Give me a blank canvas or a serious technical problem, and somehow a flower shows up. Whimsical thinking isn't the opposite of being bold—it's just my version of bold.
I can’t help but make things cute.
I’ve tried.
Give me a blank canvas, a serious idea, or some technical problem that’s supposed to look very serious, and somehow, somewhere in the process, a flower shows up. The colours become pastel. Something gets a little softer. Maybe there’s a tiny character that absolutely did not need to be there.
I don’t even plan it. I don’t look at something cool and think, “I should build that.” I look at it and think, “I want to make my own version of this. And it’s probably going to look nothing like yours.”
I’ve accepted that I’m one of those people.
Whimsical doesn’t mean less bold
I think there’s a certain idea of what “bold” is supposed to look like in tech.
Sharp. Minimal. Serious.
Clean grids. Black and white. Dashboards. Big numbers. Things that look like they have very important places to be.
Sometimes that’s exactly what something needs. But I think there’s another kind of bold that doesn’t get talked about as much.
Making something soft when everything around you is trying to look serious. Putting a little personality into something that could have been completely plain. Making something cute without worrying that someone will think you aren’t taking the problem seriously.
That’s also a choice.
Give a whimsical person a serious problem and, somehow, a flower will be involved by the end of it.
I know, because I’ve done it enough times.
I think this is why I like building things for feelings
I’ve started noticing that people who think like this tend to make things around imagination, memories, feelings, little rituals, and play.
Brainstorming tools. Mood boards. Memory keepers. Tiny things that don’t really “optimize” anything.
You end up building the thing you wish someone had made for you.
That’s basically what happened with one of my own projects.
I built a memory garden.
You post one photo a day, and slowly, it turns into a garden. Each month gets its own flower identity, so after a while you can actually see your days growing into something.
It’s soft. It’s slow. It doesn’t really do anything “productive.”
And that’s kind of the point.
It’s just there so ordinary days don’t disappear.
Not everyone is going to want that. Some people will look at a digital memory garden and go, “Okay… and?”
That’s fine.
I don’t think everything needs to be for everyone. Some ideas are meant to make sense to the person who was already looking for them.
I didn’t realise this was a kind of brain
There are apps I’ve used for years without ever thinking about why I liked them.
Locket is one of those.
It’s basically a little widget that puts a photo from someone you love right on your home screen. When I first used it, I just thought it was cute.
That’s it.
But now that I’ve spent time actually building things, I look at something like Locket differently. I can see the decision behind it.
They could have made another photo-sharing app. They could have made the obvious version.
Instead, they made this tiny thing that feels like someone you love just sent you a little gift.
That kind of thing doesn't happen by accident.
Someone had to look at the obvious version and think, “Hmm. What if we made this a little more human?”
That’s a very specific kind of brain.
And I think I have it too.
I used to think that part of me was something I would eventually grow out of. Like once I got more serious about tech, I would stop making everything look a little too cute.
Apparently not.
Maybe I don’t want to grow out of it
The more I build, the more I realise that not everyone sees things this way.
Give ten people the same problem and they’ll probably come up with ten different solutions. But somewhere in there, most of them will still make the functional thing.
The thing that works. The thing that makes sense.
And then there are a few people who can’t leave it alone.
They’ll add the little thing. Change the colour. Make the interaction slightly nicer. Put a flower somewhere for absolutely no reason.
And somehow, that’s the part you remember.
I don’t think whimsical thinking is the opposite of being bold.
I think it’s just my version of bold.
I like serious ideas. I like building things. I like solving real problems.
I just apparently can’t do any of that without sneaking a little softness into it.
And then?
I don’t think I want to.
If you also sneak flowers into serious problems, I’d love to hear what you’ve built.