Fixing the same chair three times
- Craft
- Repair
A kitchen chair came back to the workshop three winters in a row. Each repair taught me something the first one should have.
Ines Varga
Notes on making things slowly
Issue 41 · Every other Wednesday
Essays on craft, tools and writing, and on doing good work without hurrying it. From a furniture workshop, a type studio and a small software team.
Latest
A field guide to naming things
- Writing
- Studio
Names for a studio, a product or a typeface. The questions I ask before I write a single candidate down, and the tests a name has to pass.
Tomas Reyes
The case for a slower inbox
- Work
Our team moved from answering mail as it came in to three fixed windows a day. Response times went up a little. Everything else got better.
Abi Okonjo
What a paper notebook knows
- Tools
I have tried every app for notes. I keep going back to a notebook with numbered pages, and I think I finally understand why.
Ines Varga
From the archive
Earlier essays, newest first.
Writing a changelog people read
- Writing
- Work
Most changelogs are written for the people who made the change. A few rules that turned ours into something customers open on purpose.
Abi Okonjo
The studio in winter light
- Studio
From November to February the light in my studio lasts about six hours. I used to fight that. Now the whole year is arranged around it.
Tomas Reyes
Why we stopped keeping a roadmap
- Work
A public roadmap made promises we could not keep and hid the decisions we actually made. We replaced it with two short lists.
Abi Okonjo
Sharpening, a ten-minute habit
- Craft
- Tools
Sharp tools are safer, faster and more pleasant. The trick is not a better stone, it is sharpening a little every day instead of a lot every month.
Ines Varga