My Recent Reading

I should read more, but here are some recent articles I've read and thought others might enjoy. Feel free to ask me on a free consultation call about how this sort of thing is powered. It can be really handy for curating and sharing content.

James Kindred
A Creative Consultant for Brands
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March 2025

13 March 25

GOOD Agency and Leerdammer launch ‘Talk It Out’ to support YoungMinds and mental mealth awareness

By Abbey Bamford for www.creativeboom.com

Mental health among young people is at crisis levels. In 2017, an estimated one in nine children had a diagnosable mental health condition, but today, that figure has risen to one in five. That’s five children in every classroom.

11 March 25

Pentagram rebrand of Zeff reshapes the future of sustainable design

By Abbey Bamford for www.creativeboom.com

For over two decades, Zeff has quietly built a reputation for innovation in the world of sustainable product design. Founded in 2001 by William Hayes, the Bristol-based company is best known for the Ubin — the world’s first 100% recycled and recyclable recycling bin.

9 March 25

In an era of misinformation, should brands even bother trying to tell the truth?

By Spencer Buck for The Drum

These logical persuasions are known as RTBs (reasons to believe).

7 March 25

The enduring appeal of Transport for London’s seat designs

By Kyle MacNeill for www.wallpaper.com

This year, Transport for London – or TfL – turns 25. Some commuters probably feel like they have aged double that in the same stretch of time.

5 March 25

Yorkshire Tea’s Ben Newbury on the challenger thinking that stirred up the tea market

By Tim Healey for The Drum

Like most people, my career has been a journey of exploration and learning. My first proper job, if you call it that, was working as a team leader in a call center. I discovered that I was pretty good at talking and selling to customers, but also that managing a team wasn’t a walk in the park.

5 March 25

The questions ChatGPT shouldn’t answer

By for The Verge

The fundamental question of ethics — and arguably of all philosophy — is about how to live before you die. What is a good life? This is a remarkably complex question,

3 March 25

Inside the creation of Alien: Romulus – how the art team brought the terror up to date

By Tanya Combrinck for Creative Bloq

Set between Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986), Alien: Romulus, the latest addition to the sci-fi horror franchise, eschews the slick look of the last two instalments and takes us back to the chunky, grimy aesthetic of the original films; it’s a style that has seen the film nominated for a Best Visual E

2 March 25

The importance of building a “human” brand in a digital world

By for howbrandsarebuilt.com

Being a “human” brand involves being approachable and relatable in an industry dominated by corporate jargon and robotic interactions.

1 March 25

The new dawn of the London sandwich shop

By Toyo Odetunde for www.wallpaper.com

Spanning centuries and borders, the sandwich is one of the most universally familiar dishes. Simple, portable and versatile, the appeal of a meal between two slices of bread endures. It’s an optimal canvas, infinite in scope.

1 March 25

17 Travel Tech Acquisitions So Far This Year – See the List

By for Skift

Small deals are leading unprecedented M&A activity in travel tech right now, and you’ll see that they dominate the list below. As we recently reported, private equity firms have accumulated an estimated $3 trillion that they need to deploy, and roughly $300 billion of that is earmarked for tech.

February 2025

28 February 25

Take 5: Surreal LEGO Art, a Dreamy Sweater, Puffy Lamp + More

By Caroline Williamson for design-milk.com

Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist Katherine Duclos has been sharing her LEGO mosaic art on Instagram over the years and I’m forever intrigued every time they pop up.

28 February 25

“Graphic designers are not magicians”: is the industry getting too demanding?

By Natalie Fear for Creative Bloq

Recently a LinkedIn post by creative designer Priyanka Rana went viral, igniting a passionate response from creatives all sharing one poignant sentiment – the graphic design industry is in crisis. Whether we like it or not the skills that define a graphic designer have changed.

28 February 25

Robot Food refreshes Carlsberg’s craft beer brand Jacobsen

By Abbey Bamford for www.creativeboom.com

Jacobsen has long been a respected name in brewing, but as the drinking landscape shifts and craft beer continues to evolve, a refresh was in order.

28 February 25

eriro Provides a Unique Mountain Retreat in the Austrian Alps

By Alex Moling for coolhunting.com

If you book a stay at the eriro hotel, aim to arrive before 16:30 in order to catch the last gondola up the mountain, because once the slopes close, it’s just you, amidst a glistening expanse of snow, and the majestic alpine peaks that surround you.

27 February 25

Use Design To Design Change: James Hurst on the evolution of branding

By Abbey Bamford for www.creativeboom.com

Branding is more than a visual identity—it’s an operating system for businesses. This is the premise behind James Hurst’s Use Design To Design Change, a book that challenges conventional branding narratives and provides a hands-on toolkit for building brands with intention.

26 February 25

Social media in 2025: why creatives are ditching ‘rented’ spaces for owned platforms

By Tom May for www.creativeboom.com

We’ve been talking for some time about the death of social media. But now, here in 2025, it feels like things are really coming to a head. You can’t have failed to notice it.

26 February 25

Why Brand Audits Are So Important, and How to Do Them Well

By Tom May for www.creativeboom.com

We explore the pivotal role of the brand audit in the modern design process and get expert input on best practices.

When you take on a new client as a designer or agency, it’s standard practice t…

26 February 25

I stop working by noon every day — and I’ve never been so productive

By Strategy Contributors for Business Insider

Focus has always been a challenge for me, but I’ve always felt there should be a better way. I’ve tried accountability groups, productivity apps and all sorts of other gimmicks for getting more done. But on their own, nothing seemed to work.

April 2024

30 April 24

Inside Google’s latest move to postpone the cookie apocalypse

By Seb Joseph for Digiday

January is as good a place to start as any. That’s when Google began ending third-party cookies in Chrome among one percent of traffic, which equates to around 30 billion users. The move gave ad executives something to test.

30 April 24

Speculation continues to swirl over a possible WPP breakup

By Ronan Shields for Digiday

However, for some, the figures, which represent continued flat or declining revenue performance, signal the need for a more root-and-branch turnaround approach for the entity that is still thought of as the largest marketing communications agency in the world — even if its market cap, which nears

30 April 24

Making Sense of Color Tests the Bandwidth of Human Perception

By Joseph Sgambati III

It may come as a surprise, but the human experiences of taste, hearing, smell, touch, and sight, share the computing capacity of technologies like the pocket calculator, hard disk, USB Key, and computer network, respectively.

30 April 24

Tesla axed its entire marketing team—here’s why that matters

By Jeff Beer for Fast Company

News broke earlier this week that Tesla had laid off its entire 40-person marketing and growth content team, barely a year after starting it. Perhaps the biggest surprise for many was that Tesla even had a marketing and growth content team.  Ford spent $2.

30 April 24

Headspace overhauls visual identity to become mental health all-rounder

By

The platform tries out new illustrations and a custom typeface to help it compete as a serious mental health coach service. The Headspace look is famous.

3 April 24

Stagecoach Joins Soberchella as Music Fests Amp Up Their Booze-Free Options

By T.L. Stanley for Adweek

The move fits into the growing sober curious and dry tripping trends, largely driven by Gen Z, which aim to add a clear-headed layer to traditionally hard-partying events.

3 April 24

plant-based vinyl replaces PVC with sugarcane bioplastics for compostable records

By matthew burgos | designboom for designboom

Evolution Music’s Evovinyl is a plant-based vinyl record made of sugarcane bioplastics that ditches the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a synthetic thermoplastic that contributes to damaging the environment, to devise compostable records.

March 2024

27 March 24

Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines

By Melissa Heikkilä for MIT Technology Review

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Last week was the week chatbot-powered search engines were supposed to arrive.

27 March 24

The creatives’ guide to finding happiness

By Tom May

Finding happiness in the ever-demanding world of the creative industries can often feel like it’s just out of reach. We pour our hearts and souls into our work, often grappling with the pressures of deadlines, self-doubt and the relentless pursuit of perfection.

19 March 24

Yuki Uebo’s crowded illustrations are inspired by the hustle and bustle of Tokyo life

By Dom Carter

With practically 14 million people calling Tokyo home, the largest city on the planet is also one of the most densely populated.

13 March 24

I tried ‘slow productivity’ – I’m happier, less frazzled and achieving more

By Isabelle Aron

What does being productive mean to you? Being at your desk at 6am to get work done before the onslaught of Slack notifications and meetings? Tackling your inbox so that the number of unread emails is only in double digits? Getting through your never-ending to-do list?

11 March 24

The 50 most powerful women in architecture and design

By Dezeen for Dezeen

Today is International Women’s Day and to celebrate, we’ve compiled a list of the 50 most influential women in architecture and design. Having joined the Museum of Modern Art in 1994, Paola Antonelli is now the institution’s senior curator and founding director of research and development.

11 March 24

Rivian Revolutionizes the Midsize Market with R2, R3 and R3X

By Evan Orensten

Rivian has unveiled not only the expected R2 midsize SUV, but also surprised with the introduction of their previously unannounced smaller SUV, the R3, along with its performance variant, the R3X (in the few hours since the event these two are already dominating social media).

February 2024

27 February 24

Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars?

By Nathaniel Rich for The New York Times

Alyssa Shannon was on her morning commute from Oakland to Sacramento, where she worked as an advanced-practice nurse at the university hospital, when NASA called to tell her that she had been selected for a Mars mission. She screamed and pulled off the highway.

26 February 24

Land of Plenty’s rebrand of Happy Endings makes everyone feel welcome

By Tom May

Founded in 2014 by award-winning Australian pastry chef Terri Mercieca, Happy Endings is an ice cream brand defined by colourful chaos.

26 February 24

Why Do We Have a Leap Year Anyway?

By Phil Plait for Scientific American

When I was a little kid I had a friend who was born on February 29, the “leap day” we add to that month every four years. I remember we used to tease him by saying that he was only three years old.

26 February 24

Logo Rhythm

By David Airey

Logo Rhythm: Band Logos that Rocked the World (on Kickstarter) features more than 90 design stories behind iconic band logos from the 1960s to present day. “Many of the band logo design trailblazers are no longer with us. Some of their stories have been lost in the mists of time.

26 February 24

Arts Council England’s stance on “overly political” artists comes under fire

By

The government-funded organisation, which distributes public money to arts projects, recently changed its guidance on political matters.

26 February 24

Industrial Design from Thailand: A Quirky Alarm Clock Concept

By Rain Noe

For reasons of access, we haven’t seen any work from industrial design studios in Thailand since 2013.

13 February 24

The art of doing nothing: have the Dutch found the answer to burnout culture?

By Viv Groskop for The Guardian

I am standing on the sand at Scheveningen, The Hague’s most famous beach resort, in the act of niksen, the Dutch term for doing absolutely nothing. I try not to think about whether I am really doing nothing if I am standing on a beach.

8 February 24

How Quora Died

By Nitish Pahwa for Slate

“Why Do So Many Music Venues Use Ticketmaster?” “What’s It Like to Train to Be a Sushi Chef?” “How Do Martial Artists Break Concrete Blocks?” If you were looking for answers to such questions 10 years ago, your best resource for finding a thorough, expert-informed response likely would

3 February 24

What’s the Chemical Difference Between Hot- and Cold-Brew Coffee?

By Caroline Delbert for Pocket

Scientists put on their barista aprons and found out.

January 2024

26 January 24

Can QR Code-driven Incentives Solve Fashion’s Trillion-Dollar Waste Problem? This Company Thinks So…

By Aki Ukita for Yanko Design

Fashion still remains perhaps the biggest offender when it comes to waste and emissions generated by any given industry. Every year, 40 million tonnes of clothes find their way into landfills and third-world countries that are less than equipped to deal with this onslaught of wasted fabric.

23 January 24

How a 27-Year-Old Codebreaker Busted the Myth of Bitcoin’s Anonymity

By Andy Greenberg for WIRED

Just over a decade ago, Bitcoin appeared to many of its adherents to be the crypto-anarchist holy grail: truly private digital cash for the internet.

17 January 24

Easy Mode Is Actually for Adults

By Omar L. Gallaga for The Atlantic

Video games can be arduous. But real life is hard enough. Produced by ElevenLabs and NOA, News Over Audio, using AI narration.

15 January 24

The best ways to help homeless people

By Rachel M. Cohen for Vox

And not just at the holidays. I’ve been covering America’s homeless crisis at Vox all year.

12 January 24

AI ‘completes’ keith haring’s unfinished artwork, raising ethical issues and copyright concerns

By Keith Haring for designboom

Controversy erupted online when an X user employed artificial intelligence to ‘complete’ Keith Haring’s Unfinished Painting (1989).

12 January 24

rabbit releases r1, an AI walkie-talkie that can plan itinerary, order food, book taxi and more

By matthew burgos | designboom for designboom

During CES 2024, Santa Monica-based AI startup rabbit introduced r1, a handheld and touchscreen artificial intelligence device that works like a walkie-talkie with camera functionality. The main premise of the r1 is that it does what any app can do without needing a smartphone.

7 January 24

What We Lost When Twitter Became X

By Sheon Han for The New Yorker

A little more than a year ago, Elon Musk began his reign at Twitter with an elaborately staged pun. On Wednesday, October 26, 2022, he posted a tweet with a video that showed him carrying a sink through the lobby of the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

1 January 24

CASE-REAL transforms 80-year-old traditional japanese house into craft beer brewery

By Case-Real for designboom

In Saga, Japan, a renovation project by CASE-REAL has transformed an 80-year-old traditional Japanese house into a craft beer brewery, named Whale Brewing.

December 2023

19 December 23

Anak’s visual identity for coffee brand Bettr is purposely flawed, and all the better for it

By Tom May

Bettr isn’t just any old coffee brand. Founded in 2011 and based in Singapore, it’s Southeast Asia’s first certified B Corporation and is committed to bettering our planet through providing holistic vocational programs to educate and empower marginalised communities.

19 December 23

The biggest trends in graphic design for 2024, as predicted by the creative industry

By Tom May

The world’s in a rocky place right now. But the good news is that whatever happens to the economy in 2024, graphic design will be in demand… perhaps more than ever.

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