Designer Things

I used to think premium tea branding was just about slapping a gold foil label on a tin and calling it luxury. Turns out, the visual architecture behind

I used to think packaging was just about looking pretty on a shelf. Then I started paying attention to what actually happens when someone with dark skin

I used to think letters were just shapes. Then I spent three months watching a type designer named Maria Doreuli obsess over a single junction—the place

I used to think tattoos were just about looking cool. Then I spent three weeks in Samoa, watching a tufuga ta tatau—a traditional tattoo master—work on

Documentary photography used to feel like something you stumbled across in a museum exhibit, all stark black-and-white images of dust bowls and migrant workers.

I used to think metamodernism was just a fancy term art critics invented to sound clever at gallery openings. Then I spent three months watching how contemporary

I used to think eye movement in design was just about making things look nice. Turns out, our eyes don’t wander randomly across a page or screen—they

I never thought I’d spend a Tuesday afternoon analyzing linen napkins and seashell arrangements, but here we are. The coastal grandmother aesthetic—or “

I used to think bark cloth was just, you know, some kind of rustic craft thing Pacific islanders made before they had access to ‘real’

I used to think ancient manuscripts were just pretty artifacts behind museum glass. Then I spent an afternoon with high-resolution scans of the Codex Zouche-Nuttall