September 16, 2026
Starting iconners.com
What is iconners.com?
What came of the day
ICONNERS began as an unused domain with no defined purpose and ended the day as a real Studio Conners experiment with a promising direction. The day explored several very different interpretations of the name and idea, including symbols as atomic units of meaning, collaborative worldbuilding, anti-attention as an inversion of the attention economy, obscure-artifact collecting, discovery-based experiences, and slow organic growth. The strongest direction at closeout is ICONNERS as an information-theory experiment expressed through a beautiful interface. Instead of designing an interface after a taxonomy, database, or information system already exists, ICONNERS begins with the interface itself. A new ICONNERS space would start with a small set of icons representing the user's highest-level distinctions or modes. Information is then brought into that visual vocabulary, with further classifications, relationships, and structure emerging as the user works. The icons are not decorative labels; they are the visible primitives through which the information system is constructed and navigated. The concept is intentionally unresolved. No implementation was begun today. The significant result was finding a direction substantial enough to deserve another Obsession while preserving the other conceptual territory uncovered along the way.
The story
ICONNERS started the day as little more than an unused domain and a feeling that the name ought to become something. The first instinct was to take the word literally. “Icon” suggested symbols, marks, and the strange way a tiny shape can accumulate enormous meaning. That led into questions about how symbols grow into brands, religions, stories, communities, and entire systems of meaning. From there, the day moved in an unexpected direction: attention itself. We explored what would happen if the logic of the attention economy were inverted. Instead of maximizing impressions, reach, virality, and engagement, what if those things actually reduced value? That produced ideas about anti-attention experiences, games that become worse as more people discover them, increasing prices as participation grows, private collections of almost-unseen internet artifacts, and reputation built from things that become less valuable when exposed. That exploration produced one particularly strange principle: something can have public value while the evidence behind that value remains private. A collector might be respected because ICONNERS can verify that they have found hundreds of nearly unseen artifacts without revealing those artifacts and destroying their obscurity. We also looked at systems that grew slowly and organically—things that began very small, improved through use, found a natural audience, and did not necessarily need perpetual growth to be considered successful. Near the end of the day, the exploration broke away from attention entirely. A different possibility emerged: what if the interface came before the information system? Instead of beginning with a database, taxonomy, or domain model and designing a UI around it, ICONNERS could begin with a beautiful, universal interface. A user starting a new ICONNERS space would first define a small set of icons representing the highest-level distinctions that matter to them. Information would then enter through that visible vocabulary, with categories, relationships, and structure emerging over time. That direction brought the name back into focus. The icons would not merely decorate the data. They would become structural primitives—the visible language through which the information system is built and navigated. The day ended without forcing ICONNERS into a finished product. Instead, it established ICONNERS as a Studio Conners experiment and uncovered a direction worth returning to: an information-theory interface where distinctions become visible, navigable objects and the structure of information grows outward from them.
Discoveries
The Interface Can Come Before the Information System
Most software begins with data, a taxonomy, or a domain model and then builds an interface for it. ICONNERS revealed the opposite possibility: create a sufficiently universal interface first, then allow different kinds of information systems to inhabit it.
A Taxonomy Begins With a Distinction
Before information can be organized, someone has to decide which differences matter. In ICONNERS, the first icons could represent those initial distinctions. The taxonomy does not need to be fully designed in advance; additional structure can emerge as information is added and the existing distinctions prove useful or insufficient.
Icons Can Be Structural Rather Than Decorative
An icon does not have to be a pictogram placed beside an existing category. It can be the visible primitive through which a category, mode, or other structural distinction is created and navigated. This makes the interface itself an expression of the underlying information architecture.
The Same Information Can Become Different Worlds
A dataset does not contain one inevitable taxonomy. The same collection of things can be organized through completely different top-level distinctions depending on what the user cares about. ICONNERS could make those choices visible rather than pretending there is one objectively correct structure.
Anti-Attention Is More Than Avoiding Marketing
The day's earlier exploration revealed a coherent inversion of the attention economy. Attention can be treated as something that consumes or depreciates certain kinds of value rather than automatically creating value. This leads to ideas such as experiences that begin in a pristine state, increasing resistance as popularity grows, and designing for “exactly enough” attention rather than maximum attention.
Obscurity Can Have Verifiable Value Without Being Exposed
A particularly interesting anti-attention concept emerged around private collections of overlooked public artifacts. ICONNERS could verify that someone possesses an unusually obscure collection without revealing the artifacts themselves, because revealing them would increase their attention and depreciate the collection. This produced the principle: public reputation can be supported by private evidence.
Organic Systems May Have a Natural Size
Examples such as Craigslist, Discogs, Pinboard, MetaFilter, and BoardGameGeek suggested an alternative to perpetual-growth thinking: make something useful for a small number of people, improve it, allow attention to accumulate organically, and discover the natural size of the thing rather than assuming that success always means becoming larger.
ICONNERS Is an Experiment, Not Another Studio
ICONNERS does not need to become a separate agency, studio, or conventional startup identity. It can remain a Studio Conners experiment—a place where unusual ideas about information, interfaces, attention, and interaction can be made concrete and tested.
Results
ICONNERS Information-Theory Direction
A promising primary direction emerged for ICONNERS: a universal, interface-first information system where users begin by defining visual distinctions through icons and allow the taxonomy and structure to grow from there.
Anti-Attention Exploration
A substantial alternate conceptual territory was developed around treating attention as something that can consume value rather than create it, including private obscurity collections, attention-limited experiences, inverse growth mechanics, and the idea of designing for “exactly enough” attention.
Open threads
- What is the smallest set of visual primitives ICONNERS needs to represent many different kinds of information systems?
- How should users create, choose, and evolve the icons that represent their top-level distinctions?
- What should happen when existing information no longer fits the taxonomy a user originally created?
- How universal can one interface become before it starts forcing unlike kinds of information into the same shape?
- What kinds of data should ICONNERS support first when the interface is eventually tested against real information?
- Should ICONNERS remain primarily an information-theory experiment, or eventually become a practical product people use with their own data?
- Does the anti-attention territory belong inside ICONNERS at all, or should it be preserved as a separate Studio Conners experiment?
- What would the smallest convincing prototype need to demonstrate for the interface-first idea to feel real?