Happy Friday everyone,

One of our readers (hi Amale!) recently told us that if they don’t see the Storythings newsletter in their inbox by 4pm on a Friday, they begin to panic, as they’re so used to it and love the inspiration! That’s very flattering, so thank you!

We had our monthly online creative show-and-tell Proper Fancy last week. It’s a way for creatives from around the world to chat about things that take their fancy. We’d love some of you to co-host it with us (which only means bringing a few links to share and telling us briefly why they are great), so if you’d like to do that with us at the end of July, please give us a shout. We’re a friendly bunch!

This week the UK’s mostly celebrating a change of government after 14 years (this is why people matter, as we illustrated in our How We Got Here podcast for the UK Parliament last year), and the US is mostly off for the Fourth of July long weekend. We hope you have a brilliant weekend wherever you are.

Till next time,

Anjali

Drag Queens, Community and the Total Solar Eclipse (4-min watch)

Fitzcarraldo Editions Makes Challenging Literature Chic (31-minute read)

How to Build An Archive (resource)

BreakTime: Destroy Google Calendar Meetings With Bricks! (game)

Jacqueline Wilson Surprising a Trans Fan is the Most Wholesome Thing You’ll See Today (2-min watch)

What Happened When British GQ Stopped Trying to Feed the Algorithm (9-min read)

Mary Katherine Goddard, The Woman Whose Name Appears on the Declaration of Independence (6-min read)

An Animation Built From Road Signs is a Whirlwind Study in Flash Communication (2-min watch)

Who Killed The Video Star? The Story of MTV (podcast)

The Meme-ification of Anthony Bourdain (6-min read)

How we can help you

Storythings is the content marketing agency of choice for some of the world’s most forward-thinking B2B brands and organisations. Here are 2 reasons to get in touch. 

1. “I don’t know what to do” – You’ve been creating content but it’s not having the impact you need. Talk to us about our Content Audit Workshop.

2. “I need something making” – You know what you want to make but need an agency to make it. We can help make your podcast, video, publication, animation and newsletter. We do other things too. Get in touch for a FREE 30 minute consultation. 

Drag Queens, Community and the Total Solar Eclipse (4-min watch)
A beautiful video that documents the experiences of two communities (drag queens and birding enthusiasts) around one seminal event (the total solar eclipse) in Spencer, IN, USA. Produced by the Simons Foundation, it talks to the conjunction of a science audience whose entry point into the subject is nature, and a community whose spaces to perform and just be, are vastly reducing. But it also speaks to a universal audience, like the best stories do. So many reasons to like this.

Fitzcarraldo Editions Makes Challenging Literature Chic (31-minute read)
I’ve been a fan of Fitzcarraldo Editions for a while - the design, the neatness, the range of authors it publishes. Also, it addresses the power of an archive, which we believe in at Storythings! So I lapped up this New Yorker piece on its raison d’être and success as a publisher in recent years: “What Testard is really into is chronicled by Fitzcarraldo’s catalogue, which, as the house prepares to celebrate its tenth anniversary, includes more than a hundred books, by seventy-eight authors. About half the titles are in translation, and Testard’s list is divided more or less evenly between works of fiction, which share the same blue cover as “Pond,” and nonfiction books, for which the color scheme is inverted: blue lettering on white covers. The striking visual presentation is the work of Ray O’Meara, an Irish graphic designer, who also designed an original serif typeface for the books and keeps a close watch over their stylistic consistency, with much thought given to how the density of the ink, contrasting with the white space of the margins, grants a bracing severity to each page. The uniformity of appearance means that a first-time fiction writer such as Bennett becomes, visually, a peer of a Nobel Prize winner.”

How to Build An Archive (resource)
Staying with the power of an archive, Randa Hadi created this brilliant website initially to archive her own immigrant family’s history, but then was inspired to build an archive of Palestinian artists, poets, families and architects from various online places, given the ongoing genocide in the region. Have a look around. HT friend of Storythings Steve Bryant.

BreakTime: Destroy Google Calendar Meetings With Bricks! (game)
A fun thing to do on a Friday (or weekend, or whenever you get to this!): a Chrome Extension that can make a game out of your Google Calendar. Built by Nolen Royalty (great name), of eieio.games. And if you do need another game, and you’re in the UK and dislike the Tories, then head this way!

Jacqueline Wilson Surprising a Trans Fan is the Most Wholesome Thing You’ll See Today (2-min watch)
A very heartwarming video showing 78-year-old author Jacqueline Wilson surprising a fan. It’s gone far and wide on TikTok and X, as it should.

What Happened When British GQ Stopped Trying to Feed the Algorithm (9-min read)
We talk about this at Storythings a lot: with algorithms changing constantly, you need to own your audience in a much more strategic way to produce content that they want, and keep coming back to you for. In this piece, British GQ’s European Director for Audience Development, Analytics and Social, Neha-Tamara Patel, talks about the publication’s journey to overtaking its closest competitor, Esquire. They’ve done this by being thoughtful about the kinds of content they produce, and the relationship they have with their audience: “Audience development has always really been thought of as just like strategy and stats, and I don't think that's true," she said. "It's really about storytelling. I always say put the humans back into audience development, but essentially, like, who is your reader? And what do they want? And what do they want on the different platforms you're on?”

Mary Katherine Goddard, The Woman Whose Name Appears on the Declaration of Independence (6-min read)
In addition to the July 4th being the day Britain went to the polls this week, it was also of course America’s Fourth of July. And in recognition of that, this oldie but goodie about Mary Katherine Goddard, whom more people should know about. A postmaster and publisher, she achieved a lot, was possibly the first ever government employee, and was cheated of her due by her own brother.

An Animation Built From Road Signs is a Whirlwind Study in Flash Communication (2-min watch)
UK filmmaker Daniel McKee has used electronic music as the backing track to this animation that uses road signs from around the world in a flip-book style. It becomes “an entertaining semiotic study of the information societies try to communicate in a flash, and the language of imagery they’ve created to convey them.”

Who Killed The Video Star? The Story of MTV (podcast)
Podcast recommendation time. Hosted by former MTV VJ Dave Holmes, this podcast looks at the history of MTV. How did a brand that was so beloved by the youth lose that power over time, to a point where it is a shell of its former self?

The Meme-ification of Anthony Bourdain (6-min read)
Fans of the celebrated chef have given him a distinct digital afterlife - Anthony Bourdain has become a meme: “Bourdain began to shirk the spotlight toward the end of his life, but he had already become someone strangers felt comfortable imagining as though they were the best of friends. The idea that he had crafted his own persona may be slightly at odds with the man who said “not giving a [expletive] is a really fantastic business model for television.” But this self-mythologizing didn’t just serve a purpose in his career; it has cemented his place in a canon.”

We hope you've enjoyed this week’s newsletter. I’m sure some of your friends would love to read it. Sharing it would be really appreciated. If you’ve received this from a friend, you can subscribe below and get it direct to your inbox every Friday.

Thanks for reading. We’ll see you all next week.

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the whole team at Storythings.