What? Did I Do That? is evolving!?
A big newsletter pivot and a Season 6 preview!
Hi all! It’s been a hot minute since I sent out the last one of these newsletters, and I want all of you who subscribe to this—my most passionate listeners—to know that there’s actually a really good explanation for what that is: it’s been a lot!
The world has been a scary, noisy place to be, and with some of the changes by the big social media players I’ve come to rely on/fret about have made it harder for me to reach new people I think this show would benefit. That’s not the most tenable situation, and is made worse when I things are busy. AND HAVE THINGS EVER BEEN BUSY.
But, there’s an upside to a chance for reevaluation: the possibility of reinvention!
Lots of things are going to change, I think for the better, going into this next season of Did I Do That? One is in what you’re reading right now. Moving forward, here’s the plan for Substack: rather than sending out monthly-ish newsletters summarizing a couple episodes, I’ll post each and every episode as it comes out here just as I used to day-one on my other social media. That means you’ll get a new newsletter every other Thursday.
Want to see the three cursed comps I used to post to Instagram on Thursdays? Now you can look right in your inbox, where they will have appeared, along with an actual embedded version of the episode if you want to hear it from there. Damn my analytics, but if it gets more people listening who need some joy and connection amidst all this, it feels like the right move.
Since this is the last one of these I’ll be sending out in the old fashioned way with lots of bloggy preamble, I wanted to do something special for you all for being so loyal. I’m giving you a sneak preview of what’s about to go out in the world tomorrow…
Our new show art, the season 6 trailer, and some tantalizing bits about the premiere episode!
Reinvention #2: the show art! It’s new! It’s green (or, more properly, teal-ish)! It has levels of contrast that are appropriate for reading at the scale that podcast art is seen at! Most of all, though: it telegraphs what this show is all about way better!
Making something joyful we can embrace out of the moments so shameful we try to crumple them up and throw them away—that’s what this show tries to do at its best, and it’s what This Friend excels at.
I want take a minute to spotlight the high quality MS Paint smile emblazoned on my new son. I think it was unconsciously stolen off the face of Mend It Mark, who I have been watching a lot of as comfort viewing over the last few months; even though I can’t quite match it up to any particular still of him, I see his face whenever I look at this precocious li’l lad.
What else do I love? Our new type system, which pairs up Usj (from James Edmondson of the amazing Ohno Type Co., who had made Hobeaux in both Original Taste and Rococeaux from our old art) with Sligoil (a monospace whose ink traps are so big that they may as well be called gauged from Ariel Martín Pérez for Velvetyne). Together, they make for a super weird, dynamic pairing, and while I’m sad to let go of both Hobeaux and Zetkin, the latter is going to greener pastures as part of the Show & Tell Lecture Series’ game show-ified look.
The tagline is the one element that’s not yet fully grown on me, but think of it as a continuation of the beginning-of-season-5 bit of framing the show around just “true stories,” and then having it devolve into a sack of surreal burger chain sponsorship kayfabe.1 Think of it as embracing uncertainty in an uncertain age.
What of the old show art? The short answer: it got assimilated by the Five Guys’ Nissan Cube at the end of Ely Kim’s episode. I can only guess it’s being used to dispense Diet Dr Pepper syrup from a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine at a Des Moines rest stop now.
In reality, though, while the half-inflated emoji balloon had been with the show since the beginning of season 2, to say the visual had lost some air (beyond even the metaphor) is for certain. Beyond that, it never quite channeled either the message or the vibe of the show quite right to my mind, either. Worse, that balloon was not a comp: I actually bought an offset-printed run of 25 those damned things for the photo shoot thinking I’d be using them left and right, then never really did. Any of you want some balloons? Send me a self-addressed stamped envelope to the address I read out at the end of the Andy McMillan episode and one will be yours, while supplies last.
There’s a lot more visual elements to roll out with this rebrand, including the longer-term process of refreshing the website, but you likely don’t just come here to look at the show art: you want to hear show.
Well, here: show!
(or more properly, hear trailer for show, but you get it)
I haven’t recorded a new trailer since December of 2021, when I had only recorded the first five episodes of this show, all of which were under a different title than the one it has now. It was an incredibly uncertain time, not least of which because I had no idea what this thing was yet. To make a sales pitch for something that doesn’t exist yet but will continue to evolve in perpetuity is a challenge.
That it’s even held up okay-ish for this long considering all that is frankly a miracle! This new one, complete with some of the favorite on-mic moments I’ve ever had with guests, should hopefully can give new folks a better picture of what to expect, both from where the show’s been and where it’s going in season 6 and beyond.
I hope that if you enjoy it, you can share it with someone who doesn’t listen to get them on board. There’s even a reel-ified version of it (proudly animated in Adobe Flash) that’ll land on Instagram and YouTube Shorts tomorrow to make that process even easier—if that doesn’t hook them, I don’t know what will.
Maybe try giving them money? Let’s call that plan B.
Season 6 premieres March 6! But what’s happening?
That brings us to reinvention #3: we’ve got some tantalizingly rad guests coming up, both in Portland and beyond!
Thursday, March 6 is the date of our season 6 premiere, and we’ll be kicking things off with a really good one. I just got back from a whirlwind recording trip out in the Bay Area, and this first episode turned into one of the funnest two hours I’ve spent on mic with a guest in the show’s run.
I’m excited to have again gotten to travel out of town for an old-fashioned episode recording, which is not something I’d gotten to do since way back in season 2 when I split my time between Vancouver BC, Seattle, and Bend. With any luck, you might just hear some more episodes with guests from outside of Portland in the near future too—though our in-town guests on my production calendar this season are no less killer. Even better: the Rat’s Nest has been fully renovated with new mics that should make every word sound buttery smooth.
One more thing… Show & Tell?
Oh, you saw that! Why, that’s nothing to concern yourself with, Detective Columbo! It’s all perfectly innocent!
Through PSUGD, I also run the Show & Tell Design Lecture Series these days, hosted by my students in DES 125 Show & Tell most Thursdays at 12:05pm2 Pacific. Because no one but the most driven thief can enter the Art Building on campus these days, we stream live on Twitch. As of this posting, there’s a new talk tomorrow from Naily Neverez, who does product design for Planned Parenthood, and you should totally come by! For as much as Did I Do That? is about helping folks at the start of their careers feel not as alone making mistakes, Show & Tell is all about helping them feel like they know where they might go. It’s more earnest than this whole enterprise, but fun nonetheless!
That’s all I’ve got for now. See you all on March 6, here or wherever you get podcasts!
Speaking of that, if you hated the Five Guys bit, know that the opening bits moving forward probably won’t interlock or get quite that weird again for a while, but best to keep folks guessing either way!
That’s right, we are on Turner Time!
MS Paint is how I got my smile, too!
I love your new son!!!