My second annual visit to Chapman University for Jillian Warren’s course in Chapman’s graphic design program. This year, I gave a talk on speculative design and design fiction and we had a fun workshop with Q&A discussing the role of speculation in visual design and communication.

One of the consistent questions that has been coming up in these talks is, not surprisingly, is something around “How do you make a living doing speculative design?” or “How do you get paid to do design fiction work?” It’s come up so consistently — from the Harvard-Westlake panel on AI last week, to the four hours of fun one-on-one’s with Liam Young’s students at SCI-Arc yesterday — that I feel like I need to put something together on that point.

But this reminded me of Metalabel’s Promotional Principles for Creative People, which I think is a great starting point for anyone thinking about how to make a living as a creative person, including those working in speculative design and design fiction. If you cannot promote your work, no one will know about it, and if no one knows about it, you cannot make a living from it. There was a time when artists could rely on galleries, agents, or publishers to promote their work for them, but in today’s world, especially with the rise of digital platforms and social media, self-promotion has become an essential skill for creatives.

If it becomes difficult to do, I simply don’t think it’s possible to not do it and expect one to hope one will magically be recognized, seen, noticed or stumbled-upon. It just doesn’t work that way anymore. So, if you are a speculative designer or design fiction practitioner wondering how to make a living, start by thinking about how you can promote your work effectively. Use social media, build a website, network with other creatives and potential clients, and find ways to showcase your work to the right audiences. Promotion is not just about selling; it’s about sharing your vision and connecting with people who resonate with your ideas.

I had some of these challenges myself until I learned to feel and see the joy I had in creating, and then the fun I had with sharing my work. And in contrast to that, when The Manual of Design Fiction came out, I realized that the co-authors really had difficulty doing that, which I found a bit bewildering. It’d be one post — if that — and they were done. No follow-up, no series of blog posts. It was as if they thought waiting to be invited to say something or that they couldn’t find the kind of mindset to outwardly represent a sense of pride in their own efforts. I remember these weird conversations where I was posting and just having fun / experimenting with what I was hoping would draw attention to this beautiful book, and I’d get angry text messages or DMs back on Instagram that were, like, literally, “WTF are you doing!?”. And in my head I was thinking, “Um..WTF are you doing? Why aren’t you promoting this thing we all worked on together? Don’t you want people to know about it? Don’t you want to share it with the world?” It was a real eye-opener for me about how different people approach promotion and self-presentation. And my take-away was that I didn’t want to work with people who couldn’t attach themselves to at least a similar feeling I had about the work. Too tight.