📚 Moments of Truth, Anthology of Reddit, Ice Ice Bombay, Lego Story

Beginner’s Guide to Graphic Novels + a lot more for the curious YOU

May 20, 2024

Hi, this is post #159.

This is a scheduled post. By the time it hits your mailbox, I must be enjoying my break in Kashmir. There are a lot of hoops that I had to cross to make it happen. I keep my fingers crossed that this is what happened.

Here’s a sneak preview of today’s post:

And now, onto today's finds…

🪄 3 Moments of Truth

Neal from Demand Curve suggests that there are 3 Moments of Truth for any product or service. If you nail them, you’ll get the sale, keep the customer, and have them raving about you to their friends.

#1. Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) = initial research phase

#2. First Moment of Truth (FMOT) = when you encounter a product or brand on a store shelf (or website) and decide to buy or not.

#3. Second Moment of Truth (SMOT) = when you experience the product for the first time after buying.

It’s not always you’re able to experience these in a segregated manner. But as a marketer and product builder if you’re able to do something about the user’s experience in each of these moments, you’re bound to get more success.

👍 Clicks and Clouts

Rex Woodbury attempts to decode how we seek status in the digital age. This post is written more as an exploration than a prescriptive solution. And that’s what makes it worth reading.

On conventions

Conventions are the building blocks of culture.
A convention occurs when humans choose an arbitrary practice over an equally valid alternative. The key word here is arbitrary.

On how what we consider “high status” can change dramatically.

It used to be high status to be overweight. Being plump signified that you had ready access to food, and thus ready access to money. But once potato farming and mass food production ensured that nearly everyone could get enough calories, the norm changed. The signifier of status became being thin, showing that you have the time to exercise and eat healthily. Rail-thin models papered magazine covers in the 90s.

This post is based on takeaways from “Status and Culture” by W. David Marx and Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation”. You can treat it like a short overview to explore if you want to go deep on those two.

📆 Calendar Reboot

I am not a good calendar person. I try to control how I choose to spend my time, but get laxed and let others dictate their priorities on my time.

Over the last couple of years, I have done multiple resets and tried to gain control of my time. It helps, for a few weeks at least. I require more discipline and willingness to look selfish to be able to make it more effective.

Molly G’s “Time is emphasis” gives some useful tips for planning your calendar as a leader. I may not need a lot of the tips, but some determination. Still, it’s good to go visit this and know what I can get more if I put effort into gaining more control of my time.

One key takeaway is to declare ‘calendar bankruptcy’ regularly (every year can be long for many orgs) and reset priorities. This is easy to try & see the impact of.

While we’re on the topic of calendars, here’s my favorite read - “Multi-layered calendars”. A couple of key takeaways from that post:

Treating todos as calendar events is helpful because calendars introduce constraints.
We only use our calendars to look forward in time, never to reflect on things that happened in the past. That feels like a missed opportunity.

📰 Anthology of Reddit

I’ve never really understood the meaning of ‘anthology’. Here’s what Oxford dictionary told me:

Still not clear, but I get a sense. It’s a collection of sorts. And that’s good enough to get started. Here’s one of the first anthologies that I have read: “Anthology of Reddit”.

Kevin Gee collated a bunch of letters/conversations describing critical moments of Reddit’s journey and put them in one post for his “A letter a day” newsletter. These are stories that have become lore of the valley, so can be good material for some fun reading. You can also sense some raw emotions that go behind making something meaningful.

A couple of snippets:

From Aaron’s Letter (2006)

There were lots of problems, but somehow we got over them. Take a nap, walk the fifteen minutes into town to get some food, go across the street to the abandoned playground, or, when things got really bad, just look at that ever-growing traffic graph. We must be doing something right, we figured, or at least not doing much that’s particularly wrong.

From Steve’s Letter (2024)

As a way of capturing the richness, scale, diversity, and infinite possibilities for discovery encompassed by Reddit, I often compare it to a growing city. Today, our city has more than 100,000 unique neighborhoods, which we call subreddits, and each has its own slang, vibe, sense of humor, and both written and unwritten rules. We did not create these communities. Reddit’s users did. Our role is to develop and maintain a common infrastructure that helps keep the city secure and thriving, with space to grow. Sometimes, people break the rules, do harmful things, and force us to devise new rules—just as in physical cities. But our core commitment remains unchanged: to make Reddit as healthy, accessible, and enjoyable as possible.

🧊 Ice Ice Bombay

Frozen water trade would not have made any interesting title, and so the author chose to name it “Ice Ice Bombay”. Who am I to call it by any other name now?

Rahul Sanghi’s longread is subtitled “On frozen fortunes and white gold - the epic tale of India's first luxury commodity”. If you are still not excited about this one, then read on.

This is the kind of magic a curious mind can create if it chooses to go all in. A chance visit of K. R. Cama Oriental Institute - a building that once housed Mumbai’s first Ice House - led Rahul to a rabbit hole discovering global ice-trade in the early 18th century and how one entrepreneur - Frederic Tudor - made fortunes selling the white gold world over. Like all other entrepreneurial journeys, this one has its own share of ups & downs, management lessons and a contribution to building world culture as we have it.

Rahul has referenced diaries & books capturing Tudor’s life & work and made it a gripping read. As usual the TigerFeathers touch of humor is always on the side.

It’s a long read (1 hr or so read time) but worth every minute of your time. I am not sharing any snippets, as it will undermine the magic of this piece.

Hats off Rahul Sanghi, you’ve set a new benchmark.

💬 Beginner’s Guide to Graphic Novels

N S Ramnath wrote a brilliant beginner's guide to graphic novels. He experienced Maus and got inspired to go exploring. In the process, he has picked up some ideas about why graphic novels work and why we should bother about this format.

A couple of snippets worth noting down:

The comic format allows us to pause, spend as long as we want on a page, and go back to a few panels, just to make sense of the story better. Technically, you can do that in a movie too, if you are watching one at home on Netflix or on your good old CD player. But, doing that can take away your experience. In comics, doing that will enhance your experience.

and

Comics emerged from the underground, as the subtitle of Chute’s book highlights. As a result, they explored themes that were not palatable to the mainstream. But the mainstream also shies away from discussing important issues.

Finally, he has some recommendations on where to start your graphic novel journey. Maus and Persepolis are on top of the list, I am glad I have experienced them already.

🏛️ The Lego Story

Everyone has a LEGO story, but not that many people know the story of LEGO. So while we’ve always loved the toy, it wasn’t until we started researching for this episode that we became obsessed with the (still entirely family owned!) company. Yes, LEGO is the biggest and most profitable toy company in the world–nearly twice the size of Mattel. But what makes LEGO so lovable is how from day zero they have taken kids seriously and believed in learning through play. This vision is as real now as it was 91 years ago when LEGO was founded as a small woodshop in Billund, Denmark.
If you, too, would like to look at a brightly-colored 8x10mm plastic cuboid and see a spectacular tale of craft, vision, and creative constraints, then stick around for the story of LEGO.

That’s the introduction of the podcast episode on Lego. Tara, Eeke and Brie have a free wheeling chat discussing the 9 decades of Lego’s existence and the biggest, most impactful event that shaped its trajectory.

It’s a light-hearted listen, bookmark it for those moments when you need one. For the lego fans, you can always carve out 90 minutes to know more about your favorite toy.

And you’re up to hear more check out - “A Crazy LEGO Journey.” I kept reading and wondering how some people can be so crazy in love with the idea of Lego. Super impressive stuff!

✨ Everything else

Check out Klarna brand guidelines for some fun visual treats (and of course inputs on how brand guidelines should be.)
Indian packaging design fusing heritage and contemporary culture. Somehow I feel this is too focused a view. Artisanal chocolates, gins, coffee, healthy snacking goods are all chasing this direction but there has to be more to the ‘Indian packaging design’ trend than just this.
Dudi Ben Simon's playful photos draw on visual puns and humourous happenstance.
Murali, ethnicity, colonialism and cricket - A story! Some pieces get you excited! This one from Osho Sidhant did that for me around Murali & Srilanka!

If you missed the last week’s post, you can find it here.

📚Archetypes of PMF, Paradox of Creative Sense, Naming as Tool, Tools & Workflows

Pritesh

May 13

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That's all for this week, folks!

I hope I've earned the privilege of your time.

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Pritesh

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