Studio Missive 20

Hi friends,

We’re already twenty weeks into this little newsletter experiment! Thank you for coming along for the ride. I really appreciate you, and I really appreciate that a whopping 92% of you open this newsletter every week. That’s gotta break some kind of record. So thanks for being here, and here’s to many more.

Here’s what’s happening around the studio this week:

What’s inspiring you?

1. It turns out you can use clamp for responsive letter-spacing, which is dope. And apparently CSS is getting a new progress() function to make that sort of thing even easier. The current state of CSS and JavaScript is really incredible. 
2. A beautiful story from the New York Times about a life well lived and finding a meditation, of sorts, in our work: How to fix a typewriter and your life
3. This web game about scope creep is way better than it needs to be, and also way scarier. (Maybe it hit too close to home.) If you play it and you get a good ending, please share it with me, because I could not.
4. The new brand identity Cotton made for Eternal Research is pretty, pretty, pretty good.

What are you working on?

Last Friday’s project launch went really smoothly, but took me all day to orchestrate. It was almost a twelve-hour workday, which I really try to avoid. But it went great. The new website for Every Home for Christ Canada is up and running. I’m stoked on it. It merges three of their previous websites into one, clearly identifies what they do and how they do it, and has a couple unifying motifs in use throughout the design. Can’t ask for more than that on launch day.

I’ve been working on this with the client for a long time, so I hope you’ll forgive me one paragraph of self-promotional puffery: their new website reflects a multiyear partnership, and is the final of three major redesigns we’ve worked on together in that time. It also sets the foundation for several new digital strategies and initiatives to come, which I’m excited to get started on soon. 

But in the meantime, I spent a bit of time celebrating the launch. I went out for a nice dinner with my wife. I slept in a little bit on Monday (but only a little bit). And I started working on the case studies right away. (There will be two.) 

My goal was to launch the case studies the week after next one, but it dawned on me that absolutely zero people will read a case study the week before Christmas, and I would be better starting off the new year strong. So keep an eye out for the case studies in early January.

To be honest, delaying the case studies was like releasing the pressure from a valve. I’m glad I am not rushing them.

While I’m not publishing anything this week, I have been knee deep in front-end development for Bruce Mayhew’s site (whose stylescapes were featured a couple months ago). I am trying to get his site done before the Christmas holidays, but my perfectionism is getting in the way. I spent two hours this week working on the perfect icon animation in a button. I can’t get those hours back. It’s a nice button, though.

I’m also working on a lead magnet for a video I’d like to make next week. One of my goals is to get more people signed up for this newsletter, and I’m curious if videos that link to lead gens that subscribe folks to my newsletter will move the needle. 

That video is going to be the first in a real-life website and brand identity redesign process, which I first mulled about a couple weeks ago. I don’t know how long those videos will take to make; my general goal is to release a video every two weeks, but I suspect there will be more B Roll than I’m used to (any amount of B Roll higher than 0 would be more than I’m used to, to be frank). 

It feels like the year is rapidly coming to a close, and the next two weeks are focused on pushing through at a wild pace so I can take off like a rocket in the new year. If I make it to Christmas without spinning out, I’ll be thrilled.

Until next week,

Nathan