Nov 16, 2020
Wi-Fi, Wine, and the End of the World
Notes From a Designer Who Fled London to Ride Out the Apocalypse
By Sofia Cianciulli
It’s April 15, 2020. I’m back in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by old sketchbooks, dried rose petals, and one very judgmental porcelain doll I thought I’d buried in the attic.
I’ve just escaped London, where my rent was high and my fridge was empty. The world is ending, and I’d rather die on the hills of Florence than in a Zone 2 shoebox with one window and a broken kettle. I didn’t plan this. No one did. But here we are.
Oh, and I got fired the week before lockdown.
(Seriously, did they know?)
From Jobless to Fully Booked in a Pandemic
At first, I panicked. And then something weird happened: my inbox exploded. Suddenly, everyone needed a website, a digital facelift, a logo that didn’t scream 2012.
Turns out, when the world moves indoors, it moves online. Fast.
E-commerce became the new storefront. Brands that had been ignoring digital strategy suddenly had to care. The result? Designers like me were in demand—not in spite of the chaos, but because of it.
Designing a VR Art Gallery in Pajamas
Somewhere between learning to bake banana bread and pretending I liked Zoom happy hours, I found myself designing a virtual reality art gallery. Because why not? The museums were closed. The world was flat (digitally speaking), and people still wanted to feel something.
Working on a VR space felt like designing in a dream—no gravity, no rules, just possibility. We were all floating in our own little orbits, connected by pixels and Wi-Fi.
The FOMO Is Dead. Long Live the Introverts.
Odd confession: as an introvert, this global pause was… a relief. No events to miss. No pressure to show up, dress up, network.
The playing field leveled. Everyone was now a floating square on Zoom. We were all home, with houseplants and weird lighting and dogs interrupting client calls. And somehow, that made everything feel more human.
There’s something beautiful about watching the design world drop the gloss and embrace the real. Brands got raw. Messaging got softer. And for once, it was okay if your client saw your cat’s butt walk across the screen.
Summer Was Cute, But I’m Still in My Childhood Bedroom
Summer was warm, fleeting, and peppered with outdoor aperitivos and socially distanced flirting. I broke up with my boyfriend in the US (we hadn’t seen each other in seven months), and at some point, a relationship needs more than Wi-Fi and wistfulness.
So here I am again. Back in my childhood bedroom. Single. Stir crazy.
My mum has gently suggested I find somewhere else to be, so I offered €600 to vacation homes on Airbnb with no tourists and no idea what’s coming next.
What Covid Taught Me About Design
Covid forced us to rethink everything—including how we create.
Suddenly, design wasn’t just about being clever. It had to be clear. Helpful. Reassuring. In a time of mass confusion, our job wasn’t to decorate, it was to guide.
A few things I learned:
Simplicity wins when brains are tired.
Empathy isn’t optional—it’s the entire brief.
Design that connects emotionally? That’s the one that sticks.
As Chris Do once said: “Your job as a designer is not to make things pretty. Your job is to make things work beautifully.”
And maybe that’s what we were all trying to do in our own messy ways—make things work beautifully, when the world didn’t.
Till I see you again.
xo,
Studio Vagari