Everyday Objects from Faraway Places
How a graphic designer became a globetrotting office-supply merchant
I have a 5-year-old glue stick on my desk. It’s dried up and the tip has stiffened. But it looks super cool. It’s not one of those cylindrical, plastic Elmer’s sticks, but a German brand called Gutenberg Gummierstift (meaning “adhesive stick”), which comes in a tall, slim, slightly curvy glass bottle with a gold, orange and black label and a chrome top. To me, it’s a novelty, though in Germany, it’s just a plain old glue stick. That’s part of the appeal. There’s something about the most quotidian items from places not your own — the label designs and packaging shapes, colors and brand names — that makes them notable and covetable.
That’s the working theory driving Rad and Hungry, a small design retail shop and subscription service run by graphic designer Hen Chung. I found Hen’s work while combing Medium for design stories. She’d posted several accounts of her world travels, which revolve around the hot pursuit of locally-produced office supplies. That’s right: office supplies. Chung is obsessed with them — pencils, pens, notebooks and paper clips. And she’s built a business around sourcing, packaging, and selling them to people — especially designers — who still, as she puts it, “freak out” about a cool basic tool.
Chung travels to cities around the world and shops their supermarkets and bodegas. She gathers their most common writing supplies and brings them home, then packages them into “kits,” with a design treatment (a wrapper, mini zine, and hand-screened poster) inspired by the trip and the culture from which the products came.
“The only time we ever really think about design is when it’s really good, really bad, or when you travel,” says Chung, “Suddenly something you overlook at home, like a pencil, becomes really cool.” She’s right. An Elmer’s glue stick is totally forgettable, but I’ve kept my gummierstift around years beyond its utility just because it feels special and a little bit irreplaceable.
That’s the other thing about Chung’s business: You can’t buy this stuff elsewhere online. “We’re not promising the best, awesomest, highest quality pencil or paper, we’re trying to share what the average person in another country uses,” she explains, “We think that’s more special than finding something that you can already buy online. Ninety-nine percent of the stuff we sell you can’t find online anywhere else. That’s one of the criteria for sourcing: when we arrive in a place, we go buy one of everything and then we go online and hunt to see if it’s findable. If it’s easily found we won’t stock it.”
Chung’s original business model hinged on subscribers who wanted to receive all of her custom-made kits by mail as they were released. This was just before the consumer zeitgeist hit and everything from makeup to coffee could be ordered for repeat home delivery. Now, Chung also sells her finds piecemeal through her website, and she makes custom packs for corporate clients. But the core of the enterprise is still about buying an international plane ticket, collecting the local goods, then coming home and developing a packaging design concept that reflects the culture of the source country, as well as the specific experience of her trip.
While preparing for a 20-day trip to Croatia, Slovenia, and Turkey, Chung talked me through some of the country-themed kits she’s created over the last few years.
France
For the France kit (below), Chung was inspired by the French stationery company Papier Tigre, which makes memo books with geometric-patterned covers. The France kit featured notebooks, calligraphy paper, and multi-colored pencils. Riffing off the tiger theme, Chung created a zine called Eye of Le Tigre (above) with stories from her travels, which was tucked in with the office supplies.
Korea
As a Korean-American, Chung says, “I f’in love being in Korea, even if Koreans don’t love me. They see me as Japanese, maybe Chinese, but rarely Korean. After a second look, they see the Korean in me – and then I’m just an American to them.” On her last visit, the lunar calendar delivered three holidays coinciding during one week — Children’s Day, Parent’s Day and the Buddha’s Birthday.
The collision of celebrations resulted in Chung’s theme for her kit, “Culture Clash,” which included notebooks with animated characters, plus candy to represent the children, and tea for the parents. “I’ve always steered clear of the overly cute Asian type character concept,” she says, “But this particular trip I was like F-it, it’s so Korean, why am I denying it?”
USA
For the more recent US kit, Chung chose yurts as her theme, with a collection of glamping-appropriate items. Even though the American-made goods are the ones most familiar to us and therefore perhaps least alluring, the thematic frame gives the common items a collective aura. The forest-green “Memories” book and retractable pen seem like they ought to be sticking out of the pocket of a Wes Anderson character, who would probably be reading Yurt Life, Chung’s zine for this kit, while drinking coffee from an enamel thermos.
Mexico
When Chung writes an email, she often signs off OXXO — a subtle inside reference to the Mexican supermarket chain by that name. She and her travel partner sourced most of this kit at OXXO — even the pack of rubber bands looks worthy of display.
There are many more countries represented on Chung’s site. It was hard to pick just a few to show when the photos of each collection are so pleasing to pore over. The Finnish berry motifs! The Guatemalan letterpress! The Ukrainian swimming badge! To check out her upcoming Adriatic office supply hunt in real-time, you can follow her on Instagram. Croatia kit to follow.
You can follow Sarah Rich on Twitter at @sarahrich.
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