Artefact 230
Reflection and Collection
Good morning.
A short missive today, collecting a few things together before we close down for the summer break. Not that the rain and wind outside conveys summer in any meaningful way. But if the weather here wasn't so unreliable, what would British people write newsletters about, eh?
10 Years Of Smithery
On August 4th, it was officially our tenth birthday. It seemed a moment worth marking, so I wrote a short essay reflecting on some of the things that seemed important now, if not then.
I've realised that maybe there's a short set of principles here, which I've started refining a little more to make broadly applicable. Do let me know if these feel useful, interesting, worth refining or adding to.
1st Principle: Have a mental model of the terrain you operate in. Imagine the perspectives that others hold of the same terrain. Remember that it’s easier to change perspective than terraform the terrain around you.
2nd Principle: Building up doesn’t have to be about increasing numbers (sales, employees, square foot, etc). Instead, build familiarity with the terrain; the ability and agility to work in lots of different ways, creating different sources of value.
3rd Principle: Regularly reflect upon ways of connecting all of your work. Don’t rely on the existing names for things, because what you’re doing might not have a name yet. Understanding the in-between space helps you carry things from one place to another.
4th Principle: Make public experimentation a habit, inviting new perspectives through open innovation and community building. Have an idea in your head of what side projects are for, where the value lies, and what sort of value it is. Then let yourself be surprised when other things happen.
5th Principle: Find a way to find a balance that does you good in a variety of ways. Long term and short term. Financially, intellectually and emotionally. Know what good looks like for you.
The Shipping Forecast
Talking of side projects (Principle 4), I'm delighted that we've sorted one of the underlying issues that Artefact Cards was facing. The cost of shipping parcels has just been going up and up recently. So looking around at what other companies do (Copy, Copy, Copy, right Mark?), we stole the idea of the long, slim 'chocolate box' from Hotel Chocolat, which someone told us was designed for better shipping.
And so we now have a beautiful new box design which also ships as a large letter, so is cheaper for customers. Win-win all round.
We've replaced all the other smaller options with this one box, and you can choose the mixed pack or select specifc colours instead.
Pop over to the shop and have a look.
Thinking about Toolkits
Finally, once we're back from our break, I'll be coming back to the idea of different toolkits; both the TENETS project of the 'ten tools to transform your thinking', and the 'things to think with' I talked about in the previous newsletter are overdue some development work.
In the meantime though, I wanted to share this excellent piece from Shannon Mattern called Unboxing the Toolkit.
A quick excerpt, to whet your appetite...
We need to think about how kits are aesthetic objects that order and arrange things – and how those aesthetics are rhetorical and epistemological: they make an argument about “best practices,” about what matters, and about how we know things.
They interpellate, or summon, particular users and make claims about expertise and whose contributions matter and what knowledge counts. Their component parts shape users’ agency and subjectivity in relation to the objective or purpose at hand – and they have the potential to define that purpose, whether it’s baking a cake or addressing poverty.
As I say, the whole essay is excellent, thoroughly recommended. And if you scroll to the bottom, you'll find the link to the video of her talk too, which I haven't watched yet but certainly shall.
From the library
Finally, some chewy brain food, perhaps for the holidays - I've just started Dispatches From A Time Between Worlds, a series of essays on metamodernity (yes, I know).
