Is this still a newsletter?

The answer is no and I explain you why.

Hello my friends,

I hope you had a good week. Here it was a bit confusing in many ways. I planned to write a post called “my work is not my life” but the subject is so tense right now for me that I am still too confused to organize my thoughts. I may do a series of posts on the subject. Since I took the job of “dad at home” I feel like things are changing a lot, in the right way but not the one I expected. I know it seems like a kind of teasing haha but yeah I am not there yet to share my thoughts.

But thinking about that subject and also about the success of my post about not doing client work anymore made me realize that this email you receive now every week is not a newsletter anymore. It became a “blog where posts are sent each friday at 3PM CET”.

Hamish McKenzie, founder of Substack, the platform I use for my posts and you read this post on, published an interesting article on that subject:

Please stop calling it the ‘newsletter economy’

I must admit, when I moved from Mailchimp last year to Substack, I really planned to do my newsletter once a month and that’s it. But the more I was reading about the platform, the more I realized it was not a newsletter service, but a kind of publications platform. People using it are mostly writers and journalists. And Substack was created for these people, with a extension to paid subscriptions to make a living out of their writings. And be able to be independant financially.

Their documentation about how to write, how to get paid, how to find your community, really talked to me and gave me the idea of spending more time writing. Also, a few friends in the field of content creation (hi Guilhem and Bertrand :P) told me I should write more.

So I moved to a weekly “newsletter” but I started to write things that are not especially news. On some posts, I had no real news, I had nothing to sell but I had something to share. And this is what I like the most. Sharing and maybe helping.

The act or writing became my bi-weekly routine since beginning of january and I love it. Writing is really like a therapy to me, giving you some news or writing more conceptual posts like right now. It gives me the opportunity to get out of my daily life at home. It has the same power for me than going out for a walk. This is an escapade with myself.

Being a dad at home takes 80% of my time these days. And writing these 2 posts, on friday for all of you and on tuesday for my paid supporters, is the only work I plan every week. Working on fonts/prints is done only if I can find some time. And hopefully I still find one hour here and there. But it is not easy.

yeah some days my life looks like this haha :D

So you will understand these weekly writings are important for me and that I am not sending a newsletter “only” anymore but a real publication.

The tuesday post helps me to stay focused and go forward

Also, I love the tuesday publication (the one you have to pay for). This one is important because each week until now (it was not supposed to be each week though) helps me to organize and prioritize what I work on. And each week I give details of where I am in my process.

For example, this week I talked about promoting my fonts.

30 days of fonts

The week before I did post some numbers about my sales and realized while writing that I mostly never promote my fonts. So I decided to create a kind of challenge on 30 days to promote them. So this week I shared with my paid subscribers how I plan to organize myself and what is my plan to do that challenge and get more visibility for my fonts.

And next week, I will give news about where I am in preparing that challenge.

And it is really pushing me forward, step by step.

So yes, writing seems to be a thing for me right now. And I only can advise you to do the same. Write, just for yourself if you want but write. And go for a walk too!! haha :D Talking about walking, I came across that tweet yesterday I really liked so I share it with you.

This is my life exactly. And I realize recently that writing can help me too.

So yes, this newsletter is not a newsletter anymore and I hope you will still like it what it may become. Thank you for following my journey and as usual, don’t hesitate to support this publication and my work if you feel like it :)

Before letting you go, would you like a glass of wine?

Let’s finish today’s post with a great idea I found on Pinterest. This is a brand identity for a wine but not sold at all like a wine would be. This is at the same time really disturbing but also refreshing. I mean, this is just weird!!

Here are some visuals. I found it because I like the type on the label but the whole branding is funky. Still not sure the wine is good though haha :D

What do you think? Don’t hesitate to leave a comment below to discuss about that branding :)

That is all for this week. See you next tuesday for some and friday for others, enjoy the weekend and don’t forget to take a walk or write some pages :)

Take care,

Francis