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          10 stories we've enjoyed this week      

Illustration of an Indian girl wearing traditional dress
Hi All,
Hope you've all had a great week. Before we jump into the stories there are a couple of things from us.

We published a new Formats Unpacked on Wednesday. Michael Newberry deconstructs a card trick that breaks the golden rule of magic to never repeat the same trick twice. There's a lot to learn from magicians about format development, so why not start here. 

A new episode of Very Necessary, the podcast we make with WaterAid, went live this morning. Chef Anna Jones chooses contact lenses as the very necessary object she can't live without, then discovers the excruciating history behind these ingenious eye gadgets - from the first pairs created by an amateur German glassblower, to the latest frontier in wearable tech. If you'd like to talk to us about developing content formats for you, get in touch

That's it for this week. Enjoy the stories and have a great weekend,
Hugh
The Short Story
So You Want To Work With Creative People?
(9 min read)

Edgar Wright's 10 Favourite Music Documentaries
(list)

A Dad Asked Twitter For Some Fascinating Facts For His Kids...
(Twitter thread)


Storytelling, False Memory and the Rashomon Effect
(5 min watch)

A Poker Player's Toolkit For Making Better Decisions  
(Toolkit) 

The Best Ad For a Quarry You'll See Today
(2 min watch)


Why Inflight Magazines Need to Survive
(5 min read)

Commute: A Short Film About Penn Station
(2 min watch)

How to Get Ideas in 4 Easy Steps
(1 min read)


Adobe Font Contest Winners
(Instagram account)
A grid of 9 squares featuring animated fonts

How can we help you?

Storythings is a strategy and content company based in Brighton and London. We'd love to help you with some creative and bold ideas.

Here's 3 reasons to get in touch

1. You want to talk to us about content production: podcasts, videos, animations, illustrations, editorial. 

2. You want to talk to us about content strategy or format development.

3. You want to create a brand or an identity that makes it easier to communicate your message.


We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch

 
The Full Story
So You Want To Work With Creative People?
Russell Davies and a bunch of other smart creatives share some tips for corporate clients who want to work with creatives. It's a must-read for people on both sides of the relationship. For corporates getting into content marketing, it will really help foster a better relationship with creatives whose work processes have to be understood for the relationship to work. For younger creatives, this serves as a great guide to where lines are drawn, and when to say 'no'.
(9 min read)

Edgar Wright's 10 Favourite Music Documentaries
To promote his new documentary about the band Sparks, the Baby Driver and Scott Pilgrim director picks 10 of his favourite music documentaries. It's a great list. I love that he put the Bros documentary in there. Like Anvil, both films really do have a heart, which was missed by many who enjoyed it just for the laughs. 
(list)

A Dad Asked Twitter For Some Fascinating Facts For His Kids...
He got thousands of responses. These are great for parents. 
(Twitter)

Storytelling, False Memory and the Rashomon Effect
This is a good introduction to The Rashoman Effect, via a short TED-Ed video. The effect is named after Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, in which a murder is described in four contradictory ways by four witnesses. The concept tells us a lot about how our brains store memories and why multiple perspectives are always important.  
(5 min watch)

The Best Ad For a Quarry You'll See Today

Yep. Strangely beautiful. 
(2 min watch)

A Poker Player's Toolkit For Making Better Decisions
Annie Duke is an author, behavioural scientist, and poker player. To accompany her new book, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices, she's developed this handy toolkit for team leaders to use at the start of projects. I've been using Premortems for years but this introduced me to Backcasts, which also feels useful. 
(Toolkit) 

Why Inflight Magazines Need to Survive
A great read on the endurance of inflight magazines, which prior to lockdown survived previous death threats from the arrival of inflight movies, iPads and Wifi. The content marketing value of good inflight magazines is neatly summed up here: "It is a meaningful signal that tells you a lot about the underlying brand of the airline. If the magazine is good, the airline probably is too. Singapore Airlines. Finnair. Cathay. Emirates. All good magazines. Why? Investing the money to manifest a strong editorial sensibility, interesting design, and good stories normally comes from a brand that has its story straight about who it is and who it is trying to serve. And the magazine, by proxy, serves as an extension of these values."
(5 min read)

Commute: A Short Film About Penn Station
'Commute' was filmed at the busiest train station in the Western Hemisphere, New York City’s Penn Station. Set against a frenetic soundtrack that puts the viewer in the heart of a rapidly moving current of bodies, this visual essay captures what it’s like to endure one of the world’s most congested and grueling transit systems. It just seems so odd watching this madness unfold having spent 17 months working from home. 
(2 min watch)


How to Get Ideas in 4 Easy Steps
Kirby Ferguson, the brain behind the superb Everything is a Remix series, delivers 4 easy actions to help you get better at developing ideas.   
(1 min read)


Adobe Font Contest Winners
I absolutely LOVE this font, one of the six winners of Adobe's 36 Days of Type competition
(Instagram account)
We hope you've enjoyed this week's newsletter. I'm sure some of your friends would love to read it. Sharing it would be really appreciated. If you've received this from a friend you can subscribe here and get it direct to your inbox every Friday.

Thanks for reading and see you all next week,

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the team at Storythings
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