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We are starting this newsletter in the hope that it develops into a catalogue of experiences and ideas from the studio. There was a lot of thought and conversation around whether to start this now or wait until the studio was more established before sharing these perspectives, but it came down to two things: if we are going to start this, why not now? And if we don’t start it now, what will we lose in the meantime? So here it is: the first introductory post from Present Standards studio.

I. Ready or correct?

Each month, we are going to release something. We don’t have a backlog of content, essays or research to share. The idea is that we collect and collate everything we’re looking at and, at the end of the month, share it in a format that feels right for that content. Ideally, we want to reach the point where we are sharing a collection of essays, influences and ideas that shape our practice and investigate the wider interests of the studio. Right now, however, we are starting fresh with this, so our goals are to keep it interesting and honest without forcing content that isn’t ready or correct.

We are designers, publishers and developers, and as a studio, we naturally want to share our thoughts with a wider community. In fact, one of our founding beliefs is that we should share more because we can, whether through projects, experiments and tools or, in this case, our ideas and research.

II. A Present Standard

Our research will contain essays, opinions, trend forecasting and insights that we find interesting or relevant to the studio. We also see this as a space to talk with and celebrate others, through interviews or conversations with friends and partners of the studio or through a series of shared resources, podcasts and other forms of dialogue that will offer a unique perspective on a series of topics. We want to share the behind the scenes of projects, the culture of the studio and the milestones that we achieve.

We have a commitment to share something at least once a month, we will be keeping this a completely free publication available on our Substack and over on our main site at /research-index where we share our latest design experiments as a studio, so if you do enjoy something please share it with others.

Present Standards.