Everything Speaks

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Every other week, you'll get an issue of Everything Speaks. The name comes from a thing my professors used to say in critique: every choice on the page is talking, whether you meant it to or not. The serif you picked has a personality. So does the gutter you skipped. So does the photograph you cropped too tight.

I've been thinking about that line for twenty years. It applies to design, and it applies to almost everything else, which is why this letter is going to range a bit.

Here's the rough shape. Issues will land every other Friday morning.

An opener. A short piece of writing. Personal. Sensory. Often not about design directly. Something to read with coffee, not skim while standing at a kitchen counter.

This Week. What I'm working on. Vague when the work is under wraps, specific when it isn't.

A Rule of Being a Designer. One per issue, pulled from a growing list. Some are absurd. Some are dead serious. They're numbered, and the numbers are not in order. You might get Rule 13 one week and Rule 3,859 the next.

On This Day in Design History. One date, one thing that happened, and why it still matters. The work I keep returning to in my head, dragged into the present.

A Designer You Should Know. One person. Image, name, handle, three sentences. Some living, some not. Some famous, some you've never heard of.

Sites You Should See. Three to five. No essay. Just the thing.

The Studio. New work on johnhowrey.com when there is some.

Designer Provocation. A small prompt. Something you could actually do tonight before bed. Pen and paper, mostly.

Useful Music. Three to five tracks from what I've actually been listening to.

Broadway Oracle. A card pulled. A reading. You can submit your own questions; the inbox is open.

A Rune. Pulled at random. Ancient, severe, weirdly accurate. The rune is the closing ritual of every issue.

That's eleven sections, which is a lot, but they're each short. The whole letter should take eight to ten minutes to read.

The first real issue lands two weeks from today. If any of this sounds wrong for you, the unsubscribe link is in the footer of every email and works in one click. No hard feelings.

If it sounds right, see you on the other side of two weeks.

J.