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A project I think about often is Signs of the Times by Elaine Lopez, using public, familiar vernacular of street signs to express a personal message. The repetition and representation of these personal feelings in signage form elevated it to a new level of ... banality and forgettability. The mass production of signage also takes away from the uniqueness and singleness of the personal feeling, making it more replicable and accessible.

Throughout the weekly assignments, I was particularly intrigued by

I have long been interested in Frieda Hughes' My Mother poem and its focus on the commodification of deaths and grief. It made me think of the "Thank You"s that are splattered on plastic bags and how

I like the repetition as a method to express time, but also as an attempt to convert human emotions and losses into quantifiable metrics, ie. when is a good time to stop grieving? when is a natural end to grieving?. For John List's letter, it's a banal description

and

Both text is a depiction of grief in different formats, using banality and mass production as a mean to lessen the pain.

mockups of greeting cards

Repeating something makes it more noticeable but less important.

The more I repeat something, the less meaning it has.

The greeting card industry manages the challenge of mass-producing images and texts for use in interpersonal communication through both specific production techniques and narratives that “make sense” of this seemingly paradoxical task. The mass production of the personal is negotiated in the processes of writing sentiments and creating designs, as well as in identifying sending situations for cards. At Hallmark, the approach to creating emotional, relational communication for anonymous others is captured by the phrase “universal specificity,” which suggests that people’s emotions are essentially universal, and that the industry can meet the nation’s social expression needs by customizing these core insights. This view justifies the high level of concentration in this cultural industry. “Universal specificity” as a logic of cultural production conflicts with other, arguably more dominant theories of what constitutes authentic communication, in which emotional expression should be original, unique, and emanating from the speaker.