DESK is Design Kompany’s zine for people who care about Quality.
And substance.
And depth.
No ads. It’s got original illustration, essays, and quotes gathered over the last thirty years by a pair of individuals who have all this time traveled together through life asking big questions and wondering what it all really means. These two people are Akira Morita and Dipika Kohli, who met in college and started right away to design things that ‘make you think.’ It started off like that, just conversations, clubs, friend circles, and grew into a collaboration of much more depth and substance over the years. This included setting up Design Kompany as an LLC and providing boutique design services for clients in Ireland, the United States, Japan, Cambodia, primarily, since the 1990s. It’s been quite the journey and we want to make this for you to get to know us, how we think, and for us to get to know you and how you want to expand your thinking. This is interactive: we have forums on this blog in which you can talk to each other and to us in protected pages on this blog. We will delete them as we go so there’s nothing that stays and stays. Ephemerality is one of our key aesthetic points for DESK, influenced by a lot of time in Japan where that is a big deal.
I’m Dipika Kohli, and I’m the editor of DESK. I wanted to be the editor of a magazine all my life. I made a few things when I was a kid and all of them, looking back, were versions of zines in some way. The idea of publishing something through the inexpensive means of making things on the photocopier, that. That was what I was doing and when I grew up I worked for architects in their marketing departments to see how to do flashy design stuff but never really got into that to be very honest. It was style over substance too much of the time, and that was before internet and well before social media. And now we have fakey-fake stuff that AI spits at us and we are forced to look at all the time because people… make us? I guess yeah. They do. They really, truly do. As it gets more sophisticated and hard to figure out what’s real, can we go back to smaller scale writings and sharings, with people who opt in, to share, to read, to even participate in making with us if they want to? This is my kind of magazine: participation-led. I know it’s esoteric, but it’s relational art that I care about. I always have. I didn’t know it, but that’s what happened. It’s why corporate architecture wasn’t for me. It’s why journalism for newspapers–small or big–wasn’t really it for me, either. I wanted to hang out and talk to you, talk together, get you together and talk together in those small groups. Facilitation was what happened for DK in the 2010s. Akira led a lot of these things and I did, too. Mine were more art and design focused, the infrastructure of designing space for us to converse about quality spacemaking for people to meet and engage with one another deeply, not superficially. Akira did things for people in the international development sector; lots of conversations and ‘circle time’.
So now here we are, in 2026. Designing DESK and sharing it with you through direct mail. Selling subscriptions on this very page and that’s it, along with instagram pointing you here, if you want to be pointed here. This is all. The whole thing. People talking, talking together, and us hosting that dialogue and carrying it along. Do you want to be part of this ? I’d love that. Scholarships are available if financial need is an issue. You can ask me about that, anytime. The point is to make the space for us to dialogue about things that become quality things. I want to engage with those of you who care about substance, depth, and want to participate in the making of comfortable spaces for sharing, showing up, and being real. Offline is good but we can do our best to make it feel analog, even if it’s not offline. More than half of my life was analog so you know, I remember how it was. I can recreate it. For those who have never experienced this, I promise, it’s so, so cozy and you will be welcome.
DEKS is a monthly paper publication. It’s not fancy, and it’s not ‘mass produced’. As this is our first year, we’re keeping things very simple: black and white is a way, and so is photocopying at our local places where you can do that and not get caught up in ‘sheeniness’ like a lot of architectural and artsy publications can and do. Most importantly, we are producing this from a base in Phnom Penh most of the year. That means we are not immersed in the white gaze, the Western gaze of the popular publications that as a student I was made to think were THE important things to read, subscribe to, and be in the know about. But that’s just leading to groupthink and thinking some groups are more important than other ones. I am a fan of the Situationists, and am learning about Derrida through the Art & Copy Zine Club’s track that studies that person’s philosophies of deconstruction and you know what? I’m not big on throwing around big words and ideologies but I do think that breaking it all down and putting it all back together, with care, with intention, is a way for us to each challenge our beliefs and become more worldly, more aware. Of what it is that isn’t us, and what might transform us if we invite it in, to let us be changed by what we hear.
About the philosophy of identity, maybe, is what DESK is. If you asked. What is it about? People ask this. Fair enough. I think it’s about that. A lifetime of search and quiery into the various aspects of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who am I becoming?’ through reading, hosting salons on these kinds of topics, and inviting clients of Design Kompany to ask the same so that we could help them create brand identity designs back when that was a thing…. all of these and life experiences of all varieties in the different countries I mentioned above have informed our approach. To asking questions.
Who am I?
Let’s talk. Let’s discover. Let’s create and connect and get inspired and share our stories.
The first three issues have been written, edited, illustrated and designed by Dipika Kohli, creative director of DK and author at Kismuth Books.
‘I love the idea of people hanging out, having fun, laughing and talking together, just being there without any kind of clique or label or philosophy of ‘like-minded’ mumbo-jumbo to have to morph oneself to. We can exist, co-exist, respectfully be together, learn and change from what we find out, and, ultimately, become better people. That’s the goal. Meet your people.
‘DESK is about creative stuff, making time and showing up. For introspection, mostly, and what comes of it is insight. I think you have to experience it to know what that looks like. Creative frontiers for you, and us, to begin somewhere that doesn’t measure us according to some impossible ideal. We’re just us. Together. Let’s find out more about ourselves and one another, as we go. One step. At a time.’
QUESTIONS
For more info about this, contact Dipika Kohli at Design Kompany. https://designkompany.com/contact
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Set up your subscription here. If you are in Southeast Asia, your subscription comes with free shipping. We will post three issues every 3 months from Phnom Penh. For other regions, we will add postage fees, varies based on your location.