I also don’t know anything about cars except that individuals need them more than communities do

Feels like they’re setting themselves up perfectly for a hyper-individualist dystopia. This isn’t a car for taking it all in, this is a car that embraces the bleakness ahead with big screens and bright colours. I think it’ll do great. But I also didn’t get that mad when they changed the twitter font

I’m doing a deep dive on business models in type and by and large for an industry with so much product innovation, there seems to be a real lack of imagination on the actual business side of things

And I don’t mean as a spin off service. Maybe MT Studio does it? But I’m not sure that’s what I’m talking about

That’s my first and only rant on here. I promise sorta 😪

And also conferences are so fucking boring when you put people in idiotic boxes based on what collective injustices they suffered. Some black people have trust funds. They will share documentary footage and fool you. The only useful lens for injustice is an intersectional one.

So now, companies are not more quiet about one injustice than another; companies are as loud as they’ve always been, which is as loud as is good for business. Designers, if you want to make a positive social impact you can put down the iPad and do active community-based organising.

So, by playing the DEI game, designers lose by having to work within limited markets that only really represent their intended impact in a totemic way. Businesses lose by making their outputs too dependent on public opinion. Sometimes public opinion is actually wrong and bad for business.

It’s why your favourite “big time” designers seem to get real spineless when social issues without a clear line of profit (racism=easy, genocide=tricky).

It’s not just not wanting to take a stand, it’s also not wanting to have to wait on the 60-day payments cycles when you have to work for mom+pop

Here’s why it’s bad for business, for everyone: companies have to be more flexible than their long term strategies. Tying output to political tides is cute when you sell merch with your font on it, but what about when you sell water? Or rice? As a designer, the market you can serve is now limited.

Also, there’s a vested interest in the Israeli shopping market, why disrupt that? On the other hand, nobody wants to be a racist, so it’s easier for Nike to fork out 100k on some MLK Day graphics. Easy to understand, I think, so far. A story as old as time. Not bad business, just business.

There isn’t a government-mandated inclusivity quota that affects your tax incentives that’s related to support of the victims of the genocide in Gaza, so there isn’t a platforming of Palestinian designers and their work in an ad campaign by Nike.

That said, it’s connection to visual culture and social impact is undeniable. Which brings us to the industrial complex aforementioned: there is a business to the optics of inclusiveness. Its relationship to political tension, tax incentive, and corporate social responsibility are clear.

Which isn’t to say that designers don’t or can’t do good on an individual or collective level. But, so do bankers, mining technologists, and fashion designers. It doesn’t remove them from the value chain. That’s the first but: design isn’t a net good, it’s just an industry. Manage your expectations.

Which is a lot of social responsibility in itself, but allows designers to remove themselves theoretically from their relationship to exploitation. It’s: “I just draw the nice letters, I don’t work for Tesla”. The number of degrees of separation works keep designers underpaid, and self-righteous.

The first thought is that design for capital is capitalism perpetuating itself, and I’d say it’s as insidious as any other big industry. It’s not special. What is special is that art school culture in the west has led there to be an implication that designers are agents of positive social change