Kindred Studio - Monthly Roundup August 2026 A round-up of what I made, watched, read, listened to and noticed this month. (Edit this intro in Mailchimp before sending.) | From the studio| Write A Letter. I Dare You. Sending someone a letter creates a tactile, physical object that is literally delivered to someone's door. Beyond the content of the letter, there is a deep meaning to going to the trouble of writing, sealing and... Read the post → |
| Convenience is not your friend The key problem with “*convenient”* is that if something involves “little or no effort”, there’s bound to be an underlying negative effect; whether that’s giving away your personal data, paying extra for a load of bread... Read the post → |
| Watching | Reading | The smush Seth's Blog · Seth Godin New creation technologies make the best a little worse and the bad a lot better — desktop publishing, smartphone video, autotune. Seth's point is that AI is the great smush, and the... |
 | The disconnect between effort and value Seth's Blog · Seth Godin A Hard Day's Night took under 15 hours from idea to finished record; More Than a Feeling took Tom Scholz five years. One is not 1,500 times more valuable than the other.... |
 | YOKO Skips the Zen Garden for a Sticker Sheet The Dieline · Chloe Cordover Matcha branding has been stuck in the same soft sage minimalism for years, so Good Spark's tins for YOKO go the other way entirely: huge rounded letterforms cropped off at the edges,... |
 | Radical collaboration requires friction Design Observer · Chris Mele Siberia co-founder Chris Mele opens with the year-end call where a client mentioned, in passing, that most of his studio's biggest deliverable had been quietly scrapped and rebuilt after handover. Same Slack... |
 | Why have design books gotten so boring? Creative Review · Radim Malinic Radim Malinic points at a canon that never moves — A Smile in the Mind, The Art of Looking Sideways, Interaction of Color, Debbie Millman's Essential Principles. His argument isn't that they're... |
 | Why a Japanese potato chip bag lost its colour It's Nice That · Ray Masaki Ray Masaki spots a silver Calbee bag in a Shibuya supermarket with the saturation dragged to zero and the rosy-cheeked mascot missing, and a small label explaining why: 石油原料節約パッケージ, petroleum ink-saving packaging.... |
 | The Wizards of AI are sad and lonely men Design Observer · Lee Moreau Lee Moreau runs the AI moment through The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — the small and meek travelling to petition a great and terrible power, and being handed a quid pro quo... |
| Listening | Influences See the latest 100 influences → | Read past issues · j-kindred.com Kindred Studio · Brand strategy, design & growth · Ipswich, Suffolk
© 2026 Kindred Studio. |
|
