Category: Contentions
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Extra creative
The team at Dinamo Typefaces write a fun newsletter. In the latest issue, their team introduced an updated version of their font, Gravity. In the release notes, you’ll find a 10-page original manga, hand drawn by graphic designer Melanie Schmidt. She writes, “Every line was refined digitally before I switched to analogue for the shading,…
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Don’t check your blog metrics yet
Here’s the latest edition of my newsletter for early-stage growth leaders, Leading Thinker, which I also shared at LinkedIn: TL;DR: When you start a new blog or publication, your metrics will disappoint you. That disappointment leads to doubt, and often kills a content practice before it has a proper chance to make an impact. A…
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Success happens when you teach someone how you think
You’re looking outside a window, and you see a tree. Somebody else is looking outside a different window, and sees the same tree, but from a different perspective. Success happens when they decide to come over and stand at your window for a little bit. You discuss what you both see. Then, maybe you go…
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Vinyl isn’t just about the sound
In 2025, people bought over 45 million vinyl records, spending over $1 billion in the process. What’s more surprising: a stat from 2022 suggests that 50% of vinyl buyers in the US don’t own a record player. To a vinyl collector, this is absurd, and perhaps even heresy. What would a person do with a…
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Social media just doesn’t hit like a website does
Seven years ago, the Pigeons & Planes team shut down its music publication website, thinking it might be better to connect with people on social media platforms. Last month, it started up its website again. Here’s how founder Jacob Moore explains it: All that said, we’re not sure what a music website’s role is in…
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Five lessons for whispering into the Hacker News front page
A couple of years ago, I met a CEO of a series A startup. At the time, I was working as a content strategist on Figma’s marketing team, where I also found an informal role as the in-house Hacker News expert. At the time, Figma was expanding outside of its core design audience, and into new…
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10 years of stories
Whether it’s a client-initiated project or a self-initiated one, my projects all have one thing in common: I’m telling a story. Spending energy in this process—finding a story, developing a thesis, pitching it, giving it shape, infusing it with experience and expertise, writing it, editing it, publishing it, promoting it—effectively creating assets that connect the…
