Critical Daily    Critical practice in graphic design

As the weather goes more cold and unfriendly during the autumn and winter time it complicates the everyday life: all public transport and travelling in general is getting more and more uncomfortable, difficult and stressful. Especially if I am in hurry in the early morning, there are leaves, snow or eve rubbish on my car windows, I need to clean it first before leaving the house.In the most cases it takes always a bit of time. It happens especially when I have every second exactly planned.

During the cleaning of my car I usually don’t get angry. But I feel stressed, sour and maybe sometimes ironic. I was thinking about how could I make myself or anyone else more calm and relaxed during these unpleasant morning cleanings with the cars.

So I started to search for motivating or positive quotes, put them on a cute and folded paper with a shape of a leaf and placed them under the wipers of the cars. Of course on place, where they don’t confuse and mind the view of the driver. These were my most favourite quotes:

Smile :)
Relax and calm :)
Have a nice day :)
Don’t stress :)
Enjoy the day today :)

I spread my quotes on the 5th of December, and people found them on the next day, when traditionally Saint Nicolaus gives candies and small presents to kids. Of course I was a bit afraid, while I was distributing the little paper objects on the parking lots in front of my house. I was scared of switching the alarms on cars but thanx god it nothing happened.

When I checked the cars twice the next day, the messages disappeared. I noticed, that almost everybody took them, somebody left them outside their cars, maybe some of them where thrown away.
But I hope at least they made them smile. I was glad.

I hope I made this day a bit more special, maybe I made the drivers more opened for ad hoc gifts, made this morning less stressful and more joyful while doing their early morning cleaning rituals.

This project was created during the course Critic – Critical practice in Graphic Design at Department of Visual Communication at Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. Tutored by Katarína Balážiková. The course foucuses on practicing and developing individual or collaborative critical projects.