Paddy Harrington

🧠 On Fogo Island, films didn’t just tell stories—they built infrastructure.

When 1960s fishers watched documentaries made with them, not about them, it changed everything: unity, co-ops, government policy.

Storytelling isn't fluff. It's strategy.
🔗 magazine.frontier.is/when-stories...

Funny how they're using terrible stock photography instead of terrible Gen AI imagery for the ad.

You Are a City Personal brands should be living systems, not one-line bios

Everyone’s busy building personal brands like they’re products.

What if you built yours like a city?

Not tidy. Not packaged. But alive. Layered. Evolving.

Less algorithm. More authenticity.

#PersonalBranding #UrbanDesign
magazine.frontier.is/you-are-a-ci...

What is a Brand? And what is it not?

What’s a brand, really? It’s *not* just your logo.
It’s the story people tell about:
– Every interaction you create
– The values you embody
– The consistency of your presence
Creating connection over time.
Read more: magazine.frontier.is/what-is-a-brand

#Brand #Storytelling #DesignThinking

5 steps for reducing the chances of being fooled by AI generated content online:
1. Turn off your phone.

Runway | Game Worlds Explore endless worlds, characters and stories. All generated as you play.

Two thoughts that come to mind with this new Game Worlds thing: 1. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. 2. Junk in, junk out. play.runwayml.com/worlds/84571...

If you’re a designer, planner, architect—this is your invitation.

Let’s move engagement upstream and make it mean something.

Not just for the public, but for the design itself.

Good designers create form.

Great designers translate story into place.

Design driven by story transforms space.

From the Vietnam Memorial to the High Line, it’s story that turns places into something that matters.

Christopher Alexander once wrote: “Light on Two Sides of Every Room.”

It’s beautiful and intuitive.

That’s what public engagement should be—clear, human, accessible.

We don’t consult the public for surgery or engineering—but we do for design. Why?

Because space shapes meaning. And meaning comes from the people who live in a space they've made into a place.

Engaged by Design A different way of thinking about public engagement

I wrote about this in my latest for Frontier Magazine: “Engaged by Design.”
Instead of performative consultation, let’s root design in something more real: story.
magazine.frontier.is/engaged-by-d...

Too often, public engagement in design is just performance. Boards, Post-its, polite nods—and then, nothing changes.
I've been part of that.
We can do better.
🧵

I’m a Designer But what does that even mean?

Full piece here 👇
magazine.frontier.is/im-a-designer/

Design belongs upstream —
Not after the deck is done.
Not as an afterthought.
As a way of inventing new futures.

I once wrote that Ricky Gervais was a designer.
He reframed the Golden Globes.
He designed a new context.
Someone said: “He’s just a comedian.”
Both things can be true.

Designers don’t just make things —
We ask better questions.
We reframe problems.
We imagine what could be.

Design means “to mark out.”
Not decorate.
To define intention.

But what if design is the thinking?
Not just polish — but possibility.
Not just aesthetics — but strategy.

Design means “to mark out.”
Not decorate.
To define intention.

“We’ll finish the work first — then you can make it pretty.”
Every designer has heard this.
It’s code for: Design comes after the real thinking.

The fundamental flaw here is thinking his comments are in any way intended for his opponents. He knows full well who he is speaking to and that they will be sympathetic. And he also knows and intends for his comments to inflame his opponents as a form of distraction.

Gov. Walz, "There’s nothing conservative about an unelected South African nepo baby firing people at the VA."

Make Authoritarianism Great Again? with Maria Ressa Podcast Episode · The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart · 2025-03-06 · 1h 8m

Spectacular episode: podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/t... The home of the resistance is Bluesky. Let the Matrix Protocol prosper!

Scientists Made a ‘Woolly Mouse’ in Quest to Resurrect Mammoths They are cute, but are they mammoths? No. They are mice.

The ultimate branding success is being so desirable people will spend time trying to resurrect you from your DNA. www.404media.co/scientists-m...

Tweet from Scott Jennings, saying "um, yes, that's really a problem," with a quoted image saying "The problem with left-leaning media is they're intrinsically more strict with their propaganda to only using verifiable sources so it's really hard to poke holes in their ideology and arguments in comparison to a lot of low quality right-wing content. That makes attacking their points with fact checkers not very effective unless the fact checkers use misinformation tactics as well. In essence, people on the right have to work harder and more creatively to push their agendas as statistics and studies frustratingly aren't usually on our side."

This is why they're attacking science and education: if you can only win with disinformation, data become a threat.

The nice thing about technology is there are always alternatives.