Hello Curious People,
Here are this week’s headlines:
Let’s bring back some good old-fashioned hospitality to the boardroom, and remember that collaboration always tastes better when it’s shared at the table.
From skin that sparks life to glass that feeds power, innovation’s breaking every boundary. Space-built homes, pilotless taxis… tomorrow just clocked in early.
Come with us as we step into Armani’s timeless vision, explore data-driven dreamscapes, and answer the cosmic call to imagine new futures.
From glued barbecues to toothless Colonels, this week’s campaigns turn everyday ideas into unexpected spectacles that make you stop, smile, and get involved.
A look at how three developers spent six years crafting a $20 game that defied every major studio, and still came out on top.
Enjoy this week’s exploration.
Angelique
Innovation Has an Appetite. It’s Time We Fed It Properly.
Did you know the first boardrooms were dining rooms? The word board literally means table, as in “room and board.”
People gathered.
They ate.
They laughed.
They argued.
And somewhere between the bread, the wine, and the heat of conversation, they built empires.
Today, we have traded the oak table for heavy-duty plastic and a tangle of wires. The warmth of bread for the chill of PowerPoint. The modern boardroom has become part intimidation, part inertia. No wonder most “collaboration sessions” feel like dress rehearsals for decisions already made.
Collaboration Must Feed Curiosity
Brands that treat collaboration like a transaction get transactional results. Brands that treat it like a meal, an experience designed to feed curiosity, can create entirely new categories.
It is collaboration, collision, all in one. It is a perfumer sitting next to a data scientist. A behavioural psychologist chatting with a brewer. A creative director asking a chemist what joy tastes like.
Because somewhere between corporate structure and sensible meeting agendas, we lost the art of the table, and the energy of great conversation and debate.
If you want bolder innovation, you need to go beyond workshops and internal alignment to bring together people who should never normally sit side by side. We all need to sit in the delicious tension of it all to get to the good stuff, because innovation has a big appetite.
My Rallying Cry to You All
Bring back the bread.
Bring back the noise.
Bring back the messy, human pleasure of creation.
Because ideas do not rise in silence. They rise when we break them open, together.
And next time you are in a meeting, ask yourself:
Are we here to approve the plan, or to cook up something worth craving?
Need to get people around the table?
Reply to this email and let’s chat. I’d love to see how we can help to get the right people around the table and spark some breakthroughs.
This is where we do our best work: at the collision point between disciplines that were never meant to meet.
When Coca-Cola wanted to bring Open Happiness to life, we hosted a two-day creative collision of packaging designers, insights, marketing, category teams, R&D engineers, and agency partners.
That single collision sparked 200+ ideas and three campaigns, millions of impressions, a Cannes Lion, and a new way of thinking about packaging as experience.
Wait, What?!: Sci-fi Tech Hitting the Real World
Scientists have reprogrammed human skin cells into early-stage egg cells, a discovery that could redefine fertility. The method, called in-vitro gametogenesis, turns skin into the starting point for life itself. No babies from skin yet, but the code for life just went open source.
China’s pilotless taxis are off the ground, cutting an hour-long drive to just seven minutes. The eVTOLs lift two passengers up to 40km with zero pilots and full AI control. The rush hour just lost its rush!
Engineers have designed space modules that snap together like LEGO using magnets and sensors. Floating in orbit, they could build entire habitats without human hands. The future of construction might start where gravity ends.
Scientists have created a transparent coating that turns windows into hidden solar panels. It channels sunlight through glass edges to quietly generate power. (More conversational) It looks like the next solar revolution is actually framing your view.
The Cata-Lyst:
3 Mind-Expanding Finds We’re Tuning Into
These three creators show how style, science, and storytelling can reshape the world around us.
The FT / Armani
The World According to Armani
Giorgio Armani conducted this interview just weeks before his death at 91. Right up to that point, he was still running his empire with razor-sharp precision, styling looks, overseeing fittings via video, and approving every detail. But this isn’t just a story of control. It’s a portrait of a man who reshaped fashion from the inside out: relaxing suits, empowering women through tailoring, and building a lifestyle brand that spans everything from perfume to floristry.
Ryoji Ikeda
Where Numbers Become Art
Visionary artist Ryoji Ikeda creates a mind-altering new show that transforms raw data into a full-body sensory experience. Set across 12 immersive installations, data.cosm explores the unseen forces of code, sound waves, and quantum particles that shape our universe. It’s like stepping inside a supercomputer and popping out the other side.
Baltic / Art Fund
All Aboard the Mothership
Artist, Harold Offeh and The Mothership Collective have created a joyful, radical exhibition rooted in Afrofuturism and community. Inspired by Black cultural icons from Sun Ra to Octavia E. Butler, the space is part installation, part classroom, part cosmic playground, as it invites everyone, especially young people, to shape the future by dreaming big and weird, which I’m always here for.
4 Great Marketing Moves
From spectacle to sentiment, each of these ideas turns curiosity into connection, proving that creativity still hits hardest when it feels human. ()
The Ultimate Glue Test
Selleys’ Liquid Nails glued everyday objects, from a kayak to a BBQ, onto a billboard with a simple challenge: If you can take it, it’s yours. No one could. The daring stunt turned a product demo into public theatre, proving that nothing sticks like confidence.
The Hockey Smile
KFC Canada gave its mascot a makeover for hockey season, taping over the Colonel’s front teeth in a nod to the sport’s infamous grin. It’s a cheeky cultural crossover that trades polish for personality, and shows how local humour can make global brands feel homegrown.
The Swedish Prescription
Visit Sweden is reframing travel as therapy with a world-first campaign that lets doctors prescribe the country to patients. From forest walks to cold plunges, Sweden positions its natural landscape as a cure for modern stress, turning tourism into a new form of self-care.
It’s Only Natural
Burger King’s new spot captures babies instinctively reacting to parents eating Whoppers, using real footage to make a simple point: craving real food is human nature. The campaign’s raw, homemade style reinforces the brand’s no-additives message, showing that honesty still hits hardest.
For the Love of Gaming
Team Cherry
Within minutes of release, digital storefronts crashed under the weight of devotion, and Twitch numbers soared to heights usually reserved for esports empires. At the centre of it all were three developers in Adelaide, building something extraordinary from pure creative joy.
Hollow Knight: Silksong proved that in a world obsessed with optimisation, craftsmanship still has the power to move millions. It took six years, a small team, and an unwavering commitment to quality to create it, with no hype cycles, no shortcuts, just focus. And in a final act of quiet rebellion, they priced it at an accessible $20.
A reminder that the soul of gaming doesn’t live in boardrooms or budgets, but in the hands of those who play and create, for the sheer pleasure of it.
See you next week 🔮 👽 🎩 🪄