Artisan Uprising

Is it just me or did some multidimensional boundary collapse and release a reservoir of human hate and generative slop? I don’t care what you believe politically, these are not political matters—private equity and techno-billionaires devouring the truth from its poor, soft underbelly in an orgy of unmoderated, officially-sanctioned ruin is as bad as it looks.

A bit much for a B2B content newsletter? Ya. Well it’s a bit much to be right now. Reading, watching, thinking. I am genuinely curious who wants this.

Yet work goes on, doesn’t it? 

We can’t all seize the means like Farmer Duck. And as writers, we can't keep these awful ideas out. We are our own source material. So what can we do? I'm finding solace that I'm not alone. I've noticed a rebellion forming on LinkedIn of the idiosyncratic and artful—the poets have arrived. They are whispering about a new world order for work.

They're saying, you can't sit silent, the world needs your art—yes, at work.

Like,

Magali Charmot

Mag takes the uncommon perspective that she actually loves her LinkedIn algorithm. I do too. Her saying this helped inspire this issue. Train yours to follow the poets.

At a breakfast meetup last October, Mag told me that her word of the year (she always chooses a word) was “Softness,” and to invite that in. Then November happened and she decided it’d have to be something more akin to humor—in the Shakespearean, tricksterian sense of cleverly deflating the pompous. I could not be more on board. I look to her for counterintuition, style, and metaphors.

She turned me on to Metalabel, a platform to help artists self-publish.

Alona Lisa

I find Alona’s choice of words and imagery hypnotic; what a new friend of mine recently called “a strange attractor factor.” Unnormal. Not always pleasant. But it leaves me transfixed. Utter uniqueness. Candor. Eyes.

Paul Taylor

Paul’s satirical posts are always just one sentence that starts with “BREAKING,” followed by a skewer through the heart of the creative industry. It’s true to my work. His fake posts are some of the realest things I read. Levity. Critique. Unafraid to go there.

Tatiana Tsiguleva

She’s Midjourney’s design director and produces imagery you wouldn’t think possible with the tool. I appreciate that she lets everything speak for itself. Brief. Shares the work.

Ben Dietz

What words to describe Ben? Intellectually omnivoracious? Internet niche cave diver? Webtrotting archivist of rare internet curios and people Hunter S. Thompson would have found too weird to live but too rare to die? His newsletters contain more links than mine do words. Follow him and you will learn new things about yourself. Alarming things.

He started breakfast club (the in-person manifestation of the same-named newsletter). Eve and I host the San Francisco chapter. Come meet us at the 1 Hotel at Mission and Embarcadero at 8:30am every Wednesday.

Kerry Cunningham

You really can’t understand the Kerry appeal until you’ve worked a decade or two in B2B marketing where people say things like “Let’s table that because we’ll optimize for best-in-class later” and others nod and pretend to know. Kerry will have none of it. He’s a lone voice of dissenting reason. New ideas. Quotable. Rich terminology.

Maya Spivak

If we are the universe exploring itself, Maya is its chief agent. She questions our everyday surroundings in fun ways, like wandering the Vegas strip and asking, what’s with all the injury lawyer billboards and why do they all look and sound the same? Cultural commentator. Lively talks. Once executed a one-woman conference.

Matthew Kilgour

Unfiltered, unhinged, majestically brief. Caustic. Topical. Provocateur. 

Want to find even more? Look through the comments on their posts. 

What this all adds up to, for me: The time for spectating is over. It's time to make and share art in public.

The artisans are rising up.

Fenwick Principle

♟️ Artisan Uprising

We are artisans each honing our craft and who love to awaken this desire in others. Each of us brings our unique sources and inspirations including the sum of all the books we've ever read and projects we've ever led and use each task as an opportunity to further our craft.

In the next issue

I'll analyze a report Carina wrote for a client, our fifth year doing it.

Worth reading

Staring into the void of ice cream. Hat tip to Carina for finding.

How to price your art. By Metalabel, the self-publishing platform.

Tone of voice isn’t real.

How consultants almost ruined Nike’s brand. This is what MBA/spreadsheet thinking gets you. 

How a doctor lost his intuition. And what he missed as a result. Long read.

Chore. I’m loving this retro rebrand. This is a thing. Eve's take: "Retro-future is about to be in."

In-house. Great website. These folks are magazine publishers.

This is what auto tariffs look like on a deconstructed Ford F-150. Genius contextualization from The Wall Street Journal. Cars may be out of the budget. But how can you think along similar lines? 

Me, safe during the AI apocalypse.

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