Letter 30

Vandercook Rules, Pixel Fonts, Velasquez, Picasso, Dali and Toledo, Agentic Design.

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(To all the new readers… here’s a quick bio on me, just in case you can’t quite remember…)

Always free. Always interesting.

STORY

Vandercook Rules and the RISO Vibe.

Standing near the RISO printer in the upstairs loft of Jessica Hische’s studio, our little group of artists, designers, and writers started to vibe with the room. Favorite books, favorite artists, slightly obscure but clearly very good music… all the best topics. I had just pulled a print on her Vandercook downstairs and within minutes of wandering upstairs to chat and watch Jessica pull out the drums on the RISO to show us exactly up close and personal how a RISO is really a combination of silk screen and a copy machine… within minutes of being in that room I noticed something very special: we were all subtly, slightly, rocking back and forth, left-right-left-right in the same slow, subtle, gentle rhythm. It was the same rhythm that a nearby baby was bouncing up and down in her father’s arms. It was the same rhythm as the prosody of our speech: easy, musical, generous, empathetic. In short, we were in sync. Not just two of us, but all of us. The whole room was a vibe.

Can I describe how nice that was to experience? How rare to spontaneously be in sync with a whole room? And to have a moment of clarity where I noticed it?

How unforced and natural it was to tune into the rhythm of the baby, the hum of the drum of the RISO, and the rainfall patter of our conversation... The happy stories of misadventures and secret plans for art?

The baby’s Dad joined in. So did his wife. We discovered we both knew the same crazy Italian animator… Other designers and artists eased in. Our pod of vibe grew.

It was a nice little group. It made me think of all the times I’ve felt like a fish-out-of-water and how wonderful it was to feel the opposite. And how I really appreciate times when I’ve been invited in and greeted with warmth. I’ve been trying do the same for others… to contribute to the community by hosting events in NY, LDN, and SF for artists/designers/writers.

Your story?
If you have a sec… please tell me your thoughts on what makes a great experience?

Earlier this week was a different scale of gathering. 12,500 designers gathered to discuss the future of design, AI, culture, and product at Figma’s Config24 conference.

It was a rush to see so many of us in one place… To realize that the world is built by people who care, and that together, we can make the case that beauty, excellence, and taste all matter. I saw old friends, former students, new friends and person after person who was chasing the dream of building a world worth living in.

Google around and you can and videos to most of the talks, including this absolute gem from Marcin about “pixel fonts” …many described this as the single best talk they’ve ever experienced. What the video and you’ll get a sense why. Marcin deeply, deeply cares.

As a special treat, Marcin built a tool for all of us to create our own pixel fonts. Find it here: https://config.aresluna.org/ You can use the tool to design and then download your own pixel font.

The most outrageous en·fant ter·ri·ble session? Jesper from Teenage Engineering. He loves his team, clearly, even as he pretends to disparage them. If you listen closely, you can hear his true message—that a studio is a type of church. A romance with hope. A poem to the invisible. A type of love.

Love. Love. Love. Love.

See Figma’s YT for all of the talks, including a great one from Jessica and a marvelous talk on story and brand from the Browser Company—along with many others.

Here are @karlamickens and @lafillemouen as they walk off stage after a wonderful talk on story, brand and most of all—people.

ART

Toledo

I was in Spain last week (right before Config24) for great museums and super-innovative food with my family. We were there for Velázquez, Dali, Picasso, and Gaudi. We took a pilgrimage to see Guernica. We travelled to Dali’s home and studio.

But what I want to talk about is Toledo.

We visited Toledo as a part of my ongoing research into what I call “Outsider Insight.” I’m researching the history of innovation and tracking down this idea that the greatest moments of inventiveness and human innovation come from unexpected combinations from seemingly unrelated ideas, cultures or fields.

Toledo is a marvelous example of exactly this. Known as a the City of Three Cultures, it was at it’s peak when Islamic, Christian, and Jewish scholars all gathered together to collaborate on translations (and re-combinations) of ancient texts. History focuses on the conquests; I am more interested in the in-between-times when peaceful collaboration pushed human knowledge forward.

You could see the layers of conquest and evidence of collaboration by exploring the architecture. Here are a few images.

DESIGN

The Future is Agentic

I’m nearly done writing up my notes on Agentic Design from the recent workshops in SF and NYC. I’m hoping the project becomes something of an early guidebook on the future of design in the AI era.

To produce it, I followed a mini Agentic Process… (Planning, Tools Use, Reflection, Multi-Agent collaboration). For instance, our design team at Sequoia gave me feedback (and offered up improvements) to the layout(s) in the spreads. Shoutout to Andreas, Hongyuan, Nate and Wes. The writing process involved planning and rewriting (often many times). And I used many tools (Figma, InDesign, Yuni, Illustrator, GoogleDocs). I also sought out expert sources, usually the person who invented or coded the different pieces of the puzzle. Thank you to everyone who spoke to me about what I hope will become known as “Agentic Design.”

Here are a few spreads from the project.

Request: If we’re mutuals on any platform or we’ve chatted in person or you’ve attended any of the events I’ve hosted… please reach out if you’d like to help review an early draft of the piece.

The draft is designed to transform the artist/designer/writer into the builder of tomorrow. I want artists/designers/writers to rebuild the world. I’m hoping this how-to guide can help get people started.

I’d appreciate your helpful, constructive input and feedback. Think of this as a rough-n-ready field guide. Notes for our generation of artists.

And to show I’m not just a talker, but also a walker…

I’ve continued to create new projects each week learning the Agentic flow for devs and applying it to Agentic Design for the new artist/designer/writer/builder.

This week I’ve written a new AI Agent for research for expository writing. It’s my first AI big project where instead of just rolling the dice and hoping your prompt works, you break a problem down into planning, researching, drafting, critiquing, editing, re-writing, re-researching, and then subjecting the whole process to multiple rounds of self-revisions—just like real writing. I’m coding in python, using LangChain and LangGraph to construct the agents.

Honestly? It’s very very fun to create these systems of micro-agents all working together to create a final product. It’s my most complicated piece of code yet, and it’s quite fun as a designer/artist/writer to transform myself into a builder… first with AIArtAgent.com, DanceWeek.org, Cicero’s Gist, and now this research and writing tool. Fascinating! Goodbye Prompt-n-Prey; Hello Agentic Design.

This week’s personal breakthrough was to emulate what is happening in the human mind’s hemispherical collaboration—where a thought starts on the right hemisphere for instinct, first impression and vibe, then moves to the left for breaking things down into parts and pieces, and then finally moving back to the right for re-contextualization and sanity-checking.

This A-B-A’ processing path might look familiar to you—it is the sonata form in music, the three-act structure of film, and it seems, our entire experience of perceiving and understanding the world. It was a joy to bring the path of hemispherical collaboration to Agentic Design as a technique for building software.

For my own agentic flows, I try to travel between the right and left hemispheres… both in the intent of the micro-agent (its task, prompt, and “rules”) and in it’s “temperature”—which is AI developer-speak for its chaotic creativity. The “temperature” of a model refers to how wildly creative or stoically constrained the results are. The word temperature is a weird one—why not “creativity” or “chaos”—the story behind this seemingly strange choice connects to AI’s roots in math and physics: it comes from the idea that entropy increases with temperature.

“As temperature increases, so does the entropy of a system. This is because higher temperatures give particles more kinetic energy, causing them to move faster and become more disordered. The system also has more thermal energy, which can be distributed in more ways.”

So increasing the temperature increases the creativity, or chaos, of the system. I just realized you can think of “temperature” as “temperament” with 0 being matter-of-fact and 1 being totally wild.

A big part of an Agentic process in coding is getting all your micro-agents to talk to each other and fix broken bits and improve everything. In her seminal 2018 lecture, Design Thinking is Bullshit, Natasha Jen rightly describes how this step—talking through issues and ideas with trusted peers—is critical to good design and is often left out of the official design thinking process, but we designers, artists, and writers know it well and call it by its name “crit.” Teaching my Research Agent how to benefit from healthy, productive crit was a big part of how it works.

One of the final steps in the flow of my research agent is adjust the style. For that, I pointed it to my own article on writing: Words Matter. It’s a checklist for writers to use when reviewing their own work and trying to improve their text. Even if you aren’t writing AI agents, you might enjoy this article. Also, for writer friends out there… here’s a list of all my writing related posts: Story and Writing

Just for fun… I asked it to research and write up a bit on Toledo, Spain. It did three drafts, editing and rewriting each time, researching different sub-topics, and then finally adding in a “style” layer of voice and tone, shifting temperature (and creativity) as it went. It’s a little off still in tone… but not bad for a research assistant.

Here’s what I got back.

AI Research Agent… Example Essay

What if I told you that the most groundbreaking innovations in European history were born not from conflict, but from cooperation? Toledo, Spain, during the Middle Ages, shows what can be achieved when Moorish, Jewish, and Christian communities come together in a collaborative blend of cultures. This era, spanning from the 8th to the 15th centuries, was a golden age of intellectual and cultural cooperation, yielding advancements that would shape the course of history. The contributions from this period were not just remarkable; they were transformative, laying the groundwork for the Renaissance and beyond. Let us delve into the innovations that emerged from this unique confluence of cultures.

Scientific Innovations

Toledo became a crucible of scientific thought, primarily through the Translation Movement led by the Toledo School of Translators. Figures such as Gerard of Cremona and Ibn Daud translated crucial works from Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew into Latin, making them accessible to Western Europe. This monumental effort was the bedrock upon which the Renaissance was built.

Astronomy and mathematics saw significant advancements in Toledo. The introduction of Arabic numerals and algebra revolutionized European mathematics, while the Alfonsine Tables, an astronomical compilation, greatly influenced scientific thought and navigation. These contributions not only enhanced the understanding of the cosmos but also propelled various scientific disciplines forward.

Philosophical and Theological Contributions

The era also yielded profound philosophical and theological contributions. Translations and commentaries on Aristotle’s works integrated Aristotelian philosophy into European discourse, influencing Scholasticism. Figures like Thomas Aquinas drew heavily on these texts, shaping their own philosophical and theological frameworks.

Interfaith dialogues and theological debates enriched Toledo's intellectual landscape. Scholars engaged in comparative studies of religious texts, fostering a deeper understanding and respect for different faith traditions. Jewish philosophy, epitomized by Maimonides, flourished, contributing to both Jewish and broader philosophical thought. These dialogues promoted a spirit of inquiry and tolerance that had a lasting impact on Christian and Islamic theology.

Artistic and Architectural Innovations

Toledo witnessed significant artistic and architectural innovations, particularly through Mudejar architecture, which fused Islamic and Christian elements. Structures like the Synagogue of El Tránsito and the Church of San Román stand as enduring symbols of this cultural synthesis.

Manuscript illumination and calligraphy flourished, with scholars from different backgrounds working together in scriptoria to produce illuminated manuscripts that influenced European traditions. The development of new musical forms and instruments, along with cross-cultural influences in poetry and literature, enriched Toledo's artistic tapestry and left a lasting legacy on European arts.

Socio-Cultural Impact

The socio-cultural impact of these innovations was profound. Educational institutions and libraries in Toledo played a crucial role in preserving and disseminating knowledge, attracting scholars from across Europe and fostering intellectual exchange.

Economic and technological innovations thrived, with advances in agriculture and irrigation techniques improving productivity. The development of trade networks and economic policies contributed to Toledo's prosperity, making it a hub of commerce and cultural exchange.

Legacy and Long-Term Impact

The legacy of Toledo's era of cooperation extends far beyond the Middle Ages. The transmission of knowledge facilitated by the Translation Movement laid the foundation for the Renaissance and the subsequent scientific revolution. The spirit of multicultural collaboration that defined Toledo continues to be relevant today, offering valuable lessons for contemporary interfaith and intercultural dialogue.

Conclusion

The era of cooperation in Toledo, Spain, led to significant innovations in science, philosophy, and the arts. These contributions enriched European intellectual and cultural landscapes and had a lasting impact on global development. The historical significance of this period serves as a powerful reminder of the potential for human achievement when diverse cultures come together in mutual respect and collaboration. The enduring legacy of Toledo's era of cooperation underscores the importance of fostering such synergies in our increasingly interconnected world.

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Toledo,_Spain

2. https://www.museocuchilleria.es/en/portfolio/the-toledo-factory-of-weapons/

3. https://odysseymagazine.com/toledo-city-of-the-three-cultures/

4. https://www.thelonelytraveller.org/toledo-city-three-cultures/

5. https://odysseymagazine.com/toledo-city-of-the-three-cultures/

6. https://ipojournals.linfield.edu/2019/01/06/toledo-the-city-of-three-cultures/

7. https://face2facestories.org/2020/05/7-storytelling-techniques-used-by-the-most-inspiring-ted-presenters/

8. https://www.ted.com/playlists/574/how_to_make_a_great_presentation

9. https://www.ted.com/playlists/65/personal_tales_from_the_edge_o

10. https://www.linkedin.com/advice/3/how-can-you-use-personal-anecdotes-make-ted

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_Cathedral

12. https://www.historyhit.com/locations/catedral-de-toledo/

13. https://facts.net/world/cities/15-facts-about-toledo/

14. https://facts.net/world/landmarks/15-intriguing-facts-about-alcazar-of-toledo/

15. https://joshandrew.org/blog/innovating-with-faith-a-christian-approach-to-creative-leadership

16. https://www.joinc12.com/leadership/innovation-strategies-relevant/

17. https://digitalgallery.bgsu.edu/exhibits/show/icgt/beyond_the_center

18. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/history-magazine/article/muslim-medicine-scientific-discovery-islam

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Not perfect, but not bad essay for an Agent…

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