03.18.25
Hi everyone,
Thank you for being the first to sign up for our newsletter!
Since we don’t have an actual studio for you to visit (we work out of our second bedroom), we thought a newsletter might be a nice way to invite you into our workspace.
We’ll see how often we open our virtual doors, monthly or quarterly. As someone whose use of instagram has gradually petered out (and Ryan, who only ever used it to document his journey into type design… the one time I got to be featured was when I happened to be standing below a hand-lettered sign), these past two months of posting on our studio instagram have thrown me back into the deep end of social media. It feels like perhaps everyone else is feeling over it, or it doesn’t have quite the same community feel as was once there a decade ago. That’s why the idea of a newsletter makes us much more excited, to write these little dispatches. Do you remember writing emails to friends? I have various correspondences from 2008–2014, when it was one of the primary ways I communicated. Links to articles, snippets of what we were working on, mp3 attachments and youtube links, passing thoughts. In that vein, this newsletter will be structured as if you dropped into our studio — we’ll share a bit of the projects we’ve been up to, what we’re reading, any cool things we’ve seen, and of course what we’re each listening to lately.
📯 announcement!
It’s been a long winter and we’ve been hunkered down building our website and readying our case studies. We’re so excited to announce that our new website is here! Please check it out, let us know what you think, spread the word, etc. The interaction on the home and about pages was built by the talented Nikki Makagiansar and Munus Shih — we were so excited to use this as an excuse to finally collaborate with them!
💻 a peek at our screens
We’re currently preparing for our gallery opening at Kato Sake Works, where we’re showcasing the design we’ve done for them. For the past five years, we’ve worked with KSW, one of our best client relationships, growing together side-by-side. They invited us to create some print pieces to display in their taproom so that we could share our designs with their audience. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re figuring out how to arrange the pieces:
The opening is tomorrow, March 19, 6–9pm but the pieces will be on display for a month or two after, so come by anytime they’re open. If you go, we recommend getting their sake flight and seeing if you’re a Junmai, Nigori, or Nama person!
📂 a tab that’s open
Ryan
RSS is (not) dead (yet) — Audra McNamee
I’m becoming more bullish on RSS by the minute (you can subscribe to this newsletter with RSS!). I never really gave it much consideration until Nick Sherman gave me the hard-sell. But I don’t just like RSS for RSS’s sake. It’s just as much about it being a reminder of a simpler, more optimistic internet, designed directly for our benefit.
Michelle
As someone with 100+ tabs open (not an exaggeration, unfortunately) it’s hard to pick just one. I’ve been listening to some great stories from the first issue of Signal Hill, a new audio magazine.
🌳 let’s go outside for a moment
Last autumn we took a trip upstate and stopped by Magazzino Italian Art museum. We’d been meaning to check it out for a while — it’s a beautiful mix of postwar and contemporary Italian art, in an open, airy former computer chip factory. One interesting feature of the museum was that there were no placards next to the pieces. All the information was within a paper booklet given to you at the entrance. While just a subtle difference, the experience of viewing the art felt fresh. No hovering around a small white label on the wall, feeling the need to hurry up and move along as others peer over your shoulder. Instead, you could view it at any distance or angle, and read the information at your leisure. Plus, it gives you a keepsake that you can return to after you’ve gone home. Something to think about as we design our own little gallery showing at KSW.
Also you can say hello to their Sardinian donkeys.
🎵 try on our headphones
Ryan
Michelle
Til next time!
—M