Chaos Breeds New Order
The past couple of years have not been very easy for you and me. The world has not been very kind lately. We all had our struggles. Health struggles, relationship struggles, career struggles. And we had losses too, losing family, friends, important people. Betrayed, being mistreated, misunderstood. You think you did best, but no, you have not learned anything in life yet and so you fail again. You try again. If you feel like you lost your confidence somewhere in the way, I wouldn’t be surprised because so have I.
Never have I imagined the half part of this decade would turn out this way. Incidents upon incidents tormented the mental state.
But chaos breeds new order.
Sure at first it plunged my confidence way down to the bottom. I learned to trust again as I started to accept. With my new found, immunocompromised condition, I accept that I was not born perfect. So I learn to trust my body again. With all the mishaps at work, I accept that I could have managed the company better. So I learn to trust myself to lead better again. Slowly, I gained confidence back and learned to find my way to the surface.
2024 was the year we disassembled and reordered everything. In 2025, we found ourselves coming up with frameworks that enable us to work even more efficiently. This year, 2026 will be about how we improve our performance in a whole new sense of empowered direction.
This year, there are many times where our strength and tenacity is being tested, and we persevered, because now we have a stronger foundation. We were better prepared.
Things improved in 2024-2025:
- Project management infrastructure
- Cloud-based, collaborative brand guideline system
- Design sprint framework
- Friday creative WIP, adding to the existing Monday WIP
- Better creative team workflow
- Deck presentation that is more fluid in terms of storytelling
- New exploration in execution and technology
- Brand core dimensions
- Stylescape refinement
- WIP-oriented client meetings
With stronger fundamentals, I believe we are ready to perform better. Our client lineup has gotten more interesting, we have new portfolio works. This might beg the question, are we going to expand? No, we just want to stay boutique and small, so we can manage to stay as who we are ideally. There might be some mini expansions and improvements, but only if deemed necessary.
It's just because that we’re never about quantity, we’re always about quality. How do we boost our performance so we can deliver quality, efficiently?
But also, it has to be about enjoyment. The 1984 is never about burning the midnight oil. We are proud parents of our work, because we enjoy what we do. My wish is that in 2026, this performance-boosting and empowerment comes in a way that is comfortable for all of us to do.