Hey Reader,

If you pay close attention, the world around you offers a master class in just about everything. One of my favorite classrooms? The bookstore. Just wandering the aisles, scanning shelves, and soaking in the details can teach you more than you’d expect.

This week, I’m diving into how a simple trip to the bookstore can sharpen your marketing instincts. From cover design to title choices, every book is a case study in standing out in a crowded marketplace. Next time you’re in a bookstore, don’t just look inside the books—observe the outside too. There’s a wealth of insight waiting to be applied to your own brand strategy.

Keep creating,

Maria

What a Bookstore Can Teach You About Great Marketing

A bookstore is more than a place for stories—it’s a masterclass in marketing. Every cover, title, and design choice is crafted to capture attention in a crowded space. In this article, we explore how these subtle strategies can inspire your own branding and marketing approach.

CODING

Google Cloud APIs

So many tasks and issues can be solved with code. I've been working on one such solution where a client can update their content via a Google Sheet, and this data is fed into an HTML web page using an API (which is a way for different apps to talk to each other, like a telephone line).

To get my Google Sheet to talk to my HTML page I had to create the API connection using a service called Google Cloud API. I'm not going to lie, I didn't have much knowledge about how to navigate this process, but with determination I figured it out. Now the client can easily update specific content without having to deal with the more complicated aspects of website editing.

This day-long process taught me that if you really want to learn something and solve a problem, you can absolutely figure it out. So keep at that coding!

Want to learn how I did this project? Reply to this email and let me know if it's of interest to you. I'm thinking about doing a video about it.

notion.so

Notion Mail

I've never been a fan of the Gmail interface, and it hasn't changed in all these years. It works, but it's clunky. I favor minimal UI design and clean dashboards. Because I'm a hardcore fan of the workspace tool called Notion, I was excited to learn they developed their own email platform, Notion Mail. I just fully switched over to this app, and I don't think I'll go back to the Gmail interface again.

Notion Mail is clean and provides beneficial features such as better labeling and the creation of filter views. It also provides unique content blocks for use in your messages and the ability to easily share your schedule availability.

I've never been so organized with my email, and I'm so excited to feel in better control of my inbox.

Curious about prompts I’ve used lately? Here are my recent AI use cases:

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AI Prompts:

• Remind me, how do I create variables for storing my color values in a vanilla CSS file?
• What is the image size for Facebook event covers?
• How do I make my page in landscape orientation in Apple Pages?

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"Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style."​
​Massimo Vignelli

Want to learn something specific?

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