Nathan Williams - The Kinfolk Entrepreneur: Ideas for Meaningful Work

IDEAS for MEANINGFUL WORK

nathan williams

nathan williams

Editor in Chief

john clifford burns

Editor

anja verdugo

Creative Director

alex hunting

Publication Designer

amy woodroffe

Publishing Director

rachel holzman

Copy Editor

molly mandell

Art Producer

select contributors:

christopher ferguson

Christopher has been capturing fashion and landscape imagery for the past 15 years. He has shot for Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Elle, Porter, and GQ and published his own fashion magazine, SUMMERWINTER Homme.

harriet fitch little

Harriet is a British journalist and editor. She writes about culture, people and podcasts and has lived in Beirut, Phnom Penh and London.

lasse flde

Lasse is a Norwegian photographer, based in Oslo and Copenhagen. He works with a variety of clients and projects, including The New York Times, Marie Claire, Bielke&Yang and Snhetta.

sarah moroz

Sarah is a Franco-American journalist and translator based in Paris. She writes about cultural topics for The New York Times, The Guardian, New York magazine, Artforum and more.

sarah rowland

Sarah is a writer and editor who has lived in Paris, London, Portland and Nashville. Her work has been published in Monocle, Rolling Stone, Nylon, Esquire, The Guardian, Freunde von Freunden and more.

danilo scarpati

Danilo was born and raised in Naples, Italy. His work has appeared in T Magazine, 10 Magazine, Vanity Fair and British Vogue and in various shows in the USA and Europe.

mars hild rsdttir

Mars is an Icelandic photographer based in London. Her images are influenced by her Nordic background, her native contemporaries and the vast untamed terrains she grew up in.

pip usher

Pip is a regular contributor to Kinfolk and leading international publications. After living in London, New York and Beirut, she has made Bangkok her homefor now. She enjoys black coffee, eccentric people and the works of Truman Capote.

alexander wolfe

Alexander is a fashion, social and art photographer exploring uncommon scenes of everyday life in the Middle East. His work has been published by The New York Times, Vice, Brownbook and more.

For a full list of .

Contents

Introduction

We work to make a living. But living itself requires more than just income, and work (given how much time we spend doing it) can play a large part in how we define ourselves, our purpose in society and our quality of life.

During the 1970s, author Studs Terkel interviewed a diverse cross section of Americans for Working, a groundbreaking oral history in which he asked real people to talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do.

He spoke to over 100 peopleeveryone from a cabdriver to a stockbroker, from a grave digger to a jazz musician. Their anecdotes led Terkel to conclude that work was ultimately a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. In the pages of this book, we meet people from around the world for whom work is more than a simple job to be discarded at the end of a long day. Some are enabled by the strength of a single vision, some through the power of partnership; and others ideas serve to create and attract communities.

When we asked these business owners to speak frankly about their careers and values, certain words recurred: grit, adventure, even navet. We quickly discovered that becoming a successful entrepreneur extends beyond the strength of ones ideas and the ability to profit from them. It is dependent as much on private wounds as on public appearance; as much on the clients omitted from portfolios as on those mentioned in press releases; as much on the flash of brilliance as on the daily grind. We heard tales of widely respected industry leaders filing for bankruptcy to stay on top; of a designer dressing Michelle Obama from her home studio; of people serving as their companys CEO and also its janitor. Meaningful work, it seems, occurs during the process between an ideas conception and its realization.

Like Studs Terkel in his homage to jobs, we want work to improve the quality of life throughout the week: to help foster creativity, fortify relationships and forge new communities and to inspire people to make business more personal.

nathan williams & doug bischoff, copenhagen

Designed by Norm Architects, the Kinfolk office in Copenhagen offers staff different work environments, from an open-plan office to private meeting rooms, a canteen and, right, a private reading nook.

1:

A Single Vision

Nobody goes it alone, but there are those who lead the way.

Nitzan Cohen

Nitzan Cohens first venture into the world of design was thanks to a LEGO kit he received for his seventh birthday. I grew up in a socialist, communal environment that only exists in Israel, he says of his childhood on a kibbutz. The notion of design as a career wasnt something I was exposed to at all, so becoming a designer was a long process.

Nitzan had originally pursued a career in television, and tried to master sound and lighting in his teens. I worked in an Israeli studio for a couple of years, but it became boring, he says. I began playing around with props for fun, and thats when I realized that design is what excites and interests me.