# A tenant board is a census, not a directory

> Twenty slots on a tenant board, four replaced with handwritten paper and two left empty. A record of who's permitted to live somewhere, and who just does.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/apartment-block-directory

An illuminated tenant board, headed `BLOCK C`. Twenty slots arranged in a grid, most of them a
printed surname over a unit number.

Four slots carry a handwritten slip on torn paper instead. Two are left empty. `NO SUBLET` is
printed small along the bottom.

A printed slot means the building installed it. A handwritten one means somebody moved in without
asking, and the board is honest enough to show both.

## Why does a tenant board matter more than it looks like it should?

Because it's a census, not a directory.

A directory just tells you where to knock. A census records who's permitted to be somewhere, which
is a different and much more loaded piece of information — and a tenant board does both jobs at
once without announcing it, the same paperwork-over-skyline argument
[this whole material keeps making](/stories/cyberpunk-print-design). Twenty printed and
handwritten slots, side by side, are a record of who the building recognises and who's living there
regardless. `NO SUBLET` at the base is a posted rule nobody reads until it applies to them, in the
same register as [a rule stencilled on a workplace wall](/stories/workplace-safety-motto).

## Why do the handwritten slips carry the whole design?

Because they're the part of the board no machine produced.

A management company orders a printed slot when a tenancy goes through the correct channel — an
application, a lease, a deposit. A torn slip in biro means none of that happened and somebody moved
in anyway, on a sublet, a favour, or an arrangement the board still hasn't been updated to reflect.
Four out
of twenty is a specific, believable proportion: enough to say this happens routinely, not enough to
say the system has collapsed.

## What makes twenty slots the right number for the grid?

Enough to read as a real building, not so many the eye stops counting.

A board of six slots looks like a boutique building where nothing could slip through unnoticed; a
board of two hundred stops reading as individual units at all and becomes wallpaper. Twenty sits
where a person can actually scan it — count the printed ones, count the torn ones, notice the two
gaps — which is exactly the density
[a chest print's composition depends on](/stories/composition-for-a-chest-print): enough
information to reward a second look, not so much it becomes noise.

## Does it need to be a real building?

No, and inventing it is the better choice regardless of the rights question.

There's no trademark or copyright issue here the way there is with a logo or a published document —
a tenant board's format, slots and a header and a rule at the base, belongs to no one. What it does
need is invented names. Real surnames on a public-facing design, even for a fictional building,
attach a stranger's identity to something they had no say in, and there's no version of this design
that needs a real address to work.

## Does the same board work for somewhere other than an apartment block?

Anywhere a list decides who's officially there.

A staff roster with names added by hand after the printed shift list went up. A parking permit
board with half the bays reassigned in marker. A dormitory pigeonhole wall where three slots carry a
strip of masking tape instead of a printed label. The format repeats wherever an official list and
an unofficial reality have to share a wall.

## Isn't a tenant board just background detail, not really a subject?

It's usually treated that way, which is why it works printed on its own.

Set decoration puts a version of this board behind a scene and moves on — it's there to say
"apartment block" and nothing more. Printed as the whole design, at a size where the handwritten
slips are actually legible, it stops being scenery and becomes the thing itself: a document about
who a building thinks lives there.

## Does it print well?

Yes, and the two textures are the reason.

The printed slots want a clean, even typeface and consistent spacing — that's what makes them read
as official. The handwritten slips should look genuinely handwritten, not a script font standing in
for one; an inconsistent, slightly crooked hand against the printed grid is what sells the contrast.
Two or three colours cover it: one for the board itself, one for the printed type, one darker tone
for the pen marks. Dust blue, slate or a worn cream ground all read as a real fixture rather than a
poster.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the building at [JustOG](/) — how many slots, how many handwritten, what the notice at the
base says. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's
made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Twenty slots. Four in someone's own hand. Two nobody has filled in yet.