Meditation in a Toolshed: Is Design a Beam of Light?

Aggie Toppins Studio
2025

Spread from Meditation in a Toolshed: Is Design a Beam of Light?
Spread from Meditation in a Toolshed: Is Design a Beam of Light?
Spread from Meditation in a Toolshed: Is Design a Beam of Light?
Spread from Meditation in a Toolshed: Is Design a Beam of Light?
Spread from Meditation in a Toolshed: Is Design a Beam of Light?

This risograph-printed zine is a statement of practice that uses a 1945 essay by C. S. Lewis as the model for exploring subjectivity and objectivity in graphic design. The zine draws on personal experience, from the perspective of a designer who has worked in both the industry and the academy, as well as published scholarship to argue for a synthetic practice in which creative intuition is combined with research methods. The cover art and some of the interior illustrations were created using a cyanotype process, which depends on light. A sliver of yellow appearing on the second spread grows wider over the course of the publication, as if to take the reader deeper into a beam of light, and gradually disappears in a similar manner, returning the pages to white. Typefaces choices include Freight text, Graphic, and Vulf Mono.

Designer
Aggie Toppins
Author
Aggie Toppins