This project called for me to develop an ‘aesthetic profile’ through a prescribed process. We responded to prompts about what inspired us as designers, made a moodboard, and then create a ‘postcard’ to share with the class. I decided to take the project a step further and create a screen print as well. The thread that connects my passion and sensibility for design is a desire to enhance and celebrate the bounty and joy of daily life. I appreciate the effort through designed expression in whatever medium to inject beauty into and extract beauty from the day to day slog, rejecting the notion that the small monotonous steps of our lives ought not be imbued with character or humor or elegance or grace. My practice professionally has mostly consisted of graphic design work for clients, and though the goal of those projects isn’t for me to express my own ideas, I do tend to head in some similar directions frequently for inspiration. I love bold, clashing color palettes and uncluttered, simplistic layouts with expressive language and restrained typography, and love designs that evoke some sense of playfulness or irreverence, that maybe feel a bit cheeky. Beyond the graphic design work I’ve done for clients, I often to express myself through design using different elements and mediums that revolve around the home and family, living, dining, nurturing and gathering people together. I chose to express this collection of influences and values with an illustration of a fruit bowl, textured imperfectly with the prints of handmaid quilts from various decades throughout the last century. The graphic still-life accompanied by a line of text from The Convivialist Manifesto, translated from French by Margaret Clarke, a document which introduces the intentions behind a recent social movement known as Convivialism, deriving from the French spirit of convivialité, which we all know to mean the exuberant warmth that is cultivated around a table with our loved ones. The evolved interpretation presented in the text strives to reimagine a post-liberal societal structure that values interdependence, common humanity, sociality, creative individuation, and productive non-distructive conflict, a concept which I feel is brilliantly illustrative of my sense of design expression.