Open letter

19 September 2024

Dear Maker,

This letter was written with the intention to bring out, reconnect with, and foster the forgotten, blocked, or hidden maker that already exists within you. It is a reflection and investigation of what I have encountered in my practice as someone who learns through making, shared with you in case we are on a similar journey and can support each other.

As makers, we process and synthesize information in a hands-on way that requires constant trial and error, and this can be exciting as it is frustrating. It can be a bumpy path to navigate—sometimes with nonexistent ones that need to be paved as we go—but I can reassure you that it will be a worthwhile journey nonetheless. If this resonates with you, I invite you to join as an observer, a see-for-yourself-adventurer—any role that activates the maker within you. It is a small gesture, but I hope that it can be an encouraging one that can empower you to (re)discover the urge to make (and break).

Together let’s find out how being frustrated beginners in the learning process can be valued as constructive stepping stones that help us unlock insights and discoveries about our practice. How can we adapt to frictional environments and situations by embracing our pace, working with what we have, and leveraging them as tools to break through the thresholds?

When you enter this frictional world, you will find yourself in an interstitial space where the small things are magnified. Everything is slower and quieter, and for the first time, you can see and hear things that can get blurred or muffled in the hustle and bustle of deliverables and deadlines. They may not be visible to the naked eye or loud enough for us to hear—so now is your moment to tune in with your surroundings and acknowledge aSoond invent your ways of seeing, hearing, and doing things to finally let your freak flag fly.

We are not here for a smooth and seamless user experience—we are here to expand on and celebrate the friction and the bugs, the hiccups and the latencies—the natural parts of the process tucked beneath clean and streamlined interfaces. Let’s unlearn the things we have learned to quickly resolve as a reflex, and instead sit with the discomfort, observe it, and repurpose it as fuel to trailblaze and cross through unusual paths.  

Let’s get to making!

Your Future (Cross) Maker-in-Training Buddy