I share with you today a relatively old project, in that it was over in the first half of my degree, last year. Of course, one may also say that it was just three months ago, but that does not convey the depth of my realisation toward my end at Cambridge School of Art, and that this end is nigh. More on those musings later.

This ‘Independent State of Mind’ brief got us thinking on a smaller-scale, and — much like the Circus Poster brief — to adopt or make use of pre-existing visual language. The kind of task of which I am awfully fond.

Although I cannot exclaim much enjoyment for talking or responding directly to myself, I do appreciate the opportunity to view myself in the most light-hearted ways. Hence, for this, I appoint myself as Chairman of a fictional Northern-European island whose main export is fine knit wear.

I mostly enjoyed taking dictatorial portraits of myself because of course, on Hibbend, my people celebrate my position and the jumper I wear all the time, so why would they not want my face on their expensive stamps and elements of the pattern from said jumper, too?

It was on this project that I acquainted myself with the University’s laser cutter. We cut things together with much precision from imported Illustrator documents and forego aching wrists from extensive scalpel stroking. We are in love. As much as any organic/synthetic partnership could be, anyway.

The point being that we made extraordinarily good stamps together, even if ‘precision’ does not extend to 1:1 relationships between measurements from the documents to output. We just don’t talk about that.