The Existential Calculator (Take that job?)  A paper wheel
answering the question: “Should I Take That Job?”  About a month
and half ago, Adobe contacted me to “make something interesting”
for designers attending AIGA’s annual event—pretty much a dream
assignment! The project ended up involving two of my favorite
things: lo-fi prognostication equipment and paper calculation
wheels.  A paper calculation wheel is a type of volvelle which
converts user inputs into answers via the *magic* of die cuts.
They were pretty much the “apps” of the last century: they are
devices programmed for a single purpose (although unlike apps,
you can take them apart—see the physical mechanism behind the
“logic”) These contraptions are sometimes described as
rudimentary, single-function predecessors to the computer in the
contemporaneous literature because they “compute things”:  Given
the audience of designers, I thought it would be fun to make a
tool that “solves” a specific first-world-problem haunting all
creative workers at so