Vol. 1, No. 6: A Nepo Baby (and a reader's response to AI)
Welcome to Soft Labor, the namesake publication of Soft Labor, a strategic consultancy for organizations, designers, and the culture industry led by Sarah Hromack-Chan. Soft Labor is a publication about creative labor—what it is, what it looks like, and how it has and will continue to change. Did someone forward you this publication? Subscribe, read our archives, or write to us at info@softlabor.biz.
Performance Improvement Plan
Performance Improvement Plan seeks to solve problems by answering questions about working in the creative industries. What’s vexing you? Talk to us: pip@softlabor.biz. All communications and sources will remain confidential and anonymous.
Dear Soft Labor,
I work as a partner in a major architecture firm, a job I ultimately got through nepotism as my father is the firm’s (well-known) founder. I’m writing mostly out of guilt: I work hard—I did make it through architecture school, after all—but there are many people in my firm who work more brutally than I do but who have less power than I do within the firm. I benefit from their labor in untold ways, so I’m struggling to determine how I can boost them in an authentic way? How can I use the hard power I have for good?
From the studio,
Nepo Baby
Dear Baby,
We catch a whiff of superiority in your note: You assume that “these people” need your benevolence when in reality, they are the ones who earned their jobs through excellence. They’re working; they’re living their lives. We suggest a quick ego check.
Meanwhile, the true answer to your question is fairly obvious to us. This isn’t a matter of morality, it’s a matter of brass tacks. Take care of your people. Recognize their work not with platitudes, but promotions and nice, fat awards based on performance. We know that being a rainmaker comes with its own social complications but come on, Baby. We’re not management consultants here—we’re just people. And people like to get paid.
Yours,
Soft Labor
A Reader Responds
In Issue 2: AI Anxiey Attack, a recent art school grad observes their doubly-older CD’s emotional struggle while integrating AI into the agency’s process—even as they themselves feel skepticism over its value. Another seasoned creative director responds:
Dear Soft Labor,
AI Anxiety Attack’s concerns are certainly valid. However, what this somewhat newly minted grad from a major art school fails to see is that an AI-powered design generator is exactly just that. Without clear prompts, the algorithm spits out what it thinks you might want. Is that any different from the manbunned CD spitting out half-assed directions and expecting you to produce what’s inside his head?
As an experienced (and admittedly sometimes-bearded) CD I myself find that in its current form, AI produces a refined set of templated reusable concepts—no more, no less. The sensibilities that Attack has honed over the years at the brand name school is the key differentiator between them and AI. Those sensibilities are precisely what is going to move the mid studio enterprise Attack described in their letter to be less so. Eventually, those art school moves will evolve and dissipate—just like the initial concepts generated by AI. AI is just a tool—same as a Number 11 X-acto knife still is.
Still in the studio,
An O.G.
Search Results
“Search Results” points toward Soft Labor’s ongoing research interests.
🔗 Follow Soft Labor’s research channel on are.na. We update it regularly.
🔗 We’re following the development of Canyon, an “venture philanthropy” adaptive reuse project on the Lower East Side devoted to video, audio, and performance art that will open next year as just announced in the New York Times. So many thoughts and feels.
🔗 In advance of this past weekend's release of his new BBC documentary, Shifty, We’re re-watching British filmmaker Adam Curtis’s HyperNormalisation, a documentary made for the BBC back in 2016 about, in part, society’s retreat into simplicity during times of great uncertainty. We're thinking about the role work plays in the perception of social "normalcy" in moments like this very one.
🔗 Art and Labor is a distinctly-anticapitalist and highly irreverent podcast about the struggle to survive as a cultural worker. This one runs out of Ridgewood, Queens, and a hot blast is clearly being had by all involved, who eventually calm down enough in the episodes to focus on what they rightly characterize as the "human cost" of the art world.
🔗 We've started reading a few not new, but new to us newsletters, most of which have to do with trend forecasting and—brace for it—branding. Exempli Gratia: The Sociology of Business, Trademarked, and Blackbird Spyplane. (We've been love-hate reading the latter for ages as we believe its authors are single-handedly destroying the English language!) Additionally, we (still) have What is Post-Branding?: How to Counter Postmarket Semiotics sitting pretty in our office book pile.
Other People’s Projects
“OPP” follows the work of people we know and people we do not know.
👁️ Collaborators Other Means just designed Practice, a book about design and craft, for the Figma, the cloud-based design tool we all know and love. Our antennae always perk up when we see forms collide in the world—especially when the jump between cultural phenomena feels intergenerational. We're particularly interested in one essay that examines the way folks are using Figma to design 90s-feeling 'zines. (An example is the case of Secret Riso Club, who use the social tools embedded in Figma to run workshops. Smart.)
👁️ Artist Cory Arcangel’s Arcangel Surfware store is back in biz with a lovely pink logo t-shirt. Arcangel Surfware’s ubiquitous logo was “cooked” with Cookery, a command line utility conceived and written by Arcangel for essentially transforming images and video in any number of ways, the results of which are visually pretty genius. We're ambivalent about swag—we love it; we hate it; we have even produced it ourselves—but we solidly love Cookery and await this shirt's arrival because we did indeed order it.
👁️ We're mega-fans of Signs Point to Yes, the fashion label of Toronto and NYC-based artists Julia Dault and Hannah Whitaker, both of whom you quite possibly already know. We always cause double-takes on the subway with their Hairy Stylez sweatshirt and love this summer's Budz t-shirt, too. Here's their latest lookbook.
Progress Report
“Progress Report” updates readers on Soft Labor’s own work, as well as that of our collaborators and comrades. For summer 2025, we’ll be mining the Soft Labor writing archives for pieces that hold relevance to our ongoing work.
▶️ Written for Frieze, “What is Metahaven?” is one of the more far-reaching pieces of criticism Soft Labor founder Sarah Hromack-Chan has written based on citation history but also the fact that folks still ask her about it, which is always a pleasant surprise. It’s clear that the Dutch design duo’s now-infamous book, Uncorporate Identity, [PDF] spawned an entire generation of ideas, trends, and design moves. We recently re-read the piece and stand by its assertions around the roles of humor and politics in graphic design! And wow, did Holly Herndon’s career blow up in the meantime.
Dress Code
“Dress Code” spotlights workplace looks of all forms and kinds.
