📦 hoarding + mailing + playing

ISSUE #177

MAKING

I have a collection of art supplies and ephemera that I’ve been hauling around since college. It’s grown over the years as I added things that caught my eye, and contracted as I’ve used or gotten rid of things. My friend Jane refers to herself as a curated hoarder – I think describes me too.

There’s times where I’m supremely annoyed at myself for holding on to this stuff. And then there’s times where I’m very happy with past me for keeping it. This is one of those times.

It’s not a big thing; it takes up hardly any physical real estate. It’s more mentally taxing to track it and remember where it is. But I have a box labeled Letters that I keep cool typography and letterform related stuff. It’s a collection of Letraset type, felt and magnetic letters, stencils, and a random assortment of handwritten notes, type and fonts I like, and these three sheets of printer paper.

I’ve held on to these for 15? maybe 20 years? I liked how it looked and I didn’t know how or if I would ever be able to recreate this.

And what is this? Honestly, I wasn’t sure – I just thought it was some kind of computer error code, so I asked ChatGPT. Yes, it’s error code, specifically it’s HP-GL/2 (Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language 2), mixed with PCL (Printer Command Language) instructions.

In plain language: what you’re looking at is raw printer code that printed as text because a missing or corrupted command failed to switch the printer into graphics mode.

As a designer, printer, and pattern maker, there’s something really cool about that: a failed communication between a computer and a printer accidentally made a pattern instead of an image. What was useless information to the machine became something worth saving to me.

And maybe that’s the best defense for curated hoarding: sometimes you have to hold on to something for twenty years before you finally understand why.

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LOVING

If you love getting snail mail, sign up for the freeMakeist Postal Clubbefore the doors close on July 21.

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THINKING

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between work and play; labor and leisure; mind and body; education and recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

– Minister and philosopher Lawrence Pearsall Jacks

Source: Education Through Recreation (1932)