More from Melissa Penfold
Among the predictions in the annual decor trend report: Sprawling sectional sofas will yield to tidier seating, pastel hues to rich earthy shades. Oh, and…make way for murals. There will be a greater sense of playfulness and a push towards individualism. Limited budgets and a desire to move away from homogeneous high-street collections will meanContinue Reading The post 20 Interior Design Trends That Will Define 2025 first appeared on Melissa Penfold. The post 20 Interior Design Trends That Will Define 2025 appeared first on Melissa Penfold.
How do we define furniture? It might seem like a silly question, but it’s one that kept coming up in October of last year, when, in a conference room on the 15th floor of The New York Times building, six experts — the architects and interior designers Rafael de Cárdenas and Daniel Romualdez; the Museum of Modern Art’sContinue Reading The post THE MOST DEFINING PIECES OF FURNITURE FROM THE LAST 100 YEARS first appeared on Melissa Penfold. The post THE MOST DEFINING PIECES OF FURNITURE FROM THE LAST 100 YEARS appeared first on Melissa Penfold.
There’s a fairly well-established list of the things that wedding guests detest. Overly long ceremonies. Overly long toasts. Cash bars. A bachelor or bachelorette trip that sends its attendees into credit-card debt. A destination wedding in a remote locale that the couple has zero relationship to and that plunges its guests into further bankruptcy. But what about allContinue Reading The post THE THINGS YOUR WEDDING GUESTS SECRETLY DESPISE first appeared on Melissa Penfold. The post THE THINGS YOUR WEDDING GUESTS SECRETLY DESPISE appeared first on Melissa Penfold.
We’re always here to help you find gifts that elicit “you really know me!” enthusiasm, even from the normally taciturn. This year, we aimed higher, aspiring to choose items with such eternal appeal, and of such high quality, that some might become heirlooms—used and loved by both your giftees and subsequent generations. Find our updated,Continue Reading The post THE MOST THOUGHTFUL GIFTS THAT NO ONE ELSE WILL GIVE first appeared on Melissa Penfold. The post THE MOST THOUGHTFUL GIFTS THAT NO ONE ELSE WILL GIVE appeared first on Melissa Penfold.
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Our world treats information like it’s always good. More data, more content, more inputs — we want it all without thinking twice. To say that the last twenty-five years of culture have centered around info-maximalism wouldn’t be an exaggeration. I hope we’re coming to the end of that phase. More than ever before, it feels like we have to — that we just can’t go on like this. But the solution cannot come from within; it won’t be a better tool or even better information to get us out of this mess. It will be us, feeling and acting differently. Think about this comparison: Information is to wisdom what pornography is to real intimacy. I’m not here to moralize, so I compare to pornography with all the necessary trepidation. Without judgement, it’s my observation that pornography depicts physical connection while creating emotional distance. I think information is like that. There’s a difference between information and wisdom that hinges on volume. More information promises to show us more of reality, but too much of it can easily hide the truth. Information can be pornography — a simulation that, when consumed without limits, can weaken our ability to experience the real thing. When we feel overwhelmed by information — anxious and unable to process what we’ve already taken in — we’re realizing that “more” doesn’t help us find truth. But because we have also established information as a fundamental good in our society, failure to keep up with it, make sense of it, and even profit from it feels like a personal moral failure. There is only one way out of that. We don’t need another filter. We need a different emotional response to information. We should not only question why our accepted spectrum of emotional response to information — in the general sense — is mostly limited to the space between curiosity and desire, but actively develop a capacity for disgust when it becomes too much. And it has become too much. Some people may say that we just need better information skills and tools, not less information. But this misses how fundamentally our minds need space and time to turn information into understanding. When every moment is filled with new inputs, we can’t fully absorb, process, and reflect upon what we’ve consumed. Reflection, not consumptions, creates wisdom. Reflection requires quiet, isolation, and inactivity. Some people say that while technology has expanded over the last twenty-five years, culture hasn’t. If they needed a good defense for that idea, well, I think this is it: A world without idleness is a truly world without creativity. I’m using loaded moral language here for a purpose — to illustrate an imbalance in our information-saturated culture. Idleness is a pejorative these days, though it needn’t be. We don’t refer to compulsive information consumption as gluttony, though we should. And if attention is our most precious resource — as an information-driven economy would imply — why isn’t its commercial exploitation condemned as avarice? As I ask these questions I’m really looking for where individuals like you and me have leverage. If our attention is our currency, then leverage will come with the capacity to not pay it. To not look, to not listen, to not react, to not share. And as has always been true of us human beings, actions are feelings echoed outside the body. We must learn not just to withhold our attention but to feel disgust at ceaseless claims to it.
Challenge Develop strong brand foundations for an international supplement company with a proven product to help them take the US...