Important
But not serious
A few months ago, a dear friend and collaborator, Samuel Kern, offered me this juicy invitation, passed to him from Jonathan Hiller.
I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. And now I offer it to you:
“How can you make this important, but not serious?”
In other words…
Playing matters. Laughing until you pee just a little matters. Making it weird and strange and strangely weird matters. Going all in on a theme, with zero care for snooty critics and sad sacks’ judgements, matters.
This line, from Hillary Kelley in Mother Tongue, lays it out for us oh so well:
“Pleasure is a potent weapon. And a party on the precipice of history can determine how we’ll read the past.”
We need the absurd. The stupid laughs. The butter-themed-parties-just-because-we-can. Dressing up not as sexy cats and sexy firefighters but ugly ass swamp monsters and worms.
This moment matters. But taking ourselves too seriously isn’t going to build us the world we long for.
We can’t design for the joy without allowing ourselves to design from it, too.
Even when life feels hard and shitty. Or maybe especially then.
So friends, go out and make things that are important. But for the love of it, don’t make them too serious.
P.S. My new friend Danielle Egan writes an incredible Substack and is an absolute icon in going big on IMPORTANT BUT NOT SERIOUS. Follow her immediately. Attend all her parties if you can.
Upcoming Studio Shenanigans:
🎉 [Free] Workshop: How to Design Unforgettable Experiences
📆 Tuesday, March 24th, 12 - 1:45 pm PT
We’re bringing back the masterclass we ran earlier this month! Oh baby, yes yes.
Learn how to craft the unforgettable, dynamic, emergent experiences that we all are craving. Because every gathering — be it a retreat, a classroom, a wedding, a meeting, a dinner table, or a party — is a chance to architect a threshold into something new.
And yet… So many of these moments miss the abundant opportunities — for surprise or for tenderness, for breaking the rules or for reminding us how irreverently, chaotically beautiful it can be human together.
This is what we all want. More texture. More real. More wow.
But we can’t make things less boring, less shitty, less blah, less I-guess-this-is-pretty-fine… by just doing better logistical-ing.
Possibility doesn’t happen by accident.
It happens by (experience) design. This is the toolset you’ve been waiting for. And it’s a hell of a good time.
Join this free, interactive virtual workshop for a look at the fundamental framework behind my entire experience design process, as well as a peep under the hood of my upcoming deep dive course.
🪩 Virtual Course: Designing Unforgettable Experiences
📆 April 14th - June 2nd
If you want to learn how to break all the rules, expand the possibility set, and craft the moments that meaningfully mark our lives (and also, yes, make work a hell of a lot less boring and our projects a whole lot more potent), join the next cohort of our deep dive course.
“Designing Unforgettable Experiences” (formerly called “Designing Experiences for Radical Imagination”) is kicking off April 14th, and runs 8-weeks.
This flagship virtual course is my entire experience design process, soup-to-nuts, packaged up just for you. We’ll marry the rigor with the magic. And it will change every single thing you design from here on out.
Bring a project, event, or experience you’re working on or want to put in motion. Join the weekly immersive workshops to walk through a rigorous process for making whatever you’re making exceptional. Swing through our open studios for collaboration and feedback. And keep using our tools, like the 120+ page Experience Design Playbook, for everything you design from this point forward.
Payment plans and scholarships available.
Want to chat about whether it’s the right fit for you? Snag some time on my calendar or send me an email at olivia@designforfeelings.com.