With her limited edition letterpress printed artistamp, Jennifer Armburst shares 12 principles for prototyping a feminist business. Radical reminders to stick around your business.
Jennifer Armbrust is the founder and director of Sister where she cultivates teaching & tools for the feminine economy and runs Feminist Business School. Her work explores the collisions and collusions of art, business, gender, embodiment and economics. She has long been interested in the intersections of business and art and more recently, business as art. She lives in Topanga Canyon, California, where she is lovingly devoted to surfing 3-foot right point breaks, while dreaming of the elusive left.
Have you designed a stamp before?
Only rubber, never postage.
What was the most interesting or fun aspect of designing for this form, a poster stamp? What unique challenges did it present?
These days, my work is more about ideas than images. It was a fun challenge to imagine how a sheet of stamps could be a useful medium for conveying intellectual ideas. I wanted to design something for business owners, my primary clientele. Back in college, I had a friend who was learning Russian and she had stickers with the Russian words for things stuck on objects all around her house, as a learning device. I like thinking of these as a learning tool, a way of retraining oneself to do business in a new way. Stamps stick on things. These are intended to be stuck around one’s office or business (such as on a laptop, desk, book, or door) to stay connected with these ideas throughout the day.
Tell us about the art. Did you create something new for this stamp?
These are ideas I have been working with for the past three years, so the text is not new. However, I am generally prone to making everything yellow so the hot pink is a playful divergence. The surprising thing about florescent pink is that its an incredibly versatile color, it looks good in a lot of different schema. So, I thought these would be complimentary in a variety of physical environments. And also, the pink really pops, which is a good quality for any reminder to have.
Anything else?
It’s fun to buy beautiful things and keep them in their packaging. But, I really hope people use these. If you hang these around the office or workplace, please send us a photo or tag us @sister.is on Instagram. I’m so curious to see how people put these to use! Maybe in the future I’ll do a follow-up surveys to see if these actually influenced anyone’s business behaviors.