River Factory office signs. Signage modules with G. Icons from a project with KV. Typeset in Söhne from KLIM. The walls need a coat of paint.

Was on a ladder from 8 on Monday pasting these up. Very last minute rush. I made a copypasta in Kannada, nobody proofread, and that messed up some signs. The supplier messed up finishing and missed (perhaps unintentionally) the matte lamination layer. All this for some nothing. I really liked the picture of the two floating room signs.

Zfc, Auto, 1/100, F6.3, ISO3200

Zfc, Auto, 1/125, F6.3, ISO1250

Update: M points out that Jhelum should start with ‘jha’ and not just ‘ja.’ Thank you.

Last week, our noname snap-off cutter broke. I tried prying its locking mechanism open to see what it was that’d stopped working. After a bunch of misguided bruteforce attempts, I remembered patience and coconut oil. It took a while to pull the parts apart and pull the stuck blade back in, yet the disassembly did not offer any clues to fixing what was clearly broken. The mechanism inside most retractable blade cutters is a simple folded piece of metal that works like a spring (when it does) and keeps the blade from sliding in when it isn’t meant to be. The one inside this noname sample looked rusty; a shadow of its former flexible self. After a few futile attempts at revival I gave up and started looking for the easy way out via the epitome of twentyfirstcentury fixes to almost everything: one-day-express-delivery.

The Stanley 0-10-018 arrived today as I was helping wrangle some text into shape (and cracking some too many lame jokes over G-Meet) for River’s Copy Guidelines. Thus it took another five hours before I tore into the packet and this beauty presented itself. (Ru had come to visit for this was Holi-eve. We drove her home since Uber had other plans.) The Stanley opens unlike most cutters (that I have had the misfortune of acquantance-ing) into two halves as you loosen the yellow turnkey. The two halves grip the blade in a vice-like strong hold when in use. When not in use, the closed halves make sure the blade doesn’t accidentally slide out on its own. Each part has lovely detail. The metal feels substantial against your palm in a way that ‘industrial’ products only can. (I’m reminded of the Peacock Teal Green Classic 500 from ten years ago. The metallic flakes in the paint perhaps helps.)

The thing itself is chefskiss-well-built but what caught all my attention was the namesake packaging all of this was holding on to. The cutter holds—showing off its formfollowingfunction—the die-cut piece of plastic between its (the cutter’s not the plastic-piece’s) heavy metal halves, with a tiny blade-drawing sticking out with its tongue firmly in its cheek. This was delightful to look at, made even better by the almost absurd volume-contrast between the content-slash-object and its ‘container.’ To top the cherry, the only way one could take out this piece of ‘packaging’ was by unscrewing the two halves and pulling, teaching one most of the ‘how-to’ in the process. That, in my corner of Tabebuia-carpeted Bengaluru, is what we call brilliance. The piece of paper/plastic itself is well-crafted. The material choice (neither paper, nor glossy plastic), the illustration (all-business, no frills), and the copy (all information, no discombobulation), and even the subtly round-cornered die-cuts; everything—everthing—works well together to make you happy.

I’ve had an Olfa Circle Cutter since Paldi. I’d accidentally got smitten at Roopkala one day and eventually cut a lot of circles out of foam board for multiple exhibitions I was freelancing for. (I had no idea circle cutters existed. I had no reference for how much they cost.) We recently ‘invested’ in an Olfa cutting mat via Goodwill Enterprises. I have slowly come to see value in spending time and effort on well-built (and in this case, well packaged as well) everyday tools. I realise it was always money—and the lack of it most of the time—that delayed this realisation.

That conveniently, bitter-sweet-ly, brings me to March of 2014. We started working out of #6BCB eleven years ago. KL11 is eleven this month. I managed to print some basic T-shirts from Decathlon a couple of weeks ago and been cycling through the colours everyday. (To the understandable annoyance of R who got me a tasteful thrift-stored MUJI coord set via Janpath last week.) The brand team at River surprised us with a layercake today. As usual, we (M and I) were caught somewhat lost in the moment and the photo-slash-video-graphic evidence is telling. That too (not our lack of obvious reaction, but their gesture), made me happy today, among other things/people.

Grateful, etcetera.

After an unusually long wait and umpteen phone calls, the GAS67 arrived yesterday while I was out paying someone to wash Podimol. The budget-ness shows in its material choices but I say that only because the K2V2 seems slightly better built; not because I know what impeccable aerospace grade plastic on a keyboard flexes like.

In the picture are the BinePad BNK9 with all kinds of switches thrown in and to the right is the well-loved Logi Lift. (You can tell by the oilspill on its side.) I’m never going back to regular mice as long as I can.

The switches are mostly red (Gaterons), peach (Akkos), and black (also Gaterons). it is nice (in a way that surprises me everytime I type on it) and soft and silent. I am making typing mistakes more often though. I think the XDA profile caps are a little too flat to give you any tactile feedback on which row you’re on. (Or I believe that is what is happening.) They look nice though.

The 67 key layout has its problems, too. The K2V2 is 75% and has all the necessary keys for work. The Tilde on the GAS67 here is all the way to the other end on the top right and switching between files isn’t that easy anymore. I believe the multicolour Apple makes up for that inconvenience in style points.

There are no media keys so I’ve Karabiner-ed the PgUp and PgDn keys to work as media buttons (and a Complex Modification to convert them to volume keys on Shift-modifying). It will get better with time, I hope. The function key is still hardware-bound and doesn’t show up in the Karabiner-EventViewer. Will need to figure out something, or use CIY’s keyboard tool on a PC to switch that out to report some other keystroke.

This was my first time assembling a keyboard, so bent a couple of pins on a couple of switches. Most I’ve bent back since. I am guessing that won’t affect stuff in the long run as long as I don’t keep switching them around. (Laughs at own joke.)

I haven’t used this for work work yet. Not sure if going back to blue switches is something I’ll decide on yet. I miss the clickiness of them switches, though. The feedback was nice to have. These are creamy and feel effortless but that maybe why there are more spelling mistakes now than before. Like B said, I don’t usually have buyer’s remorse even in the face of light evidence.

Poppy’s hair has already found its way onto the board. I guess that means she’s accepted into the family now.

2024 was a good-ish year. Can’t complain.

In December (right before Christmas) we brought Poppy (on the name, footnote) home from a shelter near Bannerghatta. She started at a ’year old’ and now we know—from teeth-based evidence—is a malnourished one and a half year old. She was perpetually hungry and it broke our hearts to see that. She’s up for food anytime even now, but knows there will be enough and on time and is calmer in general around things we eat. At night the bed isn’t enough anymore and on winter nights we don’t complain.

Now there is just enough floor between all the fur to build a third puppy or evenly distribute over everything in the wardrobe. We prefer the first but settle for the wardrobe thing.

The one in the air in a blur is Poppy. She’s lighter and easier to lift but goes bonkers after exactly three seconds in the air. Chellam with her Bauhaussey collar isn’t as amused by the whole setup as I am.

We (KL11 and recently R) had a fulfilling year at work. We made a ‘corporate’ book about people at River. Will post some pictures later. R took soul-filling photos of people working at the factory. (Everybody smiled.) I went to some ‘events’ and was miserable after. I went to some other ‘events’ and wanted to go to more, after.


I’ve realised work isn’t the focus this year. Not the kind that brings in money, anyway. I’ve decided to work from home more often.

The year was an absolute disaster for reading. I started more books and finished few. Much fewer than usual. It isn’t that I’m older and okay-er with not finishing books; just that I was too distracted to see things through. I’ll replace the void left by two underwhelming Kindles with a Kobo, once I get through the five books on the proverbial nightstand. (Suggestions welcome on which one to spring for. I’m more interested in the more pocketable/pocket-friendly Clara.) There is a thread on Threads from Kobo’s CEO that sold me on the company and a bunch of podcasts later, the feelings hold true-r. (There are a new set of podcasts I’m listening to, mostly while cleaning the house and its utensils, and sometimes when waiting for snoring to set in. Will share a list too.)

R is home alone with the kids most days and that is not okay. So I’m testing alternate WFH days and fifty-fifty days till we find a solution.

I am cycling more. (Or at all, finally.) Driving to work always reminded me of that tiffin-box frame from Sarnath Banerjee’s Harappa Tales (there is a single-person sitting in a disproportionately huge SUV with a single tiffin box in the rearview mirror) and it is getting increasingly difficult to find parking spots for Podimol at the HQ anyway. The other day, I’d diagonally parked outside, between the drain, an excuse for a garden, and a silver-grey KIA. The misalignment drove me angry till other unimportant store-construction measurement fiascos took over that duty for the day. I’ve got some band-less toe-cages and UV-shielded sleeves off Decathlon and have upgraded to the ultimate cycle-riding fashion statement with Sandals+Socks per Rivendell. And there is now a long overdue bar-bag on the handlebar that has fundamentally changed the way I worry about losing phones/earphones from pant-pockets, forever. I think I waited too long trying to justify another Ortleib only to fail and wisen up. The ride is a fifteen minutes thing (sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on how well the little traffic near Nallurhalli Metro behaves). It is pleasant-adjacent especially this time of the year, and I hope more riding will make it more pleasant in the summery months. In the interest of worklifebalance, I’m trying to ride as light as possible, but packing light isn’t always feeling right.

Last year I wasted a whole bunch of time doomscrolling OTT platforms. This year I’ve added TV+ to the list in hopes of getting rid of everything else. I know; logic, etcetera.

There are new input devices on the way. I threw some money at a GAS67 barebones and a Kensington Orbit WL. Can’t wait to build the keyboard and see how a static mouse feels. Then I’ll write a series of posts on all the slightly weird input devices I love. (Input tools [including the ink and paper variety] decide and often define how unique one’s work is and I want to experiment and not feel old.)

Speaking of age. I also want to cook (and eat) better. Numbers from a recent blood-test was a great reality-check and one of the ways to deal with those numbers seem to be eating well. We got an Instant AirFryer and instant air fry a whole bunch of things now. The coconut oil can is sleeping in a corner. Like all great cooks, R doesn’t like me in the kitchen when she’s in the zone. I believe I also want to feel what that feels like (being in the zone, not the being out of the zone) and be more present like her.

This was the year I invited more people home than ever. (I don’t say ‘we’ because R has always had great friends.) And I see why that is a good thing. More this year.

On the name: Poppy is spelt that way to avoid copyright fights with the umbrella manufacturer. And she reminds me of a Poppy pod. Apparently she was just the generic ‘puppy’ as she was being rescued from a miserable place, and the name stuck and morphed into Poppy. She responds to most words that end in a ‘ppee’ now but we figured we’ll keep the name and help erase everything else about her past eventually. Fingers firmly crossed for that.

There is something about the kitchen that invites intimacy. I suppose kitchens are a space for intimacy because I will touch with my hands the things that will go in your mouth; I will taste what you taste; I will work for you, or you will work for me. I will make this for you because I love you, because you need it, because you want it.

— Ella Risbridger, Cupboard Love

R makes soul-filling food even when she’s not trying. This passage made me so happy I had to interrupt her cooking (which is a big NO otherwise; she has a zone she gets into, cooking) and make her read.

It is incredible, almost absurdly so (and a cliched thing to bring up), how the simplest of dishes take on levels of delicacy that should be illegal, when gifted people cook. The other month I was having some curdy salad she’d packed for lunch and was certain there was something extralong about the ingredient list till I was told—later—that there wasn’t.

The passage is from an anthology-type book I found at Champaca some weeks ago, called In the Kitchen. The book has some slow-cooking writing. R and I are making our own cookbook. (It is mostly her; I’m picking stock and working layouts.) By next year. Fingers firmly crossed.

This is R outside Jaswant Thada, Jodhpur. That (teaching) trip was a lifesaver. More on that later.

The L-grip that came with my camera has a 1/4"-20 tripod-thread on the side, for convenient vertical videography. A large percentage of the stuff (images and videos) the media team at River creates, are 1080×1920 versions of whatever they would have made otherwise. Looks like the world has moved on from appreciating landscapes to indulging portraits on screens full time.

I also realise—with not a small amount of concern—that it is only a matter of access (neither choice, nor philosophical or otherwise stance) before the floodgates of narcissism-slash-comparison bursts in to drown out our lives. (We recently got a KL11-phone to look at messages sent via WhatsApp groups. The phone has KL11’s Instagram account signed in.)

The lack of room for peripheral vision feels worse than blinding.

PS: I was reading NickAsbury’s latest ThoughtsOnWriting column discussing billboards (public advertisement). We make a lot of billboards (sometimes lovingly called ‘hoardings’ in emails that forget to turn on the doublespeak) to sell the Indie to unsuspecting victims of traffic and shopping. The ones that S and H work on are beautiful, well-made, fun even. The ones that I used to make were pages from books disguised in cloth-flex. I am used to pointing out how in most cities, the bill-board-ed folks are the only people smiling at you. The point is that we contribute to the clutter and the incessant nudging and the noise that one cannot turn off. Wondering what my penance could be.

I asked R to photograph some print samples for a thing I’m doing. Then it was a low-ish moment of recognising how the world has moved on from one-frame compositions to everything-moving compositions as a way to showcase work. I was looking at type contract, expand, and move in splines around 3D rendered figurines over fields of Fuchsia and IK Blue. I asked R if I have gotten too old, too dated for what is considered nice work today in the field. It was a moment of self-doubt that I’m not too used to sharing. As she recalls (correctly) I’m (was) fairly arrogant when it came to work in general, and detail in particular. So, this was new and uncomfortable. I was looking at all the recent stuff I’ve made and the tools I’ve made those with, and realising that the scope has shrunk from when the foundation studio wasn’t a distant memory coated in LGBs and pencildust. The scope has shrunk, and the fun has too, perhaps. I don’t know whom to blame. I don’t think I hate the daily stuff I work on, even when it is largely insignificant and ad-hoc and automated and plain. I find joy in figuring out small things for small ends. I obsess over details perhaps as a way to establish a misguided sense of control and purpose. I don’t read as much as I used to. I don’t actively listen to music the way I used to. I can’t remember the last time I rode the bicycle not to work or to run an errand.

We had a lovely dinner today, with H and a bunch of experimentally coloured cats for company. We ordered a lot of stuff because all of it was lovely. The place was not quiet but well furniture-d and open. We spoke about many things and books and people and places. I went down my go-to rabbit holes about significant teachers etcetera. (On that note, the faculty page at IIT-J’s Design School has a link to a Google Form. It has these two sentences. “Some teachers can have a lasting impression on us. They can inspire us with their thoughts, their stories, their respect and care for us, or some such action…” and “What did you like about them? How did they inspire you? What was special about them? How were they different from other teachers? Did they only teach or did they become friends?” I think that is an awesome way to find people. I was looking at the website after sharing this year’s material- and reading lists for the TDM course. The folks there—Ga and Pr in particular—have managed to do an excellent job of planning stuff, again. In contrast, I received a call on Friday from one of the NIDs for a BGD course early next month. Facepalm indeed.)

I’ve put an alarmingly short list of tools together. There is little variety. The list used to be much more eclectic and fun, especially in the software department. Now it is an apple orchard with few interesting species in between. I’m not sure if it is a sign of things stabilising over time or a sign of too much overtime.

Made this ‘illustration’ [1] for Aruma’s second-floor grooming station windows+doors. The white bits (that spray-bottle, the standing dog’s legs, all white parts of gradients, speech bubbles, general bubbles, etcetera) are transparent and the other bits are translucent (frosty) for eager pet-parents to take peeks at their (our) kids getting their spa on. There is a photo of yourstruly bent over and eyeing a young Chellam somewhere on R’s phone.

My opinion is greatly biased and they’re the first (and sometimes only) place I trust with Chellam (and before her, with Kalyani). Chelgato had an uncharacteristic seizure (tests couldn’t say anything beyond ‘normal’) a couple of weeks ago and we are a bit worried. She’s been her usual complicated happy self since—is the report from home.

Said illustration. The grey bits are grey ACP walls.

And this below is on the ground floor windows. The left side houses a pet-supply store section so sunlight wasn’t welcome. Then, everyone got bigger heads. The right side is a waiting lounge and there is a decent amount of exposed glass there. I shamelessly repurposed stuff. This was ‘work-for-a-friend’ so no green pieces of paper changed hands. There was a huge bucket of fancy shampoo involved though. (We’re sorted for another two years I guess.)

These are all—obviously—based on simple geometric shapes and an unhealthy amount of gradientry. If one clicked on that link in the first paragraph, one would also see that the symbol—unoriginal, but drawn ‘well’ by yourstruly—drove most of those decisions and not laziness. One can argue laziness drove some of the decisions when it came to the symbol, but that is somebody else’s beef. What I really loved doing was giving some of these playful poses, and—R says—obviously, drawing those wavy lines for the showerhead and hair dryer. There is a lot of copypasta that is too late to apologise for.

1: I say ‘illustration’ and ‘well’ in quotes not because I am not good at them. Make whatever of that statement, etcetera. That ‘well’ is also what I tell myself; to sleep fairly well without all the waking up worrying that I most certainly did eff something up somewhere. Just saw these files looking for door-stickers to River Stores (that now get updated, longer working hours like the rest of the country; hello, union budget!), and now my filing system needs some spring cleaning. See? I have bigger problems of ‘being good at’ to deal with. Recently, Ma at the HQ gave much wisdom in simple terms: no fire, nobody is hurt, Ar is not in jail, we’re good. That was such good life advise that I’m going to ignore and panic instead.

The List is a Paragraph That Stood in Front of a Mirror

Lists are one of my favourite things to typeset. I love how they are a near-perfect stage set for all the fundamental form- and type-related gymnastics in service of clarity and brevity. They are also so easy to mess up with the tiniest amount of extra paragraph indents or the wrong choice of bullets. The ‘risk’ thus involved is quite rewarding. I’ve also come to judge people (design people, not general people so much) by the lists they design. I find it easier to tell if someone is an excellent graphic designer looking at the way ‘bullets’ in their lists are indented, than by looking at tastefully rendered simulations of loremipsummed app screens.[1] Yes, I am fun at parties I don’t attend. Moving on.

What Lists Do

At the text level, the list strips away fluff even from otherwise well-sculpted paragraphs to surface all the crispy little chunks of stackable information. The list breaks walls of text into more ‘porous’ walls of text. Typeset well, the list pauses and takes stock of whatever has been, and whatever will be. Typeset carelessly, the list breaks the text’s flow into random islands where meaning keeps facepainted volleyballs for company. [2]

I Detest Bullets

Broken down to fundamental shapes that form them, ‘bulleted’ lists are an exercise in Gestalt theory. The directionlessness of bullets and our years of connecting dots to make meaning out of them are a match made in typographic hell. All the ‘dots’ form a line and the listed stuff floats away (sometimes together) looking like badly spaced (and punctuated) paragraphs.

Default Lists and Disconnect

Here is an untouched (Default-Systems[3]) list straight out of Illustrator 28.5 typeset in 12pt Fira Sans (on a 1920×1080 artboard). I believe here is a basic Gestalt-principle solvable grouping-and-direction problem like almost everything else typographic.

When we look at the basic-shapes version of that default-list, the grouping issues are obvious-er. I’m cheating and made the text-blocks black [4] instead of grey. (Otherwise this would be obvious-er-er.) The textblock here is a group and the bullets are one kid with a pencil away from being a separate line.

Making Lists Work: Paragraph Spacing

Starting with the most basic of measurements (extrinsic), we must add an adequete amount of paragraph spacing to separate listed items into their own units. The list is no longer a paragraph-with-a-string-of-dots-for-company.

Paragraph spacing, like everything else vertical-spacing related, is a function of how much we lead lines of type.

Making Lists Work: Indents, Intents

After spacing list items better, we tweak the indents-to-bullets to make them more intentional. This indentation takes care of most of the grouping issues around lists but doesn’t solve the aimless dots-waiting-to-form-a-line problem, especially if the listed items are equally tall.

Making Lists Work: Directional Signs

For fixing this similarity-related problem, we need signs with a sense of direction to point to the listed items rather than to the other signs below. Countering similarity with suggestion works (lines suggest a horizontal movement stronger than the vertical similarity).

Triangles work too, as long as one downplays the similarity by making them small or grey.

A mix of both lines and triangles (arrows!) works even better given how obvious the ‘direction’ suggestion gets. It also helps that the font file has arrows too, and those glyphs are an even grey like the letters and punctuation.

Optional: Alternating Rows

A fancier (not essential) way to establish even better grouping would be to iTunes-ify the list items. Either by using colour (values are a better way to go to keep the general group intact), or by using rules to break the last remnants of proximity-and-similarity-groups. Both are overkill.

B&A

No self-respecting guide is complete without a B&A comparison. Here.

This is an early draft (of Chapter 6) of the Gestalt-Typography book I’m not-writing writing over weekends. I haven’t managed to zero in on a tone for this yet. I also don’t really know what I expect out of it either. Is it going to be required-reading for T101 courses I mentor? Am I trying to be the ‘teacher who wrote the textbook’ and revel in the ego-boost? Etcetera, etc. There’s an unhealthy amount of self-doubt attached. Feel free to write in and tell me everything is fine. Or not.

There is way too much work at the River HQ that it’s started messing with life at home and going home. I take work home and work late nights (early mornings) after coming home late. I work early mornings after sleep evades me at a rest-break at 2 AM. Not proud of any of this. Too old to be able to be proud of anything after an allnighter. I haven’t withdrawn a salary in three months thanks to how oldschool our bank back at KL11 pretends to be. There is so much ad-hoc stuff to pdf-print now that there are more stores and more people and—finally—a space to work from in the HQ building. M tells me he has dreams about presentations typeset in Söhne. We need to balance all this better.

H joined the brand team two weeks ago but hasn’t gotten the necessary silicon for work yet. We’re also stuck in a hardware/software acquisition limbo that has reached Catch-22 levels of absurdity and pain. Piano-piano. We’re happy to have someone we can trust and have normal conversations with. Ru (UX expert) has been here for two months now. Same boat. Good people good at their work. Much peace when you think about them being around. Etcetera.

1: The best portfolio is a well-indented Resume with proper punctuation, clear hierarchy, and decipherable connections. Date this quote so I can somersault my way out of the responsibility later if necessary.

2: Cast Away reference. Appropriate because lead type.

3: Lined and Unlined: Default Systems in Graphic Design

4: Unrelated and fun read from Norma. Also read the rest of the logs.

I rode the Indie home and to places around WF for the past few days. Took the scooter to regular-mundane daily tasks and took it on dedicated test-rides in the night after the traffic thinned. (The photo looks like a potato-quality spyshot but that is just because I am awkward at taking photos in public. Even when it is early in morning and the only three people outside the chicken stall are more interested in other more pressing everyday stuff. R couldn’t take pictures because of the hurt leg and we are left with this crappybara I’m constantly apologising for. I even had to content-aware-fill the eff out of a piece of crumpled newspaper somewhere in the bottom left corner. See the bird-droppings on the seat above the pannier mounts? That is how ‘stock’ the vehicle was running. We’ll fix all this soon. Let R get well soon.)

The scooter rides really well, planted to the ground as if it were a car with nice suspension. (Reminds me of podimol in many nice ways.) The last time I felt this amount of ride-refinement was with the Thunderbird 500 back in GurgaonOfTheFlatRoads[1]. Like all EVs, the torque is instant and it is fun to make the motor spin up on open roads. (The whine is divine.) The range anxiety is real (started most of my rides with under 50% charge and that is not a nice thing to have running in one’s mind or flashing in the instrument cluster) and reenacting the charging sequence reminded me of trying to memorise a particularly longwinded hydrocarbon in class twelfth. That—despite how my marksheets turned out—is not a memory I’m particularly interested in revisiting everytime the chariot runs out of juice.

The Indie is a beautiful machine with a lot of well-intentioned details. We’re working on the second version of a small part on the vehicle and it is nice to see assumptions from version one fail faced with the three-dimensional experience of riding the Indie and having to charge it at the shared bays in the HQ parking lot. Looking forward to making some small significant (and above all, friendly) improvements soon.

I also did some impulsive helmet buying. Unlike my usual matte black-grey-white-with-stripes palette, this one is ‘colourful’ to say the least. R was surprised and went on to say she doesn’t recognise me anymore. I know she wasn’t talking about the second (tinted) visor-lette having come down over my grin-painted face. But the point remains noted.

There was a particularly busy traffic situation near Brookfield where I stopped next to an RE (a Bullet 350 with the golden 3D logo on the tank; not the retrofitted abomination that passes for decals at RE these days[2]). It was nice. Was happy and talked to R about it when the traffic situation let me get home sunburnt.

In other news, showed myself the proverbial door at the current temporary office this morning (before getting thrown out ceremonially perhaps; my ego wouldn’t have been able to take that fall after all the serendipitous traffic-light spotting of beziers). Looking for a tea-break friendly room and working from home till that materialises. After all these years wringing pixels behind oddly angled screens held together with velcro and bulldog clips (and sheer force of will to continue making a reasonable enough living), a proper workspace is something I’ve come to care the most about (after certain other things in life, ofc) and it is not okay to compromise. There was something that S wrote about that I wanted to discuss here. Will soon. Context.

There is a lot of work to finish. Some of it is exciting. Some of that exciting work is tweaking carpet designs in the middle of the day and tweaking them again much later. Some of that exciting work is mundane out of context but take a lot of patience and craft. (Like putting vehicle loan options and terms and EMIs in handout-friendly A5 cards. Or a 3-by-9 cm newspaper ad for hiring store staff. This last one I had so much fun with.) We are looking for capital G graphic design people to help do some of that boring/tedious work that needs an unsustainable level of attention to detail, fairly advanced typography/gestalt chops, and a lot of empathy and humility. If this sounds like I’m trying to glorify tedium and perfectionism and all those ideals that usually work against people having a life, apologies. I have heard what Carson had to say about graphic design saving the world. Also read this Nick Asbury essay on ‘purpose’ and fully agree. None of this work is ‘noble’ in itself but are good opportunities to manipulate form and order in service of someone’s experience. (Send in a PeeDeeYeff CV via hello-at-kl11-dot-in if still interested. Know that we expect a significant amount of fundamentals-in-place-ness and an unconditional willingness to work on many many many versions of things; we too do this. We also pay fairly well while being sufferable bosses.)

1: The difference is that I did not want to get one for myself immediately then, given how smitten I was with the Classic with the upswept silencer.

2: I wonder how the current B350 tank graphic even passed the basic-est of reviews. Can hear Mr. D grind his teeth everytime one enters my line of sight. I believe crapfest is the most family freindly technical term to describe that waste of materials and space. Like how a friend’s new boss describes stuff, I must start saying ‘shambolic’ and ‘gargantuan’ and suchlike.