How Are You Spending Your Winter Break?
Each year, Atomicdust closes for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The week away from work gives us time to read. To write. To step away from our computer screens. It gives us time to recharge – and get inspired for the year ahead.
Here’s a list of the books, podcasts and activities we’ll be checking out over the next week:
To read:
At Atomicdust we pull a lot of strategic inspiration from Marty Neumeier, so I’d like to read his book Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands. Knowing his concepts at a high level is fine, but I’m hoping that digging into his thinking on competition and differentiation will equip me to be an even more informed (and strategic!) part of the conversation with our clients. – Dani Howard
Moving three times in one year has given me an appreciation for design in the home: how a few key decisions can impact the feeling a room conveys, and how important that can be when you’re spending so much of your time there. I’m looking to further my knowledge of interior design by reading Lifting the Curtain on Design by Vincent Wolf, in which he applies fundamental design principles from inspiration to implementation to interiors. – Dani Howard
I’m slowly trying to read everything from George Lois – and Lois Logos: How to Brand with Big Idea Logos is his latest book. The old-school adman often heralded as the original Don Draper always offers a brash, un-candy-coated glimpse into the way he thinks. Though I’m not a graphic designer, I’m looking forward to reading his insights into creating logos. At their simplest, logos are all about communicating thought and emotion – which comes in handy in writing. – Ken Earley
The idea of exploring new ways of offering and presenting your services piques my interest and curiosity. The book This is Service Design Thinking challenges traditional thinking and encourages unfamiliar approaches to old problems. I already look to companies like IDEO, Huge and frog design for innovative thinking and this book will help me gain a better understanding of their methods. – Tara Nesbitt
When I was in Portland, I picked up Guillaume Wolf’s You Are a Message: Meditations for the Creative Entrepreneur. It’s filled with short prompts – typically just a few sentences – to get you thinking about business, design and life. – Danielle Hohmeier
To listen:
I love hearing people’s stories on why and how they do what they do, and what has or has not worked for them in business. The Finely Crafted podcast is from Proof Branding in Nashville and the guys behind it interview innovators and doers to learn more about their process. – Tara Nesbitt
In the year post-Serial, I’ve started expanding my podcast subscriptions. Over the break, I plan on revisiting some favorite episodes from Note to Self, Replay All, Start Up and Planet Money, as well as diving in to Design Details, conversations with designers and UX/UI professionals from companies like Medium, GoPro, Airbnb, Dropbox and more. The episodes are fairly long (an hour+ at times), so it’s not a podcast I get to on a daily basis. – Danielle Hohmeier
To do:
There’s nothing scarier for a writer than an empty page. That’s why I’ve put 300 Writing Prompts on my Christmas list. Even though I’ve been writing for more years than I’m willing to admit, sometimes this fear still gets in the way of creating something great. So I’m looking for a little urging to help me find some new ways to put words together. I certainly won’t be covering all 300 over the break – so here’s to extending inspiration into the new year. – Rich Heend
I’ve just finished learning and using PostCSS and NodeJS, which allowed me to build a new deploy system for our development team. On the break, I’m going to begin learning React as more and more websites are starting to use it for web apps and sites. I’m also trying to get all my “dotfiles” synced to Github over the break. – Drew Douglass
Now that I’ve moved into a new house and have my shop set up, it’s time to get cracking on designing some new furniture. Over the break, I’ll be brainstorming design ideas in my notebook and then prototyping them in Sketchup, a 3D program. From there, it’s straight to the woodshop to make those ideas come to life. – Patrick Shannon
Certainly not getting out to Hidden Valley to ski…with the weather lately I’m not sure whether to wax my skis or surfboard. But the time off is an opportune time to get in touch with my inner Ansel Adams and get out my 4×5 film camera. – Patrick Shannon
I’ve been obsessed with the idea of teaching my 8-year-old how to code lately. Over the break we’ll be spending time on code.org, a website dedicated to expanding access to computer science, especially around early education. I also picked up a Kano, a computer and coding kit for kids ages 6 and up, that we’ll be putting together. But don’t tell my wife I bought one. She’ll kill me. – Mike Spakowski
A few weeks ago, our designer Jessica invited us all to watch a Skillshare presentation on packaging design. I’m eager to spend some of the time off exploring other classes on the site to learn more about design and coding. And right now, Premium is on sale – 3 months for $0.99. – Danielle Hohmeier
