Newsletters Worth Opening Every Week

We unsubscribed from almost everything last spring. These are the newsletters that earned their way back in.

Every studio accumulates habits it never chose. Once a year we list them and ask whether each one still earns its place.

The first version of anything is a question, not an answer. Treating it that way makes feedback easier to give and much easier to hear.

The finished piece rarely looks like the plan. That is fine; the plan was only there to get us started.

The part nobody mentions

We keep a running document of things that went wrong on past projects. It is not a list of failures so much as a list of warnings, and we read it before every kickoff.

• Start with the problem, not the tool
• Test with real content, never lorem ipsum
• Show work early and often
• Keep the version that failed

Typography exists to honor content.

Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style

Small improvements compound. A page that loads a little faster, a heading that reads a little clearer, and a form with one fewer field all add up.

Most of the improvement in a draft comes from cutting. We aim to remove a fifth of every piece on the second pass, and the reader never misses it.

We keep a running document of things that went wrong on past projects. It is not a list of failures so much as a list of warnings, and we read it before every kickoff.

Constraints are underrated. A fixed word count, a single typeface, or a two-colour palette forces decisions that an open brief lets you postpone forever.