#but overall doing good!!! i like my job

[ebdanon]

my boss said she appreciates me 🥰

[luck-of-the-drawings]

"And soda; runs off into the street..." "...and soda... is totally okay!"

[gravitysoda]

Relief.

[lambentplume]

any swimmers in chat with suggestions about how to. deal with the sensory issues that occur in between being completely dry and completely wet

[buk0wskis]

final verdict

also with this my oscar playlist is up! just a sweet lil angel boy who deserves nothing but the world. brother needed a bodyguard like yesterday

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe I need to write Cardinal's Map so there's a contemporary book about the power of literature and reaching for a world beyond the mundane that isn't wall-to-wall inspirational platitudes with vague worldbuilding about the battle between the forces of good vs. evil.

[discjude]

Yeah this is about right (as always my thoughts are in the tags so there's actually kei content there lmao)

[brown-little-robin]

yeag

[evidently-endless]

listening to an artist singing ‘it won’t be this bleak forever’ like damn do you fucking promise

[sskk-manifesto]

!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jackinalex]

okay look

[gigantomachylesbian]

Guys. I did not know before now that writing could be painfully millennial in a full prose book but the pho*nix ke*per has proven me wrong and I have to complain about it in the tags

[shhh-secret-time]

No, see, because, like, you fucked up. Now you have to write that. I need that. I need the Star Park AU.

Below I will present my case:

1) That name is so freaking cute and I love it

2) Your tags made me fall in love with it

3) I know you have more ideas in that beautiful brain of yours

4) I really want it.

Please see points 1 - 4 if you have any questions.

Aafjdjakak Dude?! I'm cackling!

Fuck it we ball. Please look forward to it I guess.

I'll throw more in the tags!

[seiwas]

my coworker is the cutest 🥺 she bought me a matcha today because it’s our last day of working together on the same thing 😭

[whiskeyswifty]

would you work for Taylor given the chance?

what a good question...... i've never considered it before because i feel like i'm just messing around most of the time as a designer or whatever else she would want me for lol. let me think through this.

I think i'd be crazy to say no, because that would be an amazing opportunity and i'd be so excited to work with someone i love that i'd say yes immediately and probably cry lol. but..... i don't know if ultimately it would be a good fit and not taylor as a person/employer but in terms of our design sensibilities and objectives. my main job as a designer is to provide a product based on a brief, which is a fancy process word for what the client wants in terms of the literal product (album cover, tshirt graphic, poster, etc) and also the art or design style they're looking for, however detailed or vague they might describe it, including any branding, images, or other elements already created. however a client's main job when hiring a designer is choosing someone who's style they like as it is, whether its previous work they saw that they feel fits their own style or an illustration style that conveys artistically what they want their product to convey, etc. any good designer can contort their own style into whatever any client wants in the end, but the further the client strays from the designer's personal style, the more unpleasant and teeth-pulling it is for the designer. so it's imperative that the designer feels they match with the brief and the client feels the style of the designer matches with their own artistic sensibilities.

i don't..... think that taylor and i.... align when it comes to artistic sensibilities. i'd guess that taylor is not designing her own visuals of course (other than the occasional MV), but she is still part of the concept design and look and feel of an album at most, and signs off on merch designs that cross her desk, if she has time, at least. so everything does have to align with how she wants her Taylor Swift branding, both album to album and overall, to look and feel. given all the products she's output over the past, idk 12 years of her being this dominant in the design process, she's had a very simplistic design strategy compared to my personal style. much of her artwork for albums and marketing serves the purpose of appealing to as large of an audience as possible and having a direct and approachable dialogue with that audience. so that means materials must not be too stylized artistically in one direction or the other and for active engagement, they must be simple enough that the general public understands it clearly at first glance and can personalize or replicate it. full screen photos that consume your whole screen usually of her as she is the main product that are simple in composition and styling, creating simplistic color buckets for albums that are usually one single color, easily legible and familiar fonts for the most part (lover era lol you were such a mess bbgirl), and album/era concepts that are intentionally vague and without a sense of place which makes them open to interpretation for as many people as possible. this is the general brief for any static taylor swift visual material as her brand stands right now.

in contrast, my personal style is in the complete opposite direction. i love creating visuals that instantly ping a time and place and evoke a strong, single personality or voice. i love kitsch and the specificity of ephemera and illustration and incorporating small intricate details, and i prefer bold graphic styles over homogeny. so you can see how we are not aligned at all, for the most part. i of course could work with her to water down my style until it suited her general branding, but it would strip most of my work of what I enjoy designing and i'd feel a bit stifled and it would feel like just a for-hire gig. that's fine of course, but for her, she's above just getting someone to do a for-hire gig. at this point, she wants someone who really speaks her artistic language, as simplistic as it may be, and can bring it to life visually. simple also isn't always easier, any designer will tell you. especially with big corporate, multimillion dollar pressure behind it. you can spend days swapping out seemingly identical fonts because the descenders aren't quite right. and that's also not to say that simplistic is lesser than in terms of design. folklore is one of my favorite album covers of recent memory, and it's just a photo, framed and colored in such a specific and evocative way. it's perfect for that album, emotionally impactful with taylor this big star being minimized so small on her own album cover next to the trees that were born decades before her and will outlive her. but that's just not my artistic strength or style, being so photo-forward, that's all i mean. or the tour poster, which was simple and compact in it's design most likely so that it could be iterated endlessly for tour stop specific posters, merch, and be easily identifiable even if it's being parodied. it satisfies it's objective, but it is not a final product i would enjoy making. i like the font though, i gotta say.

i will say, though, that recently she has dabbled a bit with ephemera in a way that i really love and would gel really well with my design preferences. the ttpd album itself is simplistic in nature yeah, but the package of materials you get when you order one is really cool. the patches and magnets specifically, and the envelope designs as if you got a folder full of evidence and artifacts is really tactile and interactive. i love the black dog one a lot with the white ink on the charcoal black envelope. the albatross one as well. that's right up my alley and so fun and gives the album a slight sense of tone/time and place. (although still the messaging is a bit muddled even still but whatever). also, i've seen a bunch of the VIP package eras tour posters that people got with their VIP package and there are some really cool designs there! if she wants to continue to do specific designed elements like that, i would be a great fit i think. or if she wants to go in a more design-forward high-concept direction in the future, i would also be a good fit for that. but as it stands right now, while i wouldn't ever turn it down because it would be a dream to work with her, i don't know if she wants something in my style and i don't think either of us would find each other a perfect fit. maybe for a one off, but in the long run i'm not sure she's interested in adopting my design approach or style. but i'd be thrilled if she proved me wrong!! come on taylor lets design some stylized ephemera together!!!

[boygirlctommy]

saw the new alien movie! it was. um. well. there certainly was an alien in it