Grid.

A few months ago, Alex and Sam reached out about their love of grids. They referenced Susan Kare's sketchbook, which she used to draw interface icons for Apple during its early years. And a personal essay by Alex titled Grid World, about a lifelong obsession with grids and their intersection with computers.

Without much effort, they convinced us to make a grid version of Studio Sketchbook.

Studio Sketchbook Grid

Made in Japan, Studio Sketchbook Grid has an exposed spine revealing the quality of its construction and lays flat when in use.

The grid is made of squares and has what we think is the smallest, to be still useful at human scale grid (2.5mm). Just big enough to fill with a character, especially using one of these pens or these or this pencil. Not too big to fill in to create a pixel graphic. (Remember how tedious that was when doodling in old math grid books). Rightly sized to be used as an organizational drawing or writing aid. Small enough to be ignored and disappear as texture into background. Small enough to combine squares into the arguably far superior rectangle. Also it makes you feel closer to the insides of a computer.

Studio Sketchbook Grid.

Hands on with Studio Sketchbook Grid.

Screenshot of Pocket Fiche Community Fiche software.

Speaking of grids.

This week CW has been making a tool for people to contribute to making a Community Fiche for Pocket Fiche. We haven't ironed out all the details yet, but if you pledge for a Pocket Fiche, you will have an option to receive the Golden Record Fiche (the one we design) or the Community Fiche (the one that all of you design). Everyone who pledges for Pocket Fiche will have access to a single viewable region (~0.5mm diameter and 500-800 pixels across) to contribute a bitmap of their choosing.

Pledge for Pocket Fiche

In order to go live with this, we still need to work out the exact resolution Miles is going to print at. From there we will calculate how many zones are open to all of you.

If you're waiting to pledge for Pocket Fiche, now is a really really good time! Staking out where you want to be positioned on the Community Fiche will be in order of when you pledge.