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As the year came to a close, we looked back on our newsletter and gathered a collection of 12 of our favorite resources from 2024 — ideas, stories and discoveries that resonated with us and, we hope, with you.
Looking toward the year ahead, we’re reminded of Rebecca Solnit’s words: “To commit to something despite the uncertainty is an act of profound courage.”
Whatever challenges or triumphs this year has brought, we hope you step into the new year with hope, courage, and a belief in the possibilities it holds.
May the new year brings you moments of peace and renewal as you prepare for all that lies ahead.
Our highlights of 2024
Ben Holliday
Adding to their previous mantra of ‘keep going’, Ben Holliday explains how holding our responsibilities lightly means knowing how to let go, and how to accept the progress we’re making (or not).
Jenny H Winfield
“When your culture prioritises speed, it also deprioritises the critical development and interrogation of your learnings.” Great reflections on four major shifts Jenny has experienced in their research practice over the past few years.
Oliver Balch
A beautiful study of what it means to be human centered: an interview with breast cancer specialist and poet João Luís Barreto Guimarães who teaches medical students to empathise with patients through poetry.
Rachel M. Murray
A long read examining the complicated beauty of evil design in the age of the attention economy and what we might do to gain our attention back.
Rebecca Solnit
"And we are impatient creatures, impatient for the future to arrive and prone to forgetting the past in our urgency to have it all now, and sometimes too impatient to learn the stories of how what is best in our era was made by long, slow campaigns of change." A beautiful reminder that aligns with our thoughts this month that it’s okay if change takes time.
Jane Ruffino
“For me, it's a way to remind myself that all humans have a whole rich, challenging life outside of the little screens I'm making for them. So that even when I'm focused on user needs and user problems, I can keep it just out of the corner of my eye: the person I'm making this for doesn't actually want to be here, and that’s OK.”
Alex Pasternack, Forbes
As part of Forbes’ 1994 week (the “year of the web”), Alex Pasternack shares stories of 15 webpages from 1994 and the start of the information superhighway.
Rich Prowse, Director of practice at Content Design London
Speaking at a content strategy meetup in Australia, Rich talks about the role of cognition and decision-making in content design. (If you don’t have time to watch the video, you can read the blog post.)
Whitney Quesenberry
“Democracy is a design problem”, says Whitney, the director of the Center for Civic Design. Sharing ideas for reimagining ways to bridge the gaps between government and community, Whitney’s playful and creative approaches to public engagement are inspiring.
Caroline Jarrett
In this Content Club Pep talk, forms expert Caroline Jarrett explains how good content makes forms easier to complete and helps gather better data. She covers the basics of form design, tips on testing, and explains the difference between forms and surveys. A must-watch for any content person!
Lauren Pope
Content strategist and designer, Lauren Pope reflects on changing search behaviour, the enshittification of the web, and threats to intellectual property because of AI.
Pavel Samsonov
“An argument must work across many form factors — some for when we are in the room, and others for when we are not. In order to persuade across a variety of situations, we first need to design the argument in its purest form. An essay.”
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