Conversations from the Lighthouse is now Light House! It is with so much excitement and pride that I introduce you to this new-and-improved space.
After I announced a summer hiatus, the process for redesigning this space came completely out-of-the-blue and grew rather organically. I knew I’d wanted to give myself ample time to think about the content vision I had for CFTL; I had no idea it would lead to a complete overhaul of the newsletter—name, design, and all—in less than a month. Needless to say, I am thrilled with where we’ve ended up, so I wanted to provide a deeper dive into the new direction. Let’s take a look inside my brain, shall we?
❈ Note: This letter is a lengthy one. To ensure you receive all the included information, be sure to read it in the Substack app or online.
What You Can Expect
You’ve seen how the new Light House looks, but what will the evolution mean from a content perspective? I don’t want to lock myself into a structure that will make me feel prisoner to my own creativity. As a Generator in Human Design, I’m trying to honor my strategy by responding to what lights me up. That said, I definitely have (lots of!) ideas for the space, so here are some things you can expect to see as we roll out this new iteration:
Weekly Posts: That’s right! We are sticking to our weekly schedule. I’m fired up about all this could be, so might there be an added post or two a week? 👀Probably. But at minimum, you can expect one letter every week to arrive in your inbox.
Lots of lifestyle content: It is true that I am a deep individual. I tend to grow antsy with topical conversations around the weather. It is also true that I like pretty things and good sh*t. With the launch of CFTL, we got a lot of the former. With Light House you can expect that ratio to be much more balanced. Yes that means fashion 👗, beauty 💄, home decor 🏡, food 🫒, drinks 🧋, FRAGRANCE (no emoji for that yet), books 📚, movies 🎬, TV 📺, and anything and everything else my heart desires. 🦄 This will be the go-to place for everything I am loving, thinking you will love, or needing to shout from the rooftops about. Everything else (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) will merely be an extension of this hub. So as subscribers, you will get first looks (an eventually exclusive access) to it all.
Heartfelt essays: This wouldn’t be my newsletter if I didn’t get personal about at least a few things in my life, which means essays are staying. However, they will be far less frequent to allow me the space and time to write what feels truest and most aligned. Because many of these essays touch on very personal topic matter, a lot of them will be offered exclusively to paying subscribers down the line.
The Origin
"I started Conversations from the Lighthouse as a safe haven, a place I could express myself without the strict or suffocating confines of other peoples’ expectations, real or imagined.” — “Be Back Real Soon!” published on May 24, 2023
Aside from needing to come up for air, I wanted to step away from the weekly cadence of this newsletter for a couple of very specific reasons:
a) What started as a hideaway for my deepest and truest thoughts transformed into a space where I could finally show up 100% myself. Even though sharing my deepest, often ugliest, innermost dialogue was cathartic and necessary at the beginning of CFTL, I also knew I had so much more to share with you (which was why I started to reincorporate mainstays like “TT’s Top Three” into the content rotation again). As I continue to progress and evolve, I want this space to house all aspects of me: the sparkly, the ugly, and the profound. The container needed a quick tune-up to be able to do that!
b) What I had built before was an extension of TGC. I’m not for one second saying that TGC isn’t as much me as anything else I create, but there was definitely a time when I thought everything had to make perfect sense. I believed if I was to brand build, it needed to be from a place of cohesion. The deeper I got into my letters, the more I realized that while there is overlap between TGC + Light House, they are their own entities entirely. TGC was built to help others bring their dreams + visions to life, the latter is for me to bring my dreams and visions to life. Both, however, are founded on the belief that we each have everything we need inside of us to make that happen and that message is the core of all I do and create.
c) The more I found my way back home to myself, the more I realized the structures I had used as a level of protection needed to come down. We are ever-evolving, always dynamic human beings. I am learning to come back to myself every single day and with that growth comes the need to stretch and expand the spaces that house my creativity, too. I simply needed to breath new life into what I was intuiting this place would become. I needed to give it a chance to grow around me instead of hiding behind all of my polished, protective layers I had put into place previously.
The Name
So why Light House? If you’ve been reading my letters for a while, you’ll know when I close my eyes and quiet the noise of the outside world, I visualize a sturdy light house squarely planted on the bank of a dark shore. This is a vision that has come to me since I was little when I didn’t have adequate language for what it meant. But the more I sit with it, the more I feel connected to its symbolism. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to believe that my life exists very much in rhythm with the image of the light house. When I shine my inner light as fiercely and truthfully as possible, I have the chance of guiding other people to their light too. That alone is an immeasurable gift.
Light House is a space to have reverence for all the things (be it people, conversations, items in our digital shopping carts, places, et al) that light us up, the ones that make us feel a flutter deep in our bones, independent of if others see it too. Like signals across dark water, we send out tiny flashes that lead us home to ourselves. And when we are at home within ourselves we can then move forward to create a brighter world. This meant dropping “Conversations” because the essence of which I speak transcends dialogue. It is found in the heart of everything, if we really look.
The Design
I would be remiss if I didn’t take at least a beat of time to visually showcase how TGC became Conversations from the Lighthouse and now Light House because the truth is that they’re all connected, each one integral to the unfolding of the story.
The Asterisk Evolved ⊹
The asterisk has always been a representation of light, which is why it is so prevalent in TGC’s branding and my own personal identity, too. Despite intimately knowing a lot of darkness and pain (as we all do), I have always been an avid seeker of the light. Thus, I knew the asterisk had to stay.
When ideating the redesign, I came across this postcard from designer Lou Benesch and felt strongly that the new iteration had to include some element of the Red Beast (a reminder that our inner flame, however wild, will always be a sacred part of us to honor). I ended up hand-drawing so many different iterations of this merger on my iPad, each one imperfect and nuanced in its own way. Once I had created them, I certainly had a favorite, one that captured the essence of the two ideas beautifully, which is the main asterisk you see atop the “i” in the new logo, but I also kept all the other variations too, a reminder of all the versions it takes to make one who they are.
༻Doodles + Notes༺
I’ve always loved the idea of incorporating something hand-drawn and personal into my digital designs, I just never believed I was good enough to pull it off. I started playing around in the “TT’s Top Three” collages and really loved that it felt like passing a note to a friend on something the needed to know about. I’ve always processed and alchemized information through writing, so it just made sense to keep that as a strong design decision in this version of the newsletter. I want you to feel like this is a digital scrapbook of sorts, from my heart and mind directly to yours, no matter how imperfect it may be. We’re not trying to be fancy, just ourselves.
Color
I’ve tried to be the girl who sticks to neutrals, but the truth of the matter is there are just too many colors and things I find beautiful in this world to limit myself so much. I knew red was going to be the primary color in the rebrand (another nod to the Red Beast). In fact, I evolved the original dark orange from TGC’s branding and intensified the saturation for a color that felt more enigmatic of all that life force energy we’re attempting to capture and share. Past that, I didn’t want to limit myself to anything. There’s lots of classic black and white, but enough space for the whimsey found along the way too. Who knows how this will continue to evolve down the line, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?
What Can You Do To Support?
There was a time when I would have never included a section like this, but here’s the deal: I love doing this newsletter. It is one piece of something that I would like to make a mainstay in my career. But just because I love something, does not mean that I should not be compensated or supported for doing said thing. If you find value from this newsletter at all, here are a couple of things you can do to help me continue to be able to produce these letters:
Pledge your support: I will be incorporating a paywall for this newsletter sometime in the second half of 2023 for all the reasons I mentioned earlier and then some. In the meantime, if you like receiving these letters to your inbox and want to support my writing, you can pledge to be a paid subscriber when that day arrives. Read more about pledges here. You can pledge by using the “pledge your support” button in the footer of this email.
Like, comment, and share the letters: Clicking the little ♡ at the top of the letter takes virtually .001 seconds. It might seem like a small act, but helps me in two very specific ways: a) it lets me know what you’re resonating with and want to see more of and b) it helps with my credibility and exposure. If you found even one sliver of a letter from Light House worthwhile, consider hitting the like (♡) button. And PLEASE, for the love of all things good, shoot me a comment every once and a while. I want this space to be a two-way street, and it can’t be if I feel I’m just shouting into the void.
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So exciting Tiana! Love your newsletters so much, so happy they weren't gone for too long:)
So amazing! The expansive growth is palpable! I love the intention and vulnerability of (formerly) “Conversations from the Lighthouse” so the news that there’s more to come in literally every facet is so so exciting!