Bada · 바다 · the sea
We make slowly. We make as the tide makes — by attention, by repetition, by the willingness to wait. Bada is a small workshop for design, writing, and the printed page. Our work is shaped by the hour before dusk: quiet, warm, and a little salt-stung.
See the most recent worksEthos · No. 01
A studio is a way of paying attention. We choose fewer projects so we can stay with each one longer. We refuse the loud gesture in favor of the considered one. The brief is a tide chart; we read it and then we read it again.
“The work that ages well is the work that was made slowly.”
Read about our practiceNo. 01 · Editorial · 2025
A 144-page hand-bound annual of coastal writing and line drawings, printed letterpress on Tomoe River cream. Designed across two winters in a fishing village on Geoje, with a print run of 300 numbered copies.
Open the case studyNo. 02 · Identity · 2024
A wordmark, a small ornament library, and a stationery system for a Jeju cooperative of women free-divers. The mark is a single ink stroke; the ornament library is twelve drawings of the things they bring up from the sea floor.
Open the case studyNo. 03 · Web · 2026
A quiet web archive for an essayist who writes about food, water, and memory. Built as a typographic system first; the design is mostly margin and measure, with line drawings that draw themselves in as the reader scrolls.
Open the case studyPractice
We take on four to six engagements a year, working in close conversation with a small number of clients we are proud to be in a room with. The relationship is the work; the deliverables are the residue.
· Tide
What we call warm in a paper is never one colour. It is a small accident of fibre, of the lamp you are reading by, and of the ink already laid down beside it...
· Studio
We have spent the winter learning to say no, gently and often. The shorter list is not a smaller studio; it is a slower one, and slowness is the only luxury left to a workshop our size...
· Field
The fishing village empties at four. The light is the colour of the inside of an oyster shell. We walk to the breakwater and back twice a day, and twice a day we are surprised by something...
· Craft
Three hundred copies, one needle, a great deal of waxed linen thread. This is a short field guide to the mistakes we made and the small adjustments that, eventually, made the binding sit flat...
Contact
We answer letters in the order they arrive, and usually within a week. The more you can tell us about what you are making, the better we can help — or recommend someone who can.