Guides

  1. When A Café Becomes A Live Portrait StudioOn a rainy Saturday afternoon, a neighbourhood café can become something wonderfully unexpected. The grinder keeps humming, cups clink against saucers, and a…
  2. How a Designer Rebuilt the Everyday Receipt From the Ground UpEvery week, billions of receipts slip out of tills worldwide, and most are forgotten before they reach the bottom of a bag. A graphic designer named Jordan…
  3. Inside the handwritten weekly newspaper on a single sheet of paperIn a quiet studio above a converted warehouse in Collingwood, a writer bends over a sheet of A3 paper with a fine-nibbed pen and fills every margin with news,…
  4. silicon meets string: a conversation with an e-waste puppeteerIn a tin-roofed workshop tucked behind a fibro cottage in Brunswick, puppeteer Theo Rinaldi is soldering a vintage modem into the shape of a jester's head. The…
  5. A Rooftop Florist Finds Beauty Above The CityAt street level, the city can feel all concrete, traffic and hurried coffee runs. A few storeys higher, a florist is tending calendula, cosmos, herbs and…
  6. The Day After a Creative Breakthrough Needs a Softer PlaylistA creative breakthrough can leave you feeling strangely alert and completely spent. The idea may have arrived with a rush—during a late-night edit in Naarm, on…
  7. The Commuter Sketches That Turn Train Rides Into EncountersAt first, the illustrator looks like any other passenger on the morning train: sketchbook balanced on one knee, pencil tucked between two fingers, attention…
  8. How Knitters Turned a Street Pole into a Yarn-Bombed LandmarkA plain street pole can disappear into the visual noise of a neighbourhood: parked cars, traffic signs, shopfronts and power lines. Add colour, texture and…
  9. From footpath chatter to tracks: an Australian composer profileIn a foam-paneled back room of a Brunswick share house, a Melbourne-based composer builds entire songs from the voices of strangers. No instruments are played…
  10. Why I Stopped Comparing My Art to My Friends' ArtI spent years scrolling through other artists' work on Instagram in my share house in Newtown, feeling that familiar twist of inadequacy every time someone I…