Art and Pain

Not sure if it's about what gets made or just what I see, but... In recent years I've seen a lot more "riffing on Black history and the Black experience" books and movies around. "Get Out" was a huge example. "Bayou" was a brief-but-gorgeous comic series that was a sort of warped Deep-South Alice-in-Wonderland-style adventure. I wish it had gotten a chance to tell more of its story.

There's a trailer for a movie called 'Candyman' that, like the other two I mentioned, is beautiful, skilful and horrifying (very much on purpose.)

I've seen similar bits of white culture remixed many times over the years. I'm really enjoying seeing a new perspective. It's easier (for someone like me) to find than ever before, and a lot of it is really good.

A lot of the difference is between a Black story that's told with the expectation of a white audience and one that isn't really paying attention to that. A lot of older Black comics (e.g. old Luke Cage and Powerman, or Jack-Kirby-era Black Panther) was told for, and often by, white people.

Stuff that's not directly aimed at me turns out to be a lot more interesting. It's like how "Japanese show culturally translated for an American audience" is a bad sign but "Japanese show barely translated at all" is often fascinating.

Modest goals...

A few years ago, I was hoping to eventually get as good for random day-to-day work as a freshly-minted new designer out of college.

I feel like I'm there now. There are many new designers better than I am, but also many worse. I think I'd be somewhere in the middle 60% of the pack at this point, if I were a new design graduate.

I am routinely producing web-based designs that one might describe as "serviceable," "unobjectionable," "adequate," and occasionally even "pretty." When my design has a big obvious problem I can normally tell where it is, and frequently I have a decent idea how to fix it. My ability to steal individual elements from other people's designs is at an all-time high. On a good day I can even steal without looking obviously derivative.