Reading the tide tables behind Tidal Index

Kivo Studio spent a season in a coastal archive before drawing a single legend. This is our edited summary of their original journal entry; the full piece stays on the studio site.

Where the colours come from

Tide tables are printed to be read fast in bad light. That constraint — not decoration — drove the blue-green palette and the numeric legends.

What changed on the way to a keycap

Chart markings that read well on paper had to survive dye-sublimation and a curved keycap surface. The studio kept the ratios and let go of the hairlines.