In an automatic world, I'm back to feathering the clutch

Let's make things that feel like they belong in someone’s life forever.

Yes, I’ve changed the name of the publication again—but let me explain…

The other day, I went down one of those YouTube rabbit holes that I didn’t mean to fall in, but didn’t resist either. I watched a video by Peter McKinnon, and in it, he discusses the power of writing letters, not for nostalgia, but as a means to transform your life, business, and relationships with the people who truly matter.

Truthfully, I’m not always sure how to take Peter, because his enthusiasm sometimes feels a bit performative. I’ll admit, the title of the video sounds suspiciously like click bait. I clicked (hook line and sinke) on that video with a heavy dose of skepticism, but by the end of it, I was holding back the urge to bust out my fountain pen as if I were James Joyce, spilling ink as I wax poetic in a laudanum-induced haze.

What got me wasn’t the romance of the handwritten letter, but the sincerity of the gesture—the slowness, the focus, and the idea that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is sit down, put pen to paper, and make something that doesn’t need to move at the speed of your inbox.

That same idea of being deliberate and hands-on has been chasing me lately. I’ve watched different YouTubers shape leather goods with precision, tailor clothing with old-world techniques, carve spoons and bowls out of blocks of raw wood like they’ve got nowhere else to be. It's addictive not just because of the beauty of the outcome, but also the reverence for the process. I’m in love with the notion of the tactility and craftsmanship.

I’ve been asking myself some hard questions. Am I bringing that kind of care into my work? Am I approaching what I make with that same level of intention, whether it's art, zines, or something entirely new?

Not always!

Sometimes I’m just trying to get shit done because I’ve double-stacked my life with too many things, but I’m in a different zone now, where I lean into quality, not just output. I want the things I make to feel like they came from someone who gave a damn, not just about the result, but about every step along the way.

So yeah, this is a mindset shift. I’m not ditching the digital design or goods. I’m just grounding everything in something more tactile.

For instance, I’ve already started stockpiling leatherworking tools for a project I don’t fully understand yet, but I’m walking into it fearlessly. Not to become a master craftsman, but to see what happens when I slow down and put more of myself into every piece.

Because if I’m going to make things, I want them to feel like something. I want them to hold weight. And this feels like the right gear to be in.

Manual Transmission means…

It’s about staying in gear—choosing the pace, feathering the clutch, and keeping my hands on the process instead of letting the machine do all the work. There’s something sacred in that resistance, in not letting everything become automatic.

But it’s also about the signal: The broadcast, the writing, the sharing, and the passing along of what I’m learning in real time. This is a manual in motion—a creative dispatch for anyone who’s still out here making things with their hands and figuring it out as they go.

So, expect me to talk more about process, discovery, and the intuition that goes into making the work I do, plus the occasional dalliance into new ideas (not much new about that honestly; it seems to be my whole way of life).

Signals - Mixed media on paper, Dave Conrey, 2025

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I had a breakthrough

You might’ve picked up on this by now, but I take a lot of photos of gritty, grimy, distressed textures I come across during my regular strolls through neighborhoods that can’t decide if they’re urban or suburban. Quiet streets, cracked paint, rusted signage; my camera roll is basically a junkyard ephemera appreciation society.

I often use those images in my digital abstracts, but after watching my friend

Duane Toops

share his physical collage process on video, I realized I was missing an opportunity.

Duane and I chatted a few weeks back, and he told me about his Frankenstein process: Take a digital piece, print it, chop it up, glue it down, scan it back in, and sometimes turn the results into collage sheets for others to use. It’s like the creative circle of life, if that circle was cut with a rusty X-Acto blade and smelled faintly of rubber cement.

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out where I’m going with this, but it’s not the first time I’ve had this thought (even though I left it behind). A few years back, I created a couple of print books through Amazon KDP called Rad Scrap 1 & 2 (affiliate links) which are essentially books filled with some of my image textures for the purpose of tearing them out and using them in whatever scrap needs you might have.

These books didn’t exactly fly off the shelves, but let’s be honest, I didn’t do much to push them. I also didn’t make more. And now that I’m hoarding my own copies like rare Pokemon cards, the selection is feeling a bit… stale. There’s only so many art pieces I can make with the distressed letter 14.

There’s a freebie—You can have it.

Two Possible Solutions

1. Make more books with many more textures

2. Print out my own sheets and use them in my work

Both are feasible and easily accomplished, but the latter seems the more likely scenario. However, I could be coaxed into making Rad Scrap zines for others…just saying.

Long story short, I’ve got a printer and I plan on using it more, which means I’ll show you more of my own process (I can’t let Duane have all the fun).

In fact, I just finished making a long-form video of me doing exactly this, which you can see here, and if you become a member, you can get access to the latest Studio Stash and play along.

Studio Stash #2

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External Signals

• Being an artist, is it weird that I can’t visualize objects or colors in my mind? It’s a condition called Aphantasia and I’ve got pretty severe case of it, where if you told me to close my eyes and picture an apple, I couldn’t do it. Weird, right? Perhaps that’s why everything I make is intuitive abstract.

• Could a handmade zine land you a dream job? It work for

  Kel Rakowski
  .

• I’m a strategy nerd, but like

  Wes Pearce
  admits, I sometimes get a bit seat-of-my-pants with what I publish. However, Wes’ new strategy has gotten him more engagement from his readers, and even though his topic is not my topic (and likely not yours), I’m certain what he’s sharing can have some impact on my own engagement (My next stop after writing this is to make friends with my ChatGPT bot to help me with some third-door content ideas).