Issue 82: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

OPINION/ CREATIVITY

Embrace the dip

💬 Dame Anya Hindmarch

We didn’t want to do another fashion show. Back in 2018 we felt an urge to contribute a different sort of project. One that was more civic-minded, inclusive, and created less waste. Wouldn’t it be amazing, I thought, if on Valentine’s Day, we suspended a huge heart-shaped helium balloon from every bridge in the city? They’d look particularly striking viewed from the air: a love letter to London.

When we set about making it happen, we ran into a few issues. Some bridges are jointly managed by two authorities, and the prevailing wind that rushes along the Thames would cause problems for the balloons. We were crestfallen for a moment. Then resolved to make the plan – Chubby Hearts – work, nonetheless. We would turn it into a Where’s Wally-style approach and position them at random throughout the city – over landmarks like Battersea Power Station and squished in the gap between Wellington Arch.

‘The dip’ is a phase in the creative process that follows after the initial euphoria when you are confronted with obstacles

Chubby Hearts became a moment in London. It worked because we overcame a stage in the creative process that I refer to as ‘the dip’. There is a phase in the life of every great idea that follows shortly after the initial euphoria that signals its arrival. It is when you are confronted with the obstacles, realities, and setbacks that might prevent it from happening. You start running out of time, options, and mental capacity. That’s the dip – and it happens every time.

Fortunately, there’s a way out (or rather, through). And that’s the process of working into an idea. This is a very real thing where you pursue an idea, but persevere with it. You push, you adapt, you expand, you grow, and you sit with it until the concept fits into place. Great ideas are often painful, but it’s important to get used to the discomfort.

Last year, Hong Kong Design Centre requested that we stage Chubby Hearts there. Further confirmation that working into an idea won’t just save your plan – it could help it soar.

Dame Anya Hindmarch is the founder of global luxury brand Anya Hindmarch and an award-winning British fashion accessories designer known for her playful concepts and fearless innovation.

THE AGENDA

🗓️ Diarise this: your agenda for the coming week

1.
Bankers are descending on the Jackson Hole economic policy symposium in Wyoming. The big question looming is who might replace Jay Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve when his term finishes May 2026.
21st – 23rd August

2.
It’s a day to remember the importance and poignance of the still image. World Photography Day is today, and part of a longer running World Photography Week (which is actually a whole fortnight).
12th – 26th August

3.
The US Open is the last grand slam tennis tournament of the year. It starts this week on the courts of Flushing Meadows, New York. Stamina, guile and on-court creativity will decide the winner.
18th August – 7th September

4.
In Britain, it’s the August Bank Holiday. Which also means it’s Notting Hill Carnival, a celebration of Caribbean culture. Expect jerk chicken, reggae and (only sometimes badly) dancing personnel from the Metropolitan Police Service.
23rd – 25th August

5.
The World Solar Challenge is a 1,860-mile competition where inventors drive solar-powered vehicles from Darwin to Adelaide.
24th – 31st August

UK / LANGUAGE

Wholesome, true, and not self-oppressed at all: ‘Tradwife’ is added to Cambridge Dictionary
Source: StockCake

TikTok culture makes verbal impact

Words matter. Each year lexicographers determine which terms will make their way into the Cambridge Dictionary for the first time. In 2024, two notable additions were ‘the ick’, a sudden distaste for someone or something, and ‘boop’, a playful hit or touch to indicate affection. Now experts at the dictionary have unveiled a raft of new words to formally enter the English language, and three in particular are lifted straight from TikTok culture. ‘Skibidi’, ‘tradwife’, and ‘delulu’. Firstly, there’s ‘skibidi’, a word that traces its origins to Skibidi Toilet, a YouTube video where a macabre animated head protrudes from a urinal. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a word that can have different meanings such as ‘cool’ or ‘bad’, or can be used with no real meaning as a joke’, an example of its use is: ‘What the skibidi are you doing?’” The other two appear to be a form of Orwellian newspeak. ‘Tradwife’ refers to socially conservative wives, and ‘delulu’ is a shortened form of ‘delusional’. It’s impossible to tell whether these terms will remain in use. But they go some way to articulating the current bewildering moment in history. Skibidi.

ON CREATIVITY /

Contributor: Sir John Hegarty

US / TELEVISION

Satire, South Park-style: The President at magical Mar-a-Lago
Source: South Park Digital Studios, Comedy Partners

South Park revives satire

There was a moment in recent political history when the actions of those in power seemed so silly that they frustrated any attempts at parody – think the Trump administration’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference, or former Labour leader Ed Miliband’s ‘EdStone’. Fortunately it appears that the art of the satirical skewer has returned with the latest series of South Park. Writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone, following a bumper $1.25 billion deal with Paramount, have taken aim at the US president, representing him similarly to how the show portrayed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the early noughties: (“Hey relax, guy!”). Storytelling and lampooning remain effective ways to undercut the authority of those in power. Depicting Trump as a clownish but malevolent figure in the show is dismaying as it is funny. But gallows humour is better than none at all.

UK / ARCHITECTURE

Oxford United: a sustainable sports landmark
Source: AFL Architects

UK’s first electric football stadium

As the football season gets underway, second-division team Oxford United has made headlines for something other than its prowess on the field (which is sometimes called into question). Plans for the club’s new stadium have been unveiled by architecture studio AFL Architects and consultancy Ridge and Partners, and the 16,000-seat venue will be powered entirely by renewable energy. The building is expected to provide an increase of local amenities, and provide the football team with a boost in revenue and renown. “As the first all-electric stadium in the UK, it will operate entirely on renewable energy, integrating 3,500 square metres of roof-mounted photovoltaic panels to help reduce the impact on the national grid during matchdays,” said Ridge and Partners. The environmental impact of the sports industry is a hot button topic in the sector. As ever, innovation can help culture and commerce flourish while minimising such costs.

Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the lifeblood of real civilisation.

/George Macaulay Trevelyan