What making a ring by hand reminded me about design
A few months back, my wife and I disappeared off to a ring-carving workshop. No laptops, no screens, just wax, tools, and a loose idea of what we thought we were making. It was one of those rare days where the pace slows right down and you’re forced to stay present with whatever’s in front of you.
This past weekend, the final cast rings came back, and honestly, I couldn’t be happier with them.
They’re not perfectly symmetrical, and they’re not exactly what either of us set out to make on the day. There are tiny quirks and inconsistencies you’d probably never design on purpose. And that’s exactly why they feel right. They carry the marks of the process, not as flaws to hide, but as evidence of how they came to be.
Working with your hands has a way of humbling you. There’s no undo button, no neat history panel to step back through. You make a decision, you live with it, and whatever you leave behind becomes part of the object itself. The material remembers every choice, whether you meant it to or not.
That experience stuck with me because it mirrors something I see constantly in design work.
Brand projects rarely look like the first sketch, or the first conversation, or even the first few weeks of exploration. They evolve as you go. Context shifts. Constraints appear. New information reshapes earlier decisions. What felt right at the outset sometimes gives way to something quieter, stronger, or more honest.
There’s always a temptation to force an outcome, to sand everything down until it looks smooth, controlled, and “finished”. But polish on its own doesn’t make something good. And perfection, when chased too hard, has a habit of stripping the life out of the work entirely.
When I’m working on brand identity projects, the best results tend to come from letting ideas breathe. Testing them in context. Giving them time to earn their confidence rather than rushing them to look resolved too early. That approach can feel uncomfortable, especially for clients, because uncertainty has a way of triggering the urge for quick answers and tidy conclusions.
Part of my role as a freelance graphic designer is guiding people through that uncertainty rather than pretending it doesn’t exist. Helping clients understand that the middle of the process often feels messier than the beginning or the end, and that mess is usually a sign that the work is actually happening.
Perfection isn’t the goal. Clarity is. Intent is. A strong brand identity doesn’t come from ironing out every irregularity, but from making deliberate decisions and standing behind them. The best identities carry traces of the thinking that shaped them. You can sense the choices that were made, the trade-offs that were accepted, and the values that guided the process.
Those rings do that. They hold the marks of the day they were made, the decisions we took, and the moments where we adjusted course. In a strange way, that’s exactly what I aim for in the work I care most about at Studio Off Kilter.
This journal exists partly to document that way of working. Not just the finished projects, but the thinking behind them. The uncertainty, the adjustments, and the slow shaping of ideas into something considered rather than forced. If you’re curious how this approach shows up in practice, you can explore selected work, read more about how I work on the About page, or get in touch if you’re looking for brand support that values process, clarity, and intent over surface-level polish.
Not everything needs sanding down to nothing. Sometimes the character is the point.
