Archive
Past newsletter issues
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
What if... Language Didn’t Hold Us Back? 💭
The holiday decorations are officially up and turned on in the streets of Porto. It’s beginning to look a lot like hanging out with the family and eating tons of clementines. 🍊 After my November writing challenge, I’m actually going straight into a digital detox, to end the year on a
Fanny Vassilatos
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
What If... Our Systems Could Cause and Be Caused by a Desirable Future? 🔄
What you focus on expands. That’s what writing 1000+ words a day is teaching me right now. When you force yourself to show up for the things you care about, creative energy seems to reproduce itself. It has shown me that you get out of creative projects more than what
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, November 9, 2022
What If... Urban Places Offered Us Experiences Similar to Digital Places? 🏘️
I’m in the middle of my fourth week being in this new place I’ll one day get to call home. A highlight that’s worth sharing is the samesame co-living space we stayed at in Lisbon. It was a short first encounter, but we’re excited to head back there this weekend
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, October 26, 2022
What If... Social Media Was Designed Like Public Spaces? 🌳
As I’m writing this, it’s been precisely one week since we’ve flown to Portugal with a one-way ticket. Apart from the “Moderate Coastal Event” giving us cloudy skies and bursts of rain, it does feel like a new chapter beginning. The turning of the page is just... in slow motion.
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, October 12, 2022
What if... We Challenged the Desktop Metaphor? 📁
You might notice a bit of a different look on this email and the website. I’m trying out the name What If for this publication. I’ve always struggled to find a name that fits all the topics I enjoy writing about, but framing my explorations as what if’s feels like
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, September 14, 2022
On the Laws of Human Activity 🏙
On Civilizational Dynamics 🏙 In this meta piece, I ponder whether laws of physics might be applicable to higher-level movements of energy. If we consider creation, attention and love as energy, as the primary matter of human activity, maybe it too, follows the same rules of force, effect and motio…
Fanny Vassilatos
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
On the Proliferation of Content About Content Creation 🃏
The Meta-Creator Economy 🃏 There are a lot of things to like about the creator economy. Most notably, it enables everyone to become an entrepreneur. But it also inevitably means that the creator economy becomes an economy of its own, where creating content about content creation is a shortcut to r…
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, August 24, 2022
The Ladders of Craft 🪜, and The Creative Practice as Survival 🙈
From Craft to Management 🪜 I’ve always wondered why the natural evolution of a career eventually meant turning your back on your craft to become a manager. I didn’t get into design to manage people, that’s a whole other profession. Maybe we shouldn’t look at it like a definitive switch and
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, August 17, 2022
On Indie Social Media 🪞, and How the Many Are Smarter Than the Few 🫘
Getting Friendly With are.na 🪞 I’ve been trying out this social platform and I have to say my experience has been illuminating. On are.na, I have found more meaning, more weirdness, and more honesty. Thanks to a very transparent (non-)algorithm, spending time on are.na has made me
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, August 10, 2022
The Power of Imagination ⛰, and Decentralizing Search 🪜
Geographies of Mind ⛰ A short meditation on meditation, specifically the power of imagination which distinguishes us from other species. It is deeply human to sit in silence and think. I believe it is an act of resistance to make the time for retreats to imaginary places in the mind’s eye.
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, August 3, 2022
Your Freedom Stops at Mine 🌳, and Expressing Our Multiple Selves Online 🪩
A Game of Give and Take 🌳 A phenomenon called “canopy shyness” can be observed in some tree species. I find fascinating just how accurate a mirror it is to social behaviours like negotiating our freedoms, addressing consent and showing respect. Definitely on my forest-bathing bucket list from now…
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, July 27, 2022
The Car-Less City 🚋, and Knowledge as Wealth 🪙
Questioning the Car-First City 🚋 Having a think about our dependance on cars and how it touches so many systems at once. Urban planning, remote work, public transport, convenience and expectations, safety and the climate. Now that the pandemic and lockdowns allowed us to experience alternate ways…
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, July 20, 2022
🪑 The Case for Purism, and 🚜 On the Fulfillment Economy
The Benefits of a Purist Approach to Life 🪑 A lot has been written about the threats of minimalist design, AirSpace interiors (how Airbnbs across the world all look the same) and how we’re losing a sense of character and identity. But I still believe there are benefits to embracing a
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, July 13, 2022
🌃 On the Magic of the City, and 🧑💻 On Devotion and Contribution
Poetics of the City 🌃 A bit of a lyrical expression of what makes cities so special. How sharing moments and places with strangers keeps it always interesting. And how when you consider yourself a part of that rich multiplicity, everything suddenly becomes possible. Poetics of the CitySharing Thi…
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, July 6, 2022
🕰 Tools Are Analogies, and 🏛 Regulation as a Design Practice
Analogies of Time, Space and Thought 🕰 If maps are analogies of space, clocks, analogies of time, and language, analogies of thought, then the Web is an analogy of analogies. How can we keep building meaningful tools on top of these levels of abstraction? Analogies of Time, Space and ThoughtThe W…
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, June 29, 2022
🏆 The Universality of Beauty, and 🌀 Potential as Common Denominator
Is Beauty Good? 🏆 Here, I argue that beauty is universal because it exists in the interaction between an object and an observer. We don’t all share the feeling of beauty towards the same things, but the feeling of beauty in itself is universally positive, hence good. Is Beauty Good?“What
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, June 22, 2022
🏷 On Naming Things, and 💎 Believing in the Internet We Shaped
The Word Meraki Shouldn’t Exist 🏷 There’s something truly beautiful in untranslatable words, but I believe this particular one shouldn’t have to exist. What happens when we put a word on “doing things with love”? Having a word for this highlights how most of the things we do are motivated
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, June 15, 2022
🕊 Design With No Strings Attached, and 🌍 What if We’re the Cells?
Design Minus Business 🕊 This is a line of thought I keep coming back to. Design’s identity seems so tied to the market, always considered within some sort of business process or monetary goal. I always wonder what design is when not limited by budget and deadlines? What would be unlocked
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, June 8, 2022
🍅 The Choices We Don’t Make, 🚪the Party We’re Half-Invited To, and 📐 What if the World Wasn’t Measurable?
The Afterlife Keeps the Score 🍅 Isn’t it crazy to think just how few of our choices are really up to us? We think we’re making one choice, but in reality we’re making dozens of choices we don’t even know we’re making. We mostly get to choose from menus that are
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, June 1, 2022
🎻 Everything Is About Scale, 👁 the Japanese ‘Societal Eye’, and 🪀 Finding Where the Grass Is Greenest to Us
Of Brass, Wood and Strings 🎻 A photography series from David Brooks captures the interior of musical instruments in a way where they become beautifully vast architectural spaces. This made me ponder on the question of scale and proportion. How we sometimes need to “zoom out” to reconsider the circ…
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, May 25, 2022
🪣 The afterlife, ⛳️ artistic competition, and ⚖️ some things just need to end
Not a Bucket List 🪣I often think about The Good Life’s season 4 version of the afterlife, where you get to choose whenever you’re ready to leave for good. After learning everything there is to know about the world, I’d probably time-travel back and forth a bunch, explore the oceans
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, May 11, 2022
Thoughts on brands, the passion economy, and the curiosity & creativity divide
A personality without a personIn an effort to unravel my love-hate relationship with brands, I’ve found that they are really just beacons of identity that we choose to endorse. They represent values that we either support or don’t, and then we get to spread the love by wearing, using, or
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, April 13, 2022
The commodification of self-care, digital etiquette, and the future as collective imagination
Self-care cultureI examined how trends around wellness and self-care culture can tell us more about the dynamics of capitalism. Although this social movement came from a place of resistance to the toxic market, it has such a strong focus on physical objects and aesthetics that it was inevitably fit…
Fanny VassilatosWednesday, March 16, 2022
Artisanal Intelligence, the blame game of tech, and the necessity of friction
Uncharted TerritoriesI recently attended IxDA’s Interaction Week 22 and shared the sketchnotes I took of the various talks and keynotes. If I had to pick a single idea to highlight, it would be from the very first talk on the very first day by Matteo Loglio of oio studios. He
Fanny Vassilatos