The last week of the year wraps up as a holiday in Ireland. My year of studio notes conclude. I hope you have enjoyed reading my structured weekly reflection, insights, the resources shared, questions and a view to my weeks that were ahead.
I’ve enjoyed the weekly practice of writing without AI. Although I’d imagine it might have made my writing more succinct, maybe improved my grammar, kept me on point possibly even homogenised and polished the edges. But that’s not what this year of studio notes was about.
2026 arrives this week bridging us into new possibilities and a future yet to be. But not before we look at this week.
Reflection
I seem to have become good at building habits, a year of studio notes completed. 3 years of daily drawing completed. Consistency and structured for creativity is important. I now have evidence that I can write. Through the year I have noticed my editing improving. I hope you did too. Writing as thinking is an important part of my process. When I’m researching, designing, writing for a client I often write a document that is a precursor to the final work. It’s messy before it’s refined. Even client proposals have an ‘everything everywhere all at once’ document.
I have learnt that providence of ideas and links through sectors and silos are important. It’s one of the rules I work with because of the politics of reference. I can trace ideas, influences and variances in my work. I hate the quote about steal like an artist and hide your sources. Quoting it badly on purpose. It ties back to the different questions I’ve lived with and my interest in open source:
2008 – 2014 it was a group of 4 questions I lived with
It’s curious to read these four questions and see they still inform my work.
These questions in turn were informed by this thesis of more creativity, more new ideas, more creative expression, less stress leading to happier fulfilled people. So my destination has always been wellbeing.
Two awful PTSD triggers over the last week reminded me that life throws at us things that shape us, but it’s up to us how we react. At this time of the year when we ring in the changes I recognising seismic shifts through my life that uniquely shape who I am and how I work.
I still think of studio notes and weekly blogging as a low bar but I recognise it’s also a shop window.
Insights
Good design is subtractive. We find it easy to add things but to delete, remove design for sufficiency that’s hard. That’s what I’m focused on designing the right thing, nothing extra gets added if it does not need to be there. We love novelty but less is sufficient. That’s a muscle I’ve been working with this year. Less novelty or to challenge novelty.
What has been designed before that we can reuse or learn from and that applies to all the places we use design: product, services, process and strategy.
As a creator this reduction in novelty feels counter intuitive, I yearn for my distinct creative voice and action but also follow and use others brilliant creative work. The balance of my own thinking, design and process verses repeatable scaling frameworks, models and systemised approaches to applied business and sales is a dance. A tricky tightrope or a straight line depending on what your business is in service to. I wonder is that what’s really gone wrong with businesses, tech products and platforms? They want innovation but slice and dice ill fitting approaches to niches they inhabit. Perhaps the ‘failure of imagination’ in tech and digital products Andy Polaine mentions on linkedin is him tying into the zeitgeist of the crisis of imagination Phoebe Tickell and Rob Hopkins talk about.
I still love to understand clients pain points and bespoke design for that. Methodologies I’ve learnt critically accessed for the right type of results while recognising the process can be just as important. I combine different processes and tools, that comes with experience and confidence knowing how to blend and bend frameworks. Leaving legacy knowledge, capacity building and empowering clients forward are also important practices.
A question for you
What other regular blogs or newsletters do you read that you like the format of?
Resources
On increasing biodiversity loss and the climate crisis RTE shared the work of Dr Darren Reidy a conservation ecologist creating Irelands seed bank.
“It’s really important to have seed banking in the context of 21st century biodiversity loss, because we’re losing our plant diversity at an ever-increasing scale.
Dr Darren Reidy
Currently, of around 1,100 species native to the island of Ireland, more than 100 are threatened with extinction and a further 100 are near threatened.”
This article refers to a sedge in Lady’s Island, Rosslare and was shared in the Save Lady’s Island Lake Campaign groups what’s app. It reminds me about the rare plant workshop I attended in September. I wrote specifically about it but never posted it. I’ll edited it and publish it before this year ends.
Have you read much about community as the salve to all of modernity’s ills? Well this is a refreshing article on community not being the cure all by Monika Jiang. She speaks to the what we loose when we create communities based on economics and as a response to our loneliness.
Her Substack looks interesting, looking forward to discovering more about her work, her subject matter is loneliness. She does not quite land the ecological living world, the web of life but her reach from social bonds to AI emergent role as a substitute for connection is well written. I’d never seen someone articulate “and those with post-pandemic exacerbated social anxiety.”
I am reminded of Mia Birdsongs brilliant book, shared referenced in studio notes week 40 and 41 Resources. ‘How We Show Up’ is a book that has subtly been laying foundations in my brain for mutual care, collectivism and a commitment of boundedness. I’ve been waiting to do some of this work.
Indy Johan’s substack on European identity and the direction of the cultural identity of the EU is also worth reading: Europe the cultural project. Gosh he is a prolific thinker and writer. I stopped reading him at some point this year I found some of his and DML writing overbearingly privileged and definitely in their own specific bubble.
I was reminded of a local art exhibition a few years back when we were in our local pub over Christmas, can’t believe this is 14 years ago, I love that I had the fortitude to blog it and it’s still a great story.
From another walk down memory blogs What do you do when you meet a great story? comes this great line I actually wrote in 2013
For me those stories are the interwoven complexities of how things happen in our society. I’m interested in where those stories get told, shared and remembered… after all is that not the fabric of society and the folklore of the future?
Roisin Markham on story
A view to the week ahead
The end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026. The threshold of a new year an acknowledgment of a completed sun and business cycle. The closing of the first quarter of this century. When I put it like that it seems respectful to spend time in review, acknowledging all that 2025 was.
As I move into the new year this is what’s on my mind and potentially my desk
- deeper dive with my collection of wellbeing indicators including Doughnut 3.0
- celebrations, endings and beginnings
- visiting lectures x 2
- client work and offerings
- a review and update of my website and outward facing social media
- closing a 5 year project and network
- the change of focus for the question I’ve been living with since 2019
- a new format for my structured weekly or monthly posts I do really love the style of Sunday Scraps it’s almost like a stream of unconscious thoughts links, it’s brief and a rapid fire round vibe perhaps it’s will be a year of prototyping and experimenting with the format
- offerings, events and collectives – local, digital, other places a third space vibe, but where to nestle them Patreon, here or substack? can’t hack another platform but do miss the old days of interactive twitter
- drawing and writing my view from the edge of possibility to find new ways of work, crafting bridges to creating futures worth living into
I hope you have enjoyed being here, reading, leaning in, interacting. Thanks for your presence. May this time of the new year find meaning, renewal and resonance in your work, learning, play and where you live. I hope as you look back at 2025 the threshold of this time of year brings all of what you need.
With all that was 2025, Gaza will forever be etched as a genocide we did not stop, least we forget.
Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine ~ we live together in peoples shadow. A séanfhocal also translated as in the shelter of each other we thrive.
Enjoy the last days of 2025.
Roisin Markham 
Leave a comment