At Médianes, over the past six years as creative director, I have spent my time designing visual identities for media outlets, maps, website mockups, newsletters, magazines and printed books. I have made efficiency my priority: I seek the shortest path between a need and the answer to that need. This is necessary because media budgets are often tight, and design is far from their only expense. For us internally too, solutions are found quickly, squeezed between client projects that take priority. In 2018, I wrote my thesis on speed and centered my diploma project around tools developed to speed up page layout. Generally, working fast suits me, because I like things to flow, for practices and tools to vary.
See the base of the wall
However, finding diverse inspiration, coming up with different ideas, and looking at a recurring problem with fresh eyes become difficult over time. One new project chases another, and it becomes rare to celebrate a site's launch, to savor the joy of a new artistic direction that's just beginning to take shape.
Meanwhile, the profession will continue to evolve, with or without artificial intelligence, and I'm certain I won't be able to do this work for my entire life — and beneath my feet, the abyss: how could I reinvent myself? How would I know when? There are things I know and love to do — grow plants, explore culinary possibilities, dig into subjects that fascinate me. And then there's what led me to graphic design: drawing and painting, years at art school, object design, internships and various experiences that followed. I didn't believe in the possibility of making a living purely from art, which is why I chose applied arts like graphic design instead.
And yet… yet, it kept nagging at me that I had abandoned drawing since my studies, because overall: what was merely beautiful had no value, only projects rooted in needs (existential or shared) deserved to exist. There had to be arguments, things to defend. Concepts. For a long time, I believed I had nothing to say anyway and nothing to defend. I stopped drawing and painting; it seemed childish and futile to me. In drawing, what remained interesting were explanatory drawings for getting your idea down on paper, those that tell a story or those that propose another way of seeing, with innovative dimensions of abstraction. It's ultimately a matter of complex issues.
Return to handmade
Then I was offered the chance to participate in a three-week artistic retreat with five other people wanting to work on their creative projects. I'm going for three reasons: (1) to rest, (2) to get away from screens, (3) to paint and draw. I needed to see what I could do, while having the right to fail and produce nothing useful.
I explored different techniques — watercolor, graphite, charcoal, colored pencils, oil painting. I painted what I prefer: rocks, mountains, a bit of architecture, and the light on all of it. And it happened so naturally. As if it had always been there without my knowing it. And I'm fine with these works being purposeless, with them not being driven by commercial logic.
It did me a world of good to be away from a computer for those weeks. I felt a bit more free. It's becoming essential to find space to think and create on paper, and spend more time away from screens.
I take film photographs that I then paste into albums, I can watch a plant grow over months: how do I reconcile this pace with the need for efficiency and productivity that lies at the heart of my professional life? How do I escape this relentless sense of urgency that, slowly, drains away energy, creativity, and then desire?
Oil painting for Instagram post
I created new paintings to illustrate what Médianes represents and aspires to be. I'm not oblivious to the irony of spending seven hours painting a bridge at a time when I could generate hundreds of them with the help of various artificial intelligence companies. And that this painting would then be seen in a social media post.
I know we want to defend a way of life and work that is more frugal, slower, imperfect, but also more real. We want artisanal and independent ways of doing things, far from software and chatbots. We want to do less, to do better. Yet financial constraints, and therefore time constraints, invariably get in the way of our desires, which cannot evolve counter to what surrounds us.
We now talk about a return to friction, the creative value of waiting, of doubt. Perhaps not everything should be a matter of time. It's crucial to ask ourselves where we want to be and linger, because if we save time elsewhere, surely it's to do something with it?
To go further
- We champion design that serves audiences and media in our design manifesto.
- See how design works for your project in images.
- We talk about design, but where does the Médianes logo come from?
- Discover frugal web design, to do more with less.
