A designer who writes.
I have blogged intermittently since the mid 90s. Thankfully, much of the early teenage angst is lost to time. This collects my writings from this site, an earlier personal website, and some newsletter projects over the years, in mostly chronological order. I also publish new writing here. I publish somewhat more formal writing about content strategy and design careers at Content Career Accelerator.
The main idea being that the pencil is always accessible. You wouldn’t have to take the sleeve out of your bag or pencil case to remove the pencil if you didn’t want to. Nothing to open or close, to seal or unseal, zip or unzip. Just a quick flip like I do with my iPad … continue
I run my primary website on Squarespace. It looks great, and I like the module approach to building out things like my speaking page. It’s been working well for me. So when I decided to start blogging again, I made my first few posts there, using the blog I’d initially set up many years ago. … continue
Things I’ve recently bought, downloaded, stolen or scavenged — and what I think about them. Priority Continuum Onyx bicycle My bike got stolen over the winter from the storage area in my apartment building. It was a whole thing. I bike a lot, especially in the summer, but I have a very utilitarian relationship to … continue
It’s not hard to just grab a bag and run out the door. But I’m me, so I have all kinds of routines associated with travel.
In anticipation of maybe possibly hopefully having a book come out at some point, I’ve been refreshing my website. Partly because having a book might mean more people looking at my website, and partly because working on a book inspires all sorts of productive procrastination. In collecting things to feature on my homepage, I was … continue
Fifty-two cards. Four suits. Two colors. Three faces, the tens, the aces. Shuffle. Deal. How’s your hand? No good? Call a mulligan. Shuffle. New hand. Better? Worse? With a good shuffle, odds are your deck is in an order that has never existed in the history of cards, let alone those cards. The variables (number … continue
On why artists need to be challenged: Art should be well-subsidized, yes. But the purchase of a completed painting or a sculpture, the commisioning of a mural—or perhaps the publication of a poem or a novel or the production of a play—all these forms of recognition are the rewards of mature work. They are not … continue
I got out to a show last night. (A show is what you call a concert when you go to a lot of concerts.) Lucy Dacus at the Entry. It had been sold out for some time but I bought a ticket from a fellow First Avenue member through the Facebook group. I first saw … continue
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. ―Charles Mingus
I took myself to D.C. in February, over my birthday. I’d never been.
Or you will, if you subscribe. Personal dispatches from the desk of Scott Kubie, a designer who writes.