Hey folks, and welcome to the new Little Mouse Letters! No more design deep dives1, just an update each month on Mousehole HQ and a little bit about our life.
1. Printing books
It always fills me with joy to watch the hypnotic videos Craig sends me of my books coming off the Risograph.
The gargantuan print task has begun, a great papery reckoning after February’s implausibly successful Kickstarter. We’re starting with Orbital as we’ve got that set up already, and then we’ll move on to the beak zines.
Once the Orbital cover & spreads are printed and cut, Craig will drive them over to the finishers. Here, each book is stitched together with white thread along the spine—a manual process. It adds quite a bit of time & cost to the book production, but it’s the kind of little detail that I think is worth it.
Of course, I’m most excited to see the beak zines in their final form, but we’ll have to wait until later in the month for those. Soon, though!
2. Printing memories
A couple of weeks ago we revived a family tradition of heading to Brighton on our anniversary and cramming into a photoautomat.
Last year, we were just out of intensive care with our premature baby & covid was still making travel impossible, so we took photos at home instead. It was nice to get back to it this year (even if our boys decided to be as fractious as possible!).
Things generally still feel really unsettled, especially as we head into winter, but it is nice to slowly claim back parts of our pre-pandemic life. Hold tight.
3. Good Stuff
Every month, I’ll share a few choice links that have caught my eye.
I reread this article by Craig Mod on attention & social media. I love Craig’s writing & photography, and it was good to remind myself that it’s okay to stay off Twitter most of the time.
We’ve made this self-saucing pudding twice in the last two weeks, a delicious & easy recipe that is kind of fascinating (it looks like a real mess when it goes in the oven). Kitchen Projects is a great newsletter, full of the kind of cooking research & geekery that I relish.
This article about the Spider-Man movies was surprisingly thought-provoking for me, as someone who enjoys superhero fiction but also feels conflicted about its outsized impact on cinema & storytelling. In particular, the way it lays out how each of the reboots reflects something about the society it was made in is fascinating.
Let me know what you think about the new format! Cheers for now,
Jack
For new subscribers, the original intention of this newsletter was to provide insight into my game design process. Turns out trying to write lengthy design essays alongside delivering projects, looking after kids and working my day job was pretty unsustainable. Who knew?