What this space is for

Tidy Content is our shared practice. Most of our time is spent working in public service roles, so we don’t take on long delivery projects.

Instead, this space holds the parts of our work that need room to breathe — writing, talks, early creative projects and the questions we’re exploring.

We’re open to small, focused collaborations when the fit is right.

Writing and projects

We write about content, services, trust, systems and the messy work of making things better. We’re also beginning new creative work — including a book we’ll shape in public through our monthly letters.

On trust and the systems that scale it

Newsletter · 2 min read

Some thoughts on how trust underpins the way we navigate work, institutions and each other when the world is too complex to manage alone.

On the quarrel of the old and the new

Newsletter · 2 min read

Exploring how teams can honour what came before while making space for new ways of working, thinking and designing services.

Words, services and culture

Essay · 4 min read

Why language is never just surface-level content, and how it shapes the cultures and systems people have to move through.

Collaboration

We occasionally work with teams on small, focused pieces of work — conversations, reviews or short sessions that help people see things more clearly.

If you’d like to explore something together, get in touch. We’re based in Wales and usually work remotely.

On words as worn-out coins

Tidy Content
Nov 1, 2024
2 min read

We like to think language is simple.

Words, we assume, are neat little signs, clearly pointing us toward a reality we all share.

But language is more than a transparent lens, more than a window to a reality outside of us, or even a mirror that reflects the world exactly as it is. It’s an elaborate system of signs, a map and not the territory.

Language is also a currency.

Words are something we use, exchange, and alter. Language is a tool to trade knowledge, coordinate efforts, cause change, and build worlds - imaginary first, then tangible.

Through words, we create visions of the future, potential realities, and alternative possibilities.

But this same language that brings us together and connects us also shapes, and sometimes limits, how we understand the world. Words influence how we think and perceive - and our thinking and experiences, in turn, shape the words we choose.

Words aren’t just labels, they’re frameworks. They construct reality as much as they reflect it.

But like coins to a currency, as we use and exchange them, words and concepts wear down. As they pass through countless hands, they lose their precision, the sharpness they once had gradually fades.

Over time, we stop noticing the details and start focusing only on their weight. They become dull sounds, stripped of their original meaning, value, and wisdom. We keep using them, but we’ve forgotten what they used to look like.

We rarely pause to consider the words we speak.

We assume a shared understanding, tossing terms and phrases around without question. They’re so embedded in our language that we take them for granted, neglecting their deeper significance.

In Nietzsche’s words, ‘truths are illusions we’ve forgotten are illusions; metaphors worn out and without power, like coins that have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.”

But words still carry value, we just need to stop and look closer.

Words still matter, and only by being more considerate towards the language we use, can we rediscover the wisdom engraved on those old, worn-out coins.

A design practice where we explore content, services and the systems behind them.