As I look back on this strange and joyful year, I keep returning to a conversation I had very recently with Juli Gudehus, a leading expert in visual design based in Berlin. Juli and I realised that we have been travelling in parallel for years, both of us independently exploring how visuals combine to express complex messages, how grammars inevitably and organically emerge and how even diacritics find their place in visual systems. Without knowing it, we had each been moving through Europe, taking photographs - as good design geeks always should - of instances of visual communication. Only recently did we discover how uncanny the overlap really was. Juli posted images from Clermont-Ferrand and Zürich that I recognised immediately, because I had also taken photos of them a matter of weeks before. Spooky, yes, but pretty amazing. It felt as though we had been walking parallel paths and had finally, perhaps inevitably, met.

Juli kindly invited me to help with her Tuqtuli initiative, which I consider a privilege. As we spoke about our finding each other, I told her it felt like “Schicksal”. I was only just showing off my German, trying to make “fate” sound as deeply resonant as Goethe intended. She gently corrected me and said it was more like “Fügung”, meaning something like “chance” or “providence”. And when you put the two words together – Fügung des Schicksals – it becomes “a quirk of fate”, “a twist of fate”. It is apt for what I am trying to describe here.

It wasn’t until I looked Juli up online just now while drafting this little article that I realised that she is a proper, bona fide famous artist. That makes being involved in her work even more of a privilege. It adds another layer to how joyfully weird 2025 has been.

This has also been a year of meeting extraordinary people where Fügung absolutely applies. First among them is Nur Ferrante Morales, herself an accomplished artist, poet, writer, mystic. She is also – and I speak with the authority of discernment and experience – a world-leading expert in linguistic validation. She designs and teaches courses that have no equal, anywhere. I’ve written before that I was very wary of her initially; I saw her as a threat. But, instead, we became woven into the fabric of each other’s work: Nur joining GRC and me being invited into her Art of Diversity world. This is a world of teaching, of building and edifying people, writing and publishing. It has been exhilarating, and I am deeply grateful. Rather than Fügung or Schicksal, this feels more like Maktub, pre-destined, already written.

Then there are Kathrin Kunze and Keith Berelowitz, who remind me why I am in the area of research with patients and health communication. I hope they never lose their fire. Natalie Nedkova and her uncanny ability to connect with people. She has become a great support and friend, as I hope I have to her. Dr. Amy Dara Hochberg and the podcast that we did in the autumn was truly inspirational. I am also inspired by the 80-strong community of experts in Nur’s Art of Diversity and Linguistic Validation Café. There are too many to mention and I will decline to highlight some and not the others, as there would surely be a riot.

And what can I say about Jason Martin and the team at Cliniphai? All of them are hugely accomplished individuals and, once again, it is a privilege to be associated with them.

At GRC, we never really publicise our projects. Maybe we should but now is not the place to start. But I will say this: I treasure every member of my team: Alejandra Contreras, Diana Rodríguez, Leticia Daniels, Faiza Semai, Anna Liza VanDerWee. We are bound by empathy, respect, community and love. How many companies can sincerely say this?

I am thankful to every client that we have and grateful for the lessons learned from past ones too.

This year’s blessings extend even further: presenting to the eCOA Consortium; being invited to speak at Professor Rob Wilson’s TRIPS 25 conference at Manchester Met; ongoing inspiration, encouragement and support from Dr. Neil Jenkings, Dr. Al Reid and Dmytro Andriychenko and, of course, my family.

There were kind words from Darren Clayson and Clio Schils, each saying the right thing when I really needed to hear it.

I have also rekindled old relationships, also by way of Fügung: Dr. Karel van der Waarde’s invitation to join, and now sponsor, the IIID organisation; joining a steering group at Parkinson’s Europe and through that getting to know the polymath Nicole Thorpe (definitely Fügung) and a remarkable day in Boston recently with the world-leading health literacy expert Helen Osborne.

If this year has taught me anything, it is that life is shaped by countless small quirks and twists and happenstances that push us closer to the people and work that matter, and closer to the person we aspire to become. And 2025 has been full of them. I feel thankful and blessed. I sincerely hope 2026 brings us more nice little twists of fate like this.

Thank you for reading,

Mark Gibson

Leeds, United Kingdom, December 2025