Greetings BONK team. Thank you for taking the time to answer our 10 Questions. Please feel free to answer as a duo or each separately. It's a pleasure to do so ahead of your inaugural release party at our shop this May.
2025 marks the sixth edition of your half-year planner, congratulations! You released the very first half-year planner in 2020. It had this cool wingdings cover with a faux label maker graphic for the dates and came in two colorways. The interior was a basic grid with different hand-drawn text for every month, and very simple, low-pressure design. Since then, your lineup of stationery goods has expanded, and the half-year planner design has continually morphed to suit the needs of its user base.
Designing a planner is no easy feat (I've tried 🫠), and making stationery in the US can be tough due to lack of refined manufacturing techniques that are more often seen in overseas products. And whereas the vast majority of OMOI's planner and general stationery selection comes from overseas, BONK's half-year planner is one of the few, maybe only planner(s) that we sell which is designed and produced in the US, specifically Philadelphia. It's popular among people who maybe wouldn't consider themselves planner people, but who need a little something to refer back to when organizing their days. Sometimes the popular system planners that we sell, with their copious and detailed scheduling features, are overwhelming to a person looking to try planning, or just overkill to what someone realistically sees themself using.
The design of BONK stationery goods is something our customers gravitate towards and that stands out in the larger stationery world. For me, it hits this aesthetic mix of 20th century technical manuals, 1990s websites, DIY collaging, and old copy machines and dot matrix printers. It feels like a planner of the underground, almost! In fact, BONK is a bit mysterious online. Your website has no about info and your Instagram offers just the basics: "planners 4 u, other stuff ☻".
With all this on the brain, let's get to the questions:
1) What kind of environment did you come up in, and what kind of environment do you like to make for yourself today?
Bee: I grew up on a summer camp, which I feel like if you know me that's very telling of my personality. So the environment I was surrounded by was mostly adults, but who very kid-friendly. And, very open and welcoming to play and exploration. Grew up in the woods, so ... love to walk around—look for the Jersey Devil. Now I feel like I keep a similar environment around me of playful things. Kind of just striving to be surrounded by things that make me happy or laugh, and that's kind of it. Every time I move I take like two days to unpack every single thing and put it up on the walls to make sure I can look at everything that I have and love.
Niko: I feel like mine was similar, but a more isolated version of yours, where it was like—homeschooling, playing outside, living in a pretty rural Pennsylvania farm environment, but a bit more isolated. My 3 brothers and I would build skate ramps at the bottom of the driveway and bomb them on bikes, or pretend to be the Fellowship of the Ring cutting down dead corn husks in the field.
I'm not totally successful at it, but maybe now I gravitate towards making a simpler, less distraction-prone, more empty environment. Not totally bare, but just familiar, comfortable things. Being very careful about too much abundance, which is very different from you, Bee. I feel like that says a lot about Bonk and the mixed design philosophy that comes from the two of us working together.
Bee: It does, haha.
2) What kind of stuff were you into when you were around thirteen? Any advice for thirteen-year-olds today?
B: What grade is 13?
N: 8th grade? Right before high school?
B: Yeah that was very rough for me. Um, really bad time. I was very annoying about it, but I think that was when I really started learning and opening my eyes to things that I cared about. And I want to reiterate I was very annoying about it—the things that I cared about at 13 are not things I deem very important now which I think is okay. It was a very informative time for me to you know, see the injustices and be angry about it and tell people I was angry about it, and find my voice in that way. And I think what I would tell 13 year-olds, is to welcome that but be open—your opinions are gonna change, and that's good.
N: Were you on Tumblr at 13?
B: Yeah I was.
N: I feel like that was similar for me—I was 13 in 2008 I guess, which was early Twitter, Tumblr ...
B: Yeah literally my Halloween costume was Don't Ask Don't Tell when I was 13, like who the fuck was I?
N: Radicalized at 13, but not at all really.
B: Yeah I think that's the point—to really hold on to your voice, but like, listen to people. You don't know everything because you're 13 but that's good.
B: I was really into Manic Panic hair dye. I was really into finding Hollister at Goodwill and buying it even though it was from 5 years ago and not trending anymore, but it made me feel like I wasn't buying clothes from Goodwill.
N: I think I was off Neopets at that point, but --
B: Slay.
N: That part of my life was so informed by the stage that the internet was in, and I feel like that happened to be when the Good internet was starting to die, and social media was becoming a thing, and it's challenging to think about that for 13-year-olds now.
B: I finally got to log back into my Instagram from when I was like 13, and it was before Instagram was even a social media—it was like a photo editing app. So all of my pictures are of like, Lady Gaga with different filters. And it's mostly the same photos in different filters because I was just using the app to edit the photo, haha.
N: Yeah I don't know, I was into Ska, and the internet. Using StumbleUpon.
B: Oh my god love that website.
N: I wish that current 13-year-olds could have that experience of the Wild Web. I don't really have any advice for finding that because most of it has been dominated, but I think there's pockets of it that still exist. I guess my advice is make a website or something.
B: That was the first time I think I felt passionate about things. It wasn't the first time I had interests, but the first time I was like: oh I'm standing on this ten toes down, regardless of how fucked up and weird it is, or stupid or misinformed. And I think that is good, but—I was so unwilling to like, listen to anyone. And myself now is doing and saying things that my 13 year old self was like, not down with.
N: Yeah, you gotta go there to come back around. Yeah, maybe that's a good very general piece of advice: be passionate about something but be ready to like, walk it back.
B: And change your mind. And also like, not push that shit onto other people—when you're 13.
3) What's your stance on magic?
B: I think it's real.
N: I think it's real. How is it real?
B: I think that ... chance, is magic. I think that coincidence is magic. Personally. I think déja vu is magic, for sure.
N: Just like unexplainable phenomena?
B: Yeah.
N: I agree—this has definitely been said many times, but the word Magic, even if you're just looking at it from a psychological point of view as a non-spiritual or supernatural thing, it's just—a good word, a good concept to use a tool to think about the unexplainable. It's good to be open to the fact that real things can exist outside of your understanding, and that doesn't mean that they're inaccessible to you. I think that's where magic lives.
B: Also like any animal that is a little deviated off the normal path, that's magic.
N: LOL, what do you mean by that?
B: Just like weird sea creatures, super magical. Cryptids? Magic. The Jersey Devil is real, and it's because of magic.
N: Yeah I think in the interest of being open to things, it's just like—Living your life in a way that's open to the fact that things can just happen. Being okay with the unexplainable and learning how to work with that, I think that's a good stance to have on magic.
N: Magic tricks? Pretty cool. I think there's something up with David Blaine, actually.
B: That's what I'm saying. Or like—Criss Angel? I'm like what are they doing? Magic?
N: Criss Angel—I love him, I don't think he's magic.
B: He's Freaking my Mind.
N: I think David actually might be magic—that's my personal take.
4) What was the impetus to start making a planner/designing stationery?
B: In 2019 I got really into bullet journaling, and I made myself a whole planner basically—from a Rollbahn that I got at Omoi, actually.
N: Shout out Rollbahn.
B: I was very new to the phenomenon of bullet journaling, I thought it was incredible, but everything I was looking at was like ... sorority girls, or RAs in hospitals, and like very ... * Social * Studies * font, when you're writing in your notebook and just decorating. And you also probably have rich parents or something.
N: Yeah.
B: So I hated that, but I was really into the idea of doing everything yourself. And wasn't seeing bullet journaling in an aesthetic that I liked or could relate to. So I started doing it in a way that I liked, and I was posting it on Instagram to kind of be like—this thing that is kind of taken over by sorority girls and people that name their kid Kyleigh with like a G H in it—this is a really cool thing that a lot of us would find value in, we can make it ... cool, and alternative, haha. And the people loved it, and someone hit me up and was like "Yo can I pay you to make me a full bullet journal for the year?" and I was like "F*** that, no this took so long, sorry I'm not gonna do that." But I was like - hm, I could just print it out and sell copies.
So I recruited Niko, because I don't know how to use a computer at all, and Niko put it all together for me like an angel.
N: How many did we make of those?
B: A fair amount! It was a full year, so it was THICK. I was really proud of it but also like—it's too big, it took way too long, I don't have it in me to do this again. And Niko kind of suggested helping again if I were to do it, and I was like well, lets just make something together then.
N: Yeah, we also both worked at Omoi that year, and I think we were very inspired by the world of stationery—Delfonics, MD, and all the Japanese stationery that we were exposed to there.
B: And like implementing that into ...
N: something that made sense to us.
B: And something fun to look at it, you want to use something that you like looking at. It's hard to use something so sterile if you're like, a Goofy Girl.
N: Yeah—I think we were also in the realm of living in Philly and the DIY craft space, and bullet journaling by nature is like a Do It Yourself process, that's what it's about. And so it all kind of came together, we found a little audience for it because there were a lot of people like us that were like, in their early 20s, fucked up schedules, weird jobs, and ... trying to make sense of it.
B: In a low pressure way.
N: But that could give them some semblance of organization. That definitely informed the ambiguity and open-ness of the planner design, as kind of a reaction to more structured planners.
B: Even the Bonk planners today—we've changed so much but we've never really added anything.
N: It's just like a nudge towards organization that feels good, but leaves as much unanswered questions as to the structure of it as possible, so that people can make it work for themselves, and still have the experience of designing it themselves to some extent.
5) Do you have any thoughts you wish to share about life and living in this digital era?
B: I don't love it.
N: I do love it and I don't love it. There are so many good uh ... tech ... tools. We touched on this before but I have a lot of nostalgia for the stage of the internet and the stage of technology that felt a little more like our planners, in that it was like—a tool, and open for interpretation and use, rather than a lot of things now which feel so catered to what some person thinks the human experience is.
B: And also they're very specific, so it's like: Here's your meal planning journal, and here's your finance journal, and you have to be living a really specific life for most of these things to be relevant to you. And I think that's why people don't like a lot of planners, because they make you feel bad about yourself. Because you're not using them the way someone with a 9 to 5 and a savings account would.
N: Yeah and I think just the world of ... Life-Hacking Apps, and stuff like that, is so bloated with stuff at this point, there's so many. It feels so counterproductive trying to tap into that stuff, for me at least. I think there's a lot of potential in tools like that, but it's so hard to find stuff that works for you when there's like a million start-ups trying to fix your life.
B: I do love my internet friends, those are my family. But it does make it easy to keep friendships on a screen and not take them off of it, too. Which I'm trying to be better at. It's a great tool for finding community but I wish it was easier to find people and then be friends for real—in real life.
6) What's something you'll spend money on, and something you refuse to spend too much money on?
B: I'll spend a lot of money on socks and underwear. Big time. I'll also spend a lot of money on something that is literal garbage, and then refuse to spend money on the exact same thing depending on who is selling it to me?
N: Uhhh, this week I found a way to look up how much money I've spent on computer games on Steam. It wasn't AS bad as I thought it would be, but I've had the same account for 15 years or something, and it was ... it was in the four figures. That's something I'll always spend money on.
B: I'll drop a lot of money on some plastic. A plastic container. A plastic good.
N: Do you wanna talk about your sleep purchases at all?
B: Oh god, well I do have a habit of being like half-asleep and bidding on things on eBay. It's been a pretty harmless act in general but I did once buy a knitting machine off of eBay. I found a great deal on it, it was only like a hundred bucks—which if you know anything about knitting machines that's a steal, so I was like okay YOINK - mine?
N: You sleep-yoinked it.
B: I sleep-yoinked it. I woke up, was charged like $300 because the shipping was from Japan. So ... I'm being vulnerable right now. Yeah, just like ... two idiots with not a lot of money, but a lot of heart.
N: Yeah ... Money's ...
B: It comes and goes. But I will always spend a lot of money on socks and underwear. Always.
B: Oh—concert tickets. I will not spend money on concert tickets. I refuse.
N: Yeah I think I'm done with concerts.
B: .. to Stand Up? For that long?
N: Paying to be in pain.
B: I don't like that. It could be like $20 and I'm like that's too much money, I refuse to pay money go see your band, whether they're big or not I don't care. If I can sit down, and it's free, I'll come.
7) Area trend you wish would come back?
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B: It's hard to say what's a trend, and what's like ... maybe you are a different person now and you like different things. I've been in Philly for almost a decade and have changed so many times. Kind of wish buzz cuts would come back, I feel like everyone had a buzz cut in 2018. Or like - skullets.
N: I don't know about skullets personally.
B: I miss them. We were all ugly together.
B: This is gonna sound so annoying but I just don't know what is trending, to be real. I'm so locked into ... the Looney Tunes, I don't know what else is going on. I ain't got no time.
N: Yeah this is beating a dead horse, but—more chatrooms ... more places to hang out online.
9) Area trend you wish would retire?
B: Something I wish people would STOP doing is bleaching their hair and not toning it. I'm so serious about that. It doesn't look good on anyone, no one likes the brassy shit. Get some purple shampoo, it's not that expensive.
N: Amen, amen.
B: I'm standing on that one.
N: Philly, we've gotta retire opening your car door into the protected bike lane without looking—also just getting out and standing in the bike lane on your phone, or just straight up parking in it. I get the concept of putting bike lane further away from moving traffic but I'm not sure if we've adapted properly to that as a city.
9) What's something you wish people engaged with more?
B: It's kind of like—two things: I wish people would engage more with decriminalization, of sex work and drug use, and I also wish they would butt the fuck out at the same time. Engaging in does not mean steamrolling a conversation with information that you either just learned or don't even know. So I'm hesitant to even say that I wish people would engage with this more, because I feel that's almost the problem. That—in a digital age, and age of instagram infographics, everyone is suddenly an expert on everything.
N: Yeah, there's a lot of urgent engagement out of obligation.
B: Yeah, I wish people would give hand-warmers to their neighbors in West Philly, before offering to buy hand-warmers for people in Kensington. I wish people engaged with their communities—their direct communities more. And not in a way that they thought they needed to, but in a way that their community needs them to. I wish y'all listened to people doing this work with lived experience. Listened to sex workers, not just the ones with big platforms but the ones on the streets. Drug users, and not just the ones who “got clean”.
10) And, any shout outs?
B: My guy Mike at the flea market ...
N: Which flea market?
B: Uhh that's classified information. [REDACTED] flea market.
N: Shout out to gatekeeping.
B: Shout out to everyone who's been buying a planner every year. The Bonk heads. You're real ones. Shout out to our friends who let us sell planners in their stores.
N: Yeah—Iffy Books, Lot 49, Big Top, Omoi ...
B: Shout out Kelly at YUNS. Shout out Pet Riso ... little angels. Shout out Precious Moments. Shout out Project SAFE, shout out PhillyBRP.
Photo credits: BONK and Kit Ramsey
