear the first of a few social experiments has already generated Sjú’s first sales.

Team:

We said fairwell to Seb who finished up his months internship. I hope he’ll be back in the future though.

Looking ahead.

I’ve been invited to give a couple of talks at Chelsea Art School… mega excited about this. The first one in October will expand on my thoughts of Design as a role of citizenship.

Thought starter of the week:

I don’t know what the state of cultural exchange is like in the school system these days. I find it hard to imagine that penpals are still a thing? foreign exchange programmes if I remember correctly are pretty expensive to participate in — so not very inclusive ... Every time I pass a little phone hut like the one below their signs make me think what really is the barrier to rethink cultural exchange for schools. With international sim cards you buy hundreds of minutes cheaply.... and we live in a world of videocalls and livestreams...

Obviously you can’t really substitute for being on the ground and immersing in a place but surely there is still value in an exchange of correspondence. What really are the barriers to communicating with people from different parts of the world to complement learning development?

Friday Links:

A herd of cows catch a criminal:

Shout out to Neef @ Adventure for reccomending this great book.

Treepedia from MIT.

Treepedia measures the canopy cover in cities. Rather than count the individual number of trees, we’ve developed a scaleable and universally applicable method by analyzing the amount of green perceived while walking down the street. The visualization maps street-level perception only, so your favorite parks aren't included!

Really lovely, and potentially mega helpful in planning The Nest Project.

The union of concerned photographers: Link.

Finally I did’t catch the whole show but here’s the fantastic Haiyan on the Big Life Fix... great work... be warned it will tug at your heart strings and motivation to make more meaningful work.

Shout out to Matt Webb, his post on the history of weeknotes got me thinking about how much I used to love reading lots of studio‘s regular weeknotes. I thought why not just jump in, maybe others will follow suit... this has been a delight to write so see you next week!

Cover image: Forest Fire by Cameron Strandberg

Our talented friends Us have made their first short film and it's brilliant! Not only are we super proud of them but also delighted to have designed the films title sequence. You can see a snippet of the titles in the teaser above.

The film is called ‘Cautionary Tales’ and will be doing the rounds at film festivals over the next six months with a first stop at the Foyle Film Festival in Londonderry.

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Update: See the entire project here.

We have designed the logo for 'The Sixth Wall' a monthly podcast that invites the subject of a documentary film to interview the filmmaker.

The Sixth Wall is a really interesting concept and we're looking forward to hearing the podcast when it launches in February.

If you're wondering where the name comes from 'the fourth wall' is an acting convention in which an invisible, imagined wall separates actors from the audience... you only ever 'notice' the fourth wall when it's broken, for example on a tv show where a character breaks the mould by suddenly talking directly to you instead of within the shows narrative... House of Cards or House of Lies are good examples or if you haven't watched TV for twenty years Lovejoy also springs to mind!

So this imaginary fourth wall belongs to performances whether that's on stage or on screen... but what happens when we're watching a documentary, is that a fifth wall... and what if you go one step further and invite the subject of the documentary to break all the 'walls' and interview the film maker... That's what The Sixth Wall is about.