As part of Qpirg’s Study in Action series, I’ll be participating in a workshop/conversation with Vincent Tao on the political role of design, specifically looking at the practice of design from a (materialist) socialist perspective. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to give form to some of the ideas that have been bouncing around my head for a while.
I’m questioning why I do what it is that I do. Right now, with less than 3 days till launch, QA on the project hardly started, clients breathing down our necks. Unformatted content still coming in from halfway across the world. And a studio barely scraping by.
I try to go back in my mind to remember those points in my life when I made the decision to keep hustling along this path, and not give in and try something else. Or at least get a 9 to 5. And I try to remember a work of graphic design that actually impacted my life. Added meaning. That answered the why instead of the what.
On the corner where I used to live
With a reluctant addict, paying 200 dollars in rent
To the apartment where I first brought Cat
Stumbling and singing in chorus to lyrics
She didn’t know, but caught the tune perfectly
Up St. Laurent blvd.
French tourists are taking pictures
Of the great, white, Ubisoft logo
On this winter morning
Framing the upper third of the red brick colossus
Perfectly against
A once-endless Montreal sky.
Some classic Joy Division to mark the end of the longest (and coldest) February ever. It also marks a commitment for me to step out of “hibernation”, and work more actively towards my many goals, including much more regular writing on this site around graphic design, culture, poetics and politics. Stay tuned.
