Hi :) Welcome to dispatch #7. View the prettier web version here.
The Rise of the Creative Class
I finished reading The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida. This book explains how the creative class came to be, who makes it up, what are its problems and its potential.
Biggest takeaway
We should create systems and environments in which every single person can cultivate their creativity. Cities are key towards achieving that.
Something to ponder
At the start of the book, Florida poses a question: if we were to transport somebody from 1900 into 1950 and then somebody from 1950 into 2000, which time traveler would have a more difficult time adjusting? While we can only speculate about the answer, it's still much more nuanced than I expected.
Highlights
Creativity flourishes best in a unique kind of social environment: one that is stable enough to allow for continuity of effort, yet diverse and broad-minded enough to nourish creativity in all its subversive forms.
A good idea, like the concept of the wheel, “can be used over and over again” and in fact grows in value the more it is used. It offers not diminishing returns, but increasing returns. Moreover, an idea can be built upon. As other people apply their own creativity to a new scientific theory or product design, they can tinker with it, improve it, and combine it with other ideas in growing proliferations of new forms.
The mathematics of this do not bode well for cities and regions that are content to watch their young people move away in search of fun and adventure, complacently believing that they will be able to lure them back once they hit their thirties and are ready to settle down and start families. … The winning places are the ones that establish an edge early on, by attracting and retaining residents in their mid-twenties.
… the best urban and suburban neighborhoods look strikingly more similar than different.
… healthy or unhealthy lifestyles are not simply the result of good or bad individual decisions. They are inextricably tied up with the nature and structure of our society. America’s increasingly uneven geography of fitness is yet another symptom of its fundamental economic and class divide.
It has been a while since I shared my latest Figma videos, so it’s time to recap :) Over the past few months, I published tutorials on making donut charts, adding if/else checks to prototypes, and prototyping with set variable mode:
I also made several new plugins for editing code syntax, creating typography variables, and adding spaces to layer names. I’m especially proud about the last one because it was the first time I used Open AI (or any kind of API for that matter) in a plugin.
A few months ago I discovered this stunning self-portrait by Tamara de Lempicka, which was commissioned for the German fashion magazine Die Dame. I had never been into Art Deco style, but this painting... it lives rent-free in my head.
