The spreadsheet has its own spreadsheet
A confession about trackers, naming conventions, and why the dullest documents in the building do the most creative work.
Field Notes
46 Articles
The Colony Retro Handheld
We ship light for a living. Once we shipped plastic and buttons instead, and it may be the most finished thing we've…
Banned words: a working list
The words that don't make it into our decks, our proposals, or our meetings. Presented here with charges attached.
Why we make merch nobody asked for
Hoodies, lighters, stickers. No strategy deck, no target audience, no ROI. That's the point.
Notes from Nashville
Field notes from our home city, written the way we actually experience it. The postcard version is somebody else's Nashville.
We are not a hive
There are three ways to organize talented people. Two of them are everywhere. We're built on the third.
Creativity is not a lightning strike
The sudden idea has a long, boring backstory nobody tells at parties. On attendance, constraints, and why lightning prefers the well-grounded.
Why the owl
Barn owls hunt alone. Under the right conditions, they live together anyway. Fourteen years in, that contradiction still explains us better than…
Leave room for the good accidents
The best idea in a project is usually the one nobody scheduled. Over-planning locks the doors it would have walked through.
Summer slow is a feature
July's quiet inbox isn't a problem to solve. It's the one scheduled maintenance window the industry gets all year, and most of…
On mascots and meaning
A surprising number of brands own an animal they can't explain. The difference between decoration and a thesis is whether it survives…
The range is the point
Kids' media next to healthcare next to a state park system. The wall isn't confused. It's the whole argument.