You wear a lot of hats as an independent designer. You do a lot of design tasks through any given day, week, month, year. From high level concept to nitty gritty production. All of these tasks you’re more than capable of handling. That’s what got you here after all. But some you’re able to do faster than others. Some take more thought, effort, and time. But the ones you can do with your eyes closed, those you can knock out in no time. It could be a poster you can instantly see before you open your computer. Or going through thousands of photos and finding the best ones lickity split. The slower tasks, while part of the job and perhaps even enjoyable, you do those with the necessary mental fortitude and then you move on when able. Taken altogether as one collection of design day tasks—the slow and fast, the fast and slow—all adds up to getting things done, one thing at a time.
Copy of a Copy of a Copy
I started out by trying to copy design styles by designers I liked. I wanted to capture a particular aesthetic of the people who I thought had this design game figured out. Maybe I still do that.
Mad Hatters
Hootin’ and hollerin’, so quick to act a fool. Boys will be boys, yeah? As if offering excuses for a history of poor choices makes the ones committed in the present okay. As if it’s impossible for the adults in the room to provide restraint.
How difficult is it to let boys know that symbols matter? That when you step foot out your door into a public space, how you present yourself is no longer completely in your control. What symbols you’ve brought along with you are read and interpreted. Attached to you, their meaning can be reinforced or not, amplified or not, ignored or not.
Wear a MAGA hat while serving food to the homeless at a soup kitchen, that’s unexpected. Wear a MAGA hat while hollering at young girls, seems about right. Wear a MAGA hat, you have a lot more to answer for than simply your own identity and your own presence. Because you’re carrying with you the weight of a tired slogan many of us now wearily associate with white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, and fascism.
It may not seem fair. Especially if you’re caught up in national outrage. Even more crucial for the kids to firmly grasp the concept that symbols have power, both hidden and obvious. Both for the person wearing the symbol, and those confronted by it.
Walk out your door wearing a MAGA hat, there are real consequences. Just as there have been real consequences felt by the application of the MAGA ethos. For the kids locked in cages, or the soldiers who can’t serve their country, or the workers who trudge on without a paycheck.
I personally have yet to come into contact with someone wearing a MAGA hat. Not sure what I’d do, how I’d react. Maybe I’d just laugh in its face. I’d certainly be disgusted, and I feel like I’d know all there is to know about the person wearing the hat because the symbol has been used so repetitively. That’s the power of branding, the bludgeoning of the senses through hyper frequency. They hit us everywhere, and the meaning of the symbol burrows its way into our brains, forever lodged in between memories of weddings and funerals.
Again, it may not seem fair. But that’s where we are.
Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose
I first read about these aspects of human motivation in a long article about technology and living forever in the New York Times Magazine. That’s all I know. That, and I like the idea.
Spotify User #126029728
So Facebook bought Spotify, remember? They did, and since I deactivated my account on Facebook, I’m also effected on Spotify. Where now, I’m just a number. A nine digit string of nonsense has replaced my name. My profile photo is still there, so if you’re looking for me and have trouble remembering long strings of numbers, just look for the pink bubble gum.
User #126029728, signing off.
Viking Left
How do we make America better? We look to the Nordics. We craft a social movement by doing these 4 important points:
Gaining rough agreement among the Left on a vision for a new society
Using cooperative ownership models to prefigure that vision
Practicing inclusivity
Maintaining a commitment to nonviolent struggle
From the book Viking Economics by George Lakey.
MLK Riverside 1967
“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Riverside Church, 1967
