We asked members of the design community to choose an artifact that embodies craft—something that speaks to their understanding of what it means to make with intention. Here’s what they shared.
These artifacts are originally from Practice, a book on design and craft by Figma’s Story Studio and Brand Studio teams. The print edition, which launched at Config 2025, was designed by Other Means, in collaboration with type designer Kia Tasbihgou.
A vintage puzzle box, a perfectly tuned guitar, an AI-powered poetry camera. A daiquiri mixed with precision. A spreadsheet that still haunts muscle memory. Each artifact tells a story: not just about the thing itself, but about the choices of the creator behind it. What to refine, what to leave raw. When to push forward, when to let go. Whether built to last for generations or designed to delight in a fleeting moment, the common thread is that great craft doesn’t happen by accident. It’s made.
“Piet works with plants, but what he actually crafts are experiences. His free-hand garden schematics—amorphous forms filled with nodes of color and scribbled plant abbreviations—show his ability to work quickly and loosely, but also his deep understanding of each plant and how it works within the broader schema. He doesn’t do renderings because ‘whatever you show your client is the moment, and not even the true moment, of experiencing the garden.’” —Amber Bravo on Piet Oudolf
“The book is a mid-century modern example of the avant-garde craft used to revitalize the tired old industrial catalogs. Ladislav Sutnar oversaw a design department that followed strict guidelines for typographic layout but always with enough wiggle room to customize each individual object. It was published by Sweet’s Catalog Service and was distributed annually to architects, contractors, builders, and craftspersons. It was an art and organizing template for quotidian applications.” —Steven Heller on Ladislav Sutnar’s “Catalog Design Progress”
I first saw this poster in a graphic design history class as a sophomore and immediately became fixated on it. The tension between the sharp, graphic stripes and the repetition of soft, photorealistic portraiture felt electric—two completely different visual languages colliding in one focused composition. I think Russian Constructivism is often mistaken for being simple—made up of clean compositions, limited colors, and geometric forms—but that simplicity is quite unforgiving. There’s nowhere to hide! This poster, like all the others by the Stenburg Brothers, was made with lithography (carved directly into stone), which meant it couldn’t be endlessly tweaked until something clicked. Instead, every decision had to be intentional from the start. That level of precision is what makes this feel like craft at its purest to me. Craft is a commitment to composition and form; honing your skills enough that you can get it right in one go. —Elizabeth Goodspeed on a Russian Constructivist poster
“Playdate excels within constraints. Its one-bit screen and tiny processor mean it can’t run graphics-heavy games, but that limitation encourages developers to think about what they can build. The tiny black-and-white screen. The bright yellow color. The ‘season’ of games. The crank. The crank! Playdate proves that craft isn’t about doing more: It’s about doing something well, with intention.” —Andy Welfle on Playdate, a handheld gaming console by Panic with hardware by Teenage Engineering
“A human-powered music-making device, a mashup between a Rube Goldberg machine and a music box. It makes music in a highly convoluted and delightful way that makes me smile every time I see it. In a world of passive music consumption, I’m drawn to how it actively engages the musician and the audience alike. The process of creating the music is as beautiful as the end product.” —Michelle Lee on Wintergatan’s Marble Machine
“Craft is the result of a series of intentional choices made as the work takes shape. Some of those choices are strategic, some are aesthetic, and some are pure instinct. As a designer, I feel craft is almost always synonymous with the process of reduction. What can we get rid of? How can this be simpler? How can we achieve the most by appearing to do the least? Isolde Baumgart’s work for Kieler Woche embodies this approach in every sense. It’s as beautiful as it is clever and as bold as it is refined. It’s everything I have aspired to and always will.” —Christopher Doyle on Isolde Baumgart’s graphic design for the annual sailing event Kiel Woche
“Oliver Church made every part of this jacket by hand. I’m reminded of this when looking at the buttonholes. The slight unevenness of the thread is proof that someone’s hand was here, carefully, thoughtfully working. It makes it feel so personal. I don’t see the jacket’s imperfections as flaws, but rather as cherished markers of the hand. The lavender embroidery is also hand-stitched without a pattern. I’m always amazed by the confidence it takes to pull that off. That’s what I feel when I put it on, a little bit of that self-assurance.” —Jefferson Cheng on Oliver Church’s three-pocket jacket
“Growing up in an immigrant household with a strong mindset of wasting nothing, I learned that craft doesn’t have to be about aesthetics or innovation—it’s about finding purpose within limitations, creating order out of scraps, and making do with what’s at your fingertips.” —Kelly Hu on the cookie tin
“My favorite scissors in the world are made by a Japanese company called Craft Design Technology—I’m obsessed with them.” —Scott Belsky on Japanese scissors
“Every 20 years, the Jingu Shrine in Isu City, Japan, is rebuilt from the ground up. I love that the craft of building this ancient temple, or Shikinen Shengu, has been celebrated for 1,300 years, without a break since the year 690. The process of rebuilding takes eight years. The shrine buildings are made of solid cypress wood and use no nails—only joinery. The only way to learn this ancient craft is by doing.” —Jude Sue on the Jingu Shrine
“Craft is fractal. It begins as a flat, broad idea—a rough sketch, raw and unformed. But as you dive deeper, you sculpt and fine-tune, peeling back layers to reveal hidden worlds in the crevices. A piece starts ‘ugly,’ then transforms through selective beautification.” —Dev Valladares on the fractal
“The graphic design and layout has always stuck with me because it perfectly encapsulated the time period designers were living in, and the ethos of early dance music fandom is so innately tied to design for me. I think XLR8R was one of the last few tasteful music magazines that still held design to a ridiculously high standard.” —Jesse Pimenta on the magazine XLR8R
“I love it because it almost doesn’t look designed. I’ve built a few benches, and there’s always something to tweak to prevent creaking or bending. Making something this simple and functional is incredibly difficult. Every detail—materials, thickness, length, construction—has been carefully considered. You can’t change a thing without making it worse. That’s the feeling I chase as a designer: when everything harmonizes perfectly. To me, that’s what craft is all about.” —Ryan Mather on Naoto Fukasawa’s oak wood bench for Muji
“It requires a tremendous amount of formal creativity and technical skill to sequence and engineer the interactions of something like this where the kinetic elements aren’t obvious.” —Diana Budds on the puzzle box
“You might wonder how wood gets tied in a knot, and I wondered the same thing. These are typically made with hardwoods that are naturally rigid and fundamentally resist bending and folding. I love these pieces because they ask a curious question just by sitting there.” —Kevin Twohy on Katie Gong’s wooden knot sculptures
“There is a set of four glasses in my cupboard that my mother gifted me. The full set includes six, but I have yet to add the remaining two. Of the four I have, this is the one I reach for most often. Each glass in the series has a different volume—each formed by the merging of one cylinder and one sphere. Despite the thought and planning that went into this series, concrete documentation of the specifics is scarce. So, an inviting ambiguity remains. All that is left is the physical form of each glass.” —Maria Chimishkyan on Joe Colombo’s Sferico Glass
“Given the drink’s simplicity with just three ingredients—rum, lime juice, and sugar—the daiquiri gauges skill and attention to detail. Craft shouldn’t mean unattainable or precious. Craft means quality, accessible to everyone. Craft is something done so well, you’ll have another.” —Mig Reyes on the classic daiquiri
“When I was a kid, I had this bright blue, chunky little machine that played short Disney films on tiny reels. Just a crank. If you turned it fast, the characters moved smoothly. If you went slow, you could study every single frame. That simple mechanism was my first glimpse into how animation works—frame by frame, illusion by illusion.” —Carmen Ansio’s Super CinExin projector
“I have this daybed, ‘Ini,’ designed by my mom Noemi Saga that I absolutely love. The design is so simple, with just two pieces of wood—or sometimes marble, which is gorgeous—and three leather cushions. Moving it from apartment to apartment is easy, which is great, because I’ve taken it to two apartments already. I always put it by the window, and it’s my favorite spot for dinner, reading, and my morning coffee. I know I’m biased, but it’s honestly the perfect piece for me.” —Gabriela Namie on her mother’s daybed
“My favorite camera doesn’t capture photos—it captures poems. Rather than replace the gesture of looking, this machine invites you to be truly present in the world. A picture speaks a thousand words, but perhaps a poem speaks louder than a picture.” —Chia Amisola on the Poetry Camera
“There are thousands of chair models, but only one that’s everywhere—from landfills on uninhabited islands to massive mansions. It’s cheap, durable, stackable, comfortable-ish, and perfectly suitable for its purpose. No one knows who designed it, but one can only hope to ever craft an object so ubiquitous you don’t even question its existence.” —Wojtek Dziedzic on the Monobloc chair
“Introduced in 1954, it’s one of the most enduring and recognizable guitars ever made, and for good reason. The shape, the contours, the way it sits against the body—it all feels natural, almost effortless. The Strat is deeply personalizable. Despite all these variations, it always remains unmistakably a Strat. That balance between consistency and flexibility is what makes it special.” —Gabriel Valdivia on the Fender Stratocaster
“I’ve always loved needlepoint and embroidery but I’ve never been particularly good at either. Artist and activist Diana Weymar uses textiles to document and comment on contemporary political and social issues. Her Tiny Pricks Project began when she stitched 'I am a very stable genius' onto her grandmother’s unfinished needlework. This sparked a global movement where thousands embroidered Trump quotes, turning his statements into art. Her book ‘Crafting a Better World’ encourages readers to channel their own anxieties into creative action. She gives me hope, wit, and comradery when times feel helpless. And her work inspires and teaches me how to be a better advocate—and craftsperson.” —Debbie Milliman on Diana Weymar’s needlepoint
“I still think about how Excel 97 felt. It was so tight—the typography, the pixels, the functionality. There were no superfluous transitions or weird, complicated styling. Every spreadsheet since Excel 97 has been worse.” —Marcin Wichary on Excel 97
Learn more about Practice, the book that features these craft artifacts.
