BUILD QUIETLY
Ship a fresh cabinet whenever we have one ready. Reply to mail. Read the support inbox. Keep the cabinet free, the score editorial, and the floor open to anyone who is eighteen.
01. THE WORKSHOP
02. THREE THINGS
WHAT WE DO
WHAT WE DO NOT
SUCCESS
03. THE FLOOR CREW
From a converted print shop on Portage Avenue.
ArcticNote is built from a converted print shop three blocks east of the Forks, in downtown Winnipeg. The shop used to lay out a community paper; the lightboxes are still on the walls. The arcade is a side project the way a magazine might run a comic on the back page — small, quiet, mostly there for the rhythm of an evening.
Four people make up the floor crew. Two pixel artists who got their start designing icons for a Winnipeg startup that is no longer in business; an audio engineer who triples as the level designer and the hardware QA; and a writer who keeps the cabinet manuals readable. We answer email from one address — written by a person, usually within a working day.
The cabinet itself was designed over a long February. The first version had a rotating wheel; we replaced it with a three-by-three grid because the grid was easier to read on a phone. The frosted blue palette comes from a January window in the print shop — the colour of streetlight on snow at six in the evening.
A FOUNDERS' NOTE
“We made ArcticNote because there was nothing on the internet that read like a coffee break instead of a hook. The cabinet is small on purpose. A reader who closes the tab after fifteen minutes is exactly the reader we built it for.”
— THE FLOOR CREW
What we do, what we do not, and how we measure success.
NO HOOKS
No streak counters, no comeback nudges, no anniversary reminders, no loyalty programme, no leaderboards, no behavioural retargeting. The cabinet is the cabinet, and the door is right behind you.
QUIET MAIL
Success is a clean inbox, a few notes from readers who liked the cabinet, and a Tuesday evening where we shipped a quieter glyph animation. We are not chasing growth metrics on this floor.
Four people on the marquee.
IDRIS
Level designer & audio
MARIE
Pixel art & cabinet shell
LIN
Writer & inbox
Address & contact.
ArcticNote, c/o the converted print shop, 201 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3B 2H8, Canada. Mail goes to [email protected] and is read by a person, usually within a working day. The cabinet itself is reachable from the cabinet page on this site.