Kai — I hired you on a Wednesday in October over a flat white that had gone cold by the time you said yes, and I have been quietly congratulating myself ever since. You taught this team that craft is a practice, not a performance. You taught me that the best feedback often arrives as a question rather than an instruction. Form&Letter has no idea what is about to walk through their door. We will miss every single one of your seventeen pixel-perfect Figma comments. Go run a beautiful team. We will be cheering from London.

When I joined as the most junior person on the team, you were the first person to remember my name, and the only person who asked what I actually wanted to work on. You sat with me through that horrible week of the brand audit. You stayed late and rebuilt the type scale with me when I was certain I had broken everything. I owe my whole career so far to you, and I am going to be okay because you taught me how to be okay. Go and be brilliant in Berlin. I will keep the dumb-questions channel warm for you.

Kai — engineering owes you a debt for every single time you walked over to our side of the floor, sat down on the broken stool nobody fixes, and said "can I show you something tiny" before quietly redesigning a flow we had been arguing about for three weeks. Form&Letter is getting the calmest, sharpest designer I have ever shipped a product with. Send the address of a good ramen place when you find one. Go well.

From the marketing floor — Kai, every brand refresh of the last four years has been, in some way, you patiently rescuing it from us. The brochure for the Munich launch is sitting on my desk and I still cannot look at it without thinking of the seventy-eight tracked changes you sent at 11pm. We did not deserve you. Send us photos of the new studio. We will frame them.

Mate. The leaving drinks at the Ten Bells will be louder than you would like, sentimental in ways you will pretend to be embarrassed by, and feature at least one toast that goes on too long. I will be the one giving it. You have been the best colleague and the better friend. Berlin is a four-hour flight. I will be over the second weekend you have a sofa.

いってらっしゃい、海さん。 Go well, Kai-san. We met at the lettering meetup at Conway Hall and somehow have been trading typeface specimens by post for five years. Berlin has the best small foundries in Europe. You will be very happy there. Visit me in Kyoto when you can — there will be tea, and the new Mincho I have been promising you.

From the product side — Kai, you made me a better PM by quietly refusing to ship anything that was not as good as it could be, in a way that never once made me feel stupid for almost letting it go. That is a rare and underpriced skill. The team is in your debt. Berlin had better appreciate the gift it is receiving.

Brother — six years of late-night Figma jams, two terrible startup ideas we never built, one extremely good poster series we never printed, and approximately four thousand voice notes about kerning. Thanks for letting me share an office with the most quietly talented person I will probably ever work with. Send me Berlin coffee recommendations. Be brilliant.

Kai — your mum is so proud of you it borders on unseemly. Berlin is far, but not as far as the year you spent in Melbourne, and you came home from that one a better cook, so I have hopes. Phone calls on Sunday mornings, please. The recipe for grandma's curry is in the green folder by the rice cooker. Take it with you. Love, Mum.

From the studio you are leaving to the studio you are about to lead — Kai, you have spent six years here being thoughtful in a hundred small invisible ways. The team you are about to inherit is, in my opinion, the luckiest one in Berlin. Lead them the way you led the people next to you here, which is to say: gently, exactly, and with the lights on. We will miss you. Come back through London any time. The kettle is on.

Six years sharing a wall of monitors with you and I am still not entirely sure how you make everything you touch look so quietly correct. The team kerning meme will live forever. Berlin is going to be insufferable about you within a month. I miss you already, brother.