Jul 17, 2026 •Permalink

Feature Friday #032 — Annica Lydenberg

We’re so happy to re-connect with our friend Annica today to talk Australia, AI, and A’s and I’s. Plus, get 20% off everything in Annica's Cotton Bureau store now through Friday, July 24 with coupon code featurefriday20 at checkout.

Annica! We’ve worked together a bunch over the years — including the custom design you made for Cotton Bureau’s 12th birthday — but somehow we’ve never made the time to get you on the record for an interview. Let’s get that fixed! To start, here’s an easy question (I hope!) but one I would love to have answered: how did you decide to name your design studio “Dirty Bandits”? There must be a story.

Cotton Bureau’s 12th birthday tee, designed by Annica

Ironically, Dirty Bandits actually started as a t-shirt company back in 2003 when I was in my early 20s, chasing something new, and living in Sydney, Australia. This was before companies like Cotton Bureau made small batch or 1 off printing affordable and possible. I was designing graphics, my roommate and I were screen printing in our backyard, she was doing some cool cut and sew things and we were selling at the local market on the weekend and then started selling in shops. We named our label Dirty Bandits with ‘Dirty’ being a reference to our grungy style and ‘Bandits’ with a reference to the Pablo Picasso quote “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Art is always taking ideas and inspiration from other aspects of culture, history, science, language and I love that.

We incorporated in the US so we could start selling our t-shirts here but I was spending so much time designing websites to support our t-shirt business but by 2004 it wasn’t financially possible to do both. So I moved back to NY full time, we stopped making t-shirts, and I simply kept the business name for my design services and here we are 23 years later.

Oh, that’s interesting. We didn’t really get into selling t-shirts until 2010, but the exact problem you had (small batch t-shirt printing) is why we started Cotton Bureau. We needed it for ourselves, so we built it.

I’d love to hear more about Australia. I just finished reading In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson, and it sounds incredible. Did you get out of the Sydney area much? How did you like it?

Ugh, I did so little exploring during that time - I was in my early 20s and mostly just went to see music shows and went to the beach! I went back in 2015 to Melbourne for an art show and to paint murals. I did way more exploring then and even stopped in Sydney and went to the Blue Mountains which was epically beautiful. I could really use another trip down there for sure!

That’s a shame! You definitely have to go back. Don’t tell anyone, but I am starting to plan a trip to Australia and New Zealand in 2028. Somehow I missed the total solar eclipse when it passed less than an hour from my house, so now I have to make up for it by traveling to the other side of the world.

Let’s jump forward to 2026… what’s fresh trouble is Dirty Bandits into?

I went from t-shirts to websites and banner ads to an interest in hand-lettering. I went to Type @Cooper in 2011 where I learned to create fonts and to San Francisco where I learned about sign painting.

Now in 2026 I’m focusing on branding, mural design and painting, and making fonts. This is my first year releasing fonts commercially and it’s super exciting! I am focusing on fun, energetic display typefaces.

Kaaboo Music & Art Festival in San Diego

Tell me more about the typeface design. What made you decide to get into this space? What was your experience like?

Getting into typeface design was kind of an accident-meets-purposeful move on my part. In 2010 a new program popped up at Cooper Union in New York called Type@Cooper. It was a one year certificate program in typeface design that was a few evenings per week and weekends per month, so I could continue working and get this education at the same time. I was dying to get into hand lettering and I thought, “Close enough!” Typeface design as it turned out was actually VERY different than hand lettering. I was in way over my head and got a much more serious typography education than I anticipated. I am so grateful I did it but I was so intimidated still be the process and the technical aspects that I promptly didn’t release a single typeface commercially for the next 15 years.

I have continued to grow and develop with my lettering skills and I realized that there is a place for fun, funky, bold display typefaces so that is what I have been doing this year on top of my regular client work.

Like all designers I am forever testing out new markets for ‘passive income.’ Which basically seems to involve putting a TON of work into something that pays very little if you’re me. I haven’t cracked the code on making passive income streams pay off so I am careful to do only projects I would do free anyway!! I love making fonts, and I love designing stickers and merch and posters with those fonts for the sake of promo / fun.

Ah, yes, the passive income trap. I love your approach though. Do what you want to do and share it. Maybe it will turn into something, you never know!

Speaking of passive income, you’ve got a lovely set of shirts, hats, and mugs available on Cotton Bureau right now (Nope, Bruh, GOAT) that work for everyone from Betas to Boomers, but those were from before you became a Font Designer™️. I’m happy we were able to line everything up to get an original design with one of your new typefaces featured in this week’s Cotton Bureau Shirt Club as a throwback screen-printed campaign. Do you foresee any upcoming shirts using Still Cool, Pucker Up, or Almuerzo?

Oh I absolutely do! Next week I’m going to do a couple with Still Cool, that one is my favorite. There are two versions of that font, so I will probably do one for each, there is a solid and an outline with a drop shadow. Side note about Still Cool, the uppercase and the lowercase have the same letterform but different piles of snow on them.

I am obligated, of course, to ask every designer about AI. Since we re-started our interview series, the landscape for visual content generation tools has only gotten more crowded (and, arguably, more bleak). Where are you at with this? I can imagine a full range of emotions triggered by what at this point feels like a very near future LLM hegemony.

I know AI is here and changing every day. I find ways to use it to fill in where I don’t have strengths or resources - captions for social or realistic looking mock ups. But there are certain things it’s not gonna do. It’s not actually empathetic, particularly clever and it can’t paint a wall. Those are things that make me the kind of designer and illustrator I am.

Are sure it can’t paint a wall?? I get that though, and of course I agree. It’s a soulless, pattern matching copy machine. But it is getting quite good at it.

Okay, last question and I’ll let you go. We talked earlier about your time in Australia. Do you have any fun trips planned for the near future? Where would you like to go next if you could?

I have set my sights on a Japan as my next epic adventure for inspiration but that probably won’t be for years. Short term travel goals; National Parks of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. I want to breathe clean air and look at gorgeous skies and wide open spaces.

Japan would be epic, no doubt. I’ve yet to make it anywhere outside of North America and Europe, so hopefully we can do this again someday and you can tell us all about it!

Jul 10, 2026 •Permalink

Cotton Bureau Collaborations #002: Panic

Next up in our series of conversations with some of our favorite companies on Cotton Bureau, we’re talking to Neven Mrgan of Panic about his experience designing, publishing, and, of course, merchandising indie video games.

Hey, Neven. I have to say, I’m looking forward to this conversation. I’ve long admired the wide range of your personal and professional accomplishments. Before we get into how Playdate and Cotton Bureau have been working together on video game merch, could you give everyone a little bit of background on how you ended up as both indie “designer, game maker, and writer” and how that experience has translated into your day-to-day responsibilities at Panic?

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a designer. Somehow, it worked out for me in the long run—I’ve worked in design for the past twenty years. In my lifetime, that has meant largely digital design, which videogames are a pure and extreme expression of. I loved making little interactive experiences on the web in the 2000s: single-serving sites, tech demos, zines. And as someone with fond memories of games played on the C64, Amiga, and NES, I had that standard late-90s dream of being a videogame designer. It felt totally out of reach, however—until the App Store introduced a new platform for games in 2008. Since everyone was new to this, it felt less intimidating to me, and I got to work on early iPhone games with my friend Matt Comi.

Space Age, one of three games released by Neven at Big Bucket.

And as for writing, you’re looking at a classic book-readin’ nerd here, the kid who spent the summer break walking to the library every day. Writing feels like an extension of reading to me, and reading is something I do all the time as a form of mental hygiene. If I’m not currently reading two books, I get itchy.

At Panic, I’m currently the Creative Lead (and still a Designer at heart.) We’re a small company doing things entirely too big for our pants-size: coding developer apps, sure, but also publishing videogames, and making our own handheld gaming console. I get to work on the design of all of this: app UI, marketing websites, trade show booths, hardware, games themselves. Every day is a wacky casserole of nearly random ingredients… and I like it that way.

So, on the topic of Panic and tackling some pretty big projects, can you go into a little detail about how the game publishing part of the company got started? You all aren’t shy about telling this story, but it’s still fascinating. How did you go from a pretty straightforward Mac software business to supporting developers who make video games and, eventually, building your own handheld console?

We’ve always been flexible, and we’ve always been into videogames. Back in the 2000s, we had the goofy idea of being the US seller of official shirts for the game Katamari Damacy—and it was a lot of fun! It seemed like somehow, we could turn that into proper game involvement…

But this didn’t happen until 2013 or so, when our longtime friend Jake (creator of custom “faces” for our Audion music player, many years prior to this!) co-founded a game studio called Campo Santo to make the game Firewatch. We thought we could maybe help with publishing, a task that was notoriously annoying for mid-size game teams at the time; we were told the terms offered were usually not… amazing. So we offered hopefully better ones. And it went well for everyone, it seems!

We assumed this episode was a one-off, but then one day we found ourselves chuckling at GIFs of this goose-based game we’d seen online, and maybe… just maybe… we could publish that one, too? This got the ball rolling, so pretty soon we had an actual Publishing Team. Ten years after Firewatch, we’ve signed about a dozen lovely videogames, including the Yorkshire comedy slapformer Thank Goodness You’re Here!, the intergalactic TV signal Blippo+, and the Ecuadorean soccer-memory despelote. Games are now a major part of our business; a really fun and rewarding one.

The story of Playdate, our handheld game console—a fairly mad thing for a small company with no experience in hardware to be making—is even less intentional. Basically, in the 2010s we wanted to make a cool little gift for our friends and business partners, to mark our 20th anniversary. (Yes, Panic has been around for that long—we’re older than Facebook or Google!) It began as a clock with a cool e-ink-like screen, and we thought it would be cool if the clock face changed unexpectedly, as a little surprise. Once we had it running, we kept writing software for it, including little games, until it occurred to us one day that we had accidentally made a Game Boy of our own.

Taking the project seriously at this point, we contacted our friends at Teenage Engineering, an amazing Swedish company, to help us construct and manufacture it. They provided design input and shared their vast factory/logistics knowledge. Pretty soon, we had a manufacturing line in Malaysia, a custom OS and SDK, and a list of developers we’d secretly shared this dream with, eager to make something all-new for it. Against all odds, it all just came together: a handheld gaming console unlike any other, with a 1-bit screen, a crank, and its own game ecosystem. Twenty-four surprise games delivered weekly, an on-device game store, a constant stream of wonderful new titles.

Had someone told us at the start we’d need to build and do all of this, we would’ve said “well no thank you then” very quickly. Luckily, we had no idea how much work it would all be.

I love this story on so many levels, from the t-shirt origin story to the very real sense of “oh no how did we find ourselves here and what are we going to do about it?” that is so familiar to anyone running a business.

Of course I can’t resist the perfect segue you provided: with Panic’s experience partnering with Katamari Damacy to retail official game merch, you’re obviously familiar with how physical goods intersect with virtual experiences — I would say, “the role merch can play in enhancing the video game experience and elevating the brand”, but why use jargon to describe what is really just designers having fun with t-shirts and other novelties that fans might appreciate?

Can you talk a little about some of the things you have made in the past to support your games and what the last few years have been like as we have been able to work together on Playdate goods and apparel?

My favorite way of approaching merchandise for videogames is thinking of in-world items that would exist inside the game itself. For Firewatch, we made a set of notebooks styled after the pulp paperback novels in the tower, and posters that were meant to be part of a government PSA campaign about forest fires.

For Untitled Goose Game, the team wanted to have a number of artists they like reinterpret the game through their own art styles—another strategy I’m a fan of. Personally I’m not too precious about the specifics of being on-model and brand-accurate, as long as something of the spirit of the game is captured earnestly in the art. Once a thing is out in the world, it sort of belongs to those who love it.

Untitled Goose Game

I’d like to do a wacky, novelty item for every game, but at the end of the day, people wear clothing and put stickers on things, so we end up making a lot of those. For Playdate, I decided to lean into fan service and give the diehards what they want: logo shirts, popular games. But we snuck in some deep cuts, like a reference to our ancient “hi, I make Macintosh software” and the mascot of our developer documentation, named Crankles by the community.

When we put together Season Two of Playdate games, I worked with each dev team to make products on Cotton Bureau for their game. There’s a variety of approaches there, from using the game’s own pixel art, to beautiful, elaborate illustrations.

I’m glad we could make something physical for every title. Cotton Bureau have been an ideal partner for our Playdate merch: easy to work with, making high-quality products, and making us look good in the process. It would take us aeons to figure out everything you do, so this way we can just focus on the creative work, and let the pros handle the logistics.

Well shucks, that is awfully nice of you to say. It’s a privilege for us to work together. And I couldn’t agree more, while there is always a strong appetite for logo tees, the quirkier items are usually my favorites, like the Root Bear Perfect Pour pint glass. Or, from your earlier games, the Firewatch posters from Olly. I love everything NPS, so they were right in my wheelhouse.

Thank you so much as always for your time, Neven. What a fun way for us to continue this new series of conversations with some of our favorite companies and communities. Good luck with Season 3!

Jun 29, 2026 •Permalink

Hand-Picked Links — June 2026

It’s a scorcher out there. Stay cool with these fun links.

Designed in California

Very good friends of Cotton Bureau Jason Snell and Myke Hurley are producing a 50 episode podcast series on the history of Apple product design to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary. The project is already more than 5X funded, locking in live shows in San Francisco and London. It’s not too late to support, though time is running out. Campaign ends Wednesday, July 1 at noon Eastern.

Back the Kickstarter

Chicken & Goose Stickers

Get a pack of waterproof vinyl stickers from 6th grader Mini Kestner featuring her feathered friends for just $10. The campaign is over, but Kickstarter says you can still back the project. Proceeds will be used to fulfill orders, and buy more chickens. Maybe if you support at a high enough level Mini will let you name one?

Back the Kickstarter

Offkilter Guitars

Our good friend Dan Povost (of Studio Neat) spent so much time modding his electric guitar he decided it would be easier to just build his own. If you need a custom guitar, he’ll build one for you too.

Shop Offkilter Guitars

nLab

Back in Kickstarter land, you have less than 72 hours to support nLab and get “the world’s smallest all-in-one electronics lab”. For $179 you (or maybe a recent high school graduate entering an engineering program in the fall) get everything you need to start learning how to harness the power of electricity.

Back the Kickstarter

Still Cool Font

Our friend Annica Lydenberg aka Dirty Bandits is now officially a font designer, recently releasing Still Cool, Pucker Up, Bingo Night, and Almuerzo.

Consider this a sneak peek of our upcoming Feature Friday conversation with Annica.

Shop Dirty Bandits

That’s a wrap. Don’t forget to follow @cottonbureau.com on Bluesky and Instagram.

Jun 26, 2026 •Permalink

Feature Friday #031 — Matt Windsor

Catching up with Matt we learned in addition to his design career he may just have a future in Hollywood? Warning: intense popcorn cravings and Stranger Things spoilers ahead.

P.S. Get 20% off everything in Matt's Cotton Bureau store now through Friday, July 3 with coupon code featurefriday20 at checkout.

Matt! Hi! Welcome to Cotton Bureau’s Designer Interview Series. Let’s start with the basics. How have you been? Where have you been? What’s your life looking like lately?

Hi there! Thanks for having me! At the moment I'm going through one of those busy periods, which can happen with freelancing, where everything seems to come in at once. That combined with the multiple feet of snow currently covering my Cape Breton home, has meant I haven't been going to too many places recently. Although I feel like I’ve been traveling very far and wide through the book I'm currently designing — it’s all to do with NASA and the history of space exploration — and I’ve been enjoying nerding out on all the cool picture research.

How life’s treating you?

Okay okay busy is stressful I’m sure but also a good problem to have as a freelancer. Plus, if you’re stuck at home anyways ¯\(ツ)/¯ Cape Breton is probably incredible though, eh 🇨🇦? I would be super antsy if I was trapped at home knowing all that adventure is right outside my door.

A NASA book sounds like fun, I bet you’re learning all kind of interesting tidbits. Have you made your way over to thanking my lucky stars this interview is being conducted via email so I don't have to butcher this name Kejimkujik National Park? As a Dark-Sky Preserve I feel like a visit would qualify as research. Maybe on a clear night you’ll be able to see some astronauts floating around up there ;)

I definitely prefer to be busy than doing nothing, but I do like a bit of down time to go outside, and to work on personal projects like t-shirt designs. Trapped is a good adjective to describe it, with all the ice surrounding the home just waiting to catch you out! The winter here is way more brutal than my British origins. Excellent emoji game and Canadian language skills by the way.

The NASA book is so interesting, full of history, facts, and great photography (I don't get any royalties by the way). It’s certainly inspired a few doodled designs in my sketchbook which one day might get worked up. It was while working on another space book years ago that inspired one of my first designs (“Rocket Science”) which Cotton Bureau featured in the T-shirt Tuesday email. I was super grateful so thanks a bunch for that!

I haven't been to Kejimkujik but it looks a special place. Truth be told I’m a fair weather camper — a tent big enough to stand up in, queen-sized airbed, etc. There’s a Korean YouTuber I watch called Ryucamp who lets me live out my cosy camping dreams and supplies cute dog/gadget/food envy.

Yeah, busy is in many ways more comfortable in my opinion, but always nice to have balance. What took you to Canada? Poutine perhaps?

I love to hear the origin stories behind designs. I get to look at all the products on Cotton Bureau and naturally have my favorites but any time I hear about where the ideas came from those designs get bumped to the top of my list. Oh, and speaking of your designs.... how did we feel about Stranger Things Season 5? Live up to expectations?

Yep, busy isn’t so bad. And freelancing was how I could move to Canada in the first place. The short version is, about ten years ago my (now) partner came over to the UK on holiday, we messaged on OKCupid, a week later I almost took her to my sister’s wedding as my plus one but then realised that was perhaps a bit crazy. So our first date was the day after (mostly in a parking lot because we got carried away chatting in the car), our second date was in New York, and our third date was in Canada. Pretty standard stuff really! Long distance dating for a year followed, then 9 months traveling together around Europe, before heading over to Canada, and then the pandemic hit. I've stayed ever since and I'm now a proud, dual-passport-wielding, honorary Canuck. And yes that was the short version. Also, poutine is chef’s kiss.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Now then, Stranger Things. First off, I think by and large they stuck the landing, on what was a ridiculously hyped up final season. That was probably the main problem — the expectations were set unrealistically high. The best bit was obviously the mid-season finale Sorcerer episode. The whole season was a bit crammed with stuff, but the final Vecna fight seemed to be over too quickly for my liking. Give us a video game style multi-phase boss fight! Also I’m glad none of the main cast died, and I found it weird that some viewers were sad no one did. What about Eddie and Bob?! (and Barb!) #toosoon. Was it a perfect nat 20? No. Could it have done with just a few extra key lines of dialogue or small tweaks to make things better. Sure. But we can all agree at least they didn’t Game of Thrones it right?!

[/END SPOILER ALERT]

Oh my gosh I love this so much. But also it really feels like the plot of a great rom-com: 3 dates, 3 countries, and a pandemic? All we need now is Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson to sign on and I think we have a hit on our hands.

I have to admit, I have not finished Stranger Things yet. I actually fell off at some point in season 3. After your review though I'm honestly considering picking it back up. I completely agree the expectations were set way too high then once it came out and people were disappointed and I decided to pass.

Alrighty, one last question for ya then we’ll wrap this up. Of your Cotton Bureau designs, do you have a favorite? I'm partial to Bad Decisions Make Good Stories but there are so many great choices.

Alright, alright, alright, any screenwriters please feel free to get in touch!
Sometimes I find myself watching a show or a movie just to avoid spoilers. And I’ve just this second realised I may have spoiled some parts of Stranger Things for you! We can edit all this right?! Or put a disclaimer at the top. Sorry if I’ve ruined anything for you.

It’s hard to pick a favourite design of mine, so I’ll cop out and name three — Rocket Science, because it combines NASA and humour, Forever on a Sidequest, which combines my love of gaming and accurately describes my life, and Like Cher Subscribe, because I love puns and it just brings me joy.

Speaking of joy and Bad Decisions Make Good Stories, a lovely CB customer got in touch with me to say she'd bought that shirt for her sister and it was perfectly appropriate. The attached photo she sent made me genuinely laugh out loud and was a highlight of last year. Because ultimately, the thought of someone liking one of my designs and wearing it, brings me such happiness. Stares off into the middle distance and removes glasses, it’s why I do what I do...

Thanks for the chat and for all the hard work, care, and attention from you and the team at Cotton Bureau!

Hahah we’ll be sure to put a spoiler alert, but as for me, nothing has been spoiled. If anything you’ve revived my interest in Stranger Things. I’m sure the Duffer Brothers will be in touch soon to thank you for the additional views.

Three choices is fair. I almost went with Like, Cher, Subscribe 😂 So good. Choosing favo[u]rites of anything is so tough. What a nice struggle to have though, eh? Having so many great options is rad.

And lastly, I love this so much. That’s so cool they reached out with a photo. I hope she’s all healed now but couldn’t agree more; Bad Decisions Make Good Stories [and the best photos].

Take care, Matt! Can’t wait to see where life takes you next.

Jun 12, 2026 •Permalink

Celebrating 13 Years of Cotton Bureau

When you’re born in the 1980s in Pittsburgh, your grandfather was probably a steelworker or a farmer. Maybe you had one of each. Either way, the idea was the same. You wake up, early, and you put your time in. The work goes in one side, the product comes out the other. Day after day, week after week, year after year.

Cotton Bureau is the direct result — and, we hope, an ongoing legacy — of that ethos. Show up. Work hard. Do it again.

So it is with pride that we recognize the anniversary of the day we launched 13 long years ago and our Steel City heritage.

As part of the celebration, we’re offering two incredible deals.

FIRST, get our annual birthday t-shirt design, available in Basic ($13) and Deluxe ($20).

SECOND, select an on demand tee of your choice, again for an unfathomably low $13.

PLUS, get 10% off all additional on demand products. Use code LUCKY13 at checkout.

This year’s birthday tee is designed by local friend and artist Daniel Gurwin.

Both designs are screen-printed with water-based inks to last forever and feel great and are available one week only for the low, low price of $13.

The basic tee features a simple, 3" wide pocket print with our name, location, and date of establishment. Available in your choice of white, natural, light grey, and charcoal styles.

It’s the perfect way to show your support for Cotton Bureau without inviting any questions not already answered by your shirt.

The Deluxe version adds a large back print which showcases a Cotton Bureau seal plus a discreet woven hem tag on the front. Slightly more expensive at $20 but still a bargain.

Perfect for the true believer who wants, nay needs, friends and family alike to know where the finest quality apparel may be found.

Don’t forget by using code LUCKY13 at checkout, all Cotton Bureau customers are entitled to one on demand tee (or tank top for maximum summer vibes) of your choosing — again for the thematically requisite low, low price of $13.

Our entire on demand catalog is eligible as part of this promotion. Deal ends in one week on Friday, June 19.

At our normal retail price of $32, we don’t even want to calculate the percentage discount we’re talking about. (The Finance Department would shut this deal down immediately if they knew.)

FINALLY, as a further thank you for your long-standing support, we’re discounting all additional on demand products by 10%, so load up that cart with as many shirts as you can fit. There’s no limit to how much you can save.

Just make sure you use the code LUCKY13 at checkout.