Interview: Straight Talkin' w. Eugenia Digon
One designer's desire to cut the bullshit and tell it as it is.
Today we have an extra special interview. Eugenia Digon is a designer from Argentina who moved to Paris not so long ago. Why I wanted to hear more about her perspective and experience of creative work is because she is critical.
Ginny is asking questions, and when one does that they tend to feel frustrated. Here at No Fun, we like to give space to the frustrated, the challenging, and those voices that are not accepting the status quo as inevitable.
How Ginny and I met was via Offline Matters. She wrote to me after reading the book and felt equally dissatisfied at the data-delusions and sense of diminishing possibility within creative work today. Thus, we decided to talk about it.
Here is that talk.
Dear Ginny,
Welcome to No Fun. It’s so great you reached out. First off, could you tell us about your work, what a day looks like for you, and how your experience of working during the pandemic has been?
Hi, Jess! First of all, thank you so much for having me here. I feel honored and low-key nervous. Currently, I live in Paris. I moved here about a year and a half ago after I left my hometown of Buenos Aires where I lived all my life until coming here.
I live a rather quiet life nowadays, with my days usually occupied by work, going to parks to read, walking around the city with my headphones on, discovering new restaurants, and failing at mastering the French language.
I’m a graphic designer/visual communicator that works mostly on branding and visual design. I work remotely and have been doing for over 4 years now. As working from home was already my ‘normal’, it didn’t really effect me when the pandemic started.
But then when a curfew starting at 6pm was introduced and things got a bit crazy. That period lasted almost 7 months. During that time it felt like I was only living to work. Once the workday was over, surprise!… You couldn’t leave home, go anywhere, do anything or see anybody. The area in my apartment where I work turned into the place where I also slept, ate, did exercise, read… Just now, and not on purpose, I just described the situation as “the place where I work turned into home” rather than the other way around. That shows how much work has become a central element of life during the pandemic. For me it really felt like there was no chance to do anything else.
This obviously impacted the work-related aspects of my mental health. I have been stuck in a loop feeling as though my value as a person equates to my value as a “professional”. Only recently have I started coming out of it. But I’ll be honest, I’ve had a burnout. And I’m still in it.