Hi, I’m Brent! Graphic and user experience designer, father, with a curiosity about how we see the world.
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Carving Words
When I first started public speaking, I admired other speakers who were able to “wing it”, coming up with an incredible speech on the fly, in the moment. Somehow these speeches seemed more relevant and authentic, but also more impossible for me to ever achieve. Unfortunately (so I thought), I…
Whimsy
Whimsy. It’s one of my favourite words lately. Not the wedding decoration trend or all that, I mean whimsy the way Bob Goff uses it in Donald Miller’s book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It’s that magic that happens when we dare to do something courageous, or when…
A Slow Silent Walk
Came across this 100-year-old poem, “In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’” by Thomas Hardy, in Wendell Berry’s “The Unsettling of America”, and it struck a chord with me. The imagery in this poem runs a against the grain of modern culture – with its virtues of upward mobility, freedom…
Lean Into the Fear
Nearly fifteen years ago, in a small classroom on the edge of Santiago, Chile, I had a life-altering experience: I spoke in front of people without my knees turning to rubber. Until that day, every experience of public speaking had produced a kind of allergic reaction: my mind would go…
In Praise of “Dumb” Devices
I recently got a running watch to help track my pace when I’m running. Whenever I look at it’s single-colour, pixelated display, I’m reminded of why I love “dumb” devices. Every appliance and accessory is under pressure to become “smart”. Your camera can connect to Facebook, your thermostat is connected…
Clover
Common, abundant, passed by But they have a most amazing scent. You ask how I know this? My daughter stopped to pick just one (for us to share) From a field full of common and abundant wonders For those who’d like to smell.
The Writing Can Heal You
We’ve all, at one time in our life, experienced the “day after” crash. The day after the book launched. The week after the marathon. The night after the big concert. Seth Godin describes this period after we reach a big milestone “a kind of death.” All the adrenaline of the…
New book: Pay Attention
We often find ourselves feeling distracted and discontent, bored with our everyday routines. As Louis CK put it, “everything’s amazing, but nobody’s happy”. We look for a change of scenery, or dream about a life somewhere “out there” where everything life will be amazing again. Wonder, though, is based more…
The New Car Scent
In 2007 I married my way into Volvo ownership. Our 1987 Volvo 240 might have been falling apart on the outside, but it had a strong heart, and bravely carried us over mountain passes, through winter storms, and proved to not shy away from -30 temperatures (even without a block…
Does the typeface really matter?
I was reading a book recently, For the Time Being by Annie Dillard. When I got to the last page I discovered a note – right-aligned – from the book designer. It read: A Note on the type The text of this book was set in a typeface called Baker…