It's all made by multitudes

No one is self-made. Nothing is done solo.

I design products. I also design services, which is a different muscle. I advise a few small companies. I write, when there is something worth writing.

For years I tried to compress this down to a single line. The compression never quite worked. The work is not one thing. The clients are not one kind. The output ranges from a Figma file to a long email to a spreadsheet that ends up running someone’s operations for the next three years.

So I gave up on the single line and gave the operation a name that admits the truth. Made by Multitudes is borrowed from Whitman, who was talking about people, not studios. But the principle scales: a working practice, like a working person, contains more than one thing. Pretending otherwise produces a brand and loses the work.

What’s actually in the holding company

Today, the answer is roughly:

• A small product and service design practice.
• A handful of advisory engagements with operating companies.
• A publishing project — this site, mostly — where I think out loud about how the work gets made.

I expect the list to change. That is the point of a holding company: the container is durable; the contents move.

The shape of the work

Most engagements start the same way. Someone has an idea, or a partial idea, or an idea they have been told is good but cannot quite articulate why. The first month is almost always about figuring out the actual question. The second month is about producing something concrete enough to be argued with. After that, the engagement either continues, or it ends having done its job.

I am suspicious of work that does not have a clear ending in it from the start. The studio is small on purpose; the engagements are short on purpose. The point is to make the next year of work obvious to the people who have to do it.

Why this site exists

Not as a portfolio. Portfolios assume the work is the artifact. Most of the work I am proud of is not an artifact — it’s a decision, made in a room, that nobody outside the room remembers. So this is the alternative: a list, plainly laid out, plus some writing about how the work tends to go.

If any of that sounds useful, the contact address is on the about page.