A circle is round, it has no end.
I have been reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This book is seriously so good 10/10 highly recommend. I found it really profound the way she brings everything in life back to nature, sharing everything we can learn from it. The book is a series of stories that reflect Indigenous teachings like reciprocity, gratitude, the moral life of plants, human connection to the earth, etc. But the one thing that really got me for some reason was her emphasis on circles and circular philosophies.
There is a chapter where Kimmerer is building a traditional wigwam with her students and she stops to ask them why it is round. Her answer starts practical, explaining that a sphere gives you the most volume for the least material, the shape sheds rain and supports snow, it holds heat, and it gives the wind nothing to catch.
But then she keeps going past the functional elements, explaining that there is a cultural meaning to living inside a circle. Most living things live and grow inside nests, dens, burrows, eggs…And the first place any of us lived was a womb. A circle is the most natural shape for us to live in, but almost none of us live in round spaces anymore.
So all this really had me reflecting on circular shapes that build our world. Our round planet, round orbit of the sun, round seasons, round bellies, everything returning to the same form.
Circles in Design
Funny to look into circular design, as it is like the most basic idea and human shape. But I think it’s a good reminder. A circle signals safety, flow, importance, reverence, wholeness, energy, the cosmos.
Form follows feeling, and we as designers can utilize this form to evoke endless feelings.
Time is a circle.
The other circular concept I keep going back to is time. I was always taught to see history as a single line, but again, in Braiding Sweetgrass Kimmerer shared a new perspective. She explained that her people understood time as a circle.
She explains that modern people see time as a river, moving one direction, out to the sea.
However, her Native American ancestors saw time as a circle instead. It is not the river but the sea itself. With tides that leave and come back around again.
On a straight timeline the past is just history, but when you see time as a circle, the same events are history and prophecy. What was will be again and there are lessons in the history.
In nature we see time shown in a circle. The rings on a tree stump, a drop of water rippling in a pond, it makes so much sense to visualize time this way.
.I am not a philosopher, but you know when you read something and then you cannot stop seeing it?
I am trying to stop treating the calendar like a line I am falling behind on, instead reminding myself that everything comes back around. If you think you missed out, it’s okay. It is all just further around the circle. Seeing it in the patterns of how we live, how we repeat trends, and how we repeat history. Everything comes back around.
Polka dots
I want to bring this all the way back down to earth. Polka dots!
A key trend for 2026, I have been seeing them on dresses, ceramics, packaging, really everywhere. Polka dots are a cute little proof of everything above. They came around in the 1920s, again in the 1950s, 1980s, and again with Y2K, and here they are again this summer. It is a circle, coming back around on a circle. How cute.
I grew up in Girl Scouts and we sang a song at the end of every meeting.
The circle is round, it has no end. That’s how long I want to be your friend.
