The other day I made a little pot with Air-dry clay using the pinch-pot method. It was my first time making a proper pot from scratch. I named him Cake :)
It took me 5 days to make him. An evening to mold the clay. 2 days to dry. Painted it on the third day. It was raining on the 4th day. I glazed him with resin on the 5th day. That's how long it took me to make cake. How long did it take to make the shirt I'm wearing as I type this article? How long did it take to make my laptop?
Consumption is so easy in this era of late-stage capitalism. We rarely think about the behind-the-scenes process of what we consume. Why would we? Adding to cart and hitting purchase abstracts the entire process, from how materials are sourced to how they are shipped. In fact, that's also what good user experience is, right? Simplifying day-to-day actions so much that we don't need to think. This thought process inspired my project "Label to Labor."
"Label to Labor" is an exploration in critical design, manifested as a simple clothing tag. You might typically check the size or material of your dress, but by adding simplified, transparent data like the number of days and the number of hands it took, it adds another dimension to the dress. It's not just a piece of clothing; it's the fruit of time and labor. By humanizing the production process, we are reminded that behind every product are individuals whose labor and expertise make it possible.
I also want to emphasize the two-way approach through this tag. Apart from providing consumers with transparency, it pushes corporations to be more accountable with their processes. While it's quite possible (or likely) that corporations might not be honest with the data on the tag, I think adding a tag like this is a step in the right direction. With the right resources to fact-check tags, this can be really beneficial. While I used a clothing tag as an example, this is also a more generalized framework that can be applied to almost any kind of object.
I have a clay shop but my pot "Cake" is not for sale. Cake holds sentimental value for me. We all have things like Cake in our lives; things that hold sentimental value for us. We'd all have a lot more of those maybe if we made more slow and thoughtful decisions on what we buy.
K Bye
Akshara <3