Happy May Day Week
Yes, we celebrate May Day for a whole week. And since some of you celebrate your birthday for a whole week, I know you’re on board. This May Day week is especially good because today (if you’re reading this on your boss’ time on Monday) is also the 80th anniversary of Mussolini’s execution.
[INSERT KERMIT DANCE GIF HERE]
PRESENTING w/CONFIDENCE
If you’re having trouble talking about your work at your job, or if you’re in the middle of interviewing for a new job, this is an incredibly helpful workshop. And the next one is happening on May 8 & 9. Yes, it’s affordable. Yes, I’d rather take your boss’ money than yours. Yes, you should sign up.
A DESIGNER IS A WORKER
In honor of May Day here’s an excerpt from Design Is a Job, the second edition:
You are a worker with a certain set of skills. Both parts of that sentence are important. Mostly, we enjoy focusing on the second part—the skills. Oh, the things we can do! The problems we can solve! That’s the fun part, it’s probably why we decided to become designers, and it’s why people hire us. This book is about the other part. The worker part. The professional part. It’s about how you conduct yourself. It’s about how you use the skills, how you treat the people around you, and how you treat yourself.
It’s also about how you see yourself fitting into this thing we call society, or community, or neighborhood, or company, or economic system. You, as a designer, as a worker, have an impact on those systems. How, when, and for whom you choose to use those skills is one of the most important aspects of
your job. Those systems also have an impact on you. (The good news there is that you is sometimes a plural, and we will discuss how the plural you is stronger than the singular you throughout this book.)
Currently the economic system that most of us work within is capitalism, and while I promised my editor that I would dial it down a few notches for this book and not write a chapter on the building of and caring for your guillotine, it’s fair to say that capitalism is viewed by its most ardent fans as working best when it extracts labor from its workers for as little pay as possible. Capitalism calls that profit. I call it unpaid wages. This book is here to help you get your unpaid wages, and for some of us that may be a pursuit of multigenerational accounting. And while it may be outside the purview of this book to debate the pros and cons of capitalism, it is definitely within the purview of this book to keep you from being exploited.
A designer is a worker with a certain set of skills, but for too long we let others control those skills. We let the people who hire us tell us how to do our jobs. We saw ourselves as lucky to be here. We saw ourselves as order-takers. We saw ourselves as “creatives.” We saw ourselves as that most insidious of terms: individual contributors. (It’s a union-busting term.)
We are workers, and we work alongside other workers.
This week only, the Design Is a Job zine is 50% off if you use the code MAYDAY.
A DESIGN RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
A few years ago, Erika wrote a good post about how there was no holistic view of the research process. so she created a cohesive visual representation of the general approach she recommends to clients and follows herself. It continues to be a very popular post.
So we made a print of the diagram. It’s very handsome and useful. You can buy it here.
A RANDOM ASSORTMENT OF EXCITING CRAP YOU CAN GIVE US MONEY FOR:
A bandana for your dog (or for you, but your dog is cuter
See you Thursday at the march. Yes, there’s probably one in your town (find it here). Yes, you all have the day off. But in case you need a note:
![A note that says: May 1, 2025. Dear [NAME OF CAPITALIST EXPLOITER], [NAME OF GLORIOUS WORKER] is excused from work today because, honestly, they’re sick of your shit and meeting their comrades at a May Day event. Deal with it. Signed, [NAME OF GLORIOUS WORKER’S MOTHER]](https://assets.buttondown.email/images/d1933ee7-743c-4d5c-91a8-007f5180018c.png?w=960&fit=max)