Welcome to Full Moon

The day we’ve long planned has arrived. We can finally say: welcome to Full Moon.

We’re setting out on this adventure with excitement, and some trepidation. That’s because our ambition is a bold one. It is to cast new light at the intersection of technology, business, and creativity. And, in so doing, to further you in your quest to make sense of the world, do work that matters, and flourish.

As with starting any new thing, arriving here meant working our way through a forest of questions. Some were existential. What is our guiding philosophy? Why does this need to be in the world? Who the hell are we to do this?

Others were more prosaic. Okay, on what day should we publish?

It turned out that for us, those questions were deeply related. Early on in the weekly chats that forged this project, we came to the idea the turned into our foundation:

We need to publish every month on the night of the full moon.

Funny how such a small thing can turn out to contain everything.

The idea, as you can tell, gave us our name. And yes, we smiled over the double meaning; though it's our deepest thinking, and nothing more, that we want to reveal here.

But the idea did much more. It helped us to articulate an underlying ethic. One that was there all along, but that we had to say out loud in order to really see.

The product of that realisation, and so many others along the way, is what we bring before you now. We’ll come back to the brand of lunar energy that we hope to channel here. Before that, let’s deal with some practical matters.

First, who (the hell) are we?

Mark Curtis is the co-founder of Fjord, one of Europe’s first digital agencies and, eventually, the world's largest digital design agency. It was acquired by Accenture in 2013, where Mark became Global Head of Thought Leadership, and led work on Accenture’s landmark annual Life Trends report.

David Mattin is an internationally recognised futurist and expert on emerging technologies and their social, economic, and cultural implications. He is the founder of New World Same Humans, a newsletter read by 30,000 professionals across industry, technology, academia, and policy-making.

What exactly do we plan to deliver?

In a world of shallow, we’re going the other way. Full Moon will pursue depth — not for its own sake, but in our quest for understanding, truth, and usefulness.

At the heart of it all will be a monthly essay. Expect a deep dive into an emerging trend reshaping the future of business, design, or culture. An anatomisation of a social shift with deep consequences for us all. A think-piece on creativity in an AI age, on how brands must show up in the world, or on how professionals will navigate rapidly changing career paths.

All this and more will be our domain.

Each month on the night of the full moon, paid members will get the essay in written and audio form. Each new moon, meanwhile, they’ll get a podcast, where we'll plunge into the essay and ideas on our mind. Sometimes, we’ll bring in an expert guest. At others, we’ll host a live Q and A. Also, subscribers will get our Ideas newsletter: two quick and useful thoughts via email.

Our first essay kicks off a series by Mark on the future of design in the age of AI. It’s called Where is Design Heading?. And we’ve made it free.

Meanwhile, free subscribers will get the Ideas newsletter and previews of the content we send to members.

Full Moon will be a place for our deepest, most unfiltered thinking on what is happening now, and what comes next, when it comes to emerging tech, business, culture and creativity. We’ll dive into what it all means, and how you should respond. Yes, it will be personal; the view from where we stand. We’ll be thinking aloud and trying to make sense of what we see. That means viewing it all through the lens of ideas, frameworks, and strategies that are born of long experience, and battle tested.

Which brings us to another question: who is Full Moon for?

If you’ve ever read the Accenture Life Trends report, or New World Same Humans, this is definitely for you.

It’s for designers, marketers, strategists, and creative professionals. Founders, consultants, and knowledge workers of many varieties.

Anyone on a quest to understand how the overlapping spaces of business, brand, tech and culture are changing will find a here. Anyone who needs to keep pace with changing consumers and clients, and build work — product, service, campaign — that makes an impact. Anyone seeking to forge their own path through the rapidly changing world of knowledge work.

With all that established, we can come full circle. Why Full Moon?

We are living through, as it has become customary to observe, quite a time. Long-established rules and norms are breaking down. Emerging technologies of enormous power are eating the old and spitting out the new; but all too often seem to be entangling us in strange kinds of unfreedom and sameness. Meanwhile, the backdrop to it all is a culture that sometimes feels stuck, and at other times seems so fluid that it is impossible to grasp.

Amid all this, something about the night of the full moon spoke to us. It tapped into something essential. Something human. Something beyond.

We humans have a peculiar and fascinating relationship with the moon. It is, after all, one of the few constants we can point to across the entire, epic story of our species. Lunar cycles shaped ancient patterns of ritual feasting and communion that came to underlie religion. Predicting those cycles gave rise, in turn, to close observation and mathematical analysis of the night sky: practises that fuelled the emergence of modern science.

Objective analysis and rationality, and the subjective truths of the human spirit; these are the two halves of the moon. We intended to deal in both.

And given that the moon has always been associated with our quest to understand, to find meaning, it’s no surprise that the full moon came to symbolise the excesses that this quest can push us towards. To symbolise, that is, the off-kilter, unhinged, and mad.

These forces come out to play on the night of the full moon. We will channel them when we press send. God knows, we all need them now.

Of course, if this thing is worth doing it needs to be alive. That means it will evolve over time. And it also needs to be a conversation. The essays and podcasts we’ll send each month are not meant to be final declarations; rather, they are offered as opening statements. They are intended to draw us all together under the light of the moon. There, we Lunartiks will search for new ways to see the world, move in it, and do great work.

See you there,

Mark and David.