The Soft Labor Questionnaire: Jarrett Fuller
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The Soft Labor Questionnaire
The Soft Labor Questionnaire, is simply that: A brief series of questions we’ve asked comrades in the field to answer about their own working experiences. Would you like to respond to the Soft Labor Questionnaire? Go right ahead and do so.
Today's respondent is designer, writer, editor, educator, and podcaster Jarrett Fuller. Jarrett is Director of undergraduate program in Graphic and Experience Design at North Carolina State University. He also hosts the nearly decade-old design podcast Scratching the Surface, and writes and designs for a variety of media outlets and clients.
Tell us about the first job you ever did for money.
Not sure if this was the first first but I got $100 for designing t-shirts for my high school's cross country team when I was probably fourteen or fifteen years old? I also worked in a grocery store stock room but I'm not sure which came first!
Is your current work related to what you studied in school? If so, how? Or, how not?
Yes. I studied graphic design in both undergraduate and graduate school; I'm teaching and writing about graphic design now.
What cultural touchpoint—music, art, literature, etc.—has informed your practice the most? How?
Irving Stone's biographical novel on the life of Van Gogh, Lust for Life, which I first read in college. Every time I reread it, I think it's my favorite book ever. About 200 pages in, there's a line when Van Gogh is criticized for calling himself an artist even though he's never sold a painting yet. His response seems to never be far from my mind:
"Is that what being an artist means—selling? I thought it meant one who is always seeking without finding. I thought it meant the contrary from ‘I know it. I have found it.’ When I say I am an artist, I only mean ‘I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.’"
What is the most rewarding aspect of working in your industry? The most challenging?
My time [working in] graphic design has paralleled the professionalization and rise of design as an industry (and specifically design thinking) that has seen a reduction in the cultural side of the work in favor of a problem-solving, business-side-dominating design discourse. This has made it hard to talk about expanded definitions of graphic design and make the case for alternative practices. (As a teacher, students come in with a pre-conceived idea of graphic design now, limiting, in my view, the opportunities they can see for themselves.)
Has AI impacted your work? How?
Not personally but it has made all graphic designers scared, I think. To be honest, I find AI and most conversations around very boring—and even eye-rolling, at times.
What advice would you give to someone starting a career in your industry?
Don't get hung up on labels, job titles, lanes, industries, or borders. All of this work is much more fluid, slippery, and overlapping than we would like to admit.
What are you obsessed with that has little-to-nothing to do with "work"?
My garden and finding new music to listen to.
