More or Less in Common: Environment and Justice in the Human Landscape

Nakia Hill

When my dear friend and colleague Nakia Hill approached me to help her get her brand together, I was enthusiastic and truly honored. We collaborated closely over a few months to develop her logo, business cards, letterhead, and the crown jewel, her website. It was a dream to reflect Nakia’s vision and creativity back to her and create this archive of her many talents and ventures. Using my new holy grail tool, Webflow I designed and built a custom site for Nakia that serves as a calling card, mission statement, and home for future visions and dreams. Thank you to my brilliant and intentional friend Nakia for letting me in on her beautiful world and helping to refract it back out into the world.

Visit the website here.

The Passive House Network

Starting in winter 2021, I engaged with the the team at The Passive House Network on a multi-phase collaboration to reimagine their brand. We started with a series of workshops to identify key messages and values, setting a north star for the direction of the brand moving forward. Over the next several months, I developed a brand identity including a logo package, presentation templates, social media templates, and more. The following year, we expanded the brand into sub branding to represent their education work.

Creatives Rebuild New York

The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

Atlanta Policing Alternatives and Diversion Initiative

VOCAL NY Brand Materials

Imaginations of Home

Maura and Victor Wedding Stationery

Night of 1,000 Stories

Email Campaigns

826 Boston

MASS Design Group

Saturday August 8

I came across this website Commerce Cream which rounds up all of these shopify sites in one place and I clicked around a little looking at all these lifestyle products. I clicked on the website for Haus, an alcohol (extremely unclear what type of alcohol... Everclear?) brand which purports to be “designed for the way we drink today” and felt disoriented by their hyper-branded product photography, depicting what feels like a perpetual new years eve party.

As of late, images of gatherings feel dissonant. Back in April, I saw a tweet where the tweeter claimed they had a gut reaction to seeing the characters in a movie gathered closely indoors and I remember thinking then, bullshit. Five months deep into this shit and I have that feeling sometimes now when I watch a movie. There's another level of processing that happens when you see images of people together now — was this Before or After. What’s possible in their world? If it’s an image from my own life, I feel a deep yearning.

It’s said that coronavirus has laid bare ___ (fill in the blank.) Inequity. Our government's willingness to let us die. The collective need for networks of support. My personal need for company and communion. The experience of each day staring down a pandemic, economic crisis, and a civil rights reckoning has for me, certainly laid bare how much we don’t need lifestyle branding. I don’t want to say much about how my generation seeks identity through what they do and don’t buy because it's all been said before. The dance we do of acknowledging that social media and lifestyle is a game while simultaneously playing that game to win is losing its social cache everyday. I’m seeing we are not only less likely to play it but more likely to side eye those who persist in spite of everything. We’re talking about what it means for our feeds to go “back to normal” and we discourage one another from letting that happen. This assumes there is power in the performance of awareness and even “resource sharing” in the long term and assumes a “back” and “normal” that is far from universal.

Me, I continue to post — lately, a fried chicken sandwich, sand on Carson Beach, a smoke tree, even a selfie from vacation. I don’t think it’s reasonable or sustainable to think that people will stop posting their lives but I do hope that people’s lives begin to align a little more with the priorities they've expressed for the last few months. Will a platform built and sustained by conspicuous consumption wearing the costume of conscience consumption transform into a platform for meaningful dialogue, deep learning and un-learning? Absolutely not, in my opinion. But it might come to better reflect if anything the new norms and codes of social behavior. We already see this as we post a photo of our full-faces unmasked and outdoors and feel inclined to include in the caption something like “mask was in my bag!” I’ve heard about people seeing shameless unmasked indoor gatherings on Facebook. People have been posting in the last few days about their social media fueled shopping habits and how the instagram ads are “working.” There’s a lot of stuff that I understand buying from an ad right now like things that bring some form of comfort - home and kitchen stuff, comfy clothes, stuff to make working from home easier or more efficient.

Scrolling through these ecommerce sites feels like visiting an archive from a time where there was something to fear missing out on, important things that needed to be signalled. The photos on this Haus website feel even more alien to me than usual, as someone who really only drinks beer and sadly owns zero pieces of velvet clothing. The so-recently ubiquitous high-flash glamorous party-in-motion red-manicure photo style seems like it’s from a different world, which I believe to actually be the original intention. I think the mood they were going for is the kind of event you thought you would attend as an adult when you saw a “day-to-night” look in a magazine. You are Drew Barrymore. You are Kate Hudson, you ARE J.Lo as an Italian wedding planner. The brand is photogenic and aspirational. But now, that aspiration feels doubly like a fucking joke. The original joke being a certain class of people’s desire to host a certain kind of event with certain kinds of people unselfconsciously. The joke now being even for those who could pull off that bit, it’s not available to even them.

I love gathering people and being invited to gather. It is one thing that makes me feel like I am of the world and is a meaningful way for me to connect with people in my life. Bringing people together makes me feel like I have something to offer which is the other amazing people in my life. I need to connect. Earlier this summer, I retweeted a Reductress headline “Woman Now Masturbating to Idea of Picnic." I, too, am horny for a tupperware of watermelon, laughing (remember her?), making my friends laugh (REMEMBER HER?!), locking up my bike loaded up with a blanket and snacks.

I‘ve been thinking a lot lately about how i don't know how I’ll go back to pretending to be a regular person in an office everyday. Literally right now, I’m sitting at my desk in a sports bra and bike shorts, working at my little desk job. Wearing real shoes and a bra, not preparing dinner for later during my lunch break, not feeling like my whole full self in my space during the work day. I’m, thankfully a long way off from having to confront this. More immediately, I sense that way the way I do friendship will change as well. I'm so desperate to have people over and host at home. One of the last times I remember having people over in the winter, I literally made a recipe from Alison Roman’s Nothing Fancy cookbook, THEE canonical text for the fancy thrown together yet perfect lifestyle that is now, I hope, irrelevant. Maybe, right now, I am just tired. and maybe one day I will have energy to again get done up, put on a show, do the thing.

But I think when I have people over again, presumably in the year 2023, I want to be as messy as I feel and know myself to be. This has always been my desired vibe and while I do love to be intentional and maybe a little dramatic (I love a fancy cocktail glass and to put together a playlist — a casual and intimate space is served by being intentional) If you are in my home then, we will probably have grown together through and during this time. You’ll have seen me shiny-faced on an evening zoom. Cranky emotionally worn down on a Thursday morning all-team call. We've sweat under masks at protests, on bikes, on hikes. We’ll have facetimed on walks around our neighborhoods or surrounded by laundry piles at home. We will have been really fucking honest about feeling really fucking bad.

I see that dream picnic for us and we are wearing a lot of elastic and velcro. There’s a spread of food we made all together, or carted from home or from the grocery store on the way there. There isn't a single good picture from the whole damn day.

Saturday July 18

Otherwise, I’ve largely been offline (checking IG and twitter once a day and then deleting the app) and that’s very good. When I do go on IG, I’ve been using the Archive feature to see what I’ve posted this on this day in years past. Because life seems so largely event-less and my life so void of people, places, and things, I’m finding comfort, even more than usual, in seeing days past mapped and layered on top of my current life. Where was I two years ago? Five years ago even. Do I remember where I was when I shared that post? Posted that IG story? What did it feel like to be me? Who was around? It’s helping me answer questions about what it feels like to be me right now, somehow. It’s also making me feel connected to people I don’t get to see. I’ve been able to identify a couple friendship anniversaries through the recalling — four years since the conference in Detroit, five years since my first time in Chicago. Time will go on. There will be more to remember, sometime, somehow.

Starting this week, I’m supporting an initiative that feels so aligned with some of the learning and reflecting I’ve been doing on what access to land and nature means to Black people and other people of color. ABUNDANT BEGINNINGS COLLECTIVE, FOREST FREEDOM SCHOOL (ABC, FFS) is a Black-led community education and empowerment initiative that has been re-imagining how communities can grow learners who think critically, live responsibly, and create meaningful change. They’re aiming to raise $1MM to invest in their plan to purchase and build out land for a residential nonprofit/co-housing community space, provide scholarships for Black and Brown families, invest in their educators and more. I’d like to help out by raising $800 — can you donate today?

I’m continuing my casual but increasingly passionate study of the relationship between Black Americans, civil rights, and the land. Land trusts can hold property for community use and can be an engine for economic security for Black communities. Farms were stolen (and continue to be) from Black farmers through “legal” and “illegal” means. Connected to land and civil rights is of course, food. I’m learning about the Freedom Farm Cooperative, Fannie Lou Hamer, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver’s role is socially and environmentally sustainable agriculture and food access for Black folks in Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White. I haven't quite figured out why this is but my interest in food, agriculture, and restaurants grow. I liked this piece on Omar Tate and his journey back to food. I haven’t really thought of cooking as a creative endeavor in my life, just something that needs to be done and I enjoy doing with or for people but this interview with Klancy Miller made me wonder if there’s something there for me.

You can support a group in Mississippi looking to purchase 20 acres of farmland "as an extension of [their] Black farming and land-based community.”

Left: Spotted this awesome campaign poster for Andrew Young's run for congress in photos of the Freedom Farmer Cooperative in the book.

The Say Her Name rally in Boston on July 4 brought me closer to the streets of Boston, which I’ve come to miss exploring. We walked across five hot miles from Nubian Square to the Common, ogling and being ogled by “Independence Day” celebrators on restaurant patios and roof decks on the South End. I remembered that Sandra Bland was just about my age when she was murdered in jail, after she was arrested during a traffic stop on her way to a new job. Support Violence in Boston and reflect on how to protect and support Black women (in your life and elsewhere) materially today and always.

After attending the Boston Bike Ride for Black Lives here in Boston a few weeks ago and experiencing James’ piece about a bike rally in Brooklyn, I was thinking about what biking has meant in my life. I wrote this piece on the autonomy and sense of self riding my bike brought me back in 2014. When I shared this writing with James, he shared "Biking in New York Traffic Forced Me to Learn to Take Up Space” and my heart cracked open. So much here resonated with me about freedom and self through biking. Reading my piece from 2014 made me feel a little embarrassed about my own self-righteousness, how I felt like such a threat to the status quo by being a young beige woman on a bike in Brooklyn. But now, acknowledging my privilege does not make me want to be quieter, to simply check myself and feel gratitude for my safety but to see my struggles for freedom and autonomy as connected to others. What it means for me to feel safe and free riding my bike around town, especially in Boston (the third most intensely segregated city in the country), is very different from what that might mean for a Black woman. To understand that my safety isn’t real, is stolen or unearned, while other women don’t have that. I want us all to feel free and to actually be free. Support Broadway Bicycle, Crimson Bikes, and Spokehouse in Dorchester. Attend the Ride for Black Lives on July 25.

(Above: My bike when it was new to me back in 2014.)

I deeply miss browsing. Browsing CVS on my lunch break and buying a nail polish or a lip stain. Browsing a museum. (The ICA is opening soon and I feel deeply tested in my conviction to not visit any non-essential indoor spaces for a long time.) Browsing a bookstore. Browsing the library. When I was a teenager, somehow I was mostly offline. I never owned an iPod and I didn’t really get into learning about music online. I learned about a lot of music from the library. I miss the feeling of going to the library after school, while the kids were playing Pokemon and other latch key kids used the computers. I liked the books of course, trolled around the non-fiction section, checked out and never finished Mrs Dalloway (still!) But most of all, I liked flicking through the CDs in their hard cover plastic cases. There are some albums I associate so strongly with the library, namely Fever to Tell by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Woods by Sleater-Kinney. I have such an intense memory of waiting for the bus the morning after spending the night at a friend's house in high school and hearing those opening parts of The Fox. Browsing to me is about discovery and chance but it’s also so much about freedom and independence. (No one follows me around stores when I browse because they think I’ll steal, as far as I know.) Browsing isn’t for anyone but me. It’s not planned out grocery trips or even shopping for a specific thing. It’s my own time to zone out. I miss walking into the Copley branch of the BPL, pausing my podcast to check out the Lucky Day collection, wandering up to the second floor. I worry about what not being able to browse will do to my creativity. Everything that comes into my life, and my home, and my mind is so controlled. Carefully calculated shipping deliveries. Groceries twice a month. So little ephemera. No little papers picked up from museum visits. No copies of the Boston Compass picked up form City Feed. I miss taking things in and picking things up.

Friday June 26

Thinking About Space

Bryan C. Lee on Design Justice and Architecture’s Role in Systemic Racism by Martin C. Pedersen for Common Edge

Making spaces like homes and semi public spaces into places for gathering and organizing feels like architecture, too. Protests Aren’t Only in the Streets by P. E. Moskowitz (You should read Moskowitz' book How to Kill a City.)

In the past year I’ve really woken up to climate change. I was really ignorant to the facts and the most mainstream movements were painted as crunchy and ineffective (again, ignorant). After seeing Naomi Klein speak at a Bernie rally in February ( 🙁 ), I read Klein's book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. It was harrowing. It also gave me a glimpse into the ways that climate change affects humanity disproportionately and how its actors prey upon those who are already disenfranchised. I’m interested in seeping my understanding around the links between racism and climate change and learning more about leaders in this fight who have a strong lens for race and class.

Racism Determines Who Gets to Enjoy Nature by Drew Costley on Medium

Thinking About Reckonings

Amber Guyger Should Not Go To Prison by Elisabeth Epps for The Appeal (Essential reading)

The End of the Girlboss Is Here by Leigh Stein on Medium. Please read We Were Feminists Once by Andi Zeisler.

Related, this article "The “Grateful To Be Here” Generation Has Some Apologizing To Do" seems to acknowledge the harm done by women in the workplace slightly older than the writer but doesn't account for the harm done to the even younger people (women my age!) who work under her peers.

Op-Ed: The Nonprofit Case to Defund the Police by Jackie Rosa for the South Side Weekly. This article makes the case for the social services that will be enabled by defunding the police (Great!) via nonprofits (Less great!) Really want to dig deeper and see who's writing what about how we can move away from a nonprofit model of deploying essential social services, with the understanding that our government should be doing that work.

Listening To

This crossover Up First x Code Switch episode "Why Now, White People" where Gene Demby and Shereen Marisol Meraji do a deep deep dive into what about this wave of the movement for Black Lives has catalyzed white Americans in a way that past moments have not. If you're a person of color feeling a way about this phenomenon, I recommend a listen. If you are a white person feeling motivated right now, recently or not, I recommend a listen and a good think on how to sustain the feeling.

Pleasant by SebastiAn feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg on repeat. Pure Josie bait.

Reparations

I've been thinking and talking a lot with friends about reparations. If you aren’t acquainted with the concept, you might read Coates' essay on the case for reparations. At any rate, I understand reparations to be a systemic solution to systemic injustice, four hundred years of slavery, Jim Crow, and a century of disinvestment, policing, genocide, and incarceration. But short of a sweeping adoption of reparations from the US government (and we are very short of that), what is the role of the individual in administering reparations? How do you go about doing that? I think my thinking and approach will evolve as I try to apply some intentionality to this idea and as we start to build the concept together. Working in and around non profit and institutional spaces, I’ve come to form some opinions around giving and philanthropy. I’ve seen what giving looks like, or rather what the giver wants it to look like - proving the efficacy of programming in harmful ways, wanting to be entertained and catered to, wanting to be treated with deference. I’ve also seen what giving looks like when those who don’t have much find generosity. A recent episode of Reply All talked about a strange practice of white people sending unwelcome Venmo deposits to Black acquaintances as a form of “reparations.” IMO this practice is likely more white guilt and weird relationships to individual Black people and Blackness at large than it is any type of reparations. This episode failed to mention the proliferation of everyday folks dropping their Venmo and cash app links on twitter, hoping for some help, or GoFundMe profiles set up for folks trying to pay for make rent or make it through another semester of college. When I see these requests, I try to give $20. For the last month, and I don’t mean this to be boastful, I’ve been giving pretty recklessly. What I'd like to do is to be more strategic, both so that I can sustain giving money frequently and so that I am putting my money where my values are. My values are that I like to just give cash no questions asked to people of color when they ask for it. I am also getting really concrete and specific in the issues and ideas I want to learn more about and support. Maybe I’m spending too much time adjacent to philanthropy as an idea but it’s almost like building a portfolio. Still working this out and I'm eager to hear what you think, too.

If you don't have my contact info already, you can reach me at hi (at) joelleriffle.com or on instagram at @okayjoelle.

Sunday June 14

"What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?" by Lauren Michele Jackson. I've been moving through and interrogating some deep skepticism around the work that white people are finding themselves doing right now and this piece by Lauren Michele Jackson was a real balm for me. I’m skeptical of the idea that reading novels written by Black Americans will be enlightening for white people discovering and unsettling racism for the first time. I would like to encourage white people to read watch and listen to the same shit they always do and instead look for whiteness. It’s too generous, pleasurable, and comforting to read some of the greatest thinkers of the century speak on their experiences, their experiences of Blackness in this country and to seek some kind of enlightenment around race from that. Someone I used to work with at a youth literacy nonprofit once referred to my favorite book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, as “just a book you get recommended in high school”. White people do not currently deserve. Do most people generally read books this good when they aren’t reading for diversity? The classic and canonical texts chosen and repeated speak so clearly to the “twice as good” standard that Black Americans are held to. My proposition is that we recommend, if we insist on teaching about race through novels and text this way, mediocrity. Black folks deserve space to be as normy and mediocre as everyone else. What are the beach reads by Black women, crime thrillers, airport books? What kind of books would you normally read if you weren’t reading for your new homework? I’m trolling obviously but maybe not?

"The first thing to point out is that police officers don’t do what you think they do." Mariame Kaba in the New York Times

Revisiting Omayeli Arenyeka's "How to think differently about doing good as a creative person".

I'm bouncing between a couple different books. 'm appreciating how easily I can become enveloped in The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston but I'm taking a break to take advantage of my "digital copy" (I understand why we can't all use the same ebook at once but...) of The Third Plate by Dan Barber. Dan Barber cowrote this piece on the state of small farmers amidst Coronavirus in 2020. I'm becoming increasingly interested in food systems, the inequities and possibilities of it. I've fostering a growing interest in people's relationship to the earth, particularly that of Black and Indigenous people in the United States. I've started reading Trace: Memory, History, Race and the American Landscape by Lauret Savoy, an extremely rich and layered document of the land that we call America. How it's places got their names. How each piece was stolen and guarded. There's a lot more I'd like to know.

Will the Coronavirus Make Us Rethink Mass Incarceration?

When Josh and I visited Austin in February, our last stop before leaving town was the Blanton Art Museum. I was so pleased and moved by the collection featuring so many pieces and artists I'd never seen or heard of. It felt like a really special place. So I was so excited when I read this piece that Francisco shared about how the museum's director repurposed so many roles to keep her staff employed during the shutdown.

The Long Goodbye (1973), directed by new-to-me favorite Robert Altman and starring a young, hot Eliot Gould. I stand by that, I really do. If you are looking for more young, hot Eliot Gould you can watch California Split (1974), another Altman and clear influence on Uncut Gems (2019). I'm don't understand gambling or the appeal of it but I sure do like watching movies about it. During this time, I also watch Paul Thomas Anderson's first movie, Hard Eight (1996) which stars G. Paltrow herself, Philip Baker Hall, and my forever fave John C. Reilly. You can see in this movie the seeds of many ideas that will come into fruition for PTA in later movies. If I ever finish the last twenty minutes or so of Inherent Vice, a movie I really can't stand, I'll be a PTA completist. But at what cost.... Hard Eight has a brief yet incredible Philip Seymour Hoffman moment. When I see that guy on screen, I just light up. Craving more Hoffman, Josh and I watched Capote (2005) for the first time. I wasn't so psyched on it (maybe because I haven't read so much Truman Capote, including In Cold Blood, the story of which is being written in the movie) but it was extremely worthwhile to see Hoffman fill out that role and just to watch him move through a scene, interact with characters. I wasn't so into film before PSH died in 2014 so I feel his loss only now, exploring these special roles and appearances of his. What an incredible artist.

The Age of Innocence (1993) is a lush vision of New York City society life directed by Scorsese and made me feel like I was in the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum.

I finally, finally watched Before Sunrise (1995).I think it's easy for me to take for granted how intimate and well-crafted this movie is. How seamlessly and naturally the relationship between the two main characters progresses and swells. I could imagine another time in my life, this movie would have really destroyed me. Needless to see, Ethan Hawke is fine as hell. Julie Delpy, fine as hell. Richard really did say they'd link later, SMH.

I'm trying to make space for planning and acting, in the immediate and long term. I guess I can consider myself "lucky" (I mean, in so many ways but specifically) in that I'm damn near fixated on this question 365 - how to maximize myself, make the most of my time, my resources, my attention, my life. It's something I really struggle with and I've been trying to address more directly during quar. Now what feels like my constant internal homework, the homework of figuring out how to to live my life not only with the most meaning for myself but how to make myself useful for justice, feels prescient and essential. As someone who becomes easily consumed by thoughts of not doing enough and not being enough, becoming more grounded, moving slowly and intentionally, and being strategic does not feel optional to me. I'm grateful to understand this about myself and to already have some tools at my disposal about how best I learn and process.

For one, the only good things* to do are to process thoughts alone (I journal every morning) and to talk 1:1 or in small groups with people. I use social media to gather and scour but it's not where I synthesize, where I share in the messy work of learning and unlearning. I'm not succinct or clear enough to do meaningful work there. I am not quick to think or speak. I take a lot of time.

Second, I know that being organized and making information legible for myself is one way I learn and feel the stability and confidence I need to grow. I'm starting by making a list of all the things I see in my vision for the world which helps me identify the gaps and to get clear on what's important to me. From there, I'll gather some resources to learn more about how these aspects of the world are the way they are. Next, I'll research and see who is doing the work currently to make the world more like this vision and what they're asking I do. Then, I can do it. I don't have to start from scratch — people have been doing this work and I have to join them, not start something new.

I've made donations (in case you're looking for some new places to donate to!) to the Parsons Scholars Program Self Care Fund (Venmo and Cash App @pspselfcarefund), Transgender Emergency Fund of MA, Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Sisters Unchained, Justice for Breonna Taylor, and Reclaim the Block.

A couple weeks ago I organized a zoom conversation with twenty-some friends to start thinking about what each of us can bring to the movement for Black lives right now. I wanted to explore the idea of asset-mapping and relationships to see where we might be useful, motivated, and productive. Here's a sample agenda if you want to try something similar.

*for me

Before quarantine, I was really struggling with loneliness. I wasn't really ready to confront the homesickness for my friends and for New York that I still feel more than a year and a half, soon to be two years after moving to Boston. I visited my friends in New York in February and that melancholy became sharp and present. And now, in some ways, that sadness, loneliness, and homesickness (even for the towns we still live in, left empty and quiet without the life of our favorite places, our favorite people animating them) is for all of us to share. In many ways the past three months of quarantine have created opportunities to connected to my far flung friends, as we find time to talk on the phone during the day, text about the birds that live near our respective houses, talk about projects and ideas and things that are coming up for us. I feel especially connected and in community when I know that we are all making something, together though independently. Knowing that we are all thinking and learning and moving at this time, even when I just take a minute in my day to think, I wonder what Eva is doing right now. I wonder what Kendra is doing right now. I wonder what James is doing right now. I feel connected through the making and sharing and even in what we keep to ourselves, what we don't share. I can't wait to see everyone and right now I see them through our making, through our little texts here and there, through audio messages, through watching reality TV together.

My loneliness is coming back new and in a different shape as people start to gather in real life, outside hangs and porch hangs. On Friday night, I fell asleep to the sound of a group of woman having a hang through twilight into full night, surrounding some candles in a patch of the grass in the garden outside my house. I heard their laughter and their intimacy from all the way up here and I felt relief in being able to name the ache. An old loneliness is new as I try to find a way to explain myself and the acute and specific pain, fear, and empathy I feel in the wake of these recent murders of Black people by police. As I try to describe myself, make myself known and understood more clearly and accurately without centering myself. I found connection in mobilization, in feeling moved to mobilize and gather, which I hope is a gift that I can offer right now. Are you lonesome, too?

“I Just Want to Wear My Orange Dress to the Tennis Courts & Come Back Home Unbothered,” 2020, Jamaica Plain, MA. pic.twitter.com/sK7IMUnqFe

— Golden (they/them) (@goldenthem) June 8, 2020

Big New York Public School Teacher Energy.pic.twitter.com/NVeBMHltiU

— Jamaal Bowman (@JamaalBowmanNY) June 3, 2020

Sunday May 24 2020

"Over and over, I’ve had this experience where I wrote something or I made something, and in retrospect it became very clear that a lot of the material, and just the pathways of thinking involved, were building up long before the 'on period' in an 'off period.' So, I don’t want to make it seem like all off time is actually productive." —Jenny Odell on The Creative Independent (On taking the time you need to notice, think, and grow)

I'm not sure how I became interested in reading Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters. I've never considered myself someone interested in the world of food in any meaningful way but I like learning about people's creative practices. The book is the memoir of restaurateur and chef Alice Waters who started and has run a pioneering local and organic restaurant in Berkeley since the 1970s. She attempts with the story of her early life what Waters seemingly aims for in her food, breaking it down to its most fundamental, most clear, honest and special parts. Waters tidily connects her upbringing by an uncharacteristically accepting family in 1950s, her travels in Europe, the people, particularly lovers and friends who move through her world to the opening of Chez Panisse. I've been feeling inspired lately, even more than usual, by learning about other people's practices and work. I love to hear about communities of creative people coming together around a big vision, as cheesy as that sounds. Something about building something new together, throwing your weight into a shared project. I got different flavors of that a couple weeks ago watching Spaceship Earth, McQueen, and Filmworker back to back on a Saturday. I do wish that Alice Waters was more specific about how she was influenced by the Free Speech Moment and counterculture. I'm always craving models of how people square and embed their politics with creative outputs and try to build the world they want to see. And it's feels like a missed opportunity that the book ends with the opening of the restaurant. But this book doesn't have to be everything to everyone and now I get to follow this lead to learn more about Slow Food. Water's commitment to beauty and her admiration and relationship to creativity and the arts is really lovely to read about. Her passion for light, design, space, flowers, dress, film, and music make my heart sing. It's not a perfect memoir but I liked immersing myself in this book and I feel full of daydreams about whatever my Chez Panisse will be.

Last week, I celebrated my one year anniversary at my job, a quiet milestone that meant a lot to me. In the last year, I've regained some creative confidence and tried to learn how to be a graphic designer again. I've relearned how to be comfortable at work in a way that makes sense for me right now. I can see everything that is so special and interesting about the organization I work for and appreciate and grow with the people who put their all into it. The work I've done isn't super visible or flashy but I like doing it and I hope it's working/helping and I'm proud of it.

👩🏽‍🏫 Gave a "presentation" to some friends on what makes a comfort movies and heard presentations on topics like the color blue, birds and their legs, the inequity of quality ice cream in Boston, and more.

😎 Spent all day Thursday and Friday working from my patio. It's almost too much joy to be allowed.

🥯 My neighborhood bagel place has been doing special pick-up batches and I finally got an order in after 2-3 previous attempts. Now buying bagels has the level of tension and exact process as buying big concert tickets or registering for classes. Happy for this HUGE simple pleasure. I think this is the longest I'd gone without having a bagel for 10+ years.

📺 New Girl is a good rewatch while doing something else (like sewing.)

the psychic hell of trying to choose a meaningful way to spend your four hours of free time in your home each night

— charlie (@chunkbardey) May 23, 2020

I can't seem to consistently feel ease or abundance around time. I know the scarcity and fear is all in my mind which doesn't make it less difficult. It's been interesting to see (some!) people online talking about feeling like they have so much more time in quarantine and how they fill those extra minutes with new diversions or find themselves simply not knowing what to do with the time and experiencing vacuous boredom. Because I'm working from home, I've been able to cut out commuting and all out-of-home extracurriculars are off the table, of course. I don't have any additional (or any, period) caretaking responsibilities. And yet ten weeks into working-from-home and quar, I don't feel like I have that much more time than I used to (again, inability to feel abundance) and I feel anxious about how I spent each non-working minute and hour. I'm trying to let some of this feeling go, appreciate more what I'm doing in the moment and dread less the end of that moment, not feeling like I have to be doing anything meaningful all of the time or even most of the time, etc. I'm just trying to be easy on myself.

Friday May 15 2020

Moses Sumney - Cut Me

Swingers (1996)

I'd consider this movie part of a series of 90s movies that feels so obviously dated but even the contemporary comment on them doesn't reflect that. All the letterboxd reviews for this movie are like, this is just like me and the boys! I sure hope not! (See also: High Fidelity. Both are about the pursuit and entitlement to women's attention, care, and sex.) I'm so curious about how the 90s swing moment happened. Why did all these guys and gals suddenly think, you know what this culture needs is some 1940s influence. Vince and Jon F are cuties here if not pretty gross dudes.

🌞 Enjoying the sunshine on my patio during the work day.

🌱 Drove to Clinton, MA to pick up some seedlings from a Matchstick Market sale. I'll pot them on the patio after next week and do my best to protect them from the squirrels and grackles.

🌲 I've walked in Franklin Park near my house almost every day this week. Everything is so spring-lush right now.

🧘🏽‍♀️ I've been starting my day with yoga every day for like a year (?!) and I've recently started using Alo Moves to mix it up a bit. I like this morning series and this one, too.

first brain: i’m sad and i miss my baby robins i’m glad i have therapy today
second brain: josh telling me the baby robins is like tony soprano’s ducks, i refute this
galaxy brain: me telling my therapist josh said the baby robins is like tony soprano’s ducks

— sigh twombly (@okayjoelle) May 13, 2020

I can see a nest on my neighbors' patio from all the west-facing windows of my house, most importantly my office, where I now sit 8+ hours a day. About two weeks ago, I noticed some activity. Three baby robins had hatched. I could see them sticking their freaky little heads up out of the nest when their parents would come with food. At first they were grey and naked then seemingly very quickly, they grew beautiful speckled feathers. Their bodies grew quickly too. I could see them easily through the binoculars I kept nearby because they were getting too big for the nest, sitting awkwardly on top of one another. I googled to see that they would probably leave the nest about 9 to 14 days after they were hatched so I knew the day was coming. On Tuesday, I watched them flapping their wings so much, so eager seeming. On Wednesday, I looked out the window while making coffee and the nest was empty.

Joelle Riffle | America’s Essential Hospitals Research Briefs

Junior Designer, MESH Design and Development with Megan Bullock, creative director

Under the lead of my creative director at MESH Design and Development, I was contributed to a range of projects under the America’s Essential Hospitals partnership. One such project was designing the format for the healthcare network’s Institute research briefs. Following the brand guidelines that we designed for America’s Essentials Hospitals, I developed a clear and sophisticated typographic system which allows a reader space and clarity to digest complex and rich information about the Institute’s findings. The briefs include content like visual representations of quantitative data via tables, charts, and graphs, appendices, lists, and callouts, all of which have to be distinctive and legible.

To view PDFs of a few research briefs that I designed, visit:

1. Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies: Improving Prenatal Care in the Medicaid Population 2. Integrating Care Delivery in Four Essential Hospitals 3. Virginia Coordinated Care from the Community Physician Perspective

Resume

at a glance

(under)REPRESENT(ed)

Lead Designer
Exhibition branding, graphics, and web design for Parsons Alumni Exhibition

(under)REPRESENT(ed) was an event series and exhibition hosted at Parsons School of Design in fall
2017 for which I served as planning committee member and sole designer, developing the brand identity, web design, and print materials. The series and exhibition centered around Parsons alumni of color whose creative practices explore the lived experience of race and aim to dismantle systems of racism. The striking visual weight of the logotype underscores the paradox of underrepresentation in the arts, invoking the truth in this statement through the unique titling style and the myth, through an unmistakably bold and present visual identity. A minimal typographic system which uses just one type size of a round and open typeface and a deep purple and affecting orange allows for clarity while also making a frank and plain statement.

Live site: underrepresented.parsons.edu

Joelle Riffle | Economic Analysis of the Detroit Food System

Lead Designer, MESH Design and Development with
Megan Bullock, creative director and partners Detroit Food
and Fitness Collaborative and Urbane Development
Publication design, including illustration and icon design, information design, infographics, and typographic layout.

I designed a publication which aims to explore an
innovative approach to how localizing the food system in Detroit, MI might impact the city. The goal of this project
was to make as clear as possible a compounded set of issues. Practically, that means designing a thorough typographic system within a clean and airy layout which does not overwhelm the reader but allows them to better understand the various hierarchies. This also means resolving as much information as possible into visuals, developing infographics, charts and tables, narrative illustrations, and so on to bring the content to life. Download the PDF here.

Joelle Riffle | Teenage Dirtbag

"Make up your mind/decide to walk with me/around the lake tonight"

Teenage Dirtbag Zine is about coming of age in the early 2000s and how that affected my attraction, sexuality, and conceptions of masculinity and femininity. The way men were represented in pop culture informed the kind of people I'm attracted to and the things I find charming and romantic and sexy.

Contents include:
A playlist to better explain what I mean, a brief history of me and boys and cars, a confession about being one of the guys, an offering on my favorite movie and movie guy, a musing on how being queer affects all of this, and thinking about me in the future.

Riso printed and staple-bound zine
8.5 x 5.5 inches, 16 pages

$8.00 + Shipping

Buy Here or email me at hi [at] joelleriffle.com
You can also buy a digital print which you can print at home.

And the playlist is free.

Parole Preparation Project

Joelle Riffle | Ladybugs

Role: Designer, photographer, videographer, writer

Ladybugs is an exploration of female (woman-identified, as well as queer and gender non-conforming) friendships.

Ladybugs aims to tell stories of strong gal pal-ships and start conversations about the importance of those dynamics and bonds in our personal lives, collective unconsciousness, and pop culture. This project is a multimedia, multi-platform experience, centered around an interview session with a few pairs of folks talking with me and each other about their relationship.

Link: ladybugs.aslittlefear.co

Joelle Riffle | Designers Available

Role: Lead and Designer

Connecting designers and other creative individuals with non-profits and grassroots organizations to support their missions with pro bono design work.

Designers Available is a response to an urgent need to call our skills to action as a creative community, particularly in response to the 2016 election of Donald Trump to president. This project is intended to connect designers interested in contributing their skills in support of non-profits and community organizations actively facilitating social change through direct service and community organizing. The Designers Available network is made up of more than 170 designers and other creatives around the country.

For more information and to view The Lists, visit designersavailable.com.

Not Going Back

In response to the then-impending 2017 Presidential Inauguration, a group of concerned staff and faculty under the lead of the Director of Social Justice Initiatives at The New School planned and implemented a one-day conference of community building. As part of this group, I developed the brand identity, print materials, digital signage, and tote bags for the event. In a period highly saturated with imagery challenging the political climate, it was important for the identity of this event to challenge the visual signifiers of how political activism and resistance has and continued to be branded in 2017 and beyond while being legible as part of such a movement. In deference to the sense of social, political, and philosophical displacement and confusion that we felt around that day, I created a visual that references a mangled and distorted American flag, a symbol of the need to reinvent and remix our understanding of our country.

Joelle Riffle | Cleveland Bazaar

Cleveland Bazaar
Lead Designer
Brand guidelines including type system, preferred colors, and recommended brand applications, event signage, patterns and illustrations, social media graphics and templates, website refresh, stickers and enamel pins, print doc templates

Longtime collaborator, Cleveland Bazaar owner and founder Shannon Okey approached me to grow the visual identity and suite of assets for the Cleveland Bazaar brand. Using the existing logo designed by Katie Major at Fuzz Creative, I developed a visual language which is distinctive from other craft shows and local events while remaining true to the Cleveland Bazaar story and community. The bright and punchy visuals are evocative of the handmade and communal aspects of the brand. The brand also needed to be fun and easy for Shannon and her team to implement and adapt based on seasons and themes on the fly, which brings the entrepreneurial spirit from branding concept to practical application.

Business Card and Letterhead

Logo

Outreach Collateral

A new approach to community safety and wellness

Communications and Brand Manager

Gala Branding and Materials

Communications and Brand Manager

Email Campaign Design and Strategy

Perfume Genius in W Magazine. Two months after the release of Set My Heart on Fire Immediately and the album keeps working its way into me.

Left: Spotted this awesome campaign poster for Andrew Young's run for congress in photos of the Freedom Farmer Cooperative in the book.

Monday

Friday

Thinking About Space

Thinking About Reckonings

Listening To

Watching

Reparations

Listening

Reading

Making

Watching

Doing

Thinking

Listening

Reading

Making

Watching

Doing

Thinking

Listening

Reading

Making

Watching

Doing

Thinking

Exhibit Branding

Branding, wall text, and promotions for the alumni exhibition

"Make up your mind/decide to walk with me/around the lake tonight"

Logo Design

Logo design for an organization which supports parole-eligible incarcerated people prepare parole applications.

Lead Designer and Organizer

Branding and event graphics for day long conference

Selection from Brand Guidlines