Meet Anton: The person behind our new merch design

This summer, we launched a merch design contest to collaborate with our community on a new merch drop. With help from the jury, the finalists were selected, and the final winner was chosen by the student and alumni community on Discord.

Meet Anton, alumni of batch 2, the creator of the design and get to know the story behind the design.

Who are you, and what’s your background before joining //kood?

Hey, I’m Anton, a 24-year-old Security Engineer. Before getting into tech, I worked as an HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning), specialist. I’ve always preferred learning by doing, so when I discovered kood/Jõhvi and its “figure it out yourself” approach, it immediately clicked with me.

What are you up to now?

I currently work as a Security Engineer at Luminor Bank. My work involves designing, operating, and improving certificate lifecycles, strengthening authentication and encryption practices, and ensuring the reliability of critical infrastructure at scale.

Outside of work, I mostly enjoy photography and digital design. These creative activities introduce a welcome contrast to my otherwise technical day-to-day.

What’s one fun fact about you that most people don’t know?

I tend to jump into new challenges before fully knowing what I’m getting myself into. That’s how I’ve ended up paragliding, doing photography and videography, and now – designing clothes. I enjoy setting challenges for myself, trying new things, learning fast, and seeing where curiosity can take me.

What inspired your design, and what’s the story behind it?

The “k/” logo on the front was intentionally minimal – the same familiar structure, modified with a wireframe style to give it a tech vibe.

The back print came from reflecting on the school’s theme, teaching philosophy, and how students progress through the programme. Since this is a tech school, I wanted the design to be interactive. A QR code felt like a natural fit – both functionally and as a subtle play on the word “kood”. On its own, though, it lacked depth.

That’s when the tech-tree concept emerged. The roots represent students coming from diverse backgrounds. The stump – the QR code – symbolizes the school itself as both foundation and gateway. The trunk reflects the shared journey through the programme. The branches show students diverging into different specializations and careers. The gradient leaves represent alumni graduating and new students beginning – like a tree shedding leaves and growing new ones each year. The “tech-apples” are a nod to the successful engineers and entrepreneurs the school helps grow.

How did you approach creating it? Any fun or unexpected moments in the process?

I started with a polygon and wireframe style I used to draw with when I was younger. After looking around for inspiration, I sketched the initial structure on my reMarkable tablet, then refined it on my PC and experimented with color combinations until I found what worked.

An unexpected moment was realizing I had exported everything as JPGs, only for the print vendor to ask for PDFs. That meant redoing the color adjustments and exporting everything again – a small hiccup, but one that paid off.

How creative do you have to be in your day-to-day job?

Even though cybersecurity isn’t creative in the traditional sense, I still use the same mindset regularly. It comes up when brainstorming alternative solutions, approaching problems from new angles, and even making technical documentation more pleasant to read and visually appealing.

Are there any hidden gems in the design that people should know about?

Only two subtle ones: the QR code shaping the base of the tech-tree, which leads to the //kood homepage, and a small signature marking my collaboration with //kood to the right of it.

Everything else is intentionally out in the open – simple, symbolic, and easy to read.