The coffee mug I've used for ten years

For me, design has always been about connection.

Not just user connection or brand connection, but the moments when something in the world meets you in a way that feels intentional, considered, almost personal.

I think about the coffee mug I've used every morning for ten years. The weight of it. The way the handle sits in my hand. The subtle taper of the lip that somehow makes the coffee taste better—or at least feel better. It does what a mug should do, but it gives me something more. Something I didn't know I wanted until I experienced it.

That mug earned its place in my life.

Now it's part of my ritual. Part of how I start my day. I've built a relationship with it—the same way I build relationships with people. Through repeated recognition. Through consistency. Through care that compounds over time.

Design, at its best, creates those conditions.

Not through manipulation or optimisation, but through genuine understanding of how people exist in the world. How they move through spaces. How they form habits. How they decide what stays and what gets discarded.

When I design systems, especially systems that mediate identity, I'm thinking about that mug. About what makes something feel like it was made for you, even when it was made for everyone.

That's what drives this work.

Not scale for its own sake. Not efficiency as an end goal. But the possibility that something we build might earn its place in someone's life. That it might become part of their ritual. Part of how they understand themselves in relation to the world.

Design is personal. Design is emotional. Design is how we relate.

And when it's done well, people feel it, even if they can't name why.