Writing the NoGood book

Some twenty-odd years ago I’d spend hours on end in my bedroom, in the attic of our house, my big, boxy, self-built computer humming reassuringly on the floor beside my feet. I hung out on forums, wrote reviews about music, and built little websites about everything that interested me—chucking them out after two weeks to pursue new ways of building things, writing things. I’d spend evenings scrolling other people’s sites too, clicking my way from one to the next and inspecting the code to work out how its creators had pulled something off: the typographic details, the shadows and gradients, the textures. I loved that version of the web, and my time on it.

The illustrations by my friend Thomas are reminiscent of those days. They’re rooted in a world of rickety hardware, flickering lights, and precariously wired contraptions. They have a tactile quality, and carry the same mindset I felt back then: of independence, and a novel kind of community. A kinship with those building things out in the open.

When he told me he was designing a book of his work and asked me to write it, I was immediately excited, and looked forward to putting the story behind his work to paper. The assignment seemed simple enough: here are hundreds of pages of visual work, let’s introduce them to the world. But initially, every sentence I added got in the way of the images. Slowly, the writing became a study in what not to say.