Away from the screen
Good design work needs a life that isn't only design work. These are the things that keep the eye and the ear sharp between projects.
I shoot the Kathmandu Valley on old manual-focus film cameras — the slowness forces a kind of composition discipline that a phone camera never does. A roll a month, no exceptions.
Late nights with a step sequencer and a handful of synths. It's the same instinct as motion design — rhythm, tension and release — just in a different medium. The loop on this site is one of mine.
Weekend routes out toward the hills around the valley. Most of the ideas that end up in a brand deck first showed up somewhere on a ring road at 6am.
A notebook of hand-lettering and quick figure sketches, mostly done in cafés. It's where a lot of typography ideas get tested before they touch a screen.
Fifteen years away means a kitchen that mixes home recipes with everything picked up in the UAE — a fairly literal way of keeping both places on one plate.
Print annuals and type specimen books from the 70s–90s — a reminder that most "new" layout ideas are a few decades old, just well executed.