#designer thoughts

[themizarkshow]

Work used to be one of my special interests (Design & UX + Front-end dev). The longer I've worked in the industry though, the fewer fucks I give and everyday feels like an unbearable grind...

How/why was I ever so excited to be a designer? Can I get back there? Or is that road paved with more bosses taking advantage of me and evil corps juicing all my energy until I'm back to being a depressed husk of meat rotting in bed?

[theflowersinvenus]

Hello beauties,

It's been too long...

I know that my absence has been way overdue and the last time I wrote was back in March... It seems like decades have past since our lives have been turned upside down... and like most, I had really high hopes for 2020. Many of us are just trying to navigate this difficult journey one day at a time. So I wanted to come back here to send a message of hope. Keep moving forward. You got this.

I believe in you. I believe in us.

Sometimes, words are not enough, and I know that, but I also know how important words can be. If you're still reading this, then I send many thanks to you eternally for sticking with me, and if not then that's okay too.

The Flowers in Venus is where I dream. And I want to come back. So, be on the lookout for this upcoming Venusian Sunday, but it will be very different from the past ones.

Sending lots of peace, love and hugs 🤍

[theflowersinvenus]

you know the snatched vibes

[theflowersinvenus]

The Wedding Planner Movie 💒

My first exposure to the bridal world started off when I was very little and fascinated with the beautiful well-known actress, Jennifer Lopez. She starred in many movies, but one, in particular, was my absolute favorite. In my childhood, I probably have seen the film hundreds of times since I was old enough to rent DVDs on my own, but it still never fails to bring warm nostalgia to my heart. And my family would always remind me of how many times I would try to sit directly in the middle of the television screen for The Wedding Planner directed by Adam Shankman.

Jennifer Lopez plays an ambitious San Francisco wedding planner named Mary, and her character was so career-oriented, posh and put together. It seemed like seeing my future self on the screen, and only later would this childhood love develop further for weddings and the bridal industry. Huge personal gratitude to the director Adam Shankman, and screenwriters Pamela Falk and Michael Ellis for bringing this film into my life. I know some people would call it one of the century’s cheesiest love movies, but I am also a big self-proclaimed cheeseball.

Every time I would visit San Francisco, it would be like a welcoming hug since most of my mother’s extended family lived outside of the city. It’s interesting that only now I am putting two and two together that the Wedding Planner is based on one of my favorite cities.

I decided to rewatch the movie as I am in need of a pick-me-up. Soon, I know that my own wedding planning and the bridal company will come to fruition.

[vampvelvet]

the graphic design students in my classes are so afraid of giving critical feedback to each other like i get you want to be nice but also how am i supposed to know what to improve on if you dont tell me my weaknesses!!!!!! i cant find that shit out by myself!!

[naesarchive]

Born in 1945 in Newark, New Jersey, Kruger grew up during the golden age of American advertising, which permeated all aspects of life and informed her now-signature style. She began her training at the School of Art at Syracuse University in 1964, continuing her art and design studies in 1965 at Parsons School of Design in New York under Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel.

Barbara Kruger’s work speaks directly to us. Using pronouns like “I,” “You,” and “We” and bold declarative statements, Kruger’s work prompts us to question what we see and hear in mainstream media, and to contemplate how these messages shape our identities and society.

I try to make work that joins the seductions of wishful thinking with the criticality of knowing better.

Through a canny combination of imagery and text appropriated from magazines, television, video, and newspapers, Kruger's practice, spanning more than four decades, challenges how we assign meaning to visual signifiers of faith, morality, and power.

Politically engaged, Barbara Kruger’s work questions the power of words and images. By intercepting the injunctions of advertising, it alerts the viewer to the alienations of consumer society and its signs. She also addresses the themes of violence, power and sexuality.

After working as a graphic designer in advertising and fashion, Barbara Kruger has become familiar with the conventions of mass communication. Since the end of the 1960s, her artistic practice has taken place in the context of the development of gender studies and feminist struggles. Like Cindy Sherman, she diverts the codes associated with the female gender in popular imagery, from cinema to fashion magazines, to deconstruct the dominant discourse. As early as 1979, she presented what has been her signature to this day: photomontages composed of black and white photographs, mostly from magazines of the 1940s and 1950s, which she intercepted and enlarged, and slogans printed in Futura Bold Italic font.

Questions around who has a voice in society—and how—are key in Kruger’s practice. Her portfolio of lithographs Untitled (We will no longer be seen and not heard), from 1985, assigns a word from the work’s title to each image, suggesting a vaguely recognizable sign language. The work exhibits Kruger’s desire “to ruin certain representations” of hierarchical roles through its contradictory message: viewers may guess who the speaker is and who is included in the “we.”

Kruger’s use of commonplace objects to circulate her work beyond the gallery or museum focuses our attention on how structures of control operate and are insidiously interwoven with our everyday life. Her Untitled matchbook series from 1986 allowed for wide distribution of dark messages and violent images, providing immediate access to her ideas and statements—such as the phrase “You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men” superimposed over an image of a man being physically harassed—packaged as ordinary, ephemeral objects. As her work becomes part of the larger consumer realm of merchandising, it is important to note how others, most notably the lifestyle brand Supreme, have co-opted her iconic style for their own purposes, further underscoring questions about originality and ownership.

Creating architecturally enveloping installations has long been a part of Kruger’s practice, beginning with her 1991 exhibition at Mary Boone Gallery in New York, which featured a site-specific installation covering all four walls of the gallery with provocative text and images. In 2022, she will cover MoMA’s Marron Family Atrium with her characteristic declarations about power, voyeurism, and the horrors of war. Rather than infiltrating mundane spaces through objects, Kruger noted that her installations “construct and contain our experiences” against the overwhelming onslaught of graphics and text. Printed phrases covering a building or a room punctuate our lived experiences, hopes, and fears, inviting viewers to understand “how [spaces] form us as much as we form them.”

[naesarchive]

Desing has its own world in which to act. The risk is that by emerging from these practical and theoretical boundaries, marvelous settings get created which, however, are short-lived. Be careful of useless things.

Angelo Mangiarotti. Italian architect, sculptor, and designer born in Milan in 1921.