A Time for Chrysalis

We are in a moment of rapid upheaval that has been decades and centuries in the making.

We, and the collaborators and organizations we work with, are targets of the US administration. We’re coping with vicarious trauma in witnessing people we love fall apart and people that look like us being brutalized. We’re watching as AI is separating humans from the most human act of all, creation.

While it’s tempting to do what we’ve often done in moments of crisis — take on more of the same but do it faster — we know that this time, we must respond differently.

These conditions were not manufactured overnight, and they cannot be addressed by us doing the same work faster. This moment requires us to draw on a deep well of imagination to create a path towards resilience for ourselves, so we might continue being useful to our communities.

So, we have decided to pause our projects for three months so we can explore the three questions at the heart of this struggle: Where can our practice have the most impact in this time of global polycrisis? How might we continue to transform the ways that design happens in our world? And, how can we do the work our communities are calling us to do in ways that we can actually sustain?

Since 2012, And Also Too has been designing with communities on the front lines of struggles for justice and liberation.

It might not be entirely obvious, but there are two parts to our practice. One part is our design justice practice — co-creating visuals, tools, and resources for social movements. This work accounts for nearly all our income.

The other part is what we’ve come to call gift work — sharing our practice and learnings with our beloved community. This has taken the form of:

• Ideas we’ve synthesized like the Design Justice Principles and the Consentful Tech Framework;
• Tools we’ve crafted like the Analog Data Kit and the Vision Archive;
• Reflections on our design practice through our stories and journal;
• Pro bono design work for grassroots mobilizations;
• Calls with researchers wanting to learn about design justice practice; and
• Portfolio review and career advice sessions with emerging design justice practitioners.

This gift practice is largely unfunded, but is equally important to our mission of redistributing power in design. It has also broadened the impact of design justice beyond the communities we can reach with direct contract work.

We have avoided choosing one of these halves thus far, maybe due to persistent attachment issues, or maybe because of the elegant ways that these parts nourish each other. Whatever the reason, it’s been a challenging way to operate.

Those challenges are now too pressing to ignore, and too difficult to tackle while we juggle the day to day work in increasingly chaotic and violent times.

A chrysalis is the pupal stage of a butterfly — when the caterpillar retreats into a cocoon to prepare for transformation.

Chrysalis was the metaphor used by the Allied Media Conference in 2019, when they paused for a year to consider how to grow intentionally and accessibly. That pause was critical in shoring the team up for the first ever virtual AMC in 2020. And Also Too creative director Una Lee was humbled to be part of that team as design director.

Our Chrysalis will be a time of protected transformation. We will be staying connected, but much of the work that we’ll be doing will be done in seclusion.

Our last day in the studio will be Thursday, March 27, 2025. We will be working to wind everything down in the 2 weeks prior.

Our first day back in the studio will be Wednesday, July 2, 2025. Please be patient with us as we spin everything back up; it may take a week or so for us to respond to any inquiries.

We will be keeping an eye on email, but please know that we will be slow to respond.

If we have signed an agreement, absolutely! For other projects, most likely, though it’s possible that the scope and timelines will be different than discussed.

We would love to. Please send an email to collaborate@andalsotoo.net. Thank you in advance for your patience, as we may be slow to respond.

For the most part, we are self-funding this period.

If our gift work has made a difference in your own practice, if you’ve built upon what we’ve created, or if you’ve benefited from our insights, we’d be so grateful if you considered supporting our transformation so we can work on more offerings like the Design Justice Principles, the Consentful Tech Project, the Analog Data Kit, and storytelling about design justice practice.

You can support us by donating to the Consentful Tech Project or if you’re in Canada, you can contribute via Interac e-transfer to collaborate@andalsotoo.net.

Yes, thank you!

Yes, but to ensure you are paid in a timely manner, please submit any invoices by Friday March 21, 2025. There will be a delay in processing any invoices received later than March 21.

During this time, we’ll be catching up on rest, reading, connecting and reconnecting with co-conspirators like yourself, and conceiving new possibilities for our future form. Outside of work, we will continue to support local and translocal organizing efforts.

We hope to emerge from our Chrysalis with renewed energy and the beginnings of our new shape.

Thanks for asking! Reading (and listening) always helps us understand and navigate the moment we’re living in.

We’d love your recommendations!

Books we’re reading

• Imagination: A Manifesto, Ruha Benjamin
• Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care, Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes
• When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse, Norma Wong
• Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
• Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire, Alice Wong, ed
• Palestine in a World on Fire, Katherine Natanel and Ilan Pappé, eds
• No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, Naomi Klein

Books we’re re-reading

• Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, adrienne maree brown
• Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), Dean Spade

News Sites

• truthout.org
• democracynow.org

Podcasts

• Movement Memos with Kelly Hayes
• How to Survive the End of the World with Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown
• Becoming the People with Prentis Hemphill

Yes, we will take some time to digest, and eventually share our insights.

Yes! Though it’s impossible to say how right now.