Unlocking the Code of Eastern Beauty in National Tea Where Mountains and Waters Sing in Harmony Nature holds the secrets...

For the past twenty to thirty years, the creative services industry has pursued a strategy of elevating the perceived value of knowledge work over production work. Strategic thinking became the premium offering, while actual making was reframed as “tactical” and “commoditized.” Creative professionals steered their careers toward decision-making roles rather than making roles. Firms adjusted their positioning to sell ideas, not assets — strategy became the product, while labor became nearly anonymous. After twenty years in my own career, I believe this has been a fundamental mistake, especially for those who have so distanced themselves from craft that they can no longer make things. The Unintended Consequences The strategic pivot created two critical vulnerabilities that are now being exposed by AI: For individuals: AI is already perceived as delivering ideas faster and with greater accuracy than traditional strategic processes, repositioning much of what passed for strategy as little better than educated guesswork. The consultant who built their career on frameworks and insights suddenly finds themselves competing with a tool that can generate similar outputs in seconds. For firms: Those who focused staff on strategy and account management while “offshoring” production cannot easily pivot to new means of production, AI-assisted or otherwise. They’ve created organizations optimized for talking about work rather than doing it. The Canary in the Coal Mine In hindsight, the homogeneity of interaction design systems should have been our warning. We became so eager to accept tools that reduced labor — style guides that eliminated design decisions, component libraries that standardized interfaces, templates that streamlined production — that we literally cleared the decks for AI replacement. Many creative services firms now accept AI in the same way an army-less nation might surrender to an invader: they have no other choice. They’ve systematically dismantled their capacity to make things in favor of their capacity to think about things. Now they’re hoping they can just re-boot production with bots. I don’t think that will work. AI, impressive as it is, still cannot make anything and everything. More importantly, it cannot produce things for existing systems as efficiently and effectively as a properly equipped person who understands both the tools and the context. The real world still requires: Understanding client systems and constraints Navigating technical limitations and possibilities Iterating based on real feedback from real users Adapting to changing requirements mid-project Solving the thousand small problems that emerge during implementation These aren’t strategic challenges — they’re craft challenges. They require the kind of deep, hands-on knowledge that comes only from actually making things, repeatedly, over time. The New Premium I see the evidence everywhere in my firm’s client accounts: there’s a desperate need to move as quickly as ever, motivated by the perception that AI has created about the overall pace of the market. But there’s also an acknowledgment that meaningful progress doesn’t come at the push of a button. The value of simply doing something — competently, efficiently, and with an understanding of how it fits into larger systems — has never been higher. This is why I still invest energy in my own craft and in communicating design fundamentals to anyone who will listen. Not because I’m nostalgic for pre-digital methods, but because I believe craft represents a sustainable competitive advantage in an AI-augmented world. Action vs. Advice The fundamental issue is that we confused talking about work with doing work. We elevated advice-giving over action-taking. We prioritized the ability to diagnose problems over the ability to solve them. But clients don’t ultimately pay for insights — they pay for outcomes. And outcomes require action. They require the messy, iterative, problem-solving work of actually building something that works in the real world. The firms and individuals who will thrive in the coming years won’t be those with the best strategic frameworks or the most sophisticated AI prompts. They’ll be those who can take an idea — whether it comes from a human strategist or an AI system — and turn it into something real, functional, and valuable. In my work, I regularly review design output from teams across the industry. I encounter both good ideas and bad ones, skillful craft and poor execution. Here’s what I’ve learned: it’s better to have a mediocre idea executed with strong craft than a brilliant idea executed poorly. When craft is solid, you know the idea can be refined — the execution capability exists, so iteration is possible. But when a promising idea is rendered poorly, it will miss its mark entirely, not because the thinking was wrong, but because no one possessed the skills to bring it to life effectively. The pendulum that swung so far toward strategy needs to swing back toward craft. Not because technology is going away, but because technology makes the ability to actually build things more valuable, not less. In a world where everyone can generate ideas, the people who can execute those ideas become invaluable.

Noise Beer is a collection of craft and dark beers whose visual identity is inspired by the noise music genre...

Many Grids I’ve been making very small collages, trying to challenge myself to create new patterns and new ways of connecting form and creating space. Well, are we? The last page in a book I started last year.

This gin is based on the industrial revolution that began in England in the last third of the 18th century...