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As the Barack Obama Presidential Center takes shape ahead of its June 2026 opening, some observers have pointed feedback about an element of the building’s design. The Chicago tower features all-caps lettering that wraps around two sides of the building. But for many people, the textan excerpt from the former presidents speech in 2015, on the 50th anniversary of the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabamais nearly impossible to read. Its designers say legibility isn’t the onlyor even the primaryfunction of the lettering. “One of the key questions I asked at the beginning was, are people supposed to read this?” says designer Micheal Bierut, who typeset the lettering with a team at Pentagram, led by designer Britt Cobb. “Is legibility the primary goal here? Do we want people to be able to stand on the ground, look up at this tower, and read those words? And that was discussed on the client end, and the answer came back, ‘No, it should have the promise of meaning, it should be decipherable, everything should be spelled right and it should make sense. [Rendering: The Obama Foundation] Letters as texture Early concepts of the Obama Presidential Center designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) showed a perforated upper section depicted in drawings as an abstract, irregular pattern. At one point, architects considered filling the space with a bunch of words, like a word cloud, though that idea didn’t feel quite dignified enough for a presidential library. Instead, they decided to use an excerpt from one of Obama’s speeches. “Just as a million people go to the Lincoln Memorial, some of them will stand and read every word of the second inaugural; some people will just admire the statue in the building and kind of take it in, and a couple of words will jump out, but not the whole thing,” Bierut tells Fast Company. “It’s in that tradition that I think we were operating.” The function of the feature is to serve as a space on the building that would be illuminated to the outside at night; from the inside, it’s a viewing area. Bierut says it was “never intended to look or feel or communicate as an applied sign stuck on the building.” It’s part of the architecture, not separate from it. Not everyone is a fan, though. Chicago Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey wrote on X that the text was “tough to read to me, giving off the lorem ipsum vibes,” referring to the Latin dummy text designers use as a placeholder when typesetting, while other X users joked the full quote can only be fully read by a drone as a dual dig against the design and against the Obama administration’s drone warfare program. [Photo: E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images] Typesetting an architectural feature The words are load-bearing, which added an element of complexity to the design process. “We’re moving around typography, adjusting letter sizes and letter spacing, and suddenly you’re typesetting 5-foot letters that are bearing tons of weight,” Cobb says. “It gets to a point where it becomes [more] about structural design. . . . I might say how I wish that letter could be three inches closer, but no, sorry, it’s bearing all this weight. It’s got to be here instead of there.” The letters are set in an adapted version of Gotham, Obama’s presidential campaign font, and the excerpt comes from one of Obama’s most famous speeches as president. Given at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the National Historic Landmark where police attacked civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday 1965, Obama tied Selma to the broader American story in his speech. The excerpt reads: “You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word We. We the People. We Shall Overcome. Yes We Can. That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.” The text as it appears on the building wasn’t designed to be a billboard or read as a speech. It’s a pep talk to America. You are America. We the people. Yes we can. Even if glanced only in snippets, these words still hold power.
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E-Commerce
When I worked a corporate job, I was often in charge of purchasing decisions. At one company, my team had inherited a lot of homegrown solutions. I saw the limitations of these products and was quick to replace them if the budget allowed. In corporate settings, “build vs. buy” is a well-known decision framework. Companies weigh the cost of developing something in-house against purchasing an outside solution. Its often simple math: how much time and resources does it take to maintain this internally versus what does it cost to buy or outsource? Solopreneurs face the same decision constantly. However, the stakes are a lot higher when it’s your own time and own money as decision factors. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/11\/work-better-1.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/11\/work-better-mobile-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Work Better\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Thoughts on the future of work, career pivots, and why work shouldn\u0027t suck, by Anna Burgess Yang. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.workbetter.media\/\u0022\u003Eworkbetter.media\u003C\/a\u003E.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.workbetter.media","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91457605,"imageMobileId":91457608,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Knowing when to DIY and when to hire out is one of the most important operational decisions a solopreneur makesand one thats hard to figure out until youve been through it a few times. When to DIY Not everything needs to be outsourced. Some tasks or projects are worth learning yourself, even if the learning curve is steep at first. The strongest case for DIY is when you’ll repeat the task often, and it touches a core part of your business. Updating the basics on your own website or maintaining your project management toolthese are things you’ll do over and over. If you outsource them, you’ll either keep paying someone else or find yourself stuck when you need to make a quick change. There’s also value in the learning itself because figuring something out makes you a better operator. An example of this might be understanding your business’s financials. Even if you pay a bookkeeper to prepare them, you still need baseline knowledge about your numbers. If you outsource and dont take the time to understand the output, youve created a blind spot in your business. And sometimes, the budget just isn’t there yet. That’s a valid reason to DIY, especially when you’re starting out. But it helps to set a time limit, especially for one-off projects. If you’ve spent a few weeks trying to make something work and you’re no closer to a result you can actually use, that’s a signal to stop and reassess. When to hire it out When I first started my solo business, I created all kinds of assets in Canva. Banners, social graphicsyou name it, I made it. But eventually I realized that Id hit the limit of my design abilities. There was no easy way for me to learn those skills, nor were they a core part of my regular business. So I hired someone to do a design overhaul and create everything for me. Hiring help is a trade. You’re exchanging money to gain back your time (and, quite possibly, your sanity). Often, for a better result than you’d produce on your own. The clearest case for hiring is one-time, high-skill tasks where quality matters. In addition to design, you might hire for legal contracts or tax setup. These aren’t things most solopreneurs will do repeatedly, and the cost of getting them wrong can be higher than the cost of hiring a professional. It’s also worth hiring when a poor DIY result could cost you credibility or clients. A clunky website or an amateur-looking proposal might turn away the exact opportunities you’re working to attract. Here’s a quick filter you can use. Ask yourself:How often will I do this? Does quality matter a lot? Could I earn more in the time it would take me to learn? If the answer to that last question is yes, hiring almost always makes sense. The real cost of I’ll just figure it out When you’re solo, your time has a direct dollar value. Every hour you spend learning website design or wrestling with accounting software is an hour you’re not doing client work. That’s a real cost, even if its not reflected in your businesss financials. Of course, solopreneurs sometimes can’t afford the upfront cost to hire. That’s a very real consideration, especially in the early days. There’s no universal right answer to DIY versus hiring. But being intentional about the decisionrather than defaulting to “I’ll just figure it out”is what separates solopreneurs who stay stuck from those who move their businesses forward. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/11\/work-better-1.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/11\/work-better-mobile-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Work Better\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Thoughts on the future of work, career pivots, and why work shouldn\u0027t suck, by Anna Burgess Yang. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.workbetter.media\/\u0022\u003Eworkbetter.media\u003C\/a\u003E.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.workbetter.media","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91457605,"imageMobileId":91457608,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
Being a freelance designer has its perks, but pay transparency is not one of them. Designers are constantly forced to second-guess themselves: Should you charge a day rate or a project fee? Are you earning as much as your peers? Is AI taking work/jobs away from you? Today were launching a new, data-driven effort in partnership with the American Institute of Graphic Arts to help you answer those questions and more with confidence. Its called the Design Pricing Transparency Project, and its dedicated to helping freelance designers understand how much they should be charging for their work. Were asking designers across the industrygraphic designers, UX professionals, art directors, and othersto help us gather information by taking a short survey. We want to know what kind of projects youre working on, how you price that work, and how youre feeling about the general state of freelancing in 2026. If youre a full-time or part-time freelance designer (yes, even if you have a full-time job!) we want to hear from you. And we know that getting paid is not a one-way street. Thats why were also asking companies that hire freelance designers to tell us what they pay, what theyre projecting for the coming year, and how AI factors into all of it. Our goal is to create a detailed snapshot of the freelance financial landscape. Well share the results later this year in a special report. You can take the survey here.
Category:
E-Commerce
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