Back in 2011, I started a year-long photo project. After spending a year shooting mostly men's skateboarding, the idea of filling another hard drive with more of the same wasn't appealing. I prefer seeing things I don't know or haven't seen before. And women's skateboarding—despite its existence—was virtually invisible in the media. When I was asked to shoot at a women's competition, what I saw completely awed me.

A year later, I published Hello, Skater Girl — the first photobook focused exclusively on women's skateboarding. It was a small intervention, but one that helped make visible something that had been systematically overlooked.

The ripples from that work have been humbling to witness over the years. That's Amelia Brodka in that photo up there..putting in the work fearlessly with that cast on, knocking out that front rock in some dodgy backyard pool we found up in Malibu at some abandoned lot back in March 2011. We got chased off but not before we got this shot. At the time she was a junior at USC. She has since gone on to become a professional skateboarder, activist, and community organizer.

What does that mean?

Well — a year after that photo she co-founded Exposure Skate, a non-profit dedicated to empowering women through skateboarding. Last weekend marked its 14th consecutive annual event, with over 200 girls from around the world competing, having fun, and connecting.

Amelia and another woman I photographed for the book, Lizzie Armanto, became Olympians, competing in Tokyo 2020 when women's skateboarding debuted. Lizzie has since designed a line of helmets with Tony Hawk, skates professionally for Bird House, dropped several pro model skateboards, and is an all-around rad human being. Watching both of them become role models for young girls worldwide has been incredibly gratifying. (I'll never forget the time I was walking around Seoul, a bit jetlagged, looked up as I wondered about, and saw a billboard for Lizzie. I texted her a photo of it. She sent back a shrug and heart emoji. It was a powerful reminder of how far we've come and the visibility created.)

Why do I mention this whole story?

Well — there's an object lesson in that photo project I did for you the normal reader of this newsletter. It's a pattern I've seen play out across my work again and again, whether it's some kind of tech-design project or a side project, or a hobby: it all starts with noticing the overlooked.

The projects that matter most to me begin when something at the edges catches my attention. It's usually something invisible to most, or simply not yet taken seriously. Hello, Skater Girl was one of those moments. It's a glimpse into a future that institutions, media, and culture were too narrow or too comfortable to recognize. OMATA was another one of those moments — seeing an alternative to a marketplace of bland, over-featured, digital sports computers intended for an entirely analog sport.

These kinds of moments fascinate me. Like Dick Fosbury deciding to go over the high jump bar backwards, I do projects that constructively and effectively challenge the status quo. They invite us to reimagine what’s possible — and that's what the work of seeing around corners is all about. It's a core attribute of what we loosely and confusingly call ‘futures’. Confusingly, much of that kind of work relies less on imagination and more on systems, frameworks, and analytic measures.

What does it take to see differently? To see just around a corner? To recognize what is possible, even when it’s not yet fully visible or widely accepted? Or when it’s dismissed as screwball or niche?

That’s the kind of work I’m drawn to—the work where possibility is the focus. Where the venture is into the terrain of the truly new or unknown rather than what’s safe, normal, or easily described. When something carries that kind of charge, I want to see it, explore it, understand it, and help make it legible—particularly when there’s something righteous about that future.

That ability to sense what’s coming, to notice the overlooked, and to turn it into something real—is the throughline in everything I do. It’s not prediction. It’s not analysis. It’s attention, curiosity, and the willingness to act before things are obvious.

This is what a futures-oriented studio, practice, team and way of seeing is meant for. Its ‘KPIs’ are how much it brings back from what it sees around the corners, how much it is able to introduce conversations into the organization that otherwise would've just kept plodding along with what is known and comfortable. The very definition of conservative. It’s what I’ve built my practice around: doing the work of seeing possibility and, you know — going over the high bar backwards despite what others might assume is normal. Remember what was once normal someday will become old-fashioned

_Julian