Welcome to the weekend!

This is the second week in a row that I’ve had to travel up to London from Brighton on three days, so I’m feeling a bit like a commuter again. Fortunately, they were for very lovely reasons - running a workshop with our old friend Kenyatta Cheese at EA1 for Google, a workshop with a new client on how to find stories and build prototypes, and then a board meeting at UAL.

It was so much fun doing the workshops, and we’d love to do more. So if you want us to come and run a workshop to help you tell better stories, hit the button below.

Also - if you work in the narrative and social change ecosystem in the UK, could you help us with a short survey to shape an exciting new project we’re working on? The survey will take no more than 10 minutes of your time, and we would be incredibly grateful if you can help. Please don’t feel pressured to answer every question—any answers you can help with would be really useful.

Right then - here’s ten inspiring links to take you into the weekend. Read to the end for a good tip for the best ice cream in Brighton. Enjoy the sunny weekend!

Matt

A History of Mac Interfaces (Scrolly-telling article)

Buttons I’d like To Press (Curated gallery)

How We Built Bluey’s World (15 min deep dive)

I Love Gen AI But Hate The Companies Making It (5-min read)

Teaching Kids To Think With AI, Not Just Use It (4-min read)

The Seven Modes Of Modern Marketing (5-min read)

Thinking Like A Creator (44-min video)

I Deleted My Second Brain (8-min read)

NEW OFFAL! (9-min listen)

How Traditional Gelato Is Made (8-min video)

Don’t become a B2B zombie. STAY HUMAN.

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A History of Mac Interfaces (Scrolly-telling article)
Thanks to the always excellent Steve Bryant for sharing this link. It’s best viewed on a laptop, as there are some deeply nostalgic scrolly telling animations showing how Mac startup and desktop screen design has changed over the years.

Buttons I’d like To Press (Curated gallery)
Related (and I think from Steve again) this is a lovely curated gallery of incredibly pressable buttons. Lots of old calculators and chunky calculators here - I can almost here the noises they’d make as you press them. Although some are clearly Knobs I’d Like To Twiddle instead.

How We Built Bluey’s World (15 min deep dive)
My kids were too old for us to watch Bluey as a family, but I’ve sneaked a few episodes myself, and it’s a work of art. In this great deep dive, Art Director Catriona Drummond shows the design choices they made for the original series, with lots of great mood boards and notes - the sketches working out what kettle the Heelers would have shows the care and love that went into the show.

I Love Gen AI But Hate The Companies Making It (5-min read)
Great article from Christina Wodtke describing her attempts to find the least ethically damaging way to use Gen AI. Spoiler - there is no 100% ethical AI: ‘What I found was a hierarchy of harm where the question is “what ethical violation makes you the angriest?”’

Teaching Kids To Think With AI, Not Just Use It (4-min read)
Related to the post above - we’ve linked to Noah Brier’s Brxnd.ai before, as he’s one the smartest, and most practical, writers on AI and marketing right now. As the parent of young children, he shares how he’s supporting his kids to use AI in their education: “But here's the thing: every cognitive tool involves trade-offs. Writing may have weakened memory, but it enabled science and literature. Calculators diminished mental math but freed us to tackle more complex problems. The question isn't whether AI will change how we think—it will. The question is whether we'll teach kids to navigate these changes consciously or let them stumble through on their own”

The Seven Modes Of Modern Marketing (5-min read)
We all know marketing is changing as we enter a post-follower, post-Google, gen AI world. So this framing from Rei Inamoto is really useful. I like they way he focuses not on technology or platforms, but the ‘modes’ that you can use to communicate as a brand - Product, Storytelling, Technology, Halo, Spectacle, Purpose and Business Model.

Thinking Like A Creator (44-min video)
I’ve had this on my ‘to watch’ list for the last week or so, and finally started dipping in when I realised Evan Shapiro does a great job of adding chapter indexes to his Youtube videos. So I just dipped into the section where BBC Studios bosses discuss how they use fandom engagement metrics, and then I’m going to skip on to Amelia Dimoldonberg and Kiel Smith-Bynoe talking about how they work as creators.

I Deleted My Second Brain (8-min read)
I’ve seen a few people share this recently, and there are two responses people have: absolute horror from people who have built up similar ‘second brains’ and rely on them for everything; and fervent agreement from people (hello!) who never managed to be that organised: “My new system is, simply, no system at all. I write what I think. I delete what I don’t need. I don’t capture everything. I don’t try to. I read what I feel like. I think in conversation, in movement, in context. I don’t build a second brain. I inhabit the first.”

NEW OFFAL! (9-min listen)
I had lunch with one of the mysterious team behind OFFAL last week, and they have a new book and audio release out now. If you’ve not tried OFFAL before, it’s a woozy dreamscape that somehow perfectly mirrors what the world feels like right now. I love the intro to this episode - AI versions of Kier Starmer and Donald Trump reminiscing about their days in the early UK rave scene. Support OFFAL by signing up now!

How Traditional Gelato Is Made (8-min video)
I’m including this because every year I try to make gelato, but it’s one of those things that is incredibly simple in theory, but devilishly hard in practise. I think you need a combination of absolutely perfect local ingredients, years of family history, and maybe one of the awesome stone-grinding mixers that they feature in this video. I doubt if they’re available on Amazon Prime.

And there we go - hopefully there’s something in their that will give you inspiration for the weekend. If you are in Brighton this weekend, the best Gelato spot is Marroccos, deep into Hove near the King Alfred Sports Centre. Gelato Gusto in the North Laine is a very fine second option, but Marroccos wins because you can buy a cone and then eat it immediately on the beach.

Please share the newsletter if you think someone you know could use some inspiration (and the occasional gelato reccomendation). We’ll see you here again next Friday. In the mean time, have a lovely weekend wherever you are!

Matt, Anjali, Hugh and the rest of Team Storythings