Reading up on creativity

Bruce Nauman's latest videos and drawings are improvised from physical and mental exercises, resulting in raw and vulnerable art.

John Cleese argues that creativity requires a calm, playful, and open mental state, which management cultures often suppress through urgency and interruption.

A 2014 study found that walking, compared to sitting, significantly boosts creative thinking—measured by generating novel uses for objects and original analogies—but slightly impairs focused problem-solving.

Savour is a newsletter by Resend's design team exploring taste, craft, and the small details that make great products.

Arie and Chuko Esiri take a team approach to filmmaking, and their Nigerian-set adaptation of Virginia Woolf's 'Clarissa' has wowed the Cannes festival.

A humorous guide demonstrates six typography rules to make text look futuristic, using examples from sci-fi movies like Blade Runner and Star Wars.

Lists six simple pleasures—including voice memos, snail mail, and a private screening room—to add joy to the day.

True AI creativity requires subjective experience and intrinsic drives, not just mimicry, and creating such AI would impose ethical responsibilities for their suffering.

Chaos gardening is a low-effort method where seeds are tossed onto soil to create a spontaneous, colorful garden.

Through her Uncomfortable project, architect Katerina Kamprani designs deliberately inconvenient everyday objects, celebrating the pleasures of poor product design.

Improv comedy, though often terrible, helps people overcome decision paralysis by forcing them to embrace uncertainty and act spontaneously.

Interior designer Lauren Geremia converted her former dining room into a multifunctional workspace for working, painting, and nesting.

Silicon Valley tech workers are intentionally cultivating personal taste as a uniquely human quality they believe AI like ChatGPT cannot replicate.

Vibecoding turns software creation into a form of self-expression, shifting consumer value from utility to the emotional act of making.

Kaeden Rowland’s viral videos inject whimsy into mundane office supplies like ballpoint pens and toner, gaining broad online traction.

Fashion designers' uniform dress code of navy sweaters, dark pants, and jeans reveals a professional conformity that shapes their collections and audience perception.

Embracing commercial opportunities improved the author's art, challenging the belief that creativity must remain insulated from commerce.

Jimi Hendrix's iconic sound was the result of a carefully engineered chain of analog guitar effects, including the Octavia pedal designed by Roger Mayer.

The act of sharing AI-chat transcripts is emerging as a new literary form that transmits raw thinking rather than compressed conclusions, inverting traditional communication craft.

The Yoda family of artists share a 4,000-square-foot loft on Mercer Street for 35 years, each independently creating their own art.

Chloé Zhao discusses overcoming her deepest fears to open her heart as she directs the film adaptation of "Hamnet."

The original article argues that the struggle of writing without AI is what produces genuine thought and quality, while commenters debate whether that friction is worthwhile or just a luxury.

Experts predict that by 2026, home design will emphasize craftsmanship and individual expression over mass-produced trends.

The article presents a challenge to spend 10 minutes uninterrupted looking at a single piece of art by an artist in Greenland.

An interactive explainer that builds a mental model of how cameras work from photon detection to lens optics, using dynamic simulations and visualizations.

Martin Scorsese writes that he and Rob Reiner had a natural affinity, reflecting on their decades-long friendship and collaborations.

Claude Opus 4.5's breakthrough lies in reasoning across visual workflows, synthesizing creative intent from reference images and improving generative pipelines.

Riley Walz generates viral internet pranks and profitable side projects by acting on every idea he finds fun, which attracts collaborators and turns even impossible stunts into reality.

Older AI image generation models produce more aesthetically pleasing, artistically coarse results than newer, precise models like Nano Banana Pro, according to the author.

Filmmakers targeting a PG-13 rating have developed strategies to ration one particular four-letter obscenity, balancing impact with rating restrictions.

The author explains a simplified 1/d contribution technique for volumetric raymarching in tiny GLSL demos, backed by integration of the inverse square law.

Frank Gehry, who died at 96, contributed to classical music by designing concert halls with acoustics as stunning as their visual architecture.

Paged Out! is a free experimental technical zine where each article fits on one page, covering programming, hacking, retro computing, and demoscene.

Swiss cartographers at Swisstopo have hidden tiny illustrations in official maps for decades, defying their mandate, with most discovered only after the cartographer retired.

Handwritten diaries protect personal authenticity and resist the homogenizing effect of AI on human thought and expression.

The author regained a love of reading by surrendering the belief they knew more than the author and trusting the narrative journey.

Experiments with Google's Nano Banana Pro visual reasoning model show that structured, constraint-rich prompts produce better comic book adaptations than vague requests.

A man leaves corporate security to restore typewriters, finding purpose and fulfillment through a dying craft in a small Vermont shop.

Three Hollywood figures reflect on their early-career struggles and how failure shaped their paths, ahead of their new film 'Jay Kelly'.

Reading difficult books is inherently painful and social; engaging with a community helps readers push through intellectual discomfort and find shared meaning.

Solvej Balle's 30-year effort 'On the Calculation of Volume' reframes the tedium of contemporary life as unexpected wonders.

A New York Times article tours the home of actor F. Murray Abraham, featuring his eclectic art collection, personal tributes to his wife, and theatrical memorabilia from his stage career.

Design is the practice of seeing through surface to understand underlying structure and rearranging elements into new forms that didn't exist before.