The magazine of new design storytelling by Tiny Cutlery
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Inspired by the excitement found following your favorite old newspaper columnist, Starters are stories that recenter the writer’s voice. They start conversation and inspire deeper research, not unlike an array of starters at the beginning of a good meal.
Each issue is a collection of experimental storytelling on, around, and within the design world.
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Open Call
season 04
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“CHromatic”
Starters — Season 03
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3.01 Peter Paul Walhout— "Stone Song"
Carpentry, meditation, and finding solace in NYC high-rises
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3.02 Jean Pflum — "The Bottle Keeps the Score"
How the art and hobby of perfumery connects to a covert self-expression for trans bodies.
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3.03 Jocelyn Beausire — "Our Land is Diggerland"
Visiting America’s only construction-themed theme park, and invoking Baudrillard
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3.04 Mariam Arwa — "RSVP"
Two lovers and the topic of epistolary
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3.05 Gene Lee Han & Emily Conklin— "Your Own House / A Museum of One's Own"
A photo essay in conversation with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
Season 02 —
F/W 2026
Starters Season 02
featuring writing by…
Allyn West
Dylan Mulvaney
Ekam Singh
Daša Anosova and Anja Riabova
Adrienne Economos Miller
Derin Fadina
Bz Zhang
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Marley Amico
Season 02 Launch
February 2026
Season 01 —
Summer 2025 —
Starters 01 features writing by:
Nolan Kelly
Daniel Jonas Roche
Diana Budds
Alisa Petrosova
Sanjana Lahiri
Ellen Peirson
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Amelia Langas
Season 01 Launchwith Nik Bentel StudioAugust 2025
Starters — Season 02
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2.01 Allyn West — "Just the Two of Us"
Rural queerness and the “radius of spontaneity”
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2.02 Dylan Mulvaney — "What Remains"
What does it look like when graphic design transcends its original purpose to become cultural heritage?
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2.03 Ekam Singh — "Masala Dabba"
On the ubiquity of spices and their designed history, from India to your kitchen cabinet.
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2.04 Daša Anosova & Anja Riabova — "The Billboard"
Two women, Ukrainian military recruiters, and Rem Koolhaas
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2.05 Adrienne Economos Miller — "Prairie Fence"
What’s collective architecture made of anyway?
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2.06 Derin Fadina — “Home Improvement”
The Diderot Effect IRL in London
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2.07 Bz Zhang — ”Land We Didn’t Technically Steal But...”
The ethnoburb of California’s SGV and land back movements on uneven ground
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2.08 Marley Amico — "Affirmation Cravings"
On the “decenter men” movement and finding a new infrastructure of intimacy
Season 1
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The burden of disillusionment was never meant to fall on the public. What choice is there in the face of a sustained erosion of any social safety net? The failure lies not in the people’s inability to dream, but a system that punished them for doing so.
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That day I felt more like one of Benjamin’s streetwalkers than a member of the press: a uniquely urban creature protected in the covered space beneath shop windows where the public sphere becomes a semi-private one, as comfortable and enclosed as one’s own living room.
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At its core, the dinner party presents a type of cozy leisure. It grants permission to waste time, feast the eyes, and graze a table. The event is inefficient by design, and loved all the more for it.
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Each summer, I watched the forest behind our gated compound disappear as Skolkovo—Russia’s answer to Silicon Valley—rose up on its hill and expanded. Our walks grew shorter, the paths narrower, the trees retreating from spreading glass and steel. Now I track this architectural dissolution through Google Maps, dropping the little yellow person onto familiar streets, watching through pixels as the last of the park vanishes.
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In the wall were two very small shoes meant for a baby. They looked like they could have been made of satin. They had a light pink hue, and they scared the hell out of all of us.
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It is winter. It is cold. I do not have a body or head or limbs for that matter. I am a simpler entity lacking soft tissues, mushy organs, and blood. My physicality is moldable, pliable and composed entirely of plasticine—a soft, oily, non-drying clay. Unlike humans, I don’t walk upon the environment. Instead, I roll.
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“A little over a year ago, I encountered a handmade sterling silver olive fork that was as exquisite as it was delicate. ‘Can you eat from these?”’I asked the gallerist. The fork was part of an exhibition. ‘I mean, you can.’”
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When I was growing up, it was an entree & water only. I would find exactly the best main available that also, of course, wasn’t the most expensive and usually it wouldn’t be the least. And never could my family members order the same thing as me—because then we’d all have one less thing to try. It didn’t matter if this was a sushi restaurant or a Chipotle, the ethos was the same: I wanted to try it all.