These Days
Hi! Some housekeeping. If you’ve received this email it’s because at some point we’ve interacted and I’ve thought: This person is interesting. I want to stay in touch with them.
Let me tell you about this little scam I’ve been running. My friend is an editor and gets invited to screenings for films. Arthouse pictures that take risks. Independent films trying to land distribution. Early screenings for Academy contenders. I really love movies and wanted to see them, too. I asked him how I could get into the screenings and he told me he'd assign me an interview with a director and then I'd start getting invited to stuff. Ok, so the scam is actually just work. Most of my creative life has been seeing something someone else made and then trying to reverse engineer it to make it my own. This process of watching, taking notes, asking questions, it’s all really familiar for me. Last year I interviewed Joshua Oppenheimer about his film, The End. There’s a couple moments where the edit holds onto the characters wristwatch for a hair long. It caught my eye. I asked Joshua about it. “Ultimately time is the antagonist”, he told me. About living in Indonesia, Joshua said that he knew a sign the government was corrupt was when people’s watches cost more than their cars. What a satisfying answer. Think about a project you worked on last year. Try to recall why you chose the exact shade of blue you chose. Then imagine giving an answer rooted in reason as much as that one. My day-to-day involves a lot of client work. I’m usually balancing somewhere between 7–10 projects ranging from large campaigns for non-profits, brands for tech companies, and strategy docs for foundations. It's a nice variety. And each of these projects has different needs, constraints, and deliverables. For instance, some organizations have large budgets. Others small. Some brands only need a visual identity. Others want guidance on voice and tone. I love the breadth of this work. It helps me see a fuller picture of the moment we’re in. And yah, 2025 was a little weird? For me, it seemed the whiplash from the new administration pushed people who felt stagnant to make changes they otherwise wouldn’t. I saw so many posts from LinkedIn influencers talking about how incredible AI is but I'm betting the exhaustion they're feeling from consistently defending their worth against it is a lot to hold. So many haphazardous creative and business decisions were made. Am I alone in feeling like there was a moment during the summer where as long as something had the shape of familiarity, it was fine? To be clear, I don't have a strong take on if all of this is "good" or "bad". It just happened. When people ask for my thoughts on AI, I tell them that we can’t sweep back the ocean but we can define the shore. The same is probably true of our new administration. I used to think history was written by people looking backwards and trying to make sense of it all. But that's not true at all. It's very much written in the now. It's the decisions we make in our day-to-day. The wristwatch we wear. The shade of blue we choose. I think it's important to remember that. And I really do mean this: it's such a fucking gift to be writing history alongside you. I'm rooting for you.
Recent Work The studio won some awards this year! Two Webby’s and an International Creative Award for our work with the ACLU. Plus two gold Anthem Awards for our work with HRC. I’m extremely proud of everyone on the team for their work. One other fun studio thing. We worked with José Andrés to develop a brand for his new philanthropic initiative called Longer Tables Fund. I'm sure we'll do a proper case study soon but you can head to my website for a peak at the work now. I photographed and interviewed Joachim Trier for his new film, Sentimental Value. It’s very good. I want to photograph more things next year so if you want me to do that for you, let's chat! The Bench opened up in Soho this year. It's such a cool space. I've loved watching Michka build it. I did the initial branding and have also done some cool posters for recent events.
Top 10 Films My favorites from 2025 in alphabetical order. See ya on Letterboxd.
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