Am I Finally Finding My Voice?
How my Creative Flow is finding it's own way to align the planets
My journey into being more reflective within my personal creative work had sort of reached a natural pause point until recently - we’d moved home, I felt burnt out both physically and emotionally, and all my personal work ground to a halt.
But then something unexpected happened, and Mother Nature seemed to take over the controls, and she’s delivered me a bit of a passion project; I discovered the world of Communication Tools aimed at people who are Non-Verbal*.
Wait. What?
What the fuck do I know about non-verbal communication tools? Well, it turns out, more than I realised. But more on that in a minute.
*my learning curve in this world is in a state of constant flux. The term ‘non-verbal’ is not something I’m using moving forward… whilst at time of posting this, I knew no better, I’ve since run a language update on myself, switching instead to ‘non-speaking’.
A Brief Introduction To Autism
To cut what might become a very long story short, my daughter was recently diagnosed as Autistic. She’s 9 years old, and to get such a diagnosis with a girl at such a young age is pretty bloody unusual. The learning curve for her and our whole family is huge. Some say those with Autistic Operating Systems are a bit like Apple vs PC. Brilliant at some tasks, terrible at others. Communication with other people can be a real issue for her. If you want to know more about that incredible journey, my wife is writing about it here with her own subbie called ‘Always Autistic’.
Whilst most of the time Little Miss A isn’t what you’d call ‘non-verbal’, she often truly struggles to find ways to articulate her wants, needs or feelings, which led us to hunt down some flash cards to help her through her day.
It’s a pretty simple concept - when you don’t know how to get the words out of your mouth, you simply show the card that best conveys what you want or how you feel. The idea sounds easy, but our search for the perfect solution revealed a highly confusing mish-mash of images and wording, often in a rainbow of garish overstimulating colours (I assume designed to be friendly?) that seemed to make the problem worse, not easier.
They’re often cards that look like clip-art, lifted from a Pre-School catalogue, and whilst they may ‘mean well’, I think they can often make the user feel utterly belittled and stupid - the modern day equivalent of wearing a big cone of paper on your head, with the letter D on in.
And given that the world and his brother are finally discovering they’re neurodivergent, I think we can be far better at helping people with such simple tasks as asking to go to the toilet or watching some telly, without making it bigger than Ben Hur.
The Planets Start To Align
Clearly there was a personal project here for me - to create Miss A a set of her own cards that she wasn’t ashamed to use (at school for instance, where the peer pressure for 9 year old girls to fit in is just fucking insane), but more importantly, cards that also WORKED - that would help her find her voice, even if those words didn’t come from her own mouth.
As a designer obsessed with roadsigns, tube maps and other systematic design solutions created to move people quickly through life, it’s possibly my perfect project! And holy smoke, one with actual humane purpose for a change.
Actually, now I’ve thought about it a bit, the planets really do seem to have aligned in quite an odd way for me. Firstly, stylistically, I’ve netted out in a place not overly dis-similar to some of my more successful (ahem, I actually SOLD some!) personal work from the days of owning Bianca the Risograph - namely my Sausage + Fork and Tomato + Knife style images, showing frustration of a tricky situation. And then there’s the work I’ve spent years creating in cafés - drawing people without mouths, all unable to speak.
I have a deep level of interest both in graphic design on a functional level, and also with finding ways to communicate emotion without too many words. Add to that mix a personal purpose - to help my own child to function autonomously in a predominantly verbal world - and no wonder it’s fast become my favourite passion project of all time!
Introducing Find Your Voice™ Cards
Smash Cut to mid July, 2024, where I find myself pulling all the pieces together, conveying emotion and feelings through simple visual concepts, and producing 56 ways for people who struggle to find their voice, to talk with ease about all sorts of things.
It’s VERY early days for this personal project, but I’ve done something I don’t think I’ve ever done before - get it out there, let people interact with it, and feed back what I can improve, change, or add. It’s a bit scary to be doing something I don’t fully understand, but from what I can find online, I don’t think anyone else has nailed this either. My goal is to create the most effective set of Communication Tools on the market, to help a wide audience of users - not just my daughter, and not just kids. I’ll probably never achieve that, but hey, a boy can dream, right?
For now, it’s nothing more than a few sheets of A4 paper that users can download and cut up to help them go about their business. But future thinking on this project is to create a physical deck of cards - removing that DIY aspect from it, and making the whole thing feel more comfortable in a world at large - a world where anyone and everyone can find their voice.
Some have mentioned how this concept would work well with abused children, or victims of domestic violence. And I’m up for pushing this on and on, to help literally anyone have tools to make their life easier.
So, yes, for now, the planets on my personal drive for happiness in my creativity do seem to have aligned. Maybe, just maybe, I too have found my true voice.
Over to you!
I’d love to hear what you think about this project.
Have you had similar revelations through unconnected dots in your life, that somehow connected together later in the process?
Should I seek government funding to get this to become more tangible, so those in need can get their hands on it?
If someone in your life could do with a helping hand with getting their voice heard, you can grab more details on my website, here: thegrumpy.club/findyourvoice
The cards are fabulous Stephen, perfectly done. Don't want to belittle the purpose but brought to mind a canine ouija board I've seen somewhere.
Reminds me of a project by a grad designer I recruited a while back now. She applied this idea to tableware products where a series of illustrations were able to be pointed to by kids, as well as adults, in socially awkward moments to express feelings when words and thoughts are not easily communicated. 2-way comms is the important thing too... as much as it is tricky for anyone on the spectrum, it's also understanding the barriers to communication with them as this is part of the frustration for all.
Her work, self-initiated too, had an original design, not dissimilar to your creative, and original application to table mats, cloths, cups etc, as well as more conventional printed cards. I think this communication is sometimes over engineered by 'experts' when really we need more creative solutions, choice and outcomes.
Great so far Steve... wherever this goes, it's on the right wavelength!
Best,
Mark