Kristen Radtke is creative director at The Verge. “I work with the art team on the overall look and feel of the site across illustrations, photos, and branding,” she explains. “I also design feature stories and custom packages.” One of her favorite software packages is Calligraphr, and so we asked her about it. 

What exactly is Calligraphr?

Calligraphr is web-based software that will help you turn your handwriting into a font. You don’t need Photoshop or any image-editing software, just access to a printer to print out one of the templates that Calligraphr provides. You then draw your alphabet using the template. When you’re done, you snap a picture with your phone and then edit the individual letters in Calligraphr. It’s super affordable — you can do a lot with the free version, and full functionality costs $8 for a month or $24 for six months. The payment doesn’t automatically renew, which is great.

When did you first start using Calligraphr?

I’ve tried a bunch of different DIY font makers, and Calligraphr is the easiest to use that I’ve found so far, with the most professional-looking results. In early March, I hosted a fontmaking workshop with some friends as a casual skillshare and an excuse to get together and eat snacks. I did a full sample of my font using Calligraphr to get familiar with it, and it only took me a few hours.

Each of my friends was able to complete their font in the afternoon (more or less — two said they had to finish cleaning up the files that night before exporting). It was such a fun, breezy project!

Why did you get it?

When I draw comics and graphic stories, I need my handwriting for dialogue, captions, and text. Traditionally, cartoonists would do all this lettering by hand, but a lot of us just turn our handwriting into a font. I have to write really slowly for my handwriting to be legible — my notebooks are truly incomprehensible messes — so lettering digitally is a borderline necessity for me. Prior to using Calligraphr, the last font I made was around 2019 (I can’t remember what software I used), and I knew I needed a tune-up. There were some spacing and kerning problems in that font that I wanted to brush up to make it look more natural and more like real handwriting.

What do you like about it?

It’s easy! It’s cheap! It’s fast! For such simple software, you can do a lot of adjustments. You can include variants, so you have multiple letters for a single character, and the font will randomly assign different variants when you type, creating a more hand-drawn effect. It’s helpful to be able to adjust the padding around each individual letter, since all letters need a different amount of space around them in order to look readable and correct. An “O,” for example, has a lot of negative space in its four corners, whereas an “H” has none. So I made the bounding box around the “O” tighter than around the “H” in order for those letters to look correctly spaced when I’m using them in a word or sentence. 

The ligature function, which comes with the paid version, is also useful, especially if you write in cursive or link certain letters when you’re writing fast (when I write “ing,” for example, I tend to connect the “n” to the “g,” even if I’m not writing in cursive). The one note here is that you need to make sure you have ligatures enabled in InDesign or Photoshop (or whatever program you’re going to use your font in, after you’re done) for those variations to work.

Is there anything about it that you wish were different, or that you think would improve it?

The letters can take a while to clean up – sometimes there’s a random speck in the background, or one part of the line is a little thin – but the tools are really straightforward. It just takes a bit of getting used to.

Who would you recommend it to?

Anybody who wants a font of their handwriting, regardless of your design/technical ability. You can use it for professional purposes or just for fun – I’m thinking about using it to send out birthday cards, because I love mail but hate writing by hand (and I get so sloppy that people probably can’t read what I write, anyway).

It’s Thursday night in Chelsea, and we’re here to celebrate the color of 2025, which was chosen on behalf of the world by a team of trend forecasters in 2024. Pantone, the company behind the famous universal color-matching system, announced the winner earlier today: “Mocha Mousse,” a “flavorful brown” that was greeted on Bluesky and X with rows of poop emoji. Pantone selected Mocha Mousse because it “capture[s] a global mood of connection, comfort, and harmony,” which is not a mood I’ve picked up on lately, but I’m going to their party anyway.

When I arrive at 6PM, I find a long, punctual line of taupe and brown waiting to be let inside the venue. “I panic bought it this morning,” a woman says, gesturing to her bedazzled blazer. “I was like, ‘I need something brown.’”

Two magazine editors queuing behind me strategize about how long they need to stay before they can split for another engagement. “But the color of the year is a big deal for us,” one says.

Inside, everything is smooth and brown and smells vaguely like a spa. Waiters stand in the entry with trays of espresso martinis before a hall of products arranged in pop-up stalls, kind of like cosmetics counters in a large department store, which, tonight, we’re calling “activations.” We’re not really celebrating a color; we’re here to celebrate brands.

A Joybird chaise is draped in a Janavi x Pantone throw, embroidered with the words “ME MOMENTS.” Behind it loops an AI-generated video of swirling milk chocolate and silky brown fabrics that reminds me of an old Dove commercial, where women were enveloped in the ecstasy of chocolate when they took their first orgasmic bite. Pura Smart Fragrance Diffusers display two custom Pantone scents — Mocha Suede and Mocha Moment — which perfume the room with notes of coffee bean, cardamom, walnut, and leather. A rep from Oyuna cashmere explains that its cashmere is the best in the world because the Mongolian goats the company sources its wool from are the happiest goats in the world. “Happy goats make fuller fibers, because they’re warm and not stressed,” she says.

I walk past a display of Hanky Panky thongs en route to a giant mirror at the end of the hall so I can take a selfie of my outfit for the group chat. (Spoiler: it’s brown.) “They’re comfortable, right?” one woman asks as she rubs her hand along the lace of a red thong. “So comfortable,” says another.

The woman at the thong station is Sommar Boese, the CFO of Pantone’s parent company, X-Rite, and she did a lot of research about thongs earlier today. “They have low-rise and high-rise,” she tells me as I inspect a case of 25 individually boxed thongs inside a luxe black case — one thong for each previous Pantone color of the year. 

“Is it like an advent calendar?” I ask, shouting over a cover of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” played by a band on the other side of the venue. 

It isn’t, but she loves the idea. “They don’t have the new color yet because that would be the twenty-sixth year. I expect they’ll be making it soon, though.”

Honestly, the consumer in me wants everything these brands are promoting: I’m close to the target demographic for the products at this party. I have a Joybird sofa at home, and I do indeed like comfortable underwear and soft scarves. While I’d never call it a “me moment,” I guess that is what I’m chasing when I visit overpriced serene beige spas.

I was introduced to Pantone’s catalog of color 15 years ago as a student in a letterpress class in Iowa, where I mixed colors from goopy pints in meticulously portioned thimbles I slathered onto a Gutenberg press. I didn’t know then that Pantone was the company that colored most of the world and so much of what I would someday buy, and tonight, I’m startled to be reminded that color is a product. Instinctually, color feels like it can’t be owned by a single company. Colors seem like concrete facts I teach my toddler as we page through a board book, pointing to circles of red, blue, and yellow. On the next page, I trace the bubbly outlines of the numbers one, two, and three. Surely you can’t trademark or patent the number three.

Beyond the hall of little luxury goods, the products at the party get larger: around the next partition is a Mini Cooper convertible, custom painted in Mocha Mousse. Stacks of Saratoga water cases create a makeshift wall behind the car, celebrating “a legacy of colorful water.”

Antoni Bumba, an influencer with nearly a million followers on TikTok, sits in the passenger seat with the door open, crossing her legs as she pretends to swipe and type on a special-edition Pantone x Motorola Razr. A woman with blunt platinum blonde bangs and a slouchy vintage Chloé handbag secured with two large padlocks takes videos of Bumba with her phone. 

Bumba is here tonight influencing for Motorola. She splays her arm across the Mini Cooper’s fuel cap in mock exhaustion, as if she simply doesn’t have the time for whoever is calling. She takes a sip of her Prosecco with an exaggerated eye roll, like, Well, I guess I’ll just drink this.

When the blonde woman sees my colleague Amelia Holowaty Krales taking photos of Bumba in the Mini Cooper, she stops. “Could you do that again, so I can take a video of you taking a picture of her?”

Downstairs, past the band now singing “If you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain,” a makeup artist demonstrates Ipsy’s Pantone collaboration with blush and eyeshadow in Mocha Mousse. A panel designed to look like a gigantic distressed picture frame asks “What’s your special moment?” in swirly, Pinterest-y script. Partygoers write down their special moments on mocha Post-it notes and stick them to the board:

“PROTECT YOUR PEACE”

“A chocolate bath”

“5:00 p.m. every Friday”

“Eat Pray Love Toast Sip XO”

“Beating breast cancer”

“NOW!”

The entrance to the bathroom is framed by a floor-to-ceiling mocha-tinted mirror, emboldened with “SELFIES ARE OUR FAVORITE FORM OF SELF-CARE” in gold letters, ringed by mauve roses and crisp blush laceleaf anthuriums. Inside, the Ipsy-sponsored bathroom stalls are wrapped in Mocha Mousse. “It’s beautiful,” says a woman in a deep beige hijab, touching a stall door. 

Most everyone is wearing at least something on the beige to brown spectrum, attire ranging from formal sequined gowns to T-shirts and sneakers. But there are two older women embracing color: Valerie, in a bright yellow fur hat, and Martina, who has neon pink hair. Valerie runs the @idiosyncraticfashionistas Instagram account with her friend Jean, which documents their friendship in maximalist, color-saturated fashion. “I can tell by your reaction that you haven’t heard of it,” Valerie says, “but it’s all about being old without being dull.”

Valerie, wearing a crocheted multicolored kaftan, tells me she’s wanted to be invited to this party for years, but she’s disappointed the selected color wasn’t yellow or pink. “Mocha Mousse is very beige,” she says. “Have you heard of this thing called a ‘beige mom?’” She shrugs. “Maybe if I had three kids, I’d like beige, too.”

We talk about beigecore, the trend that’s led “a generation of women [to] dream in beige and cream,” as my colleague Mia Sato wrote recently. What does Valerie think about beigecore? She pauses and then leans in. “I think I’ll slit my throat.”

Behind her, Shuya Gong, an innovation fellow at Harvard School of Engineering and the creative director of IDEO CoLab Ventures, stands with James Lynch, a writer wearing an American flag belt buckle that says “Easy Riders.” In her work at Harvard and IDEO CoLab, Gong tells me, “We look at the intersection of technology and theology, instead of how much your fingertips have scrolled and swiped throughout the day.”

“Theology, like, God?” I ask. 

“Yeah, basically,” she says. “If you look at the relationship to God and theology in the church, mass was a space where people would gather.” 

She explains that we used to experience time in a more linear fashion — morning to night, nine to five — but now, our phones are inundated with past, present, and future simultaneously, rendering the shape of time chaotic. “The control of time and the way we bring people together and relate to each other has fundamentally been shaped by technology instead of community.”

Given how much the shape of time has changed, Gong thinks Mocha Mousse makes sense. “We’re looking for things that are more grounding, that help us move slower.”

A waiter offers us miniature Reubens from a small row of skewers, like tiny versions of the metal spikes lining awnings in New York, designed to keep pigeons from landing and shitting on people who pass below. 

“All the food is brown?” Gong asks. 

I mention that, earlier, I’d seen one tray of non-brown food. 

“Hilarious,” she says.

In the last room downstairs, partygoers stand inside a human-sized Pantone swatch before a long, gleaming bar of actual Mocha Mousse: the whipped dessert is laid out on top of plexiglass cubes containing the raw elements of their dominant flavors, like torn-open pomegranates and piles of coffee beans.

Motorola phones are propped up across the table, the juxtaposition of tech and dessert giving all the food the vague plastic quality of faux dishes in Tokyo restaurant windows. Everything looks delicious, but not exactly edible. 

“Indulge,” a folded Motorola Razr resting atop a plexiglass cube of pistachios instructs me, “echoing the soft warmth of Pantone 15-1317.”

A woman next to me picks up a Motorola Edge 50 Neo. “I almost got one of these,” she says to her friend, “but then I didn’t.”

Upstairs, Elley Cheng, Pantone’s president, has replaced the band onstage. She tells the audience that the London Eye is illuminated in Mocha Mousse tonight and that the celebration will continue next week in Shanghai and then Mumbai. The crowd whoops. 

Aja Edmond, the global head of brand at Motorola, steps onstage, talking about “creating your own moments with Mocha Mousse.”

“Yessssss,” Bumba, the influencer I met in the Mini Cooper, says behind me. 

Edmond gestures to the TV, where we watch a Motorola commercial and clap.

Everyone talks about how this color can connect us: Laurie Pressman, the vice president of the Pantone Color Institute, says Mocha Mousse is about an “everlasting search for harmony.” She explains that the color can help us embrace joy and enrich our world. Nobody acknowledges that 2024 has been shit, or that next year is on track to be as bad or worse. Pantone — knowingly or not — has picked the right color.

I first fell in love with Samar Haddad’s playful yet sophisticated caricatures on Instagram, where she publishes pop-culture poster art of her favorite TV and films under the name “Space Vacation.” Her exemplary cartooning skills allow her to deftly create a distinct face with only a few lines, creating an instantly recognizable trademark. Her drawings are funny and weird; her color palettes are enviable.

You’ll see her illustrations dotted all over The Verge — most frequently, accompanying our how-tos and sometimes The Vergecast. I chatted with her about drawing people without noses, where she finds inspiration, and how she makes time for art as a parent.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How did you get started making pop-culture prints?

I had been working in design at branding agencies for a few years and was stuck in a rut where I was always dictated by what the client wanted, and I never really got a say in how the projects ended up. Then, a friend of mine was working with a television production company, and they were looking for a collective of designers to create posters in whatever medium they wanted. I chose to illustrate several iconic movie characters and combine them together in one composition. That was the most fun I ever had on a project, and I loved the freedom I had. 

Then, seeing as how movies and series are what got me excited about illustrating in the first place, I continued with Game of Thrones, the first illustrated poster I made for myself, and as I continued to create more posters based on the movies and series I love, I launched the brand Space Vacation through my first exhibition in 2016 to showcase these prints. It’s been an exciting journey ever since.

What was it about movies that got you excited about becoming an illustrator? Any particular films or shows?

I’ve always been more drawn to fiction and fantasia than reality. Being around films and series felt like stepping into my own world. So paying tribute to some of my favorite movies or series happened naturally, and I began designing posters with my own interpretation of them. I started with the movies that influenced me the most as a teenager like Alien, The Breakfast Club, Star Wars… I feel really lucky to have grown up during such an exciting time for cinema.

How do you begin a new project? Talk us through the process of creating a composition.

The process is the same for each project. I try to capture an idea or inspiration from whatever I have watched recently; it can be a line from a movie or a scene that really stayed with me. I write it down and then come back to it (usually at night when everything has quieted down and I can concentrate without interruption). I develop this idea further by creating several vector elements like the main characters, the setting, and sometimes I integrate them with type. I go through many color schemes and composition variations until I’m satisfied with my progress. And I always work digitally. I feel it allows me flexibility whenever I feel like starting over or changing elements to recreate them differently.

So you’re creating individual elements and then juxtaposing them together into one composition?

Yes, I treat it like a collage. I used to love doing art collages as a hobby when I was in college, and I thought, why not apply that same treatment to illustrations? The process does take a lot of trials and alternatives, but in the end, I find it very rewarding.

The faces you draw are so distinctive — you use very few lines to immediately communicate a recognizable person. How did you find this style?

When I first started drawing faces, I went for a really geometric style. I experimented with making characters recognizable through other distinctive aspects, such as a unique clothing item of theirs. But I found that this approach made the characters appear stiff and often kind of alike. So I started to loosen up my style a bit by making the lines curvier. I made the positioning and sizing of the facial elements more proportional to the real character I was drawing. It was that mix that made the faces more recognizable, I guess.

I have to ask: why don’t you draw noses on your characters? I love this detail and the fact that people are still so recognizable even without them. Was this a conscious choice?

Yes, it was. I was inspired by anime characters and felt this allowed more focus on the eyes and mouth, which convey a wider range of emotions and expressions. The nose, a critical and refined feature, is left undefined to preserve the subject’s essence, capturing a deeper character beyond mere physicality.

Do you approach editorial art and commissioned projects differently than the pop-culture prints you make?

I treat self-initiated prints the same way I would treat commissioned projects. If I were to treat them differently, I would get too comfortable, and they would become secondary. I wouldn’t want the outcome to not be as good as I would want it to be because, at the end of the day, they’re as vital and personal as my other work.

Do you still have time to draw “just for fun”?

It definitely got a lot more challenging ever since I had a daughter, and spending time with her occupies most of my time. In my pre-toddler life, work always took over. Now, it has shifted drastically because I want to be present for every moment, especially in the early years. But I make sure to set aside time for myself and creative play to keep fueling the spark and replenish my inspiration.

The Verge is turning 10, and a look back at the last decade’s worth of stories provides not just an encapsulation of what The Verge has covered but also a snapshot of how quickly the tech that informs our lives transforms. And since we’re The Verge, we can’t just look behind us. Celebrating the last 10 years is also about examining what might come next. Micha Huigen is the perfect artist to distill this intersection into a single image because Micha’s images never actually confine themselves to one space. His surreal illustrations function like scenescapes within which we get to explore close-ups of tiny modular worlds and expansive reimagined realities at once. Though he inks and colors digitally, his art maintains an analog quality, filled with halftones that suggest DIY lithography. 

The 25 editorial illustrations, each of which represents one feature in our Verge 10 package, link together into a seamless infinite grid, filled with Easter eggs and precise linework that offer something new with each viewing. (We also think it makes a great pattern for any of your home wallpapering needs.)

I spoke with Micha about dropping out of art school, the evolution of his illustration style, and why urban exploring was pivotal to his development as an artist.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. 

How do you make your illustrations?

I used to always do the sketching and the linework on paper, then scan the linework and color it digitally. But I recently bought myself a drawing tablet with a screen, which makes working digitally feel way more natural. Nowadays, I only do the rough sketch on paper, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ll be doing that digitally soon as well.

For my personal work, I sometimes like to go fully analog, often with acrylic paint and markers. I like the way digital illustration is so efficient and that there’s an infinite amount of options within reach. That used to be a bit overwhelming, but now it feels like an advantage. I really enjoy the freedom it offers me.

How did you approach this project for Verge 10? Was the scale of it overwhelming?

When I read that I was going to make over 25 illustrations that had to be linked perfectly together, I was honestly a little overwhelmed for a bit. But once I let it sink in, and figured how I was going to approach it, I was just excited. I use different frames within one illustration, with things going in and out of those frames, allowing me to make objects go from one frame into another illustration that is linked next to it. Once I did four or five illustrations for this project and saw that they linked together nicely, I knew it was going to work out, which was very relieving. 

How do you first approach a drawing? How does your process of sketching work — do you start with an idea, or just see what comes out when you sit down to work?

The first thing I do is make a little summary of the article to have an idea of what the subject is and how I can represent it. Then I start thinking about objects that have to be in there and how to make that look interesting, or how I can turn them into more than just a literal depiction of those elements. Take the illustration for the article about electric vehicles, for instance. The main idea of the article is that Tesla batteries died too quickly to be used as racing cars. A battery and an EV were things that, realistically, had to be in the image. So then I started thinking about how I could make those objects speak to the imagination. I started looking up what electric motors and the interior of Tesla’s cars look like. Tesla’s dashboard screens gave me the idea to create a frame with the arms of a race driver holding a steering wheel, going into a frame with a dashboard, and out of that screen comes another frame with an image of a battery that’s nearly empty.

How did you begin your career as an illustrator? Were there any pivotal moments that made you the artist you are?

I have been drawing my whole life. I was that typical dreamy kid who always filled the pages of his notebooks with doodles in class. When I graduated from high school, I went to an art school specifically to become an art teacher. But I was way too young in my mind back then and I didn’t really take it seriously. After half a year there, I quit. The future was not on my mind at all. I spent a while doing side jobs, and finally, I decided to  go to ArtEZ to study illustration design. I guess I had to become a bit more mature first. 

My attitude completely changed. In the first year, I thought I already knew how to draw and that I already had my own style. I did every assignment and handed it in on time. Never missed a deadline. But in my mind, I did it just to get that paper. But by the end of the second year, I saw my classmates discovering new materials, new styles, and that made me realize that it was stupid not to try and explore new things as well. That’s when I started to figure out what I wanted to say with my illustrations and how to say it. 

I graduated with a portfolio of work about urban exploring. I went to abandoned construction sites and demolished restaurants and tried to convey that sense of adventure in my drawings. 

After graduating, I had a variety of side jobs. I worked in a factory stacking boxes on assembly lines. Slowly but surely, I started to get more commissions, and about two years ago, I quit my daytime job and tried to make a living out of just illustration. Three months later COVID-19 hit, and a few big commissions got canceled. But luckily the government here in the Netherlands provided a subsidy to freelancers, which allowed me to continue working.

What drew you to making illustrations about urban exploring? Is there something about abandoned places that’s particularly compelling to you?

As a kid, I used to roam around with friends in the industrial area in town. It was always really exciting. Just the general feeling I used to get when building stuff like huts and bridges to cross ditches or discovering cool places never really left me I guess.

How did your style develop? Has it changed over time?

My style has gone through a few changes over the years. Both in terms of subjects as well as the way I go about an illustration. 

I used to draw a lot of dusty attics, sheds, rusty factories, industrial areas filled with car tires, wooden pallets, and iron bars. After a while, I wanted to do something different. Then I started getting back into drawing more surreal, psychedelic things, which gives me the opportunity to come up with interesting compositions, switching perspectives and finding solutions to make objects morph into other things. 

Your work is made up of a lot of modular, geographic elements — you zoom in on close-ups in a scene, you superimpose elements from elsewhere over the top of a landscape. How did this come about, and how do you create these compositions?

I feel like this way of approaching illustration comes from two things. The first is from the way I drew as a teenager. I used to just grab a fine liner and start drawing, with pretty much no concept in mind. It often started out with just organic shapes and I built from there. It enabled me to look at a drawing with a kind of bird’s-eye view and to see multiple ways of going about drawing things. I also developed a good sense of spatial awareness, so I can kind of visualize an object from multiple angles. And the other thing is the discovery of adding frames, giving me the ability to play with size and perspective. 

Do you look at the work of other artists for inspiration? 

I used to do that a lot, especially during and after graduation when I was really figuring out my style. I used to look at other works and try to pinpoint what it was that made that specific illustration look good. Nowadays, I don’t really look at other people’s work as far as inspiration in terms of style.

What is your working routine like? 

I’m quite a chaotic person, so I really like having a bit of structure, which as a freelancer is something you really have to create yourself. So I try to have a five-day workweek from 9 ‘till 5. This past year, I’ve been renting a studio with another illustrator and an animator. It really helps me to keep my work and private life separated. 

There are weeks when I’m very busy and work ten hours or more per day. Sometimes there are weeks where I don’t really have commissions to work on. That’s when I try to create personal work, of which I sometimes make prints for my webshop or just my portfolio. Only thing is that you can’t force inspiration and creativity. So there are days where I’m just staring at a blank piece of paper for hours, forcing myself to create stuff and do that until it’s 5:00. It often doesn’t work that way, so I’m still trying to figure out what to do in those moments because I don’t want to be doing nothing.

What is your dream commission? 

Apart from making art, I’m really into skateboarding. I’ve been doing that for about 17 years. And I also love making music, particularly playing electric guitar. I’m in a band, we play a combination of some indie / funk stuff. I’ve had some commissions where I got the chance to combine those passions. I’ve made some gig posters, done some EP and album covers and some merchandise design, and I designed a skateboard deck once for a small skateshop. I guess my dream commission would be to create art for a band I really love. I’d also love to make deck designs for a well-known skateboard brand.

But this commission for The Verge was a dream commission as well. I really liked the challenge of making such a large number of illustrations and linking them together to make one big image. And it was quite an honor to get the opportunity to work together with such a big platform on a project that’s pretty huge for my standards. 

But I don’t really have specific dreams or plans, I just try to continue to grow as an artist because every commission has the possibility to lead to another one. The way this commission for The Verge came about is the perfect example. A year or two ago, I sent an email to bimonthly magazine The Believer to ask for a collaboration. I didn’t hear from them for a while. But after a few months, I got a reaction and got asked to make a spread and two spot illustrations for the magazine about stolen relics from India. They appreciated my work at The Believer, and I got a new commission to design one of their covers. I was pretty proud to design a cover in my little studio in Zwolle for a magazine all the way from America. When Kristen [who used to work at The Believer] started working for The Verge, she offered me the amazing chance to do the Verge 10 project. So cool how that all started with one email! That’s already an unexpected dream come true for me.