My collaboration with Thom Smith grew through music, conversation and making things together. That shared history is more useful than any perfectly worded brief. We know how to challenge each other’s ideas and keep working on them afterwards.

Thom and I have played together in several bands, including Darkcorpse, Retch and Worship Pain. Each has its own kind of madness, discipline and design instinct. The energy that drives a setlist also drives a sketchbook, and our working relationship was formed in cramped rehearsal rooms as much as over design drafts. Years of playing together taught us something a course could not: collaboration depends less on overlapping skills than on being able to translate between them.

Same instincts, different mediums

Thom approaches product design the way he approaches music: bold composition, balanced tension and deliberate texture. His latest release is a nengajo, a New Year’s card, for the 2026 Year of the Horse. I did not design or print it. My part was the online store. Even from that distance, the card shows what I have come to expect from his process, where formal precision and impulsive gestures sit side by side. He studied at Cooper Union and chose Japan as both inspiration and the place where his work gets made, and you can see both in it.

While Thom makes physical things, I build the digital setup around them. The division mirrors our roles in a band. He brings the visual noise; I look after the structure that holds it up. That balance is why the collaboration works. My background in digital operations means I can organize a launch, and Thom makes sure there is something worth launching.

Design as an extension of sound

Every print, shirt and card Thom releases carries the same pulse as a riff in Worship Pain or Retch. We have always treated the visual side as part of the music rather than decoration for it. Even at early Darkcorpse shows, Thom’s posters did more than advertise. They set the mood before anyone played a note, and people arrived already knowing what kind of night it would be.

That is why setting up the store for his work was more than logistics. The job was to keep his intentions intact online. When I built the Squarespace store for this year’s nengajo, I was less concerned with automating anything than with making the site feel like the card: tactile, refined and slightly dangerous. Black card stock, gold ink, red accents. Those choices come from a vocabulary we have shared for years, one that mixes Japan’s care for craft with the grit of the Tokyo underground.

Systems are part of the craft

After more than a decade of working with artists, I no longer see art and operations as opposites. A well-built online store is a creative piece of work in its own right. Like a print or a song, it needs rhythm, clarity and pacing, and it falls apart when it is crammed too tight. Performing together for years made those instincts carry over naturally into how we plan and present his releases.

What bands teach about making products

Playing in bands taught both of us to listen before leading and to build structure out of chaos. Those lessons guide how I set up digital systems and how Thom approaches product design. It is the same creative habit expressed with different tools.

Our partnership works because Thom is fearless about texture and I am stubborn about structure. When those two line up, a release like his nengajo feels inevitable. The Japanese influence shows in the brush-like gold lines and the balanced red accents. The discipline of his training shows in the geometry. The underground energy shows in the decision to finish each set by hand. None of that came from a brand guideline. It came from years of absorbing the same scenes, records and streets.

Craft, commitment and continuity

Collaborations like this one remind me that the partnerships that last are built on a shared obsession more than a shared plan. We have both changed over the years, picking up new instruments, new mediums and new illustration tools, but the way we work together has stayed recognizable. Whether we are rehearsing or arguing about typography, it tends to follow the same loop:

  1. Start rough: get an idea in front of the other person early, before it is polished enough to defend.
  2. Push back honestly: say what does not work, knowing the friendship can take it.
  3. Keep going: return to the idea until it holds up, rather than stopping at the first acceptable version.

Quality comes from that loop. Perfection is rarely the goal; persistence usually gets us further.

Thom’s nengajo is a good example. My part was only the store, yet it still feels like a continuation of our history together. Each release marks a point in a long conversation between sound, form and friendship, and I expect that conversation to keep producing new things for years.

If you are an artist or maker thinking about how to present your own work online, the principle is the same one we follow: let the work set the tone, then build the store so it gets out of the way. I have written more about how visual identity works in Japan for anyone thinking along those lines.

Further reading: room for psychedelic art in a professional identity · visual identity strategy and branding in Japan · how to find live music in Japan