About
Same letter. Every hand different.
An allograph is one letter written by a different hand. Your a and mine are the same letter, and no two look alike. That's what a take is: the same mark, in your hand.
Why it exists
A blank page is hard. A page with one mark on it isn't.
Most apps hand you a blank page or a filter. We hand you a shape: a circle, a doorway, the statue down the street. Then we get out of the way.
What you make of it is yours. Draw over it, or find it in the world with your camera. Nobody else's looks like it, and the reveal shows you just how differently everyone saw the same thing.
Nothing in your take is generated. Every one is made by a person.
The starting-point idea has a name in creativity research: the primal mark (Berg, Stanford GSB, 2014). Read the paper
Where this is going
One mark a day, for the whole world.
Every morning, the same mark lands on every phone, from Tokyo to Toledo. Everyone takes it their own way, and the moment you add yours, you see how differently the rest of the world saw it. A daily ritual you share with strangers, or just with your people.
And all around you, marks that only exist where they stand: the statue on the square, the mural behind the bakery, the fountain everyone walks past. Every town has hundreds.
The shops around every mark welcome people in with an offer, and count the ones who actually walk through the door. A creative layer on the real world, paid for by the places people go, not by selling the people.
That's what we're building.