## How It Started

The Diskette Project started with a question: what if we thought about software the way we think about the objects that used to hold it? A floppy disk was small, physical, and precious. It held something complete and self-contained. You could hand it to someone. It had a weight to it.

We started printing saves — little releases, zines, and resources — as beautiful portable files that look and feel like a small object rather than another link in a feed. Each one gets its own retro-styled landing page, like a physical sleeve sliding out of a desk drawer. Something you'd want to keep.

## Design as a Frame

The name "Diskette" leans into the nostalgia, but the design language is its own thing. Lots of white, near-infinite blank space, thin rules, and a tiny serif for the fine print. It feels like the cover of a pamphlet from 1989 that somehow lives on the internet. Understated is the point — the files are the stars, not the chrome.

There's a deliberate tension in the whole thing. On one hand it's resolutely nostalgic and physical. On the other it's a fully digital, link-shareable, instant-access thing. We never let one win over the other. The absurdity is the appeal.

## Community Happened Anyway

We never really planned for people to show up. The Diskette Project was meant to be mostly for us — an ongoing illustration exercise where a handful of us design fake products, absurd little files, and tiny print-flavored web pages. But then people started sharing them. And then more people. And then it became a full-blown community project.

At our peak, over 5,000 people joined our community. Not bad for a thing that started as "wouldn't it be funny if..." Actually, the community did what good communities do — they made it better. They built their own diskettes, riffed on the design, and pushed the whole thing somewhere none of us could have gotten to alone. It's equal parts mine and everyone's.

> The best projects are the ones the internet insists on finishing for you.

## It's Still Kind of Silly

Let's be honest — it's a project about digital floppy disks. It's absurd. And that's exactly why it works. The internet desperately wants to play. The second you hand people permission to be silly and make something beautiful while they do it, they'll show up in droves.

The Diskette Project taught me that the best creative work usually starts as a joke, a bet, or a dare — never as a "strategic initiative." Give people something tactile-feeling and strange, and give them room to add to it. You'll be surprised what comes back.

## What's Next

We're not sure where Diskette goes from here. And honestly, that's part of the fun. It might keep growing. It might plateau. It might just exist as a strange little archive of playful internet objects. Any of those outcomes beats never having made it at all.

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