explorer/designer/creator
December 30, 2025
Reflections on 2025
Foreword
First post! I’ve been trying to think about what I want this to be: is it a design blog, a self-help guide, a sign-of-the-times, a reflection pool? something like that. I tend to jot things down here and there (if you know where to find it) but wanted a space to think deeper about some of the those moments. Where an insta post, are.na block or substack newsletter seemed to fall apart.
To quote a friend:
Jean:
Do you have deep thoughts you want to share?
Ethan:
Well.. yes, all my thoughts are deep thoughts
Unfortunately, it’s like a chasm that needs time to explore.
I need a space to explain the nuances, complications, learnings, dwellings, criticality (consideration?) of not only my career in design, but maybe the impact it has had on me. Not in a bad way, but the way that I am thinking about “the things” (who is impacted? is it suitable for the brand? how can I avoid and anticipate confusion? Will this have ripple effects on x, y, z? is it usable?) more than ever making “the things” (blueprints, reports, logos, artifacts, etc).
So maybe this will be largely about the subject - design, but unpacking thoughts on thoughts on thoughts. It’s that unseen part of creative practice, and my practice, has changed, and will continue to change. I hope that others can relate or feel a connection to it too. In the reverse, I think I am searching for some sort of understanding, knowing that I am not alone in thinking - caring - to think.
I have tried to make a conscious effort not to censor or water down myself – I think it’s more important than ever to have a perspective – and to quote @maidenstudio (ig) “Stop acting as a PR manager for your imagination.”
Handle with Care
Fundamentally, I care, about my practice more than anything. What is my practice now? Something I am trying to also.. care about discovering more. It is no longer just drawing, making images or one-off posters. Not only creating websites or app experiences, but now the things that power, even that, to work. I’m drawn to this much larger mess, tangled and weaved with objectives, scaling, larger than life endeavors that take shape in multiple parts affecting one another. My practice now has become .. more about uncovering, exploring and trying to facilitate what the right thing is at the right time. I guess that is the place you end up in after you learn enough tricks.
But with that, one of the largest difficulties, in making the right place at the right time, is care. I’ve gone back and forth on what it means to care – when it has been too much, too little, in the wrong places, or the wrong people. It’s too much to care, maybe a bit dangerous to care, about everything. Probably a no-brainer for most people, and if we look around the world, it feels like a nearly extinct trait in 2025. But it’s a give and take.
So when is the right time to care? Is there a determining “worth” to care?
For me care is a form of accountability, guidance, as duty, responsibility. An always on activity. “Most of all, care is the willingness to do the work, and to do it better each time.” says Cherrypye and Nina Paim, from the Futuress. In this way the role of a designer is to care, in order to “make the thing better.” And it is hard to do better – and determine how to choose how to do better. Many times we have to acknowledge that care can feel resistant, uncomfortable, parental. But it can also feel soft, supportive and guiding when done right. And there’s a time and place for both. I’m wondering more and more when does the singular duty end and the shared duty begin? How is care a shared understanding, built into the process so that it is not only on me?
There’s this funny thing working in tech, you create all these proposal rituals, concepts that are “good, better, best” or “crawl, walk, run” - a stepping stone of how much the company could “care” about something and then a committee of some sort says yes, this is worth caring about we can allocate 10 cares to this. Or no, actually we can only give 5 cares about this. Maybe one, or maybe they don’t care for it at all. (I don’t know how well that really works.) What it is telling, though, to corporations, there is a cost – to care. They begin to define and analyze care here as salaried and hourly time, financial investment and a song and dance of cost-benefit-analysis.
This seems really easy to do from the perspective of a company, but when does the role of designer caring become too much? How do you determine that the cost of your care is actually not going to be a benefit to you, your team, your client, etc? Is it possible to be that objective and still maintain creative integrity? Because people aren’t company in that way, we’re squishy, liquid and reactive, a care framework or social contract needs to be too.
“...let’s look at care as an embodied experience, a continuous commitment and journey, one that should be frequently reviewed, revised and renewed to adjust to the needs of our changing communities and ecosystems.
...We need to ask, on all levels of our practice: Who are we, and who do we care for? How do we create frameworks for care to thrive? How do we actually listen to those who have historically been silenced? How do we take them seriously, while accepting accountability and being the change we want to see in the world?
Care is contracts signed and honored, fees paid on time, inclusive codes of conduct, complaint systems that work, acknowledgement of harm, genuine apologies and reparations. Care is who we cite and who we refuse to cite. Care is refusal, and disengagement from toxicity. Care is also taking time off. ”
- “Does Design Care?” - Cherrypye and Nina Paim, Futuress
It’s incredibly cool, to care.
In a world that is desensitized, hyper-individualistic and at ends with each other. Care is making sense of chaos, tying strings, weaving narratives and objectives together. Protection, safety. A third consciousness, awareness, and understanding.
At the same time, I can’t help but feel sad about how care can be undermined. Quickly broken, a house of cards that can fall at any time. Shared visions we work towards as illusion, deluded by truths we tell ourselves to feel good, goal posts that shift until there is no longer a goal at all. I’m trying to become better at care in this way, protecting yourself from the heartbreak. An inevitable moment that seems to follow me, and maybe you too.
I care so much – love to dive in quickly, sparkly-eyed and enamored. Play is necessary, enthusiastic and powerful. Contagious. There must be a time where play is protected and honored. Play time. Space where you need not worry about the adults. Rachel Sennott called this taking an edible, getting an ice coffee and putting on the craziest fashion show in your bedroom mirror. Throw the clothes on the floor, and don’t worry about it until later. Ebbing between drunken bliss and free wheeling downhill. Let your freak flag fly. But for a moment.
Play is a stimulant. Unlimited play, a drug.
The year of 2025, maybe in tech, maybe in daily life where this new play toy is the air we breathe around us – chat agents, llm models, generative tools. Quick, easy, dopamine hits that appear like the future is at our fingertips. It’s hard for me to not see it as a stimulant, as it’s designed to continuously please you, regurgitate information as fact, and sometimes, create something pretty interesting. Maybe a side effect of it - not only limited to ai - but I’ve seen again and again, this sense of unfettered play can unlock the “one thing that will solve all our problems” mentality. A drunken goggle filter that blocks out any existing work, efforts, visions you may have been working toward. It’s the contagious manner of play, that it feels good, and magical to do just that. It’s no longer important to think, it can do it for you.
There’s another post I want to write about learned helplessness, bean soup-ification, nietzsche’s the last man who wants to learn nothing, wants to do nothing, and live for passive and comfort only (will try to later).
I’m learning more and more that care too is about the bounds. Where play needs to end and reflection begins.
If it were a framework, questioning is part of the care process.
It’s a bit of an exhausting effort, to question everything, but a necessary evil, too. Where you must go back to the drawing board: Who is going to use this? Is it backed by data, a lived experience? Is it appropriate? Truthful? Will this impact existing workflows? We must facilitate these conversations more widely and openly to consolidate the fog of play.
Why do this? We pride olympians for their athleticism, sheer willpower and care for their sport. The time, effort and practice is the journey worthy of the end goal. And there are social contracts of care for them, too. Organized moments for play, endurance, comradery, celebration. Standards; enhancing drugs are cheating the game, and the responsibility as an olympian. I’ve been told this is the difference between the growing divide of craftspeople (higher standards, honoring craftsmanship) and everyday worker (what’s necessary, that okay is enough). The odds I find myself in is here - wanting to be better, with the stamina to withstand the weight and responsibility - I don’t desire the ordinary.
We understand that all of us cannot fit the standard of olympians - and frankly, we can’t all be. We need people to look up to, and people that frustrate us, projects that push us to become better and projects that disappoint us. Maybe that is the difference, the type of care you hold yourself to, and the standard that is understood by the people around you.
"You can either design the candle, or you can design the room it sits in” - Virgil Abloh
In that way, as a designer, it’s like you have to care just enough. Knowing where to pull the strings in the right way. About determining how much the people around you believe in it, want it to be good, better, the best, or just enough. Continuously examining and re-examining your relationship to care, a project, your people, your time. Virgil’s analogy here is comparing a tin can in a white wall gallery, to a tin can in a garage - the perceived difference is it’s context. Is the tin can a piece of art or a piece of garbage? In the right place, it is beautiful, and another, ordinary. We can make the comparison to creative work, athleticism, too. A single person alone cannot make the work, the team, better - it must be with the care, curation of the room too. Distinct roles, partners that make care work. The one who designs the candle and one that designs the framework, and the room for it to exist beautifully in. Finding the right people to believe that caring in this is worth it, is the hard part.
Reflection
Clarity is a gift, and 2026 to me, not optional. Potential to make: a care outline, with the rituals that are necessary to come to a shared understanding. Building in time for care, protection, safety. Protecting creativity and your mind.
Ethan Coy
explorer/designer/creator
Ethan is a system - a multitude of lives coming together to design wonderful ideas and experiences. His career has been a meandering path covering fine art, graphic design, activism, non-profit governance, product design and entrepreneurship.
explorer/designer/creator
December 30, 2025
Reflections on 2025
Foreword
First post! I’ve been trying to think about what I want this to be: is it a design blog, a self-help guide, a sign-of-the-times, a reflection pool? something like that. I tend to jot things down here and there (if you know where to find it) but wanted a space to think deeper about some of the those moments. Where an insta post, are.na block or substack newsletter seemed to fall apart.
To quote a friend:
Jean:
Do you have deep thoughts you want to share?
Ethan:
Well.. yes, all my thoughts are deep thoughts
Unfortunately, it’s like a chasm that needs time to explore.
I need a space to explain the nuances, complications, learnings, dwellings, criticality (consideration?) of not only my career in design, but maybe the impact it has had on me. Not in a bad way, but the way that I am thinking about “the things” (who is impacted? is it suitable for the brand? how can I avoid and anticipate confusion? Will this have ripple effects on x, y, z? is it usable?) more than ever making “the things” (blueprints, reports, logos, artifacts, etc).
So maybe this will be largely about the subject - design, but unpacking thoughts on thoughts on thoughts. It’s that unseen part of creative practice, and my practice, has changed, and will continue to change. I hope that others can relate or feel a connection to it too. In the reverse, I think I am searching for some sort of understanding, knowing that I am not alone in thinking - caring - to think.
I have tried to make a conscious effort not to censor or water down myself – I think it’s more important than ever to have a perspective – and to quote @maidenstudio (ig) “Stop acting as a PR manager for your imagination.”
Handle with Care
Fundamentally, I care, about my practice more than anything. What is my practice now? Something I am trying to also.. care about discovering more. It is no longer just drawing, making images or one-off posters. Not only creating websites or app experiences, but now the things that power, even that, to work. I’m drawn to this much larger mess, tangled and weaved with objectives, scaling, larger than life endeavors that take shape in multiple parts affecting one another. My practice now has become .. more about uncovering, exploring and trying to facilitate what the right thing is at the right time. I guess that is the place you end up in after you learn enough tricks.
But with that, one of the largest difficulties, in making the right place at the right time, is care. I’ve gone back and forth on what it means to care – when it has been too much, too little, in the wrong places, or the wrong people. It’s too much to care, maybe a bit dangerous to care, about everything. Probably a no-brainer for most people, and if we look around the world, it feels like a nearly extinct trait in 2025. But it’s a give and take.
So when is the right time to care? Is there a determining “worth” to care?
For me care is a form of accountability, guidance, as duty, responsibility. An always on activity. “Most of all, care is the willingness to do the work, and to do it better each time.” says Cherrypye and Nina Paim, from the Futuress. In this way the role of a designer is to care, in order to “make the thing better.” And it is hard to do better – and determine how to choose how to do better. Many times we have to acknowledge that care can feel resistant, uncomfortable, parental. But it can also feel soft, supportive and guiding when done right. And there’s a time and place for both. I’m wondering more and more when does the singular duty end and the shared duty begin? How is care a shared understanding, built into the process so that it is not only on me?
There’s this funny thing working in tech, you create all these proposal rituals, concepts that are “good, better, best” or “crawl, walk, run” - a stepping stone of how much the company could “care” about something and then a committee of some sort says yes, this is worth caring about we can allocate 10 cares to this. Or no, actually we can only give 5 cares about this. Maybe one, or maybe they don’t care for it at all. (I don’t know how well that really works.) What it is telling, though, to corporations, there is a cost – to care. They begin to define and analyze care here as salaried and hourly time, financial investment and a song and dance of cost-benefit-analysis.
This seems really easy to do from the perspective of a company, but when does the role of designer caring become too much? How do you determine that the cost of your care is actually not going to be a benefit to you, your team, your client, etc? Is it possible to be that objective and still maintain creative integrity? Because people aren’t company in that way, we’re squishy, liquid and reactive, a care framework or social contract needs to be too.
“...let’s look at care as an embodied experience, a continuous commitment and journey, one that should be frequently reviewed, revised and renewed to adjust to the needs of our changing communities and ecosystems.
...We need to ask, on all levels of our practice: Who are we, and who do we care for? How do we create frameworks for care to thrive? How do we actually listen to those who have historically been silenced? How do we take them seriously, while accepting accountability and being the change we want to see in the world?
Care is contracts signed and honored, fees paid on time, inclusive codes of conduct, complaint systems that work, acknowledgement of harm, genuine apologies and reparations. Care is who we cite and who we refuse to cite. Care is refusal, and disengagement from toxicity. Care is also taking time off. ”
- “Does Design Care?” - Cherrypye and Nina Paim, Futuress
It’s incredibly cool, to care.
In a world that is desensitized, hyper-individualistic and at ends with each other. Care is making sense of chaos, tying strings, weaving narratives and objectives together. Protection, safety. A third consciousness, awareness, and understanding.
At the same time, I can’t help but feel sad about how care can be undermined. Quickly broken, a house of cards that can fall at any time. Shared visions we work towards as illusion, deluded by truths we tell ourselves to feel good, goal posts that shift until there is no longer a goal at all. I’m trying to become better at care in this way, protecting yourself from the heartbreak. An inevitable moment that seems to follow me, and maybe you too.
I care so much – love to dive in quickly, sparkly-eyed and enamored. Play is necessary, enthusiastic and powerful. Contagious. There must be a time where play is protected and honored. Play time. Space where you need not worry about the adults. Rachel Sennott called this taking an edible, getting an ice coffee and putting on the craziest fashion show in your bedroom mirror. Throw the clothes on the floor, and don’t worry about it until later. Ebbing between drunken bliss and free wheeling downhill. Let your freak flag fly. But for a moment.
Play is a stimulant. Unlimited play, a drug.
The year of 2025, maybe in tech, maybe in daily life where this new play toy is the air we breathe around us – chat agents, llm models, generative tools. Quick, easy, dopamine hits that appear like the future is at our fingertips. It’s hard for me to not see it as a stimulant, as it’s designed to continuously please you, regurgitate information as fact, and sometimes, create something pretty interesting. Maybe a side effect of it - not only limited to ai - but I’ve seen again and again, this sense of unfettered play can unlock the “one thing that will solve all our problems” mentality. A drunken goggle filter that blocks out any existing work, efforts, visions you may have been working toward. It’s the contagious manner of play, that it feels good, and magical to do just that. It’s no longer important to think, it can do it for you.
There’s another post I want to write about learned helplessness, bean soup-ification, nietzsche’s the last man who wants to learn nothing, wants to do nothing, and live for passive and comfort only (will try to later).
I’m learning more and more that care too is about the bounds. Where play needs to end and reflection begins.
If it were a framework, questioning is part of the care process.
It’s a bit of an exhausting effort, to question everything, but a necessary evil, too. Where you must go back to the drawing board: Who is going to use this? Is it backed by data, a lived experience? Is it appropriate? Truthful? Will this impact existing workflows? We must facilitate these conversations more widely and openly to consolidate the fog of play.
Why do this? We pride olympians for their athleticism, sheer willpower and care for their sport. The time, effort and practice is the journey worthy of the end goal. And there are social contracts of care for them, too. Organized moments for play, endurance, comradery, celebration. Standards; enhancing drugs are cheating the game, and the responsibility as an olympian. I’ve been told this is the difference between the growing divide of craftspeople (higher standards, honoring craftsmanship) and everyday worker (what’s necessary, that okay is enough). The odds I find myself in is here - wanting to be better, with the stamina to withstand the weight and responsibility - I don’t desire the ordinary.
We understand that all of us cannot fit the standard of olympians - and frankly, we can’t all be. We need people to look up to, and people that frustrate us, projects that push us to become better and projects that disappoint us. Maybe that is the difference, the type of care you hold yourself to, and the standard that is understood by the people around you.
"You can either design the candle, or you can design the room it sits in” - Virgil Abloh
In that way, as a designer, it’s like you have to care just enough. Knowing where to pull the strings in the right way. About determining how much the people around you believe in it, want it to be good, better, the best, or just enough. Continuously examining and re-examining your relationship to care, a project, your people, your time. Virgil’s analogy here is comparing a tin can in a white wall gallery, to a tin can in a garage - the perceived difference is it’s context. Is the tin can a piece of art or a piece of garbage? In the right place, it is beautiful, and another, ordinary. We can make the comparison to creative work, athleticism, too. A single person alone cannot make the work, the team, better - it must be with the care, curation of the room too. Distinct roles, partners that make care work. The one who designs the candle and one that designs the framework, and the room for it to exist beautifully in. Finding the right people to believe that caring in this is worth it, is the hard part.
Reflection
Clarity is a gift, and 2026 to me, not optional. Potential to make: a care outline, with the rituals that are necessary to come to a shared understanding. Building in time for care, protection, safety. Protecting creativity and your mind.
Ethan Coy
explorer/designer/creator
Ethan is a system - a multitude of lives coming together to design wonderful ideas and experiences. His career has been a meandering path covering fine art, graphic design, activism, non-profit governance, product design and entrepreneurship.
explorer/designer/creator
December 30, 2025
Reflections on 2025
Foreword
First post! I’ve been trying to think about what I want this to be: is it a design blog, a self-help guide, a sign-of-the-times, a reflection pool? something like that. I tend to jot things down here and there (if you know where to find it) but wanted a space to think deeper about some of the those moments. Where an insta post, are.na block or journal entry seemed to fall apart.
To quote a friend:
Jean:
Do you have deep thoughts you want to share?
Ethan:
Well.. yes, all my thoughts are deep thoughts
Unfortunately, it’s like a chasm that needs time to explore.
I need a space to explain the nuances, complications, learnings, dwellings, criticality (consideration?) of not only my career in design, but maybe the impact it has had on me. Not in a bad way, but the way that I am thinking about “the things” (who is impacted? is it suitable for the brand? how can I avoid and anticipate confusion? Will this have ripple effects on x, y, z? is it usable?) more than ever making “the things” (blueprints, reports, logos, artifacts, etc).
So maybe this will be largely about the subject - design, but unpacking thoughts on thoughts on thoughts. It’s that unseen part of creative practice, and my practice, has changed, and will continue to change. I hope that others can relate or feel a connection to it too. In the reverse, I think I am searching for some sort of understanding, knowing that I am not alone in thinking - caring - to think.
I have tried to make a conscious effort not to censor or water down myself – I think it’s more important than ever to have a perspective – and to quote @maidenstudio (ig) “Stop acting as a PR manager for your imagination.”
Handle with Care
Fundamentally, I care, about my practice more than anything. What is my practice now? Something I am trying to also.. care about discovering more. It is no longer just drawing, making images or one-off posters. Not only creating websites or app experiences, but now the things that power, even that, to work. I’m drawn to this much larger mess, tangled and weaved with objectives, scaling, larger than life endeavors that take shape in multiple parts affecting one another. My practice now has become .. more about uncovering, exploring and trying to facilitate what the right thing is at the right time. I guess that is the place you end up in after you learn enough tricks.
But with that, one of the largest difficulties, in making the right place at the right time, is care. I’ve gone back and forth on what it means to care – when it has been too much, too little, in the wrong places, or the wrong people. It’s too much to care, maybe a bit dangerous to care, about everything. Probably a no-brainer for most people, and if we look around the world, it feels like a nearly extinct trait in 2025. But it’s a give and take.
So when is the right time to care? Is there a determining “worth” to care?
For me care is a form of accountability, guidance, as duty, responsibility. An always on activity. “Most of all, care is the willingness to do the work, and to do it better each time.” says Cherrypye and Nina Paim, from the Futuress. In this way the role of a designer is to care, in order to “make the thing better.” And it is hard to do better – and determine how to choose how to do better. Many times we have to acknowledge that care can feel resistant, uncomfortable, parental. But it can also feel soft, supportive and guiding when done right. And there’s a time and place for both. I’m wondering more and more when does the singular duty end and the shared duty begin? How is care a shared understanding, built into the process so that it is not only on me?
There’s this funny thing working in tech, you create all these proposal rituals, concepts that are “good, better, best” or “crawl, walk, run” - a stepping stone of how much the company could “care” about something and then a committee of some sort says yes, this is worth caring about we can allocate 10 cares to this. Or no, actually we can only give 5 cares about this. Maybe one, or maybe they don’t care for it at all. (I don’t know how well that really works.) What it is telling, though, to corporations, there is a cost – to care. They begin to define and analyze care here as salaried and hourly time, financial investment and a song and dance of cost-benefit-analysis.
This seems really easy to do from the perspective of a company, but when does the role of designer caring become too much? How do you determine that the cost of your care is actually not going to be a benefit to you, your team, your client, etc? Is it possible to be that objective and still maintain creative integrity? Because people aren’t company in that way, we’re squishy, liquid and reactive, a care framework or social contract needs to be too.
“...let’s look at care as an embodied experience, a continuous commitment and journey, one that should be frequently reviewed, revised and renewed to adjust to the needs of our changing communities and ecosystems.
...We need to ask, on all levels of our practice: Who are we, and who do we care for? How do we create frameworks for care to thrive? How do we actually listen to those who have historically been silenced? How do we take them seriously, while accepting accountability and being the change we want to see in the world?
Care is contracts signed and honored, fees paid on time, inclusive codes of conduct, complaint systems that work, acknowledgement of harm, genuine apologies and reparations. Care is who we cite and who we refuse to cite. Care is refusal, and disengagement from toxicity. Care is also taking time off. ”
- “Does Design Care?” - Cherrypye and Nina Paim, Futuress
It’s incredibly cool, to care.
In a world that is desensitized, hyper-individualistic and at ends with each other. Care is making sense of chaos, tying strings, weaving narratives and objectives together. Protection, safety. A third consciousness, awareness, and understanding.
At the same time, I can’t help but feel sad about how care can be undermined. Quickly broken, a house of cards that can fall at any time. Shared visions we work towards as illusion, deluded by truths we tell ourselves to feel good, goal posts that shift until there is no longer a goal at all. I’m trying to become better at care in this way, protecting yourself from the heartbreak. An inevitable moment that seems to follow me, and maybe you too.
I care so much – love to dive in quickly, sparkly-eyed and enamored. Play is necessary, enthusiastic and powerful. Contagious. There must be a time where play is protected and honored. Play time. Space where you need not worry about the adults. Rachel Sennott called this taking an edible, getting an ice coffee and putting on the craziest fashion show in your bedroom mirror. Throw the clothes on the floor, and don’t worry about it until later. Ebbing between drunken bliss and free wheeling downhill. Let your freak flag fly. But for a moment.
Play is a stimulant. Unlimited play, a drug.
The year of 2025, maybe in tech, maybe in daily life where this new play toy is the air we breathe around us – chat agents, llm models, generative tools. Quick, easy, dopamine hits that appear like the future is at our fingertips. It’s hard for me to not see it as a stimulant, as it’s designed to continuously please you, regurgitate information as fact, and sometimes, create something pretty interesting. Maybe a side effect of it - not only limited to ai - but I’ve seen again and again, this sense of unfettered play can unlock the “one thing that will solve all our problems” mentality. A drunken goggle filter that blocks out any existing work, efforts, visions you may have been working toward. It’s the contagious manner of play, that it feels good, and magical to do just that. It’s no longer important to think, it can do it for you.
There’s another post I want to write about learned helplessness, bean soup-ification, nietzsche’s the last man who wants to learn nothing, wants to do nothing, and live for passive and comfort only (will try to later).
I’m learning more and more that care too is about the bounds. Where play needs to end and reflection begins.
If it were a framework, questioning is part of the care process.
It’s a bit of an exhausting effort, to question everything, but a necessary evil, too. Where you must go back to the drawing board: Who is going to use this? Is it backed by data, a lived experience? Is it appropriate? Truthful? Will this impact existing workflows? We must facilitate these conversations more widely and openly to consolidate the fog of play.
Why do this? We pride olympians for their athleticism, sheer willpower and care for their sport. The time, effort and practice is the journey worthy of the end goal. And there are social contracts of care for them, too. Organized moments for play, endurance, comradery, celebration. Standards; enhancing drugs are cheating the game, and the responsibility as an olympian. I’ve been told this is the difference between the growing divide of craftspeople (higher standards, honoring craftsmanship) and everyday worker (what’s necessary, that okay is enough). The odds I find myself in is here - wanting to be better, with the stamina to withstand the weight and responsibility - I don’t desire the ordinary.
We understand that all of us cannot fit the standard of olympians - and frankly, we can’t all be. We need people to look up to, and people that frustrate us, projects that push us to become better and projects that disappoint us. Maybe that is the difference, the type of care you hold yourself to, and the standard that is understood by the people around you.
"You can either design the candle, or you can design the room it sits in” - Virgil Abloh
In that way, as a designer, it’s like you have to care just enough. Knowing where to pull the strings in the right way. About determining how much the people around you believe in it, want it to be good, better, the best, or just enough. Continuously examining and re-examining your relationship to care, a project, your people, your time. Virgil’s analogy here is comparing a tin can in a white wall gallery, to a tin can in a garage - the perceived difference is it’s context. Is the tin can a piece of art or a piece of garbage? In the right place, it is beautiful, and another, ordinary. We can make the comparison to creative work, athleticism, too. A single person alone cannot make the work, the team, better - it must be with the care, curation of the room too. Distinct roles, partners that make care work. The one who designs the candle and one that designs the framework, and the room for it to exist beautifully in. Finding the right people to believe that caring in this is worth it, is the hard part.
Reflection
Clarity is a gift, and 2026 to me, not optional. Potential to make: a care outline, with the rituals that are necessary to come to a shared understanding. Building in time for care, protection, safety. Protecting creativity and your mind.
Ethan Coy
explorer/designer/creator
Ethan is a system - a multitude of lives coming together to design wonderful ideas and experiences. His career has been a meandering path covering fine art, graphic design, activism, non-profit governance, product design and entrepreneurship.