Christoph Rauscher

I’m Not a Cyborg, But That’s Okay

2026-02-17T00:00:00Z

Listening comprehension: I have poor hearing. As a child, I had surgery in one ear; it went great, but my hearing capabilities have been fairly one-sided since. It’s gotten worse over the years, and my friends kept noticing it lately, too. In loud environments, I felt like I was trapped under a diving bell; all conversations were muffled and exhausting. A recent hearing test confirmed my experiences, and I decided to tackle the problem like a real adult: I went to get a hearing aid.

I was really excited for it! I was ready to be transformed into a cyborg—not one of those self-made microchip-implant-ones, no, a real, medically approved one! With my test results, I consulted a hearing care professional, who gave me a standard model covered by health insurance: a battery-powered, grey device with a little transparent cable plugged into my ear canal. It was basically invisible. It connected via Bluetooth to my phone and provided three programs: Surround hearing (for everyday life), front-focussed hearing (for conversations), and streaming (optimized for music and TV).

What can I say: my enthusiasm dampened quickly. From what others told me, these modern devices could do anything; they’d basically replace my AirPods and merge my digital and analog life (sound-wise). But as I am only impaired on one ear, I only got one hearing aid, so the in-ear streaming was pretty useless. The device was flimsy, and the microphone often looped me into conversations not meant for my ear(s). Random rustle and beeping constantly brought my attention to my impaired hearing. It was not the calm, enhancing technology I was hoping for, but a clumsy attachment that needed constant grooming. Worst of it all: the hearing improvement was barely noticeable, at least during my trial period.

Admittedly, for me this was a luxury problem. On one ear I can hear just fine—for other people, these devices are necessary, and hopefully helpful! However, they are not magical; not as the ads for health tech wearables would promise. The whole endeavor took me down a rabbit hole of wearable technology—is that still a thing?! For years, Big Tech has been trying to force smart watches and glasses upon us, but they never seemed to get out of the sports segment. Their UX and UI are impressive (using finger gestures and eye motion), but the products ooze the late-capitalist sweat of self-optimization and loneliness rather than really improving life on a societal and interpersonal level. Especially recent failures like so-called “AI companions” (ughhh)—the Rabbit r1, the Humane AI Pin or Friend come to mind—make it clear: they’re interesting design experiments, but none of these were really useful or helpful. A proper hearing aid for improved social interactions is.

For now, I decided to keep my non-cyborg body, without hearing aids. A privilege, I know! As it turns out: no one really understands anything in loud social environments; it’s not just a me-problem. Many people just don’t care so much; they drink and smoke and laugh and maybe are just less sensitive to noise. It’s fine. I’ll just have to ask you, every once in a while, to maybe say that again, please? Or I’ll just smile and nod, and stay here under my little diving bell.

How to be less awkward: I love reading Experimental History, a newsletter by psychologist Adam Mastroianni. In his text “How to be less awkward”, he dissects the phenomenon that most people think they’re great at housework but awkward at parties. Relatable!

Electric Romance: In a museum, I took a photo of a drawing from the 1740s: The electric kiss—a curious phenomenon from a time when electricity found its way into society. I made a little Instagram reel about it (it’s in German); have a look!

In the previous issue, I asked you about your language preference for this newsletter. While the results were very mixed (with a tendency to “Either is fine”), I decided to continue this dispatch in English. If you prefer German writing: I publish in German on my Christowski Blog, and oftentimes on Instagram, too. Thanks for following along! Until next time—Christoph.

PS: This issue’s title is a nudge to Park Chan-wook’s 2006 movie “I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK”. Remember that one?!

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No One Dies From Love

2026-01-15T00:00:00Z

Jump to the German version

Thoughtful four-eyed chamber-pop-enthusiast, 34M, seeks your attention! I’ve been reading and enjoying The Cut’s Personals newsletter a lot recently. Besides a little essay on “love–based mysteries,” it features hand-crafted personal ads from singles (mainly New York Magazine readers, so a fairly homogeneous group) who are looking for love. The ads are free to post (with a strict no-AI-rule!), delivered once a week to my inbox, and they are so specific: Cute bisexual journalist, 29F, seeks smart and curious person who enjoys arguing. Future mid-size city mayor seeking First Gentleman. Ambiverted urban gardener seeks open-hearted & sexually fluid 25–35M to explore NYC’s nooks & crannies. Green-eyed social worker, 30F, seeks leftist to make deep eye contact with. It’s just pure joy reading through them!

The few contact ads left in German magazines usually connect older people for companionship and romance. I still like reading them when I get the chance; however, all those younger and diverse voices in the Personals newsletter are a really refreshing change. The brevity of it all—only four to five lines per ad—makes it extra luscious! [Carrie Bradshaw voice:] I couldn’t help but wonder—is written short-form the ultimate and superior way to meet new people in a digitized world? Many of my closest friends I’ve met through weblogs, forums, and Twitter. I’d totally be up for the first text-based dating portal. It’s time!

From what my friends tell me, there seems to be an overall dating app fatigue, and the last time I tried them, their design exhausted me. There was no joy except the constant dopamine kick (which left me with an empty feeling shortly after). Meeting people online felt so much harder than meeting my future partner in the deli aisle. So, is that where we are? Digital tools empowering me for unthinkable offline activities; is that what it’s all about?! (Bad) design can change the world, after all.

Speaking of bad design: It hurts witnessing the downfall of Apple’s formerly outstanding UI design. My Mastodon bubble is outraged over the recent Creator Studio icon updates (for good reason), and this in-depth essay on the icon inconsistencies in macOS by Niki Tonsky is spot-on!

On a more positive note: 10 years ago, I sent out the first issue of this newsletter! Can you believe?! I started it in 2016 to experiment with the format, and I still enjoy it a lot. I hope you do too. Coming back to old issues is weird; some notes feel 1000 years away, and some I could have written just yesterday. You can read through the whole archive on my website.

This issue’s title is borrowed from my current earworm: Tove Lo & DJ_Dave, “No One Dies From Love”. The hopeful first line is followed by a devastating “Guess I’ll be the first”, and I assume these lyrics were written after a really bad online dating experience. They should have tried a local magazine ad instead! And maybe that’s something for you, too? Give it a try—I might. Yours truly—Christoph.

PS. I’m currently considering to write future issues in German. Would you mind? Let me know! Thank you.

Deutsche Version

No One Dies From Love

Nachdenkliche, Chamber-Pop-affine Brillenschlange, 34M, träumt von deiner Aufmerksamkeit! The Cut veröffentlicht seit einiger Zeit einen Newsletter namens Personals, in dem neben einem kleinen Essay über »love-based mysteries« auch Kontaktanzeigen zu finden sind. Ein relativ junges Publikum (primär vermutlich New York Magazine Abonnent·innen) postet dort handgeschriebene Gesuche, extrem romantisch, spezifisch und skurril: Cute bisexual journalist, 29F, seeks smart and curious person who enjoys arguing. Future mid-size city mayor seeking First Gentleman. Ambiverted urban gardener seeks open-hearted & sexually fluid 25–35M to explore NYC’s nooks & crannies. Green-eyed social worker, 30F, seeks leftist to make deep eye contact with. Wie kann man da denn nicht total neugierig und schockverliebt sein?!

Die wenigen Kontaktanzeigen, die man heute noch in deutschen Magazinen findet (Sie sucht Ihn im ZEIT Magazin, etc.) verkuppeln meist ein eher älteres Publikum gegen die Einsamkeit. Ich lese sie gern, aber der jugendliche Esprit im Personals Newsletter ist eine schöne Erfrischung. Besonders die Kürze – maximal vier bis fünf Zeilen – machen den Charme der Kontaktanzeigen aus, und [Carrie Bradshaw voice] I couldn’t help but wonder: Ist die geschriebene Kurzform die ultimative Art, in einer digitalisierten Welt neue Leute kennenzulernen?! Viele meiner engen Freund·innen habe ich über Blogs, Foren und Twitter kennengelernt, und ich glaube, die Welt ist mehr als bereit für eine textbasierte Dating-Plattform. Das verrät mir mein Entrepreneurial Spirit!

Sowieso habe ich in meinem Bekanntenkreis eine gewisse Dating-App-Müdigkeit festgestellt, und als ich sie das letzte Mal benutzt habe, fand ich ihr Design extrem überfordernd. Es hat nicht wirklich Spaß gemacht, abgesehen vom immer-währenden Dopamin-Kick. Leute über eine Dating App kennenzulernen schien mir plötzlich viel schwieriger, als meinen zukünftigen Partner einfach an der Supermarktkasse zu treffen. Ist das vielleicht einfach die ganze Idee der Sache? Digitale Tools, die so stressig sind, dass sie mich zu unmöglich geglaubten Offline-Handlungen bewegen?! (Bad) design can change the world, after all.

Apropos Design: Das Apple UI Department hat sich in letzter Zeit nicht gerade mit Ruhm bekleckert. Meine Mastodon-Bubble ist zurecht empört über die jüngsten Updates der Creator Studio-Icons, und dieser sehr ausführliche Essay von Niki Tonsky über das Icon-Wirrwarr in macOS rollt einem die Fußnägel nach oben.

Kurz noch eine kleine, schöne Hausmitteilung: Vor 10 Jahren erschien die erste Ausgabe dieses Newsletters! Can you believe?! Ich habe 2016 damit angefangen, um ein wenig mit dem Format zu experimentieren, und es macht mir immer noch großen Spaß. Ich hoffe, euch auch! Manche Ausgaben lesen sich als wären sie 1000 Jahre alt, andere könnte ich auch erst gestern geschrieben haben. Das gesamte Archiv gibt’s auf meiner Website.

Der Titel dieser Ausgabe ist mein aktueller Ohrwurm: Tove Lo & DJ_Dave, »No One Dies From Love«. Auf die hoffnungsvolle erste Zeile folgt dann direkt ein niederschmetterndes „Guess I’ll be the first“, und ich nehme an, dass dieser Text nach einer wirklich schlechten Online-Dating-Erfahrung geschrieben wurde. Sie hätten es stattdessen mit einer Kontaktanzeige in einem lokalen Käseblatt versuchen sollen! Und vielleicht ist das auch etwas für euch? Probiert es mal aus. Bis zum nächsten Mal – Christoph

PS. Würdet ihr am liebsten immer eine deutsche Version des Newsletters lesen? Lasst es mich wissen! Dankeschön.

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From a Design Perspective

2025-11-29T00:00:00Z

I just got back from one week at HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd. At the university for design, I hosted a one-week writing workshop with the task: write about an object. I asked the students to analyze a chosen item, its form, function, design, as well as their personal and emotion connection to it.

As you are reading this, try it for yourself! Take an object close to you and note down three sentences. What do you know, notice and like about it? What’s maybe wrong with it? How does it make you feel?

Here is my example: this orange fountain pen. It’s made of cheap plastic and it’s very light-weight. I bought it because I wanted to be a person who writes with a fountain pen. Turns out: I hate it and never use it. It always dries out, it scratches and smears (probably because it was cheap), I don’t have the patience for it. It’s an object that tells me that sometimes I’m trying to be someone I am not.

It was very interesting to see what students brought to class, and to read their personal object stories. Working with students is also interesting because I am not used to their way of thinking. After more than 10 years in the design industry, I cannot avoid looking at everything from a design perspective. Students are more light-hearted, so it was fun to look at the world and its details from a different angle with them.

For the workshop, I asked the class to avoid working with ChatGPT. They use it for everything everywhere all the time, and honestly, I was a bit shocked how small of a role media literacy played in the design curriculum. In the end, we all read each others essays, and the students told me they found it refreshing to read something raw, human and personal from their classmates. This made me very happy.

Next year, Sonja and I will be hosting our annual Writing = Design workshop at University of the Arts in Berlin again. I’ll keep you posted about times and dates via this newsletter and Instagram. Would love to see you (and the world from your perspective) there!

This newsletter makes a very irregular appearance as I am busy! So here’s just one little work update: I’ve teamed up with FragDenStaat to launch their project Überbrückungsfonds—a fund to bridge pending financial support from the state for non-profit organizations. My role: branding, website design, social media templates, and some cute animations. Have a look (and donate if you can and want)!

Now playing: DJ_Dave – Airglow. I saw a reel of her on Instagram, live-coding music with strudel.cc. It reminded me of dabbling with Processing back at University (I was so bad at it), so it was a joy to watch.

Until we read each other again: Have a great December, don’t let all the project deadlines grind you down.

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The Screenless Office

2025-08-08T00:00:00Z

It has been invisible at first. But over the past years, I noticed it more and more: this weird barrier between me and my computer. I spend so much time sitting in front of it! And recently, it seems like the connection between me and the work has eroded. There is a gap, or a crack, or a transparent barrier, and sometimes I can’t pass it by.

So why is that? What‘s the missing link? I still love computing, and work, and making stuff?! Is it the interface? All these open windows, but no fresh air? Is it the hardware? Am I finally ready for augmented reality goggles? Is it my crippled attention span that makes a flow state so hard to achieve? Probably a mix of it all.

This whole debacle of my work-desk-mind-disconnect reminded me of a course during my Interaction design studies at university, titled The Screenless Office. Facilitated by Brendan Howell, the task was to translate contemporary digital workstations into analog workflows and media. The class was embedded within a broader artistic project, as Brandon writes on its website:

The Screenless Office is a system for working with media and networks without using a pixel-based display. It is an artistic operating system. (…) It is constructed using free/libre/open hard- and software components, especially for print, databases, web-scraping and tangible interaction.

And, while the project is well over 10 years old, it touches on many topics that I still find interesting (and relevant) today. Like the idea of a screenless office as a counterpoint towards efficiency:

[The screenless office] is freed from the implicit social requirement that new technological projects conform to standard principles of progress, universality and efficiency.

The radical removal of screens (and therefore current interfaces) as a way to kindle ideas and creativity again:

These interfaces have become so embedded in our conception of reality that we now have a crisis of the imagination, where it is difficult to even think of anything different.

I usually find it tricky to apply an artistic idea like the Screenless Office to an everyday work setup (which clearly cannot be screenless), but it tickles a nerve: Within my social bubble, there is this constant longing for less screen time, more time outdoors, hiding under a rock, etc etc, and just seeing an utopia like this can ease the mind a bit: There’s always another way of doing things.

Three screen-free jobs I can see myself doing:

Best Boy at a film set (I’d be labeling all the cables!)
Gardener (I’d meticulously sculpt those trees)
Choreographer (I have no clue what it involves exactly, but I think I‘d be good at it)

What would be yours?

Goings-on about town (my timeline):

On Liquid Glass: I have yet to meet the one person who is excited about Apple’s new visual design language. So much has been written already, and I strongly resonated with Naz Hamid’s blog post about it: Different Think.

Frame of preference: Marcin Wichary takes us down memory lane with Apple’s system settings, from 1984–2004. I just love a well-designed niche deep-dive like that, and I, too, was frustrated when Apple ditched its iconic system settings layout in 2022. A general life advice: Find your people who are as emotionally attached to a system settings layout as you are.

Solar-powered blogging: The Low-Tech Magazine has been around for a while, but I appreciate coming back to it every now and then, as it touches on societal, technological, and sustainability topics like public bathhouses and hot water bottles.

Summer has been idle, but is planning its comeback. My (phone’s) screen time average is currently down to 3.5h/day, and I can live with that. This was, by the way, the 50th edition of this newsletter—I’ll probably do 50 more. Thanks for reading!

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The World is Outside

2025-05-06T00:00:00Z

I am starting an attempt to live a more off-line life. I’ve always been a computer person, especially an internet kid, but this place and my relationship to it has changed. And while the web still does bring me joy, it also confronts me with a lot of anger—more than it should be. So, I’m trying to relearn to behave like a human made of flesh and bones, moving in an actual three-dimensional space.

While finding non-computer activities for myself was easy (sports, drawing, going places), making connections to others and finding a community that is not merely internet-driven was something I struggled with. I’m not necessarily awkward or strange around others, but I do admit that I always found it easier to get in touch with people through the internet, through text, or images. Turns out: approaching people without any digital layers, just through talking and a smile and my face (…)—it’s a very raw experience. So many insecurities and unknowns and possibilities (both of rejection and enlightenment!). But I’m learning. And I might even be getting better. Meet me outside.

Good digital spaces

They do exist though, the good places on the internet. Sometimes, they might be tiny, narrow niches that just get uncovered by accident. I am thankful that Mastodon continues to be one of those spheres where I can find joyful digital spaces, and interesting people. Just one example: My internet friend Javier created PoetiCal, a calendar feed that shows poems and little text snippets in your calendar. You can subscribe to it for free, and hand in poems and texts yourself. Every day when I open my calendar app, I find new little blocks of joy in there. If you need to turn your calendar into a joyful digital space again, I can highly recommend it!

Human intelligence

A topic that’s hard to avoid these days is ‘artificial intelligence’, and I’ve been lurking and typing around it for weeks now. I decided that I’ll skip it, especially in this dispatch. I won’t let it take up more space than it needs. For me, it is currently not a massively helpful tool, and debating it usually just brings me more anger and frustration. It will keep doing that, as it stick around for a while, but I want to focus more on things that bring me joy: Real conversations, writing, drawing, being creative, using my brain, making connections (in my head and with others). I don’t need to obsess over it so much, and I want to practice what I preach: We don’t need artificial intelligence so much as we need human intelligence.

My next screenless adventure: I will be visiting Warsaw for an extended weekend. Any pointer towards good restaurants, galleries, and odd city lore is highly appreciated. I will report (maybe). Until then: Enjoy the spring breeze, and treat yourself to some offline time from time to time.

Post Scriptum — Now Playing / This issue’s title is borrowed from a song I found on an old mixtape. I was gifted a CD from a very offline encounter, with a hand-drawn cover: a literal depiction of the mixtape’s creator standing at a pissoir, POV, so to speak. This drawing will live in my head forever, and I am so glad I still have the mixtape: Ghosts — The World is Outside.

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Fran Lebowitz on Technology

2025-04-23T00:00:00Z

Fran Lebowitz by Christopher Macsurak (cc-by-2.0)

People love listening to people with strong opinions. That’s why we cannot get enough of Fran Lebowitz, the New York intellectual with the (seemingly) longest writer’s block ever. In a recent video interview for Harper’s Bazaar, she answers a variety of catchy questions on “the concept of Now,” as talking and having opinions seems to be her thing (and I admire her for that, no doubt!). The entertaining four-minute-conversation touches topics like fashion shows, avoidance of news, and of course, the internet.

Admittedly, I do find it a bit hilarious to ask Fran Lebowitz for her opinion on topics like internet friendships and artificial intelligence, while she clearly states that she does not own a smartphone let alone have an internet connection in her apartment. She also bluntly says that she does not understand how these things work. However, she manages to find a truth in it: “I simply am more worried about human intelligence than I am worried about artificial intelligence”—for what its worth; it will make us all dumb.

The freedom to not partake

2025-01-29T00:00:00Z

Fleeing the scene: A wood cut from the Renaissance novel Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

My illustrator friend Cristina Estanislao just removed all her art from Instagram and wrote about it on her new newsletter:

The question of whether instagram is expendable in our lives as illustrators in this day and age is a difficult one. I find it hard to quantify my personal gains from it.

After Cristina participated in one of my Writing = Design workshops a while ago, I stayed in touch with her work via Instagram. I enjoyed her drawings and seeing work updates. But while reading her recently launched newsletter, I noticed that what I really was after is her writing (surprise!); understanding her approach and her view on things. In her post, she particularly debates the question whether illustrators need Instagram as a tool to stay visible, and concludes to “exercise our freedom to not partake”:

I am convinced, however, that we do not actually need it, and that most of the artists here underestimate the power and importance of real-life connections. By making our work so readily available to everyone for free, we are selling ourselves short, and if there is one thing I have learned over the few years I’ve been working as an illustrator, is that it is my responsibility to inform of my work’s worth.

Another post/cartoon from Carson Ellis’ newsletter Slowpoke is making its rounds on Instagram, opening with the question “Should I Quit Instagram?”—especially after Meta announced to train its AI with user’s content, and the very recent shift towards a hellscape-X-like platform without content moderation (and therefore, actively promoting hate speech). Carson writes:

[Instagram is] addictive by design. It willfully destroys the mental health of children. Endless scrolling is making me stupid. It’s powered by anger and hysteria, it’s powered by (very effectively) selling me shit, everyone complains about it. Nobody seems to like it. Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole. Whatever goodness I manage to extract from instagram is despite its evil intent.

And Carson asks our collective questions:

Would I know what’s going on in the world? Would I know what’s going on with my friends? Would they know what’s going on with me? Would I disappear?

The cat in the cartoon gives us the answer:

That’s what they want you to think.

Moving away from algorithm- and ad-driven platforms like Instagram in the long run can only be a positive change. I understand that it can’t always happen from one day to the other, but seeing people understand how unreliable and ill-natured those billionaire’s platforms are, gives me hope and, honestly, a creative push. It’s fun to make stuff again! Even if the audience is smaller and the tools are less polished and we won’t get 10.000 likes and Moleskine won’t sponsor us and pay for our sketchbooks. We don’t need that. We need to make stuff. That’s the fun part.

I highly recommend following Carson’s newsletter Slowpoke, and Cristina’s newsletter Hopeless Dibujante (also published in Spanish!).

Play It as It Lays

2025-01-06T00:00:00Z

The time between years is drenched in train rides, as per usual. I scroll through my phone while the Swiss alps and lakes pass by, and reflect on the past year. Many of my plans did not cut it: I didn’t make more time to draw or go to museums. Yet again, I spent way too many summer months working. But 2024 has also been good in many aspects. So I’m not defeated—I made some adjustments. Here is, just in time for the new year and a new chapter, a little list of updates!

In December, I left Village One, the design and tech cooperative I co-founded three years ago. In those years, I learned that I love the team + work, but I don’t enjoy co-managing a company, and I don’t want the responsibility of salaries, employment contracts, and bureaucracy. The special setup of Village One—a democratic work place for ethical design and tech—is something I deeply believe in and honestly, I wouldn’t set up a small-scale company in any other way. I’ll very likely continue to work with the Villagers as a freelancer (we love each other very much still!), but I will also focus other creative projects, and my own stuff. I will make time!

Looking back at those three years, I am more than thankful for the people, and for the things we worked on together. My two biggest projects over the years were Publix (a house for journalism and democracy in Berlin), for which we built the website and helped with lots of technical and design decisions, and the Sovereign Tech Agency, for which we developed their brand architecture, visual design and website. So much stuff to be grateful for (and proud of).

Stepping out of a cooperative is a whole different game than leaving any other type of shared company—it’s very low-friction. Harry wrote a great blogpost about it in the Village One garden. As 2025 is the International Year of Cooperatives, the Village One garden is a great point to start learning about how great coops are!

So, that’s it! I’m going full-time solo again in 2025! Exciting times. However, I still have a bunch of freelance projects from 2024 to document and wrap up. Here is a brief overview:

Falter.at Redesign

My biggest freelance project from 2024 was the relaunch of Falter.at. This was so much fun! The weekly newspaper from Vienna has been mainly focused on their printed paper, but with the web relaunch, we’re putting more emphasis on their digital publishing. The Falter team was an absolute joy to work with, and making digital editorial stuff just really is my jam. Find many details in my FALTER case study.

Book Cover: “Schleichwege zur Klassik”

I illustrated Gabriel Yoran’s introduction into classical music for Insel Verlag. I love making book covers! It was a real joy to explore the topic, and to work with so many skilled and quality-obsessed people. Here is the case study with some sketches and behind-the-scenes:

Illustrations: “Verkrempelung der Welt”

And throughout the year, I illustrated Gabriel’s column for Krautreporter, in which he explores the question why products of everyday-life are getting worse and worse. The writing was very enlightening and sometimes quite complex, and it was fun to find visual metaphors for it. I finally published many of the drawings, have a look!

And now? It’s January, and after a year full of work, I am treating myself to some creative weeks for myself. But soon, I’ll be up for freelance work again!

If you’re looking for a web/ui designer, a brand designer, an illustrator or a design lecturer, feel free to drop me a line! I am especially interested in editorial and publishing projects, in ethical and open source technologies, and in design education.

Usually, the year passes by with the blink of an eye. I hope you found some positive bits in the past year, and are looking ahead into a good 2025. Another year, another round, make it count!

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The New Aesthetic

2024-11-04T00:00:00Z

Where I was. We entered the U8 train at Alexanderplatz. A person comes up to me: “Hey, aren’t you christowski from Twitter?!” It’s extremely weird and slightly uncomfortable, for two reasons: I was not famous on Twitter; I had a very small amount of followers. And secondly, I just tried to explain to my friend how my Twitter bubble worked; and how it had connected me to so many great people.

This was in 2012. Different times.

It was this weird phase where the analog and digital world had a relatively small overlap. You were a real person online, but life still happened offline, and if you were on Twitter, in Germany, in 2012, you definitely qualified as “chronically online.”

Of course, I long for that time. It had a specific tactility to it. The New Aesthetic, as James Bridle called it: Glimpses of the digital sphere, making their ways to the offline world: Pixelated sunglasses, planes with digital camouflage prints—he called it “a mood-board for unknown products.”

In 2012, I was very excited about Bridle’s research. It bridged a gap, somehow in reverse: All of a sudden, not the analog world oozed into digital spaces (remember skeuomorphic interfaces?), but the other way round! It was a visual way to observe what the future might look like—not always positive or optimistic, but peculiar and interesting.

Current developments in technology and aesthetics, such as generated and synthetic imagery, machine-made texts that clutter and clog the internet, are a newer iteration, in some way. By now, the analog world turned digital, and the digital world is oozing its debris into its own streets. Finding a clean lane in our digital world has gotten tricky.

Twitter is gone now, but the initial New Aesthetic research Tumblr blog (yes! Tumblr!) is still being updated, with more current examples. I highly recommend scrolling through it, if that’s your thing. Me, personally: As I remembered the encounter about Twitter on the train, I finally accepted that this type of digital-social fabric was lost, and closed that chapter for good. There are better online and offline spaces now, anyway. The real world still exists.

What else is happening?

Grafikmagazin — A little interview with me was published in the recent issue of the German Grafikmagazin, a publication dedicated to graphic and print design. I got to talk about writing as a design tool, which I love doing (as you might know).

Beyond Tellerrand — This week (!), Harry and I are attending the design + tech conference Beyond Tellerrand. I haven’t been in a while, but I remember it as a great place to meet indie web makers, designers and nerds offline, and I am really looking forward to it. Say Hi if you’re there, too!

(Brat) summer is over, I still have not jotted down my ultimate XCX album review, and it might not happen afterall now. Autumn has arrived, and all its golden glory is gone already. I made it count though, I hope you did too.

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Why writing still matters

2024-10-27T00:00:00Z

For the new issue of the German design magazine Grafikmagazin, I was interviewed by Patrick Marc Sommer for his column “Zukunft gestalten” (“designing the future”). I got to talk about text as a design tool, and how I got into writing in the first place. I also explained why I think it still matters! Especially in times of quickly generated, machine-made and synthetic copy, designers ought to pay attention to detail. I write:

As designers, we have two important skills: Paying attention to detail, and making the invisible visible. Writing, just like drawing, is good training for both. I believe that an insistence on precision is very important today. Our tools are incredibly fast, and at the same time we don’t want to live in a fleeting world where everything is only good-enough. Writing is a thought process to understand problems and recognize connections. If we make an effort to be precise, we gain insights that might otherwise remain hidden from us. Good wording can make our work more accessible - even to ourselves. Text is so omnipresent that we often overlook it. But our job is to look very closely.

You can get the magazine (which is beautifully produced!) online and in well-assorted German book stores.

Greetings from the shore

2024-09-12T00:00:00Z

Where I was. I am writing this as I am sitting in a kayak on the swells of the Atlantic Ocean. We’re passing by the caves of Benagil, as I decided to live my life more to the fullest. That’s how I ended up in this boat, on those waves, which are much higher than I expected. It turns out that sitting in a lightweight polyethylene vessel on top of the ocean is not dangerous—but it was more than I could handle. All of a sudden I realize how little control I have over the situation—just like fear, waves come in waves. They cannot be tamed. And so I panicked.

I’m obviously not writing this out at sea; I am here at my desk. My safe haven, so to speak. Welcome to a new issue of this little dispatch.

Paddling out there on the ocean, floating between waves, I wasn’t capable of clear thinking. Afterwards though, when waves and panic quieted down, I was in awe of this lack of control. These waves were just something that couldn’t be changed. We are so used to making things work: We can learn new tools and technology to adapt. We can shift dates in our calendars. We can pull up a sweater if we’re cold, and we can ask for help if we’re lost. But we cannot change the waves. We simply have to decide if they are for us, and if not, we better stay out of them.

I prefer my terrains to be manageable. That’s just something I learned about myself this month. I am totally aware of the fact that being a control freak is coined as bad character. Control freaks are no fun to be around. I know that! But I cannot deny that I am one. And I think that sometimes, it comes in handy in my job as a designer, too. Attention to detail; obsession over minor matters; observing and taking a closer look. I’m here for it. Somebody has to be!

Poolside read: For my vacation (the part on land, in my deckchair), I got myself the last issue of The Happy Reader. I’m so sad they don’t make it any longer, as I was the ultimate target audience for their witty writing, their miniatures and anecdotes. However, you can follow editor in chief Seb Emina’s subsequent endeavor, the newsletter Read Me.

On my own account: Next Wednesday (September 18), I am giving a short talk and exercise on Writing as a design tool (in German, I guess). If you’re in Berlin, come around: Ignite Talks #7, 19.00 – 22:00 at CoCreation Loft, Schinkestraße 9, 12047 Berlin. Get a ticket here!

From the sketchbook: In our summer writing workshop, my friend and participant Bastian wrote about this guy he saw at the train station, reading his newspaper. He called him Peter. I drew him, and now he somehow turned into us; Peter, and Bastian, and also myself.

Thank you for reading and sticking around. I hope you had a great summer. I am sad to see it go, but I am also slowly getting ready for autumn. Taking in some fresh air, watching the waves from the shore, knowing my comfort zone. I hope you know or find yours, too!

Subscribe to the newsletter: Here!

The straight line is godless

2024-08-15T00:00:00Z

After years, I revisited the Kunsthaus Wien, a museum showcasing the art of Friedensreich Hundertwasser. I wanted to come back here because I recently remembered the architecture, which I loved, and wanted to ensure that my memory didn’t fool me.

Hundertwasser was an Austrian artist, painter, and ecological activist. He was interested in nature and our connection to it and expressed his ideas through manifestos, paintings, graphics, buildings and whole city concepts. He was a firm critic of growth and capitalism, and his art was always embraced imperfections—he was actively working against straight lines in all his works. “The straight line is godless” is one of his famous quotes.

Looking at his paintings, I noticed that I don’t care much for them. I like the simplicity of his watercolors and Japanese woodcuts, but the motifs—not my vibe. However, he was able to do something that I really do struggle with:

“Hundertwasser would paint wherever he was at the time: at home or in nature, as well as in transit, in restaurants, trains, airplanes, hotels, and while visiting friends’ homes. He did not have a studio, nor did he use an easel; he laid the canvas or paper flat on a surface in front of him.”

What I really do care for, though, are his buildings. Hundertwasser had very progressive ideas of self-sustaining, ecological city planning, and some of his ideas were even realized. His buildings are well-known: colorful, wonky, with no straight lines (see above) and lots of trees and plants incorporated. The Hundertwasser house is a well-known tourist attraction, but it’s also loved to be hated: the excessive use of color, decoration, and the lack of symmetry work against so much of our learned understanding of what’s “right”.

Which was exactly what Hundertwasser was going for. Big parts of his architecture have uneven floors, which are a joy to walk on. He called even floors “machine-made and not humane.” His descriptions and elaborations on walking on uneven floors are slightly too esoteric for my taste, but I do admit that moving through the uneven rooms was interesting and somewhat grounding. It’s probably easier to implement in rooms with no furniture (like, museums?), and it certainly has some accessibility issues which were not thought through at the time.

Hundertwasser dreamt of breaking up the concrete city, being an early inspiration for the concepts like the Biotope City, and a very early advocate for sustainable city planning. Looking at the climate crisis and our heated cities now (Vienna being a great, hot example!), some of his ideas are still very contemporary, even urgently needed. I generally love odd and playful architecture, such as the buildings by Inken, Doris and Hinrich Baller in Berlin, and I think our modern cities need more of that. More wonkiness, more plants, more delightful surprises. Revisiting Hundertwasser’s works brought that back to my attention. My memory didn’t fool me, after all.

Something That Needs Nothing

2024-07-06T00:00:00Z

Where I was. At 11pm, as I sit here and write, I open a book of short stories. What I’m looking for is right in the middle of it, page 63. As I flip through the pages, I notice how they turned yellow. It feels like a really old book by now; a book I could have found in an antiquarian bookshop. It was published in 2007. As I lay it flat open under my desk lamp, the yellowed edges illuminate in a fluorescent red, almost as if the stories shine from within.

Page 63. “Something that needs nothing.”

Welcome to a new edition of this newsletter. For the new readers, a brief introduction: I’m Christoph Rauscher, a designer + writer + illustrator from Berlin. By day I make websites, and by night, I usually rest. Sleep is important! I sometimes long for the times when I was able to stay up until 2 or 3am to work on my stuff, but with a busy day job, I rarely have that energy. I love working at night though. It’s calming, and thoughts are more timid, and no one texts you. Anyway—welcome to this dispatch. I‘m glad you’re here.

A couple of weeks ago I finally launched a new iteration of my website! I haven’t written any code myself since I built the last version in 2020, and I took the chance to catch up on some CSS techniques and give the site a proper tech setup (Eleventy!). I now have a little blog for my writing (even an RSS feed!), and in the future, I will also have more detailed project pages to show my work. It’s all in the making; as Erik says: “Everything is ready; it just needs to be done.”

The most prominent and enjoyable aspect of making this site was the amount of control I had. Everything I did was intentional, and if it didn’t work as intended, I had three options: I either made it work, or I found an alternative, or I left it out and learned to accept its flaws. The only limits were defined by my skills and my time, and both of these were flexible (I could make more time and I could learn new things). The site and its design are not fancy; I am done with fancy after looking through millions of scroll-hijacked product pages and designer portfolios for days and weeks and years. I like it plain and simple.

The main goal of the site was to a) create a space for my writing, and b) build a better technical setup to easily enhance the page. Both worked out! So, please let me invite you in: Welcome to my website!

There is a project overview page (still working on that…)
There is also a complete archive of all the newsletter issues, back to 2016.
There is a section with drawings!
And a section with texts + writing projects.

Tons of stuff is missing, but as I said: It’s up to me to change that. Let’s see when that will be. Until then, I’d be curious about your thoughts and feedback. Send me a link to your website, too!

Being in control is a very precious feeling in times of algorithms, political turbulence, societal change, and economic uncertainty. I guess that’s why I always circle back to making things by hand (be it online or offline): They keep me in control, and vice versa.

What else? I have been enjoying the new Charli XCX album and the whole brat campaign a lot! From all the big pop star releases this year, this one really stands out. I’ll do a write-up on my personal blog soon!

I get a lot of positive feedback on my monthly lists, still, which really are just a glimpse into my diary. I write them in German on my personal blog, and send them out as an email, too. Sign up, if you like?

One thing that’s been calming me down is the YouTube channel of Benji: benjiplants. He elaborates on his houseplants in very much detail, and both he and his partner have the most soothing voices.

So, where was I? Oh, right. It’s July already, and how did this year move by so quickly? However it did it—it did. Summer nights are the best nights, when the world slowly calms down at 9, 10pm, and as it gets darker, the pages of our books illuminate. I’m off to read that story now. It’s from the book “No One Belongs Here More Than You” by Miranda July. Page 63. Something That Needs Nothing.

No more art on Instagram

2024-06-09T00:00:00Z

From June 26 on, Meta will update its privacy policy to train its AI tools on user data. Instagram and Facebook users in the EU and UK can opt-out of that, through a dubious and somewhat wonky request form. I mainly use Instagram to share my illustrations and writing, and quite frankly, I don’t want Meta to use this data to train their language models. So I opted out.

To be honest though, I’m not sure if that really is of any use. I can’t believe that they haven’t scraped that data yet; they sure have. But the whole discussion, yet again, opens a bigger question of whether we should use platforms like Instagram in the first place (the answer is: No).

It has never been a good idea to upload our art and writing to Meta-owned or big-tech platforms (be it Instagram, Pinterest, Behance, and the likes; basically anything of larger scale that is largely VC-funded at jumps on the AI train). With Meta now feeding our work to large language models to generate replicas of it (and do whatever other stupid things), it’s time to finally drop it. It sucks.

I am not a big artist on Instagram. I do not have a huge following or exposure there. But I have a sense of ethics, and I really hate what big tech is doing. Reflecting on Instagram and how it changed over the years—it really does more harm than good (to me).

I know that I can “glaze” my images and make them unusable for AI, at least for now. I might do that for some of my works, I think it’s an important tool and research project. Honestly though, I don’t want to use Instagram in the first place. It is, in big parts, a very hostile environment. Do you sometimes read the comments there? It’s wild!

I’m aware that we cannot stop the AI craze of big corporations, they will enshittificate the web despite some European artists opting out of their data policies. They don’t care if I’m on their platform. They probably already got all my data anyway.

But I care about myself, and my work. We don’t have to be part of these social networks. What has been true since decades; since Social Media started, still is: The only right place to show your work online is your own website. Learn how to make and host one. It’s not that difficult. Send out a newsletter (subscribe to mine!). Own your tools. It feels really good.

The Long Hard Stupid Way

2024-04-10T00:00:00Z

Coordinates: I am typing this—again!—on a train, as this seems to be the only place for me to unplug from the world and jot down some words. As night falls, one very orange strip of light just disappeared behind the horizon, somewhere between Germany and Austria. Here we are.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the value in my work, and the current times I work in. In my day job I make websites; tons of buttons and rounded corners and modules and typographic pairings and responsive grid layouts. A significant other part of my job is writing proposals and documentation for these websites, and communicating with the people they are made for—clients, and luckily also the viewers and users of these sites.

What is it that adds value to these websites? Why are they worth making, viewing, using? I recently came back to a lecture from Frank Chimero from 2012, where he talked about doing things “the long hard, stupid way”. Ultimately, the talk was about making an effort, and about gift-giving.

So, what makes a good gift? It is personal. Its value is subjective; maybe it sparks joy, or adds ease to the recipient’s daily life. It is made with care and thought, and the less care and thought go into it, the less personal it becomes. I liked Frank’s idea of seeing the digital tools we make as gifts for others. Inefficiency—or doing things the long hard stupid way—can become an advantage, even a feature, if you think of it as a gift. A thing someone—you or I—cared for makes the world (the internet!) a more precious place. And isn’t that what we all need right now?

The year has moved into April already, and I hope this email finds you well. Here are some work updates:

Village One + Freelance

In July, Village One—our small design + tech cooperative—celebrates its 2nd birthday. It’s been a great and wild ride so far! From April on, however, I split my time between juggling projects for Village One and doing more freelance work for myself again. I want to write and draw more, and longed for a less repetitive day-to-day-life. Let‘s see how that goes!

Writing = Design Workshop

Just like in recent years, Sonja and I will host another Writing = Design workshop at University of the Arts this summer. From July 22—26, we will explore writing as a design tool. You can learn more and sign up here; would love to see you there!

Illustrations for Krautreporter

My friend Gabriel Yoran writes a great column for Krautreporter about the “enshittification” of the world: Why do products get worse and worse, whilst everything was promised to get better?! I am illustrating the series, have a look here (German).

As the train approaches my destination, it emptied out almost completely. I love these quiet evenings on a softly rumbling train carriage, so peaceful and focussed. I hope you had a good start into the year so far. Daylight has been saved, spring is here, we made it!

The Muse visits during the act of creation

2024-03-21T00:00:00Z

I recently stumbled upon a LinkedIn post by tante, commenting on the current hype of AI, more precisely, on the a recent incident at SXSW 2024, where a euphoric reel about AI and its future has been booed by the audience. I quite liked his thoughts and accusations towards the AI hype:

Because where are all the promised gains in efficiency? Where is the better world? All we see is a wasteful technology that's propped up by VC and Microsoft money that's easily detected as a way to further centralize our digital infrastructures while laying our digital spaces to waste.

And further:

Some systems labeled "AI" today will stick around. Especially the non-generative stuff (for image processing, object detection, pattern recognition in data streams, heuristics to detect errors in work products, etc.) but a lot of the #genAI field is just spam creation. And it's actually making some - especially creative things - harder to achieve.

The overall promise of “artifical intelligence” and generative AI being creative and supporting creative work, made me suspicious in the first place, and tante has the right quotes and references for my scepticism:

Famous film critic Roger Ebert once said “The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before.” and the booing is people coming back to realizing this simple fact. You are not creative and then create something, you become creative by working on something, creativity is a byproduct of work.

I will tell this to all my students and colleagues and friends and anyone else, too. This quote by Roger Ebert is the ultimate hall pass to be weird, to do something unexpected, to surprise yourself and others. Test your boundaries, dip your toes into the unknown. It’s what adds joy to life and work. Joy is a huge part of creative processes—and outcomes.

In this way AI is deeply dehumanizing: Making the spaces and opportunities for people to grow and be human smaller and smaller. Applying a straitjacket of past mediocrity to our minds and spirits.

My first Mac

2024-01-25T00:00:00Z

The Mac turns 40! And as Marcel and other people on Mastodon are sharing their first Macs, I’m going to do that too. It really was a turning point for me.

I remember lurking around the iPod at Hertie (a big shopping center in Munich). Back in 2004, it wasn’t common in Germany to find Apple products in regular stores. I was thirteen years old, and started to get interested in design and tech, and as Marcel writes, there seemed no way around Apple products.

I got an iPod, but a Mac was still too expensive. Eventually, I got the chance to buy a second-hand PowerMac G3 from a family friend. It was my first Mac! It ran MacOS 8 and had all Adobe products installed.

But I wasn’t interested in Mac OS 8. I wanted Mac OS X! Panther! So I bought and installed it; it was slow and not really usable, but I loved it. Just like I loved the machine—the blue translucent plastic, the handles, the hatch to access the motherboard. Despite its slowness, it was so much fun to use iPhoto and iMovie and the likes on it.

My “real” first Mac was the first white Intel MacBook. It ran MacOS X Tiger, and I had so much trouble with it. It was broken constantly, I needed to have the motherboard replaced twice, and there were still hardly any Mac sellers in my area back then. It didn’t bother me. It made school so much more fun; using Keynote and iLife and making little websites on it. I was such a weirdo running around with this alienating piece of tech.

I also still really love the plastic cases of the mid-2000s Macs; they feel less precious and were nice to touch and use. I wish my current MacBook Air was built like that.

Anyway. Every once in a while, I get to use a Windows PC and I am still fascinated how different it is, how much wonkier it feels, and how odd the interfaces are. Mac OS Aqua really was the key reason to get a Mac for me—I was drawn to the glossy, whimsical interfaces and the product’s form factor. I still am.

As I got older and Macs just turned into a tool I needed for my work (and life, I guess), I started buying old Apple stuff on eBay, just to fulfill some teenage dreams. I don’t hoard Apple hardware excessively, but I keep some things around that I just love and cannot get rid of. One example is the 2003 Apple Cinema display with its acrylic case. The product design, inspired by a painter’s easel, just keeps delighting me. It’s not usable anymore with my M1 MacBook Air, but I loved writing my Master’s thesis on it in 2018.

My current setup as of 2024, besides the MacBook Air, is a 2019 iMac with a huge 27″ inch retina screen. It’s great to use, but as it stands on my desk, taking up all that space, it lacks joy, at times.

Sitting on my couch, I’ve been staring into a wall of code for a couple of hours already. I’m trying to reorganize my website and digital outlets, updating my body of work; drawings and web design projects and writing. Learning new tools is hard, and I am not a programmer, and I have no patience. But I have a plan!

While re-shuffling all those digital things, I was also trying to bring some clarity into my writing and newsletters and digital profile. Usually, I do not believe in separating professional and private things online: I am who I am, and I don’t post personal stuff that doesn’t belong on the internet anyway. But I found it tricky; my blog and social media posts often are written in German, which excludes all non-German-speaking audiences—specifically, the design and tech community.

So, regarding this publication’s future: I want to circle this newsletter back to its design writing roots. The earliest issues (2016!) were explorations on fake marble, filter bubbles and PIBA-DIBA. I will not be the 500st design newsletter in your inbox; this letter will stay personal and diary-like; it will include life and work updates as well as musings, but it will be my professional writing outlet.

If you’re German-speaking and interested in my monthly lists (no work stuff, just play!), you can sign-up for my monthly newsletter Fakten und Mirakel (“Facts and miracles”) here.

As my newsletter service TinyLetter finally, after years of neglect, is being shut down, I will move to Buttondown, a more independent, light-weight service. I found Mailchimp and other marketing tools to not be suitable (this is not a marketing email!), and Substack is, besides its ugly design, also questionable in many other ways. The more aware I become regarding my software usage (just like consuming food and buying clothes), the more difficult it gets. On a positive note, I am enjoying my consciousness, and making well-elaborated decisions. Most of the time, at least.

Looking back at 2023: I worked a lot! With our coop studio Village One, we did some fantastic projects: we designed and built the new website for DemocracyNext, an action institute exploring democratic citizen assemblies. We rebranded and built a website for the Sovereign Tech Fund, who invests in digital infrastructure. And we are building and designing all digital outlets for Publix, a new house for journalism in Berlin.

Being involved in projects I care about really makes me happy. What was missing this year was time and space for my own projects; drawing and writing and maybe teaching. I will make room for this in 2024. So if you have a project or teaching gig or workshop in mind: Let me know!

Carving out time for personal work is especially difficult if your personal aspirations are so similar to your work setup: Mostly spent at a desk, mostly alone, thinking and trying out things. I find it hard to justify all this alone-time. But in the end: My time is mine, and that’s how it should be, no?

For a couple of months, there’s been a little post-it sitting on my iMac’s screen frame. It says “If you want to be a writer: write”. I haven’t written much since, but it keeps me alert. And it counts for many things: If you want to be an artist: make art. If you want make progress: act. If you want to rest: switch off your phone. If you want to be a writer: write.

I hope you can leave the year at peace with yourself and others, and are eager for a new one—2024 is just around the corner. Another year, another round, make it count.

Manifestations of Romance

2023-11-25T00:00:00Z

Berlin, 6:25 pm, new note: I am typing this in iA Writer’s “focus mode”, a tool that highlights only the very current section that is being edited. I never use it because focus, what even is that?! Haven’t heard from her in years. And you, dear reader, haven’t heard from me and this letter in months, either, so: Welcome back.

Some smaller towns in Italy have so-called “Necrologi.” Big analog boards in the center of the town, or at relevant pedestrian crossings, that originally announced the passing of a parishioner. When walking through the cities around Amalfi coast this summer, I saw them. Posters informed passers-by about recent deaths, yes, but also about upcoming celebrations, concerts and the town’s goings-on. They were not advertisement billboards; they were very local, specific platforms for communities to share events of interest.

The famous Parisian bookshop Shakespeare and Company has been cultivating a wall of analog notifications for ages. On little paper notes, people share messages, stories, call-outs for other visitors to dig through and find each other. True love may or may not be found in those layers and layers of paper, but the board itself is a manifestation of romance that visitors long for. Paper as a real connection to a stranger.

And also: Do you remember BVG Augenblicke? Berlins public transport system, BVG, used to have a digital platform where people who shared a moment on the train—a smile, a gaze, a brief conversation with a stranger—could find each other again. Oftentimes, secondary romance is to be avoided (as it turns out less exciting as expected), but having the tools—both digital and analog—to give it a chance; it was magic. Technology was magic!

As a true millennial, I stopped believing in digital tools as true connectors for a while now. But I don't mind it too much. I'm just over it, really. Like Jason Parham writes in his essay on wired.com: “It's not that I consider myself too old for social media, or the pace and attention it requires. I’m just less interested in being everywhere these days.” Same, really. I still enjoy posting to my Instagram story from time to time or write a blog post when I have something to share or need to feel productive. It’s ok to realize that the magic has vanished. Maybe it’s to be found offline, on public notice boards and in book shops and on train rides and through the people I already know. Or within a little community of readers and friends like you—thanks for sticking around!

The last issue of this newsletter was sent in May. Summer passed, the world still spins, sometimes and recently so furiously that it has been hard to manage. I hope you do, somehow.

One of my coping strategies: I keep writing my monthly lists. They keep up the feeling of being creative, or at least productive; it's some output that comes around every month. If you’re interested in what’s happened during my summer, find some notes from June, or September, or simply scroll through this blog. I’m planning on sending them out as a separate newsletter in the future because who visits weblogs these days, really. I'll keep this letter as an English format, though.

How was your summer? Where are you right now? I’d love to hear from you: What’s been keeping you spinning? I hope you’re well!

Dogs, Beans, and Red Badges

2023-05-11T00:00:00Z

I’m currently on a train back to Berlin. My sparse data plan is already used up, and as the train’s wifi is not working, I am treating myself to five hours of flight mode. Over the past months or maybe even years, I became extremely sloppy with answering text messages. The little red badges on my phone’s apps kept multiplying exorbitantly—until I finally deactivated them. I used to be on top of my game and very active on social media, eager to connect to people and keep digital conversations going. I found it exciting, and I gained energy from the digital exchange. But looking at those 15 unread WhatsApp messages, 10 long Instagram direct messages awaiting a reply, and an email app very far away from “inbox zero”, I have to admit that I am not that person on top of their game anymore. I can’t keep up.

But I also have to say: I don’t want any of it. I want to be at the bottom of things. Endless conversation streams are almost as exhausting as endless meetings, endless classical concerts, and endless scrollable feeds. I prefer things to have a beginning and an end. A narrative, so to speak.

Just as I struggle with keeping a tidy inbox, I feel exhausted keeping up with current debates on technology. After Elon Musk bought Twitter and sent it down its hell ride, I basically left the platform. I do not miss it; those timelines and “digital products” in general have lost their joy and meaning for me. Therefore, I missed most of the early and heated debate on ChatGPT. I do find its rise interesting, to some extent. But I do not care about computer-generated vocals, or artificial radio hosts, or machine-written movies. There’s no joy in that; we’ll get bored by it quickly. I am more curious about how people and states will learn to live with these inflammatory tools, and I want to see them bring an actual positive impact to the world. Haven’t read much about that yet. Until then, I’ll mute the buzzwords. We still are in control of who and what we pay attention to—at least for now we are.

On dogs. When spending time with the dog, I remembered the On Being podcast episode with artist and illustrator Maira Kalman. She describes dogs in the most beautiful way: “They’re heroic, and they’re comic at the same time, which I guess is my favourite way of looking at things.” In her book Beloved Dog, she writes: “They are constant reminders that life reveals the best of itself when we live fully in the moment and extend our unconditional love.”

On beans. I’ve been enjoying Kerry Cunningham’s newsletter Circle Back so much recently! She’s so funny! I loved this issue about Anish Kapoor’s new and sad Bean sculpture in New York from a while ago. Subscribe here.

On the blog: I keep writing my monthly lists. They’re a good processor of life’s events. Read all lists, or specifically January 23, February 23, March 23, April 23.

Briefly noted: My friend/colleague/accomplice Sonja and I will host our annual Writing = Design workshop at University of the Arts in Berlin this summer. It’s one week (August 7 – 11) of writing and exploring text, and if this sounds like it could be something for you: It is! English language, everyone is welcome, find all the details here.

I hope you had a great start into the year and are enjoying some of the much needed spring sun that has been appearing every once in a while recently. Watch out for big red notification badges, turn them off, even, and go for a little walk. Greetings from within flight mode.

Books from Boxes

2022-12-26T00:00:00Z

I am sitting in between towers of moving boxes, filled with my clothes, my books, my stuff – just so much stuff that needs to change coordinates with me. I am moving! Well, I did—that’s what I spent the whole November and December with. Packing things up in boxes is a cathartic process. I wasn’t able to get rid of as many things as I wished, but eventually, I took this as a sign that I am already surrounded by the things I love, and I want to keep them. Ok, most of them.

Finding space for all this life within a new place is a long and exhausting (and sometimes also expensive) process, and every once in a while, I need to remind myself that this is all fun and I am doing it for me and I finally get to decorate and design everything exactly the way I want to. I cannot help but wonder: Is it more difficult to chose a wall color when you're a visual thinker; an aesthete? Shouldn’t it be easier? Maybe I am just a slow decision maker, and that’s ok, too. I’ll get there.

As 2022 comes to an end, let’s briefly look at the hard facts and feelings:

I moved into a new apartment, which was an unbelievable (the apartment is perfect!) and stressful (I have not done this in quite a while!) process. However, I am here now, lurking out of all those boxes that still need to be unpacked. Home makes me very happy and thankful.

I had several teaching jobs in 2022: Web design at Merz Academy, my annual Writing = Design workshop week with Sonja, and a whole semester’s course at UdK on writing about illustration. All these jobs were completely different, but I got the chance to find out that a) I want to do more of it, and b) I developed a better understanding for how my style of teaching and working with students could work. Now, let’s see where it fits in.

In July, we founded our cooperative: Village One. Since then, we’ve been talking to other coops, thought a lot about our company approach, and obviously did some work, too: For example, we helped Neue Narrative to rebrush their website, we teamed up with Cobot to do a big research project, and we work closely together with Publix, a new house for Journalism in Berlin; building their digital infrastructure. I definitely enjoy the variety, but I sometimes miss the office buzz you normally get with a company. Working remotely and alone at home as a freelancer is fine, but teaming up with others feels different when you meet at the kitchen table. Anyway, a lot is planned for 2023 with Village One; follow us if you're curious. We're also looking for a designer to join the team!

I continued writing my little column for the form design magazine: This year, I wrote about the cloud (295), desktop publishing (296), buttons (297) and phone sex (298). You can see some videos about the columns on my Instagram, and buy the magazine online.

Both writing and drawing exercises felt a little thin this year. I miss it, but other big projects occupied my desk. However, I did write my monthly diary recaps on the blog (find them here) and I was involved in two book projects: For Lorenz Meyer’s “Kreuzfahrt durch die Republik” I drew cover + portraits, and for Gabriel Yoran’s new Genussbuch »Wenn das Leben dir Zitronen gibt, mach Dressing draus« I drew the cover and some spots. Next year, I want to make something just for myself. More depth, less instagram.

What else? I travelled places! I am not a traveller, it makes me nervous and I find it so exhausting that I forget about the beauty and the new input I bring home with me. I went to Vienna (I love you!), I spent my time in pools and restaurants in Greece, I went to Rome and ate all the things. It was nice. Let’s say it like that: I am not into traveling, but I do enjoy a nice vacation. Find me at the pool.

As December’s days rush by so quickly, another year is put to the archives. Boxes, archives, folders – how are these the symbols of my year?! Sorry that this letter turned into some work-focussed yada yada, with little wisdom and no new year’s predictions from within my crystal ball. Current times are so wonky, I decided to avoid outlooks and be more here, in this tower of boxes—in this slice of air and time.

I haven’t written this letter in a while, but it feels good to be back at it. How has your year been? What comes next? Send me a reply, if you like, or we’ll find each other in other ways in the next year; it’s almost there. Another year, another round, make it count.

It Takes A Village

2022-07-03T00:00:00Z

Coordinates: It’s half past midnight and I just switched the light back on to start typing this. It was one of those situations we all know: As soon as you put your body to rest, your mind starts wandering, walking, sometimes running. So did mine – and another issue of this newsletter was long overdue! So here we are: 0:24am. Welcome back!

Log book: Since the last newsletter, six months passed by. I kept true to my belief that one should only write something when there is something to tell, and the last months have been so full of work and projects and business that I didn’t know how to make shareable sense of everything. That’s why I sticked to the simple format of lists: I made one for every month of 2022 so far, and if you understand German, you can read them all in the blog. However, I actually do have some bigger news I want to share with you:

I am co-founding a company! For the last two years, I’ve been enjoying my freelance life and all the freedom that comes with it, but I've been missing exchange and tackling bigger, more relevant topics with a team of smart people. Luckily, I found these people, I've been knowing them all along. For a while, we've been talking about how we want to work, what we want to work on, and how we can build a framework that provides a flexible, democratic work environment to design and build digital products.

That’s why we decided to found a cooperative: Village One. ✨ We signed all the paperwork on Friday, and it is all very exciting!

Why cooperative though? As it is owned by its workers, the format truly ensures that everyone can have a say and steer the company towards the right direction. The world and our society are battling so many crises at the moment, and as much as designers like to tell themselves that "design will save the world" – it won’t, I’m sorry, not until we use our energy for the right things. Overcome capitalist thinking; putting the planet over profit; redistribute privilege; foster a calmer, better society; online and offline – that’s what we aim for. It sounds utopian, yes, but we have to start creating the right frameworks to steer the narrative. Harry Keller, one of my co-founders, puts it very well in his newsletter (which I highly recommend):

For a long time I’ve felt powerless and unsure what I can contribute here, but over the past months I’ve sat down with a few thoughtful people and we’ve sketched out a new kind of workplace. A place that embraces emergence over hierarchical planning, a place that’s owned by all its workers, embracing diversity and new perspectives, which is democratically governed, feminist, anti-racist, curious and humble, choosing cooperation over competition, operating as a distributed team with asynchronous workflows, enabling maximum flexibility for its people, empowering them to live the life they want.

At the moment, we’re a small team, but we’re very excited to get going with our first projects, build our own site, and get to know more people (maybe you?) that are interested in our idea. I’d be happy if you followed along; on twitter, on our mailing list, or just by reaching out (simply by replying to this e-mail).

You can read even more about it on our Village One site (more content to come!) and in Harry’s recent newsletter.

We’re still busy getting everything up and running, but I wanted to have you all aboard already and share the news with you (and also the reason that kept me so busy during the past months). So, what else happened?

I wrote more columns for form design magazine about digital nostalgia: One about the Cloud, and the most recent one about Desktop Publishing. Ordering the printed magazine is highly recommended; the form team always manages to add a big variety of perspectives towards one topic; most recently: Generations.

During this summer semester, from April to July, I teach a course at University of the Arts Berlin. Together with the students, we work on a book about the University’s illustration class, and I teach writing techniques. Mark your calendars: The "UdK Rundgang" is on July 22–24.

Also: You can still sign up for my one-week writing workshop Writing = Design together with Sonja Knecht from August 8–12, 2022, in Berlin. I’m already excited for it, it’s going to be fun!

On the blog: I’ve been listening to OTTO, Belle & Sebastian and Charli XCX a lot, I wrote about the annoyance of queues in Berlin, and about weird drinking glasses.

Ok. That was a lot, take some deep breaths now. Six months of stuff, but I’ll let you go enjoy the sunny weather now. I hope you’re all well, savoring summer, soaking up the sun!

I Need a Camera to My Eye

2021-12-31T00:00:00Z

Sitting on the train back home to Berlin, after a week at my parent’s home: the idea of my own pillow, my own coffee machine, my own trip to the super market makes me cherish the fact that I am a grown-up; that I only slip into the child’s role for a couple of days a year. I am very thankful for having a family that I can visit over the holidays—we do not argue about politics or vaccines or the Christmas menu. But I am also thankful that I have a life of my own, a life I can design the way I please. That fact that I can do things differently.

As the cities pass by the train window, I flip through my phone’s camera roll. The past year felt longer than usual; whatever happened in the beginning of 2021 appears to be two, three years ago. What is left of it? My brain can’t slice the year up into months anymore, everything gets blurry, and a couple of snapshots throughout the year help to cluster moments and events and ups and downs. What is a good way to make sense of your personal past? I have a messy way of keeping track of life: During the year I switch between various notebooks and note-taking apps, write lists and memories, organize a digital calendar, but everything is all over the place and hard to delve through. As a visual thinker, my camera roll really is the one place that keeps everything connected: A quick glimpse into the past that holds feelings, places, and faces. I wish I’d be less awkward in taking pictures—after all, they’re my extended memory. The smartphone itself doesn’t make me a cyborg; the camera roll does.

Then again: I am still a hopeless romantic when it comes to hand-writing, diaries and notebooks. For 2022, I bought a thick daily calendar, with the great intention to jot down one or two thoughts every day. Inward and outward looking, getting closer to what happens, finding my own language for everyday life, and making it my own.

2021 wrapped: I designed a poster for Berlinale Talents. Together with Gabriel, I published a small fun book. I’ve been to the sea side, and I walked on the frozen canal. I lived off orange cake and ravioli and fancy lemonades. I wrote a lot less than I wanted, but my blog is alive and well—I still wish we would all go back to blogging and ditch Instagram and its lousy companions. I discovered great new music; just recently: Haruomi Hosono and Gilligan Moss. I read 16 books, and wrote four columns for form design magazine.

As for 2022: All will continue. Make it yours as much as you can. Another year, another round, make it count.

I Am at War with My Time

2021-10-30T00:00:00Z

I am standing in front of a photograph of Cate Blanchett; a film still by Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto” video installation. The portrait is huge, Cate’s cold gaze is staring at me. Underneath it, in small serif letters, the sentence: “I am at war with my time.”

Rosefeldt borrowed that sentence from artist and architect Lebbeus Woods, who wrote it in 1993. Originally, that sentence was only introducing a long list of things he was at war with: “I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms.”

Battles. I often find myself residing in fixed and frightened forms, incapable of moving forward, weighed down by fear, uncertainty and an annoyingly low level of self-esteem. I am at war with my time, as in: it always feels like it’s running out; I need to do more, faster, better, louder; my work needs to be more precise, more recognizable, more in general; even my personality needs to be more decisive, more sharpened, more consistent.

To get out of that sword fight, Autumn is a great month to start reflecting the year. What has happened so far? What was achieved, what was done for the first, what for the last time? Which battles were won, which were lost? I sat down at my desk, wrote a list of all the projects I’ve finished this year. I rated them by categories like ‘Fun’, ‘Pride’, ‘Revenue’. Luckily, most cards showed a positive score, and the ones that didn’t were already archived. I’ve learned my lessons, let’s move on.

Sculptures. Summer was so full of work that I was grateful for a month off, visiting a handful of art museums around Germany. I saw Cate Blanchett’s portrait, but I also really enjoyed looking at sculptures by Hans Arp in Hannover and the œuvre of Beuys in Bonn. I saw the two Gutenberg bibles (the oldest books printed with movable type) in Mainz and I stumbled upon a long-lost book about dreams in an antique book shop in Heidelberg. I drew some drawings of the cities I visited and posted them on Instagram.

Slow Mornings. Back at my desk, I enjoy taking some slow time to get my head started in the mornings. Just me and my notebook. Austin Kleon’s demonstration of his slow use of the Pentel Brush pen—a pen I really love as well—was a great inspiration for that ritual.

Music. Black Marble released a new album, Fast Idol, which is just as perfect as their 2019 release Bigger Than Life. I’ve also been listening to a lot of DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ, to Red Hearse, and to German rapper Haiyti. And to my annoying neighbor with their most recent passion: The bagpipe.

A Personal Note. My friend Gabriel Yoran and I worked on a small book that will be published on November 9th. I am very excited about it! “Warum heißt es Traum und nicht Memoryschaum” (“Why is it called dream and not memory foam”) is a collection of playful (German) language twists, which I illustrated. The book is published by the great Frohmann Verlag, and you can pre-order it directly there or at your favorite book store. It makes a great gift for people who love language and drawings.

I am at war with my time. It’s my birthday soon, another decade hits; and I recently found an old (now private) blog post from October 2011: “What my life will be like in 10 years”. It was a fantasy about me being super independent, living in my own nice space in the middle of Berlin, surrounded by great people. With some distance, I realize that lots of these 10-year-old wishes turned true, and some things happened I couldn’t even dream of back then. Maybe the long run isn’t always that important. As Woods wrote in his manifesto: “I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then ‘melt into air’.” Choose your battles wisely.

At the Bottom of Everything

2021-07-30T00:00:00Z

After the weather has been indecisive for the whole weekend, the rain finally comes down on this Sunday evening. I am sitting here, in my sparsely lit living room, on the couch, in summer shorts, sipping ice tea. Apparently, these 20 degrees Celsius are what makes our summer this year, and whatever, I’m fine with it.

This dispatch has been on a little break. After the last letters, I felt that my writing had become too whiny, and I wasn’t sure whether I actually have anything of relevance to tell. And, reflecting on the media landscape of the past years, I believe: If you don’t have anything to say, then don’t say anything. We need a slower, calmer internet; we need to be more selective in what we ingest — and as artists, writers and publishers, I think we can be more precise and selective in what we publish and share, as well. I know that all the social media experts will tell you that you’d need to publish one post, three instagram stories and a newsletter each and every day, but honestly: No. You don’t need to. No one needs to read or see it, either. The world won’t spin faster from the noise that we make – it will just cause nausea.

During the past months, one line kept coming back into my head. Donald E. Knuth, professor emeritus at Stanford University, writes: “Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things.” I think this goes for all social media that came after e-mail, too, and it’s exactly where I want to be: At the bottom of things. Here on my sofa, with the rain outside, reading weblogs and making little websites and delving through the vast amount of printed magazines I buy but never get to read.

A brief note on goings-on in my life and ministry: A couple of months ago (the last dispatch was sent out in April!), I seemed to have unlearned to say the word “No”, and by now I'm wading through piles of unfinished work. Some of it has just been completed though: I designed an innovation report on Synthetic Media for the German broadcaster WDR (read it here; in German), and I wrote another episode of my technology column for form magazine, about screen savers (buy it here). More is to come, and I'm excited to tell you about that soon. Until then, here is a collection of things I enjoyed online:

Seen on TV: My twitter bubble is already full of praise, but I want to stress it yet again: Ted Lasso on Apple TV is a great show, probably the best I’ve seen this year. I have zero interest in soccer, but the show is just a great mixture of fun and emotions, with a refreshing take on male characters.

Thoughts from the home office: How can work environments change once people are required to go back to their cubicles? Will it be required at all? What’s needed to achieve sustainable remote work, asks Cal Newport in the New Yorker.

Reading poetry: The &SHY; magazine is an inspiring take on digital and interactive poems. The issue Mistaking Glass For Skin and Hannah Schraven’s poem forever dolphin love II are definitely worth your time.

Maybe I will find a way back to writing this letter more regularly. Or maybe I will stick to the rule to only publish when I feel something is worth publishing. Until then, I will try to stay at the bottom of things. I hope you can find a way to manage the noise, too.

The Sound of 7 o’Clock

2021-04-03T00:00:00Z

Almost one year ago, in April 2020: I’m sitting in my reading chair at the window, the iPad on my lap, flipping through a New Yorker issue. David Remnick’s comment on the city’s situation, overwhelmed by the chaos the pandemic had been causing. He describes how the city applauds the essential workers at 7pm every evening (one year later, this feels even more like a farce). I cry over the text, it’s a lot. In April 2020, everything is a lot.

12 months later, we’re still here. The applause silenced, obviously. My routines, like reading magazines before work, also fizzled out. The home office gym classes, the Instagram live dances, the eagerness to cook something new – it all got swallowed by commonplace. The internet, a place I was always happy to spend time, also got boring: The dances have inhabited Instagram, too, and Twitter is overshadowed by arguments and horrific stories, eating up my soul. Paul Bokowski puts it into the right words (I quickly translated): “[…] It may be vital for me to strive for less psychological toxicity. That is, to do something that actually goes against my nature: to deliberately close my eyes. Not from the problem itself, but from its multimedia symptoms. […] The only thing that keeps me happy these days is reading and writing.”

On words. As much as I like design as a practice, I often struggle talking about it. I want to describe a certain phenomenon, but cannot find the right term for it. Recently, Malte pointed me to Evan Collin’s are.na boards – his (mostly architectural) research provides words for everything! For example: Utopian Scholastic, Gen-X Corporate or The Global Village Coffeehouse (you’ll know it when you see it).

Another term I encountered and liked: Corporate Memphis! Author and designer Rachel Hawley analyzed the illustration style we’ve all seen and internalized during the past years of using digital services: oddly-shaped humans with exaggerated limbs, roller-skates and cheerful colors. Read about how this style is made-to-scale to tell a corporate fairy tale about big tech companies, and how it might evolve in the future.

What else? I’ve been blogging during the past months (mainly in German). I wrote about the sky, about oysters, about my hands, and about the the guy who moved into the ground-floor apartment.

Quietly, this little e-mail dispatch turned 5 years old. Thanks for reading along! You can find the first issue from 2016 here, but I rather recommend you last year’s letter on temperature guns. In it I wrote: “a lot of things just feel a bit weird right now, right?” The right now part turns 12 months these days, and well, it’s still a lot. But at least we’ve managed it through the dark winter, so let’s stay positive. What other options do we have?

Where You Find Me

2021-01-30T00:00:00Z

Berlin is preparing for the snowstorm. It’s awaited for Sunday, temperatures are supposed to go below -10°C, and we’re expecting up to 30 centimeters of snow. This city is not used to it anymore; the last time I worried if my shoes were winter-proof was about ten years ago. But sitting in my apartment, as I’ve basically done for the past year, I’m excited for it. I’m excited for the sound of the snow, the silence of city, the brightness and the crisp air.

While I started the year with a big slice of uncertainty, January took care of things itself, and by now, lots of them are clarified. There’s enough work to do, and I’ve accepted that my motivation oscillates between “I’ll make this Wednesday a Sunday and stay in bed” to “LET’S GET THIS DONE”. As we all know, January and February are the hardest months to get through—mood, productivity and serotonin are on their lowest levels. But we are already halfway through! You can find motivation in anything if you’re desperate. And if you can’t, it’s also okay to just stay in bed from time to time.

Not much else noteworthy happened in January. And as we’re going to be covered unter 30 centimeters of snow at any given moment, things might stay that way a little longer. So here is a short list:

I’ve been listening to the new The Notwist album on repeat the past week. It‘s eery and gloomy; perfectly composed for this weird time. My favorite song is Into Love / Stars, but Where You Find Me is also great and a very typical Notwist song.
If you’re rather in need of uplifting music, give the new Baio album “Dead Hand Control” a spin (e.g. on Spotify). It’s catchy and weird and fun to listen to.
In case we’re not going to be completely snowbound, the Berlinische Galerie published three audio tours guiding you along remarkable 1980s architecture in Berlin. For me as a big Baller-enthusiast, this will be the perfect companion for snowy Sunday walks.
For the readers who are more into nature than architecture: In this Twitter thread, I received some great recommendations on where to meet animals in Berlin these days.

Animals can be great mood boosters during winter. Unfortunately I only get to see my friends’ and colleagues’ pets via Zoom, but the decision to get a four-legged flatmate is getting closer and closer. Just like the snowstorm! Stay safe, stay at home, and if you want: Stay in bed.

We’ll be Alright When I Rub My Eyes

2020-12-31T00:00:00Z

On magic: It’s March 2020 and I’m on a video call with a friend. We’re all new to this whole stay-at-home situation, and she had offered to lay her Tarot cards for me. She’s using playing cards of Magic: The Gathering, just to spice things up a bit. The cards tell me about the general situation (Silent Attendant: “The Answer to life should never be death; it should always be more life, wrapped tight around us like precious silks”), they give precise recommendations (The Bandage: “Prevent the next damage that would be dealt to any target”), and conclude a possible outcome of it all (The Arcane Laboratory: “It soon became obvious that some experiments were best overseen by fireproof teachers”).

On waves: Admittedly, I do not believe in Tarot, but as we were (and still are) facing months of uncertainty, I enjoyed its randomness. There’s always something to get out of it—if you just read between the lines. So I’m digging into the year: Every other month, I got overwhelmed with pandemic anxiety, but over time, dealing with it became easier. The constant decision-making, weighing reason with facts, desires and relationships was probably the most exhausting part.

While it was widely accepted to be stressed and anxious during the first wave, it feels less tolerated in the current situation: Everybody needs to have their shit together by now. I don’t like that. I liked that everybody talked about how they’re feeling all the time; admitting exhaustion, fears and uncertainty. I want that to stay even after Corona. We will all get better at expressing it.

I listened to a lot of Charli XCX this year. Here’s an interesting introduction to Hyperpop (if you were wondering what all the Tumblr Vaporwave kids were up to now). A plan for next year is to actually tidy up my Spotify playlists—for now, you can tune in to my public playlist. This letter’s headline is from my song of the year: Rub My Eyes by Hearts Hearts.

A book that I keep thinking about is Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation.” I read it in January and it somehow set the scene for the months to come. Follow my readings on Goodreads, if you like.

As people are talking about digital gardens and mourn the days of personal online publishing, I am happy to point out: Weblogs do still exist! For example: Gabriel, Nina, Marcel, Lisa, Andreas.

For the new year, I encourage you to read between the lines. Read between anything! There’s always stuff to carve out. And for now: Let’s stay at home as much as we can, to prevent the next damage that would be dealt to any target. Another year, another round, make it count.

I Don’t Know Anything, I’m Just a Rock in the Sky

2020-11-07T00:00:00Z

The loud and bright November sun screaming through my windows doesn’t seem appropriate for what’s happening in the world right now. It’s 9am and I am sitting at my desk, trying to focus and get the day started. Around me, notes, post-its and scraps of paper are piling up. Lots of ideas and fun projects I want to tackle. It seems that this month, as we‘re all asked to stay at home as much as we can, could be the right time to do it! It seems.

This year though, I often feel like I’ve unlearned everything. How do you start a personal project? How do people write? How do you manage life without any sort of structure? Comparing all my freedom with what I actually do with it, I tend go get slightly disappointed in myself. I could do anything, really, but nothing feels good enough. All I spend my time with is solving Sudokus.

Not everything is bad though. I’ve been involved in some really interesting client projects, I’ve been on the phone with friends more frequently, and how nice is it to find joy in simple things like a sunny autumn walk these days?!

Re-reading a newsletter I sent to you exactly one year ago (“If you’re going through hell, keep going”) also eases my mind a bit: Maybe it’s just November that emits these weird vibes. I generally take ease in finding reasons that are out of my hands. Destiny! I’m pretty sure something is in some sort of retrograde or a weird sun or moon or whatever flying luminary out there is involved if things don’t go as planned. Whiny millennial voice: “Not everything is our fault!”

The climate catastrophe sure is though. I watched David Attenborough’s new Netflix documentary “A Life on Our Planet” and can recommend it (which usually isn’t the case with Netflix documentaries, I often find them gimmicky).

If you want to zone out from the world’s disasters for a short moment, the New York Times “Election Distractor” is the perfect site for you.

And, as I learned while reading last November’s issue again, looking at the past and finding the good and healthy stuff in it can also help to cope with things. I flipped through my Live Photos from this year’s summer and made a very short video from them. Watch it here.

This letter’s headline is from Miranda July’s 2011 movie “The Future”. I’m looking forward to seeing her new film “Kajillionaire” once cinemas are open again.

If you have adequate tips to stay productive, or any reasons to avoid it and get carried away, please send them my way. My inbox is open for all sorts of diversions! Stay healthy, distracted, and be gentle with yourself and others.

H is for Hawk

2020-09-29T00:00:00Z

We’re sitting in a small park somewhere in Berlin, when R. points to the sky: Look! The unusual bird lands on top of a street light, looking back at us. It’s a majestic animal, yet smaller than the usual crows we see around the city’s parking lots. In an unwary moment, as we look away, the sparrow hawk arrows right into the bushes behind us, and seconds later, we hear a sharp and short squeak. Then, the bird flies away over our heads, with a little mouse in its claws. We can see its tail squirming as the mouse is carried through the air on its last trip.

It was a weird moment. Bittersweet, like the beet root ice cream in my mouth. For a short second, all the people in the park were mesmerized; the guy on the lawn held his little chihuahua with both hands, in fear that the hawk’s claws would take it away. A very irrational fear, but still – understandable. Fear makes us do weird things.

In September I decided that my summer break had been long enough, and I started moving into a nice little office space to pursue my freelance career. I’m doing it at my pace, one step at a time. I’ve learned to say No to things, and being your own person really seems like a healthy concept to me? Thanks to myself for finally noticing!
I jotted down a couple of vacation notes on my blog. I also wrote about an iconic IKEA clock and about the underwear in the tree outside my kitchen. I’ve been writing that weblog since 2006, and I still like the idea of having a room for myself on the internet — almost like my own little garden. Stop by if you wish.
From now on, I contribute a little design column to the German form design magazine. Nina Sieverding and Anton Rahlwes are the new editors-in-chief, and I am really keen on their approach on topics, perspectives and the magazine’s design itself. Go get it!

As quickly as the sparrow hawk took its prey, this year’s summer decided to take a leap and leave. My summer wasting was a success though; I had a lot of good outdoor pizza dinners, and I spent a vast amount of time speeding through the streets on my bike. I accept that the COVID anxiety behaves like a curve, too. Sometimes it’s high, sometimes it’s low. New Normal, etc etc. I hope you’re still coping somewhat well.

The Last Screensaver

2020-08-26T00:00:00Z

You know it from the first MacBook you bought, or from your school library’s computers, or from the backdrop of a film you recently watched. The Flurry screensaver, shipped with every Mac since 2002, has become an acquainted digital surface in movies, offices and homes.

But screensavers are a thing from the past: We all remember the infamous flying toasters, the virtual fish tanks and mesmerizing labyrinths that covered our grey CRT monitors when our dads entered the room. Flurry was different: it moved away from trashy aesthetics and added a soothing, ambient quality to computer screens. And since its release, it hasn’t changed: A variety of light streams gently move around the black screen, spreading colored particles at different speeds and magnitudes.

Flurry was created by software developer Calum Robinson as a side project in 2002. Briefly after he published it online (you can still find it on Github!), Apple contacted him to include it in their new operating system, Mac OS X “Jaguar”. It complemented the eccentric Aqua interface with a dark and subtle appearance, still colorful enough to catch your eye.

Screensavers were made to protect CRT monitors from phosphor burn-in. If the phosphors glowed at a constant rate for too long, they left traces on the monitor’s glass surface. But we’ve moved away from that technology years ago. Today, it makes much more sense to simply switch off your display. No one would download and install a screensaver anymore, not even for fun. But Flurry is still there, moving its tentacles around empty offices, libraries, accidentally being activated through your Mac’s hot corners.

For me, Flurry is also a steady component of the creative work space. When Macs were not ubiquitous, but mainly a tool for the creative industry, a creator’s desk was immediately recognized by the light-stream covered monitor. Of course, Apple computers also had their outstanding Y2K hardware design back then, but Flurry was that one recognizable software component that said: This desk is a creator’s desk. They might be on a break right now, but they’re still around. Just like Flurry is today.

A Summer Wasting

2020-08-16T00:00:00Z

Do you remember the vast amount of summer holidays we used to have as kids? Six weeks without school, without duties, six weeks of living a completely care-free life. These weeks were heralded with a school report, and our parents would pick us up at around 12 in front of the school; and we’d leave another year of nerve-wracking stress and torments behind. I hated school, but this moment of stepping into a long, empty summer, was always pure bliss.

Last week, I started a self-prescribed summer break. I’ve had some weird years and I’m in-between jobs, so I decided to actively do nothing for a couple of weeks. Not sure if the care-free childhood feeling is replicable as an adult (probably not), but the feeling of not planning very far ahead puts me at ease—at least for a brief moment. Actively deciding to not care for a moment is self-care! I’ll call the dentist sometime soon. I’m sure the whole tax situation will sort itself out. I’m not going to plan any big travels.

This is probably one of my least favorite character traits: I am a really bad traveler. The whole part of organization and the pressure of having to have great experiences just stresses me out. As a child, my parents would usually take us on a real vacation for 10 days during summer break. And while I generally enjoyed that very much (and didn’t even need to plan anything, of course!), it was also work: It somehow meant that the actual summer break was only 4 weeks. I needed that idleness to just let the past months sink in. Painting, drawing, seeing friends—simply not having to have any exciting experiences (but not avoiding them either, of course). Just letting the time pass by.

Things that caught my attention:

As my friends know, I am big fan of the houses by Inken, Doris and Hinrich Baller. Ex Libris dedicated one of their No News News issues to Baller’s exceptional Berlin architecture.

Remember the hot priest from Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s TV show Fleabag? Andrew Scott shares some life lessons (and Irish swear words!) in the podcast How to Fail. If you enjoy this newsletter, you’ll enjoy that episode, I’m very sure.

As a quick break from sitting outside, I can recommend this short animated series about Tinder date stories on arte.

You probably all know about the astonishing power of the blue blood of horseshoe crabs (the 450-million-year-old living fossils!). Radiolab resurfaced their 2018 episode recently, with a little update on the animal’s role in COVID times.

In other news: Today, on August 15, it would be Roger Willemsen’s 65th birthday. He died in 2016, and since then he is dearly missed as one of Germany’s most-liked intellectuals. In fact, I don’t know anyone who didn’t appreciate him as a moral compass, and I, too, miss his voice in current times. Recently, my friend Eva and I were discussing which prominent people we’d like to ask for advice when making decisions, and Willemsen definitely would be my chairman of the board. Who would be yours?

As my summer break continues, I’ll be spending the nights listening to Belle & Sebastian’s summer vacation soundtrack, which also served as the title for this issue: I spent the summer wasting / The time was passed so easily / But if the summer's wasted / How come that I could feel so free? Stay cool and safe and enjoy the weather.

Learning to Love You More

2020-06-30T00:00:00Z

We stumbled into the exhibition by accident. And as we didn’t have any plans, we decided to put our masks on and have a look around. The gallery showed a collection of installations and sculptures, mostly focussed on internet art, and the artist’s exploitation. When we walked through the rooms, passing by a giant print of Alex Tew’s Million Dollar Homepage, I saw it in a corner: A tiny desk with a laptop, showing the website learningtoloveyoumore.com.

Learning to Love You More was an interactive project by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher that ran until 2009. The website listed a number of assignments that people could fulfill and send in their results, which were then exhibited on the site. 39: Take a picture of your parents kissing. 35: Ask your family to describe what you do. 66: Make a field guide to your yard. 5: Recreate an object from someone's past. I knew this site! When we were teenagers, me and my friends did some of the assignments, and they can still be found online. I had totally forgotten about the site and how much joy these tasks and perspectives brought to me. Asking my parents to kiss for a picture was weird and memorable. I actually enjoy creating those kinds of moments. Rediscovering the website on the tiny desk at Kunstraum Kreuzberg reminded me about it.

Right now, it’s 9.55pm, I am sitting in my living room. As I turn my stiff neck towards the window, I catch the blue hour; tinting the house across the street in a tender blue, almost purple color. It’s not going to last long, I can see it passing by. Like most summer evenings. Like me cycling through Weserstraße, on my way home from a dinner with a friend. That’s when I usually catch the blue hour, too. All this won’t last long: The people sitting outside their Spätis, drinking beers, the kids running around with their dogs, the warm air and me and my bike: This is what we longed for the whole winter, and realizing every year anew that it’s worth the wait — It’s an easy thought, and I like it. I like easy, sometimes.

One thing I am trying to learn is to smile in pictures.

One thing I already learned is that I don’t need to please everybody all the time (cool!). Now, however, I am scared that people might not like the new Me who doesn’t want to be liked by everybody. It’s a vicious circle.

On a bit more light-hearted note: I went looking for the best-designed watering can out there and wrote a little design critique (in German).

And to stop blathering about Corona in this newsletter, I wrote a Corona diary for German form design magazine, which you can buy here. The current issue deals with Crisis and Design, and I can highly recommend ordering it!

Here’s my Learning to Love You More assignment to you: Educate yourself on your internalised racisms. Fight them. Keep on learning and strengthening your senses; speak up, and learn what to do next – Hire black illustrators, for example. Here is a list to get started with. In between, you can put the phone or computer away and go outside. Cycle through summer, because as we all know: It won’t last as long as we’d like to.

Cat Person

2020-05-28T00:00:00Z

There is this one incredibly strong memory in my head that, when triggered, makes be both very happy and very sad. It goes as follows: When I grew up, I had a big tomcat named Kasimir. He was a soft and gentle animal, and as we both knew each other from a very young age, we were very attached. He enjoyed being held like a baby; his arms wrapped around my neck, me gently swaying him—really, just like a baby. I remember his fur, his scent and flat face pushing against mine. His big paws. I remember everything. And the fact that I remember, even though he died about 8 years ago, gives me a lot of comfort. I might remember it forever. I hope I will.

Together with the comfort of this memory, I’ve spent the past weeks in my apartment, as probably most of you. Just occasionally I went went out to see friends with a distance. We walked along the canal, around Kreuzberg, looking at people and houses. I’ve enjoyed observing the slow progress of coffee shops and ice cream parlors re-opening, arranging themselves with the safety restrictions. Everyone has been extra-friendly, it seemed, and that made me happy. It should stay like that. I hope it does.

I also noticed that the activities I do with friends are a lot more active and thought-through. We go on bike tours, we explore unknown parts of the city, and we share more feelings. I tried making a list of what stays from this pandemic on an interpersonal level, and this should be one of the things. I hope so.

When I walk around my neighborhood now, everything seems to be back to normal. The bridges and parks are full of people, the smell of weed and take-away pizza is everywhere. I get invitations to gatherings; people are dating again; and when I hear loud house music from a party in the park, I want to believe that we can all relax and live summer as we were used to. But I don’t think I’m ready yet, to be honest. It doesn’t feel right. And so I stay here, with my memories and video calls and bike rides, watching cats on TikTok, remembering Kasimir, seeing one friend at a time. It will get better. I’m sure it will.

I read Rachel Cusks “Outline”. That’s what it is; an outline; observations loosely tied together in a story. I tend to enjoy books where nothing happens, and this is one of them, but some sentences Cusk writes are just very on point.

I wrote a brief love letter to the Flurry screensaver, which you probably know from your Mac or from computers in movies.

I also wrote a postcard from my living room. It was a writing prompt from The Isolation Journals by Suleika Jaouad. Highly recommended newsletter!

The weekly (German) YouTube series “Social Distancing” by Hazel Brugger and Thomas Spitzer is the most wholesome thing to watch on a Sunday (or any day).

What are your old memories that make you feel all the feels? Think about them for a minute or two. It’s a nice thing to hold on to. And in case you have a cat: Give him or her a big kiss and pat on the head from me. If you have a dog, please do the same. I hope you’re all safe and well and finding your way through these troubled times.

Unfurl Like Smoke, We Twist And We Curl

2020-03-26T00:00:00Z

A four-year-old boy is sitting and sobbing on a hospital bed, refusing to have the mask put on his face. It’s 1995, that boy is me, and I’m supposed to go into surgery for my ear. But it’s not possible: I am too scared of a pictogram.

Even 25 years later, I can see it clearly in front of me: The brochure about inhalation anesthesia, with the drawing of a child with closed eyes, a huge mask covering its face. It honestly looked like the kid was dead, and even though I was only four years old, I knew one thing: I won’t inhale something that obviously would kill me!

In the end, I didn’t die, I just fell asleep. Everything went according to plan, and I lost my exorbitant fear of masks and anesthesia. I had to think about this pictogram the other day though, when I read Anne Quito’s design critique on the temperature guns used in public places like airports or on boarders. There are certainly more important things to worry about or focus on right now, but using the interaction design of pointing a gun to one’s head for a protective measure just somehow feels … a little off?

But I mean – a lot of things just feel a bit weird right now, right? It’s just a weird time; we’ve been placed in this odd science fiction setting and we all don’t really know how to act, or where to go. Well, the latter is simple: Nowhere. We’re all advised to just stay in, what I’ve been doing for about 10 days by now. And while I really enjoy being at home and by myself, I am surprised how exhausting it becomes after a while. The urge to facetime my whole address book is definitely there, and the magnetism of my sofa—preventing me from doing all the cozy quarantine stuff like baking and drawing and Telegym—is sending extra-strong vibes these days. I might need to find a solution for that. Or maybe not, and just nap. 8-hour-video-calls are exhausting enough; even though we’re all doing them in sweatpants.

Speaking of naps: Here’s a brilliant video by the School of Life, on naps and slowness.
Lisa captured the mood of the current situation just perfectly, as “I am putting my face on you again in order to perceive a very small thing inside your chest”, it’s beautiful.
I just bought a bunch of vouchers for the stores, cafés and places I would usually visit on a Saturday, but which had to close due to the current situation. In Berlin, you can do that on Helfen.berlin, and an another inventory of shops that need support can be found via Pleasedontclose.

This probably won’t end anytime soon. It’s the new normal, and we’ll need to find ways to deal with it. Every other day, I have a little meltdown thinking about all of this, and I miss hugs and sitting on crowded trains and falling asleep on a friend’s sofa and celebrating birthdays. Three things that helped me: This song by Barner 16, this cartoon on love during the pandemic, this cat on TikTok.

I hope you’re alright and safe and healthy. Try to avoid spending too much time reading live blogs, don’t get scared by graphs and pictograms, just stay informed and, last but not least, at home (if you can). I’m sending you virtual hugs and awkward handshakes.

This title’s song has been stuck in my head for weeks now. Works well as a soundtrack for when the pains pf physical distancing kick in extra-hard. Dijon – Skin (Spotify, Apple Music).

Palindrome Days

2020-01-30T00:00:00Z

We’re standing in an empty two-room apartment in Kreuzberg, with freshly painted white walls and floors covered in grey carpet. It smells like solvent or glue. A young woman presents us the artwork that is currently shown in this gallery (that’s what the apartment apparently is used as). A bunch of wooden panels and beams are stacked onto each other, occupying one of the rooms completely. It looks like someone’s about to move in, or out; it feels like we need to pass through these rooms to get to the actual gallery. But we don’t: “This artist’s installation is presented in three phases. Currently, we’re in phase two, where the installation—a room within the room—is being dismantled and stored right here in the exhibition space.”

I mean, honestly, my first thought was: This is stupid. This isn’t a gallery, even if the rooms are lit by neon lights and presented by a smart, well-dressed art history student; and the artwork clearly doesn’t function in these rooms. But then again: I liked the idea of showing this dismantled state. We all know it, right? Being in-between, just stacked and stored somewhere, waiting to be put together again. I liked that someone tried to find beauty in it, and I am trying, too.

A random January list:

I’m reading actual books again. After “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”, I read short stories by Doris Dörrie, and am now in the middle of Steven King’s “On Writing”. Follow me on GoodReads!

If you’re having a hard time getting the year started, my friend Hans has a bunch of arguments to overcome artificial limits. I know Hans, you can fully trust him on that one.

Don’t judge: I started watching YouTubers that recommend minimalist lifestyles and hand out tips for productivity and personal growth (I am already cringing whilst writing this). Matt D'Avella’s videos are nicely filmed, though! I’ve been taking cold showers since, and I love it! Changed my life! New year new me etc.

I’ve been listening to music, too: Hatchie, a singer/songwriter from Australia, got stuck in my head forever. Right now it’s Ngahere Wafer and his album You’re So Cool from 2017. I’m late to the game, as always.

I found the idea of being in a in-between state also in this beautiful twitter thread by @nichtschubsen. It’s German, and it asks: “If your life was a recipe, at which step would it be right now?” People replied things like “stir gently” or “whip thoroughly” or “throw away and order pizza”. It’s an option, too, and who doesn’t like Pizza?! However, let’s ask the follow-up question: What’s the next step of your recipe?

I hope you’re having a good February, whatever state you’re in. It’s a long one this time, and we had the first palindrome date (02.02.2020) for 909 years (11.11.1111). We won’t outlive the next one, on 12.12.2121. But that’s okay. Keep going/simmering/baking/etc.

All I Need is One Night to See if it’s Right

2019-12-31T00:00:00Z

When I enter my cold Berlin apartment after spending the Christmas holidays at my parent’s house, I immediately throw my bag on the bed and start unpacking. After all those years (10, to be precise) and train rides between Berlin and Bavaria, I still suck at packing bags appropriately. So many redundancies! The water colors I bring every time, as well as the sketchbook, that is left unopened during the whole stay. The stack of unread New Yorker issues—who is actually able to read that much every week?! The shirts and jumpers I wanted to wear but didn’t, as I hardly left the house and spent the holidays in my comfortable sweatpants. And the ugly brooches I bought for everyone but forgot to hand out on Christmas eve. It all goes back into the drawers and shelves. And like those brooches, some things are meant to be left behind in 2019 entirely.

I just finished my yearly review lists, asking myself: What was good? What wasn’t so good? What was missing in 2019, and what do I need more of in 2020? It was easy to make these lists this year. I learned to identify and get rid of stuff that does no good for me (it just took a lot of therapy and a bunch of breakdowns to learn that). But I got it now. Or, let’s say: I got better at it! Cheers to that!

In 2019, I wrote a brief essay on the things I wanted to focus on: More excellence regarding my work; taking up more space regarding myself; and allowing more feelings regarding … my LIFE, I guess?! Well, essay comes from the french verb “essayer”; to try, and that I did. Most of the time. I didn’t become a master of any of these things, but at least I managed to remind myself about them throughout the year. I even allowed myself to be less excellent in certain situations, or take up more space than I would usually, or cry (!!!) while watching a movie; or presenting an honest indifference towards things that didn’t interest me. Or, simply, remembering to hug someone extra hard when it was necessary. (This, in particular, is something I want more of in 2020, that’s for sure.)

What I enjoyed watching, reading and thinking about during the past months:

I admittedly was surprised that the German Queer Eye spin-off by the Berlin public tv station RBB actually turned out really nice and, thanks to Fabian Hart, is really wholesome and not cringeworthy at all. You can find the three episodes on the ARD Mediathek (in German).
My Twitter feed has been full of hate and destructive arguments lately, so I decided to pause Twitter for a couple of days. I made a list of a small number of people I actually wanted to follow, and until now I don’t miss any of the rest.
Doris Dörrie wrote a book about Writing, and even though I haven’t read it yet, I started writing again, on paper, everyday, just for myself. It’s true what she says: 10 minutes of writing can be a cheap, easy and relieving journey back to yourself. Give it a try.
I also wrote about salad. I just had to get this off my chest, really.
I took the Dazed 2010’s Subculture Quiz and—surprise—my subculture is Normcore. What’s yours?

So, that was 2019 then. Unpacking bags, re-arranging shelves, deleting candids and duplicates in my Photos library, and making lists clearly clears the mind. I hope this brief note finds you well while switching decade. The upcoming year already has a bunch of exciting changes that I can foresee, and I am looking forward to sharing them with you. Stay safe and sound and let’s hug extremely hard when we see each other next time.

This issue’s title is borrowed from: WHY? – Stained Glass Slipper (Listen on Spotify or Apple Music).

If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going

2019-11-03T00:00:00Z

Partly stressed, partly depressed, with a tiny spark of excitement, I am sitting in front of an empty slide deck. It’s some rainy weekend in October, and I am supposed to give a talk about my work during the upcoming week. I am paralyzed.

I used to give presentations quite frequently; I would even say that it used to be one of my best-trained designer muscles. But during that weekend I noticed how rusty I’ve gotten; how tricky I found it to draw a line without an actual pencil; and how shaky my voice gets while it peeks on the speaker notes. On the other hand: I really, genuinely enjoy it. I love talking about design, about an idea or a craft or a process, drawing that story line and deciding what’s worth saying and what isn’t. I just haven’t done it in a very long time.

So, as I am sitting at my desk, blank page horror in full blossom, I text my friend Ralf about my sorrows. He reminds me of a very basic wisdom: “If it doesn’t work, keep doing it—it’ll come to you eventually.” If you’re going through hell, keep going. It sounds cheesy, plain and overly dramatic, but drama helps, ffs sake; emotions help!, and it has a whole lot of truth to it. In the end, that stroll through hell saved me yet again: After I finished the slides and after the presentation was given and when I allowed myself to be relieved, I noticed: Wow, It’s good to be reunited with something I really like. Winning that spark back wasn’t as hard after all, it just felt so for a little part of the way.

Speaking of speaking: In October, I was invited by StanHema to talk about my design work and its relation to writing and text. That was fun, because as as we all know: Design is writing is design, and sorting and sharing all these connections in my head was really motivating and eye-opening.

I also noticed that this September marked my 10-year-anniversary in Berlin. I’ve always imagined to write a huge thinkpiece on how this city changed me, my life, my believes etcetera yada yada, so that in the end, I just published a list of random thoughts.

Learned about myself: I’m really into poetry. Actually I’ve always been, I just didn’t want to admit it, and I only like the weird stuff. And Rilke.

Even more links: I enjoyed this documentary about elderly people who speed-date (German); I learned a lot about Susan Sontag in this article about writing her biography; and I always admire Robert Rieger’s photography and especially his instagram posts.

I hope you’re all on a safe stroll off of any hell-like trails, but if you’re in the thick of one: Keep going! Have a blissful start into November.

Flying Low & Passing Through

2019-08-30T00:00:00Z

Flying Low is a contemporary dance technique, developed by David Zambrano. It focusses on the body as a spiral: A constant exchange of collecting and releasing tension lets the dancer move upwards and downwards, high and low, always rotating. It’s an intense technique – watch it here (but don’t try it at home).

It also describes my past month’s mood fairly well. The idea of gathering and sending, that the technique promotes, actually sounds like a common creative practice: You look at things, absorb them, and then you process them, work with them, and make something new out of them. Pretty straight forward.

But I’ve been struggling with that lately. Last month was quite exhausting: I took time for personal work, but it never really worked. I was discontent, the outcome was never good enough, yada yada, you know how it goes. But I always needed that “fix” of pushing it out to the world. I needed to publish something; to show something. It was almost like everything I made only had a right to be made and exist if it was out there. But showing my work was not the release I was hoping for, it just made the tension bigger. I didn’t know what to do.

~ Brief pause, deep breath, building up tension ~

And I still don’t.

I wish I was able to tell you how I solved the creative block, but I haven’t yet. It’s been about four weeks, and by now, I just focus on passing through it – by simply not doing anything. And actually, as I recently discovered fun activities outside of work for me, it might not be that hard after all.

Here is a jumbled list of things I’ve done, read and learned:

A – I learned that the term “Carpe Diem” doesn’t translate to “Seize the day”, but rather to “Pluck the day” (“… evoking the plucking and gathering of ripening fruits or flowers, enjoying a moment that is rooted in the sensory experience of nature”), which is beautiful and reduces the anxiety to getting stuff done. Here’s the article about it.

B – I am going to dance classes again, after I stopped for almost two years. Not to practice Flying Low (I have enough spiraling and gathering and sending struggles in my life already), but just to get moving again. It’s fun. If your mind is stuck, moving is a good idea.

C – I need a book shelf! If you have recommendations for beautifully designed shelves, I’d be grateful if you shared them with me. Instagram aggressively advertised this Italian shelving system to me, which I love (it has all the good stuff: wood and metal drawers and mustard colors), and of course it’s extraordinarily expensive.

When the weather gets colder, swallows tend to lower their flight level. For September, I might stick to that mode, too; flying low, just passing through it. However high your level for September might be: Please pass through it safely.

Isn’t It Ironic?!

2019-07-31T00:00:00Z

I am only allowed to leave my underwear on; no shirt, no socks. It makes sense, because after the doctor asks me to stand still, she points her gun-like mole detector on all the moles that are spread across my body. On the huge iMac, I see the pictures she takes: Red and brown and skin-colored spots, really close; they look more like bruises or the watery ink blots I make when mixing ink. She says it’s all good, but takes some pictures to monitor the mole’s alterations.

So, as a mole-covered person, I went to get a skin cancer screening (apologies for using the word mole for the fifth time now; I really don’t like it either). Which is somehow ironic, because in July I learned that I might not actually be the mole I always thought I was; hidden inside, behind his desk, wearing his huge glasses, avoiding sunlight. I’d like to inform you that I discovered FUN activities for me.

For a very long time in my life, I thought I’d needed to stay away from all things fun—I avoided holidays (too expensive, too time-consuming, I could be working during those two weeks!), I almost never went out for drinks (I don’t really drink, so what’s the point anyway?!), I skipped parties and festivals (too many people). Last weekend though, I went to the Pride parade here in Berlin, and I figured out that I am not scared of big crowds anymore, and that’s really good. It was actually really fun! And I also went out for drinks, during a really nice summer night, and that was enjoyable, too. How did I not know that having fun can be so effortless? Being able to refrain from judging oneself, and letting go of that workaholic’s remorse regarding leisure time—it’s really quite something. 10/10, can recommend.

Which reminds me of a comment I got from my friend Sonja, regarding my last newsletter’s headline (Take Yourself With You). She pointed out that a good way to make uneasy situations more enjoyable is the thought that you always take yourself with you. And if you are cool with who you are, the uneasy situation might actually become manageable, if not even enjoyable—you’ve always got yourself! I liked that thought, and it made it even more appealing to love myself a bit more.

That’s why I also spent some me-time during July: I read Sally Rooney’s Normal People (as everyone did, apparently, and besides the book, I also enjoyed being part of the hype). I wrote a poem about a deer. I drew a vampire, and I wrote about awkward handshakes. Funnily, I got a lot of feedback on the handshake story from people who I’ve had a lot of awkward-handshake-situations with. Well, we’re all just trapped in our heads I guess.

Anyway: Now that I know that fun is an easily-accessible commodity that I could treat myself with every once in a while, and also now that I know that all my moles (SORRY) are innocuous, I invite you to enjoy this summer to its fullest. It’s August already!

Take Yourself With You

2019-06-26T00:00:00Z

It’s 9.30pm and 21°C outside, which is quite nice. I am sitting on my sofa while typing this; after I spent 50 per cent of the weekend sick in bed, another 25 per cent with friends, and the remaining 25 per cent with myself, which I’ve been enjoying a lot lately.

So what has been happening?! I admire people who manage to send out newsletters on a very regular basis, but I am not one of them. That’s actually good for you, because I guess I am not the only one with tons of unread newsletters in my inbox, which I’d LIKE to read but eventually just mark as read because there is so much other stuff to read and see and do.

In general: I’ve learned a lot about what kind of person I am and what I am not, and accepting both has been a big relief recently. I am not a travel-person, for example, at least not right now, and that’s okay. I am, however, a picky eater, and that’s okay too. I’ve spent years trying not to be one; trying to like everything, but you know what: Liking everything is ~not joyful~ at all. Being at ease with the things you can and cannot fulfill is fantastic, and it makes coping with life so much easier. Cool that I only needed 27 years to figure that out.

Sitting here, on a Sunday night, with a cold soda and an uncomfortably warm laptop on my lap, made me remember my last summer: I’ve spent it completely inside, writing my thesis, letting the warm days pass by. I am not a lake person, or a picknick person, but I definitely am a summer person. I am looking forward to making it count (a bit more) this year.

Hard facts to add some links to this letter: We’ve polished Zeit Online a little bit (as in: we removed the sidebar, and made everything a bit nicer and bigger and better). When I showed the designs to readers, no one noticed a difference, and that was okay. I wasn’t trying to design something new; I just wanted to improve the existing thing, and as Lucius Burckhardt taught me: Good Design is invisible. (Bitter pill to swallow at first, admittedly.)

I’ve also been blogging (yes, I still do that occasionally): I drew manspreaders I saw on the train, I cycled behind a woman with a carpet beater, and I drew a selfie of me on my therapist’s sofa. I generally try to draw more on my instagram.

Even during summer, sofas seem to be my happy place. Nothing wrong with that! That’s why I’m sending you kindest regards from between these pillows here right now, and kindly ask you to stay cool and use sunscreen during the next days.

Using an iBook G3 as a typewriter

2019-01-02T00:00:00Z

William Zinsser said something I often think about when writing: “I don’t like to write, I like to have written.” Admittedly I don‘t fully agree—sometimes, writing can be a cleansing and joyful process. But yes, it’s true, sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard to get started, it’s hard to stay focussed, it’s hard finding the right words. It’s hard to be witty and smart and all that.

I struggle a lot with the focus part. My life is full of distractions. Therefore I only have two options: Write on paper (which works great, but is a slow process), or move myself to a remote place far away from any noises or social life or internet access. But that’s not always possible. I am not Thoreau; I cannot hide in a Walden hut, not yet. Until then, I sometimes use a technique I found in Seth Kenlon’s Use This interview:

For writing, I have a 2001 G3 iBook with a 500mhz PowerPC processor, 128mb RAM, and a third-party battery that just never dies. It doesn't seem to want to do graphics, so I just boot to a text console using Debian Linux.

I loved that idea! And I love the old Apple iBook from 2003 that I still had lying around. It runs Mac OS X 10.3; an operating system that is so old it doesn’t allow any of the fun internet distractions of the 21st century. The hardware does a great job at giving me focus, too: It’s such an act to set up the clunky old laptop that once I sit in front of it, I usually stay there. It’s too much in the way to not focus on it, and at the same time, it only allows one simply thing: writing.

Once I have my draft, I usually copy the .txt file to a USB stick, or throw it in the Public folder of my actual work machine via the local network.

Admittedly: A somewhat tedious process. But the process is always part of the deal, especially when it comes to writing. I love typing on that old machine. It gives me a cozy feeling. And that’s exactly what I need when I am in search of words, or wit, or simply: when I like to have written.

Think Lightly of Yourself, And Deeply of the World

2018-12-31T00:00:00Z

Like every morning, my eyes open at 5:55am. Partly because of my inner clock, but also because my thoughts tumble around and wake me up. I start laying out tasks for the day, and conversations I need to conduct; I push words around like letters on a scrabble board, and while I end up with perfect formulations at 5:55, I usually miss out on using them during the day. I stay in bed until 7:30, sometimes 9:00am. Then I get up.

On the last day of this year (you are probably reading this in 2019 already, so take this as a greeting from the past and send it to the archives), I got up at 8:00am sharp. I went to a supermarket and bought three zucchinis. Then I re-read the newsletter I sent out one year ago. It was titled “You Think You Might Not Get Through It But You Do”. That’s probably what I learned throughout this year: You actually do. I finished a lot of things this year; I got a master’s degree, I worked with a lot of great people, and I worked on a lot of things including myself. I end this year being torn between totally agreeing to Jerry Salz’s statement “Work is the only thing that takes the curse of fear away” (I blogged about his great piece on being an artist), and accepting that not working might sometimes actually be the best cure for my nervous self. I might find out in 2019. Don’t cry—work. If you feel like it.

What follows are the occasional recommendations from around the web. E.g. Austin Kleon’s weblog, in particular this exploration of the metaphor “surfing the web“.

I enjoyed this piece by the California Sunday Magazine about Homes. They photographed and talked to a variety of people where and how they feel at home, and the audio layer of the piece makes it extra-intimate.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to move my blog’s home from Tumblr to a self-hosted system again. I made tons of posts (dating back to 2006!) private, and kept only the writing I still like public. When Tumblr decided to apply content filters as of Dec. 17, I already left the platform. Malte’s tweet summed up my feelings perfectly: “take this recent tumblr crackdown as a reminder that this is still the web. you can learn to build and own your own platforms.” (12/4/2018)

Drawing the 2018-Finishing-Line: Fear has been, yet again, way to dominant in my year, and I want to continue working on taming it. Besides that, I want to become better at using those formulations I make at 5:55am, I want to become better at taking up space, and more intent at making decisions. I hope you all had a great year and have some (not too many!) plans for 2019. Stay safe and sound, Yours truly—Christoph.

“Forget Being a Genius and Develop Some Skills”

2018-12-20T00:00:00Z

One of the best things I’ve read this week was art critic Jerry Saltz’s “How to Be an Artist” (New York Magazine, Nov. 26, 2018). In 33 rules, he describes and explains how to deal with life as a creative person, and how to become a better, more confident artist. I nodded my head at almost every single point, but here are the quotes and ideas I actually enjoyed to most:

1: Don’t be Embarrassed. You often reveal things about yourself that others may find appalling, weird, boring, or stupid. People may think you’re abnormal or a hack. Fine. When I work, I feel sick to my stomach with thoughts like None of this is any good. It makes no sense. But art doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t even need to be good.

I’ve been studying and working in the creative field for about 10 years now and still feel it, and Jerry’s list doesn’t sound like this feeling of embarrassment and insecurity will go away. So I guess I better learn to deal with it.

Lesson 5: Work, Work, Work. (…) Every artist and writer I know claims to work in their sleep. I do all the time. (…) How many times have you been given a whole career in your dreams and not heeded it? It doesn’t matter how scared you are; everyone is scared. Work. Work is the only thing that takes the curse of fear away.

This last sentence stuck with me. I am going to paint it on the wall of my living room, maybe even on the insides of my eyelids. It’s not necessarily meant in a workaholic way, but in a way to remember myself that creative work can always a safe haven, too.

Lesson 6: Start With a Pencil. (…) Next, draw the square foot in front of you. This can be tight, loose, abstract, realistic. It’s a way to see how you see objects, textures, surfaces, shapes, light, dark, atmosphere, and patterns. It tells you what you missed seeing.

I just enjoyed this little exercise and can recommend it to everyone. Drawing helps you see things.

Forget Being a Genius and Develop Some Skills.

D’uh.

Lesson 9: “Embed thought in material.” — Roberta Smith. (…) An object should express ideas; art should contain emotions. And these ideas and feelings should be easy to understand — complex or not.

Exercise: An Archaeology. Make an index, family tree, chart, or diagram of your interests. All of them, everything: visual, physical, spiritual, sexual. Leisure time, hobbies, foods, buildings, airports, everything. Every book, movie, website, etc. The totality of this self-exposure may be daunting, scary. But your voice is here. This will become a resource and record to return to and add to for the rest of your life.

This reminded me a lot on the Starterpack meme I made a couple of months ago, which was so much fun and taught me a lot about myself. It also made me accept myself more.

Lesson 14: Compare Cats and Dogs. Okay, this sounds ridiculous, but call your dog and it comes right over to you, placing its head in your lap, slobbering, wagging its tail: a miraculous direct communication with another species. Now call your cat. It might look up, twitch a bit, perhaps go over to the couch, rub against it, circle once, and lie down again. What am I saying? In seeing how the cat reacted, you are seeing something very close to how artists communicate.

This quote is a much needed argument for cat people, like me.

The best definition of success is time — the time to do your work.

When I was working in an agency full-time, I enjoyed the work I did, but it often didn’t feel like creative work—as it was never work that included myself as an artist. It was client work. After I couple of years I noticed that this doesn’t make me happy. Today I still sometimes feel guilty about it; something in my head tells me that anything but a full-time job is just lazy. Turns out: Creativity is a full-time job by itself.

Envy looks at others but blinds you.

I guess the only way to prevent my eyes from getting worse is to change my view on fellow designers and artists. Not that I am full of envy, but I noticed looking at other people’s work too much prevents me from believing in my own stuff.

After beating yourself up for half an hour or so, stop and say out loud, “Yeah, but I’m a fucking genius.”

Because you are! Amen.

We Are Our Own Devils

2018-10-31T00:00:00Z

I am strolling through Goethe’s garden (as depicted) as I’m in Weimar, a small German city known for, well, Goethe’s œuvre and the Bauhaus university. It’s mid-September; summer is still in full blossom and makes us all feel like we could get used to this; this does not need to stop, ever. But it will, we all know it, the seasons won’t fool us. But we like the idea of being fooled, even for a couple more weeks.

One and a half months later—October’s in its final hours as I type this—I peel myself out of bed and turn on the radiator; I have my gloves and thermal underwear in place and switched from iced coffees to hot tea. But outside, I still cycle through golden, leave-paved streets on Urbanstraße, which is delightful and makes the thought of the upcoming months more bearable.

I am happy to welcome you to another episode of this little gathering. Quite a few things happened during this summer; however, I wasn’t part of most of them. I was busy writing my Master’s thesis. While passing a couple of miserable moments (”Fuck this; nobody cares about my degree, let’s simply not finish it”, as well as “With this thesis I will go down as the first design student who failed and disappointed his supervisors in an abysmal manner”), I finished the book, I had it printed, I presented it in front of a room of intimidated undergraduates, and I passed. I was actually happy with the result. Lesson learned: Accepting that your own work is enough as it is, and trusting the people who tell you along the way that you are doing fine, could prevent a lot. Of. Stress.

During the thesis research as well as the writing as well as the miserable phases, I had two mantras pinned to my wall, hoping to find peace with both of them. One said “You are not special, work harder!”, the other one said “You are valid”. To cut a long, philosophical exploration short: I still haven’t found peace with neither of them. I don’t think I am special, but working harder isn’t always an option (sometimes, yes, but I carry a slight disbelief in the hard-work-can-get-you-anywhere-philosophy). Being valid, however, is a though one: Am I? Is that all enough? Is a book and it’s presentation in front of intimidated undergraduates and a good grade and a finished degree enough? I know that I myself am the person who can decide what’s enough, but how on earth am I supposed to know?!

[A lot of italics, this time. I am sorry. Maybe I should make this newsletter a podcast. (No.)]

The thesis was the main reason I didn’t get to jump into Berlin’s lakes during this summer’s heatwave. Very possibly, after nine years in Berlin, it was the first time I envied my friends and actually wished to refresh my media-theory-twined brain with a jump into cold water. But it’s okay. Maybe next year, or maybe never; maybe I really am not the person for lakes (that’s at least what I learned about myself every time someone convinced me to join them for a trip to Berlin’s outskirts).

I am trying to re-structure this monthly (or rather quarterly?) piece of writing little bit. You’ve already made it through the biggest part; the self-absorbed ramblings and updates on life and existence. What follows is a shorter part, where technology, design, culture and feelings are taking turns.

To keep it brief this time, I’d like to hand out two recommendations to add to your digital digest:

Spencer Tweedy restructured his newsletter as well and now sends out very brief and snackable observations. Subscribe here or delve through his online collection of words.
Perfect for quick lunch or dinner breaks home alone: The New Yorker’s Cartoon Lounge YouTube series. Everything is fun and witty and entertaining about it: The animated intro, the cartoons themselves, but especially the charming hosts Emma Allen and Colin Stokes. Watch the playlist here.

I hope you all had a great summer, got one or two chances to jump into a lake (or any other refreshing surrounding), and are in peace with how much you need to be to be content with yourself. If you have any tips or other, more rewarding mantras, please let me know.

I’ve Never Liked Anything In My Entire Life

2018-05-04T00:00:00Z

I am at a conference about the internet and mental health. It’s a one-day event and I only bought a ticket because I wanted to hear Katrin Passig and Felix Stalder share their ideas on how the digital transformation influences our brain, our behavior, and how our society handles the “New”.

As the speakers discuss the meaning of digital endorsements and interaction (such as “likes”, “favs”, comments, etc), an older man in the row in front of me leans in to his neighbor: “I’ve never liked anything in my entire life”.

That sentence stuck with me more than any of the talks or discussions. As an active participant in social media, of course I cannot imagine that someone never “liked” anything. What’s not to like! But out of context, the sentence is deeply saddening. Imagine this elderly person, sitting in a darkened conference room on a sunny day, leaning in to his seat mate, with a cold coffee in his hands, confessing: “I’ve never liked anything in my entire life”. I’m glad that the internet preserved me from this nightmare.

I have liked and still do like quite a bunch of things in my life. Recently, these albums and playlists, for example:

Baio – The Names (Spotify link). Chris Baio, known as the bassist from Vampire Weekend, makes cheerful indie pop music, and I especially like his album covers and this remix album (Spotify link).
Young Fathers – Cocoa Sugar (Spotify link). I know, I’m late to the party, but after their track Shame has been my workout soundtrack for MONTHS, I was looking forward to a new album—and it’s great!
My friend Martin publishes really well-curated playlists on Spotify. Check them out! My current favorites: “Charlottenburg Nord“ and “Hits zum Vergessen”.

It’s intense how Berlin transforms from Europes ugliest/greyest/saddest/dirtiest city into the most wonderful place on earth during spring: I cycle through the streets and have exactly the same thought as every year around that time: There possibly is no better city for me to exist in than here. I hope you enjoy spring as much as I do! Have a good one, and talk to you soon.

Design Won’t Save the World

2018-03-12T00:00:00Z

As we’re jumping into the moving van, Felix asks me to hold a bag of medical supplies he brought from the hospital. Tubes, syringes, needles, disinfectant spray, all packaged separately in thin plastic bags. What’s that for, I ask. Felix’ friend—a doctor, too—was going to start his first job next week, and Felix promised to help him practice injections and blood sampling.

The way he handed me the bag with supplies was very casual, but I felt weird and—all of a sudden—very useless. When I help my friends and colleagues with work stuff, it’s usually about color choices, or whether the copywriting of an input field is clear enough. It doesn’t have any relevance at all. Whereas Felix, he f-ing helps friends take blood cells out of a body to put them into a laboratory to check them for diseases, and to actually cure them.

The whole tale that “Design can change the world!” has already been demystified a while ago. Another poster won’t save the world, nor will another app, or another chair, or typeface. Design does have the ability to make things better, but looking at our world full of over-designed products and services, it hardly ever is executed in a way that it does so. Design is often used to make bad things look better, and through that, it multiplies its negative impact. To be honest, that sometimes make we want to quit design altogether.

On the other hand, I am very lucky to work with people who are striving to use design for the better. Maybe that’s also because I waved goodbye to the startup world quite some time ago, and I try to work only with people and companies who I find relevant and/or pleasant as human beings (not only as colleagues). No bad vibes are worth the money, especially when you decided to make your passion your job.

Other stuff:

1 — Words: I’ve read a couple of good essays recently. In The Good Room, Frank Chimero explores the missing soul of our digital environment. A while ago, James Bridle wrote about the disturbing loopholes YouTube’s algorithm creates. And I love Jean Hannah Edelsteins newsletter “Thread”. Pre-order her book if you enjoy her writing, too.

2 — Pictures: I created a meme-inspired “starterpack” about my personality. Check it out here and make your own—I’d be curious!

3 — Life Hack: I unfollowed everyone who calls theirself “influencer” on social media and posts tons of ads. It just makes the web a shitty place. Please stop it.

4 — Lesson learned: Negative people are not worth your energy. It’s okay to stay away from them.

So, I helped Felix move last month. I also helped two friends paint their walls, and I re-arranged my furniture (it looks shit, so I’ll have to move it back again tomorrow). I will continue to design stuff, even if it’s worthless compared to the benefit a doctor brings into the world. I simply can’t do anything else; so I might just use it well. Have a great start into spring (Yes! We made it through the winter! Isn’t that something!).

You Think You Might Not Get Through It But You Do

2017-12-31T00:00:00Z

On the other side of the train wagon, a man is sitting alone in a four-seat arrangement, his computer on his lap. He smiles while he types furiously; he seems completely sunken into his task. I imagine him writing a draft for his novel, or a sweet message to a loved one, but maybe also he is just calculating his tax payments, and had a successful year?

While the train rattles through Berlin Grunewald, I see the day turn into night: The blue hour passed by and let the darkness come through. I don’t like darkness, but sitting in a cozy train after a long day, being carried through it safely, feels okay.

Looking back on 2017, my year hasn’t been that great. Lots of uncertainties and bad feelings. The most dominant one was probably fear—fear of all kinds of things. I managed to get rid of some of those fears (I am not scared of terrorism that much anymore, or of the movies “Panic Room” and “Seven”, as I watched them and they were not as horrible as I imagined when I was a child). But new fears developed, without control, and it takes time and hard work to get through them. I’m still on it.

However: As you are probably reading this in 2018 already, I don’t want to write about the past. There are a lot of learnings from 2017 that will carry me through the upcoming year. The most important one is this: Emotions are not rational. Explaining a fear or a feeling doesn’t always work, and it’s still okay to feel it. The only way to cope with it is to be okay with it.

Also: It’s so soothing to make things that make you happy. I struggled a lot with a seminar paper I had to write for university, but I really wanted to succeed. So I made a project out of it; I wanted it to feel like a creative project rather than a task I was forced to do. So I made a website for the paper; made something out of it that’s sharable and that fits my style—as a designer, but also as a person. It reflects me and the stuff I am thinking about, that it feels good to have that represented by some sort of artifact. If you want to know what that is: Read the paper I wrote about Invisible Computers here.

Some other things that might sound really lame but made me surprisingly happy: Living in a tidy apartment. Taking care of houseplants, watching them grow. Looking outside the window, listening to the neighbors singing. Give some money to people who ask kindly on the train. Invite people for coffee instead of going out somewhere.

For the upcoming year, I want to spend less time with people I am not really interested in. I want to say No to things I don’t like. I want more moments that allow me to smile about something I write, draw, make, say, see—the guy on the train, with his laptop, during that blue hour, was a good inspiration.

Have a great start into the new year. As last year: Make it count—but this time: don’t stress. We all should stress much less.

Shape-Changing Computers

2017-11-17T00:00:00Z

During my media theory studies, we had a seminar about the establishment of the personal computer in ordinary homes. From a historical and media-theoretical point of view, we read and discussed essays and papers from engineers, philosophers and researchers from the 1960s to the late 1990s.

I loved the seminar as I finally found the time to read stuff by really important people who paved the way to modern-day computer interaction—people like Ada Lovelace, Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg, and (my favorite!) Howard Rheingold. His very well-written book “Tools for Thought” is available online, and guides perfectly through the history of computers as tools.

During our semester break, I wrote an essay about one thing I found particularly interesting: The computer’s form and shape—and how it was always designed to disappear (eventually). With current technology trends like voice input and wearable tech, its starting to actually do so. I put a slightly shortened version only, have fun reading (if you’re interested)!

Read in English Auf Deutsch lesen

Stay Golden

2017-10-02T00:00:00Z

As the sun is making an appearance after a couple of weeks of rain and cold weather here in Berlin, I am sitting on the back seat of the M41 bus line (the only bus line that has its own song). Next to me, a woman—probably in her early sixties—explains to her friend: “For a long time, I was only able to take selfies with this phone, because I didn’t know how to switch the camera around! Yesterday, my daughter explained it to me. Look!” She clumsily points at the camera interface to take a photo of the sun breaking through the dirty windows. It’s autumn, friends! Welcome back to this newsletter.

So many things happened within the last months, and at the same time, nothing exciting happened at all. Life just passed by; I passed through it. The woman’s situation on the bus reminded me of all the bad technology that we’re surrounded with. Like the visit to my parent’s house earlier this month, where my dad has a technology setup I just don’t understand anymore (and therefore hardly can help with tech problems). He switched to an Apple ecosystem a while ago, but the Windows DOS mindset is buried very deeply within his brain and pedantry. Everything could be so easy, but people don’t want things to be easy. (Except that one time, when Microsoft announced a couple of months ago that their infamous MS Paint software would be discontinued—no worries though, it will be around somehow). Sometimes, it’s the dumb and simple things that have a strong cultural and emotional impact.

Speaking of dumb: I watched “The Circle” the other night. To clarify: I haven’t read the book, so I can’t compare the differences there, but even though the movie was fine as a simple piece of entertainment, it had so many flaws within the storyline and the topic in general! I just didn’t believe a word Emma Watson said as her character Mae, and I got tired by the very thin dialogues. Half of the story and all possible twists were left open-ended. There was simply nothing either desirable or dystopian—it was just silly most of the time. The semi-futuristic interfaces looked like they were designed in 2002 (check out this great film on how to depict the internet and messaging in film!). Even to logo of “The Circle” was horribly executed! The one Jessica Hische drew for the book in 2013 was much nicer. To sum it up: I was very glad that in my reality, we already overcame platforms like Facebook and 24/7 oversharing of boring nonsense. The movie’s topic almost became obsolete for me.

Most of the time, at least. I’ve been consuming Instagram excessively during the last months, and experimented with their Story feature a couple of times. What bothers me there: People don’t take the time to actually tell stories. They just use it as a dumpster for candids. If you have recommendations for great Instagram story tellers, ping me! My current favorites are Jürgen Siebert’s “Fontstories”, Kübra’s diary posts and Sophie Passmann’s jabbering.

Some more personal and project-related news: At ZEIT ONLINE, we launched a new digital magazine called “Arbeit”. It’s a platform about our relationship to work and work-life-balance, about changes and chances, and failures, too. I designed the thing (and am still totally in love with Milieu Grotesque’s Patron font family).

I was also working on a book which will go to print later this month—my first assignment as a copywriter, which was exciting and fun. Also, I am still working on a seminar paper, which I’ll publish in a couple of weeks, too. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram to never ever miss out again about my exciting life (spent on my couch for 80 percent of the day).

Ok. So far. Have a great start into autumn, and let’s hope that the sun makes a couple of more appearances before it finally gets grey and cold outside for good. Also: remember to switch your phone’s front camera to the back from time to time, to capture some of the rays and golden leaves. Happy October!

One With The Freaks

2017-05-06T00:00:00Z

Dear friends, it’s been a while. Please apologize my absence – I’m not quite sure what happened. Maybe it was a mixture of rainy day mood swings, busy University days and long, demotivating train rides between Potsdam (where my University is) and Neukölln (where my home is) that kept me from jotting down this humble monthly sheet of words. But I am back. Here are the news.

1 — I watched the 2017 version of Ghost In The Shell a couple of weeks ago. Knowing that I am late to the game by now, I still want to share some thoughts. The first time I stumbled upon the anime was in 1999, when one-hit wonder Wamdue Project used the famous “Making of a Cyborg” scenes in their music video for “King Of My Castle” (YouTube link). While I didn’t fully understand the philosophical depth behind the original story, I always noted the cultural significance Mamoru Oshii’s anime kept until today.

The story takes place in 2029, which is only 12 years away from today. I found it particularly interesting to compare the futurescapes which the 1995 and the 2017 movie versions paint. While the anime version creates a dystopian urban jungle with a very grey, olive, dusty color palette, Scarlet Johansson runs through a neon-blue and light-polluted LED-city besieged by advertising holograms. I recommend scrolling through the set of moodboards and thoughts by designer Monika Bielskyte, who was involved in creating the movie’s visual direction in the beginning. The moodboards stick to the overall cyberpunk topic, but some of them are much less dystopian and cold than the end result.

2 — So much for the sci-fi nerd talk. Admittedly, I am not even that much into all this stuff, but with Ghost In The Shell, it was different; and comparing the past to the present (with a little bit of future) is always interesting. In this semester, I am participating in a research project about the early stages of the home computer. We are time-traveling through the 1970s, ’80s, and early ’90s, when the internet was very far away from being at our fingertips, and companies were trying hard to make up reasons why a regular household would need a personal computer.

I cannot even remember a point in time where our home computer did not have an internet connection. Sure, it was not part of our everyday life, and as a kid, I mainly used the computer for games and creating crappy PowerPoint animations. I would say that being born in the early 90s, my generation is not only digital native, but also internet native. It’s nice to dig through research, advertisements and general perceptions of life where this crucial tool called Internet just wasn’t even existent.

3 — Speaking of computer nostalgia: This Guardian article reminds us about “the forgotten world of 90s movie websites”.

The Washington Post compares the apartments of New York’s famous TV shows (like GIRLS and Friends) to reality. This would be very interesting for Berlin, too.

People with odd attitudes are usually quite inspiring. Like Karl Lagerfeld, who explains his daily routines in the Harper’s BAZAAR series.

I played around with Anchor.fm briefly. The concept is simple: Like an audio version of Snapchat, users can create radio stations that disappear after 24 hours. It’s a very well-made and fun app, and from time to time, I mumble German mumblings into my phone’s mic. If you want, you can download the app and follow my station.

4 — Upcoming: Later this month, I’ll be writing for Berlin’s TYPO conference. We catch the conference behind the scenes and front row, and there are lots of great speakers, as every year. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

If We Can Land On The Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart

2017-02-05T00:00:00Z

It took this text a while to make it through the foggy streets of Berlin. It was hard to move forward. Just like January: I struggled getting out of bed, as—except for a few sunny days—the city was buried underneath a thick, stifling blanket of winter.

Even though I am not very active on the platform, the first people in my Snapchat stream started using Snap’s Spectacles—a pair of glasses with an integrated camera that records short clips and posts them to the user’s story. When Snap released the product last year, I was skeptical (as Google Glass failed and video-recording glasses just seem like a suspicious thing in general). However, when I saw the videos filmed with the device, I was surprised: The way you can take someone else’s point of view, as well as the user experience of the round video, was just fantastic.

During the last term at Uni, I thought more about wearables in general, and how they need to be designed to actually work for their users. Fashion plays a big role, obviously, and I liked this conversation about Apple’s trial and error to create fashionable gadgets. While I find the AirPods technically very interesting, I think their product design fails on a lot of levels (can you run with these things? Shake your head in disagreement? Wear a hat?!). Just like the whacky idea that thinner phones are better to hold, sometimes more (e.g. a cord) is more.

In general, I feel that the more advanced the technology around us becomes, the more useless it appears to me. My Facebook stream was completely destroyed by algorithms, and so I ditched it. A computer with a touchbar instead of keys, that completely dumps my muscle memory?! I also can’t think of any use for voice-controlled home assistants, other than them telling me facts about eggs (side note: I enjoyed Johna Paolino’s essay about the different style of making conversation with Alexa vs. Google Home).

A lot of products and algorithms are not only useless, but also fuel our fear of missing out so badly and shamelessly. Who wants that?! Just think of Instagram’s push notification when someone starts a live video: “XYZ started a live video. WATCH IT BEFORE IT ENDS!” How can one not become totally stressed out and anxious about the digitized world? In Manoush Zomorodi’s podcast Note To Self, Anil Dash explains the great concept of JOMO instead of FOMO.

Lets focus on that and joyfully miss out on some things in February. Valentine’s Day, for example. Ugh! I’ll stay inside for another month, and listen to the La La Land Soundtrack. I also loved listening to Beulah (a band I missed out for long enough), and Benji Hughes. Happy February.

Easiness, Celebrities, and Another Round

2016-12-31T00:00:00Z

This is it. I really can’t wrap my head around why new years eve is such a thing, but it always is: so much weight on one night that throws us into raw panic; you better make this evening the greatest of the year, it’s your last chance!

It’s not going to work anyway. So I decided to skip it. Also, I am not going to make this my end-of-year review, because I know that we will wake up tomorrow, and there will be just another day, another month, another year waiting for us. It’s only names that change.

Over Christmas, I met friends from school, and we shared our best moments of the past year. It was hard to think of something—not because my year was shit; there were ups and downs, and 12 months are long. I tried to explain this one recent evening, where we luckily got cheap tickets for the Vienna Burg theatre, and afterwards we stumbled out into the Austrian night, and it was so clear, and we decided to walk home, because you can just walk everywhere in Vienna, and on our way, we ate a cheese-filled sausage (don’t ask), and it was all very easy. // Easy was what I needed. We spent so much time in coffee houses again, and that was easy too: “More Royals or more Celebrities?”, asks my friend and holds up a bunch of tabloid magazines. Hours passed, and we let them, we just read and said nothing. I find talking really hard sometimes, which is probably a bourgeois problem. I enjoy being silent.

This year ends with a lot of things it started with. Sholem published his first book with his Berlin Diary drawings. I keep re-reading Elisabeths weekly summaries, because they are soft and gentle everyday life observations. I still watch Roger Willemsen on YouTube, and I wish he could have said or written something to hold onto after 2016.

For the next year, I plan to discover more music. I’ve been listening to only two albums recently: Solange’s True (2012), and Pure Bathing Culture’s Pray For Rain (2015). I saved some tracks on Spotify, but I can’t remember titles or artists, which is sad.

Two days ago, a thin but cold layer of frost covered the city I am currently in. Winter came back. Twelve months ago, I couldn’t wait for it to leave, I almost couldn’t bear Berlin anymore. But Summer saved me, yet again. And I am impatient for it to arrive. Four more months. And then another year. Another round. Let’s make it count.

The Library, Digression, and Items from the Future

2016-11-30T00:00:00Z

It’s 9.30 am. I am carrying my transparent plastic bag filled with a laptop, some pens and a book through the library. This place is quite ugly from the outside, but inside, it somehow works. A light-filled atrium connects the sounds of the entry hall with the desk areas and bookshelves. The noise level in here is perfect—not too quiet; you still allow yourself to breathe, and not loud; enabling the perfect concentration mode. I put my coat, my bag and my phone (necessary!) into the locker, stuff a coffee and a doughnut in my face, and find myself a desk.

It’s basically a time machine back into 2013, when I spent most of January in this building to finish my bachelor thesis. The audience is a wild mix of art and engineering students, and they all appear to be very focussed and smart. I like to make myself comfortable on the fourth floor, between the sheet music and the multi-media library. From here, I can watch November’s rain, finish some books and finally try to focus on studying. I really do try, at least.

However, I also allow myself to drift off from time to time, from link to link, book to book. In October, I briefly mentionedDesign Fiction. In class, we talked about this amazing project by the Extrapolation Factory, called99¢ Futures. It was a pop-up store which, for one day, sold various items from the future, like a Mars Survival Kit, void refills, or an “instant full university degree while you sleep”. I might want that one. Even more design fiction can be found in Mark Dudliks essay“Speculations From Tomorrow”, where he explores the narrative of the Netflix series Black Mirror, for example, or Spike Jonze’s movie Her (remember Scarlet’s alluring Samantha voice?).

Less fictional, more scary: Adobe recently presented a tool dubbed“Photoshop for Audio”. From a 20-minute voice sample, it lets you manipulate existing and create totally new audio snippets—allowing people to put basically any word into any persons mouth. While it does sound like a disaster, regarding the current mistrust in media and algorithms, it really is what we have already gotten terribly used to with image manipulation.

Further digression: My friend Caitlin is an awesome person and writer. Need proof? Read herarticle about womanhood(is that a word?). Anyway, it’s relevant.

I am not very up to date when it comes to trending topics and memes, but some fragments of the #mannequinchallenge slipped through to my phone.This one won.

This last day of November is my 25th birthday. And of course, I found myself thinking: “25 is basically 30, and 30 is close to 40, and 40 means full grown-up-status, and what else is supposed to come after that?” What a stupid chain of thought. However, it reminded me of Miranda July’s movie“The Future”, where a couple wants to adopt a cat, and suddenly has very similar thoughts. They turn off the internet, start volunteering, loose each other, and everything falls apart.

I don’t think thats going to happen to me though. I’ll hide here in the library, with some doughnuts and coffee, and if I stare at this open Pages document for long enough, it might start filling itself. Fingers crossed. Enjoy December.

Golden Clouds, Learning, and Minority Report

2016-10-31T00:00:00Z

The train takes approximately 1.5 hours to get me to Potsdam. I will be studying there for the next one or two years. On my way, I pass through Grunewald, which is really one giant cloud of golden leaves right now, and lots of lakes. Berlin is very watery, and Potsdam is very tidy. However, the first two weeks of University left my mind in a very untidy state. So much input! Here are just two fragments of things I stumbled upon:

I read about the PIBA-DIBA proposal, for example: A guidance to blend the Digital with the Physical (paper here). It basically gives two lists to designers, based on: „Physical Is Better At“ vs. „Digital Is Better At“, with the intention to direct the designer’s focus to beneficial aspects of using digital vs. physical objects. Another interesting topic I stepped into was the design methodology of „Design Fiction“. In this essay, Julian Bleeker explains how science fiction is a powerful way of innovating and pushing ideas to a wider audience (you all remember the crazy interfaces in Minority Report, and how fragments of them slowly drip into our lives, and how their designer John Underkoffler actually made them reality).

My Dropbox is filled with PDFs, TED talks, and about 100 links to Google Scholar papers. What I find hard is to manage all this input. I have the feeling that I forgot how to learn. And I am not talking about this new kind of learning; interactive and revolutionized methods leading to epiphanies, adaptable to the “real world”. I am talking about learning in its purest, dullest format: sitting at a desk, my nose and eyes buried in books, folders and my laptop, with blue ink stains on my lips from chewing on my pen (gross). Obviously this is due to my broken attention span (on that note, I enjoyed Douglas Forsters thoughts on How to Rebuild an Attention Span), and my three-year-pause of being a student.

With the luxury of my planned studies, I got to think about my desk and learning setup a little more the past month. While I find it okay to read on my tablet on the train or sit in our University’s very nice and quiet library, I really cherish my own home office. Or maybe I’d like to call it “my study” from now on. It’s a place to really sit down and focus, surround myself with paper and technology, and get lost in this area for a little while. It just never feels unproductive.

With the setup of a proper working environment, I found myself curious and critical over the latest release of Apple’s new MacBook Pro and the Microsoft Surface Studio. Both being doubtlessly powerful machines, their hardware design is lacking character. I really have a thing for outdated technology, and every time I watch old TV series where someone self-importantly hacks into an iMac G3 “for homework”, I feel all fuzzy and nostalgic. The site Starring The Computer provides a ridiculously large collection of computer appearances on TV and in movies.

Also in October:

A — Rixdorf, the historic town center of Neukölln, and I finally became reconciled. I used to hate Neukölln in the dark autumn and winter months, but the area around here got so much nicer. There is a real bakery, a book store, and I even visit the bar around the corner from time to time.

B — While I try to get used to academic writing (I took a crash course at University, and am reading much more academic papers), I also felt like not writing like a robot from time to time. A reminder in my phone pushes me for one diary entry per day. I don’t always do it, but I do it more often now, which is very soul-cleansing™.

C — Other than that: It just started raining, and I was so so so motivated to go out for some physical activity this evening. But ok. I might just stay at home, in my study, and watch the outside slowly turning into winter. Have a great start into November!

Sketchbooks, Cobble Stones, and Solitude

2016-09-30T00:00:00Z

With the cobbled part of the street, I slow down a bit. I take notice of the old houses and small byroads, dipped in the blue hour of the evening, and I glance into a warmly lit restaurant window. It’s empty, there is only one person inside, close to the window. The man isn’t reading, he’s not looking outside, he’s not really looking anywhere at all. It was a very calm moment, and in the next one, I got shaken up by the cobble stones again. I cycled on, and asked myself: Was he lonely, maybe?

For its larger part, September was spent in Augsburg, my parent’s home town. I wanted to take a break from Berlin, get some work done, and use my newly gained freedom to read, learn to cook (haha, yeah, no) and fill my sketchbook. There are only a couple of friends left in the town where I grew up. But when I meet them, it’s doesn’t feel like we live 600 kilometers apart. My friend Viktoria asked me if I would still fill those black notebooks with snippets, poems and drawings, as I used to in school. I loved carrying the small Moleskine books with me, and really put effort into the “ideas”, as I used to call the filled pages.

Unfortunately, I had to disappoint Viktoria. Since I started studying design, my patience with notebooks got close to zero. My handwriting is poor, it feels like my drawing skills didn’t improve over the years, and I just don’t take the time to go through printed magazines and cut out the things I like or find funny anymore. Now that creativity is “work” for me, the simple art of Scrapbooking feels dilettante. And I don’t like that. Remixing, editing and sorting the things you stumble upon is an integral part of the creative mind. I can still remember a lot of pages from all the old black books I filled, just because it took time and effort, and was actually fun to do. It was more than just a notebook with sloppy handwriting and messy sketches for sketches.

However – I didn’t manage to draw a lot. I watched some video tutorials on water colors after I visited my grandfather, wo enjoys doing it, but I wasn’t very successful or determined. With my return to Berlin, I stumbled back into reality. Even though the city is so much bigger and wide-spread, it’s also so much stronger connected. Everything is wired up and constantly buzzing. Next week, I’ll have my introduction day at University, and I am excited! It’s probably just me who’s buzzing, to be honest.

Things that caught my attention:

Rebecca Solnit on being a writer: “Find your metaphors where no one is looking.” I should read some more classic literature.

On the other hand, I enjoy delving through Gregor Weichbrodt’s corpus of work. He explores conceptual digital literature, for example with his Dictionary of non-notable Artists, or BÆBEL, a mash-up of IKEA furniture-assembly instructions.

A thought: Instead of in the woods, we’re getting lost on the internet.

Take some time to go to the woods though; autumn is amazing these days. Go with a friend, or maybe take some time for yourself to do so. Solitude is not loneliness, and it can be quite relaxing. Enjoy October!

Lists, Memorials, and Relationship Luxury

2016-08-30T00:00:00Z

For the time after my last day at work (I quit my job mid-August), I had a list prepared. I wrote down stuff that needed to be done for a long time, such as fixing the shelf in the kitchen, getting a new passport, or cleaning the windows. It also featured fun things like museums I’ve always wanted to go to, people I haven’t seen in a while, movies I wanted to watch.

August is over now, and I’ve been out of the day job for about three weeks. No surprise: I haven’t crossed-off a single item on the aforementioned list. Instead, my days were spent with the following: Waiting for the letter of acceptance for the master’s program I applied for (which I got today, finally!). Taking pictures of people taking pictures (they usually pose in an equally majestic way as the statue they’re photographing). I walked through Prague, wondering if I would find all the old buildings more interesting if there were some new ones in between. And while watching Stranger Things, I really wished it was set in the 90s rather than the 80s, just for a stylistic change. I enjoyed the series, but the 80s-aesthetics-card has been played way too often already. I could handle some flared pants, lava lamps and leather coats by now. (Ok, maybe no flared pants.)

I visited Vienna, and fell in love with the city. We spent a lot of time in those typical coffeehouses; places you can hardly find in Germany anymore: Old wooden furniture, piano music; everything smells as if you could write great novels in here. Also, I don’t have a lot of friends who enjoy wasting time in coffeehouses as much as I do. We get used to positive habits about the people close to us; we take them as a luxury that we don’t want to miss in future relationships. That’s why finding the right friends is hard, sometimes.

Other notes noticed:

The current run on the mattress market by startups [sic!] is insane. Every month, there is a new company trying to revolutionize the way we buy mattresses (quick reminder that one should switch their mattress every 10 to 12 years). I appreciate it, because I appreciate sleep. In his Aeon essay “Falling For Sleep”, Rubin Naiman explores how our perception and appreciation of it changed.
Ever wondered why dumb people seem so confident? Ever felt really unsure, even though you’re usually a smart person? It’s called Dunning-Kruger effect, and describes the cognitive bias of illusory superiority.
Park benches are a better memorial than tombstones.
I wonder: Is there a sign that things are not quite right? Symbols from movies (a flickering light in the dark street, a black cat running across it) evoke so. So vice versa, what are the signs that everything is quite alright at the moment? It feels so, anyway. August brought summer back, I went swimming in a lake for the first time this year, and I’m ready for autumn now. September, make me tick some more things that are not on the list.

Pocket Monsters, mundane practices, and Microsoft Excel

2016-07-31T00:00:00Z

It’s a rainy Sunday evening, and this weekend is the second one in a row which I enjoy in solitude and stimulating aimlessness — eating food, going out for coffee, catching some Pokémon, meeting friends I don’t see enough. We probably won’t get a cloud-free, diaphoretic summer this year, but you know what? That’s fine.

I saw them standing in small groups on sidewalks and in parks this month: Young people catching Pokémon, everywhere. When I finally tried the app and walked around my neighborhood, I was approached by a young boy on his bike, opening with the common question “Ey! You play Pokémon Go, too?” I took the chance and asked him about all the rules, which I still don’t fully understand (Make use of the stardust! Walk two more kilometers to hatch this egg!), but it was a nice encounter—which I probably would never have had without the game.

I remember being obsessed with those Pocket Monsters in the early 2000s. I spent all my money on the playing cards. My main interest wasn’t the game itself, I also never owned a Game Boy; I was more into the character design (subconsciously, I assume, but still). The original 151 Pokémon were all drawn by Ken Sugimori, and I still can draw some of them from my muscle memory. Unfortunately, this whole Anime thing was quite big when I was child, and I am not able to fully erase it from my style of drawing.

Change of scene: In the beginning of August, I will have my last days as a full-time employee at Edenspiekermann. After three years, I am saying Goodbye to an awesome agency and crowd, where I learned and grew enormously. This place made me a better designer, team player and communicator. I am moving on to work more freely on design projects, and to go more into design and technology research. When I applied at the university for a masters program, I realized that I haven’t had the feeling that something really counts for me for a while. I always took work very seriously, but it was never so close to me personally. With my application, this was different.

Applying for a master’s program required a proposal for a research topic. When we—I together with 12 other applicants—presented our ideas, we all got the same feedback. “This is too abstract! You are designers, bring your thoughts into shape! Design [Gestaltung] is always a direct artifact!” I am not sure if I agree with this statement of the professor fully, but it sparked an interesting thought: Most sciences, most abstract research, most ludicrous studies are based on very basic, almost mundane practices. To be a surgeon, you must likely cut open a human. To be a sexual therapist, you most likely must have sex. To be a designer, you have to create something. This thought makes me calm and motivated for my next chapter.

One other thing I found out in July: While we spoke of childhood memories before—do you remember Nelly’s and Kelly Rowland’s musical fling “Dilemma” from 2002? I never realized that in the music video, Kelly tries to text Nelly on her Nokia 9210 – by using Microsoft Excel (YouTube link). I love this ragged and faulty use of technology on TV. It reminded me of the awesome Source Code in TV and Films tumblr, which analyzes the code’s actual meaning.

On that note, I’ll leave you to a good start into August. It’s the last proper summer month, so make it count: Cycle the city, try stand-up paddling, eat cucumber ice-cream, visit the outdoor cinema, make your own lemonade, and—thank god this trend is back—wear shorts and socks in sandals.

Wrong Turns, Echo Chambers, and Appearances

2016-06-30T00:00:00Z

We can’t blame June for the volatile weather conditions. Or, can we? Anyway, it wasn’t only the weather that was turbulent the past month.

When the UK voted for the Brexit, my social networks exploded. Through my colleagues, I mainly know young people in the UK – all between their early twenties and mid-thirties. They all were devastated and frustrated, deeply concerned when the referendum’s result was delivered. The newspapers I read also went head over heels about the vast negative consequences. To me, it seemed so obvious that the UK had voted for the wrong decision, and I couldn’t wrap my head around how this had happened.

During the first days and weeks, I haven’t stumbled upon one single positive aspect about the decision to leave. I read through the comments on the Leave Campaign’s Facebook page, just to get out of my echo chamber (a word I found in this German interview with Miriam Meckel, and I much prefer it to “filter bubble”). It is crazy how we are trapped in this shield of algorithms and precast opinions. It really takes some time and effort to dig through this chamber and grasp some different, unheard voices.

Well, anyway, I did that, but honestly, I did not come across a lot of smart things. A campaign driven by lies, politicians driven by wrong-tracked overzealousness, media driven by populism. Voters driven by the wrong assumptions and untold truths. Eventually, the whole thing reminded me of Platon’s “Allegory of the Cave” – there is so much wisdom and perspective out there, and once you found it, it’s the most shattering process to pass it on. The School of Life YouTube channel has some nice, brief memory brush-ups on philosophy, history and the like. I enjoy watching it while brushing my teeth in the morning, or while having dinner by myself at night.

Unrelated but relevant: This thought came to me while riding the bike down Sonnenallee (not a recommended cycling route), just like epiphanies mainly happen during showers, walks or moments where no pen and paper are available. Anyway, I realized: We, too, are just small — and sometimes not so small — parts of other people’s lives. We jump in, we stay for a while, and in most cases, we leave again. We just make an appearance. And after this, things are free to move on without us.

July marks an important, finalizing month in my current phase of life. The last couple of years were filled with work, so much work, and I truly loved it. But August will be spent traveling (a little bit at least, because I am a horrible traveler), seeing friends and family, buying a proper office chair. We’ll see. But for now: July, some more sun please, and let’s go.

Designers, Friends, and Amateurs

2016-05-31T00:00:00Z

There is one tag line by Frank Chimero, which I often use as a personal excuse for everything that goes wrong in my life. “Professional Designer, Amateur Human”. This works perfectly for the past month: May.

It’s the moment in which I am sitting on the concrete stairs in front of Berlin’s “Haus der Kulturen der Welt”, a beautiful location right inside the city’s biggest park. The annual TYPO design conference takes place there. And while the conference was a huge success — we as the editorial team wrote over 70 blog posts for all the talks — I am sitting there, on the stairs, under me the silver reflections of the shallow water, and for a brief moment I have the feeling that I am loosing control of my life. It slips away. The moment is short but crisp and clear, and after it, everything seemed different. So I call my friend Eva.

She visited later that month, and as I wrote about how important it is to acknowledge the awesomeness of people who surround us: Eva really is awesome. Talking to her for ten minutes makes me motivated for life, it makes me curious and courageous, and everything seems doable and acceptable. Even if the whole conversation spins around a problem where we both don’t know the solution for: It makes me feel less like an amateur. Thanks for that.

Three other great people are Roman, Sebastian and Beate, who’s documentary about young philosophers was screened for the first time in Berlin last month. I lived with Roman when they started editing the material back in 2014 (!), so I knew bits and pieces. But the final movie turned out really wonderful. It makes the process of thinking visible, and manages to not be boring for a single second. The audience at the screening were mostly philosophy and cultural science students, and I learned: philosophy students ask a lot of questions. One of them wanted to know about the initial motivation to make the movie. I loved Sebastian’s reply: “I asked myself: Which movie do I have to make, that everyone else would simply fuck up?”

This was a key moment for me. A moment about relevance in creative work. A key to making purposeful things. There is so much design in this world that is useless, and so many valuable ideas that are so badly designed. Maybe because of all the amateurs. Sorry, this newsletter was messy, but so was May. Hopefully June will be better.

Palaces, a trip to Milan, and one decade

2016-04-30T00:00:00Z

My personal blog turned 10 years old in April. What the?! It started out as a crappy Blogger blog called “Blogski Christowski”, then I moved it to WordPress, and eventually ended up on Tumblr, because I once thought mobile blogging would become a thing. It didn’t though. Micro-blogging became a thing, and all the blogs I used to enjoy as a teenager disappeared. The only things people really blog about these days are green smoothies, fashion and the death of blogging. Everything else is on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, you name it. But I like it here. I like the old school flair the word “blog” pours. And I am glad some of you are still around. Thanks for that.

April was packed: I went to Milan for the first time. It’s a nice city (even though my friends mentioned through-out the trip how different Milan was to other Italian cities). What I don’t really understand is Italy’s coffee culture: You enter a café, order at one counter and pay (even if you haven’t decided for your type of croissant yet), then walk to another counter and choose the croissant, and finally order again – at another counter – the coffee you initially ordered. You have to drink it while standing in everyone’s way though, because if you sit down, the coffee gets really expensive. I don’t know. If you’re used to Berlin’s artisanal coffee-brewing craftsmanship, Italian coffee simply is nothing special.

We went to the furniture fair, sSalone del Mobile, but realized that 24 halls full of chairs and brass side tables are too much to handle. We mainly were fascinated by the first halls; the “Classics”. Everything there was a bit too much (understatement of the year): Gold, marble, heavy curtains, a champaign bar that electrically rises out of a palatial wooden table. There is so much luxury in the world that we can’t even imagine.

More Milan: 150 years after Da Vinci finished his gigantic and famous mural “The Last Supper”, someone cut a door into it, and Jesus’ feet were gone. Like, who would do that? In German museums, you are likely to be expelled by the museum attendant if you don’t keep a safety distance of two meters from an exhibit.

Three more thoughts that popped up last month:

Always leave with the mindset of leaving for good. If you are a nervous traveller, do not think about the fact that you have to go back again. That thought pollutes the whole trip. Travel and think, Ok, I’m going to stay here.

Concerts are poems, really. I went to see Akua Naru, without knowing her, and I was sure that her music wasn’t really my kind of music. But her show was brilliant: A mixture of rap, jazz, mellow and loud, connected by a well-crafted narrative. Which is really the most important thing for a concert (and the reason why I hardly go to any concerts anymore).

All palaces are temporary palaces.

April was not only busy, but also decision-heavy. I wondered: Can decisions really be wrong if you decide to always make the best out of it? May will show us. I’m off to catch some sun now.

Technological relations, the world’s oldest social housing complex, and faux marble

2016-03-31T00:00:00Z

Since I started cycling to work, my phone usage has gone down about one hour per day. In March, I spent over a full day—roughly 26 hours—on trains. That gave me the chance to catch up on some podcasts and articles I saved within the last weeks.

In context of the Apple/FBI lawsuit, I really enjoyed this story by Loney Abrams called “Larping off the grid”. Set in 2020, where wearable devices are mandatory for every citizen, she explores the idea of disconnecting yourself from constant connection. While just a couple of days ago the FBI claimed to have hacked a terrorist’s locked iPhone (after fighting Apple who refused to create a back door to access the data), the story considers the necessity of hacking yourself OUT of technology, rather than IN to it. Which, I think, is an interesting idea, and I can relate to it: Who doesn’t know the urge of setting the phone to flight mode and hide it in the drawer for a couple of hours, just for some peace and quiet?

Technology is so weird: We created something that stands in a constantly oscillating relation to ourselves. My friend’s parents bought a robotic vacuum cleaner. When I joined them at the dinner table, they were talking about it, about it’s efficiency and noise, how it knows where the stairs are, and how it makes the edges of the carpet uneven. As I missed the beginning of the conversation, I did not realize immediately that we were talking about a machine, not a human.

Later this month: Over easter, I visited my parents in Augsburg. Seven years ago, I could not wait to leave it behind me, but now, with a certain distance (and my parent’s new flat much closer to the city center!), I can see it’s beauty. Augsburg is known for the Fuggerei, the world’s oldest social housing complex, located right in the middle of the old city. People still live there, for 88 cents rent per year, with the requirement to be catholic and to pray three times a day.

When we visited the Fugger chapel close to the amazing weekly market, I noticed the beautiful walls made out of some sort of “faux marble”. Created with the Scagliola technique, a mixture of minerals, glue and pigments, it features vivid patterns and a shiny surface. The creation process makes the material much more precious than real marble, and that alone is a reason to love it.

I started being more cautious when it comes to surfaces and materials. Working in the digital field, my main fabric are pixels, and there’s not much variety to them. Getting inspired by textures from fashion, paper (remember the paper grain web design trend a couple of years ago?!), and nature helps refreshing the eyes. Nature always helps. Spring is here. Happy April!

Muscle Memory, Snapchat, and Roger

2016-02-29T00:00:00Z

It’s February 29, shortly after 11pm. I’m sitting in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg, on an old but comfortable IKEA sofa. This day was a rare one. I hope you made it count!

So. February. I changed my phone’s passcode in the beginning of this month. I’ve had the same four-digit-code for at least four years, and as my phone does not support any form of biometric identification, I need to keep typing that code to access my device. What I was not aware of though was the strength with which this code had been woven into my muscle memory. After 29 days, and over hundreds of unlocks, my thumb still is not quite able to perform the new numeric array. The struggle is real!

Sticking with phones (topic-wise): The new qz app got quite some attention in our office slack and in my twitter stream. Basically, it’s a robot that texts you the news. In a messenger-like interface, it provides short bits of information, and offers either questions to learn more on the topic, a link for further reading, or another piece of content. While the tone of voice is friendly and human-like, I only used it once for curiosity reasons, and never again.

What I started using more during the last month was Snapchat. We all struggled in wrapping our head around the confusing, basically also non-existing interface (swipe here, tap there, accidentally send an ugly selfie to a stranger and close the app in frustration), but I started liking it after a while. It’s nice to get so close to people’s lives, almost observing them, letting them carry you around their everyday life through the phone’s front-camera. While there are some really good snapchatters like my friend Eva (? hurraeva) or Cecilia (? motionandgrowth), who only use it when they actually have a relevant story to tell, it’s mainly a channel for nonsense and gibberish, which, honestly, is quite nice after a long day of work. Let the others do the talking. ? christowski1 (lamest nick name in the history of nick names.)

Also nice after work: swimming. Listening to this podcast by Marcel and Eva (it’s in German). Reading through this beautiful and in-depth article by Robin about a new approach on web typography. Watching every interview and TV show on YouTube that has Roger Willemsen as host or guest.

His death earlier this month truly saddened me. I have been in awe of his work ever since I started writing; his way of telling stories and embracing life‘s oddities has been a true inspiration during my last ten years (I wrote about one of his readings nine years ago on this blog). When he passed away, so many beautiful, admiring and sad articles had been published, and they got me thinking: How do we appreaciate someone’s existance while they are still with us, without being overly emotional or pathetic? How do we let them know we appreciate the work they do, and the time they share with us? I find that hard sometimes, oftentimes.

Roger Willemsen wrote a quarterly column called Willemsens Jahreszeiten in ZEIT Magazin. Here’s the archive. Even though there won’t be a new column this spring, we have one thing to look forward to in March: Daylight saving time. “Es wird Frühling!”

Thermal underwear, 100 essays and Berlin drawings

2016-01-31T00:00:00Z

One of the hardest months of the year is coming to an end. The darkness of winter is eating me up, I want to hide inside and just wait till it’s over. Neukölln is not a pleasurable place to be during the winter months – I hate spending time outside after 5pm, which leads to a lot of home office days and me temporarily moving to my friend’s home in Prenzlauer Berg.

Something that helped my dark mood and misanthropy: Avoiding public transport. I stepped up the cycling game, buying thermal underwear, rain clothes, and made a DIY ass-saver (who would buy a bicycle without mud guards?!). When it was -10°C, my most important purchase was a pair of really expensive Roeckl gloves, which I lost one week later. By then, January was well-disposed; temperatures almost spring-like.

Also purchased were too many books this month: Brian Christian’s The Most Human Human, Sarah Ruhl’s 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, and a couple of novels I want to read this year. The latter – 100 Essays – is just a pleasure to read because it consists of really short, really fun musings on theatre. I tend to buy a lot of books and never make it past the first 80 pages, and for a long time I thought I am just not the smart book person I wanted to be. In fact, my attention span is very short when it comes to reading, but oftentimes, I also just choose the wrong ones. I had maybe two or three books last year that I read in one go, for example Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: A fantastic novel with simply the right amount of zeitgeist and magic. I bought it at The Curious Fox in Neukölln, which you should pay a visit if you’re into english books.

Other findings of joy this month: This set by Robag Whrume; I did not listen to anything else. Elisabeth’s weekly writing, especially this text after the first week of January. I fell in love with the drawings and paintings of Sholem Krishtalka: An intense capturing of the city and queer clubbing scene in Berlin.

Two more months to go until spring is back.

Christoph Rauscher

I’m Not a Cyborg, But That’s Okay

No One Dies From Love

No One Dies From Love

From a Design Perspective

The Screenless Office

Goings-on about town (my timeline):

The World is Outside

Good digital spaces

Human intelligence

Fran Lebowitz on Technology

The freedom to not partake

Play It as It Lays

Falter.at Redesign

Book Cover: “Schleichwege zur Klassik”

Illustrations: “Verkrempelung der Welt”

The New Aesthetic

Why writing still matters

Greetings from the shore

The straight line is godless

Something That Needs Nothing

No more art on Instagram

The Long Hard Stupid Way

Village One + Freelance

Writing = Design Workshop

Illustrations for Krautreporter

The Muse visits during the act of creation

My first Mac

You Are Here

Manifestations of Romance

Dogs, Beans, and Red Badges

Books from Boxes

It Takes A Village

I Need a Camera to My Eye

I Am at War with My Time

At the Bottom of Everything

The Sound of 7 o’Clock

Where You Find Me

We’ll be Alright When I Rub My Eyes

I Don’t Know Anything, I’m Just a Rock in the Sky

H is for Hawk

The Last Screensaver

A Summer Wasting

Learning to Love You More

Cat Person

Unfurl Like Smoke, We Twist And We Curl

Palindrome Days

All I Need is One Night to See if it’s Right

If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going

Flying Low & Passing Through

Isn’t It Ironic?!

Take Yourself With You

Using an iBook G3 as a typewriter

Think Lightly of Yourself, And Deeply of the World

“Forget Being a Genius and Develop Some Skills”

We Are Our Own Devils

I’ve Never Liked Anything In My Entire Life

Design Won’t Save the World

Other stuff:

You Think You Might Not Get Through It But You Do

Shape-Changing Computers

Stay Golden

One With The Freaks

If We Can Land On The Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart

Easiness, Celebrities, and Another Round

The Library, Digression, and Items from the Future

Golden Clouds, Learning, and Minority Report

Sketchbooks, Cobble Stones, and Solitude

Lists, Memorials, and Relationship Luxury

Pocket Monsters, mundane practices, and Microsoft Excel

Wrong Turns, Echo Chambers, and Appearances

Designers, Friends, and Amateurs

Palaces, a trip to Milan, and one decade

Technological relations, the world’s oldest social housing complex, and faux marble

Muscle Memory, Snapchat, and Roger

Thermal underwear, 100 essays and Berlin drawings