Kindred Studio - Monthly Roundup

July 2026

A round-up of what I made, watched, read, listened to and noticed this month. (Edit this intro in Mailchimp before sending.)

Watching

The Endless Loop of 8-Track Tapes: How It Really Works

Woody's Hobbies

David Fincher's Hidden System in The Game

StudioBinder

Extrapolations — Official Trailer | Apple TV

Apple TV

The Movie Poster That Drove Stanley Kubrick Insane

Paper and Light

The Mastodon in the room

Mastodon

OpenAI Wants A Government Bailout

Prof G Markets

How the Hawaiian Power Grid Works

Practical Engineering

Lake Mead's MAJOR Crisis is Literally 10ft Away...

Desert Rat Explorations

The Internet Is Dead…And Nobody Cares

Rick Beato

Fiend Without A Face live in Tulsa 10.2.2023

philippeguillou

Reading

Why brands are going custom with type

Creative Boom · Abbey Bamford

Studio DRAMA's Frankie Guzi makes the case that bespoke type has gone from luxury indulgence to strategic necessity — the glue holding a brand's voice together across apps, billboards, AR and packaging....

Stop ruining it

Seth's Blog · Seth Godin

Seth Godin borrows an insight from stereo-maker Paul McGowan: musicality isn't a feature you add to an amplifier, it's what's left when you stop ruining it. He runs the same logic through...

The AI identity crisis: Why your brand is now at the mercy of an algorithm's trust

The Drum · Mark Challinor

Mark Challinor interviews Hope Frank of the Forbes Communications Council's AI Group, who argues the CMO is now a governor, not a storyteller. Her provocation: 'Brand used to be what you said...

London Festival of Architecture 2026: everything you need to know

Wallpaper* · Ellie Stathaki

Wallpaper's Ellie Stathaki guides you through the UK's biggest architecture festival — 400+ events across 11 London neighbourhoods, themed this year around 'Belonging'. Director Rosa Rogina frames it as a chance to...

The state of the creative industry 2026: what our survey tells us about pay, burnout and AI

Creative Boom · Tom May

Creative Boom's flagship survey of 882 professionals lays the year bare: 69% have hit burnout, 86% now use AI while only 10% think it's good for the industry, and nearly half of...

Building a brand means building a world – that's why Blanca Doba's identity for Bare Earth didn't stop at a wordmark

It's Nice That · Ellis Tree

Self-taught and only three years in, Blanca Doba treats branding as world-building — her identity for fictional body-care brand Bare Earth stretches an ornate, calligraphic signature across lace borders, pressed-flower photography and...

Fifth Avenue food hall identity highlights how a person can trump a mood board

Creative Boom · Tom May

Love & War's identity for Shaver Hall, a new food hall inside the old Lord & Taylor building on Fifth Avenue, starts with a person rather than a mood board — naming...

Meet Sastre, a new typeface shaped by tailoring and nature

Creative Review · Adam Woodward

María Ramos of Spanish-Swedish foundry NM type releases Sastre — Spanish for 'tailor' — a text family drawn from the marks tailoring patterns leave on fabric in her parents' Galician workshop. Beatrice...

Manual's future-facing identity for the Obama Presidential Center

Creative Review · Daniel Milroy Maher

Manual's Tom Crabtree and Patricia Callaway spent three years on the visual system for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's South Side. They kept the Foundation's rising-sun mark but built three new...