COMMUNICATION
Communication is the invisible architecture of belonging.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."- George Bernard Shaw
Orchestra (1953) Anita Snellman. Read more about this painting.*
For more than forty years I’ve worked with organizations of every kind. Some were reinventing how we live and work through technology. A few designed and sold athletic gear. One was providing international aid services. More than one was educating tomorrow’s teachers, caregivers, and community leaders. Their missions couldn’t have been more different. Yet beneath the surface, they all kept arriving at the same realization.
Organizations rarely struggle because they lack words. They struggle because they lack shared understanding.
Marketing can’t resolve confusion. Internal newsletters can’t rebuild trust. Mission statements can’t compensate for strategic ambiguity. People communicate clearly when they know what they’re building together.
The same pattern repeats at every scale. Families lose one another not because they stop talking, but because they stop understanding what matters most to one another. Communities fracture when shared purpose gives way to competing stories. Our culture often mistakes louder voices for clearer meaning. Whether we’re leading a company, raising children, or trying to hold a democracy together, communication is ultimately the work of creating enough shared understanding to move forward together.
Communication is the work of creating shared understanding, and shared understanding begins by noticing what lies beneath the words themselves.
Living into our fullest humanity has always been a shared endeavor. The conversations we practice today become the relationships, organizations, and cultures we inhabit tomorrow.
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communication, shared meaning
Communication creates society
Marshall McLuhan famously observed that the medium is the message—that the ways we communicate shape society as profoundly as the ideas we communicate.James Carey asks even deeper questions. What if communication is not primarily the transmission of information, but the creation of shared meaning? What if communication itself is how society comes into being?
BOOK: Communication as Culture, Revised Edition
communication, collective intelligence
Learning to think together
William Isaacs asks a question that opens all kinds of doors: What becomes possible when a group learns to think together?His answer stretches our understanding of communication itself. Dialogue, he suggests, is far more than conversation. It is the practice of creating the conditions where a group can discover insights that none of its members could have reached alone.
BOOK: Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together
communication, nonviolent communication
Learn to hear what matters
Most communication books promise techniques. They offer better ways to persuade, negotiate, present, or influence. Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication begins somewhere much deeper.His central insight is deceptively simple—and extraordinarily difficult to practice: beneath every opinion, criticism, argument, or demand is a human being trying to meet a need.
BOOK: Nonviolent Communication. A Language of Life
communication, listening
The power of a better question
The person asking the questions often learns more than the person giving the answers. Edgar Schein built an entire philosophy of leadership around that deceptively simple idea.Unlike many consultants, Schein was convinced that leaders and advisors should stop arriving with answers. Their job was not to be the smartest person in the room. It was to help the room become smarter.
BOOK: Humble Inquiry, The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling
* About the painting
Anita Snellman was born in Helsinki in 1924 and became one of Finland’s leading twentieth-century painters.
She painted Orchestra in 1953, not long after studying in Paris. The influence of European modernism is there, but so is her own voice. The painting isn’t strictly realistic, nor is it abstract. It lives somewhere in between.
The musicians remain distinct individuals, yet they are clearly part of something larger. Each makes sense on their own. Together, they become something else. No one in the room is making music alone. Each player matters. The listener matters. The music itself exists because everyone is attending to one another.This is how communication works. Meaning rarely arrives fully formed from a single voice. It emerges between people—through attention, timing, and the shared work of creating something that none of us could have created alone.
"Progress is people flourishing."
-Ted Gioia
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Social Messaging
Using posters to express concerns, influence public opinion, and foster dialog
This poster was issued by the Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB), a Quaker organization based in northern England. Founded in 1913 in response to rising militarism and the threat of war, the Board’s mission was—and still is—to encourage and support efforts for peace across Britain and beyond.
WEBSITE: Northern Friends Peace Board
Visual Identity
"Before we had the design system, logo and identity for Sun Day, it was just an idea. After, it became the seeds of a movement."
The headline quote comes from Bill McKibben. Together with Denis Hayes, founder of Earth Day, he launched Sun Day this past Sunday, September 21, 2025.
ARTICLE: Designing Action: COLLINS, McKibben, and the Birth of Sun Day
Advertising
Better business through chemistry
On his website, Rob Schwartz says: “I help business people be more creative and help creative people succeed in business.” He lives up to that promise in his newsletter, Rob Schwartz Helps, where he generously shares his love for the creative business.
ARTICLE: Atomic Bonds: Why Great Work Requires A Little Chemistry
Social Messaging
Portraits of peace from around the world
Selman is a Brooklyn-based brand identity and design studio founded in 2013. Its founder, Johnny Selman, believes design carries ethical responsibility and can bring urgency, empathy, and clarity to pressing issues like injustice, climate change, and political divides.
WEBPAGE: Peace Post
Social Messaging
Reporting hate is care in action.
While federal support for emergency services has been shrinking, Illinois is one of only three states with an agency focused on responding to hate incidents. To build public trust, Chicago designer Nick Adam and his firm Span teamed up with the University of Illinois Chicago’s Institute for Healthcare Delivery Design to create a new identity for the program, which helps people and communities affected by hate.
ARTICLE: Words Are Not Just Words
Audio Production
Using the sounds of the world to tell stories of the world
Helena de Groot grew up surrounded by music—both of her parents were musicians. “My mom took singing lessons while pregnant with me,” she says. “I don’t have scientific proof that it affected me, but come on—being inside her resonating body must’ve left an impression.”
INTERVIEW: On the Unglamorous Parts of Creative Practice
Social Messaging
Transforming the Geneva Convention into an urgent plea for accountability.
During escalated violence in 2024, the last operational hospital in southern Lebanon was bombed, violating protections established by the Geneva Convention over seventy years ago. In response, TBWA|RAAD and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) inscribed articles from the Geneva Convention onto the hospital’s shattered walls.
ARTICLE: TBWA\RAAD: A Bombed Hospital is the Medium and the Message for the ICRC
Visual Identity
Capturing history as a color palette
The U.S. Postal Service turned 250 years old on Sunday, July 26, 2025—marking its founding by the Second Continental Congress. The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum hosted a family-friendly celebration, and USPS launched two commemorative stamp programs. Meanwhile, Pantone honored the milestone with a color-based tribute to key moments in postal history.
WEBSITE: USPS Pantone 250 Years in Color
Social Messaging
"Approved by the future, for the future"
Following the success of That Sugar Film, Australian filmmaker Damon Gameau co-founded Regen Studios, a production company dedicated to telling stories that inspire and mobilize audiences around regenerative ecological and social solutions.
VIDEO: Future Council - Official Trailer
Misinformation
Misinformation
Combatting disinformation starts at home.
The intentional spread of misinformation is a clear and present threat to democracy and civic life. It is dividing communities and making informed decision-making even more difficult. But people do tend to trust information from familiar sources or cultural contexts. So the science is showing that engaging loved ones through empathy and connection is a proven way to resist this reality.
ARTICLE: To Combat Misinformation, Start With Connection, Not Correction
Film, Video, Animation
"Tiny Desk was always a passion project."
In 2008, Bob Boilen (host of All Songs Considered) and NPR music critic Stephen Thompson went to a Laura Gibson concert. The venue was noisy, and Thompson jokingly suggested that she come to the NPR offices to perform where they could actually hear her. She said yes. They taped it—and a tradition was born.
VIDEO: Inside NPR's Tiny Desk Concert Set | Set Tour
