The Structure of Winter
These are the hard yards, these cold January days.
People return from the seemingly never-ending celebrations of December to the what feels like the coldest, longest month imaginable.
Some heap additional misery upon themselves… giving up this, forgoing that, forcing themselves upon literal and metaphorical treadmills.
Yet January has its merits. It returns us to a sense of order, beginning things again, or starting them anew. It is an excellent planning month.
"Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do - or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so." - Stanley Crawford
January is when a lot of that to-do list falls away. The festive break seems to wash away the ephemera; tasks which were so urgent in December, yet are forgotten afterwards.
People spend January rediscovering what it is they do.
Or discovering what it is they want to do.
"The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood." - John Burroughs
It is a season for creating frameworks, building the scaffolding of the coming year.
So it follows that the this season's Artefact Cards should be all about structure; helping you capture those delicate, fragile ideas, and bringing them in from the cold.
We are proud to present the Ice Blue Graph, the seasonal special for Winter 2013.
May they kick start your best ideas of the year...
"Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius" - Pietro Aretino
The Winter 2013 Edition is out now - head here to see it in all its icy glory.
