Tiny Talk with Dan Cederholm

As the saying goes…the happiest two days of a boat owners life are the day they buy a boat and the day they sell it. I see you’re a USCG licensed captain, so what’s your take on that? Tell me about Advencher!

I grew up in landlocked Vermont kind of obsessed with the ocean. Fortunately, my parents were also obsessed and our roots were in Coastal New England, so it’s always been part of my DNA. I’ve lived in Salem, Mass. for the last 25 years and can’t imagine not living near salt water again. About 10 years ago I bought a small Boston Whaler (speaking of bucket lists!) knowing nothing about how to operate it. But I dove in and learned as much as I possibly could about navigating, safety, etc. That led to wanting to study for a USCG Captains License, which I mainly did so it would force me to learn as much as I could about boats and being safe on the water.

I realize at this stage in my life, I enjoy learning about things I’m really bad at. Fishing is another one. I’m a terrible fisherman. But it’s not about performance for me—it’s about the journey and doing something I can feel present in. Things that have nothing to do with pixels or screens or business.

You released a game called Vowels of Hell to accompany the new font it used, also made by you, Dragönsteel. Did making one inform the other?

Ha, that’s a good question. I wanted to do my own take on a simple, clean blackletter typeface and so my mental moodboard was going to places like the AC/DC logo, and Dungeons & Dragons—an almost cartoonish, ironic version of blackletter. As I was playing around with it, I knew I wanted to lean into RPG dice as part of the marketing and realized that all the consonants could fit on a 20-sided die, while all the vowels (if you include Y) could fit on a regular 6-side die. The perfect physical vehicle for showing off the font. Then I came up with a groany pun. It was after all that when I invented the admittedly silly word game that would work well with the two dice. The good news is that you can use them for other, likely more interesting, games or “word randomization” tasks 🙂

I love the idea of making fonts, but then putting those fonts on physical things, and Vowels of Hell was sort of a perfect storm of those goals coming together in one package. Lately, I feel like I’m just striving to make stuff that reminds of all the fun things I was interested in as a kid growing up in the 80s.

What’s the deal with your muppet/puppet?! I love it, I want one, but I need to know more.

Speaking of things I was into in the 80s…I grew up adoring the Muppets, Sesame Street, etc. Puppets have always inspired me for some reason! Alf, The Dark Crystal, Yoda, E.T.—there’s still something magical (and hilarious) about a real, physical puppet character performed in the right way. I also don’t love being on camera or photos of myself, so years ago I found a company that makes Muppet-quality custom puppets and decided to have one made of myself. I even used it to do Zoom calls. People (most people?) like puppets and it sets a humorous tone for an otherwise boring meeting. When puppets are involved, they immediately take the edge off of any situation.

I firmly believe there should be more puppets in the world. Ty, you need a puppet version of yourself. Make it happen!

Your success seems natural and consistent, but is there something you were excited to work on that turned out terrible? Any big lesson learned?

Well, that’s awfully kind of you to say. The truth is, like most folks, I second-guess everything I do haha. And suffer from imposter syndrome. It doesn’t help that I’ll put a lot of time into learning something, only to move onto something else where I’m starting from square one again. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

In terms of work that turned out terrible…there is plenty 🙂 Just last week I was getting 20+ years of old blog archives reorganized so I could get them back online. Seeing those old posts was, at times, embarrassing! But they represent a certain time. And I have to remember that it was all a step toward what I’m doing today. I’m old enough to have work out there from a long time ago that I really despise. Often it’s the visual stuff. I’m sure a lot of designers go through this as well, but the lesson is to keep making. Keep creating stuff that you want to see in the world. The world will always be changing, of course. And not everything you make will be incredible, and that’s okay.

Here’s a very specific failure I’m proud of. When I was in high school I was convinced I wanted to make a stop motion short film about a Wild West shootout. So I went out and bought all the materials to build a set: posterboard, astroturf, clay, paint, etc. I had no idea what I was doing. I was ahead of myself by hundreds of steps. I didn’t even have a Super 8 camera. I eventually realized that just because I could envision parts of the process well, I didn’t have all the pieces to make a complete film, and so the materials were a waste.

The lesson I leaned is that I was born in the wrong decade and could now easily make a (likely awful) stop motion film with my phone.

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