025: 🪅 One year of Staring at the Ceiling 🪅
With every link I've ever shared.
Graphic design, visual delights, and things worth noticing, delivered twice a month.
Welcome to the Staring at the Ceiling First Anniversary Special Newsletter Celebration Email.
I won’t indulge too much in being self congratulatory, but I think it’s important to celebrate milestones, big and small. So indulge me a little bit.
I started sending design links out to my former coworkers three years ago, as a hobby and a nice way enhance team culture. I moved it to Substack two years in when I was unsatisfied at my old job, with layoffs looming, looking for new jobs, and full of self-doubt. Now I have a job I like and a newsletter with over 1k subscribers. Life is better!
Sending an email out twice a month has made me feel more confident in my voice and taste and it’s really fun to put together. I love that it keeps my eyes and ears open for inspiration and gives me something to look forward to. The world feels a little more colorful when you engage with it more fully.
It has also been a delight to make sweet and cool Internet Friends who cheer each other on. How nice!
As I took a retrospective look at the newsletter, I wanted to try something new. I take great joy in putting together Asset Library and always find myself excited for the next month’s issue, which got me thinking…
Going forward I’ll be condensing Asset Library and In the Clouds into one newsletter, sent out in the same cadence—on the first and third Monday of the month. The goal of this is to broaden the scope of what I am sending each month, with a greater emphasis on design (this won’t affect you if you’re already subscribed). Send me a message if there’s anything you’d like to see more or less of.
In sending these newsletters every month, I’m slowly crawling toward finding my perspective and figuring out exactly what it is I have to say. Stay tuned for my point of view to emerge.
As a gift to you, I compiled every link I’ve ever lunked.
Asset Library
📈 TRENDS
Q1 Social Trends Report from Rachel Karten / Chaos Packaging / Monotype’s Trend Report 2024 / Trend report: the uptick in what I like to call Squire Core / The Pinterest Fall 2024 trends report / Type trends for 2025 / 2024 recurring design trends / Design trends for 2025
🖍️ BRAND WORK
Play Studio’s Open AI Conference Branding / Matty Matheson Food Company Packaging is can-core / NYT Staff Conference Branding / Framework’s Branding / Athletics’ branding for Alba Larsen / IBM’s Security Brand Identity / Wolff Olins' rebrand of the New York Botanical Garden / Goldman Sachs / Tupperware / Speedo / Glossier (concept) / Aeromexico / Figma / PayPal / AG1 / LEGO / Herman Miller’s new identity by Order1 / eBay’s brand playbook / Lore brand identity / Headspace’s Sandards Site / Casa Bien’s website (and work) / Forest Carbon
🛠️ TOOLS
A helpful cheat sheet for After Effects Key Frames / Bendito Mockups / Free premium mockups2 / Custom Map Generator / UI Color Generator / For the Job Seekers: A Career Pivot Guide / Motion Design Principles / A template for organizing design systems / ColorZilla browser extension / Paletton / Shots.so / Indesign Shortcuts / Photo gradient dot com / A designer’s unfiltered take on surviving a brutal market / 12 quality mockup resources / How to write for non-writers
🎧 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS
Beyond Mexico ’68: Lance Wyman’s world of design / The Palm Royale opening titles / Shaping design and culture at the NYT / Why this font is everywhere / A graphic design breakdown of Severance / Catalog (1961), a computer graphics film / Play Mountain
💽 INDEXES AND ARCHIVES
This very amusing database and taxonomy of bread tags / Manicules3 / Jazz and Hair Band Lettering / Index of Aesthetics / Stay trendy / An amazing collection of 1950s and 60s hotel labels / The lost art of movie titles / VIET GD / Web Design Inspiration / Flickr Archive spreadsheet
🗞️ ARTICLES
Some thoughts about the bad Apple ad / UCLGs Pact for the Future / The Great Toilet Rebrand / Thinking About: For the Love of Still Life / Carly Ayres on the disappointing wipeout of the AIGA Eye on Design Archive / This Enrique Olvera interview about his Valle De Bravo home, Casa O / Crafting the Visual Identity for Figmas Config 2024 / A thoughtful argument about copying in design / Good artists borrow, big business steals / In defense of design tropes / Charles Eames’ Advice for Students / Hoping is not enough / The Dazed cheat sheet for becoming a graphic designer / When to do what you love / Why everyone can and should be a good storyteller / From Parade to L’eggsHow to market to designers / Who is Pantone’s color of the year for? / Best album art of 2024 / Best movie posters of 2024 / Caleb Vandem Boom on designing for Clairo and Vampire Weekend / Dancing the flip flop / Blackbird Spyplane on Millennial power branding / What is a design system? / NYT’s zine honoring the underground press of the Harlem Renaissance / On following your dreams
🔠 TYPOGRAPHY
The Dot Color Font / Honey Lettering by Kier Novesky for GQ / A picnic invite with ant lettering
📖 BOOKS
Tools Magazine’s gives craft a contemporary image / The Book of Symbols4 / Palate Palette / The City is Ours: Manhole Covers / Less is More: Limited Colour Graphics in Design
🌀 MISCELLANEOUS
Embroidered Photography by Daniela Spector / Being the World Champion of Looking Around / This Apple animation / What does happily ever after look like? / 100 ways to share your work that aren’t social media / The Maurice Sendak exhibit at the Denver Art Museum / Design details that feel like magic / Visualizing the Paris uprising of May 1968 / Is the love song dying? / Space Type Generator / Chicago gang business cards / Oefenstof (2024), Anna Lucia / The distance between anything at all and the center / Edward Lear’s nonsense botany
In the Clouds
🎶 MUSIC
Claire de Lune / My seasonal playlist for spring/summer 2024 / Brat / Bedroom Song by Aggie Miller / Gay? by 12RODS / SABLE, fABLE
🗞️ ARTICLES
Mark this off your to-do list / How to De-Bog Yourself / This is what the internet looks like now / Why wellness is so annoying / Color Story: Indigo / Normcore History Lesson / The astroturfing of fashion culture / Our New Religion Isn't Enough / Already There: an essay on grief / I regret what’s in my camera roll, Research as a way of life / Coming home / The nonsense notes I wrote on Bravo’s The Valley for my friend Maggie5 / Young Women Are Fleeing Organized Religion. This Was Predictable / This read about the costuming in Funny Face made me want to watch it again / A Guide for Kitchenwares / You good? My bad / The small/independent brand encyclopedia / Dove Grey, Part II / How to waste less food / 68 ways to eat fewer ultra-processed foods / The strange story of the album Plantasia / Severance is filmed in a building that reimagined corporate life / How Wallace & Gromit found a place in our living rooms, and in our hearts / The wonder of Soviet bus stops / How to Begin / Art and artifice by Donna Tart / 35 street style moments from i-D history / Notes toward a new romanticism and an update / Fifty easy ways to make 2025 better / A look back on Quincy Jones quotes / Who am I in spoon form? / Alberto Tandoi walked 400km across London and photographed all of the people who caught his eye / Finding Flaco lovingly details owl’s year of freedom / Secret history of color: blue / All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten / Staring into the abyss is a core life skill / Framing 101
🛒 SHOPPING LINKS
Linen pillow covers / Cura by Mila / Molecula Jewelry / Apolo Pickleball / this rug / This $4,700 votive candle holder / Pea Lauer / Banzo Bond blazer / Mexican silver cuff / MNZ metallic Serafina flats / Stainless steel ice cream bowls / Jean Paul Gaultier Berlin Wall mesh top / Pylon candle holders / Suzanne Rae glove shoe / Lichen Incense holder by Rahul Gowthaman for Shinko / Santos by Monica Triangle bag / Cecilia horse knit sweater / Stainless steel cake stand / Alexander Calder-esque initials brooch / Holiday Studio NY 2025 Calendar / Library card sweater vest knitting pattern / Aluminum tea kettle / Inspiration shirt
🖼️ ART AND BOOKS
Robert Mapplethorpe’s flowers / Anyone’s Ghost by August Thompson / Handwriting with pen / Un Retrato de Diego, La Revolucion de la Mirada / Mitosis art / The Cubies’ ABC / 700 years of Dante’s Divine Comedy in Art
🎧 VIDEOS AND PODCASTS
Jenny Nicholson’s video essay on the Star Wars Hotel / Critics at Large - The Trap of the Trad Wife / This clip of Charlie Bardey and Richard Perez at Union Hall / I hate my phone so I got rid of it
🌀 MISCELLANEOUS
The Valid Horseshoe Theory of Consumables / Public Work by Cosmos / The NYT Impressionism Quiz / Melody Hansen compiled a list of resources for those who want to help those affected by the LA fires / Who killed the world? / State of create by Patreon / Music map / 10 Flowers 10 Places / Hello Artists / Animal onomatopoeia in different languages
🎁 GIFT GUIDE
Thats all, folks. Thanks so much for reading.
I leave you with the song that inspired the title of the newsletter.
See you next time. You can expect this newsletter in your inbox on the first and third Monday of the month.
If you’d like to support the newsletter, you can buy me a coffee.
1 One of my favorites of this year.
2 Seriously essential.
3 One of my favorite things I’ve found and shared here. Chef’s kiss.
4 Everyone should own this book!
5 I just re read these notes and laughed out loud. A lot of my notes are just that I want to punt Jax Taylor across the continental United States. I love The Valley.
Congratulations!
Congrats on a year! “Stay tuned for my point of view to emerge” is such a great line.