How to make a website for your creative work
The Creative Independent Filed
“Artists excel at creating worlds.”
SHELF No. 01
Creative advice
Craft, taste, and process advice for creative work.
Make better work
13 RECORDSPREVIOUSLY FILED
"Don't Call It Art" — An Illustrated Q&A
Range Widely (David Epstein's Substack) Sent
“The students who were told they’d be graded on quantity made all the best pots because they made a lot of pots, and the students who were told they’d be graded on quality produced almost nothing because they were too occupied with trying to make a perfect pot.”
The Three Kinds of Creative Friction: Good, Bad, and Hidden
Attention Matters Sent
Sometimes the constraint is the thing that makes the idea interesting.
How to write an artist statement that doesn't suck
The Creative Independent Sent
The point is not to sound smarter. The point is to say what you mean clearly enough that the work can arrive with its force intact.
28 slightly rude notes on writing
Experimental History Sent
“If you want that perfect brush stroke or that exquisite shot, then you have to squeeze your neurons until they scream.”
Nothing Too Late, Nothing Mistake
Feed Me Sent
I really think when something is made by friends or lovers or people who consider each other a good hang, it shows up in the fabric of the final product.
Accidental Instagram influencer Ida B. on meeting your own standards
The Creative Independent Sent
“If the only thing you really give a shit about is the thing that you're doing and being able to do it in a way that meets your own standards, weirdly, I guess that's the key to success.”
Using AI makes writing more bland, study finds
NBC News Sent
“The LLMs are pushing the essays away from anything that a human would have ever written”
How Not to Interview (Interesting People)
Om Malik Sent
“You are not the subject. They are. So let them lead.”
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Figma's new Source Material YT channel is pretty great
YouTube / Figma Sent
I just really love objects that reveal themselves. As a designer, I think good interfaces don't always reveal themselves at once. The kind of reward curiosity
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The Whetstone
The Whetstone Sent
AI is being sold on a single promise: think less. The people getting real value from AI are doing the opposite — using it to sharpen their thinking, not replace it.
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The Man Who's Spent a Lifetime Making One, Giant Map
YouTube / People Make Games Sent
I attempt to think as little as possible."
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Why the best writing advice is often the weirdest
The New Yorker Sent
Everything about the book is mortifying, and it totally set me free.
Get unstuck
4 RECORDS
How to Write? Longhand on paper? Typewriter? Word Processor? Scrivener or Obsidian?
Unapocalyptic (Substack) Sent
“Each tool creates a separate set of constraints on your creativity.”
PREVIOUSLY FILED
How I learned to just fucking write
Substack Sent
“That pattern would follow me through my creative life until I found a way to write or make art that allowed me to bypass my inner critic.”
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How to stop procrastinating
The Economist Sent
Picture the benefits of achieving a goal; contrast that image with the main obstacle; and devise a tactic to overcome it.
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Crisis Response: Trying the Old Thing Harder
TikTok Sent
“We're in crisis, i wonder what we could do? Definitely not something new, let's try the old thing harder!”
Build a creative life
9 RECORDS
Take Your Pleasure Seriously: Play as a Way of Being
Designboom Filed
“Seriousness hardened into restraint; a good life became something to optimize, streamline, and save.”
PREVIOUSLY FILED
The Quester's Guide for exploring your world
Metalabel Sent
“An interactive journey of ideas, activities and stories designed to make you see the world differently and turn the world into a creative playground”
Letters to a Young Creative
Steve Jobs Archive Sent
“Seek the unchanging or what should not change.”
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Dull not to
TikTok Sent
dull not to
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Ze Frank: Get Uncomfortable
YouTube Sent
You aren't a static thing. You change a lot over time. For me it's been really important to say 'show up for the person you are that day'.
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How to cultivate artistic friendships
The New Yorker Sent
I remember telling my grandmother about our isolation, and she said, “Have regular parties at your house.” She told me what to do, and we did it, and she was right. God, I owe a lot to my grandmother.
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Conan O'Brien Delivers the Commencement Address | Harvard Commencement 2026
YouTube Sent
“So maybe my wish for you is not that Harvard becomes the last thing people know about you, but instead that Harvard becomes the least important thing people know about you.”
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How to Make a Living as an Artist
fnnch Essays Sent
“Can it not perhaps give you more joy remaining a hobby?”
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Developing creative identity
Michael's Notebook Sent
“A better question for any creative person is: what activities do you want to pursue? What kinds of understanding will that create?”
Develop taste
6 RECORDS
PREVIOUSLY FILED
Not Everything Is For You
tyfromtheinternet.com Sent
A graphic designer's personal essay on taste, change, and the quiet wisdom of a kid who simply stopped liking what she used to like.
TASTESLOP
Nemesis Memos Sent
“The biggest thing people are missing about taste across the board is that it is relative, contextual, and social.”
The Dead End of Good Taste
One Thing Newsletter Sent
“I expect we'll see a shift in emphasis from taste to character, in which the premium is placed on contradiction over cohesion and the specificity of one's interests over generalized cultural fluency.”
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Aesthetics are your problem and mine
Saul Bass Sent
“I wanna make beautiful things even if nobody cares”
Work with technology
14 RECORDSIn Defense of the Detour: on craft, A.I., and what gets lost when we skip the slow part
The New York Times Filed
When we reach for the wrong tools too quickly, we eliminate the part of the process where our particular experience and point of view enter the work.
PREVIOUSLY FILED
On AI and Writing
BRXND Dispatch Sent
The problem, I think, is that good writing is fundamentally anti-consensus. For writing to be above average, it shouldn’t sound like everything else.
No shortcuts: why AI threatens creative instinct
It's Nice That Sent
“Eliminating this rote work isn’t inherently bad, so long as you compensate for the muscle it built.”
Legibility of Effort
eieio.games Sent
“Until recently, “someone cared enough to write this” was an ok heuristic.”
The Cost of Easy Answers
Ness Labs Sent
“When every gap in understanding gets filled instantly, we lose the conditions that make human curiosity possible.”
Media artist and researcher Roopa Vasudevan on creative resistance in the digital world
The Creative Independent Sent
“We put faith in the algorithm the same way we put faith in divinity.”
AI as a Design Medium
Harvard Design Magazine Sent
“If you treat AI as a tool, you ask: how do I get the right answer? If you treat it as a medium, you ask: what happens if I push this?”
What happens when identity becomes a subscription service
girl online Sent
Figuring out who you are is an incredibly inefficient, high-friction process.
An unpersuasive guide for how to resist temptation online
Matt Pearce Sent
“To cling to the primacy of the word is to reject completely the modern methodology of persuasion.”
When Magic Becomes Mundane
BRXND Dispatch Sent
A reflection on how AI tools transition from feeling revolutionary to becoming part of our everyday workflow
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SLOPHUNTERS | The History of "That's Not Real Art"
YouTube Sent
Painters vs. photographers, musicians vs. talkies, model makers vs. CGI. This is funny, but it's worth remembering to separate critiques of process vs. critiques of volume and quality. There will always be more of everything (e.g., photos, writing, gen art), so a refinement of judgment will always follow an increase in output.
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Subway Takes' Kareem Rayma on ignoring the data
Adweek Sent
I made it. I watched the edit, I made sure it was great. But the data is not my job. The data trap, in my opinion, can suppress creativity.
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Appearing Productive in The Workplace
No One's Happy Sent
“The slowness was not a tax on the real work; the slowness was the real work. It was how the work got good.”
Protect your attention
13 RECORDS
Your Perception Of Time Is, In Fact, Warped
Noema Magazine Sent
“We do not, in fact, have an internal clock measuring minutes, hours and days. Instead, we use our external environment as a proxy for the passage of time.”
PREVIOUSLY FILED
A Philosopher's One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird
Derek Thompson (Substack) Sent
“The question, "what should I pay attention to?” is not a function of anything about my local environment.”
Why Is Digital Freedom Making Us Exhausted and Sad?
The New Atlantis Filed
If the twentieth century had feared domination by the state, the twenty-first would reveal another possibility: domination by freedom.
Strategy needs good words
Martin Weigel / Canalside View Sent
“Strategy is the art of getting other people to do something. In the pursuit of that, narrative is the strategist's tool.”
The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Are Built On A Scientific Premise That Experts Keep Telling Us Is Wrong
Techdirt Sent
“That sounds so obvious it feels almost silly to type out.”
A check-in with a very inspiring creative on creating a creative life
The Trend Report™ Sent
“You need downtime, slow time, and vast nothingness to get yourself back to being creative.”
"Nothing" is the secret to structuring your work
vangemert.dev Sent
This is how many people work: they start with a mess, work terribly hard while adding to the mess, then lose oversight and get frustrated. The harder they work, the worse it gets.
BONFIRE OF THE INANITIES: enshallowfication
Beth Bentley Sent
“I think my problem - perhaps yours too - isn’t just unfinished projects. It’s unfinished thinking.”
You want to be 'interesting'? Baby stop dabbling
Beth Bentley Sent
“Late capitalism needs us to be shallow interest-tourists.”
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How to remember everything you read (stop trying)
X (Twitter) Sent
Step 1) Become obsessed with a meaningful goal.
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How a Writer Uses AI Without Losing His Voice
Every Filed
I wake up and I don't touch the internet.
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Manage Your ‘Ultraprocessed Time’
The New York Times Sent
engineered for convenience, compulsion and stimulation, not for nourishment.
Talk to people
5 RECORDS
How to get ideas
Mason Currey Substack Sent
When you get a clever idea, it is a consequence of being connected. To language, to other people. And so that magical, spiritual aspect of the concept is the product of a group effort.
PREVIOUSLY FILED
The Reasons We're All Talking Less
The Atlantic Sent
Conversation requires, at the very least, the presence of another person.
The competitive advantage of being likeable
Julia Willemyns Sent
“Who wins in this new world? I would put money on those who have strong social skills.”
The stranger secret: how to talk to anyone – and why you should
The Guardian Sent
“I realised that there is a sort of unwritten code you learn as you get older, which enables you to assess whether a conversation is a good idea or not.”
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How to Be Old
The New York Times Sent
3. Don’t forget to bestow confidence.
Stay human
15 RECORDS
PREVIOUSLY FILED
The Conditions Under Which We Like Ourselves
Product Research & AI Evals Sent
Some of what feels like being myself may have developed in other people’s company.
Aesthetic injustice is when you deny someone access to beauty
Instagram Filed
One of the saddest things anyone has ever said to me ...
Too much of our technology is phony
A Working Library Sent
“The only way to achieve unending comfort is to wall ourselves in, close up the doors, lock them inside and out.”
We're Being Forced Back Into Our Bodies
Concept Bureau Sent
“The body ... is the last real thing we can trust.”
The Decline of Deviance 2
Experimental History Sent
“If you want to see something interesting, you have to see things that you might dislike.”
'Have I been influenced, or is this actually me?' How personal taste fell out of fashion
The Guardian Sent
“Working out what feels authentic to us has become very difficult since we subcontracted out those instincts.”
Calvin and Hobbes and the Price of Integrity
The Republic of Letters Sent
Private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships.
Anti-Dystopia
The Futures Lens Sent
“That is anti-dystopian action at its core: doing what makes the world more human, even when you cannot prove it matters in the grand scheme.”
Visual artist Daniel Arsham on the possibility of endless failure
The Creative Independent Sent
In creative spaces, it’s not like you have a career where you’re working for someone else. Instead, you’re inventing your own job and your own reality.
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WEIRD WINS
Outlier Sent
Why, how, and when weird wins - and what you can practically do as an agency, brand or just human to win weird too.
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The best way to consume magic is to not know it's coming
TikTok Sent
Anything that relieves something of its ordinariness is magic.
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What are we doing as a species, besides trying to perfect the consumer?
Vox Sent
Hope is a practice. It means that you commit to act on behalf of the things you love, regardless of the probability of success.
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The Long, Hard, Stupid Way
Frank Chimero Sent
“I think that extra labor is more of a gift; it’s the extra essence behind it.”
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The System That Punishes Beautiful Design
Design Theory Sent
“Objects do reveal what we believe in ... but they reveal systems and power also.”