Every talk leaves a lot of scraps, and Beyond the Machine is no exception. I read a couple books, watched about 20 hours of interviews with Brian Eno, listened to 10 hours of podcasts with Rick Rubin to make sure I wasn’t being uncharitable…
This talk was given on October 14, 2025 at Kinference in Brooklyn, New York. Spoiler alert: the last part of the talk covers plot points of the movie Spirited Away. Another warning is included right before the spoilers with a jump forward l…
I’ve been researching a new talk the last few weeks and along the way stumbled across a concept that’s been rattling around in my head. I am writing to share, because I find it a satisfying description for the tech flop era. The idea is cal…
Today, I learned that eels are fish. This was a disappointment. I knew of fish, I knew of snakes, yet I always assumed eels were some secret third thing. But, nope, they’re just fish. Or are they? A little digging revealed that eels are dee…
Last week, early morning, the sky flushed that fuzzy summer cirrus peach: I wake up inspired to send a brief newsletter with one nice idea. An admirable goal—let’s finally get to writing! But of what? I walk to get coffee, and before steppi…
When is tricky these days, but it’s the only question my expectant monkey mind can ask. Time feels especially squishy this year, as my daily schedule drifts further and further away from the traditional 9-5 work window and months slip by an…
Last week, I shared some thoughts on creative dispositions. I personified two attitudes, architects and gardeners, to show how a writer’s inclinations produce a certain kind of text, thus affecting the design. But the gardener and the archi…
Every once in a while you come across a fact that is so sumptuous it begs to be considered a metaphor. And then, there are other facts that are so perfectly just-so that they need to be viewed as apocryphal. I have read about the monkey tra…
A few weeks ago, the folks at Milanote asked to interview me and brought along an unexpected brief: “let’s sit down and talk through the process of one of your projects.” As someone who is consistently banging the drum about the importance
This talk was given on February 15, 2018 at Substans Conference in Bergen, Norway. I’m a designer, but writing is another important part of my practice. Most of what I’ve written focuses on making the case for a cohesive and generous philos…
Frank Chimero in his most desperate state is Frank Chimero writing a talk. Each time I go through the process, I swear I will never do it again. Then someone invites me to speak at a conference about innovation in a hot air balloon over Cat…
I was commissioned to write the foreword to SuperHi’s first publication, Learn to Code Now. If you’re interested in boosting your HTML, CSS, and Javascript skills, go check them out. The house where I was raised was an ideal place for our f…