Bookmarks!!

published July 31, 2026

You want bookmarks!! Because you read books!!

Go to fucken uhhhhhh my goodies page, yeah. They're really super pretty istg omg auuhhhhhghhaaa.

...did you do it??? Ok now lemme start the part of the blog post where I ramble at you (sorry you can't comment on it rn, I want to bring that back in the future but it'll be a HUUUUGE undertaking).

Did you know that Japan has standardized...colors?!?! There are anywhere from 200 to 1,300 of them, as far as I've found when researching. I unfortunately was not able to find any list of 1,300 colors 😔 but that would've been cool if it really happened.

Goddamn, like maybe Japan has a standard for everything in existence, they go crazy-hard man. Their pre-Android flip phones had basically identical UIs and symbols and stuff. Their weather forecasts use the same cartoon sun, cloud, umbrella, and snowman icons, and lay out their information identically to each other. And now I'm finding out that they have a set of colors that is not only near-consistent, but has exact names for every single color?!?!?! I just wonder how this came to be??? Is it the Galapagos effect?? Is it cuz a small number of companies/organizations dominated certain cultural areas?? Do Japanese companies just really like to copy each other??? What could it possibly be????? Either way, it's FASCINATING, cuz the consistency gives such a strong sense of identity to things folks wouldn't even think about. It's like a signature that you may miss the first time around, but certainly won't want to miss the second time.

...I think that's about it?? At least on that front. I hope some kids find these bookmarks somehow, and print 'em out and do arts-and-crafts and draw on them and share them with classmates and stuff. Actually this whole project started from me being like “the Kanto and Johto cities have color-related names, so what if there was some kind of labeling system I could make off of those colors”. Like a color-coded map, or wallpapers, or something. Every idea I had didn't feel right, but I knew I had to do something with this fascinating color information, I couldn't just leave it alone.

Then, I don't remember when, I suddenly had an epiphany. I was thinking about the silly little Game Boy Printer feature—because I am a nut, I did the math and found out that it prints at possibly exactly 6 pixels per millimeter. (I do not own a Game Boy Printer, someone needs to confirm this.) Some of my ideas were about “what if there was a little box where you could attach stickers of your in-game Pokémon”. Like at the Photo Studio. “I like Mail, what if I made real-life postcards where you can attach your little guys in sticker form and send 'em off to your friends”. That, the computer wallpaper idea, and the map-to-track-your-catches idea, were all swimming around in my head. I tried making wallpaper designs but they were ugly and not Pokémon-y enough, so that discounted the postcards too. The map would've been more on-theme, but then the color and plant theming would just be frivolous and a bit pointless. What's some kind of stationery that's small and you can stick ur stickers on it and—

BOOKMARKS. It was just a hit of intuition. And from there, I came up with the following ideas: you can choose your favorite city in Kanto or Johto, and pretend it's a souvenir you got from there that features the city's signature color and plant (plant is based on either the city's color name, or if no specific plant found there, then the Gym Leader's name or some other important figure); you can print 'em out with a color printer at home or at a library or somewhere, and you can fill in these blanks for your name and your team members' names (like namecard meets physical teamsheet), and since we're on the topic of drawing why not allow you to draw on the back, so that you can maximize the paper and have both a beautiful bookmark and lots of little notes; and perhaps, having a themed bookmark might make it fun to read (balance out the video gaming), and the different details like the colors and the plants and the citations for the stock photos are things that a kid could get interested in, and maybe they could learn about different plant types and about those Japanese traditional colors and learn about places to get stock photos and set a decent example for citing your work. All of these big ideas started pouring out after that moment of sudden intuition.

I hope that these silly li'l bookmarks do serve some kind of purpose like that. You never know how the things you do or make might change how another person thinks or lives, so I hope that everything I do can be in a positive direction like that. I did kinda exhaust myself on making 20 entire bookmarks in a row, so they're not all the greatest (some aren't even legible 😳). But overall, I still think they're really pretty. And what about you? Check 'em out, print 'em out, cut 'em out, write your name to make 'em yours, and slot 'em into your books. And while the comments section on the blog is closed, lemme know by replying to this Bluesky post!