I wrote an article for It's Nice That

Spoiler alert: It's about labour

Dear On Lookers,

I finally get to share something long in the making. A few months ago, the iconic

Elizabeth Goodspeed

commissioned me to write something for It’s Nice That about labour and organizing in the creative industry (and did an amazing job editing me and pushing the piece in exciting directions). I got to talk with some really interesting folks (thank you Karlotta, Joe, Patrick and Greg) who try to think and do things differently and I tried to outline some causes and some solutions to how we can think more about what we do as labour that’s worth fighting for.

Shout out to shiwen sven sang who made an amazing illustration for this piece, I can only imagine the labour involved in this image. The quality of this kind of image puts to shame most —if not all— publications for the stagnating rates illustrators have worked for for decades while endlessly renewing themselves and providing much of the value the industry is capitalizing on. To shiwen and to all illustrators out there, know that no matter how much money you’re getting for a job, it’ll always be way lower than what your work is really worth.

It’s definitely not my most radical piece, but it’s headed in the right direction I think. Kudos to It’s Nice That for making more space for critically engaged writing. As this piece hopefully articulates, celebrating artists’s portfolios should always go hand in hand with championing better work conditions for them. Any efforts to do one without the other participates to the erasure of labour from the history of art I pointed to in the text.

I’m currently reading this great book about white-collar unionism in 20th century New York’s creative industries. There’s a rich history of labour organizing from people in advertising, publishing, etc. which has, again, been completely erased. A time that might give us some cues on how to think lines of solidarity among creatives workers, how to find the commonalities between us, and to to champion each other.

Solidarity comes from a mutual care for others’ lives. This corner of the creative industry is structured in a way that makes it hard to see oneself in another person’s struggle. Yet, as the fractal romanesco cabbage, problematic work conditions are found in small version within each layer of the industry. I was reading the story about Porto Rocha’s No Free Pitch campaign and something Felipe said caught my eye:

“What if, instead of relying on pitching, clients made a real effort to get to know the agency, as a company and as people? How they think, the culture, the vision,” the creative director says. “Whose perspectives are in the mix? What experiences would inform their solutions? What’s their process? What do they bring to the table? And vice versa, agencies can get to know clients, too.”

This could have been written by an illustrator about collaborating with design agencies. (In Québec we say ‘Tout est dans tout’). I always rant about how I wish illustrators were seen less as hands providing stylized filler content and more as true visual communication experts to collaborate with early on a project. Abusive practices trickle down to the the bottom, most precarious layer of the pyramid (in our case, often illustrators). Solidarity needs to be multi-scalar and multi-directional, extending understanding and care to everyone involved in the supply chain of creative labour.

I’m so excited for you all to read this (and apologies for not posting more often on here) and please do reach out to let me know what you think, share it, comment it, critic it, a text is only worth as much as its intertextual life.

xoxo

Julien