Posting Card, 2024
with Industrial Facility

A simple networked device for growing and sustaining friendships. It uses a multi-colour e-ink display to let a close group share their lives in a slower, more intentional way.

What began as a conversation about our endless, algorithm-driven online culture became a prototype for something more hopeful - a future  where less technology can lead to deeper connection.

The internal project was launched under Future Facility — a technology-focused offshoot of the main studio — as a way to develop and communicate the studio’s capabilities.

Thank you Sam, Kim and Leo

Posting Card’s display refreshes seven pigments individually to show incoming photos and messages, reminiscent of developing analog film.

This slow refresh process naturally prevents passive consumption, ensuring each use is deliberate.

Most displays around us glow, demanding attention and leaving us staring at lightbulbs.

In contrast, the E-ink display reflects light like a photograph, interacting with shadow and ambient light — working politely in the dark.

Posting Card lives in your space, not on your person. Its ambient nature makes our social connections present in the physical world in a more subtle way.

This sustained presence exists somewhere between fleeting digital messages and the permanence of analog print.

The display is bistable - it retains images without using power, consuming energy only when updating.

This resourceful characteristic led to a dematerilised form: A single PCB, protected by a silicone case and powered by a coin cell battery.

A hanging clip covers both portrait and landscape orientations.

This ultralight approach is reflected by a set of simple but meaningful functions

A switch lets you choose between displaying new messages from your personal network in real time, or cycling back through past ones.

The social network is built on a distributed, peer to peer protocol.

Private messages and photos are sent directly from friend to friend, without being used to train algorithms or tailor advertisements.

Today's social media is like a stream - a fast, endless timeline filled with content from people you barely know.

You plunge your head in, swept along by algorithms designed to maximise engagement and attention, leaving you gasping for air.

Posting Card is more like tending a garden, offering a space for slower, more intentional connections to grow.

It provides a gentler, more mindful alternative for sharing images and text with a small circle of friends who can truly be themselves, free from the pressure of likes, notifications, and read receipts. Using only a simple network structure and a handful of components.