The Amicus
My Blog
This Substack is my continued ponderings, discoveries and creative practice as I play with the lay lines between Design, Feminism and all things witch adjacent. Think of it like a witches brew. I’ll keep throwing things together until the magic happens.
In 2024 I completed my Graphic Design MA at The University of Portsmouth. My project focussed around The Image of The Witch in Modern Feminism but opened the proverbial can of worms that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to wrestle back into the potion jar.
My final resolution focused on producing a new Malleus, but in service to the witch and the other. What if, as we seem to lurch closer to a new era of neighbourly distrust, unfair trials and harmful bias, we don’t attack the other, but embrace it? What if we welcome our witches, learn from them and invoke a spell of empathy?
To answer this I created the Amicus Maleficarum, or ‘Friend of Witches’. It was designed and written in response to the Malleus and is even in direct conversation with it at times. You can read about it here.
Whilst I am infinitely proud of this project, the questions, stories and ongoing injustices I read about in producing the Amicus still exist. The worms are still very much out of the can and the thread I began pulling in the Autumn of 2023 continues to unravel into new tangles, experiences and stories. I’ve gone through the looking glass and I can’t go back through even though my MA has concluded.
This Substack is my continued ponderings, discoveries and creative practice as I play with the lay lines between Design, Feminism and all things witch adjacent. It unnerves me to tell you there will be no answers, no hard and fast conclusions and no neatly wrapped bow of safe, complete end points. There will be terrible creative practice results, and my own thoughts around world events. There will be history posts, and some that dance with design ethics like postitionality and what the fuck is AI anyway.
