Is Your Out of Office On?
Eurocoded, Growing Offline and Work in Progress with Emily Chen
It’s August, it’s Europe, it’s officially out of office season. Have you got yours on?
I’m taking a fairly tentative approach to holiday-mode this year, as in, I am physically on vacay but it feels mentally illegal to take time off while building nouvôt. I could stand to take some sage advice from Emily Yu Chen below.
So the compromise is a working holiday - I’ll take it and I really can’t complain! There’s too many exciting projects in the pipeline including a new workshop series, nouvôt futures aka your guide to building better every year - and the return of GOOD FUTURES in September. On which note: GOOD FUTURES is taking a break this month (OOO fully on), returning in September for The Future of Fashion. More on that to follow.
Until then, here’s some summer reading on The Future of Work and The Future of Eurosummer - or read both, get way existential and reflect on work, life and the future of summer holidays.
Ideally poolside, with your out of office fully on.
Caitlin x
Scanning curious signals across fashion, tech and culture to reframe for optimism in dark times. Plus ‘how might we…’ ideas for what we can do, moving forward.
Growing Off-Social: Talks around the eternal value of email marketing and our tense dependence on the sloppy state of social media - and growing off it - including: Nick Tran, Lucy Werner and Gabriella Zutrau who summed it up accurately: “If you’re not getting people OFF of social media, you’re not actually building a base you’re building a following that can be ripped out from under you at any moment.“
Eurocoded: Over the past year, I’ve been tracking the rise of Eurocentric signals from the incredible work of 21st Europe to the progress of EU INC., the general boycott of American goods, the end of American soft power upstream of the budding middle-power moves. So when this came across my feed, it was very much a metaphorical add to bag moment, instant checkout. I’m curious to see what Europe can accomplish when it stops seeking to ctrl+c/ctrl+v compete on US and Chinese terms, and instead on its own.
Colour Revival: This piece from Vogue on The New Kings of Colour piqued my intrigue. You’ll have already seen the data on colour loss in our digital and physical world over time, and the increase of griege in our homes versus the millennial yearnings for ye olde 90s McDonalds. Is it wishful thinking or one signal of possible new directions towards a bolder, brighter future?
Moving Forward
Start a scene, make it local, make it bright. Ok, that’s the simplified version but thinking a little critically; how might we support and contribute to each other growing offline, compete on our own terms for the long-term instead of copy pasting currently popular models and stand out in a sea of griege? Or worded another way: how might we fix the “everybody wants to be the DJ, nobody wants to dance” state of communities.
Some prompts to jumpstart your curiosity:
What does your local community need? Maybe it’s not another event, maybe it’s more (or more engaged) participants to the party, better wayfinding, offline advertising, neighbourhood notice boards, content programming.
What can only you create or bring? Avoid the siren call of creating another run club just because that’s what is trending, and instead think what is the kind of event that only you could host? Got a niche passion? Brilliant, start there.
What is missing that once existed and people need? When was the last time you said ‘I wish we still had…‘? Great idea, start there.
Start small and scrappy, in your living room, park, library, or coffee shop corner with one friend as a proof of concept. Or make the most of the internet, join and reach out to the folks running events you want to help with. It doesn’t have to be fancy, scaleable or a mega money maker, but moving forward let’s help each other build and connect offline, compete on our own terms and end the decade of greige.
Chatting work, change and hope this week is Emily Chen. Emily is an art director & designer working with meaningful brands that elevate creativity and well-being in society. She lives in Lisbon, Portugal and loves solo travel, good design, bookstores, samba, the Mediterranean Sea and collecting cookbooks.
What are you working on right now?
Currently, pursuing a few different threads (I tend to be that way!) but they all come back to the same of thing of allowing people to feel good, come home to themselves, and create their definition of a creative & fulfilling life. I interview creative women: designers, writers, artists and those with holistic life wisdom, on how they have pursued a creative & fulfilling life through building self-trust and following their own instincts in work and life.
I love to tell the stories of international women in the creative field. I find our lived experiences (navigating different identities and bridging cultures) brings a very interesting perspective to the field of design.
Perhaps, we see things that others might not.
A part of my interview series is a curated series of travel guides. Each guide will be a creative’s take on the city — detailing where you can take creative workshops, find local gems to eat at, learn more on cultural activities, slip into the local rhythms of life there.
I just published the Creative City Guide to Syros, Greece.
On the professional side, I have been re-thinking who I want to work with and how I want to work.
As an art director & designer, I’ve realized I love working with teams that, in their brand + marketing efforts, want people to feel good, feel more cared for and create a more joyful & beautiful world. I love borrowing perspectives from the artisan & architecture worlds. The intention in those fields is to build something that is beautiful, timeless, functional and makes someone’s life easier. I want to bring that perspective into my design work.
It’s really about going back to what I love about design — making people feel connected and cared for in detail, beauty & craft — versus design being made only for attention, virality, or consumption.
We are human and we will always need things that are made with care from humans. This felt sense of being connected and cared for is essential. I am exploring what it means to bring this viewpoint into my work and in the project choices I make.
If you could change one thing about the world of work right now, what would it be, and why?
If I could change one thing about the world of work, it would be placing a higher emphasis on nurturing human vitality through work and the work place.
The modern workplace puts a high emphasis on productivity and growth, often at a cost to human vitality, learning, and self-expression. As a creative, I do need downtime to fill my creative well (Cooking, painting, learning new things, being in nature / by the sea). These sources give me the inspiration and energy I need for my creative work, my collaborators, and personal relationships.
I am also learning that creative energy comes in cycles and to respect that.
We may be in a summer were everything is blooming — new work projects, shows, being out there — and then we will need to be in a winter to recharge, integrate, learn what to move forward with and what to start to let go of.
All seasons are part of the creative process and the unfolding of our life path.
What’s giving you hope right now?
This substack by Emmie Rae called ‘I don’t want to build an empire, I want to live a beautiful imperfect life.’ We are taught to achieve big goals and then you’ll have made. But is it also okay to want a beautiful life? One in which you can slow down enough to enjoy the beauty in the life you are currently living? Also, the internalized voice from the online world is so real!
Recently attended a call for Sacred Design Lab where there were different community leaders speaking about their projects bringing self-compassion and community strengthening rituals into their communities.
I love artisan crafts and generational wisdom. This fair merges both in Mallorca each year. It is so cool to see how designers approach physical objects and make them with craft & care.
And my morning coffee ritual, loving DAK Coffee.
Until Next Time…
Cut the small talk and ask these magical questions from Priya Parker instead.
Do you know about Dichotomous Keys? Something for your holidays in nature.
Sites like Literature Clock are what the internet was made for. Yep, that’s a website pulling snippets from literature that reference the current time.
A very good book for those who yearn (responsibly):
