One final 2024 update 🎆

Hi!

This week marks that strange period where everything seems to slow down, yet the list of things to wrap up before the weekend feels longer than ever. It's become my little tradition to reflect on the past year and share some highlights. In fact, this is the eighth year in a row that I'm doing my year in review. If you're interested in a series, you'll find every year from 2017 onward on my site.

The biggest change for me this year was leaving behind my 15-year freelancing journey to join Summer Health full-time. While 2023 was about slowing down and working less, this year flipped the script. I've worked more, but there's been less stress since I no longer worry about where the next project will come from.

It's also our third year in our house, and we've truly settled into country life. Things move at a slower pace here, but there's never a dull moment. Between work, Taylor, the house, and the garden, there's always something keeping us busy.

See you all in 2025!
Anton

3 links

1. After posting my last piece, "The Moral Dilemma of Our Platform Choices," I realized something interesting: I can often guess a writer's platform based on their behavior. ConvertKit users, for example, tend to flood inboxes with emails focused on growth, which eventually leads me to unsubscribe. Substack writers, meanwhile, inevitably introduce a paid option and gradually reduce the value of their free content—it's always about monetization. The writers I stick with year after year choose a different path, balancing quality and quantity. Daring Fireball has been self-publishing without a newsletter from the start and remains as good now as ever. One of the latest newsletters I've decided to pay for is M.G. Siegler's Spyglass (hosted on Ghost!). He covers technology exceptionally well, and I particularly enjoyed his recent piece, "America Has Been Acquired."
2. A slightly different approach to a year-in-review, Yann shares his insights from his first year of working at Linear. I've been intrigued by the culture at Linear since day 1 and this post gives you some additional context to how they think about quality. Their video series "Conversations on Quality" is so good. Don't miss out on the episode with my friend Kevin Twohy!
3. This year, one of the hottest topics in design has been the debate over AI—will it help us or hinder us? I was skeptical at first, but I've come to see AI as a natural extension of my work. Recently, I've been exploring image creation because finding good stock photos of sick children is incredibly challenging. AI isn't perfect, but it's a massive time-saver that helps you keep moving forward. I was excited to read about how Pentagram, the legendary brand agency, decided to use Midjourney while creating a public-facing governmental website. As Mia aptly puts it, "it was more than just a technical decision—it was a cultural statement."