💛 We're in Selfridges! and How to Spend It* 002: with Kristoffer Tjalve

A new retail touchpoint, bringing back phone calls and five links worth your attention.

Hello all,

Happy Wednesday. A slightly surreal update: Quiet Media is now stocked in Selfridges. For a small, independent project like this one, going from idea → object → retail floor at one of the most iconic department stores in the world isn’t exactly the natural order of things! Which makes it all the more special.

Huge credit to the team at MagCulture (and Selfridges of course), who’ve spent the past six months bringing this partnership to life. A beaaauutiful 🤌🏼✨ pop-up space, and with it an incredibly generous platform, opening the door for independent titles like Quiet Media to be discovered by entirely new audiences. If you’re in London, I invite you to go and see it in person. Pick up a magazine and support print because as we’ve established, it’s back.

Below, another great guest joins How To Spend It* as our latest tastemaker of attention. I started this series to explore how reclaiming our attention actually shows up - more often in the small habits and routines we build every day. Hopefully it offers something useful as you think about your own.

Finally, at the bottom of this letter I’ve rounded up five links worth your attention this week. Enjoy.

As always thank you,
Charlotte

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Inspired by the Financial Times weekend staple How to Spend It, this series reframes the idea of spending - not money, but attention. Each conversation features a “tastemaker of attention”: someone intentional about where their focus goes, from the habits they build to the tools they use and the constraints they choose. The recommendations range widely, but the premise is simple: attention is a currency, and how you spend it shapes everything.

Following our first edition with Andrew McLuhan, our next guest is Kristoffer Tjalve. Kristoffer is a thoughtful maker, writer and doer - I discovered him through one of his projects, the Internet Phone Book, and reached out to collaborate for the Inaugural Issue of Quiet Media. The result is a beautifully crafted double page spread, fully customised for the publication by Kristoffer and his team. Enjoy his take below.

Just look at that 😍 the Internet Phonebook spread in Quiet Media

1. What are you currently working on or thinking about?

I’m getting my driver’s license at 38. It’s fun, scary, easy, and hard at the same time. The other week, I took the theory test in the suburbs of Athens, Greece. Imagine a cubicle room like those 80s and 90s office designs with too bright ceiling light and before the open floor plan. That’s where we were doing our theory test, sitting in red rolling desk chairs in front of a desktop with WindowsXP. When I say ‘we,’ I refer to myself and the cohort of 20 teenagers who follow the norm and get their licenses as soon as legally possible.

Why am I two decades late? I used to say that I was happy with my bicycle and public transport, so I didn’t need a car. Later, I claimed I was waiting for self-driving cars. It’s possible that both are true, or that it is a childhood-inflicted trauma from the weekly trips between my separated mom and dad: the car was not independence, it was an obligatory and unpleasant transition between very different worlds.

Nevertheless, I’m thinking a lot about my metaphorical transition from backseat driver to taking the steering wheel, and I wonder if it is coincidental that I’m shifting seats at the same time as my mom is in her final stage of a chronic disease, and while my son is starting elementary school.

2. What’s one thing you’ve stopped giving your attention to recently?

Can I name a few? I have four rules for my newsletter:

1. Don’t write about what I dislike.

2. Don’t include mainstream commentary.

3. Don’t analyze.

4. Don’t use the following words: urgent, important, hope, fear, future, tech, startup, social media, and artificial intelligence.

These rules of what not to do have cultivated my idiosyncratic interests and introduced me to all these incredible people who experiment with the web as a medium and material, many of whom I now consider close friends.

3. What’s something - a tool, practice, or format - that’s helped you focus or create space for what matters?

I’ve started to make more phone calls. Not voice notes, not video calls, just a phone call. A back-and-forth with someone who knows you is grounding and uplifting. Maybe you’ll make a plan to meet. Maybe you’ll share what’s been on your mind without a statistical confirmation from a language model (from ‘yes, you are right’, to ‘have you thought about what you are running away from?’). Either way, you’ll likely feel better - and so will your friend.

4. What do you want to give more attention to in the coming months?

I moved to Greece with my family when life invited us to explore another path than the one we thought was ahead of us. It was supposed to be a temporary stay: three months, a palate cleanser of sorts.

The morning after we arrived, I immediately felt at peace. It was mid-November, and the late-autumn sun was warm and kind. We ate breakfast at the nearest café, and our calendar was empty. It was freeing to be completely detached from social obligations. That’s three years ago.

Now our life is fully established in Greece: we have moved all our belongings, gotten our residency permits, opened bank accounts and businesses, our son is in Greek school, and our weekends are full of birthdays, dinners, and social activities. Yet, I hardly speak any Greek. It’s time for me to learn the language to immerse myself in the surrounding landscape.

The Internet Phone Book is now taking submissions for their much anticipated second book! You can submit your website here.

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How to Spend It* is also a unique segment published in the Quiet Media Inaugural Issue, see below:

Available on Metalabel or in MagCulture, Shreeji Newsagents and, as we covered today, in SELFRIDGES!

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Five links worth your attention this week 💭

☎️ As Kristoffer suggests making more phone calls, parents are reintroducing landlines for their kids. While there is some getting used to, kids are actually loving it. The article also suggests some steps on how to introduce technology to children. As a millennial / Gen Z cusper, I’ve admittedly never had a phone cord to twirl, but all for bringing them back.

🍐 A great round up from holly chapman of the best of Milan Design week, brands are leaning back into craft. Having a presence here frames a brand as a makers and craftspeople, not just advertisers. Clearly a different audience, but it’s interesting to see it in contrast with the activations at Coachella recently. This feels luxurious, and considered - a smart move among all the AI slop.

🧑🏻‍🌾 Success isn’t a ladder, it’s a garden. Matilda Lucy on how growing a business is like tending to a garden. It's a beautiful, soft metaphor - one of the most original when thinking about growth. It shifts the focus away towards conditions, time and individual goals. She’ll soon be sharing a self-directed resource for us all to use..

🌍 The Tiny Tourist by It’s Nice That responds to algorithm-induced overtourism and badly behaved tourists. It’s a reminder of how to travel with more care and intention to the world around you.

🐊 The most incredible first brand design identity for the Brazilian Amazon. Feast your eyes. It’s a reminder that the most powerful brand worlds don’t need to reach too far.. Start with what exists and what you inherently embody and stand for.