The Origin of the Name

Back in 2010, when I began the search for a name to attach to my creative work, I had a short list of criteria. Even though my work as a graphic designer lives in pixels, I wanted a name that evoked the analog, tactile world — screen printed gig posters, letterpress, the rough texture of real ink on paper. I also wanted a domain name that was short and memorable. And I wanted it to feel personal, tied to something that mattered to me.

"I wanted a name that evoked the analog, tactile world — screen printed gig posters, letterpress, the rough texture of real ink on paper."

I kept coming back to my childhood, to baseball and basketball trading cards, to the ritual of tearing open wax packs and the smell of that stale pink gum and the hope that this pack might contain something special. The cardboard in your hand. Or, if it was collection worthy, a thick plastic case protecting it.

While researching the era I grew up collecting in, I stumbled across an industry term I'd never heard before: the "junk wax era." It was perfect. It was short, it had texture, it felt tactile, it referenced something printed and physical, and it connected directly to a formative part of my life. It also contained, I'd later realize, an entire framework for thinking about value, meaning, and why we make things in the first place.

"It also contained, I'd later realize, an entire framework for thinking about value, meaning, and why we make things in the first place."

The so-called "junk wax era", roughly 1986–1994, refers to the period when baseball card manufacturers (Topps, Fleer, Donruss, Score, Upper Deck) began flooding the market with product. Someone in a conference room realized there was massive demand from people who'd convinced themselves that these pieces of cardboard with photos of athletes would appreciate like the vintage cards from the '50s and '60s, which had appreciated precisely because nobody thought they'd be worth anything and therefore threw them all away.

So the manufacturers printed millions. Tens of millions. An obscene quantity of identical Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cards, all of them preserved in plastic sleeves by collectors who were simultaneously trying to preserve value and thereby destroying it through the very act of mass preservation.

The cards became essentially worthless because supply didn't just exceed demand, it buried demand under a mountain of surplus cardboard.

But here's the thing: the name stuck with me. It stuck because it captures something larger and more uncomfortable about the moment when childhood wonder, the thing that made you beg your parents for packs at the grocery store checkout, collided with mass production and capitalist hype cycles, when actual value got replaced by the simulation of value, by the idea that if everyone agrees something matters, it matters, even when the agreement is based on nothing but the agreement itself.

And this connects, in ways I'm still figuring out how to articulate, to what drives the work I make. The cards I kept aren't worth anything according to the market, according to the Beckett Price Guide or eBay's algorithm or any of the external validators we're supposed to consult. But they matter to me. They matter because meaning, real meaning, the kind that actually affects how you move through the world, isn't determined by collective speculation or resale value. It's constructed through the much quieter, much less scalable process of giving your time and attention to something.

"(Meaning is) constructed through the much quieter, much less scalable process of giving your time and attention to something."

I want my work to feel like that. You follow what pulls you, not what's trending or what the market says should pull you, and you build something honest, and then you see who it finds and hope that the work keeps a roof over my head and my bills paid and my cats fed. The goal isn't to reverse-engineer success or optimize for engagement metrics. The goal is to chase curiosity and stay surprised by what I uncover, to make things I love and hope (without any guarantee, which is the uncomfortable part) that they find their people.