The tick only makes sense beside the tiers you don't have

Dot-matrix charcoal and amber, thrown across a chair back like it was pulled off a machine and never filed. YOUR CONNECTION sits above a three-row table: TIER 1 UNMETERED, TIER 2 4 Mb CAPPED, TIER 3 0.5 Mb PEAK ONLY. A heavy tick sits against the bottom row.

Only one row needed printing. All three are there anyway.

Why print tiers that don't apply to the reader?

Because the notice isn't reporting a fact, it's making an argument, and an argument needs the comparison.

A single line reading 0.5 Mb PEAK ONLY is just a number. The same line under two faster ones, each passed over by the tick, becomes a sentence: this is what exists, and this is what you get. The document does the persuading by laying out the whole menu and ticking the cheapest seat.

Delivering the same number without the other two rows would read as an outage report. With them, it reads as a decision somebody else made about what you're allowed to have.

Why does the tick carry more weight than the numbers themselves?

Because a number without a mark is neutral, and a tick turns it into a verdict.

4 Mb CAPPED reads as a spec. A tick sitting against 0.5 Mb PEAK ONLY reads as a sentence handed down. The tick is the one mark on the sheet that isn't measurement — it's judgement, printed in the same weight and ink as everything else so it looks like it belongs there as much as the numbers do.

What makes a good version of this design?

Three rows is close to the right count — few enough to read at a glance, enough that the gap between the top tier and the ticked one actually stings. A notice with only two rows just says "slow"; one with three says "slow, compared to what other people are getting for the same line." A fourth row would dilute the sting rather than sharpen it — the reader would have to work out where their own tier sits in a longer list instead of seeing it isolated at the bottom.

The heading above the table

YOUR CONNECTION sitting above the whole table rather than only above the ticked row does real work — it claims the entire chart as personally relevant before the reader has read a single tier, the way a form addressed to you feels different from one addressed to nobody in particular.

Is there a real provider being depicted?

No. The tier names, the speeds, and the notice format are generic — the shape a service-tier table takes belongs to the format, not to any one company that has ever printed one.

If a real provider's actual branding or tier names were the point of a design, that company's marks would be theirs to license, the same as a real drone manufacturer's markings would be if a design depicted one specifically. This one doesn't reach for a name because the joke doesn't need one — three invented tiers and a tick do the whole job.

Does the same document work for other kinds of manufactured scarcity?

Anywhere a company sells access to something that costs it nothing extra to give — a queue position, a download speed, a seat class on a route with the same number of seats whether they're marked premium or not. The tell is always the same: several tiers exist, printed side by side, and the cheapest one is capped at a number that has nothing to do with what the underlying thing actually costs to provide.

A ration card works the same trick from the other direction: scarcity stamped onto something that isn't actually scarce.

What's the strongest objection to reading this as satire rather than a real notice?

That a dot-matrix tier table looks exactly like the paperwork it's mocking, which is the whole point rather than a flaw in it.

The design works because it commits to the format completely — no wink, no exaggerated speed figures, nothing that signals "this is a joke" from a distance. A reader has to get close enough to read 0.5 Mb PEAK ONLY and do the arithmetic themselves before the tick lands. That's slower than a punchline, and it's why it holds up on a second look, the way a licence only lands once someone actually reads a clause.

Does it print well?

Yes, kept to two inks.

Charcoal for the table and amber for the tick is enough contrast to make the mark jump off the page without turning the whole thing decorative — a second bright colour anywhere else would compete with it. Dot-matrix type wants to stay genuinely monospaced and slightly rough at the edges; smooth type undoes the read entirely. Keep the rows short enough that the numbers don't have to shrink to fit, since 0.5 Mb is the detail the whole design depends on somebody actually reading. Grey is worth keeping as the base garment colour too — it reads as institutional stock rather than a deliberately styled print, which is exactly the paperwork this design is pretending to be.

How do I get one made?

Describe your tiers at JustOG — how many rows, which speeds, where the tick lands. 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.

Three tiers printed in full, and a tick against the one that was never going to be yours.