Aidan Bowden

Creativity through logic, progress over process, design without ego.

[Aidan Bowden @aidanbowdenexe]

I love the new type, even if it's somewhat Marlboro-coded.

[Andreas Storm @avstorm]

Coca-Cola unveils a new global brand identity

[Aidan Bowden @aidanbowdenexe]

I miss the ASCII title screens at the top of old GameFAQs guides.

There was something very generous about them. As if the whole document's comprehensiveness and length wasn't enough, someone decided to spend the time crafting a little creative monument. A small announcement that the guide had been made by a person with serious passion.

That seriousness is funny, but I do not mean that dismissively. It is one of the more charming forms of seriousness: the kind that appears when someone loves a thing enough to make an unnecessary gesture inside it.

It feels closer to folk craft than design, although I suppose it is a strange kind of design problem. The rules were inherited from the environment: plain text, fixed width, no colour, no images, no mercy. The pleasure came from seeing how far someone could bend those rules without breaking legibility.

There is a reason these headers often felt more personal than the professionally produced material around the games themselves—an intimacy that can only come from earnest and heartfelt attachment.

That feels worth remembering.

Anyway, here are some favourites from the archives. (I really appreciate the abstractness of the Final Fantasy X example).

[Aidan Bowden @aidanbowdenexe]

I have a reluctant affection for bad or rejected early works.

Not affection exactly. More like the feeling of finding a photo of yourself in an outfit that proves your friends were kind.

There is a particular kind of education in that embarrassment. You can learn principles, history, composition, technique, all the things that make you less dangerous near a blank page. But taste also arrives through the slow horror of recognising your own previous certainty.

At some point, you look back at a decision you defended and realise it was mostly volume.

Anyways, here's some stills from an unreleased short film I made up in the Perth hills near my old house.

[rekdt @rekdt]

FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8

[Aidan Bowden @aidanbowdenexe]

I’m about to enter my fifteenth year in design, which feels both improbable and strangely continuous.

The first things I ever designed were CD labels for my band in at high school. I taught myself Adobe Creative Suite using one of the many copies that had fallen from the internet’s proverbial truck, and the roughness of my cover art was matched by the equally-strained emo tracks within.

Thankfully, that curiosity led to a packaging gig for some of the Australia's most visible FMCG products—work I can still annoyingly point out in the fridges at Coles to my wife years later. Eventually I would return to The University of Western Australia to study fine art and philosophy, then a brief side-quest researching art and cultural export in Japan's Kansai region. Plus there was a small chapter of viral content creation during the pandemic (but that's for another time).

Today, and for the last 3 years, I lead creative direction at SLICK, an agency with twenty years behind it and a substantial portfolio of great clients across both brand and digital transformation.

Written as a sequence, it sounds like a pretty fortunate journey, and in many ways it was. I've had an immense volume of support that continues to this day that has eased the navigation of each stage. But there has never been a moment without uncertainty, risk, and fear.

But you just have get on with it, don't you?

That's it. Here's some photos of animals I saw in Japan.

[Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital]

We still think about you.

[Aidan Bowden @aidanbowdenexe]

There are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see them.

[Aidan Bowden @aidanbowdenexe]

Oh my god...

[Ramin Nasibov @RaminNasibov]

I used Nero to burn CDs as a kid and only later realized the pun: Nero burned Rome-"Burning ROM".

[Aidan Bowden @aidanbowdenexe]

EVA has so many scenes that, even as silent vignettes, convey an immense existential grief. One of my most seminal experiences with media as a young man.

[Gene Park, Oppaheimer @GenePark]

this means so much to me. i am still so proud of my 7 year old article on Evangelion. it was the first time i publicly acknowledged my time in an institution as a depressed, suicidal kid and how Eva taught me that existing is worth living for.

https://t.co/kSmeuMcpR0

[Caitlyn Momochi 🪄✨ @Y2Karyl]

This anime was meant to be watched in 480i because some effects were rendered as interlaced video.

[Aidan Bowden @aidanbowdenexe]

I've been taking photographs for almost 20 years, and I'm yet to take a photo I enjoy more than this basking sealion.

[Aidan Bowden @aidanbowdenexe]

Art is so powerful when it comes from the perspective of a witness, not an archivist.

[hunny @Hunnyindapants]

This was the greatest art tip video I’ve ever watched wow 👏

[Aidan Bowden @aidanbowdenexe]

Hello @X