Transmission #8: The perfect knife, design/consulting, simple living and killer asteroids.
Design, ideas and other flotsam
Hello. Welcome.
This is Transmissions by me, Martin Brown. Father. Husband. Designer at Craig Walker and lecturer at RMIT. Marty to most.
This is an ongoing newsletter that collates some of the more interesting stories, links, quotes and other curios that float my way. If you’re new here, then sign up now to get more of these in your inbox, and don’t forget to tell your friends!
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Apologia: In last week’s email, I neglected to properly link to Tom Lee’s wonderful story, A Brief History of Outdoor Knowledge Work. Check it out here if you missed it.
Design
The Kitchen Bladesmith
Todd Oppenheimer, Craftsmanship Quarterly
File next to ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’ and ‘New Yorker stories that should have been even longer.’ This is the story of Master Bladesmith Bob Kramer, whose obsessive pursuit to the make the finest quality knives takes him around the world, and features dozens of fascinating digressions around the metallurgy of knives, Damascus steel (and the story of its rediscovery, in the evocatively-named wootz), Japanese carpentry, the failures of industrialisation and the nature of obsession. If you make it to the end (it’s 12,000 words!) there’s even video cameo with Anthony Bourdain.
Six things design firms can learn from the fast lane of consulting
David Heacock, LinkedIn
One should always be cautious of articles with listicle titles, particularly those published on LinkedIn, but this is a good one.
Over the past few decades, design has been elevated from choosing a shade of curtains to being a serious pillar of business strategy. And with that there has crept both naivete and an inflated sense of self-importance amongst designers finding themselves sitting at the big-kids table. This article looks at how design could, and should, play within the context of broader business decision-making, and ultimately how to leverage the best out of design – having a point of difference and not being subsumed by the suits, but also acknowledging that design and business is ultimately a symbiotic relationship, and remembering that, for most, ‘the value of design is not self-evident.’
Ideas
Experience: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years
Wilf Davies, The Guardian
There was something extraordinarily touching about this story of a farmer in Wales. “I’m a farmer and look after 71 sheep. My boyhood was spent helping my family on the farm. I have never wanted to run away from it, even as a young lad. This valley is cut in the shape of my heart. I once visited a farm in England, about 30 years ago; that was the only time I left Wales.”
There’s a world that’s slipping away, and we’re too busy on our damn phones to notice. Wilf is what real rebellion looks like.
How to Survive a Killer Asteroid
Cody Cassidy, Wired
In short, you almost definitely won’t. This article details the almost-unimaginable violence of the Chicxulub asteroid hitting the earth 65 million years ago. Liquidised rock, 1000-ft tsunamis, fire walls, 1000-mph shockwaves – a LOT of bad things. But somehow, quite a lot of creatures did survive, by burrowing into the ground, or living in caves, and by being a long, long, long way away from the Yucatan peninsula.
Quotes
“When sceptics are asked to explain why people succumb to conspiracy theories, they tend to say they offer a strange comfort – they allow people to make sense of a chaotic world. But I think there’s another, more often ignored reason. You get renaissances of conspiracy theories when the powerful behave in conspiratorial ways.”
– Jon Ronson, Making Sense of Conspiracy Theorists, The Guardian
Chart of the Week
(ht @tomfgoodwin)
Other
According to @Chamath Palihapitiya, Amazon saves people in the US an average of 75 hours per year, through buying online vs going to a store. That’s nearly two whole working weeks!
Daisugi is the Japanese forestry technique of growing cedar from a ‘platform’ on the tree itself. It’s a real thing, and it’s beautiful.
Popular Japanese biker @azusagakuyuki turns out to be a 50-year-old man using FaceApp. Link
Roughly 1 in every 10 words said by a Glaswegian is a swear word. Link
Peter Chung, the genius behind Aeon Flux, is now on Vimeo. Extraordinary work. Link