Config has done an incredible job bringing designers together. It felt natural for Paper to be there, celebrating design and connecting with the community, as our first ever foray into marketing. Every action and decision had to feel authentic to Paper: artfully designed, built in-house, and a bit cheeky.

We poured a lot of love into our craft. Here’s what we did:

• 3,000 Paper branded coffee cans that we personally handed out outside the conference center all three days
• 12 newsstands around SF showcasing work from Lovable, Quartr, Ramp, Resend, Vercel, Y Combinator, and Zed that was Designed with Paper
• 10 Paper taxis that circled Moscone Center
• 4 DIYed Paper coolers to keep the lattes on ice
• 2 LED trucks featuring Paper shaders
• 2 Paper Space Invader–themed claw machines (dark mode and light mode)
• Sponsored the Detach After Party
• Paper napkins and Paper pens scattered around the party
• Paper Mono magazines and Paper Mono posters

We built and executed everything as a team (no agencies). Everything we shipped was designed in Paper, and everywhere we showed up was staffed by the Paper team. Getting to talk to people was a central goal of the week.

We crafted each piece to feel like art we’d personally want to keep. We assembled and branded the coolers ourselves, walked to every newsstand ourselves to take pictures, carted 1,000 coffee cans a day from trucks into my hotel room at 6am, and refilled ice throughout the day from the hotel ice machines.

Doing everything ourselves meant that everything we did had at least one thing go wrong (stay tuned), but all together, it all went pretty right!

We’ll break this down into two parts:

• Part 1 — Swarming SF: newsstands, taxis, trucks, coffee cans, coffee distribution, coolers, and merch
• Part 2 — The After Party: claw machines, Paper Mono mags + posters

Newsstands

The first thing we locked for Config was securing 12 newsstand locations around SF. We wanted to use this space to show how teams are actually building with Paper. Lovable, Quartr, Ramp, Resend, Vercel, Y Combinator, and Zed are such wonderful partners, and they use Paper to design their products.

We wanted to showcase their work. Each team designed their own newsstand, featuring the art they were most excited about from what they’re building in Paper.

Problem #1: We had a dire text misalignment on the Vercel newsstands (on us, team Paper).

Solution #1: Luckily we got these swapped out in <48 hours and reprinted them in light mode. Silver lining, SF — you now get the best of both worlds.

Trucks

The reality was that the newsstands were not close enough to Moscone to ensure designers would see them every day. We had to get creative: how could we bring Paper closer to the places where designers would be? On wheels. We organized 2 LED trucks to circle Moscone.

Problem #2: For the first hour the trucks were running, the art was stretched on the sides because the specs shared for the art did not match the actual dimensions.

Solution #2: Noticed immediately, called, resolved, no evidence. (Hi Stephen! This is the first time you’re hearing about this!)

Taxis

We wrapped 10 taxis with the Paper brand to join the brigade.

Paper taxis started circling earlier in the month, so people may have spotted them around pre-Config.

At one point in the weekend, I was stuck in traffic, looked up, and was faced with a line of Paper taxis ahead of me. I understood the meaning of karma like never before.

Coffee cans

We distributed 3,000 vanilla lattes. We partnered with Lovable and Quartr on two of the designs and used the third design to celebrate Paper Mono: our first font, coming soon.

Coffee handout

We met up at 6am each day to pick up that day’s batch of 1,000 cans and sort them into some mix of my hotel room, the coolers, and the luggage storeroom at the hotel.

The rest of the day was filled with excitement and chaos as we got to meet so many talented designers and did our best to stay out of trouble. We had some help with handout from best friend of the team, Alana Goyal.

Problem #3: There were ultimately some calls from the conference to the city of SF about our unexpected attendance (calls to the authorities may have been threatened once or twice…).

Solution #3: Becoming best friends with the Config security team and working together on how we could respectfully cooperate got us through this unscathed.

Coolers

We DIYed four of our own coolers rather than buying more expensive ones made for this purpose with your logo already prepped.

We ordered the coolers on Amazon and added the logo with Harcourt’s Cricut + iron-on vinyl. Even though they looked lovely on day 1, these coolers were probably our one categorically bad choice:

Problem #4: The coolers were the weapons of mass destruction. I have battle wounds from these coolers collapsing on me.

Solution #4: My hotel room dual-purposed as a repair shop for the coolers, and my bruises are healing well.

Shirts

Fully designed in-house by Agu. We wanted to make sure they were shirts we would all actually wear.

Hats

Again, designed in-house. I was personally most excited for the two-tone.

No mistakes on merch. 100% hit rate.

What we learned from our conversations

Serious effort doesn’t go unnoticed, and human connection doesn’t get forgotten. People valued us showing up on the street corner and pouring our hearts into putting beautiful design directly into their hands.

Coming soon

Stay tuned for Part 2: The Detach After Party, the Paper claw machine, and the Paper Mono magazines & prints! Plus the Paper merch shop (the people have spoken!).

Special thank yous

• Harcourt & Hugo — Hugo was supposed to be on vacation and just “lending a hand;” he actually lent every cell in his body to this operation.
• Agu — legendary designer.
• Jessi & Alana — thank you both for helping with can handout!
• Noelle @ WorkOS and Sona @ Modal — for the best recommendations on how to do OOH right.
• Adam @ Freebean, Alex & Patrick @ JCD — GOAT vendors.
• The designers at Lovable, Ramp, Quartr, Zed, Y Combinator, Vercel, and Resend who partnered with us on making art.

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