The saddest designer An Essay by Chia Amisola chias.blog I am tired of the premise that creation means productivity––especially in the laborious sense...Creation has become mangled with labor in a world that demands man to monetize all of their hobbies and pursuits. In return, it seems empty, almost sad, really––to be the designer spending weekends again on the screen. To tell you what I like to do in the weekends, I like to do the sad thing...The ‘good’ people tell you to detach your life from your workspace, but this summer, I think I’ve just realized how much I adore what I have the luxury of working on everyday. In the weekend, I make. I make not because it’s the only thing I have ever known, but because it’s the most certain way forward. To see the fulfillment of the workYour life adds up makingidentitywork
The web in decay is the web by design An Essay by Chia Amisola chias.blog When will there be a guide to best practices for archiving the web? Will the giants responsible for the platformization of the web make the act of digital archival any easier for us? Is it foolish for platforms like Snapchat or Instagram Stories to brand themselves as “temporary” when temporariness is impossible on our internet? Should the web exist as something organic, malleable, and destructible –– or as an eternal timekeeper? Is link rot more of a technological issue or a human one? Do humans want to know themselves forever? The Internet Is Rotting decaywww
In defense of disorder: on career, creativity, and professionalism An Essay by Chia Amisola chias.blog Professionalism is a lie, build what you love, explore everything. In today’s age of creation, anyone who attempts to tell you otherwise is lying. You’ll end up seeking what you traded for the rest of your life. Successful careers are not planned workcreativitybureaucracy
How to Think About Notes An Article by Will Darwin www.willdarwin.com Thinking in terms of outputs Maggie Appleton's Digital Garden notetakingwritinginformation
Thinking in terms of outputs In our use of digital and analogue filing tools, we classify information through folders. An article about railway construction gets filed under ‘infrastructure’ or ‘transport’. In Evernote we tag it with ‘rail’ or ‘construction’. This is thinking like a librarian and not like a writer. We are classifying the information as an input. The reason you take notes as a writer is to produce content. It makes sense, then, to take notes in line with this goal. Traditional filing like this tends to fail when you attempt to write your content. You are stuck trying to figure out which categories will be relevant for your proposal, paper or blog post. Interesting writing often comes from connecting separate fields through a common idea. By revealing the common denominator. By unifying two seemingly-contradictory ideas. How can you possibly achieve this if you’re looking in the same category for your information? The categories simply do not fulfil the function required by the writer. The notes you take and indeed, the way you process information, should be with a specific project or idea in mind. You must classify information in terms of its outputs. When you take notes on a book, think about how this could apply to a specific idea you had or how it argues against a paper you read last week. The premise is that you should be organising by context and always trying to connect the dots between the content you're consuming. How to be a genius notetakinginformationwriting