Wonderfuel Issue Number 12 – The joy of letting go of time

What if the most joyful thing you could do today was ignore the time, not manage it, not optimise it, not colour-code it into neat little boxes, but just completely ignore it for a while and see what happens.

When was the last time you actually took your watch off or chose not to look at your phone on purpose, not because you were busy, but because you didn’t want to know what time it was or what came next.

Take it off, put it down and stop checking what’s coming next for a moment, because that constant need to know, to plan, to move on, quietly steals your attention from everything that is actually happening right in front of you.

And instead of rushing through the day like you normally would, start looking twice at things you’d usually walk past without noticing, at moments you’d normally compress into something functional, at the small details that only show up when you slow down enough to actually see them.

Let yourself get a little lost, not in the stressful way where you feel out of control, but in the curious way, the kind you had as a kid when time didn’t matter and everything felt more interesting simply because you weren’t measuring it.

Because joy rarely lives in the schedule, it doesn’t sit neatly in your calendar waiting for its allotted slot, it shows up in the gaps, in the unscripted, in the moments where you’re not trying to get somewhere else.

So give yourself a day, or even just an hour, without the clock running your decisions, and see what changes.

Because you might find something you’ve been too busy to notice has been there the whole time.

‍

// Quote of the week //

‍

// The founder diary //

Yes, you read that right, I designed something with my eyes shut, and not in a “thirty years in I should probably be able to do this by now” kind of way, but in a “nothing is working and I need to try something different before I throw this out of the window” kind of way.

I was properly stuck on a piece of creative where everything felt fine on the surface but completely wrong underneath, a bit too obvious, a bit too forced, and definitely not the thing it needed to be, so I stepped away from my desk and went and sat on the couch just to get out of it.

And then, almost out of frustration more than anything else, I closed my eyes and carried on thinking anyway, no screen, no sketchbook, nothing visual to react to, just ideas forming without anything to immediately judge them against.

And something shifted.

Because the moment you start sketching or moving things around on a screen, you’re not just creating, you’re editing at the same time, you’re correcting, refining, dismissing ideas before they’ve even had a chance to become anything and your attention is constantly being pulled in different directions by everything you can see.

You think you’re exploring, but you’re actually filtering and that filtering is where a lot of the more interesting ideas quietly disappear before they’ve even been given a chance.

But with your eyes closed, none of that gets involved, there’s no visual noise, no immediate judgement, no instinct to tidy things up too early, just space to think things through properly and let them go somewhere slightly less obvious.

And in that space the ideas started to feel different, less sensible in a good way, less expected and a lot more interesting than anything I’d been forcing out on screen before.

Turns out my eyes weren’t helping as much as I thought they were, they were getting in the way.

So next time you’re stuck, try it, close your eyes just long enough to stop looking for the answer in front of you, because sometimes the quickest way to see something better is to stop seeing altogether.

‍

// The joyful brand – Confused.com //

Rarely do adverts make me laugh these days but this one from Confused.com made me spit my dinner halfway across the lounge and all over the dog.

Since 2009 when the Meerkats invaded our screens, the previously mundane as hell insurance comparison sector has been altogether a whole lot more magical, with joy as an entry level requirement.

And this latest ad by Confused.com is a belter.

It does the one thing that many brands don’t do nearly well enough - show people how thier lives can be better because of their brand.

The elevated, weightless floaty sensation when you’ve sorted your car insurance.

Simple but deadly affective when done well and clearly deadly effective as it has made me question my allegiance to Sergei and his pals.

‍

// From the archives – Vodafone Living Speech Mark Generator //

Throughout my almost three decade career I have been lucky enough to work on some amazing brands while contracting for other agencies.

This week’s archive takes us back six or seven years to an amazing fourteen months spent working with Superunion (Now Design Bridge & Partners) on the rebrand of Vodafone. This time culminated in working on designing a tool to help deliver living speech marks to creative agencies worldwide.

This project was the epitome of joy spending time working out how to bring to life the Vodafone living speechmarks not just for static use but also making them move and pulse.

And... lucky for you the url for the prototype is still working and here it is for you all to have a play with.

// Who or what is Wonderment? //

Wonderment is the joyful branding agency. We make businesses more effective by making their branding more affective. Wonderment isn’t just a name. It’s something wonderful, done on purpose. Something meant.

Got something exciting brewing, drop me and email let’s chat.

View the Wonderment website