Building the Most Unique Newsletter You’ll Ever Read

The web has gotten a bit routine. Many of us spend our days on the same three websites without putting a lot of thought behind it. I know I constantly open a new tab of YouTube or Twitter just as a reflex. We’re used to standardized experiences on our sites and take notice when something doesn’t feel the same as everything else.

That’s why David Allin Reese’s work feels so exciting. David is a designer on Google’s Material Design team and also hosts both his personal website and his self-described “mutating newsletter” on Glitch. David was generous enough to answer questions about his work and his recommendations for those interested in design.

Very honored to see that you use Glitch for your personal website. Why did you decide to go with Glitch?

I think it’s nice you noticed.

After learning about it from a friendly colleague, Glitch is the creature that grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the digital world. Before this, the web was a place I had only previously interacted with on the surface and had never contributed to, like many of us. I had never stepped through the black mirror, and Glitch let me step through and see that I could shape the reality in which most of us (and I) live.

Technically, as a graphic designer who had never built anything on the web, Glitch exposes (and in an inherent way, teaches) the many unspoken assumptions about building a website or app. A really simple example of this is how Glitch has a template for a basic webpage which contains an index HTML file, a CSS style file and a script file, and explains what each file is capable of doing. Many people familiar with the web might say things like “Well duh! That’s what you need to build a site!”.

Well I didn’t know stuff like that before Glitch showed up, many people still don’t know. No matter how many documentation sites or tutorials or books you read about making stuff on the web it can be hard to make the leap from concept to practice; Glitch provides a basis to learn.

We live in a (digital) world where most people can only “read”, and just a select few can “write”.

I didn’t choose Glitch, it continuously teaches me how to be independent on the web. Rather than the idea of “choosing”, it’s about the feeling of pride in the relationship between myself (the student, the builder) and Glitch (the teacher, the community, the movement) and it’s why I choose to stick around and build projects with Glitch’s (and some generous friends’) help. Having that shiny ‘.glitch.me’ URL is pretty sick, and mysterious to those who haven’t encountered it before.

Can you walk me through your mutating newsletter, This Is What Is In?

I would love to walk you through this.

In a tiny, shimmering nutshell, This Is What Is In is a series of my own investigations into digital storytelling. Usually it’s a short story or poem that can be read through a series of interactions on the screen; I send out an email with a link whenever I finish one.

I want to better understand the relationship between physical interaction and reading, or the rhythm of text. Digital media has been influenced by physical consumption of text such as the turning of a page in a book or the unwinding of a scroll. What is a page-turner in the age of infinite scrolling? What about cliffhangers at the end of a chapter? You can create an infinite amount of these interactions in the digital world with magical paper, a magical textile, how can stories be woven into this magical paper to quietly add mystery and meaning?

The origin of This Is What Is In comes largely from the desire to write and share stories. Throughout my life, I recently realized, I’ve used writing as a way to deal with anxiety, depression and loneliness. These are sometimes caused by negative circumstances in my life, but mostly they just appear of their own volition. The act of writing teaches me about them, but also about my desires; I learn something I had never thought of, about myself or otherwise. This Is What Is In is as much for me as it is for you.

Have you worked on projects similar to This Is What Is In before? What was your first experience with this kind of dynamic experience design?

Wow, I will be adding dynamic experience design to my resume, thank YOU.

This Is What Is In is actually the sequel to my undergrad thesis, Those Spaces In Between. I participated in a thesis exchange semester at Willem De Kooning Academy in Rotterdam; it’s an amazing place, a place where the future looks like it already happened, and where contrarian art is celebrated. The theme of the thesis semester was the concept of “Public vs. Private”.

During my time there, I was in a long-distance relationship with someone who, in retrospect, sucked. To deal with self-isolation, depression, and lack of personal boundaries, I reflected on this experience in my work. Those Spaces In Between is a diary of compositions which are accompanied by abstract text entries written from the perspective of a being, sending messages to his significant other from great distances. The extensive abstraction between text and image allows for personal interpretation, and one to find their own meaning within them. I took a lot of inspiration from video games I played as a kid, like Pokemon and began to explore the impact of “typewriter” effects on reading text.

For the final thesis exhibition, I collected emails of those that people missed on a clipboard with the intention of sending them Those Spaces In Between… I didn’t. Three years later, just a few months ago, I pulled out that list for the first time and used these emails as the first subscribers to This Is What Is In.

Where do you find inspiration for This Is What Is In or for other projects?

You.

I often find myself getting inspiration from so many places: walks in the woods, a single word in a song, nighttime drives, sci-fi short stories, one can only hope for the moment it happens. One inspiring group of people is a musical group named iamamiwhoami**, **which started producing anonymous synthpop audiovisual projects in late 2009. Their use of symbolism interwoven into a combination of music and film creates an air of mystery and meaning which ties multiple chapters, and even albums, together. This is one of my favorite music videos… and maybe this one. I have also been diving deep into the world of David Byrne recently, I’ll let you know if I make it out alive.

Friends. A friend of mine Cortney Cassidy recently started a Mail Blog, where she sends you these beautiful analog blog booklets in the mail. I read them by candlelight. Cortney is someone I look up to quite a bit, and I’m grateful to be able to work with someone who is so creatively self-aware.

Also when I need to zoom out or change direction with whatever I’m doing, I have been using Brian Eno’s and Eric Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies since I was introduced to them in college. I also have found The Universal Traveler come in handy more than a few times.

Are there resources that you would recommend for people interested in design?

Themselves.

If someone is interested in learning about design, I would encourage them to first explore art: art theory, art history, art criticism. I feel like that may not be the answer many people are looking for, but I truly think it’s crucial to have an understanding that what you put out into the world has immense impact. The medium of the day is digital, the medium of yesterday was print, photography, sculpture, painting, textiles and the list goes on. Thinking of this current digital phenomenon as a single moment in the vast history of visual communication will give you the tools to have your own perspective about the past, present and future of artistic expression, no matter the medium.

I think anyone can design if they are willing to understand that there is no right or wrong, there is only** you, the creator, **making a choice within a set of constraints. Study color, study typography. Acknowledge that your relationship with these things must develop, but will also change and mutate over time, be ready to try something new every time you sit down to work, kill your darlings, save them, remove that self-doubt. Be subversive with everything you do, let your work tell your story and show others how you wish the world was, and maybe one day it will change. If you aren’t being subversive, I’m not really sure what you’re doing here, and no one else will either.

You can learn more about David on his personal website and you can subscribe to his newsletter This Is What Is In.