manifesto · September 24, 2026
Ten Rules for Making Small Things Well
Ten short rules pinned above our cutting table, for anyone who makes leaflets, pamphlets, posters or anything else small enough to finish. Print it, pin it, argue with it.
Read this aloud
Finish it. A small thing finished beats a large thing imagined. Cut the scope until the end is in sight, then walk there.
Make one. Before you make two hundred, make one. Hold it. Be ashamed of it. Fix it.
Decide the size first. Size is a decision, not a consequence. Choose the page and let the words fit.
Use fewer words. Say it, then say it again with half of them. The second version is the one you meant.
Leave space. Empty margins are not wasted paper. They are the part of the page that lets the rest be heard.
One typeface. Two if you must. Three is a committee.
Show your working. Keep the draft, the mistakes and the rejected cover. They belong to the work.
Do it by hand once. Fold the paper. Cut the edge. Learn what the machine is imitating.
Give it away. Make more than you can sell. A thing that is read is worth more than a thing that is stacked.
Begin again. The next one is better because this one exists.
How to use it
Print this on one sheet. Pin it above whatever table you work at. Cross out the rules that don't fit, and write your own in the gaps. A manifesto that can't be edited is a rulebook, and nobody finishes anything under a rulebook.
We wrote the first draft on the back of a paper bag in March. It had four rules. It grew as we made mistakes, which is the proper way for rules to grow.
Why numbers
We number them for the same reason a recipe does. You can start at one, you can skip to seven when you're stuck, and you can say to a friend across the room: check number five. Numbers make a manifesto portable. A paragraph of fine sentiments can't be shouted across a workshop.
Why ten
No reason. Eight felt too tidy and twelve felt like a diet. Ten fits on a sheet with room to spare, and the last rule is the one we actually mean.
Argue with it
If you disagree with number six, good. Print your own. Pin it beside ours and see which one the dust prefers. The point of a manifesto is not that everyone agrees with it. The point is that it makes you decide what you do believe, and then write it down plainly enough that somebody else can disagree.
Small things, made well, are a quiet kind of argument. They don't win by volume. They win by being finished, by being on the table, by being there when somebody picks them up.
Make one this week.
Names, places and events in this demo are fictional.
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