June 27, 2024

A Soft Launch for Soft Labor LLC (and a question)

A Soft Launch for Soft Labor LLC  (and a question)

Soft Labor, is an occasional newsletter about trends in visual culture written by Sarah Hromack. Soft Labor is a reader-supported publication: I invite you to share this newsletter and subscribe at either the free or paid level. I appreciate you.

APB: I recently formed Soft Labor into a digital and cultural strategy consultancy that advises organizations, artists, and designers. SL serves as a bridge — strategic, creative, managerial — between orgs and studios. (Let’s collaborate, obviously.)   

In doing so, I have worked through the process that one does when establishing a WOSB (woman-owned small business), performing various legal, financial, and strategic feats to fulfill what has been, for me, a longtime desire to operate independently after so many years of working institutionally.    

I’ve been sitting on the URL for ages, knowing that I’d venture in this direction at some future point in time. In forging forward, however, I have been ruminating on a question that should, by the (flawed) logics of capitalism, solicit an obvious answer: Should I “brand” Soft Labor? 

I’ve had the pleasure — and it really has been just that: a distinct pleasure — of working with and around some of the most talented designers in the United States and beyond on countless projects. In other words: I know some folks. And I have the capital! The fruits of my own labor.

For better and/or worse, I approach most problems academically. I research. I read. (I’m thumbing through GOAT Glenn O’Brien’s writings on advertising from the 80’s and 90’s, for example.) I talk to people whose ideas and sensibilities I feel kinship with.

And so, dear readership-cum-focus group, I turn to you: Should I brand Soft Labor? If so, by whom? It truly might not matter.
Holler.   

 

Copyright 2024 Sarah Hromack; all rights reserved.