Making the Invisible Easier to See
So we can design it with more intention
Design, as a practice, is highly visual. A large part of a designer’s role is to help clients imagine what the end result might look like, so the work never comes as a shock. We visualise early, often, and deliberately.
After my earlier post on how parents are designing the invisible every day, I asked myself a simple question. If parents are shaping culture at home, how might we help them actually see the emotional tone of their home? The feeling of safety. The trust between one another, or the lack of.
Most of us are not trained to design these invisible layers, yet we live inside them every day. Words like safety, trust, care, and connection may sound simple, but each carries a different weight and meaning for every person. What feels safe to one, might feel suffocating to another. What feels calm to one parent might feel distant to a child. When something goes wrong at home, it is rarely due to one moment or incident. It is often a buildup of all the different invisible things over time.
We must find ways to see them, be more aware of them, so we can talk about them and act with intention. Because we can’t design it, if we cannot see it.
That led me back to something very familiar in design. How we work with colour. When we say “blue”, we could each be imagining a completely different shade. That is why we use swatches. To give a shared form to something that would otherwise look very different in each of our minds.
Introducing Famtone
Famtone is the emotional palette of a family.
A visual language for the invisible parts of family culture.
In this series, I help families see the emotional tone of their home, notice patterns they normally only feel, and make small, intentional shifts over time. I explore one invisible aspect of family culture at a time, such as emotional safety, adaptability, curiosity, or trust, to offer a more holistic view of these invisible factors. You can use these to support conversations, as a shared understanding, or a tool to support working together towards a shared vision.
It offers a simple way to see, name, and talk about the invisible, as you shape the culture of your home.
The first in the series is coming your way very soon.