Christian Solorzano [00:24]

Hello, you're listening to Underscore, a show by the Chicago Graphic Design Club. I am your host, Christian Solorzano, and I'm delighted to share my latest conversation with Chicago-based educator and graphic designer Michal Janicki. And in this conversation, he shares the story of moving to Chicago at the age of 13 from Poland with his family and his introduction into the world of creativity, design, arts, and how that eventually led him to what he's doing today.

He walks us through his perspective on emerging technologies, specifically artificial intelligence, and the ways that perhaps there is a possibility that they could enrich the process, the creative process within graphic design. He also shares with us the importance of having a personal design practice that allows you the luxury to explore your interests, to experiment with new tools, and to overall just keep yourself inspired.

And for Mihao, it means developing and building his own websites, doing graphic design work for theater here in Chicago, and overall just giving back to the community. So as always, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope that you enjoyed this conversation, and we'll talk soon. Good afternoon, Mihao. How's it going?

Michal Janicki [01:50]

Good. How are you, Christian? Thanks for having me.

Christian Solorzano [01:52]

There's been a handful of previous guests that have told, that have told me, that have shared your name with me and have been asking to have you on our show. So thank you for agreeing to be on the show. And for the listener, I encourage you to check out Michal's website. It is one of the coolest websites that I've seen in a really long time. So as you listen to this, open it up on your phone or on your computer and click around.

One of the questions that I always like to start off with, you moved to Chicago from Poland when you were 13, and I'm very curious about what life was like for you before graphic design. What was life before graphic design?

Michal Janicki [02:37]

Oh boy. Trying to think back to 13-year-old Michal. So I was the second person to go to college from my family. So at 13, life was rough. I came to the States, and I think my outfit for school was like a pair of white short shorts and like long socks with sandals, while everybody was wearing like their, cool Smashing pumpkins and Tupac shirts and stuff, and I had no idea about almost anything, and I didn't speak the language.

So life was a life was a little bit tough at the at the start. It wasn't easy. I was also coming into puberty and slowly in my head figuring out that I was probably queer in some way. And, with the stress of the immigration and my parents and the upbringing, I was like, I don't want to raise that to the— to, make them more worried than they should be. So life was weird.

Christian Solorzano [03:56]

And at what point do you feel like you start to maybe find your voice a little bit and maybe grow, kind of grow into yourself? What was that like?

Michal Janicki [04:05]

It was definitely— I gravitated towards the arts. I think, being in the closet and also at the same time, acting out because of all this, sort of repression probably within myself, it was a great and safe space to be in and also felt welcoming and open to, people that were maybe a little bit different or a bit of an outcast or—

And I feel like the teachers and also like a lot of the students there were really almost the saving grace. And it was, something that kind of continued through high school where I was kind of, the goth kid in high school. And the goth kids and the gay kids and any type of outcasts kind of flock together. And it was almost a natural fit that you'd start painting or taking photographs or making music or yeah, stuff like that.

Christian Solorzano [05:12]

I love that. I mean, I love— I could totally relate to the just feeling like an outcast as a teenager. I was definitely like the also the goth kid. That's— that was my— that was my label. And do you have a recollection of like maybe some of the first things that you ever designed or made or any art that you would— that you were starting to create?

Michal Janicki [05:31]

Yeah, definitely. I feel like in high school, me and my friends were sort of highly artistic. I fell into the visual art of that. So I was making a lot of paintings, collages. I was sort of obsessed with European history that was like post-World War I and post-World War II. So like Dada, a lot of my friends were reading Kafka and like watching French New Wave films. So we sort of, at that time were kind of gravitating to that look and feel.

And yeah, I feel like that was kind of my life throughout high school. A lot of collaging. And when I went to school, I knew I couldn't do art because my parents very specifically were like, you can't do art. So I was like, well, I know graphic design is computers, so I can kind of lie to them and just say that it's— I'm going to school for computers, and they'd probably be fine with that. And they were to a degree.

So that's kind of how I fell into being a graphic designer, I would say.

Christian Solorzano [06:57]

Do you remember your first computer? What was it?

Michal Janicki [07:00]

I do. It was a Mac laptop, which was very expensive at the time to get. I remember that it was, it was fully white. It felt great. It was when the UI was still like 3D and—

Christian Solorzano [07:15]

Yeah, skeuomorphic.

Michal Janicki [07:16]

Yeah, skeuomorphic. It was so great. It's such a good memory.

Christian Solorzano [07:21]

So then, so you go into, you go to the University of Illinois in Chicago to study graphic design. Given that you had some kind of background in design and art by that time, did you feel like you were sort of like at advantage? Because you knew a little bit about maybe visual communication or composition?

Michal Janicki [07:42]

Well, University of Illinois Chicago had a very interesting program, and I was lucky not to feel at an advantage. I felt at an advantage when I, when I started, and I was so excited to meet other people that, had similar interests. But when I started, I remember my first class with our professor, Philip Burton, who kind of comes from this very Swiss school of design and is very strict. So I kind of came into school and I was like, I'm ready to make a website, right?

And he kind of had us cut out typography in very fixed sizes and arrange it on a blank page and put a piece of glass over it. He'd kind of walk around and, mark things that were interesting or not interesting. And I remember being so frustrated with that because it's so tedious and so rough. And how many ways can you like move 3 pieces of type on a page?

And it almost felt like a boot camp, of like something that kind of tears you down a little bit before building you back up. But looking back on it was so great and kind of put everybody on a very level playing field and really started to open people's eyes up to, the poetry of composition and the poetry of how things can flow on a page without all these extraneous things. Just the purity of typography and the purity of shape and form.

So I was, I was immediate. I was as frustrated as I was at the beginning. I was so overwhelmed by the end of, how little I did know. I thought, I thought I was coming in as a big shot, hey, I can make a collage for you. And it was sort of like, maybe, but there's a lot of consideration to this. So yeah.

Christian Solorzano [09:57]

I remember having one design teacher once tell me that I should consider another profession. And this was after, again, like just me thinking that I was like qualified to be a designer because I, had Photoshop on my computer as a teenager. And then all of a sudden it's like a whole different, just like a different standard. And I still think about like that comment that she made.

Michal Janicki [10:23]

Do you think about it like maybe there's something in it or like, no way I'm going to, I'm going to show her? I mean, you never know. Like maybe she is Right. I don't know, maybe. Yeah, it's every designer has these thoughts. I feel like if at least once a week you're not thinking, I should be doing something else, you're probably not a good designer.

Christian Solorzano [10:47]

And on that topic, I get the impression that you're very multidisciplinary, and just looking through the breadth of your work, it's not just like Graphic design. You're also doing a lot of— you're also a developer, coding. That's another means of expression that you talk about. A lot of theater design as well. Walk us through maybe how a lot of these interests come together to sort of shape your outlook as a creative, as a designer, because it doesn't seem like you're just fixated on one particular medium.

Michal Janicki [11:27]

Yeah, I definitely have a problem where I have this weird attention span where I go from one thing to the next. And, I would used to get bored really easily with things. Probably why that class at UIC was such a struggle, because it was a very highly focused thing. So I kind of go all over. I mean, I feel like growing up with kind of the advent of the internet, shaped my interest in that quite a bit.

It's, looking back on it, it's shaped my life quite a bit. I met my husband on the internet. So I mean, it's like, it's crazy what an extreme reach it has. And I love getting to sort of the tinkery side of like, can I make things happen? Can I, can I make my MySpace profile look amazing? If you remember.

Where you used to be able to do that. So I was very interested in that, right in school. I was programming, right there. We had classes that taught us the basics of programming. So I was super interested in the technological aspect of it. And then with theater, that's a very interesting story because I always gravitated to the opposite of what people might think that gay folks gravitate towards. So when I was in high school, I actually didn't take an art class until my senior year.

I only took shop because I was like, I'm gonna do metalworking. I'm gonna— even though I was gravitating towards people that were in art and I was doing a lot of painting and drawing, I didn't want for some reason to be like kind of pigeonholed. And I always thought of theater as like, oh, that's where like, the queer kids go. So I'm not gonna go to that. I'm not gonna be interested in it.

And then when I was in— a little bit out of college, my brother took me to Trapdoor Theater here in Chicago. And it's sort of like an experimental avant-garde theater with a lot of focus on European playwrights, and specifically, the founder, Beata Pielch, is Polish, and she put on a lot of Polish playwrights. And when I saw a play there, my mind exploded. It was just the most amazing experience, I think, in my life.

I saw a play called the Shoemakers by Stanisław Witkaczek, and it had, rock and roll in it. It had screaming. It had nudity. It was, so punk rock. It was in the back of a restaurant. I mean, it was just the most hardcore, awesome, like halfway inaccessible, but also funny thing that I saw. And I remember my jaw being on the floor, and I had my first design job at that point.

And I was thinking to myself, I can't just design for like this sort of like, corporate rich thing. I'm gonna reach out to these people. I'm gonna make a poster. It's so funny looking back on it how naive I was. Like I reached out to this little theater that can barely string a budget together, and I was just I designed three posters for you. Like for free. Like I'm willing to just like come, like, clean the floors. Like whatever you need.

And I've been working with for like. Oh my gosh, like so many seasons, like over a decade. And it— but it was great because it allowed me to kind of have these different expressions of my creativity. And it, I feel like it also mirrored my life in which I was kind of keeping different compartmentalized versions of myself. Like separated.

Like I kind of had like, I had my art friends and I had like, my not art friends, and then I had my like woodworking, and then I had my, like different things all separated. And my professional life started to be very much so similar, where I worked for a financials company, and then I would like keep myself up at night.

Secretly go to a gay bar for a beer and then like come home and like work on theater work. And it was a very unsustainable but very fun time in my life, I would say.

Christian Solorzano [16:24]

Yeah. I love that you mentioned like just being young and naive because I feel like that's such a precious thing to hold on to. Because I've even noticed that I used to be a little bit more willing to take risks when I was younger and just kind of be a little bit more ignorant about just going after something. Whereas I feel like the older you get, you start to get a little bit more calculated. And I think sometimes that's where the spontaneity kind of disappears.

If you start to take yourself a little bit too seriously. But I love that there's this like aspect of so many different facets of you just coming into play, and they're all maybe very different from one another but still share some similarities, which, I mean, I just, I love that.

Michal Janicki [17:17]

It's a big lesson, of how to show up authentically, I feel. It took me such a long time. I'm hoping if any, of, my students or your students are, listening to this, I always tell people, the part that you're trying to, hide away, is going to be the part that helps you so much. And, whatever you're kind of trying to work against or, try to hide, that part will actually allow you to flourish and allow you to take bigger risks. And to take Smarter risks.

And to like, direct, your existence like overall into a place that's both sustainable and interesting at the same time. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [18:14]

Yeah. And I'm curious about how you— so you were working at, was it Morningstar, the financial place? So did you find, did you ever get into the point where you kind of found a conflict of interest between maybe working in a very corporate setting and also maybe doing this more like experimental, playful stuff. Let's say after 5. How did those 2 worlds— was there ever any tension?

Because I feel like a common theme that I see with designers sometimes is that we just hate like the corporate lifestyle of, taking orders, buttoning up and all that stuff. So how do you, how do you balance? Because I mean, today you're at IDEO. I would say like you're still this goth kid on the inside.

Michal Janicki [19:00]

So on the outside too, sometimes I still wear a lot of black, I guess. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, that comes up with, a lot of conversations. When I was teaching at UIC and at Columbia, I was very lucky. I would say that Morningstar is, I feel, still is. I have a lot of friends that are still there. An incredible place to work.

They— design sits very high up in that company still, and it obviously it did when I was there, and they were so supportive. And actually, a lot of, folks that I would think of as like kind of my guides and my mentors were always so supportive. Of everything that I was doing and were so interested in it. I remember when I was at Morningstar, I decided— this is again me being very naive— I was like, I want to make a movie.

I want to make a noir film. And I'm gonna get people to act. And I just like literally asked people like at Morningstar, hey, will I act in this film? And they're like, absolutely. They're just you should absolutely do this. We're gonna support it. 300%. So they were— they're great. They had an educational budget, that allowed people to study. They have amazing programs where people are able to take, breaks from what they're doing, and they have really talented people that work there.

So for me, it was a wonderful place to work, and I remember After a few years, I decided to leave just to get exposure to different types of work. I really— my goal was to work in a studio, and I really wanted to do that. And it was one of the hardest decisions of my life because I didn't want to leave.

I would say like 90% of me didn't want to leave, and 10% was like, oh no, you should take this lower-paying job with less benefits and no stability, right? But a part of me thought, if I don't do this now, it's going to be so much harder to do it later.

Because as you grow older, you get more responsibilities, you get, a lot of different things that you kind of have to do, and kind of taking a huge risk like that and, it, which I didn't know if it would work out at all. It was, it was tough, but I was lucky that I came from a good place. I never felt like, oh, I'm working this corporate job and I hate it, and I wanna do theater posters.

It was kind of like, no, I like it too. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to decide.

Christian Solorzano [22:15]

From conversations that I've been having, it seems like we're in this state where it's all about like systematizing everything and everything is sort of championed for like what performs better. Like we're so data obsessed, like everything just feels so fast-paced. And I know that brings— is a little bit alarming to some people. So how do you, how do you navigate through all the, all that noise?

Michal Janicki [22:41]

I mean, I feel like, first of all, it's totally fine to acknowledge that the world is a very alarming place right now. I feel like if somebody's not alarmed at this point, I'd be like, you're missing a few things that are happening in the world. But kind of like bringing it down to the industry, I feel like there's a lot of shifts. And changes, and they do happen like very like radically fast. I'm not sure that it's that different.

I feel like after kind of like living through all these like the sky is falling moments, of like, you're like, I still remember, people being like, is Photoshop design real design? People kind of being alarmed by that, or like Oh my gosh, you're using Comic Sans, now is that would be so cool. If someone did something Comic Sans, I'd be like, that is amazing, and so, thoughtful.

So I think that there's a lot of change, but I feel like there's also a lot of responsibility that we're finding within ourselves. And maybe that's where some of the, panic might be coming through of, in this sort of like structure that we exist in this, very materialistic world, as Madonna says, are we the material girl? Are we creating some of these like larger-scale issues or contributing to them by utilizing design, in ways that maybe aren't very helpful to people?

Or, are we like ignoring our friend Dieter Rams, of like kind of this do no harm mandate that he almost had. Are we being environmentally conscious? I mean, when you think about, I'm a huge Dieter Rams fanboy, but like when he said that, no one was really like thinking about the environment in the way that we're thinking about it now, or, seeing the effects of all this stuff that's happening.

And I feel like that as designers and specifically as communicators and as people who have been I feel like they— we have been granted a larger seat at the table around, how companies operate and what they do. And, what are products like?

Designers kind of started to morph into this role of like, oh, we can have a fully design-led company, whether it's designing shoes or designing a platform or designing something else, and it can Spin out into being, having much more money at stake than a country might even. I feel like we are starting to sort of deal with the responsibility that we have towards the world and towards shaping it to what we feel it should be.

And also there's a responsibility I feel that designers have for raising our voice and making sure that we are being heard around what should or shouldn't come out into the world. And how, and how.

Christian Solorzano [26:13]

Yeah, I always mention about how, one of the beauties and also the alarming aspect of design is that it kind of touches everything. And there's so much, there could be so much risk involved that when done not thoughtfully.

Michal Janicki [26:29]

If anybody's out there making dark patterns in UX, stop it. Yes.

Christian Solorzano [26:36]

And how do you go about instilling some of this holistic perspective in your students and in maybe the younger generation of people that are going into a changing industry? How do you, how do you go about having those conversations? Because even me, for myself, I remember when I was in graphic design school, we never talked about sustainability or business or like impact or value or anything. It was always just very technical. And it's like, here's how you lay out this type.

But it was never about the implications that come as a result of doing something perhaps in a particular way. So how do you speak with your students about this? And maybe what are some of the responses that you get?

Michal Janicki [27:24]

I like to kind of have this mantra of reminding folks that everything's made up, like units of measurement. They don't really— someone just made it up, the 16:9 format, that just kind of came about because of, pretty random forces. And, the deeper you dig, it's sort of like a lot of things are like that, like money came about because it's a symbolic way of, wealth and transfer of wealth.

And it's sort of, everything at its core has been either invented or just kind of came about because it was a thing that made sense or was convenient at the time. And sometimes these systems can spin out of control. Sometimes they're built on, they're built in a way that's not equitable. They're built in a way that's not accessible to everybody. And that's just the way that we are as humans. We're very imperfect. But it's very important to remember that all these things can be changed.

Maybe they can't be changed in our lifetime, but we have to kind of remember that, just because, somebody says everything should be on a grid. That is not necessarily true. And there are, there are people that have shown us that it doesn't have to be that way. There's a way of finding balance. And I feel like I always want to kind of instill in my students of like, yes, you're here to learn a particular craft and how to be good at that craft.

And it's just very convenient for us to teach you using these things that are already established, because that way we can focus in on this very tiny little thing of like, say, typography or color theory, right? It's, we, we're not answering world problems with Typography 1 class, right? But it's really important to just remember that we can change these things little by little.

And that we can make up our own rules, and we can live by those rules, and we can make the world better that way. So I try to remind them of that. I think the reactions are probably like the reactions of like myself listening to this is like both like, yeah, we can do it, punk rock, and also like eye rolling, probably.

And that's great. I love it when students eye-roll me. That is awesome because I'm always like, yes, question your authority, right? Especially me in that room. For sure, question it. But I've seen, I think, a big change from, I think especially in the post-pandemic world. I feel like it was sort of illustrated for people very quickly about how certain systems can, fall apart, and also how different realities can be built up and believed by many different people.

So there's just a lot of like positive and negative effects of all these things that are happening. And I feel like young people are extremely smart. They may not be able to express it yet. They may not know how to express it. But I feel like they know a lot more than I knew when I was their age, just about how things function and business and technology and how these things kind of intertwine to make our reality around us.

One of the joys of teaching is me learning from them and seeing exactly how they take on these challenges and how they feel and the responses range from people being like, I'm gonna design in a totally punk rock way, and, throw everything out the window. Let's experiment. To like, hey, you know what? I'm in school to get a nice job, and I'd like to learn the viable amount of information that I can from you to secure a good employment that's well paid with good benefits.

Christian Solorzano [32:04]

When you were first learning coding, what were you building? Like you mentioned, like customizing like your MySpace. What did your MySpace look like?

Michal Janicki [32:13]

I was in my very Swiss design moment. So I think it had like, it was very minimal. It was all black. And I was very obsessed with using like Helvetica Neue on everything. So I think it was like pretty boring actually. It wasn't that exciting. I'm trying to remember. I think like some of the first web pages I designed were like really crazy. They're like school assignments. And they were just like very random buttons and kind of constructivist ideas.

And I remember putting down on my resume, knowledge knows HTML, CSS, front-end programming, right? And then like getting to a job where like you actually had to like maybe take that and have like real knowledge and not just experiments was like really fun, but actually a cool way to like utilize that as well.

Christian Solorzano [33:19]

So walk us through maybe a little bit about creating your own studio and maybe what that— maybe what were some of those pain points or challenges that come with doing something like that from the ground up?

Michal Janicki [33:32]

There was never pain points. And I have to say that my studio only like, it doesn't make money. Yeah, it's— I still have a full-time job. I've always— I always have. So it's really more like an outlet for me to, I would say, give back. Like the stuff that I do on the side, like I either do it through volunteer work or through like a very discounted rate for folks. And it's a way for me to like kind of keep my feet in the community.

Teaching kind of came about in a similar way, when you're As, when you're, when you're like a, an associate instructor or professor, it's, you kind of, you're not doing that for the money.

Christian Solorzano [34:31]

I know. It's like play money, like extra cash to—

Michal Janicki [34:36]

Exactly. But what it gives to you back, I feel, is so huge. When I, when I was sort of at that first job at Morningstar, I paid so much attention to Studio Bema, to the theater work, to making movies as a way to kind of explore and see what's out there and who's out there and what are they doing. And also, kind of there's an edge in Chicago. I feel like specifically around film and specifically around theater. And I think graphic design too.

I feel like there's still people kind of like pushing that envelope a little bit. So it was a way to really like keep in touch with that community and to give back.

Christian Solorzano [35:33]

I know that you are an AI user. There's 3 recent posts on your website that I want to ask you about. And the first one is, I would say, like the most recent one because it's the one that appears first on your site, and it's your Budget Pigeon project. Tell us about it. I am very intrigued.

Michal Janicki [35:55]

Budget Pigeon kind of came about through trying to experiment with AI and seeing exactly what it could do. And I thought when— this was like a while ago, like so AI has advanced quite a bit. But when I first started to like experiment with like large language models, and also seeing some of the experiments that my coworkers at IDEO were doing, where they were using AI in like very unexpected and to me interesting ways. It wasn't just oh, I made a picture, isn't it cool?

But it was a little bit more about, setting up systems and, rapid prototyping and, large analysis of, huge data, which, I mean, large language model, that's kind of where that comes from. And I was like, oh, wow, what could this be used for that would be a, funny, because I was doing it on my own, but B, also like kind of maybe useful. So I was checking, what the, what the large language model could return in terms of finance.

And when I think of finance and specifically investing, it's such a mercurial thing, right? Like the market on a day-to-day is sort of driven by the mass feelings of a bunch of people aggregated into a total. So if one day we say Apple stock is worth all of the United States monetary value, and then the next day something happens and we're like, boo, iPhone sucks, we don't think this is worth anything, people stand to lose fortunes or gain fortunes.

So I thought, wow, that's kind of like astrology. It really kind of reminds me of, this sort of need to believe in like, a greater thing that's happening around you. And I thought these 2 concepts of AI and astrology, and I guess the 3rd concept of using AI for that, could be a really interesting thing, a really interesting experiment to get out there. And I decided to see if I could rapidly prototype a real website, like it's a WordPress site, including content writing.

And I was like, all right, like I know about my horoscope and like maybe a few people like near me. Like I was like, I knew Aries, like we're supposed to be like very out there and athletic and competitive. So I asked AI about connecting financial health to what folks might perceive as their personal traits.

And in the— for example, for an Aries, which traditionally if you read a bunch of horoscopes, it says Aries are a bit hotheaded, they make decisions quickly, they're very competitive— that's my sign, that's why I'm kind of aware—

The advice was to Think about investing in a more balanced way, saving up a rainy day fund, taking a look at the balance of a stock portfolio in a 401 if you have one. And I was like, this is great. This is making this sort of tedious budgeting information which most people like don't want to think about, or like aren't too interested in. It's— it can be kind of dry and boring, and it's connecting with something that's extremely deeply personal to them.

And it can do that very quickly, say on a weekly basis or a monthly basis, and it can kind of spit out advice. And if I read that advice and I make sure that there's nothing like harmful in it, it's not like, hey, invest everything into one stock, right?

Christian Solorzano [40:20]

Yeah.

Michal Janicki [40:20]

Like that would be very bad, harmful, terrible information. Don't do that if you're listening. Be balanced. It's not only for Aries, it's for everybody. But I thought, wow, what a great thing. Let me see if I could, stand this up in one weekend.

And I haven't made a WordPress site in a while. I just haven't programmed things in a while. And really quickly I was like, all right, we're making this all black and white, mostly like dark because it's the unknown. It's, astrology. We're just gonna do a quick illustrative style for imagery. But then what I found most compelling about AI is I was just how do you make a header stick on a website in WordPress?

I had no clue. I remember doing it before, but I was like, oh, I have to like go back to that, like think about, the interface changed on WordPress too since I last opened it. And I was just can I just ask? And I did. And it not only did it provide me the answer, it told me how to put it into the interface. You can go in and put in custom code to whatever template you're using.

And then I was like, oh, great, how do I change the type? And it just kind of like kept building with that. All the way to the point of me asking, okay, if I want a site like this to catch on, what should I do? And it sort of gave me generic but useful advice of like, oh, you have to go on social media. You have to let people know about it. You should, discuss this with other people.

And it even gave me like a little bit of a warning of like, things like this take time, or something like that. Like, don't expect success right away. And I just thought that was, that was so such a fun thing for a rapid prototype.

And actually, I put that together and I went back to a few folks at IDEO that were experimenting with AI as well. And they were just oh, write this up, write this up on our blog to just kind of see these different examples of how we can think about emerging technology in a way that, isn't too alarmist, but isn't too, rose-eyed glasses, I think is the saying, either.

How can we kind of remove ourselves a little bit emotionally, cool the engines and look at the technology like it's out there. It's a platform. But how can we shape it to be what we want it to be? And how can we kind of use it in ways that are like honest and positive? I would say my experience was one of the more like basic ones.

Coming out of ID, like other people are doing super interesting things in terms of like sustainability and the environment and storytelling. In ways that was so refreshing, because I always saw these conversations center around AI on like, oh, like it's making these images, and, is it using things that are properly licensed? Is it, going to put designers out of work or illustrators out of work? And there's definitely like, I share those concerns.

I feel like there's definitely bad, weird things with it that we haven't figured out how to deal with yet. But the Budget Pigeon one was, to me, it brought like a little bit of joy just because I could stand something up and do it quickly and do it in a fun way and also make sure that it was like, in my mind, I hope, a positive thing. Like maybe it can get 1 or 2 people interested in—

In finance or like balancing their budget or thinking about, using technologies to answer those questions for themselves or like see a few of those things for themselves.

Christian Solorzano [44:48]

I tend to be on the negative camp when it comes to AI, and I think it's mostly because I see the way that certain businesses talk about it as only a means to productivity, production. Sometimes like my fear is that like AI is going to bypass the thinking that is required to solve problems. So sometimes, having answers so quickly at your fingertips, I don't know, I worry that it's gonna, atrophy our ability to problem solve. That's my perspective.

So what do you have to say to that?

Michal Janicki [45:24]

Going back to the beginning of what you were saying, I feel like the word productivity is, a weirdly coded word. Like a lot of times people say productivity, they mean profit. And, like we do live in a profit-driven society, which is not always that great because I feel like sometimes we equate our productivity to how much profit we make. And like right away when you said that, I kind of paused because I hope that we don't do that.

I really hope that there's more value to things that don't make profit. And I think that you hit on a tension, like it's a very intense tension of how do we put value to our work? I mean, kind of going back to like the stock market and all of that, like a lot of times people will be rewarded for their quote-unquote productivity, but it's productivity within like a certain parameter that's set up for different people. Like specifically, I think there's a tension of creatives.

Like sometimes I find it really like interesting when people do not do very good at their jobs. I love hearing about that. Even people on your show where they say like, I got this job and it was on paper a dream job and I sucked. I was let go. I was just not doing it quite right? And then they go on and just like explode. I mean, Steve Jobs, right? He was like let go from Apple. I mean, that's that is crazy.

But then afterwards, right, he just sort of found like exactly what he was doing. And obviously there's a ton of value in that. So I share your concerns. I feel like when something comes from a place of joy and it aligns with either the client or the firm that you're working for, it's a joyous thing. And to the firm, it's a profitable thing, right? Because like, they gotta pay rent, they gotta pay you, they gotta buy insurance. So they're like, yeah, cool.

Yes, we love awesome things, but we also need to make money. We also need to create value. We need to create profit. So I think there's a tension there. And I love that you're bringing that up because obviously I don't have the answers because I'm kind of talking in circles. But I feel like, that's definitely something to figure out.

Christian Solorzano [48:32]

I mean, I'm all for AI if AI is going to afford me the luxury to work less and spend more time doing the things that matter to me. I don't know, like I mentioned, like so far I've only seen it as just like another, it's like now you're expected to produce even more because the expectation is that you can now do 5 times as much because of these tools. And that's the part that I feel like kind of scares me a little bit.

Because if, for example, if with AI the work week could be reduced to 3 days a week, I'd be like, bring it on. Let's have a longer weekend.

Michal Janicki [49:09]

But you would think that like when computers came about and we no longer had to like Put type, like set type. Like you would think that would have happened then. Like I don't even understand. Like before the internet, like you went into the office and like what did people do? Like you had like a phone and a typewriter. Like I don't know. Like you had to like figure all this stuff out. I mean it's so much work, right?

Just to like produce like the simplest ad or something and like. Faxed it over to a newspaper. But obviously the work week was not reduced, and I feel like that changed the way that creatives work quite extremely, right? Like the types of jobs and the types of work that people did became— I think it became more cerebral. But also, I agree with you. I'm like, Wait, we were promised less work, but now it's more.

Christian Solorzano [50:15]

How would you encourage someone to even get started with playing with AI? Because I know that there's so many, just like so many tools, so many different approaches to it. It's like, what's, what would be like your intro to AI 101 for dummies? Well, how do we, how do we get started with just experimenting and figuring this thing out?

Because I think when you, when you play with it, when you experiment with it, I feel like it makes your opinion be a little bit more informed as opposed to just pointing fingers at it and not really knowing what it is intimately.

Michal Janicki [50:46]

I'd say probably the best way to experiment is to not think about AI and maybe look back on things that are of interest to you or things that you feel like you want to experiment with, whether that's different topics or different ways that things look or histories, etc., right? And to not go into a platform based on what that platform just like is. I think like maybe like Photoshop, right?

Like if you just go into Photoshop and you're like, I want to Photoshop, like what does that mean? Like say you're into, experimenting with collaging, right? But like what kind of collaging and how do you do it? Like you can do yeah. By hand, and that's awesome because it's by hand. But what does it mean with like when you do that with AI? I recently saw an artist that dug up the very first versions of DALL-E where it just had this like weird look to it.

Like it was very specifically rough and just bizarre. And they went back to that and were like experimenting with generating images in that style and actually like leaning into those aesthetics and then translating whatever those aesthetics kind of spit out into a 3D model. So like taking the handmade and like actually twisting it around, which I thought was so fascinating and so it makes you think, right? Where the human part begins and where it ends. I was like, oh, that's so Andy Warhol?

He was kind of making these similar suggestions of like, what does that mean now? What does art mean? And then just recently I heard about a person who submitted a real photo to an AI-generated photo contest and won. And I don't know if this is true or if it's just like the internet telling me something, but I was like, that is so awesome. Like trying to physically like recreate the style of AI, but like for reals.

Christian Solorzano [53:14]

And I saw on your Instagram that you went on vacation and you took some photographs and then you tried to recreate them with AI. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Michal Janicki [53:26]

We went to Iceland. I took, a few photos which I like, just like with my phone. It's always fun when you click on the location and you can see like, millions of people like taking the photo of that one thing that's just very iconic in Iceland, like the black beach or something.

And I just thought like, oh wow, like I bet if I try to recreate this photo, like it would be pretty good because there's so many people like Doing that photograph, like from all these different angles and spaces, and it was like it was pretty like fairly spot on. And this was pretty early, like in image generation, and that really made me think of like why do we do this? Like why do we take like photos of beautiful places and post them on Instagram?

When, someone, a much better photographer probably, has, taken that photo, before. And it's sort of like, you, if you took, an existing photo from a Google image search and posted it, I'd believe you. I'd be like, sure, that's great.

Christian Solorzano [54:41]

Good for you.

Michal Janicki [54:42]

But that experiment was really fun in that it really made me and I haven't figured this out. Like maybe I will, but it really made me question like my activity across social media of like, oh my gosh, like do I just like want people to know I went to Iceland? Like that's not like cute? Like I don't know, like are they interested in this really? Like maybe my friends are to some degree, but like do they need to see it if you've seen it before?

Like it really kind of in something happened in my brain where it was one of those aha moments of, oh my gosh, like all these images that we're taking, like they're kind of superfluous in a way, like especially to how I experienced it, or, how I might journal about it or write about it. Like the artificial intelligence of creating imagery, like really put a bigger value for me on my own, like perception of what happened. And it made me start journaling just for myself.

I actually feel like AI is such a great example of amazing marketing. Probably right now when I think about it, I feel like artificial intelligence is maybe a little bit more interesting outside of the art world. But I mean, with some of the examples that I mentioned before, I think with the right imagination and with the right thinking, you can use it in your practice in a way that doesn't feel icky.

And maybe in ways— like, an easy way for me to do that, just like in my own practice, is to mix things. So if I have an interest in investing or an interest in finance, and I want to mix it with my interest in narrative and my interest in, kind of world building. And then how can I best do that, really quickly? I feel like that, for me, that feels right. That feels like the right, level.

For instance, if I was, making a poster for something, and I was just Here's an AI image I generated. I don't think that's like the worst, but I also don't think that's very interesting. And it can also just, not be as joyful, because I feel like there's such a joy to creation. And even though, yeah, this thing can do it quicker, maybe not better, but quicker.

I mean, I think you can use it, but right now I've— I'm sort of like, oh, I'm still seeing stuff that's like amazing from people that there's such a thought behind it and such a cleverness that I haven't yet seen. We might see it one day, like as it progresses. But currently I'm like especially looking at a lot of the experiments that like my colleagues are doing, I'm like, ooh, I'm actually a bit more interested in, genome sequencing than I am in making a cute picture.

I don't know, it's sort of like, ooh, that's where, that's where, an amazing— that's where the amazing part of it lives. I feel like that feels like progress to me. For me, there's many tensions with AI, but, the tension of, platform versus user. Even when I use any Adobe product, for instance, or Figma, like there's that big Figma conference right now, I'm always like, oh my gosh, like I do like using this product. I feel like it's helping me.

But at the same time, is it also forcing me into particular patterns that have been developed by studying users and studying what people are doing? And studying, quote unquote, what works. There's always that tension of, even when I see design, I love seeing artwork, and I love seeing design where I hate it at first, because that's when you know it's new. Because if it's— if you love it immediately, it's probably not new. You love it because we love mirrors, right? We love seeing ourselves in things.

And when I see something that's not myself, where I'm kind of like, oh, that's uncomfortable, or that's weird, or like, that's ugly. I think that's so cool, to really get into the head of someone and see a new perspective. And for me, that's the tension with platforms of any kind, because I'm like, is Figma making us make everything look exactly the same? And then, that platform is supported by other platforms that like measure, how people interact with things.

I'm like, is it kind of driving us towards a unity of expression?

Christian Solorzano [60:09]

Yeah. I mean, I would say so, because I mean, if you, if we look at the majority of like, for instance, user interfaces, it's no surprise that everything kind of on the web looks the same. Like just looking at, I don't know if you're familiar with like the Web Design Museum online.

But you could go back, you could go back in time and look at websites in the early 2000s, and every website had a very distinct character where like a green background or like experience, like a very strange circular navigation or sound. And I think Figma makes it very easy to, I don't know, standardize everything and—

Michal Janicki [60:50]

A little bit.

Christian Solorzano [60:51]

And I mean, it's great. I'm not hating on it, but I also, to your point, I miss the difficulty of, finding an Easter egg on a website.

Michal Janicki [61:02]

Oh, yeah. No, definitely. I think that's another huge tension because, I mean, I agree with your point. Yeah, the web is starting to look very similar, but also it's more accessible for people than it used to be. We have, contrast tests and, people that are, maybe sight impaired can use it. And we've, we figured out how to get imagery to a certain, image size where it can load really quickly. So if you don't have a fast web connection, you can still use the products.

And, all of that stuff is like, to me, we kind of— we don't live in either a or B. I'm kind of like, we live on this sort of scale between those 2 things. And it's like choosing where you wanna be on that scale. That to me is like so interesting cuz some people are like, yeah, I'm making a website that's like crazy and like you won't know what's going on, right?

And it's like, at what point do you just alienate people and at what point do you pique their interest and make them wanna know more?

Christian Solorzano [62:13]

I mean, I'm keeping an open mind with everything going on right now with AI, but I just haven't been that surprised yet. But like I said, maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. I gotta stay away from LinkedIn because that's—

Michal Janicki [62:28]

Well, I'll be, I'll be watching for what you come up with. I feel like that's a good— I don't know, I feel like it's a, it's a nice challenge.

Christian Solorzano [62:39]

And we all know that you don't have much to do, right? So yeah, do you wanna actually— do you wanna give myself and the audience right now an AI challenge? What should we what should we do? What's a good exercise for us that maybe we could check in 6 months and maybe do a little show and tell? That's what we need, like some homework.

Michal Janicki [63:03]

Look at us teachers. I mean, we could, we could, we could think about how do we bring the AI thing into a tangible thing. Or maybe a competition for, who can make the least AI-looking AI image without manipulating it.

Christian Solorzano [63:22]

The least AI image, the least AI-looking image using AI without manipulating it.

Michal Janicki [63:28]

Just prompt, just prompting. No just, yeah. And from scratch, no uploading things, no referencing, like specifics, just prompting it to be the most specific. And maybe we can also throw in like the most stylistically you.

Christian Solorzano [63:49]

So for anyone that's listening, that'll be your— it's a first. We've never given the audience a homework assignment. And so we're almost at the hour, but I just have like a few more questions and they're related to you outside of, the world of design. But I'm interested in hearing about what are your other interests?

We've talked a lot about theater, we talked about graphic design, teaching, all these other things, but how do you, how do you like recover, like decompress, or how do you go about like when you want to turn your brain off? Like what's something about you that maybe someone wouldn't be able to pick up from looking up, looking you up online?

Michal Janicki [64:32]

Decompress. RuPaul's Drag Race is great for decompressing. You can kind of just space out and look at Colors on the screen. It's great. Yeah, I would say like travel is a huge part of it. My husband and I definitely like travel quite extensively and try to do it as much as possible. I feel like it brings not only great decompression, but just, I don't know, it just opens your world up a little bit. It's awesome.

And definitely just like spending time with my husband is just healing to me. It's, it has— we've been together for almost 10 years and it hasn't gotten old yet. Being around family and friends, definitely. Is great as well. Meditation has been a huge part of my life for quite a while. So just kind of, either something as simple as just walking and like just focusing on the very act of walking and, touching grass, as they say, outside is it's huge.

It's a huge power I feel that is within like each person to kind of slow down and, get quiet.

Christian Solorzano [66:15]

Yeah, meditation for me has been a big, just a big part of the creative process. I feel like it's kind of essential to quiet the mind. If you, if you could give any words of wisdom either to just to the audience, like what are your parting words? What are, what's something that you wish yeah, someone could take away from this conversation? I feel like there are so many gems, but what's your, what's your call to action for the listener?

Michal Janicki [66:45]

That's a good question. So it might be kind of glib, but I usually quote Björk on this. I just feel like she's had so many good calls to action. But one of her lyrics says, imagine a future and be in it. And I would say that's my call to action. Let's everybody imagine what we want this future to be. That's, an actual one that we'd want to be in. It's so easy to imagine, terrible and dark things.

But it's, I think, a lot, much more harder work to imagine constructive and bright and amazing things that bring us together.

Christian Solorzano [67:29]

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. It was a joy speaking with you. And now that we're on each other's radar, I hope that at some point we could do some kind of collaboration.

Michal Janicki [67:41]

Yeah, totally. Thank you for doing this. This is such a great service to the Chicago design community. This is amazing.

Christian Solorzano [67:48]

Thank you. I appreciate it. What a cool episode that was. Thank you so much for sticking around till the end. To learn more about the show, to learn more about the Chicago Graphic Design Club, visit us at www.chicagographicdesign.club. We have some exciting programming happening this summer, so our Instagram is the best way to stay up to date. Thank you.