RE-MAPPING CREATIVE PRACTICE by lorileerager

A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design in the Graphic Design program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, Vermont. By Luke Dorman, 2021 Approved by Master’s Examination Committee:

Ziddi Msangi

Ian Lynam

David Schatz

Natalia Ilyin

Contents Part 1 The Cartography of Design Part 2 A Map of Education

A Map of Process A Map of Alienation A Map of Self

Part 3 Counter-mapping Conclusion Bibliography

37 41 44 50

55 80 84

The Cartography of Design Travel far enough along any map and you’ll eventually find the edge of the world. All maps have their limits since, almost by definition, no map can contain everything. As Denis Wood says, “No map can show everything. Could it, it would no more than reproduce the world which, without the map, we already have. It is only it’s selection from the world’s overwhelming riches that justifies the map.” 1 Part of a cartographer’s job, then, is to narrow the scope of information presented on a map. They set a map’s agenda and select the traits to be mapped; they eliminate characteristics that are not relevant to the map’s purpose; they reduce the complexity of the world in the interest of creating a clearer model of reality. It must be acknowledged then that this process of selection, the series of choices to include or exclude, ingrains a set of biases into an object that is typically portrayed as an unbiased model of reality.

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With this knowledge we can see that any map, through the specific information it highlights and prioritizes, tells us what to pay attention to and, in this way, begins to convey a very specific worldview due to what it reveals and conceals. Despite this intrinsic quality of their creation, maps typically appear authoritative and objective in the worldview they present. Even a hand drawn map, for instance, might appear authoritative if it serves its intended purpose. Under an illusive guise of impartiality that is easily mistaken for absolute truth, maps convince us to believe in the system of thought they prioritize, the completeness and accuracy of their world view, and establish a way of thinking about the world that carries tremendous influence. Maps, by giving us a picture of reality that transcends our vision, become a structure for knowledge, a framework for understanding, and potentially, a platform for imagination.

Much in the same way physical maps of the world seek to model reality, we all create mental maps of the world that chart our own personal realities. Each individual serves as a cartographer, charting the landscapes of our memory, surveying our lived experiences, selecting data points from our accumulated and inherited knowledge, and assembling these components into a personal geography. We make many maps for ourselves: maps of relationships, maps of professional life, maps of our dreams, maps of cities, maps of social structures, and we compile these maps into a mental atlas that represents our way of knowing and experiencing the world. And yet despite these layered personal cartographies, the world is large, and we still get lost. Life, then, becomes a process of orienteering whereby we attempt to locate ourselves within the contexts of the maps we carry, trying to define not only

The Cartography of Design

where we are but also who we are in relation to the world. We’re making the map while we’re using the map and in this way are constantly redrawing and reconnecting ourselves to the world.

Maps are a helpful reference for how we orient ourselves within the vast landscape of cultural contexts, social structures, and epistemological traditions that make up our world. There are many types of maps and they all have symbolic parallels to our lives: general reference maps for locating ourselves, road maps that lead us where we’d like to go, data maps that help us link disparate concepts and information we’ve accumulated, and on and on. What’s also compelling about maps as a construct and model of reality, is that maps can be dissected or redrawn in order to alter the information they prioritize. These shifts might reimagine the world by prioritizing different values and information or by changing the size of the territories in relation to one another. One might shift the locations of landscapes we deem important or unimportant knowing that whatever the change, it’s clear that any particular map is just one of an infinitely large number of maps that could be produced from the same landscape. Maps have power to shape our perspectives of the world, but that power and that vision of reality can be restructured. To me, this suggests that our constructs of meaning, our structures for how we know the world, can be undone and redone, redrawn and remapped. The map provides the context and then we do the rest. It’s up to us to understand both where we’re located on any given map and what new territories we might be charting or seeking as we move through the mapped or unmapped geographies of our lives.

The Cartography of Design

In my practice as a graphic designer, I’ve slowly learned that I care more about the contexts and conditions of design than about anything else. I’m interested in the maps that orient our design practice, what they prioritize, and how they shape our perspectives of creative practice. I’m less interested in the forms of design (though let’s be real, forms are still sexy) and more interested in the contexts of design. I’m interested in the ways we work, the structures we operate under, and the values we uphold, manifest, or reify through our creative practices. A designer must navigate many maps that define the structures of our practice, and most of these are not maps, or ways of knowing the world, that we have created ourselves. In fact, the idea that we can create processes for creative practice that more closely align with our personal values is not an idea that’s commonly taught. Therefore, designers, by default, enter the world of design prepared to tacitly perpetuate the established beliefs, systems, and structures of design. The design process we learn in school is based on systems rooted in hundred-year-old Western European modes of thinking that may or may not have relevance to contemporary society. The practice of design is typically geared towards upholding the status quo of capitalist productivist society, with design’s value frequently measured in relation to its economic function.2 Perhaps the most clear parallel between education and cartography is in the teaching of design history. The historian’s selections from the rich history of design results in incredibly influential and authoritative messages about what “The Graphic Design World” deems important. After all, it is natural to assume that anything we’re taught in history class indicates the most important things to pay attention to, and anything left out of the history books must not have been of much significance.

Traditional teachings of design history, through the information they prioritize, reify traditional ideas of what is important in design (i.e. clarity, structure, messaging), how that importance is manifested (i.e. a myth of some special genius that typifies the heroes of design history 3), and what important people look like (ie. white and male 4). Design history creates a very specific map of the world that, through its influence, shapes ideas of what future design should look like. A map can exist as a vision of the past (the world as it has come to be known), the present (the existing world), and the future (the world we’d like to travel to), simultaneously. As graphic designers, all of our work provokes questions about the futures we want. Our work either visualizes something new or it solidifies the status quo. In every project we work on, we attempt to define what matters. We embark on the same process of selection as the map maker. We choose what to include in our work, what attributes to highlight, and what messages we want to communicate with our audience. By defining what matters and putting our work into the world, we too are building a vision of reality, creating small pieces of the future. Every act of design is an act of future making. As David Bayles and Ted Orland write in Art & Fear, “You make your place in the world by making part of it – by contributing some new part to the set...Each new piece of your art enlarges our reality. The world is not done yet.” 5 Each act of design we engage in creates a piece of the future, which makes it incumbent on us to contemplate the kinds of futures we desire. What futures are we making for ourselves through our work and are they futures that align with our values? What maps are we creating with our work? What maps are we using to guide us in through the creative process? What ideas do they uphold? When we feel lost or like our work is meaningless, how might we redraw the

map to help us find what truly matters to us? By maintaining awareness of the fact that we have a hand in the futures we create through our work, we might imagine a heightened sense of responsibility towards ensuring that that future aligns with values we believe in. Bruce Mau writes that, “there are requirements that designers must fulfill: open up to possibilities, live with purpose and ideals, constantly measure the work against the purpose and ideals.” 6 He suggests that we should seek to manifest these purposes and ideals in everything we do, establishing a holistic practice in which the ideas and attitudes that are present inside the studio inform, and are informed by, our lives outside the studio. This might suggest a reprioritization, at least on a personal level, of what is important in design. It suggests a practice that requires us to critically examine the systems of belief that we have been trained in, the structures of design in which we operate and whose values we uphold through our work, and a requirement to answer questions about whether or not we want to actively support these things. In this way we might mirror the intentions for design set forth by Annelys de Vet and look at design as, “a tool to deal with reality, to relate complex truths, as a compass to find your way and figure out what matters.” 7 What I have come to recognize in my own practice is that none of what I do matters if it doesn’t lead to a good life. What I mean by this is a practice that manifests the things I value, that empowers others, that centers generosity and care, that places a high value on myself and my self-worth, that seeks ways of working that are experimental, imaginative, and driven by curiosity, and that exemplifies what it means to be a critical,

The Cartography of Design

socially, and politically conscious individual. This is the map I have created to guide me, and it is a map that requires constant revision. Design is not only the tool with which to actualize these values, it is also a compass to try and figure out what matters. The way we live and the way we work are in dialogue with one another and the ensuing discourse is activated through the real experiences and actions of living and designing. We will not always succeed with this kind of practice that seeks to uphold our values, which is why it is an ongoing process of measuring the work and the processes behind the work, against these ideals. When we fail or when we spot gaps between ideals and actions, we must make adjustments, maintaining consciousness of the effects of our actions and embrace the attitude that design must be both, as Antionette Carrol says, “the intentional and unintentional impact behind an outcome.” 8 We examine what can be learned from these moments and embrace the idea of process as a teacher, not a tool. If we are able to create our own map of design, our own vision of the world that highlights and prioritizes what matters to us, what do we put on that map? What does our map tell us to pay attention to? What kind of spaces or processes can we create for paying attention and listening so that we might answer those questions? How do we manifest the things we care about through our work? How do we create a good life through design?

The Cartography of Design

NOTES 1. Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2004), 40. 2. I am thinking about this through an ecofeminist lens, which maintains that capitalist economies only see value in activities when they can be fragmented, reduced and commodified. I see this as a prevalent attitude in the design field where a designer’s worth is measured against the recognizability of their clients, with brand recognition and economic influence generally closely aligned. Maria Mies and Vanada Shiva describe how “In the market economy, the organizing principle for natural resource use is maximization of profits and capital accumulation.” They give an example of how “Only when food becomes ‘ethnic food’, music ‘ethnic music’, and traditional tales ‘folklore’ and when skills are harnessed to the production of ‘ethnic’ objects for the tourist industry, can the capital accumulation process benefit from these local cultures.” It follows then that graphic design, operating within this economic structure, is viewed in similar terms, whereby design is only seen as valuable insofar as it helps transfer value, either in terms of monetary value or cultural value, to a brand or company. Maria Mies and Vananda Shiva, Ecofeminism (London: Zed Books, 2014), 1-80.

3. Aggie Toppins, in describing the way graphic design history has traditionally been taught, notes that books like Phillip Meggs’ A History of Graphic Design focus on individual accomplishments instead of the social and political circumstances from which design styles and movements were born. This, in turn, promotes a view that “design objects are the result of a designer’s special genius rather than cultural influences or economic pressures,” and prioritizes “individual achievement over social phenomena.” Aggie Toppins, “Can We Teach Graphic Design History Without the Cult of Hero Worship?”, AIGA Eye on Design, May 29th, 2020, https://eyeondesign. aiga.org/can-we-teach-graphic-designhistory-without-the-cult-of-heroworship. 4. The individuals who, by virtue of their inclusion in graphic design history books have become part of the canon, are by and large white and male. It’s also worth noting that much of design history focuses on Western aesthetics and movements. Ramon Tejada notes how, despite their contributions to the field, “People of color: Hispanics, Latinx, African-Americans, Native Americans, Women, LGBTQ people—those labeled “minorities”—have been relegated to the margins at best, or often just excluded.” While there are a number of new initiatives that seek to

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broaden the design canon and shine a light on the contributions of BIPOC individuals and non-Western design history, the way that graphic design is still taught in many classrooms focuses on the lineage laid out in books like Phillip Meggs’ A History of Graphic Design, which contain scant traces of BIPOC contributions to graphic design history. Ramon Tejada, “We Must Topple The Tropes, Cripple The Canon”, Walker Art Center Soundboard Reader, July 26, 2018, https://walkerart.org/ magazine/soundboard-queering-designeducation-ramon-tejada. 5. David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art & Fear (Santa Cruz: The Image Continuum, 2001), 69. 6. Bruce Mau, MC24 (New York: Phaidon, 2020), 45. 7. Annelys de Vet, “Towards A Political Sensorial Design Education,” in Design Dedication, ed. Annelys de Vet (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2020), 31. 8. Laetitia Wolff, “Antionette Carroll and Albert Shum: Learning through Action,” Design Observer, August 22nd, 2018, https://designobserver. com/feature/antionette-carrolland-albert-shum-learning-throughaction/39899

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A Map of Education Graphic designers navigate the territories defined by many maps and, while trained to be critical thinkers, we are rarely prompted to turn our critical gaze on ourselves and the structures that define our practice. This is exacerbated by the fact that many of the maps that define the structures and thinking around design are deeply embedded in professional practice and, as such, are heavily resistant to reimagining. One might define a handful of these structures as those that underlie the design industry: Modernism, Design Thinking and Capitalism. The design industry seeks certain qualities from designers that make it easy to integrate into the preexisting systems and structures that the industry itself has created. It seeks from its workers a standardized and predictable method of making, valuing uniformity of process and technical knowledge, seeking to make designers interchangeable and therefore expendable. This fact in and of itself defines much of the map designers navigate. Educational institutions seem eager to cater to this need and typically teach to the industry’s desires. While graphic design is hardly, in practice, an autonomous discipline as it rarely operates in isolation and has a long history of being

intertwined with industrial production, it still seems like teaching graphic design in relation to capital and the desires of the design industry becomes problematic for the worldview it imparts on students. Students believe that the task of graphic design is, as Freidrich Tietjen says, “to make objects [for business]...and that subsequently these objects represent what graphic design is.” 1 It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that conflates the business of design with the theory of design, when these are actually two distinct concepts. It teaches students that they can only exist, as designers, within the structures of the design industry because the products of that industry are what form our concept of what design is. How are designers to imagine anything different if they’re never shown that a different reality is possible? What sense of agency can they feel in defining different systems if education doesn’t provide that context?

• • •

It’s common in a school setting for students to have assignments divided between occasional “real world” projects and the rest of their work. These real-world projects attempt to simulate the experience of working with clients and their attendant feedback, design priorities, demands and deadlines. Real world projects are intended to orient students to a design world deeply intertwined with the consumer economy. The fact that teachers so often describe things in terms that separate the rest of design education from the “real world” begins to suggest that lessons learned outside of these “real world” projects have less value and possibly no application beyond the school setting. If they did, they, too, would be described as real. The fact that we tell students that design becomes “real” when done as a service for someone else establishes a belief about what reality is like, suggesting that anything that diverges from the construct of design as a business service must not be real design.

I also think this approach of teaching towards industry precipitates a crisis in young designers. After spending four years in programs that direct them towards the field of design, essentially telling them that the entire purpose of their education is to get a job as a designer, those graduates who quickly land design jobs feel like they’ve “made it,” and that they’ve arrived at the final destination they’ve been working toward for so long. We’ve trained them to believe that the purpose of education is to get a job and the purpose of their design skills is to keep that job. Newly employed students think they’ve reached some apex that they’ve been working towards yet experience a rude awakening when they realize that they have not, in fact, arrived at the final destination they envisioned. Instead, they have just begun a new journey – one that they may not be prepared for. We prepare students with the skills to work within the design industry but we don’t equip them with the skills to evaluate whether the work they do in the industry aligns with their values, if they agree with the values their job promotes, or if they feel like they are able to manifest things they care about through their work. We don’t teach students how they might build a practice to achieve a more meaningful life through design, instead we teach them a process just to help them get their foot in the door. We teach students the skills to think critically about their work but not how to apply these critical skills to their own lives. Designers might know a lot about how to properly set type, but not about how to establish a healthy work/life balance. They might understand gestalt theory, but not how to make work that matters to them. They might not allow themselves to leave any widows or orphans on a page but will accept job situations that require them to work all night in order to meet unreasonable deadlines. “This is reality,” we’ve told them, “welcome to the real world.” Without being taught that other realities are possible, that each map that defines our world could be remade a thousand different ways, designers enter the world thinking that

the reality of professional graphic design life is unshakably established and that there’s nothing they can do but try to navigate that reality. Perhaps all designers would benefit from a practice that focuses less on the forms they make and more on the underlying contexts and structures in which those forms are created. Perhaps all designers might benefit from being trained not to seek answers for how to be a designer, but to seek questions that help them discover what kind of designer they want to be. How might the journey through professional design life be altered by leading with questions such as, what do I care about and how do I bring those cares into my working practice? What makes for a valuable design practice? What if we focused not on career goals but on happiness and quality of life goals? We fortify designers with ideas about process and teach them that the design process is a useful tool for solving problems, making visual content, and certainly making their employer happy. But what students aren’t shown in school is that, since they will be left to figure things out on their own after graduation, their process must also become a teacher and not just a tool—a way to turn the focus inward and examine the conditions of design practice, while simultaneously searching for alternative conditions in which to manifest new realities. They must be shown that they can redraw the map that defines their life inside design, and can start by defining the important features they want to include on that map.

The popular notion of graphic design, certainly the type of Modernist design that is still the foundation of much design practice and education, is projected as a universal value-free system of knowledge by which the logic of the method claims to arrive at objective conclusions and “solutions” to “problems.” The outcomes of the method are marketed as the objective and most correct solutions to a client’s communication problems, which creates a self-affirming system of belief by which the method is seen as correct and objective and therefore any design that comes from following the method must also be, objectively, correct. The rules and processes of design that designers learn are presented as rational tools for executing what we’re told is design’s purpose: to present content and messages with clarity. But just as the cartographer makes selections from the world’s overwhelming riches, prioritizing certain information while excluding content deemed unimportant, the rules of design are also based on specific selections from the myriad ways one might go about designing. The selection of certain values of design over others, presented to us as a recognizable and repeatable industry standard

design process, uphold specific worldviews while devaluing others. As an example, the type of Modernist thought that underlies much of these industry practices places a high value on design’s ability to create clarity and structure, communicating messages rapidly to an intended audience. This way of thinking is based on a belief that neutrality can be achieved by stripping away what is seen as unnecessary adornment. Of course, neutrality is not truly possible as the intercession of the designer, as intermediary between message and audience will always introduce some element of subjectivity. By claiming neutrality despite this, designers uphold a facade of ideology disconnected from the reality of their work, and the marketing of graphic design work as objective and rational becomes a deception in which designers are culpable. This attitude allows designers to focus on the intentions of their work while ignoring the actual consequences of their work, focusing on the solutions they provide while possibly ignoring the greater problems that require these discrete solutions in the first place.2 Even a designer’s most sacred tool, the grid, carries ideological significance that typically goes unquestioned and unnoticed. Francisco Laranjo highlights, for example, the way in which grid systems, as a priority of designers, reinforce a purist way of thinking that centers values of uniformity, reproducibility and scalability at the expense of valuing difference. While grid systems tend to be viewed as systems of neutrality and order, their preference for uniformity over diversity shapes a way of thinking that is reified each time a designer prioritizes grids over other approaches to design. It’s not the grid itself that carries the meaning of course, but the ideology that the grid is borne from. The grid is an artifact produced by a specific ideology and passed down from generation to generation until it reaches the hands of designers working today, sufficiently detached from the values that informed its creation. Designers are taught to build design around this system without examining the values the grid upholds. As Laranjo states, “The illusion of

universality and objectivity coming from a specific historic and geopolitical context is exported worldwide to the present day and still applied with the same conviction, or simply as eternally marketable style, with multiple reincarnations. These are not design systems of universal validity. They are systems of oppressive deception.” 3 How might we recreate the structures of design if we worked with more awareness of the values our processes uphold? What prevents us from moving forward with our thinking rather than holding on to ideas of design rooted in hundred-year-old ideologies? What values might we map onto a contemporary design practice if we were starting anew?

on ati

Alien f o ap

Raised in a culture that consistently tells us that if we “do what you love you’ll never work another day in your life,” it seems natural that visual artists would follow their creative impulse towards a career in design. Graphic designers, after all, typically earn a salary, whereas studio artists typically do not. We’re told to follow our passions and seek a career where we get to do the things we love every day, and graphic design seems like it should be a good fit. The flip side of this mentality of course, is the idea that, if we’re doing something we love, we’re not really working, which, no matter how much we love design, is patently false. Design is work. There is no creative switch we can turn on when we enter the office and turn off when we leave. Every idea we bring into the world is brought by sheer force of will and frequently on a tight deadline. When we, as creatives, internalize the idea that work we love is not really work, we can use it as a rationale for maintaining unhealthy working practices or an unhealthy work/life balance. We feel like it’s ok to work long hours or to work just for exposure, or to undercharge for our services because, if we’re doing what we love then what do we have to complain about?

Sarah Jaffe draws a connection between the impact this attitude has on creatives and the historical narrative that society has built around artists. She talks about how society sees artists as eccentric lone geniuses who will simply make art no matter the personal or financial costs, as though they cannot control the impulse to create, even in the worst of conditions.4 Cut an ear off? Keep making art. Live in squalor? Keep making art. Society sees art as a calling that can’t be derailed no matter the conditions an artist finds themselves in and, as such, it’s not actually work, it’s something we’re driven to do. Not only does society believe that artists will make art no matter what, but society generally views artmaking as a leisure activity and not as a work activity. These perspectives combine into an idea that anyone paid to make art should probably just shut up and feel lucky about it. Jaffe’s point is that this idea is then extended into the way we view other creative fields as well, graphic design included. As creatives in this kind of society we internalize this perspective. It’s not just that society projects this idea onto us, we, too, wind up believing these things about ourselves. We feel like we’re lucky to have any kind of job where we can use our creative talents, and so we find ourselves willing to accept any number of unhealthy workplaces or work practices because we feel fortunate just to be able to use our creative skills at all. “No matter how hard things are” we tell ourselves, “at least we’re not digging ditches.” While graphic design is, on most days, better than digging ditches, if you compound this internalized attitude with the fact that many designers enter the field deeply in debt as a result of their schooling, many designers feel like they don’t have any choice but to stick with whatever situation they find themselves in just because they need the money. These compounding effects can cause us to forget ourselves in the workplace, forgetting who we are and why we got into the profession in the first place, and instead tolerating whatever contexts and conditions of work are thrown at us.

In addition to the internalized idea that we should be willing to do anything for work simply because we’re lucky to have a creative job in the first place, there are other aspects of design training that we internalize as well. My early experiences working within the design industry, for example, made me feel like I was slowly erasing myself. There’s a popular belief that design should be an empty container that supports other people’s ideas and that designers should act like chameleons, able to transform ourselves from project to project in order to become what our clients need. We are taught things like “the best design is no design,” or that “good designs are those that go unnoticed,” convincing ourselves that it’s a good thing if nobody notices our hand in the things we make. How quickly, then, we forget ourselves, forgetting our own interests and replacing them with the interests of others. In my own experience, this led me to a crisis where, after years of trying to make the work I thought other people wanted to see, I no longer knew how to make anything unless it was for someone else. I forgot how to make work for myself. I forgot what I wanted to see in the world. I felt like I lost any concept of what I actually wanted to make because I was only trying to make work for others. We experience an odd friction as designers where we try to minimize or stifle the self in the interest of the rational and objective approach we are taught, while simultaneously desiring recognition for our work. Yet, even if we are able to maintain a sense of self, a unique perspective, or a degree of creative agency within the work, the work still does not bear our names or outwardly acknowledge our contributions when it’s released into the world. Any praise for the work, after it reaches its intended audience, is granted to whatever brand we worked on behalf of. This separation between self and work is an idea that Karl Marx talked about as a byproduct of industrialized labor, and it feels alive and well in creative industry. It’s not uncommon for designers to enter the field with dreams of changing the world or working towards some greater good. It’s hard to hold

file photo of karl marx

on to those dreams when you’re making weekly ads for the local newspaper or doing some other tasks of graphic design that boils down to just making more things to fill a landfill. Marx sees this kind of work as creating a sense of alienation in an individual because we’re detached from the work we produce. We are alienated from ourselves because, instead of seeing ourselves as the creative workers we dreamed of becoming, we see ourselves instead as replaceable appendages of a process in which we have no real agency or input. The work we produce isn’t our own creative expression, it’s an expression on behalf of someone else: our clients, our creative directors, our bosses. We aren’t making the things we want to see in the world, we’re making the things other people want to see in the world and typically we’re doing so just to sell more products or services that keep the whole thing running. While this feeling of alienation begins to chisel away at the enthusiasm we might otherwise bring into the work and make it harder to find any sense of meaning in what we make, Sarah Jaffe points out that the concept of alienation isn’t actually just about our feelings. Jaffe writes that alienation is ultimately, “about whether you have the power to decide where and how hard you will work and whether you will control the thing you make or the service you provide.” 5 Graphic designers typically do not get that opportunity unless they take it upon themselves to make a change. Designers work within a capitalist construct that ultimately defines vast territories of how we work, where we work, and what we work on. Even the life of a freelancer, untethered as it may be from a single boss or a 9 to 5 desk job, requires compromises in a search for more agency since freelancers still have to work as part of the capitalist system. They might lose the desk, but they don’t shake the system. Freelancers are free in the way Uber drivers are free. Sure, they can work when they want but it comes at the cost of job security, healthcare, paid vacation, and stability. It’s a false freedom that makes designers feel trapped within a system they can’t escape. Maybe I should have been more

wary of all of this when I realized one of the bestselling design books of all time is called, How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul. This separation and disconnection between work and self is part of what makes it feel hard to manifest a good life through design. We don’t see ourselves in the work and so we don’t see the solution to our problems as being attainable through the work. The work belongs to someone else, and we don’t think we have the agency to change it. But if we recognize that each act of design we engage in, each piece of work we put into the world, helps continue to build the world, helps continue to build the systems we might be eager to escape, perhaps we recognize in this that the world could be built differently if we could define the values we want to see in the work. The complexity of the systems we operate within, mean there are always opportunities to make change. We contribute to the systems every day, so what might be possible if we contribute with consciousness? We build the systems of design through our actions, and once we recognize this, we can focus on how we might want to re-encounter the world and rethink the actions that either maintain the world as it is or seek to define a new reality. In describing the practice and beliefs of immersive art collective Meow Wolf 6, founder Emily Montoya recently said, “It’s all about reinventing the mundane spaces and trying to get you to re-engage with a sense of curiosity and possibility to remember to wonder...We forget ourselves every day. We have the choice and the freedom to re-engage with ourselves and the world around us, to remind us that we have the capacity to create infinite beauty and change.” 7 Could this become a permanent embodied attitude of design? What would we need to do to help remember ourselves every day?

A Map to Self Young designers who enter the field of design come face to face with the issue of needing to rewrite their map, but it’s also an issue that persists throughout a designer’s life as they learn and grow. We are constantly orienteering, finding our way, reconnecting, redrawing. The map is the framework and the contexts of design, and these contexts will inevitably change over time, either through a shifting socio-political landscape, personal development, or from simply changing jobs. As designers we know that what has been built can be rebuilt, and I believe that it’s important that designers come to the field with an understanding that this applies not only to the objects of design, but to the processes, methodologies and contexts of design as well. I embrace the position that Ana Paula Pais establishes, writing that design should entail both, “locating and challenging the conditions of our current realities, while creating alternative conditions that allow for new realities to happen” 8. We get so lost within the structures of the design world because the systems we encounter can consume us so thoroughly and therefore seem large and unchangeable. But

as paralyzing as it can be to contemplate making changes to the vast contexts that define the way we work, we have to recognize that the world is something we make and so we can make it differently. I had been working as a designer for at least a decade before I had two small, yet important, realizations that helped me rethink my relationship to some of these structures. For one I recognized that, while I liked what I did, I didn’t always like how I had to do it. What would it look like, I wondered, if I tried to do more of the things I like and less of the things I don’t like? How might that simple conscious choice affect my practice? How might I go about implementing changes that could help me achieve this goal? What kind of effects might be possible with a small and simple change? I also realized that the day will never come when all the work is done. There will never be a time I walk into the office, look around, say “well folks it actually looks like we finished everything,” and then crack a beer and put my feet up on my desk. Since the work will never stop, since the work and the job will never create its own healthy boundary, it’s up to me to create the boundary. Again, the realization that I could take hold of one small part of how I operated within the contexts of design, felt like a powerful act that could ripple out to other parts of my practice. What else is possible when we start to take these little steps towards recognizing that we have control over the ways we encounter the world and experience our life in design? What might a practice look like that prioritizes awareness of the impact of our work on our lives? When we encounter systems that don’t uphold our values, how much agency do we have to rethink these systems for ourselves and create a practice that matters? Can we develop design practices that imagine different futures for ourselves and how do we get started?

NOTES 1. Friedrich Tietjen, “Off the Page. Some Notes on the Visual Event”, in The Visual Event, ed. Oliver Klimpel (Leipzig: Spector Books, 2014), 64. 2. Access to clean water is a problem that affects almost a billion people around the globe, leaving many with no choice but to drink from local water sources that could be contaminated with bacteria or parasites. The LifeStraw, a portable water filtration system that can filter out 99.99% of bacteria and parasites, has been touted by some as a solution to this problem, and millions of LifeStraws have been donated to households in West Africa. While the LifeStraw certainly seems to have its benefits as an effective, if temporary, solution to this public health issue, the fact of the matter is that thinking of the LifeStraw as any kind of long term solution allows the root of the problem to perpetuate unchecked. Instead of solutions that seek to address the source of water contamination, the LifeStraw attempts to provide a remedy only for the end results of contamination. It’s like sending pillows to homeless people–sure they might have a better night’s sleep but it completely ignores the societal problems that allow someone to be homeless in the first place. Rather than spending $30 per LifeStraw per year, perhaps those funds, if directed towards sewage

infrastructure, or water treatment plants, or some other measure intended to solve the root problem, might be more effective. As it is, the LifeStraw as a solution locks consumers into a cycle of having to purchase new goods every year, while allowing the governments that could potentially create solutions with greater impact to continue to ignore the problem and shift responsibility to consumers. Peter Murray, “LifeStraw Brings Clean Water to Almost One Million in Kenya”, Singularity Hub, November 9, 2011, https://singularityhub.com/2011/11/09/ lifestraw-brings-clean-water-toalmost-one-million-in-kenya-video. 3. Francisco Laranjo, “Graphic Design Systems, and the Systems of Graphic Design”, in Modes of Criticism 5, ed. Francisco Laranjo (Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2019), 6. 4. Daniel Denvir, “Work Won’t Love You Back with Sarah Jaffe,” February 25, 2021, in The Dig, podcast, https:// www.thedigradio.com/podcast/workwont-love-you-back-with-sarah-jaffe/. 5. Ibid. 6. Meow Wolf is an arts and entertainment company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico that is best known for their large-scale immersive art installations.

7. Todd Martens, “Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart is Opening in Las Vegas in a Pandemic. What to Know,” Los Angeles Times, Feb 17, 2021. https://www. latimes.com/entertainment-arts/ story/2021-02-17/meow-wolf-omegamart-covid-era-opening-las-vegas-inpandemic. 8. Ana Paula Pais, “Unfolding Potentials (Within and Across)”, in Slow Reader, ed. Ana Paula Pais and Carolyn F. Strauss (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2016), 26.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Maps not only describe the world but also bestow upon the world a reality that we cannot see without the map. Maps give names to places, they inscribe the world with lines marking borders, they present data, and divulge layers of information that aren’t physically present in the world for us to see. We don’t pass over any physical lines in the ground when traveling from state to state, or when crossing between voting districts or school districts, or any of the other kinds of borders one can find on a map. All of these things, these pieces of social and political knowledge, require maps to uphold and reinforce their existence, only becoming real once they are mapped. In this way maps make real that which is invisible. If we seek to discover new or alternative systems of value through design, systems we define for ourselves rather than systems that are defined for us, then we too must map the things we hope to manifest in order to make them real. Weaving the invisible threads of our own beliefs and values into the map of creative practice helps make these abstract ideas more con-

crete. This becomes a process of counter-mapping, which Denis Wood describes as a way of, “Taking the map back into our own hands, making it serve our interests – human interests – instead of the interests of a profession, or state” 1. If we imagine a design process of counter-mapping whereby we critically examine the contexts that define our current practice, and then conscientiously rewrite them, what might our new map look like? What form might it take? How might it help us work towards a new sense of connectedness and wholeness of theory and practice? How might it help us find meaning in our work and use our practice to manifest the things we care about? One way we can write these guiding principles into the world and make them more real is by creating a personal manifesto. Manifestos have a long and storied history in the arts as founding documents for various movements including Futurism, De Stijl, Dadaism and the Bauhaus. But manifestos can also serve a personal purpose and, I’d argue, are actually more meaningful and powerful when written as a statement of personal values as opposed to statements of group ideology. A personal manifesto requires paying attention to self and fostering an inner dialogue in search of what we find meaningful. Carolyn Strauss says this kind of inward focus “Opens up and supports discovery of the fertile territory that lies within the individual, a place where poetry is born and where imagination, intuition, deep knowing (and also not-knowing) reside. Inner dialogue is a process of encountering oneself within oneself, of coming to trust one’s own reservoir of being, and of actively bringing that ‘inner’ into resonant balance with the ‘outer’ dimensions of life” 2. The manifesto becomes an outlet and prototype of sorts for bringing our inner self into contact with the outer world. It achieves the same function as the map in that it helps make the abstract outcomes we hope to realize through our practice into a reality.

Countermapping

Despite the impression the founding manifestos of movements like the Bauhaus might give us, a manifesto does not have to be a grand declaration meant for the history books. Instead, we can think of a personal manifesto as a temporary and malleable statement of purpose, a testing ground for ideas, and a guidance system for our exploration into creating a meaningful practice. When I wrote my first manifesto, I was admittedly intimidated by the implications of making such a declarative statement. It wasn’t until Ian Lynam* convinced me that I just needed to write a “manifesto for the here and now,” that my reticence subsided. I thought I was writing something grand and declarative that would serve as a foundation for a new mode of practice I was about to embark on. Instead, I realized that, while I was writing something foundational, it was only a foundation for tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. The manifesto only had to define my practice as long as it served my practice, at which point I could revisit, rewrite, and realign. As long as the manifesto is providing a guide for our work it is serving its purpose and, when it no longer serves that purpose, all we need to do is rewrite our guide. For my first manifesto, I engaged in the type of internal dialogue Carolyn Strauss talks about. I asked myself questions and paid attention to the answers that emerged. I tried to capture whatever ideas I had about the things I wanted to center within my practice and made a large list of possibilities without being overly critical about it. I tried not to be too clever, and sometimes I succeeded. In the end I took all of the potential pieces of my manifesto and wrote them out by hand, imagining that perhaps touching the letters would help me understand what was truly valuable and necessary to include in the final version. Writing by hand slowed the process down just enough to really dwell on each line of the manifesto and see if it resonated, resulting in something I felt comfortable using as a guide for my practice.

* Countermapping

Excerpts from my “manifesto for the here and now,” I is for Authentic.

In 2017 I had my graduating students write a collective manifesto at the beginning of their final semester. The purpose of the project was to have them discuss ideas about what mattered to them and create a manifesto that declared those values. I hoped that the resulting document could potentially guide their practice for the rest of the year. The manifesto above is what they came up with. The group still refers to themselves as the “Shit Show” in group chats.

Writing the manifesto becomes a starting point in a larger process of creating a personal and more meaningful practice. Writing these guiding principles into the world makes them more real, but we still have to follow through with an integrity of action meant to support the purpose and ideals of the manifesto. Bruce Mau, well known for his Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, says that, “Everything we do should reflect our declared principles: how we live, how we use resources, how we produce the things we want and need” 3. The manifesto gives us a tool to find our way towards this goal and if we revisit the process over time and maintain it as a key part of practice, it can help ensure that our working practices stay aligned with our values. In this way manifestos can become a method for continually responding and adapting to the contexts of design we find ourselves in. By being reflective and reflexive with our manifesto, we begin to establish a creative process that serves as a teacher, not just a tool. Mau writes about a workshop he teaches where participants create a personal manifesto in three minutes and how, at first, most people assume there’s no way they can write this kind of statement of purpose in such a short amount of time. Mau notes that, once participants actually begin writing the manifesto, most finish in less time than they’re allotted. His conclusion, from leading many of these workshops, is that three minutes is a long enough time to write because most people already have a sense of the future that they want, they just haven’t been asked to articulate it. He says, “Almost everyone has an image of a more abundant, equitable, and just world they would like to live in, and of how they would like to help create it. People know how they’d like to apply their talent, energy, and intelligence: they clearly see what role they want to play and the impact they want to have” 4. The manifesto, by giving us a way to access these visions for the future, helps make them more real and therefore more

Countermapping

actionable. The power of the manifesto doesn’t just lie in the fact that it makes the world we hope to create more real through the writing, but that it helps us find a way back to ourselves by bringing forth and articulating the things that are truly important to us. We remind ourselves of these dreams for the future that we typically hide away, buried under all the other maps that define the contexts of our practice. Perhaps, in this way, the manifesto becomes more akin to the compass that helps us find our way and figure out what matters. The actions we take to support the manifesto are what truly rewrites the map. We need some kind of vision of the world we want to create so that we have something to work towards, something that guides us through process. We cannot work towards finding deeper meaning with our practice, if we don’t establish any real sense of what is actually meaningful to us. So, in order to create a practice that aligns with and manifests our values, a practice that feels valuable and meaningful and fulfilling, we have to begin to define at least a rough sense of what these things are, and then work towards them. Searching for fulfillment through our work, we might begin by asking simple questions that help us clarify where we are within the maps that define our practice, asking things like: Does my work make me happy and am I doing the kind of work I imagined? Who does my work benefit? What kind of future does my work manifest? What do I love to do? What do I want to achieve through design?

Recognizing what we hope to achieve and the values we want to uphold through practice helps shine a light on the areas within our practice where these values and desires are absent. This helps us define areas for focused change within our practice. Once we

Countermapping

recognize the disparity between the current contexts of design and the contexts we wish to create, we can work towards closing that gap. All of this helps us find answers to the questions we ask ourselves about how to challenge the conditions of design that define our practice. All too often it feels like design practice is motivated by what we think other people want from us. We are less often challenged to think about what we want to achieve, and more often challenged to make guesses at what we think other people want us to achieve. We guess at what clients or creative directors want us to do, we guess at how to define our value, we guess at how to charge for our work, and how to set limits on what is asked of us. We’re always trying to gauge what is expected of us and how we can live up to these expectations. It becomes a practice rooted in uncertainty and anxiety, where we’re always trying to live up to an expectation that is placed on us by someone else, as opposed to an expectation we place on ourselves. We’re working from a place of fear: fear of failure, fear of not meeting expectations, and fear of making mistakes in our work. We get so swept up in this way of operating that we don’t take the time to consider what it is we really want to do and are instead motivated solely by what we believe we’re supposed to be doing. What do we really want to achieve through design? Who are we really designing for? What is motivating us? So much of how we operate as designers is based on things we think we’re supposed to want, rarely finding the opportunity to examine what it is that we are really after. Counter-mapping, whether done through the manifesto or through other processes, helps us find answers to these questions. I believe that figuring out what we want to achieve and manifest through our practice is the key to a good life through design. I think this occurs when we recognize that, while we can

Countermapping

follow the path made by the designers that have come before us, we can only follow it so far. If we travel far enough along any map, we’ll eventually find the edge of the world. There comes a time for each of us where we have to write the map for ourselves, to become the cartographers of our own futures, to write our personal geographies into existence. A fundamental shift occurs when we relieve ourselves of the burden of working at something we think we’re supposed to be working at, and instead work towards something we believe in. The manifesto, or any other form of counter-mapping, gives us a guide towards the future we wish to create for ourselves, highlighting values and principles of making and being that we hope to manifest through the work. This holds a key to finding fulfillment through design and, by searching for a fulfilling practice, helps better equip us to aid others through our work as well. For example, imagine a design practice that recognizes that our health is as important as the things we make–a practice that recognizes that we aren’t actually required to sacrifice ourselves in service to our work, and that it’s a choice when we do so, therefore we could make different choices. How might that kind of practice better enable us to help others or how might that choice inspire others to follow a similar path? How might we create a better life and a better world for ourselves through design?

To me, all of this highlights that the true value of any process of counter-mapping lies in inquiry. Without prioritizing inquiry, we tacitly reinforce the status quo and uphold the established beliefs, systems and structures of design which may not actually align with our beliefs. Writing our values into the process won’t automatically fix everything, but neither will maintaining the

Countermapping

status quo. If more designers operated from a place of inquiry in order to establish more meaningful and healthier working practices, what might that look like? How might that transform the design industry? In everything we do we have to wonder, what maps are we creating with our work? What maps are we using to guide us through the creative process? What ideas do they uphold? When we feel lost or like our work is meaningless, how might we redraw the map to help us find what truly matters to us? By maintaining awareness of the fact that we have a hand in the futures we create through our work, we might imagine a heightened sense of responsibility towards ensuring that that future aligns with values we believe in. There are many ways we can attempt to manifest the things we care about in our work, but we won’t know where to start without rigorous inquiry. The inquiry also doesn’t stop when we leave the studio. This is about a life of making and to find what it is we value through design also requires us to find what we value outside of design. It’s the connection between these two spheres of life, life inside the studio and outside of the studio, where a holistic practice begins to emerge. Graphic design is not a practice simply of forms it is also a practice of contexts. It is a practice of making meaning. We have to make it meaningful.

How we create is tied to who we are. This suggests to me that figuring out where we are within the contexts of design, and building a valuable practice, isn’t about the forms we want to make, it’s about how we want to live our life through design. This critical examination of what kind of life we want to live through design becomes one of the most important questions we have to

Countermapping

answer. I’ve come to understand that life as a designer is a life of making. Ann Hamilton writes, “A life of making isn’t a series of shows, or projects, or productions, or things; it is an everyday practice. It is a practice of questions more than of answers, of waiting to find what you need more often than knowing what you need to do.” 5 For me this suggests the importance of a holistic approach to our work that envisions design as a total practice that recognizes the fluidity with which the ideas and attitudes that are present inside the studio inform, and are informed by, our lives outside the studio. It becomes about maintaining a practice that, as Ana Paula Pais suggests, “sees significant value in how other ways of knowing, experiencing, and acting can inform and enrich design activity” 6. What tools we can integrate into our life to help us maintain awareness of these other ways of knowing that might inform our practice? Slow Research Lab maintains a list on their website of what they describe as tools, which includes openness, vulnerability, curiosity, trust, inclusion, and not-knowing, among many others. 7 These ways of being and experiencing life help us maintain awareness of who we are inside and outside of the studio. This awareness helps us recognize what we want to achieve through our work, write those goals into existence, and then take action towards achieving these goals. This, I believe, is key to a fulfilling practice—finding ourselves and rewriting the maps that define our practice, in order to manifest the things we care about. What spaces can we create for listening to ourselves and fostering internal dialogue as we search for the things we hope to manifest through our work? How do we explore the outcomes of our internal dialogues within our work? Annelys de Vet gives an example of how, simply through our living, we can access new ideas about our making. She talks

Countermapping

about her students at the Sandberg Institute doing things such as cooking for one another and how these simple acts, when viewed through a graphic design lens, can connect to a larger practice. In her perspective, organizing a dinner provides an example of a way of being, that’s about ideas of initiating, communicating, organizing, and hosting, when viewed through a design lens. She says, “You practice intuitively but through it you recognize other structures, so you think ‘Hey maybe instead of organizing an exhibition we should organize a dinner’ or maybe it should take another form, but you need to go through these experiences and really allow the work or the material setting to speak to you, instead of having an idea first and then executing the idea, which is often based on something you already know. So how can you allow the energy of the work, the meeting or the community to drive you forward?” 8 These moments can be anything as long as we’re paying attention and approaching life with an open mindset that seeks to learn from our experiences, and then connect those lessons to our practice. As a personal example, I’ve learned a fair amount about different mentalities of design practice from going on hikes with my daughters. My kids and I approach hiking with different understandings of what the objective is: I think of hiking as being about following a trail and arriving somewhere, whereas my children think of hiking as wild and free exploration of the terrain that exists off the trail. They don’t want to arrive; they want to explore. This kind of moment, approached through the lens of design, teaches me to recognize that people can have very different ideas about something’s purpose, and both ideas can be correct. The fact that there is not always a binary or an objectively correct answer becomes an important idea to hold on to in my design practice. It helps, as a designer, to remember that we don’t know everything and shouldn’t presume to hold all the correct answers, especially when more than one answer can be correct.

Countermapping

This moment also reminds me of the value of exploration. It connects with something Carolyn Strauss writes about where one might find “tangible forms not as ends in themselves, but as traces of process and portals to new levels of understanding.” 9 Perhaps we focus too much on the things we make, not the path we take to make them, and perhaps the fulfillment and meaning we often search for as designers is attainable once we recognize that there is not a single way to be a designer, but that there are many ways, and they can all be correct. Perhaps the point of our life in design is not to arrive, but to explore.

The act of mapping and counter-mapping becomes the cornerstone of building a practice that honors our values in order to help manifest the things we care about, as opposed to the things we’ve been told to care about. What I’ve learned for myself is that what I care about most, is manifesting a good life through design. That has become my simple, yet oddly enigmatic mission. It is a vague directive with the potential to guide with utmost clarity, in that, while it’s perhaps challenging to describe in detail the ways I’d identify this “good life,” it is often incredibly easy to see when my work leads me away from this mission. I have come to a point where I feel like nothing I do as a designer matters if it doesn’t lead to this purpose, if it doesn’t lead to a good life, and so I have to evaluate each situation I find myself in, each context that informs a design project, by the measure of whether it is something that aligns with this map I have created for myself. The things we hope to manifest through our practice are deeply personal yet have potential to connect to collective values that we seek to uphold. Our contributions to the world help make

Countermapping

the world and, as such, all of our making is future-making. All of our work contributes to the map of what the world will become, which makes it incumbent upon us to contemplate what kind of world we want to make, and to work towards this through practice. Sister Corita Kent reminds us to, “Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while” 10. What better place to trust, than the one we’ve drawn for ourselves? What better way to guide our practice, than by the map that seeks to manifest the things we care about? I can’t think of a better way to achieve a good life through design.

Countermapping

NOTES 1. Denis Wood, Rethinking the Power of Maps (New York: The Guilford Press, 2010), 156.

2021, https://www.slowlab.net/ RESOURCES/Resources-TOOLS-Slowpractices

2. Carolyn F. Strauss, “The Poetic Ship”, in Slow Reader, ed. Ana Paula Pais and Carolyn F. Strauss (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2016), 17.

8. Jarrett Fuller, “163: Annelys de Vet,” September 30, 2020, in Scratching the Surface, podcast, 31:20, https:// scratchingthesurface.fm/163annelys-de-vet.

3. Bruce Mau, MC24 (New York: Phaidon, 2020), 45. 4. Ibid, 65. 5. Ann Hamilton, “Making Not Knowing,” in Learning Mind: Experience into Art, ed. Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 69.

9. Carolyn F. Strauss, “The Poetic Ship”, in Slow Reader, ed. Ana Paula Pais and Carolyn F. Strauss (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2016), 16. 10. Sister Corita Kent, Learning By Heart (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), 176.

6. Ana Paula Pais, “Unfolding Potentials (Within and Across)”, in Slow Reader, ed. Ana Paula Pais and Carolyn F. Strauss (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2016), 24. 7. The complete list of “Tools” from the Slow Resource Lab’s website is: Openness, Receptivity, Acceptance, Vulnerability, Mindfulness, Introspection, Curiosity, Interrogation, Intuition, Acknowledgment, Honesty, Critique, Reflexivity, Dialogue, Integrity, Confidence, Self-Determination, (Co-)Visioning, Imagination, Daring, Trust, Transparency, Horizontality, Inclusion, Mutual Respect, NotKnowing. “Slow Practices,” Slow Research Lab, accessed March 30,

Countermapping

I wholeheartedly believe in the importance of building a meaningful design practice that enables us to work towards manifesting the things we care about, and I believe that redrawing the map of practice in order to prioritize the values we seek to uphold with our work is an effective starting point. Through an ongoing practice of reflection and inquiry into the ways we work, we can stay aligned with the values that we’ve established. When the contexts of design pull us away from these values, we are hopefully better equipped to reorient ourselves and make adjustments because we’ve already defined what we feel is truly important.

Bibliography

Graphic design practice is complex and full of challenges that make it difficult to uphold our ideals in all circumstances. I can freely admit that, in the process of creating this book, I sacrificed any number of the values I seek to uphold through practice because I felt that the work demanded it of me: I spent too much time in front of the computer, too many evenings working past midnight, too much time away from my family, and too little time recuperating and caring for myself. The value of the kind of self-reflective process I’ve described is that when we recognize these moments in our lives where we have strayed far off the map and are no longer working and living the way we want to, we have a guide to bring us back to ourselves. We have a means of attempting to consciously navigate forward instead of feeling lost and confused as we recognize the misalignment between the way we want to work and the way we are actually working. So now, as I complete this portion of creative practice and seek to realign my work with my values, I can look upon the map of practice I’ve made for myself and see the territory I want to occupy. I know where I want to go, even if I acknowledge that it will take time to get back to that place. But this is life–this our constant process of orienteering and locating ourselves within the contexts of the maps we carry. When we redraw the maps in a way that seeks to prioritize the things we care about, to reconnect ourselves to the world in the hopes of manifesting the things we value, our journey back to ourselves becomes easier and we are able to navigate forward with more purpose, more hope, and a more meaningful practice.

Bibliography

Bibliography Bayles, David and Ted Orland. Art & Fear. Santa Cruz: The Image Continuum, 2001. Brave New Alps. “Co-Creating Empowering Economic Systems– Strategies for Action” In Modes of Criticism 5, edited by Francisco Laranjo, 6. Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2019. Denvir, Daniel. “Work Won’t Love You Back with Sarah Jaffe.” The Dig. February 25, 2021. Podcast. https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/ work-wont-love-you-back-with-sarah-jaffe/. de Vet, Annelys. “Towards A Political Sensorial Design Education.” In Design Dedication, edited by Annelys de Vet, 5-34. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2020. Fuller, Jarrett. “163: Annelys de Vet.” Scratching the Surface. September 30, 2020. Podcast, 31:20. https://scratchingthesurface. fm/163-annelys-de-vet. Fuller, Jarrett. “157: Deanna Van Buren.” Scratching the Surface. June 24, 2020. Podcast. https://scratchingthesurface.fm/156deanna-van-buren. Harmon, Katharine. You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004. Hamilton, Ann. “Making Not Knowing.” in Learning Mind: Experience into Art, edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas, 69. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Ilyin, Natalia. Chasing the Perfect. New York: Metropolis Books, 2006.

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This book uses a whole mess of typefaces, but is primarily set in Covik Sans and Covik Sans Mono. The Covik Sans family is designed by James Edmondson/OHNO Type Co. The typeface began as a serif face called Covik that Edmondson created for his graduate project at TypeMedia. Following graduation he shelved the font until an opportunity came about to do some design work for a friend’s restaurant at which point Edmondson revisited Covik, removed the serifs, expanded the font into a number of weights and Covik Sans was born. Edmondson later added a monospace version as part of the branding for Future Fonts.

Fonts used elsewhere in the book include: Anthony, designed by Sun Young Oh Faune, by Alice Savoie Lo Res 9, by Zuzana Licko Saiga, designed by Teo Tuominen Savate, by Collectif Wech And a bespoke typeface I designed at metaflop.com

Design: Luke Dorman Editor: Serena Rodriguez Endless Patience: My wife and Natalia Ilyin All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses.