Why are we Making Real THings?
A 35% tariff announcement, an update to Gronk 4, and the possibility of war in Iran, and we’re all supposed to smile and continue in a holding pattern that might last another month, a year, or until the end of Trump’s presidency. Who knows?
As a studio, and a small business, we’re used to peak times and slow times. July is always slow. Most of our clients spend the first half of the month “networking” at Stampede and the second half on family vacations. But this year still feels like an anomaly, especially because we seemed immune to the usual contractor lull for more than a year.
Of course, things change. And suddenly, we find ourselves waiting FOR projects to start.
At first, we panicked. We made some cold calls, set up some meetings, tried to get things going. But after a few weeks, we remembered something:
the slow times are when we’ve always done our most interesting work.
These are the passion project months.
In our twenties, when most of the time was a slow time, we pumped out passion projects. And it was that work that gave us the skills and the portfolio that led to the paying work. So, we’re back at it. Dusting off a few old ideas. Shooting a few new ones. Including this conversation, this moment of self-reflection.
We started with honesty, about the state of the industry and our anxiety around it, but that led to some epiphanies about why making things still matters. It matters to us as artists, But also to our organizations, Our communities, and Our governments. None of this work is strictly about the end product, and it’s certainly not about perfection. The power of making things is that it forces you to go out, discover and learn. You can’t learn anything if it only takes the click of a button. So we’re going to keep making. We don’t know what the future holds. But we love that our work demands something real of us — that it pulls us into the world and invites us to collaborate with others.
By Eric Pauls
*Show notes - We taLKED about AI slop and refEREnce LAst WEek TOnight: