cbdc.studio is a rogue aquarist's cabinet — a wall of backlit tanks, each holding one tropical fish (a project), preserved behind iridescent glass. We did not ask permission to scan the archive. We are not going to apologize.
scroll. the cabinet is deeper than it looks.
We treat every project page as a preserved specimen pinned behind iridescent glass. The studio does not apologize for being loud. We arrived through a back door nobody bothered locking, and we left the lights on.
Brand systems for clients who want their archive to outlive them. Editorial sites that read like confiscated field journals. Identity work for record labels, restaurants that don't take reservations, and one museum that asked us never to email them again.
Slow. On purpose. We refuse three out of every four briefs. We work in plates and proofs, never in decks. We will not name-drop your competitors because we will not have heard of them. The output is the proof; everything else is theatre.
Identity for a small-press publisher of confiscated zines.
Wordmark, three editions of stationery, and a 64-page catalog set in Fraunces WONK. The press wanted to look like contraband. We made the dust jackets glow under UV. They sold out the first run in four days.
A digital atlas of disputed border rivers.
Holographic map tiles, oral-history audio, and a citation system that lets contributors mark a record as "officially incorrect." Built for an unnamed institute. Won zero awards. Used quietly by three governments.
Branding for a restaurant that only seats six and never advertises.
Hand-pressed business cards, a one-page menu set entirely in italics, and a phone number that rings on a payphone in the kitchen. They booked solid for two years on word of mouth.
Quarterly magazine on rituals nobody practices anymore.
Four issues, each printed on a different paper stock, none of them coated. Photography by archivists who refused to be credited. Type set entirely on a borrowed Linotron 202. The fifth issue is overdue.
Cassette label identity. Sleeves printed three colors over black.
Twelve releases, each with a hand-stamped serial. The mark is a single fish silhouette that mutates per artist. The label burned through six photocopiers. They are now on the seventh.
Wayfinding for a museum that asked us never to email them again.
Floor plates, vinyl wall typography seven feet tall, and a guide pamphlet folded into a fish. The director cried during the unveiling. The press attaché blocked our number the same week.
There is a reason every loyalty card, transit pass, and counterfeit-proof seal uses iridescence. It is the cheapest way to signal "verified" while remaining unreadable. We use it the other way around: as a stamp on things that were never licensed in the first place. The foil is not the proof. It is the dare.
Italic forms predate Roman web orthodoxy. They are slanted because they were carved fast, in haste, by people who had somewhere to be. We use them for the same reason. A roman uppercase says: I am the institution. An italic minuscule says: I have already left the building.
Backlight your fish. Side-light your typography. Never top-light a specimen — it flattens the gills and kills the iridescence. The same rule, reversed, applies to clients: never present from above. Slide the work across the table. Let them lean down to it.