16669: Hello, Dalí!

Superside moves from Frida Kahlo to Salvador Dalí, offering its cheap design services to marketing visionaries. Talk about delusions of brandeur.

16668: Super Sewer Sells Stereotyping & Stealing.

 

According to Wikipedia, Superside is a subscription design service that provides design at scale for enterprises and scale-ups.

 

The Superside website boasts:

 

The better way to get design done

 

Get creative that performs. Plug into world-class design talent powered by AI to make your team faster, more efficient, and scalable.

 

A more likely description would be Superside is a crowdsourcing freelancer outhouse, undoubtedly taking advantage of desperate creatives willing to work for minimal hourly rates or miniscule project fees.

 

Sounds like a lazy solution for brands with no desire to hire a White advertising agency and/or no funds to launch a White in-house studio.

 

Superside claims to offer world-class talent—meaning its roster probably includes Victors & Spoils castoffs.

 

And while the talent is powered by AI—whatever that means—the illustration for its advertisement (depicted above) could have been rendered via AI, no? BTW, did anyone check with the Frida Kahlo Corporation for copyright approval?

 

Then again, cultural appropriation never considers the rights of the appropriated.

16461: Recommending, Recognizing, And Rethinking Centered.

 

Centered: People and Ideas Diversifying Design edited by Kaleena Sales advances “A rich, inclusive, contemporary, and global look at design diversity, past and present.”

 

In many respects, Sales ultimately provides a platform to challenge the boundaries and standards that have been historically established—in arguably Eurocentric and colonialistic style—for graphic design.

 

To ascribe Sales as having edited the book could also be challenged—mostly because “editor” seems an incomplete and insufficient designation.

 

For starters, Sales is credited alongside Adolphus Washington as co-designer of the cover.

 

Perhaps Sales should be acclaimed curator, having concepted and assembled an extraordinary exhibition of words, works, and perspectives. 

 

Creator could apply in today’s creator culture—as could influencer, given Sales’ intent to provoke progress.

 

That said, Centered: People and Ideas Diversifying Design by Kaleena Sales is a terrific book—definitely worthy of perusing, probing, pondering, praising, and partying.