manifesto
Posted in by will - Mar 01, 2010We are a brand.
As a brand we think a lot about the social role and behavior of brands; brands today are used as cultural identifiers; we as consumers buy things to say things about ourselves. We use brands to express.
We, as a brand, express specific cultural values, and we make products that tie individuals to those values. Fundamentally we are just a signifier, something that acts as a flag for a community of shared values.
We are a platform.
In recognition of the fact that we represent a community, our devotion to that community goes beyond selling things to them. The design of our company is wholistic, we did not begin as a product, but as a desire for a wonderful job making good things in a good way. Company and product came as an organic answer to this desire for a whole and healthy expression of human labor. We are devoted to our community; we strive to publish content relevant to it, fund it’s artists, provide jobs to it’s hands, and make it’s tools along the way.
We are a community of shared values.
We believe in the expressive individual, we believe in independence from large social institutions, that we may choose to express ourselves in a whole way, as independent, or as part of small and specific communities of value.
We believe in small workshops and regionalism.
We believe that making a good living from proud work is a basic human right.
We believe in hand-tools in the name of clean industry, human scale, and energy independence.
We believe in natural materials, sustainable means.
We are against packaging, we are for bulk-food and hope preparation.
These things allow people to be autonomous, they give us freedom. They are also hard work.
We take delight in this creative labor, in these expressive acts.
We believe in human power, sweat, the joy of activity and physicality.
We believe in beautiful tools.
We believe in beautiful work-clothes.
We believe in rugged and lasting things that hold up to a manual life.
We are not anarchists. We believe in the connection and expressive tools that technology brings. we believe in the potential to unite dispersed individuals with communities that share values. Dispersed persons with minority values can now easily trade goods and services, information and art. We believe in the laptop class.
This is why we chose as our first project to create jobs that make durable, bench-crafted bags for engaged people who care for expressive objects to carry their laptops and possessions on bicycles or through active and demanding lives. It is work that is much needed, and a very symbolic and much needed object.