Weekly Cucumber Salad #7 🥒
Content
a) Personal updates: week in review
b) Trip updates: Rotterdam with Autonomics!
c) Newsletter changes on the horizon
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a) Personal updates: week in review
Finally took some time to listen to Tyler’s “new” album “CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST” and I’m VIBING with it! Amazing summer and travel vibes. Can’t wait to listen to HOW WIND BLOWS by the Léman lake.
My allergies finally caught up with the European environment. Been experiencing annoying nose and throat itching and just generally terrified of polen.
Finally have a proper working space with a comfortable chair. Spent the last year working from home on a bootleg Eames and it was an ergonomic nightmare, my lower back went to hell.
Yes I'm a "messy office space" kind of person.
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b) Trip updates: Rotterdam with Autonomics!
I feel like so many things happened in Rotterdam it’s hard for me to write about that part of the trip, but I’m very happy for having to take some time to think about it.
Context
Since early 2021 I’ve been a member of a workers tech cooperative called Autonomic (do you need a website? let us know). This trip was a small part of a series of meet-ups happening in Europe organised by Autonomic. Many of the members had never seen each other irl until our first meet-up in May, which was super exciting.
Rotterdam x Amsterdam
Rotterdam has a very interesting vibe. While Amsterdam is very classic and historical, Rotterdam feels very modern and industrial. Amsterdam also has a more bougie vibe while Rotterdam feels a little bit more relaxed and casual (while still being quite bougie).
I don’t have a lot of WWII knowledge, but I immediately figured Rotterdam was a city that was flattened during the war because of the modern architecture. Walking in the city really feels like an architectural experience in itself.
Experimental Publishing Master’s show at Worm and Varia Zone fun printing day
I was really lucky to be welcomed by amazing hosts during this trip. While Clara took me into a classic art rabbit hole in Amsterdam, Luke showed us interesting community spots in Rotterdam.
We attended this student’s presentations of a Experimental Publishing masters course, which was super inspiring, and interesting. It was very nice to be amongst fellow graphic designers who aren’t completely immersed in meaningless work for big corporations. It made me feel like there’s still space in graphic design for genuine creative explorations, and refreshing experimentations.
Some pics of the show and publications I got there:
This excitement was further heightened when we visited Varia Zone, a community collaboration space. There’s a certain pleasure to being in a space full of paper, printers and zines.
I felt so excited to be around interesting printed materials for the first time in such a long time! Printmaking was a huge part of my interests while I was in college. After graduating, no having easy access to any tools besides my ink jet printer at home, and being involved in soul-crushing work were factors that distanced me from this interest.
Some pictures of the Magium zine, elaborated by Luke's partner Alice. The visual design was made by Simon (who's also a collaborator at Autonomic):
This short trip to Rotterdam was very important for helping me reconnect with some elements of graphic design that once inspired me so much, and actually made me excited about design. I feel like being immersed in meaningless social media oriented work for so many years made me loose perspective of how inspiring graphic design can be. I hope I can convert this inspiration into action and come up with some interesting experimentations in the near future.
c) Newsletter changes on the horizon
It’s becoming increasingly harder for me to publish the newsletter weekly as more projects are coming up at Autonomic and I have less time to write long and insightful essays, as I had originally planned.
That being said, this is the last weekly edition of the newsletter, the next ones will be published every two weeks.
I’ve also decided I want to work on publishing a zine with the most interesting essays once I reach 20 or 30 editions of the newsletter, so I’m very excited about that.
With love, ✿
Ana Luisa