Archive for the ‘Design + Creativity’ Category
Downloadable “Fighting for What is Right” Poster for Women’s March and Beyond
Pablo Picasso once said that, “Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It’s an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.”
The same can be said for art in general. Art is a powerful tool. It is how we communicate. It is how we express ourselves. I made a papercut the day after the U.S. presidential election, inspired by a line in Hillary Clinton’s speech. I eventually turned it into a limited edition print.
In honor of the Women’s March on Washington, and the many marches and protests that I hope are to come as we as citizens stand up for ourselves, our sisters and our brothers, I decided to make a downloadable version. It’s free and available to anyone who wants to use it. Art for the people. Print it, post it, carry it.
Download here.
“Stand With A Million” Buttons
These 2.25″ buttons are being made in honor of the Women’s March on Washington, taking place in Washington D.C., and at other locations all around the country, on January 21, 2017. Buttons are currently in production and will be shipped out Monday January 16, 2017. Buttons are printed by One Inch Round in Portland, Oregon with 65% recycled steel and 100% recycled, FSC-certified paper.
$1 of each sale goes to Planned Parenthood. You can buy one here.
“Write Like a Motherfucker” Notebook
“Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense—the creative act.”
– Kenneth Rexroth
As the new year kicks off, I have been thinking about the necessity of ideas and words. Without them, we are soulless, both individually and culturally.
At the end of last year, I made a papercut inspired by a line from Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar column. I wanted to use it to inspire others to create, so over the holidays, I turned them into a notebook, printed by Scout Books. They’re meant to fuel all kinds of revolutionary ideas and writing.
They’re available in my shop now, and 10% of the proceeds goes to supporting PEN America, an organizations working to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide.
“Protest Fuel: The Revolution Must Be Fed” – Benefit Zine
In January 2017 (just in time for the Million Women’s March) my friend Caitlin and I will be releasing Protest Fuel: The Revolution Must Be Fed. We are currently wrapping up the final design so that we can send it to the printer right after the new year.
No matter who we are or here we live, we must eat. Food is something that unites us. With that in mind, I wanted to use food as a catalyst for change. Protest Fuel is a collection of recipes, essays, artwork and quotes, all with the goal of inspiring you to take action, whether that’s by hosting a comforting soup night or getting out on the frontlines in a protest.
The zine itself is will be printed in January 2017 in Seattle by Girlie Press. All of the contributors to this zine have volunteered their recipes, stories and time, and for that I am very grateful.
I wanted this zine to benefit a cause, but how to choose? There is no way to choose. There are so many issues that are important right now. I have chosen to donate 100% of the proceeds to the Women’s Environment and Development Organization. When women thrive, so does society. Without the environment we have nothing. As one of the WEDO founders Vandana Shiva once said, “In nature’s economy the currency is not money, it is life.” I hope that this zine inspires you to choose life, to be active within your own communities, and to support the people and initiatives committed to positive change.
You can preorder Protest Fuel: The Revolution Must Be Fed here.
Handprinted Notebooks
Making art feels good, and so does opening up a blank notebook, which is why I have added handprinted notebooks to the Comestible store.
It is a print of the Comestible logo, to inspire ponderings on food, recipe ideas, notes from your foraging adventures or sketches of nature. The notebooks are from the lovely company Scout Books, 100% recycled paper and bound with black staples.
If you love notebooks and supporting independent artists, hop on over and buy one!
#mybodymychoice
Stars, Stripes and Uterus, 5.5″x 8″ papercut © Anna Brones, 2016.
I made the above papercut in honor of women’s rights around the world, and if you are interested in showing your support of women’s rights, you can snag it as a coffee mug, t-shirt or print over on Society6.
#womancard
Since I know some of you have been looking for your #womancard and can’t find it, I went ahead and made one for you.
Inspired by this fantastic article by Alexandra Petri.
[Original papercut by Anna Brones]
What if Objects Were Designed to Last Instead of to Be Replaced?
Planned obsolescence is something that I find infuriating. The idea that we design things to fall apart is absurd, especially when we consider the world of mass consumption, and mass waste, that we live in. These days it’s so easy to toss something broken and buy something new to replace it. But even worse; often if something is broken, you might not even be able to get it fixed at all.
I take a look at this topic in my latest piece for Brooklyn Fashion and Design Accelerator, featuring a new smartphone – the Fairphone – that is designed in the complete opposite way of most of our technological devices: it’s designed to have a long life.
Our modern culture has become synonymous with throwaway culture; when something doesn’t work, things are cheap enough that it’s often less expensive for us to toss whatever doesn’t work and buy a new one. Of course, the real costs of getting rid of something and buying something new to replace it are externalized. The price it costs us to replace an object is often far under the real environmental and social cost of producing a new one.
Consider this: in 2010, Americans threw away around 310 million computers, monitors, TVs, and mobile phones. That makes for hundreds of thousands of phones thrown away on a daily basis. When it came to smartphones, only about 11% of those that were disposed of were recycled, leading to a significant amount of e-waste. Certainly there is a part of that number comes from a desire to just have something new, but another part of it comes from being forced to throw something away because it’s just not possible to fix.
In its second iteration, the Fairphone is said to be “designed to change the way products are made.” This isn’t just a new phone design; this is a design challenge to other industries, asking them to step it up and think smarter about design. Besides just design, Fairphone is rethinking the entire economic model that most businesses base their practices.
Read the full piece here.
Image: Fairphone
For a Love of Bikes and Books
“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.”
–Marcel Proust
I would add that many of those magic childhood days were also spent on a bicycle. Books help us explore the world, and bicycles do too. Reading a book is a solitary activity, and while cycling is often done with friends, for me there is a pull to those rides when it is just you, the pedals, the road and your imagination. Your mind can wander to new places, see new things. Just like reading. No wonder those childhood days, full of freedom and exploration were so magical.
The Journey is as Important as the Destination
“The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast, and you miss all you are traveling for.” -Louis L’Amour
I love this quote that my friend Dan sent to me this week.
We are so often focused on the end goal – be it a destination, a deadline – that we forget to enjoy the process in between.
That is of course very true when we travel; we forget to slow down. But I also I think about this a lot in terms of doing creative work. You are always hustling to get something finished, it can be hard to focus on anything besides that list of things that you need to have accomplished by a certain time.
I have to force myself to stop and ask yourself, “why do I write?”
When I step back and think about my work, I remind myself that I do in fact love to write. If I let my mind wander, it immediately goes to envisioning a day when I can just sit in a quiet space with a cup of coffee and just write whatever I feel like writing.
But that’s the romantic version of writing. Instead, when I dive into my work, I am mostly stressed about getting an interview, getting to a certain word limit, or cutting something down. In the midst of the madness of the freelance hustle, I completely forget to appreciate that I am in the middle of actually doing the thing that I like to do.
The process isn’t always enjoyable. It can be downright frustrating and hard. But it can also be fun. That moment when you get into a certain flow and you feel like you could just keep going forever. It is those constant ups and downs – the seemingly never-ending roller coaster – that make the entire process so gratifying.
Overall, do you enjoy the journey? If not, it’s time to change paths. What can you do to slow down and appreciate the process?
If we don’t slow down, we forget what pushed us on our various life paths to begin with. There’s a routine to the everyday, but you can’t led it become a rut that silences your passion.
We are all on a journey somewhere, and it’s not just the destination that counts, so let’s all take a little time to slow down.
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