The Dilettante Digest - Autumn 🍂
What are you doing with your one, amazing life?
I started this newsletter as a thought repository, to catalogue and share what I’d learned about design leadership I didn’t really have anywhere else to put.
Amazingly, there are passions in my life that aren’t design! I call them my dilettantisms (indeed I named my consultancy after the concept)- and I realised I wanted to share them with you too. So, today I’m gonna tell you what I’ve been up to this autumn!
I’m calling this my Dilletante Digest - a quarterly life update about cool stuff that’s been going on outside of Cait the Design Leader.
You don’t have to care, but if you stick around I promise it’ll be worth it. There are cats…
Playing with chemicals (printmaking)
While last year had some big life moments (quitting my job, going freelance, getting married to the love of my life), in 2024 I’ve gone deeper into my hobbies.
I keep coming back to drawing and printmaking. My time in the studio is the definition of a flow state- I’m totally zen, but also totally switched on. I love it.
Here are some prints I’ve made this autumn. A few are available for sale (sub £100) - please drop me an email if you’re interested in picking one up!
Shameless book acquisitions
In my Sisyphean effort to stop scrolling, I resolved to allow myself as much non-algorithmic written content as I like. 44 books and counting, if Goodreads is anything to go by!
Here are some I read this Autumn I can heartily recommend back to you.
Atomic Habits god it’s cringe to be reading this in 2024 but the advice still slaps. What you spend your hours a day doing is a vote for the person you wanna be. Still thinking about it tbh.
Getting Better by Michael Rosen. I love reading books by older people. Memoir covering the various times in the poet's life he's had to 'get better'. Covers some dark topics, but incredibly uplifting and philosophical. He links his various struggles together to think on what it means to 'get better'. Can't recommend enough- the audiobook is narrated by him which I'd also highly rec!
The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper. Historical fiction set in the seedy underbelly of Pompeii following a Greek slave as she tries to rebuild her life? Amazing. If you've ever been to Pompeii / Herculaneum and thought 'I wonder how this thing was used? Who drank from this fountain?'... the author clearly did the exact same. This is my Roman Empire. (First book is the best, but the whole trilogy is worth a read and not too heavy.)
Things I built are launching!
We announced King of Meat, the crazy dungeon building game I’ve been working on at Glowmade for the last year and a bit! Very ironic for someone who’s been vegan for seven years? Potentially. Sign ups now open for our Beta!
Wildly as I was writing this, my previous studio, Drest, announced the release of the relaunch of the Drest app, on which I headed up the UX team for two and a half years. It’s amazing to see it finally come out, and have so much of my design direction reflected in the launched product! Download on the App Store now.
Future newsletter ideas
I’m the type to scribble out half a blog on a train when I have no wifi, then leave it to rot in my archives. In various states of completion we have…
How to run an interview (part 2)
The Unwork Manifesto
Fear of HMRC gives them power
Managing your time as a creative freelancer
Why I never want to run a company
Do any of those sound somewhat interesting? Comment and let me know, and maybe it’ll motivate me to finally finish one!
Gassing up my friends
I’m gonna use the final bit of this note to talk about some of the people I love who’ve done things I’m proud of- because why not?
Shay, a 3D character artist and printmaker, started her own blog, covering her creative process, and did her first gallery exhibition! Her openness to new ideas and dogged learning of new techniques inspires me to be better!
Caz, a creative director, launched his fine art games magazine A Profound Waste of Time 4 at Gosh Comics in Soho, and announced APWOT5! And it’s already funded, which is super cool. I love how he’s created this design language across all the APWOTs, stuck to his guns and regularly delivers a product the rest of the industry just can’t compete with.
Allie, a designer of high-end editioned books, announced Carmilla, a gay vampire book from the 1870s (hell yeah). It’s also fully funded!! The world of professional printing and books is a black box to me but Allie always makes it makes sense, mixing technical knowhow with a passion for illustration and graphic design that reminds me a lot of UX. Chef’s kiss.
See you next week for the conclusion to how to run interviews (we hope!)