Horizon Lines
How design ops fit into an artist-run ad agency—and the psychology of seeing physical horizons.
I’ve teared up four, five times in my new apartment in Detroit just from seeing the sun. It’s most often the sunset from my bedroom, peaking through the late winter gray before tucking into the evening. For a brief few minutes, I feel the air sucked from the room—maybe it all condensed into the teardrop on my right eye—as I watch the sun set behind deciduous branches and the Frederick Douglass Academy for Young Men.
I posted a picture of a moment like this to Instagram back in January with the caption “Gm! Say it back!”:
(For the record, I lied. It’s not a sunrise in the picture; it’s a sunset. I’m sorry.)
I thought the selfie-less pic would get algorithm’d (e.g. a post for me and ten others who saw it and liked it), but it received a lot more attention than I anticipated. It opened up a question not about why my overhead paper lights are on the ground (I’m trying to install them, give me a few days), but rather the magic of seeing sunlight—and a sunset, and a horizon line—during these gray days.
I figured I would continue with the thread of horizon lines and send a few exciting recent updates on my radar. Sunlit things sound good right now, don’t they?
Design Ops in an agency by artists
Genius/wizard Jon Fukuda once told me that doing a good job in client-facing design operations means working for just a period of time with your client; or, working in perpetuity “means you’ve done something wrong.” I took this advice in stride when Digital Counsel, an ad and strategy agency run by artists, asked me to reorganize their work across editorial, design, and social channels.
The north star, let’s say, was to ensure the team did less duplicative work. When things move at the pace of an agency, various team members need to plug into complex work in a minute’s notice and fill any missing copy, visual, and PM work within that minute. I started untangling with a full audit of one work pillar, Hyundai Artlab’s Editorial platform, which publishes critical work by young and established art writers on today’s contemporary artists. After itemizing the 29 steps required to move an article from original concept to published across website, IG, and FB, I then backtracked to estimate when each step should happen to publish on time on Airtable and a new daily calendar on Figma. After reviewing the aggregated data, we quickly noticed where along the process things backed up—taking too long during version control, updates on copy post-design, and collecting feedback from teams—then hired and trained two new team members (a copywriter and a full-time account lead) to better catch everything on time.
Let’s bring back the horizon line: sometimes, when there are so many weeds, managers and team members both get lost in them. We forget the trees, the forest, the sunset. Untangling these questions through a design operation lens acted like a lawn mower for Digital Counsel, allowing them to mow down the details faster so they can spend their time on big vision projects.
Speaking of which, Hyundai Artlab is currently on the lookout for two art writers dedicated to their geographic regions who explore today’s social issues through the lens of contemporary art.
The Artlab Editorial Fellowship is open to applicants anywhere in the world, and welcomes art writers at any stage of their career. Each fellow will receive mentorship, financial support ($10,000 USD), and publish three pieces on Artlab Editorial. I’m so excited to have worked on this fellowship and see it out in the world!
Applications are due on March 28, 2023 by 11:59pm EST :)
By the way, if you’re looking for other residencies, fellowships, and opportunities, I recommend Upstate Update by Izzy Dow for opportunities above New York City, as well as the well-known Words of Mouth and Listings Project. I also recently joined the 18 Coffees community, and they send a lovely roundup of opportunities. One of my favorite people, Katheryn Thayer, also oversees Primary VC’s newsletter that often drops tech-related opportunities.
Coda 1: good art to see
WHEN THINGS ARE BEINGS blew my mind recently at the Stedelijk Museum. I highly recommend reading through their online publication on a slow Sunday morning.
There is no party so noisy as the one you’re not invited to was also a fantastic exhibition at Tent Rotterdam / Kunstinstituut Melly, in particular Serene Hui’s piece (below) and Effi & Amir’s film By The Throat (2021), a searing investigation on how our mouth, throat, and teeth correct and rearrange language and dialects to deadly, emotional, and hilarious affects.
Shout out to Ellen Gallagher and her series Watery Ecstatic, which builds from Drexciyan mythology to portray a Black utopia/Atlantis born from enslaved Africans thrown overboard during the Transatlantic Trade—and their children learned to breathe underwater. It was amazing to witness this work inspired by the Detroit classic all the way in Europe.
Coda 2: horizon directionality vis-à-vis, well, me
