A home for niche design

Now accepting pre-orders from a brand new website

It’s been a hectic week. I put myself on a deadline to release a (mini) website for the niche design zine, a project I’ve been working on for the past year.

When I first wrote about the zine two months ago, it was primarily for showing progress to myself while signaling something to the outer world after intensely working and writing in silo for a few months.

This time, I wanted to push further—raising more awareness and generating more pre-orders to help fund the remaining work, which still has a long way to go.

So, if you aren’t familiar with the project, here’s a short blurb:

The niche design is an open call for designers and product makers seeking meaning beyond metrics. An invitation to rethink how we shape products and culture. It's a personal project but also communal—sharing philosophies and work ethics of people building atypical products and technologies, from software to hardware.

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It’s odd, if I were to give an advice to someone else, I’d promptly suggest making a website. Everything on the internet should deserve its own place. But when it comes to my own things, I immediately face blackouts—it’s just me, stuck in my head, trying to figure things out. And because I haven’t found and settled on a style for the zine itself, it felt even harder; what conveys niche? what makes niche design tangible? I made this all up and I now I had to deliver some answers.

So I took a week (and a half?) to put something together. I found Maxi, a great typeface by Dinamo that felt natural for conveying the project’s weird perspective. It was also the first time in 15 years I allowed myself to purchase a commercial font for a personal project. Though I did compromise on a single weight, as fonts aren’t exactly cheap.

There’s something to be said about how detaching from the work itself makes the work actually WORKS. But that’s for another time—for now, I’d say that bringing the zine a bit closer to reality feels so much fun and rewarding, and I even got to use Cargo for the first time, which yields pleasant aesthetics.

Since the last update, I’ve had more people share their perspectives and work ethics with me—both in their personal and professional lives.

In addition to Pavel, and Charles, I got to interview

Anton Repponen

on his journey on cultivating a unique and diverse practice: from growing up and studying  architecture in Estonia to the heyday of Fantasy Interactive in Stockholm, and moving to New York, where he now resides; and from opening his own studio, working with notable brands to teaching design in Barcelona.

Here are a couple of quotes I especially liked from our conversation:

• “Problem-solving is part of design, but it’s not the only reason we engage in the process.”

• “ If you want to follow all these web practices, you gonna end up looking like everybody else.”

(By the way, I have one last spot for an interview on the history of the design community—let me know if you have someone in mind!)

For the closing part of the zine, I decided to have a few short Q&A’s with some cool people I’ve been watching who build atypical stuff. And talking to them has opened my eyes, as each one introduced me to its own world:

I learned from Anjan of Daylight about many niche products I didn’t know; from Pirijan of Kinopio on building soulful software as a solo maker; from Andy of !Boring on the importance of playing with software; from Yatu & Norm of USB Club on bringing fiction into reality with USBs; from mysterious XH of mmm.page on the role of websites; from Herman of Bear on building an enduring blogging platform; and learned from Vin, Lucas & Kent of Futureland about their long and persistent journey building a cozy habit tracker.

This roster isn’t locked yet, so expect more to come! ++

So far this mini-launch has gone quite well. I’ve got some people sending me questions and saying positive things, which is very encouraging.

Oh, and the pre-orders have already covered the cost of Maxi!

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Although I won’t resist if you share this project with whomever you like, I’m also considering doing some press.

I’ve applied to Indiecon 2025 and learned that zine fairs are actually a thing! I’m still learning about this space, and I’d love to know about more cool events in that spirit.

Now I need to stay heads-down for another month or two to hopefully finalize it all and start shipping it!

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Meanwhile,

Ditch trends. Avoid playbooks. Reject boredom.
Embrace the niche to rediscover authenticity.