Why we started Connect

Connect started because I wanted somewhere to put the things that did not fit anywhere else. Not a portfolio, which is a record of what went well, and not a newsletter about the industry, of which there are enough.

What this is for

I spent a decade designing systems nobody was supposed to notice. The work was mostly invisible by design, and the writing about that kind of work tends to be either a case study with the difficulty removed, or advice from someone who solved the problem once and has been selling the solution since.

What I wanted to read was the other thing: a specific account of a specific decision, including the part where it did not work. That is the only real editorial rule here.

A post earns its place if someone could disagree with it. If nobody could, it is a description, and descriptions belong in documentation.

Who writes here

Seven of us, with different jobs and no house style beyond plain sentences. Elias designs books and writes about attention and tools. Adaeze does the interviews. Tomas, Priya, Johan and Rafael write about the parts of their work that do not photograph well.

Everyone writes under their own name and everyone disagrees with someone else here, which we have decided not to resolve. The posts sit in one feed rather than separate sections, because splitting them by author suggests you should pick a favourite and read only them.

What to expect

A couple of posts a month, sometimes fewer. No sequences, no upsells, and no post written because the schedule said so — the schedule is a floor for effort, not a quota for output.

We also take a few pieces a year from people outside the regulars, and we pay for all of them. If you have a specific thing you did, learned or gave up on, the pitch page explains the rest.

That is the whole plan. The first posts are already up.