Arjuna.

Most pens are functional objects you forget the moment you put them down. Arjuna was the opposite brief: design a pen someone keeps on their desk because looking at it makes them feel a certain way. A statement object. Something that signals taste, weight, intent.

Done solo at Story Design, a design studio — my chance to work on a luxury industrial-design problem without the usability constraints of an app or the scale constraints of a system. Pure form study.

Luxury rarely shouts. The hardest part of Arjuna was the restraint — every detail that wasn't doing work had to come out. The form is minimal but not anonymous. The weight is deliberate. The grip transitions are felt before they're seen. The cap closes with a sound that someone notices but couldn't describe afterward.

Arjuna doesn't solve a public-health problem or scale to 1,800 workplaces. It's here because design taste is built on projects like this — where the only constraint is "make it good" and you have to develop your own judgment about what good means. Every other project in this portfolio benefits from the eye I developed working on objects like Arjuna.

Working at Story Design also taught me how a real studio operates: how briefs evolve, how clients respond, how feedback shapes form. That craft sensibility is part of what I bring to systems work today.