Designed by Sarah: July 2025 Studio Recap

This month I’m thinking about handmade things and creativity. I loved this article from Katina Bajaj arguing that life should require a bit of friction to be meaningful and deep. It beautifully puts to words a lot of the feelings I’ve had over the years about automating the fun out of life, or cozy games with no adversity, or having everything delivered to you any moment. Katina’s article highlights the feeling of being in autopilot mode, where you feel like you’re languishing because you aren’t having to work for it. It reminds me of the end of the Good Place when they actually get to the Good Place (Spoiler?) and it’s actually just very… boring. There’s a Simon Pegg clip going around on the internet right now about how “Entertainment is an overrated function of art. Sometimes, being made uncomfortable is the point.” Sometimes, being bored is a good thing!

I went kayaking in a really difficult stretch of river a few weeks ago and about halfway through told my friend “it’s just really frustrating to not be immediately good at something,” which I realized sums up so much about being an adult. We don’t feel like we have time or space or grace to make mistakes and grow. Similarly, this video from Antonio Gary Jr. makes the point that we have outsourced all of the most important aspects of our lives to other people’s opinions, reviews, influencers, and ratings. He says “because mistakes became expensive and being wrong in public can go viral.”

A lot of this, to be fair, feels like a result of information overload: For example, I want to try a restaurant and don’t know where to look. I poll my friends and get 30 options. I want to figure out which is the best (note: examine why) so I check reviews. I end up going with the spot that has the most/best reviews. I think we have forgotten how to explore our own spaces and engage with people and places without a plan or preapproval in some way. It feels less like an intentional outsourcing and more trying to make sense in an overwhelming world.

Also in the wake of an overwhelming world, I loved this piece by Brandon Ogbunu in Wired about zines gaining again in popularity after a broken, social-media-saturated landscape. As some people who get things in the mail from me have said, “Man it just feels good to hold a THING in my hands again.” Our recipes are virtual, our pictures are virtual, our whole lives feel tangible and weird. Which is a nice segue to:

Last month, paid subscribers got a copy of this zine I made with Gray Chapman and I have a few more to send out. If you sign up today, I’ll make sure you get one too. So far I’ve sent prints, zines, materials from art exhibits I went to, and other little treats. It’s mostly been once a month. And it’s hopefully all very nice. I think you’ll like it.

Warmly,
Sarah 

Ps: Make sure I have your mailing address when you sign up! Check at the bottom of this email!

This month, my mother would like us to know about the Quokka and the people who fly to Australia to take selfies with them. From the San Diego Zoo’s website: “The quokka’s friendly, curious personality (even toward humans) is surpassed only by its perpetual “smile.” Of course, the quokka’s grin is largely due to its facial muscles and protruding front teeth, not the person on the ground waving around a selfie stick, trying to get a #quokkaselfie, which is trending in Australia (and worth an Internet search). While getting that close to wildlife is usually frowned upon—Instagram even created a warning for the quokka selfie hashtag stating that some images “may be associated with animal abuse.””

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• What will it be? It depends. But I have some ideas and this tells me how many things to make or order.

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