Multidisciplinary Mess (An Interactive Post)
As you read and explore this post, I share some of my latest photos, I really want to document more this decade, and I'll take advantage that your hear to get some eye balls on my photos.
Hello, everyone.
This post is a little selfish—because I want to talk about what OFFICE MESS means to me first, and how we (yes, we’re a team if you’re here with me) are moving forward into 2025.
Most pro Substackers and full-time content creators have already shared their opening-year posts. But remember, I’m just a guy. A man who loves craft, aesthetics, fashion, design, content, economics, and culture. A man who loves the internet—its culture, its meaning, and all the good-bad parts. I aspire to be a full-time craft creator, but after a few years of trying, I’ve come to embrace my fate as a multidisciplinary mess.
As we all move forward in this rat race, our views and perspectives shift depending on our surroundings, families (friends), and luck. Luck is really just a way of describing randomness. In this chaotic randomness we all live in, we’re bound—whether we like it or not—to digital content, physical content, creation, and consumption.
Most people just consume. And sometimes, I wonder: what is it like to only consume? What is it like? After 12 years of creating and posting on Instagram or 18 years of being on YouTube (as an amateur), I’m curious—what does it feel like to just scroll, watch, listen, and stop there?
Email me your thoughts or comment below—I’d love to hear your take. (My email: lv@designoffice.me.)
Now more than ever, people are recognizing the power of creation. Content is on the rise, and I feel like 2025 will mark the year we collectively acknowledge that we’re living in a simulation—and just don’t care. It’s not like there’s a red pill we can all take to escape. Some people will choose to live in the void of “hope,” clinging to religions and gods created by ancient writers and influencers. But most of us have left that behind, moving toward our own creations.
Content is just a new way of speaking, connecting, and storytelling. And honestly, it’s fun. Think about sitting at a café with friends, talking, spending money you don’t have, people-watching, and just being alive. It’s amazing. Talking is amazing. Why do you think we gravitate toward TikTok, podcasting, and other platforms? Sure, you can create a conversation or a vibe with photos and videos—so Instagram, you’re safe. Stop worrying so much. Insecurity is a turnoff, buddy. Why can’t you see your potential? Anyway, moving on.
It’s not that people are becoming content creators this year; it’s that everyone is waking the f*** up. Yes, building an audience can lead to a life where you don’t have to work 9 to 5, living like royalty. So why not try? (Stop being so envious of people that make it, fucking haters.)
But—and it’s a big but—if you’re doing this just for the money, fame, or vanity, you’ll run into some interesting quests. Instead, find meaning in the connections the internet offers, not just the pleasures.
I genuinely love my 10 followers who join my lives each week. We’re friends. We enjoy talking. I’m just the host, bridging the conversation—but that’s it. We give it life together. I love it when they start talking among themselves, and sometimes I’m just in the background, playing music. We’re all there, connecting, not feeling alone in this void, in this simulation.
Sorry if I’m being repetitive—I just really want to update your software. Of course, it’s optional. I’ll respect it if you believe your pen is god or that 2 + 2 is 5. In the end, that’s what it’s all about: not giving a damn about anything, because we’ll never really know the final truth. Or maybe we will know someday, with quantum computing and AI evolving by the millisecond. Haven’t we cracked the code? Hasn’t technology bridged the gap between science and magic? Why fight it?
It’s magical feeling to get “hellos” from different countries when I go live on TikTok. Video calls—magic mirrors—still blow my mind. But we won’t even get into women creating life or a seed becoming a tree. That’s another post. More ancient biological technology we still don’t fully understand. For now lets just stick to posting consistently on social, and deal with that.
So, as we look at the rise of content creation, it’s not about people becoming content creators. It’s about people waking up, finding purpose, and wanting to connect by speaking the language of digital. We’re all becoming crafters, more alive, embracing content creation as a natural extension of life. And as we do, we must realize it’s not about trends or views—it’s about purpose. It’s about finding meaning in the connections we make.
The first steps are simple yet profound: documenting and editing. That’s how we truly learn to speak in this digital world. It’s about picking up a phone or a camera, capturing moments, and sharing them. By learning this language, we open ourselves to deeper connections and a more purposeful existence.
Office Mess the first 6 months.
Diary + Analysis + 2025 Game Plan (Tips)
How is Office Mess as a brand feeling today?
INTERACTIVE QUESTION WITH THE READER - You can also answer this with me. How is ___”your brand, company, or channel”___feeling today? (Extra points if you email me your answer)
My answer:
As an independent personal brand on the verge of amping the force with which we are moving forward, I’m feeling pretty hyped up. I finally have a business that fully integrates with my personal creativity. D.o (a design office) founded by Regina Romo and myself has finally arrived at a point of full flexion. Allowing me to not only fulfill my personal creative disciplines at my own pace, but also to farm future moves, strategies, and enough waiting time. Always account for good waiting time when diving into the world of digital. Yes everything moves faster, but most things still take the same time to actually ferment the right way. Anything you choose to do online, needs around 2 to 5 years to really understand what it is in the first place and its roll in the real world. Trust me 3 years will fly when you start pursuing craft, and not results.
For a digital and simple example lets say, if you, today, open up a social account and add a quick caption stating - “artist” or “photographer” or my favorite “creative director”, you are automatically by all means that what you just said. Now. Are you better then other folks that have been doing it for 15 to 20 years longer, probably not.
Are you a special case with prodigy like traits? Maybe, but probably not. You and me, like everyone else, will first have to become the young master in training everyone should aspire to be. A young crafter of whatever skill or skills you are chasing. Chase the skill, the process, the purpose, not the results or engagement.
So contemplate good waiting time. Waiting time, you can use to develop even more that skill, or skills you aspire to have. More time to allow your project to naturally tell you what it needs. A waiting time you will use to become a master at reading what your projects or even life needs. By reading yourself, better. By understanding your thoughts, your breathing, your mind, your consciousness (you) will automatically tell you what to do.
As I embarked into the world of substack (blogging) and independent photo journalism, I guess I’m finding myself right at home. At a time when other digital social platforms, weren’t giving me what I needed to grow my own digital universe. I found Substack both overwhelming and beautiful when I first arrived to the platform. I was so happy to see so many creators out there producing amazing and organic, almost DIY level content with passion. If your in to it, it is easy to find someone to subscribe to on substack. For a lot of ex Tumblr users I also feel it was also really refreshing, I was reading endless comments about it when I first arrived. It did get annoying as it is not Tumblr.
Tip #1
Office Mess becoming my primary tag on IG was “the move” of 2024. Of course, not everyone will understand why I ended up changing my tag name to a more quirky take. So here’s a quick first tip from my experience:
Have only one account that serves as the base for anything you do on Instagram. This means that if you (and you should) are going to be the center of your project, ditch the personal tag or IG. Nobody has time for that—connect with your people in real life, not online. The internet is for the unknown, not your entire life.
I constantly made the mistake of opening separate accounts for projects that, in the end, all pointed back to me anyway. It’s no secret that the internet has talked about each of us being the center of digital brands today. Phrases like “people want to follow people, not brands” started making sense to entrepreneurs like myself and the clients I worked with. That’s when the extremely stressful process of getting in front of the camera began. We entered an era in which writing down our thoughts—and being more analytical about how we move forward as a potential persona to follow—has become normal. Any good personal brand can be leveraged over the long term. If your business or brand depends on you, don’t stress—that’s a stronger base than you think. My problem? I didn’t realize it sooner.
It’s important to note that this makes the most sense when you’re the reason people follow you on any digital platform. For years, I struggled to put myself as the main attraction, and Instagram didn’t help. Over time, I used it less and less, and around four or five years ago, I migrated to other apps like YouTube, Twitter (RIP, now X), and TikTok to not only find new ways to connect or create community but also to play the economic games derived from views, likes, comments, followers, and collaborations on digital socials.
Today, if you’re in any conversation—literally any—and the person you’re talking to says they have (let’s not go too far) 400,000 followers on TikTok, IG, or any well-known platform, it’s an instant backup to whatever they just said. That’s a lot of social digital power—a digital social currency that can absolutely be leveraged IRL.
Remember, God texted us; she wants you posting.
Tip #2
Build each post like a letter or newsletter with layers over the course of one to three weeks, then see what happens.
Tip #3
Use and master tools like Notion.
2024 Stats - (August to December 6 months)
Posts on substack = 10 (2 videos)
Posts on youtube = 2
Post on Instagram = 39
Posts on TikTok = 52
-
Office Mess Brand Identity Update -
My new short opener:
(Trying to) curate the economics of content, ~~(art) >~~craft, and culture.
Let me know what do you think down on the comments, or email me your thoughts.
PART II –
Understanding How I See Order & Chaos
I like order, but I respect chaos—the randomness of life that connects us all through so many possibilities.
As a creative who’s obsessed with making content to be consumed and archived for the sake of happiness, you can’t ask for more. If I could directly talk to my younger self and tell him to chill out, I would. So many times when I was younger, I did feel a calm beneath it all—never really giving up—and I recognized that everything happening was just part of my path, whatever that was at the time (parties, hot aliens, and drugs).
Let’s create order and thrive in the chaos.
Today, I don’t struggle to understand that this game of “life” is rigged for everybody. The only way to win without killing yourself in the process is to come together, find community with as many people as possible, and create order while thriving in chaos. This is a chaotic binary system—why not just normalize that? I’m not smart for saying it.
Before going too far with this existential rant, let’s focus on why we’re here: to analyze digital worlds, marketing, content, and art that we can’t connect with.
Why are we talking about this? What’s the point of understanding order and chaos?
Design Office, aka d.o, holds order amid our inevitable chaos.
Our own office, working for us and with us, not against us. Modeled after the “second brain” theory methods used in software tools like Notion or Obsidian, the second brain still requires the main (first) brain to work from. The office method does eventually grow on its own, and can separate from you, giving back time to relax and enjoy. With AI on the rise, the office method can be used as a workflow formula in the worst-case scenario, and in the best-case scenario, it can give any plan or project a sense of purpose. It can help you create a plan from scratch or refine a draft. Anything today, needs an office to function correctly.
So we invite everyone to create their own type of “office”—first digitally, then physically if your craft demands or needs it.
Before diving into how to launch your digital office, let’s go over CRAFT.
Craft is a higher form of art—one that requires dedicated years of training to study and master a skill.
INTERACTIVE QUESTIONS:
What is your craft? Are you a full master? Are you on your way? Are you a student of craft or art? But what is art?
Are you observing craft and learning as much as possible?
Don’t get stuck on the art question. Let others deal with what is art. Here, we know what craft is—it’s indisputable. Craft is years of practice, and the potential failures that have shaped you.
We might all be learning from each other on social media. Maybe that’s why we see the rise of behind-the-scenes content—doers and crafty people, artists in what they do, entertaining the masses with a catchphrase, a dance, a sketch, a skill, a sound, an adventure. So many different types of craft.
PART III -
The full experience to offer or consume has to do with the physical and digital merging together. When you read or consume enough sci-fi content, you understand that the physical world cannot survive without the digital.
physical + digital = full experience
Final formula if your launching anything today:
(in sync rhythms + tones + in chaos rhythms + mood)
I do believe that Office Mess can have a physical place open to the public one day. For now, it will be a digital space for curating, writing, and documenting—a lot of talking, in English and Spanish, why not, lets break the rules.
Born from the beautiful mess I tend to find myself in. Let me tell you a little story: after twelve years on Instagram with my still-favorite tag of all time, @luival, it was time for a change. I needed to refresh the game and how I posted online, after so many other attempts. It got boring.
Posting online, publishing, browsing on your phone—these have all morphed into our lives. Do we love it? I think we do. I feel the wave of so many different styles and forms that will dominate in an open world connected digitally. It’s just about to get really good, and existential.
So, in other words, you have to live and contribute however possible to the outside world as much as the digital one. Both are equally important.
We started building stronger foundations in the real world (d.o), to serve as a base for what we were going to create digitally later on. We finally arrived at a fresh new start when we moved to Colonia Escandon. Four years ago it was an even more well-guarded secret, so we were lucky to acquire a seat at the table—truly a mathematical blessing. The house that now serves as our first office and base for all our major clients and projects is coming up on its fourth year, functioning as our physical space to create, gather, live, work, and sleep. We found we had everything we needed in that house, but we’d have to become more crafty with everything—even budgets. What started as a necessity (being crafty) for our new lifestyle built out of one location also made us fall in love with craft and space management.
It wasn’t successful from day one, but now, as we enter our fourth year, I can stand stronger and more secure behind our methods, experiences, mistakes, and findings.
We’ve discovered new formats to achieve higher levels of creativity, productivity, and peace of mind. Not a formula to stop playing the game, but to play it differently.
Designed differently.
GTR (good, tasteful, & real)
Today on good:
Office Core win & new dimension by Paper Mag
Office Core - by Nasty Magazine
Need this Jacket -
Tasteful:
Learning is always tasteful ..
A Mexican creator to keep watch for 2025.
Fashion:
Real:
Hunter for the hottest
I hope you enjoyed this letter, diary, and curation.
See you at the office
- LUi.
What a great, well written, and thought through post. I enjoyed reading the entirety of it and how you crafted around your ideas and aspirations. Substack has always felt like home too. Inevitably, while I read your journey I see how you connect with the reader and prompt us to think about our own journey. It’s nice to read others going through the same paths and switching lanes while always staying true to ourselves. Superb read - leaving inspired!