Claire Carroll

There or Not There

Ok, fine. Fine. I’ll tell you a true story. But this is the only one I’ve got. It’s a horrible story though.

I was twenty-two, and I worked for a hybrid ethical advertising practice in Central London. I didn’t know what I was doing there. I had no idea. The practice was commissioned, usually by the local authority or private companies, to deliver striking messages in public spaces. The practice was in a studio, located in a former warehouse, which had been damaged by a flood that summer (no, don’t worry, that was before I started. That wasn’t the thing I did). I was employed as a studio assistant to sort out all of the archived drawings and paperwork that had been damaged by the floodwater.

I was quite happy to re-file the crispy, dried-out papers. The work was better paid than the pub, plus I didn’t have to work at night, or walk home with my phone and keys clenched in my hand, damp down my front from the drip trays, ears ringing. Working in the day was something normal adults did. So, if I did this type of proper work then I’d be a proper adult. London was full of this type of stratification. Or maybe I was. I can see that now, OK? I can see that I was the one with the problem.

Perhaps because I seemed excessively happy to have been given this role, or perhaps because the directors had told them they should make use of me, the architects and architectural assistants started to ask me to help them on their projects.

Some people say that the structure of our practice veers towards anarchocommunism, one of the senior creatives said to me during my first week. I didn’t understand what anarcho-communism was, but then I realised that he probably didn’t expect me to. He went on to describe how the work they did was concept-driven, creatively led, no hierarchies within the staff, a horizontal network of collaborators, no company shareholders, no dividends.

It’s about producing the best, most functional, most aesthetic and most meaning ful design for the client, and for the public, he said. Nothing else matters.

I said something like, oh, wow. Cool.

9