Self Care Zine by FLIESSEN MAGAZINE

FLIESSEN VOL. I ISSUE III.

Contents Page Making Projects Fun 03

Self Care Through Distraction

Comic 11

Collage 12

Student Writings Self-Care With Gracy 06

Are We There Yet? 08

13 15 18

Skin Care 14

Thick Press Interview

Failing at Skin Care

Skin Care Resources 20-21 Front & Back Cover photos by Paloma Delgado

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Sara Jamshidi Assistant Professor & Faculty Advisor, Graphic Design sarajamshidi.com My first advice on how to stay focused during quarantine is to work on a fun project! When working on a project you like and enjoy, the process of working and creating is very enjoyable and exciting. What makes a project so interesting is the process of asking questions, diving into the subject matter, using the tools, and the way I design the project. Also, working with the people you like and having fun with them is what truly makes the project more

enjoyable and collaborative.

and subjects.

I really enjoy the classes that I teach: Typography, Communication Design, and Design Fundamentals I. All of the classes are very fun for different reasons; for example, it is so exciting to teach about color theories and the interaction of color in my Design Fundamentals class. Since classes are online this semester, we see all of the works in RGB, which makes everything so bright! It is different from seeing a project printed on paper that’s CMYK. Also, the group of students that I teach are amazing. The one aspect of teaching that makes it so exciting are the students

Everything that I am working on is so interesting to me, and I don’t really get tired of it. My current project is designing a typeface. This project is driven by research, where I look deeply into the spoken language of Arabic type script. The reason why this is so fun is because I am working with another designer, and we love looking at the details of Arabic typography and type design. Even writing a research paper about it and designing it is interesting because this process is combining research, practice, and learning all at once!

The other project I am working on is starting a website and platform for young faculties in design; this is for anyone who is interested in combining teaching and their professional studio practice at the same time. Although this project is difficult at times as I am working with new things like PR, marketing, writing press releases, and working out a business model that is not quite the easiest - I still find joy in this because I get to work with many people I love. Before I get into school work, I have a morning routine: I work for one hour on writing about my project on postage stamps and personal research, then writing on my research for type design, and finally one hour on my concept practice idea (the new business I started). This is all taken care of before 9:00 every morning! If you love the subject and find it fun, it becomes so interesting, and the work doesn’t feel daunting at all. I’ve learned to design in different media and tools. I get tired when I work on just one software, so I break it up. I always start sketching out my ideas in my sketchbook so everything is not completed on the computer. Interview translated by Abby Kim Photograph by Paloma Delgado

Self Care Through Distraction

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I don’t know about you, but my self care comes in the form of avoiding all of my responsibilities. Whether it’s homework, work, or even calling my parents, I will do literally anything to avoid doing something on my To-Do list. I am the resident 2 am kitchen-cleaner in my apartment simply because it allows me to think that I’m doing something productive without doing work that might stress me out. Sometimes the weight of doing an assignment can be so heavy that it feels amazing to just push it off until the day before it’s due to play The Sims instead. So, if you would like to adapt my style of self-care, I’ve created a comprehensive list of ways to distract yourself from all of your responsibilities, at least for a little bit:

Isabelle Bryson Interaction Design ‘23 Insta: @brysonize

watch way to much tv

This is obvious, like the rest of this list will be. Who doesn’t love trying to find a new show on Netflix that maybe is kinda boring but not as boring as doing your astronomy homework? I’m sure that you’ve seen just about everything you’re interested in watching during the time we all spent in our homes... but here is a proposal: watch the stupidest show you can find and make it a game. Personally, my stupid show is The Bachelor. I would also highly recommend Love Island, as the British accents really take it up a notch. I used to be the person who HATED shows like these, but now my roommates and I look forward to it every single week. We made each episode a game, one maybe involving alcohol, but that’s besides the point. If you, and maybe some friends, can devote two hours to following the rules of a meaningless game, I promise your worries will fade away into the back of your mind until you’re forced to recon with them again.

get creative

This is a big one. I absolutely love to spend maybe 30 minutes creating anything. If you’re any type of artist reading this, you may be familiar with the feeling of getting half way through making something and thinking, “I really do not want to be doing this right now,” but you keep goingbecause you know the outcome will be worth it. Getting into that almost uncomfortable zen mode is so surprisingly stress relieving, despite the negativity that it might bring up. During this time of year, I especially like making gifts for my friends and family. This allows me to take myself out of my own brain and go into someone else’s. I get to think about what they would love, instead of thinking about what I have to get done before Monday.

its game time Video games are another thing on the list that takes you fully out of your own mind. You get to live in another world and make decisions completely independent from your real life. I personally love Animal Crossing and The Sims, as I’m a pretty creative person who loves to create characters and construct worlds. When I play these games I get to control the life of someone else, making my brain relax for a bit because I am making decisions... just not important ones. I also love to talk about video games because I think everyone has a different taste. My best friend is obsessed with horror games and will play them until the late hours of the night. So whatever your favorite game is, allow yourself the brain space to play it and not worry about everything else going on.

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music

clean up your mess

One of my absolute favorite things to do is make Spotify playlists. I can spend hours searching through my library of songs to curate a playlist that matches an incredibly specific mood. I also create a new playlist every month in which I almost Marie-Kondo my playlists. I listen through the entirety of the previous month’s playlist, re-adding the songs that “spark joy,” and saying goodbye to the songs that don’t by giving them a final goodbye listen. This almost meditative process makes me, again, feel productive by making decisions, but none too crucial that I’ll lay awake at night thinking about them.

Like I mentioned before, I love to clean my entire apartment at very odd hours. Something about watching a dirty space transform into a clean one feels like my mind is going through the same thing. Doing the dishes, as much as I hate it, makes me feel like I’m picking each individual dirty stress in my sink of a mind, and putting it in the dishwasher to be cleaned and addressed at a later time. This is absolutely the least fun and least frequent distraction I perform, but it’s still a valid one. When I know I have a big project that I just can’t start, I’ll clean my room instead to give myself a good space to work in for when I am in the right mindset to do work.

friends

This, again, is pretty obvious, but I cannot express the weightlessness I feel when I’m just hanging out with my friends. Gathering the most important people to you in one room and just shooting the shit is probably the best way to forget your worries. And if it is a safe space, maybe you could confront them! Talk to your friends about all the bullshit homework you have to do or the stupid work schedule you have this week. Just talking it out with people who care about you, but not actually doing any work, can take the weight off of work and make it a lot less stressful. I think what I’m really trying to get at here is to give yourself time. Right now especially, I feel like we’re all running a mile a minute trying to fit every last thing into our days, but sometimes you just need space to breathe. I allow myself to turn off my brain through distraction at least three times a day, and I still get my work done. While this procrastination might cause me a little stress in the future, at least it’s put off... that’s at least how I look at it. Work is important to all of us, but allowing yourself to be a complete human can give you the motivation to do better work, instead of allowing you to do a lot and this becomes your whole life. If you’re still reading this, this is your sign to take some time for yourself. Give yourself 30 minutes to forget about everything and embrace the joy of distraction. Photos by Isabelle Bryson

Self-Care with Gracy

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Self-Care with Gracy Gracy Obuchowicz Self-Care Coach How would you define self-care and its purpose? The more I study self-care, the more I understand the vastness of its definition. Understanding my "capital S" Self, and the care it needs to thrive is the work of a lifetime. And yet, self-care is also so simple! It's a way of treating myself so that I can really give all of myself and fully receive from others. Self-care teaches me to be truly generous and generative. It also has something to do with daily routines, a compassionate inner dialogue, the courage to be vulnerable, and the ability to move with the change of life itself. I'm a student of Ayurveda, which teaches that our deepest self-care is a remembrance and practice of our connection to nature. Learning to shift with the contractions and expansions of my days, weeks, months, and years has taught me that I'm so utterly connected to life itself. It's safe to go with the flow and change! Unfortunately, our capitalistic culture has been designed for us to continually forget these essential truths. Most of us even confuse self-care with just buying more stuff. I like to distinguish what I call "authentic self-care" as a way of breaking away from dominant culture and cultivating a revolutionary, more cyclical way of being in my life and world. In this way self-care is subversive and most definitely a form of activism and activation. How did self-care become so important to you? How has it changed your life? Growing up in a family with addiction and mental health issues made it difficult to learn authentic self-care. From a very early age,

I was programmed to make everyone else happy so I could feel safe. Somehow I got the message that my self-care hurt others. I learned to ignore my real needs and suffered a lot as a result. Beginning my yoga practice in college gave me a true north in my self-care journey. I began to understand that I had power within myself and that honoring that power actually helped others. In my early 30's, I had a deep desire to study Ayurveda and begin practicing these ancient self-care recommendations. This unlocked so much power in my life! I knew I had to share this wisdom with others and began

â&#x20AC;&#x153;What does work is falling in love with the process of moving with, learning from, and amplifying the changes of your life.â&#x20AC;? teaching others about authentic self-care. I've watched as this kind of self-care has vastly changed the lives of so many people, and without fully meaning to, has become a leader in many parts of my life. It's

Page 7 What is it like working with clients and seeing them experience that transformation in their life? How has your self-care training changed since the start of the pandemic? Working with my clients has been one of the greatest gifts of my life! I started my work knowing a little bit about self-care, but I've really learned the most from watching my clients engage thoughtfully with their own self-care process. I've learned that when given the tools and the space, most people are really great at healing themselves.

been so humbling and so beautiful. I've learned that self-care, when practiced authentically, is the path to an embodied creativity and a form of visionary leadership. Rather than being selfish, it's our most direct way of serving others. This kind of truth really spreads, but we first have to become willing to practice it for ourselves. You can't skip that step. What inspired you to work with Thick Press and create Selfcarefully? Erin, the editor of Selfcarefully, was one of my self-care clients. She had experienced the power of this kind of self-care and asked if I had wanted to make a book together to share the message on a wider scale. I really wanted to make a book with her, but I had also just given birth to my son Jonah and didn't feel like I had enough time. Erin assured me that we could just go slowly and practice selfcare along the way. I actually ended up writing a lot of the book on my phone during metro rides because that was my only free time. My writing was messy, but we cleaned it up later during the editing process, and the vignette-style of Selfcarefully emerged. Maria, our designer and illustrator, joined the project and together, we kept crafting the messiness into something beautiful and meaningful. I'm still in awe of our creative process and how much we did, but still how gentle and alive the whole journey has felt. Working as a team has meant everything! The time of the lone wolf is really over.

As for changes in my work during the pandemic, I've actually shifted very little. A couple of years ago, when I became a mother, I realized I needed to dramatically shift the way I worked. I moved from a more expensive, cohort-style coaching program focusing on habit changes, to a more affordable, ongoing virtual community membership focusing on the intersection of social justice and selfcare. It was really hard for me to make all these changes- I think decreasing your income in our society brings up a lot of self-esteem issues- and there were times that I didn't understand why I had to change so much. But now, in the wake of so much change in the world, I realize that my capital "S" Self was guiding me. I had my second child right at the beginning of the pandemic and it's been an immense relief that I don't have to reinvent my work right now so that it stays relevant during such a big moment in our world. What are some tips or recommendations you would give to someone who is just starting to bring self-care into their life and daily routines? I think it's so important to start small! There's a Japanese philosophy called kaizen, which basically means "good change, small change, continuous change." You can begin a yoga practice by doing one minute of stretching a day. You can go to bed earlier by moving your bedtime back 5 minutes every week. In modern western society we're taught to be so perfectionistic. We feel like if we don't make a huge change or reinvention of self then it's not worth our time and energy. I think by now that most have learned that this New Year's resolution style of change doesn't work. Huge pushes just aren't sustainable. What does work is falling in love with the process of moving with, learning from, and amplifying the changes of your life. With that, it's also important to remember that we're not problems to be solved. Most of us have been taught self-improvement, which reinforces the idea that we have to change something fundamental about ourselves if we want to be worthy of love and belonging. Selfcare is so different. It's an ongoing practice of reorienting yourself in the present moment. There's nothing to prove, so we can just have fun finding little ways to care for ourselves. It's so simple yet so radical at the same time.

Are We There Yet?

Emma Caamano Graphic Design ‘23 Insta: caamanodesigns I'm probably the last person that should be talking about self care, but here I am and here you are. I've never been a fan of those trendy self-care books and podcasts and, huge disclaimer, I never will be. Now, let me tell you, at my lowest moments I have considered picking up the praised ~how to make life a little less shittier~ book of the month. But the fact that I can't read past the title, nevertheless the description of the book, leads me to believe that it would be a waste of time and money. Sort of a lost cause in that area, as for all the time I spend focusing on caring for others instead of myself those self-care antics, quite frankly, make me want to bash my eyes out. Now, if that's your thinglighting some candles, getting all cozy, and divulging in the latest selfcare special- by all means do what I can’t; probably better than the impulsive dyeing sections of my hair blonde, getting another piercing or tattoo lifestyle that I have accustomed myself to. With the small ounce of seriousness I have left in me, there is no dumber thing than criticizing another person on working towards their own selfcare. There is nothing but applause for anyone that is trying to better themselves in whatever way they can. I’m merely stating that everyone has different methods and

paths to becoming who they want to be. Beyond the purple shampoo and needles poking my body, I am still learning what my methods are for self care and self love. I mean how can we feel okay all the time when we live in a media-driven world that has been used to make us question our every move. The only solid fact we really have is that birds aren’t real. Naturally, life is bound to get hard, especially for those with ornithophobia; it probably heightens the whole fear of it all. The one tip I can give out is stop giving a f*** and listen to your own bodycensoring that out for the small ones and my parents (hey mom and dad, sorry for the whole needles thing, but you should try it sometime, really brings the ~we live on a floating rock~ thing new meaning).

Photos by Emma Caamano

If you are hungry, then eat. If you don't feel like showering, then spray some perfume- or don’tI dont really care, just rock out. The quicker you realize that mental health can be abusive and can morp a reality where you see yourself less than the average Joe, the closer you'll be to doing little happy dances throughout the day. Even the average Joe isn't so average. There is no average. Reality is what you make of it. Now before I go all, the mind is the most powerful tool and the way you perceive yourself is how others will perceive you, I’m just going to list some things I do to self care: going on random runs, listening to an unfathomable amount of Mac Miller, planning out what my first stick & poke will be, watching Skins on repeat, and shooting film of the homies. If you want to go all philosophical then just shoot me a text and let's hash it out.

Thick Press Erin Segal and Julie Cho Social Worker and Graphic Designer What was the inspiration behind Thick Press? Thick Press came out of a conversation in the California desert between two old friends: Julie, a graphic designer, and Erin, a social worker. We were both frustrated by trends in our fields that we attributed to neoliberalism, which we define as the way market logic gets applied to everything. Motivated by our conversations, we decided to create a publishing practice in order to enact our vision of a slower, more process-driven world, where creativity and care matter. What is it like publishing books that cover important topics like self-care, social justice, and “the thick of the human experience”? What does that collaboration process look like? Even though our content can be weighty, we try not to take ourselves too seriously. Each project is completely different. We work very slowly, creating time and space for creativity and playfulness. We also take pains to avoid imposing our agenda on our collaborators. How do you believe design plays a role in human experience? Without humans, design can’t exist. In our practice, our books are a permanent witness to acts of care. Design plays an important role in documenting

and communicating stories that center the human experience. How do you bring self-care into your daily life, especially during the current times? In addition to trying to care for ourselves, in the ways that Gracy Obuchowicz describes in Selfcarefully, we both find that carving out time for Thick Press serves as a form of community care for ourselves and our collaborators. This is all due to the fact that the work of Thick Press is playful, meaningful, and creative. Our practice often feels like work, but it never feels like alienated labor. During the pandemic, as we also practice design, teaching, and/or social work at home in shared space with our kids, it’s difficult but important to remember to prioritize Thick Press. It’s also important to remember that we can only do so much, and that’s okay, too. What would you say is the ultimate goal of Thick Press? Our intention is to pay as much attention to the process as we pay to the product. Comic to the right by Vickiana Dulcio

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Yeah, Yeah... Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be out in a min!

You coming anytime soon?

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YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF

FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE

YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF FIRST LOVE YOURSELF

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