Hello Universe

Essay describing Frank Drake’s 1974 Arecibo Message to aliens as inspiration for a graphic design studio.


A humorous (and loose) explanation of the Arecibo Message’s context, sophisticated design, and how sending signals into deep space may relate to Stewdio’s ambiguous practice. Featured in the premiere print issue of design blog It’s Nice That, designed by HudsonBec in collaboration with Joseph Burrin.

An excerpt from the “Imagine You’re E.T.” section:
From one short stream of on/off blips you get the front-page news from planet Earth: Third rock from their star, made of pretty standard atoms, they like to party, and there are a bunch of them. Excellent. But can we really communicate? Get to know the inner them? Sadly, the Hercules (M13) star cluster is 25,000 light years from Earth. That means even light, the fastest thing we know of in the universe, would take 25,000 years to travel from one to the other. Sorry baby, you know how I feel about long distance relationships. And human bodies just don’t last that long.


Released April 2009.