Tempo, not Intensity

Four flights down in a former abattoir in London, you'll feel the bassline before you hear it.

Fabric gets everyone. Music nerds who can name the vinyl pressing plant. Hardcore ravers sweating through their third shirt. Random tourists who wandered in on a whim. People from Sao Paulo and Southwark, Tottenham and Tbilisi.

Craig Richards has been resident DJ at Fabric since opening night. Nearly 1,000 sets in that single booth. He can play the warm-up before the headliner arrives. Take the peak slot when the room's at full tilt. Or keep people there until 8am.

When he talks about his craft, this little quote jumped out at me:

“ [It’s about] knowing the intensity of the tunes you're playing - not the tempo, not the beat-matching, just the intensity”

Most DJs follow the formula. Start at 120 BPM, build to 130, pull back, push harder. Speed equals energy.

But Craig does something different. He layers. A slow track can punch you in the chest. Something minimal can be overwhelming. Something fast can feel weightless.

Intensity isn't speed. It's depth. It's texture.

You probably know what I mean - have a look through your Spotify selection.

This applies to anything you design (and yes, you are a designer).

So what does intensity actually look like?

It's the moment in a workshop where you stop talking and give people two minutes of silence to think. That's not slow - that's intense.

It's the presentation where you show one image and let it sit there for ten seconds before you say anything. Not faster - more intense.

It's the meeting where instead of cramming in five topics, you go deep on one thing that actually matters. Fewer items, higher stakes.

Intensity is contrast. It's the shift that makes people sit up. The thing you subtract that makes everything else hit harder.

We usually do the opposite. A meeting loses energy, so we speed through the agenda. A workshop feels flat, so we add another breakout. A presentation drags, so we talk faster.

More tempo. Less intensity.

Next time you're designing something - a workshop, a meeting, a presentation - ask yourself:

Am I just increasing the tempo, or am I actually building intensity?

There's a difference.

And once you feel it, you can't unhear it.