Amsterdam-based illustrator NoGood releases a self-published, crowdfunded 272-page monograph collecting five years of work, essays by Cory Doctorow, Douglas Rushkoff and others, and the thinking behind a practice rooted in retro technology, open-web counterculture and the politics of ownership.
The NoGood Book took two years to make and kept changing shape the entire time. Hardcover to softcover and back again. Redesigned several times. Text scrapped and rewritten. The format itself proved as difficult to settle as the ideas inside it. “The definitive design has proven illusive,” its maker admits, with the understatement of someone who has been chasing the right version of something for long enough to know that the chase is part of it.
NoGood is the pseudonym of Amsterdam-based illustrator Thomas, who began working under the name in 2021. Inspired by retro technology and the open-web counterculture of the 90s and 2000s, his illustrations feature rickety hardware, clunky self-hosted software and modded devices as a way of thinking through questions of ownership, control, data and privacy. The work blurs the line between commissioned and personal because both have always come from the same place. “NoGood has no clear beginning,” he writes. “When I close my eyes and retrace my steps, I see the internet of the ’90s and ’00s. I see myself in a room, drawing obsessively. Sitting at a computer, clicking a mouse, surfing the World Wide Web.”
The book, released in August 2026, is the natural extension of that sensibility. 272 pages, 180 by 250mm, softcover with an exposed spine, printed by Wilco Art Books in Amersfoort on Munken Cream White and Rainbow 18 yellow. Typeset by Wonderwerk in Supply Mono and Untitled Sans and Serif. An edition of 400, priced at €70, crowdfunded. Self-publishing felt like the only honest option. “It felt inevitable for the work to be bundled in a book, the most honest expression of myself,” Thomas writes, “to make one substantial, lasting thing rather than an endless stream of lighter ones. Its format — printed, heavy, definitive, and unchangeable — serves as an antidote to the pressures of keeping up with the algorithms that I steered clear of, long ago.”
Alongside the illustration work and process documentation, the book includes essays by Cory Doctorow, Douglas Rushkoff, Mike Masnick, Joan Westenberg, Bart Mol and Em. Writers and thinkers whose work shaped the practice, given space inside the object that practice produced. “This book, in its own right, marks an important moment for me,” he writes. “Very much the present-day version of the craft envelope with drawings I used to carry around, it sheds some light on my process and work, and pulls back the curtain on the creation of NoGood and the technologies that influenced it.”
NoGood is a freelance illustrator based in Amsterdam. Previous clients include Red Bull, Røde, Wired, Miro and Blockstream.
Website: nogood.studio Instagram: @nogood_studio The book: nogood.studio/the-nogood-book
The NoGood Book, August 2026. 272 pages, 180 × 250mm, softcover, exposed spine. Edition of 400. Paper: Munken Cream White and Rainbow 18 yellow. Printed by Wilco Art Books, Amersfoort. Typeset by Wonderwerk. Book photography: Lilia Luganskaia.
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