What is the future of creativity and technology?
I explore it in what the world is making, what history and culture hold, and the future taking shape between them. The thread runs through what I’m collecting, my monthly dispatch, and my presentations.
Passages, images and fragments, saved as I read and look.
Last updated 3 hours ago.
‘My greatest terror is that I have not gotten even close. That all the things strung between these events are actually meaningless. But worse, these events that I take refuge in, that I define myself by, are just as absurd. And once all space recedes, I imagine that I must fall, but I still do not move. And in that terror, I see that I have not gotten even close.’
‘But I do not know truly why it scares me so much. It scares a man who wishes to have something sturdy to stand upon. But in truth, everything is contingent. For the dead pieces of land which he might cling to, which have grown stagnant in their depravity, do not even constitute as land any longer. They are like chunks of ice hurled into the sea. The life that one might produce upon them will be so sterile, one will wish each moment, with their feet grown hot and large from the ice, that they should never have stepped on at all.’
‘But it is only probably, and leader said, this is really what I do believe; because a person cannot change. A person cannot change, but they might find ways of mitigating the greatest and worst parts of themselves, which seem always to attract in kind, in equal measure those same modes from the world. There was a point in my life, he said, in which I felt that I could be anything. And through the course of living, I felt that I had changed so dramatically. At a certain point, I received the option of changing entirely, and I believed even that I had. But after a while, I’m uncertain what gave it away, but what had changed, if anything even had, was not so much myself, as my position in relation to the world. Its gravity, I suppose, has loosened upon me and I looked back upon it as something almost malignant. And I thought that it had grown as such because I had changed. But it didn’t. What had happened is only what I believed. And this does not make it wrong, I eventually realized. But still, having seen it, I could no longer blindly believe it. But what I learned terribly, is t
I’m interested in a sort of magic (I know that’s a heavy word) or mystery. This is what attracts me. Something that you don’t know exactly, something that is ambiguous in the work. So, maybe not seeing but perceiving things – perceiving in a quite broad sense, not only on the visual level – how we read or how we approach the history and so on.
Nothing of that kind here yet.
One idea, the last Sunday of every month. 19 editions since December 2024. The latest is readable here, the rest only in subscribers’ inboxes.
The word hallmark comes from an actual hall, Goldsmiths’ Hall in London, where since 1300 silver has been tested against the sterling standard and struck with the hall’s mark, so you could trust it without knowing the maker. A word that once signified quality now names the opposite: the hallmarks and giveaways of AI. Work where the tool led and the person barely shaped it.
Read by leaders in brand, design and technology, from agency founders and global tech companies to voices across art and culture. From the replies:
There is an energy to them — gentle, considerate, deeply thoughtful — and they present a way of looking at the world that is both curious and inspiring.
I don’t take the time to read many newsletters, but I always enjoy yours. Very well written and thought provoking.
What a fantastic newsletter. A pleasure to read and so many useful lessons in there.
Your note really resonated with me as I try in my own area to still utilise human skill and experience to extract the most out of a project.
Love your emails
Thanks for the brain food as ever :)
This might be my favorite newsletter yet!
A dispatch on craft, creativity and technology. A Sunday-morning read, once a month. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
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Tudinh Duong is a creative technologist and a Founding Partner & CEO of Made by ON↗, a Creative Technology partner that defines the platforms, tools, and experiences that give ambitious organisations a competitive edge. He founded the agency on the belief that design and technology are not separate disciplines.
That conviction continues to shape the agency, where strategists who understand code, developers who love design, and designers who think in systems create experiences that drive brand equity and growth.
His background bridges both fields. He holds a First Class Honours BA in Graphic & Media Design from London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, and a Distinction MSc in Human-Computer Interaction from University College London, where he was recognised on the Dean’s List as part of the top 5% of the faculty. Doctoral research conducted in partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital and UCL resulted in co-authored published papers on novel technologies.
Made by ON’s work has won four Lovie Awards — for Air, Colophon, London Design Festival and The Creative Study — and a Webby nomination for Air. He is an Executive Member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the body behind both awards, where he judges the Lovies. He is also a former Chair of the St Bride Foundation, established in 1891 with one of the world’s most significant archives of print, publishing, and graphic design.
Featured in Design Week and The Guardian, and a regular speaker and panellist across the design and technology industries, Tudinh writes a monthly dispatch exploring craft, creativity, and technology.
Through Made by ON, a selection of clients and collaborators:
Giving presentations is one of my favourite parts of the work: sharing what I’ve learnt and love, everywhere from world-leading creative agencies like Wolff Olins, DesignStudio and Saffron to companies, universities, festivals and panels. Recent themes: AI as an amplifier for human intelligence, brand trust in generative work, and an unlikely path into creative technology.
Below is a flavour, not the full list. If you’d like me to give a presentation or join a panel, get in touch ↓
The festival’s theme was change. Mine was about what doesn’t. People have always made maps of Mount Fuji, with tools that change beyond recognition, from Hokusai’s woodblocks to satellites, and now AI. The mountain hasn’t moved, nor has what we want from it. And a map can do more than record. Stevenson drew Treasure Island before he wrote it, and the story climbed out of the map. The tools change, the making lasts.
Boundaries are handed to us early, between disciplines and identities, between the expected and the possible. Play is how we unlearn them. The best work lives between opposites, magic and logic, past and future, tradition and innovation. What happens if you allow the boundaries to blur?
A talk about digitally archiving architecture that is mainly about swimming pools. Roman baths, Snøhetta’s harbour bath at Knubben, and the Victorian pool still sitting under the theatre floor at St Bride. A pool is simple to document, a rectangle filled with water. But the 1932 gala report counted over 28,000 swimmers in one brilliant summer, and no blueprint holds them. That is what an archive is for.
What the Japanese art of flower arrangement knows about working together. Five principles: harmony between elements, embrace difference, leave space for possibility, embrace impermanence, work with imperfections. An arrangement is alive, imperfect and temporary. So is a good collaboration.
