Studio Journal
Autumn 2025
Autumn is already on it’s way out just as quickly as it arrived. Time has a funny way of slipping by me despite how neurotic I am about it, figured now would be a good moment for me to reflect on the past few months.
If I had to summarize this autumn, It would be this: I slowed down & it’s brought me back to a time that I felt I would never be able to access again. There were days I achieved absolutely nothing outwardly “productive” & instead spent hours experimenting with prototypes. I felt like a kid again taking apart my PlayStation 2 just because. These days still felt meaningful to me, just as those days as a kid still are. I’m beginning to understand that progress in a creative life isn’t linear or measurable. Sometimes progress is a shift in how you feel as you work, or a shift in the perspective you have of your work.
The Studio
I joke that Keoni Studio doesn’t really exist. I’ve always had many hobbies & projects: this time last year I was creating pixel art animations of greataxe attacks for an indie GameBoy Color game, in August I was (and still am) obsessing over pottery, & in between I’m researching philosophical essays. This autumn, I realized I needed a single umbrella to bring all these disparate threads of thought together. I needed both a physical & mental space where my studies, projects, & research could live together. I talk a lot about holistics; how much more of our lives are interconnected than we initially think. Combining my various projects & interests under a single studio gives me the space to view these projects holistically.
The purpose of Keoni Studio was never to become some formal company or brand. I’m deliberate when I call it a practice. It’s an ongoing experiment where I can play with ideas, materials, & philosophies & see what comes out of these explorations. By dubbing it a studio, I feel I’ve given myself permission to treat my eclectic interests as one cohesive journey instead of a hundred scattered side quests. Making it easier for me to gather all these scattered thoughts in a way that people maybe could more easily understand.
These past few months, Keoni Studio’s structure has been evolving organically. Initially it was just a blog I had on Tumblr, then I created this website to make something more focused on my practice itself. I started a mailing list; because I’m trying to bring email penpals back. There’s no strict roadmap here, & one of the beautiful things about keeping this informal is that I can pivot or expand anytime. Keoni Studio will absolutely look different in a year, & that’s okay. This meta-project is meant to be fluid, growing & changing as I do. As of this moment, it’s a one-human interdisciplinary studio exploring life through craft & design. Which, admittedly, doesn’t make much sense. Another way to put it: it’s me trying to make sense of the world by making things.
The Philosophy
Early on, I knew that if I was going to try to tie all of my passions under one banner, I’d need some guiding principles to keep me from getting lost in a mental fog again. Much of this philosophy is influenced by a video essay I made in September called A Manifesto to a Good Life. The Studio’s philosophy can best be summed up as exploring traditional practices, treating design as a form of philosophy, & always asking new questions instead of rushing to answer the ones I already have.
Firstly, I have a deep love for traditional craft & folk practices. There’s something meditative about doing things the old school way. I guess when you can’t fill your time with endless TikToks you develop practices that can provide mental enrichment within themselves. I find comfort in the challenge that comes from trying to understand, not perfect, understand, skills that haven’t changed much in decades, if not hundreds of years. These practices connect me to a history, a people, that remind me that not everything valuable is shiny & new. In fact, a lot of the good stuff has been around for so long we’ve collectively forgotten about it. Part of the studio’s mission is to dive into these aged crafts & see what they can teach me today.
I have almost two decades worth of interest & exploration in industrial design & graphic design, & I’ve always approached design as more than just making pretty things. Good design, to me, is about intention on the designer’s & user’s part & thoughtfulness on the designer’s part. In a sense, it overlaps with philosophy. Good designers ask “why”, “for whom”, and “what if” just like philosophy does. But while philosophy has unlimited breadth to explore & shape itself through language & thought, design must create its answer in physical form. So in the studio, when I design something (be it an item, a process, or a routine), I treat it as a kind of philosophical experiment. How we design our tools, our homes, our schedules, it’s all a reflection of what we value & who we are.
Probably the most important part of my philosophy is that I prefer to pose new questions rather than rush to answer my current questions. I approach my work with a spirit of inquiry, even if the questions don’t make sense, intuitively. What does the history of journaling tell us about humanity through time? How does working with ceramics reveal the limitations of our bodies? These are the kinds of questions that intrigue me. Will I definitively answer them? Who knows. Probably not. But simply exploring them is exciting & keeps me moving forward.
The Journey Notebook
This project has consumed a significant portion of my life this past season. and in mid-November I was finally able to officially launch the first edition of my handmade leather notebooks, affectionately dubbed Journey Notebooks.
I spent months prototyping different versions of the notebook. My dining room (which is also my workshop) became full of leather scraps. I tested out various structures, explorations of sizes, how many inserts is too many before the notebook becomes cumbersome. I tinkered with it. It was a slow process of refining the form but, eventually, I arrived at a design that felt right. A balance of a traditional traveler’s notebook style with a few updates to improve durability.
When it came time to launch the notebooks, I’ll admit I was nervous. I had posted them on social media and shared bits of the process in the Studies entry, so I did what I could to try to “market” the results of my exploration without making my personal Instagram turn into an annoying brand. I’m not going to say that the launch was this explosive moment that’s changed the trajectory of my life. The launch post has 9 likes on Instagram, you do the math. I hadn’t started this studio or spent months on the Journey Notebooks to get rich or become another social media brand. I did it to challenge myself, to learn, & to ultimately develop skills to share something I care about with whoever is interested. I’m happy knowing that there are people out there who are going to be using notebooks I made myself.
I found myself thinking about the quote “only beautiful things lead us out to join the world beyond our heads”. I’ve interpreted “beautiful” not to just mean something that’s aesthetically pleasing, although that’s definitely part of the equation, but something meaningful. The Journey Notebook project led me out of my head & into the real world with tactile problem-solving and human connection. By that metric, it was a resounding success.
I’m happy with starting small. I mean, this whole project was about going slow, paying attention, & valuing quality. It’s only right that it grows with the same ethos.
The Future
Moving forward, I’ve got no master plan. As someone who used to plan their life in 5-year chunks, I find that oddly freeing. What I do have are hopes and curiosity about the road ahead.
I’m absolutely going to keep making things. Possibly too many things at once, but hey, that’s on brand for me. The Journey Notebooks will continue to evolve; I might offer another batch in the coming months. I also have this itch to get back into ceramics, although that may have to wait until after my move since I’ll have to get access to another pottery studio.
The “study” part of my work is only going to grow. I have a running list of topics I want to dig into when the time is right for me to assemble my thoughts on them. I believe that my Studio Journal entries are as much a part of my output as physical crafts. Writing helps me process why I do what I do. So expect more essays on various things.
A big part of the journey ahead of figuring out where I & my work fit in the grand scheme of things. I’d love to collaborate with other artisans to learn from them and continue exploring that space between philosophy & design. Part of understanding my place is also understanding my impact. I’ve grown up, I don’t expect to change the world anymore, but I do want to contribute positively, even if in a small way.
To new beginnings,
Keoni
