In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Jewish futurist and community artist Mike Wirth sits down with graphic designer Alex Duchene to explore what it means to be a neurodivergent, Jewish creative. They talk about ADHD “neuro spicey super powers,” how neurodivergence shapes their design practice, and why stories are the throughline that connects their creative, Jewish, and neurodivergent identities. This is a conversation about thinking differently, designing with intention, and what Jewish futurism looks like through an ADHD lens.
Episode Transcript
Welcome back to the Jewish Futurism Lab, where we unpack Torah, tech, and tomorrow. I’m Mike Wirth, Jewish futurist, community artist, and design educator coming to you from Crowntown, Charlotte, North Carolina. Today, we’re switching gears and we’ll talk about what happens when Jewish identity meets graphic design, ADHD, and neurospicy superpowers with Jewish graphic designer Alex Duchen. This is the episode where Jewish futurism gets into the mind, the margins, and the messy beautiful ways ADHD and Jewish creativity collide. Let’s get into it, y’all.
Alex Duchenne is a Jewish graphic designer on a mission to make activism accessible, sharable, and rooted in real lived experience. I first came across Alex’s work on Instagram shortly after October 7th. Her punchy, typographically driven posts with quotes layered with minimal imagery signaled that she was using the language of graphic design to share her perspective of a Jewish neurodeivergent creative woman. Alex understands the experience of an ADHD brain and reflects that wiring in the way she thinks, designs, and connects with others. But here’s where it gets interesting. Alex isn’t just designing for aesthetics and a paycheck. She’s designing for her community. She supports other artists. She centers connections and turns complex emotions, political realities, and religious identity into visuals that feel both personal and universal. In our conversation, we talk about what it means to be neurode divergent Jewish graphic designers and how our super spicy neurode divergent powers shape our work and why stories are the throughine that connects our creative neurodeivergent and Jewish selves. Alex and I also talk about the graphic design industry, the joys and the challenges of being an ADHD brain in that space and how neurode divergence shows up in our creative process and what we want our future descendants to inherit from this moment of Jewish futurism. We explore how design can be a tool for reflection, resistance, and relatability, and why Alex is an amazing practitioner of Jewish futurism in every pixel that she places. So, without further ado, here’s my conversation with Jewish graphic designer Alex Duchen.
Friends, we’re here with the uh amazing Alex Duchen um who is from our great state of the north, the 51st state. No, we’re kidding. We’re kidding. our wonderful neighbors up in Canada. And uh you’re located right now in Toronto, right? I’m in Toronto. Yes, I was uh I moved here in 2008, but I was born and raised and grew up in uh Montreal. Beautiful. Beautiful. Tell us tell us a little bit about your your Jewish story, your your uh your origin. So, uh, my parents came to Canada. My mom came to Canada from Morocco, um, along with, uh, her parents and her siblings. And some of her siblings were already married with kids. Um, so they came to Canada where the rest of the extended family like, you know, the the my mom’s aunts and uncles with their kids and some of their grandkids, they all went to Israel. uh for whatever reason this part of the family decided to come. They were initially actually going to go to France and then my aunt went to France. She didn’t like it and she was like, “Oh, but I heard about this place called Montreal. They speak French. Let’s go there.” Um so they ended up in Montreal. My dad uh came to Montreal from France in 1964. And he met my mom in Montreal. And my dad was born Catholic. He converted to Judaism. uh when he met my mom, he always told us that it it resonated with him so much more than his own upbringing. And not that he came from a super religious family, but whatever, you know, the Catholic upbringing that he had never resonated with him. And you know, when he got into my mom’s family, he just felt like he belonged for the first time in a long time. And so it really he gravitated to it. And it’s funny because my dad was actually the one who, you know, taught us about Jewish history and taught us about the Holocaust and all. It wasn’t my mom, it was my dad. Yeah. So that’s a little bit of my And I grew up in a very, you know, conservative sphartic Jewish home. Uh we weren’t highly religious. The the high holidays were sacred. You know, Yamiper and Passover, we were like it was we followed to like the letter everything. We cleaned the house for weeks before Passover. It was very But in between those holidays, you know, other than keeping kosher at home, like we we didn’t have like a daily practice, but it was present, you know, Jewish life and Jewish traditions and Jewish customs and and culture was very present in our home. So that’s my Jewish life for you. And I’m an artist. I, you know, from as long as I can remember. I mean, as far back as being a child, like I was always an artist. like I you know I was that kid that would lock myself in my room for hours and just draw. I also went through a lot of trauma as a child. I had a very difficult childhood. Um and so it was my art was it I always say that it saved my life because it kept me sane. It was a way for me to escape. It was a way for me to express myself but I didn’t know how else to express myself. You know as a child going through trauma that’s also neurode divergent and doesn’t have the tools and doesn’t even know what the hell that is. So, I was an artist and you know, my dream was to grow up and be an artist, but um I was highly intelligent. My grades were through the roof and you know, my mom was very like, “No, you’re going to be an engineer. You’re going to be a doctor. You’re going to be a lawyer. You’re going to be So, I went to school, you know, in pure and applied science and I did quantum physics and chemistry and advanced chemistry and all those things. And then when I reached university, I got a job in an advertising agency to help me put myself through school and uh because I was, you know, starting to think about uh moving out of my parents house. So I wanted to start making some money and I discovered graphic design. That’s when I was like, okay, maybe this is something that I can do that I can actually make a career out of and that will also allow me to, you know, be a creative. And the other piece of that puzzle for me was also the fact that as soon as I got on the job market as a neurode divergent, I I had a really hard time functioning in like the 9-to-f5 very structured environment. And so I immediately knew that my path would have to include me finding a way to work on my own own terms as an artist, be a freelancer. I worked in advertising for many years and then par and parallel to that I started teaching myself graphic design. I bought a Mac, my first Mac computer in 1999. I became like a a full Mac geek for a few years. Like I literally took my computer apart and put it back together to learn about the actual hardware and that and then I started building my own computers from like buying pieces and building my own computers for a couple of years. Back when you can do that? Yeah. Like I would, you know, I would buy like a motherboard and then I would buy the K and I would, you know, assemble. I had I, you know, it didn’t always work, but I had so much fun doing that. Um you could you could open the side of some of those like G4 G5 Max. Right. Exactly. Different components in them. So it was very cool and I had a lot of fun uh geeking out that way and I and I became like a little bit of an IT nerd and I learned you know I learned like HTML and like the beginning of Flash when websites became a thing and you know all that stuff. But it was very clear for me that okay, this could be a creative a way for me to live my life as an artist and and actually make a living and not be stuck in a 9-to-five job that I hate to just go home at night and make a painting kind of thing. I didn’t want to do that. Like I was like, “No, I I’m I will not survive doing that.” So, I taught myself graphic design. I started taking little jobs on the side. Even when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, I would just say, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” And I’ll and I figure it out and I learn and apply. And then um when I moved to Toronto in 2008, that’s when I was like, “Okay, I’m not going to go and find a job. I’m just going to I’m going to do this. I’m just going to jump in and let’s just hope it works.” And I started my own little freelance business and I grew it and uh here I am now 15 years later, 16 years later. Well, masle tub. Masleto. So, I’ve been asking a lot of artists this. At what point in your career did you start to feel like I should be making some Jewish stuff? I’m going to be honest with you. I, you know, it’s it trickled in here and there, but the focus on that has really happened since October 7th. Uh, for me, that was the massive that was the big big trigger. Not that I didn’t do any before that. Sure. Sure. Um, but that was the big trigger for me. It’s really been since then where my my artistic career has kind of merged with I started speaking up after October 7th and there was you know my career as an artist and there was my activism but my activism turned into content creation and the content creation started to kind of blend and fuse with my art and with my graphic design career and then it just turned into this whole like one big multi-disiplinary thing. That’s when making Jewish art started to really be something that I wanted to do moving forward. Yeah. I mean, I I became aware of you, I think, after October 7th, like so many uh of our fellow Jewish creatives. I noticed immediately that like you had great graphic design chops because your your pieces were like getting right to the heart of the matter. Um I really felt that’s why I was curious like, you know, did you have experience in that? Were you were you making liars for uh you know JCC’s or federations or anything like that or any groups prior? No. No. It was just purely driven by instant instinct merging you know my Jewish there’s a lot of things that I things that I’ve connected now that I didn’t connect in the past like for example you know I’m as an artist we’re storytellers as artists and also for me as an divergent person telling stories is often the way I’m able to articulate my thoughts because very often like I have a lot of things going through my brain but there’s a disconnect between my brain and the words coming out of my mouth. And so very often when I want to explain something to someone and I want to make sure that they I drive the point across, I use an example. And that example is usually a story. And storytelling is is a massive part of Jewish life and Jewishness and, you know, Judaism as a religion, as a faith, as a culture, as you know, all those things. And so when I started uh my activism after October 7th and I reconnected with my Jewish community and my my the Jewishness within me, that’s when I started seeing like, oh, okay, you’re like this because you’re neurode divergent, but you’re also like this because you’re Jewish. And when those Yeah. Right. And and then when I started making those connections, like so many things made sense. And I think that’s where the desire to make Jewish art was born. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Let’s talk about being neurode divergent. You know, you’ve been in business now 17 years, right? With your with your own with your own shingle right on the on the door, right? You don’t have a boss. You don’t have, you know, an administrator. How are you managing all this? Like what kind of ways or strategies or systems have you adapted to stay successful? I’m a I I have a part of my brain that’s actually very like I’m really good with math and spreadsheets and and getting and do like I and I also you know one thing that actually it’s funny because I I refer he this person comes up in a lot of the conversations when I talk about this stuff because he was kind of a mentor for me but my boss when I worked at the advertising agency I had a boss who is my version of Larry David um he very Larry David like no filter, completely off-the-wall, very eccentric. Um, he was an incredible boss and he really taught me how to run a business and so I learned a lot from him and a lot of the way I run my business comes from what I learned from him. So that was one thing and like I said, I have a part of my brain which is, you know, the the scientific part of my brain which I’m very good with math. I’m very good with accounting and and spreadsheets and doing I don’t it’s not my favorite part of the work but I’m good at it. So I’m able to I’m able to run a business and I mean the rest I don’t know like you know to be honest with you I’ve lived my life very much according to like fake it till you make it. So I I never really had a plan and I don’t I I don’t think I I’ve had plans that I’ve executed. It’s more like, okay, you want to go in that direction. You don’t know how the hell you’re going to get there. Just start walking at that direction and things are going to start, you know, as you move forward, the lights are going to start going on. And that’s kind of how I figure stuff out. So, it’s hard for me to be like, oh, I, you know, I did I moved from A to B and then to C, from C to D. I just kind of figured it out as I went along and it just worked. And I think the other thing is also that I’m very much driven by passion. And so I have become a little bit selective in terms of the projects that I take in, the clients that I work with, so that I’m always passionate about the work that I’m doing because that drives me and that makes me want to hyperfocus and do a good job and, you know, make it better than anything else they’re going to see and all the things. So that’s a great strategy right there. Right. Like yeah, from Alex here to your ears, right? Strategy one is pick stuff that’s going to interest you, right? And keep you connected to your passions, right? Would you say? Yeah, absolutely. Because as nerv neurody divergent people, we when you know usually when we lose interest or we, you know, we procrastinate, it’s become like we’re driven by things that that don’t bore us. If we’re bored with something, we’re not going to want like it’s just the way our brain works, right? So, I’ve always that for me, I’m like, okay, well, that’s your strength. If you’re a highly passionate person, try to work in industries and in fields where you’re going to get to work on projects that are going to excite the hell out of you and then you’re going to want to do the work. And it sounded like uh a strategy too. Maybe we can pull out from something you said before, which is like pick things that maybe you’re not fully sure you can do, but you’re pretty sure you could learn, right, in the time given. So that’s yes that was um so I remember the first website that I did I got hired to do a website for this huge law firm in Montreal. I had no idea what I was doing. But I walked out of that meeting and I wanted to get that contract and I kind of weighed I was like, “Okay, the worstc case scenario if you can’t do it, you either subcontract. You find somebody who can and you subcontracted and then you don’t make the money, right? But at least you know, you don’t lose faith in in taking on a project and then saying that you can’t do it, right?” So, I just took it. But I was terrified because I went home that night and I was like, “What did I do?” And I I I’ve had I had a lot of situations like that at the beginning when I would just take jobs and be like, “Okay, I’ll figure it out.” And because I I was self-taught, eventually doing that became less and less scary because I became really good at learning things as I moved along. And then for me, it became a challenge. It was just like, “Yep, I’m going to learn it. I’ll just there’s a new tool out there. I’ll just learn it. I’ll just learn it and then I’ll be fine.” Fabulous. Fab spoken like a true designer, right? who who got their chops in the the ‘9s and early early double OS. You mentioned earlier that sometimes you felt that like being neurode divergent connected well with being Jewish. Yeah. Can can you talk a little bit about that? How you see like neurode divergent behavior perhaps being Jewish in in in character in a way? So I’ll give you an example. When I was a kid, I struggled a lot with religion when people would be like when I would ask, “But why?” Cuz again, that’s as neurode divergent people, we have a hard time doing something unless we know the reason why we’re doing it. And so, and and so I would say, “But why?” But why? Like, you got to if you want me to do this, you you got to tell me why. And for me, because it’s the way it is or because God says so was not a valid reason for me. And that’s also a very Jewish thing to ask questions to, you know, to question the status quo, to not accept, you know, an answer and to be like, oh, I don’t know, you know, to argue, to to research, and to go looking for the answers yourself is a very Jewish thing. So there’s been so many things like that where I’ve made those connections, the storytelling, the the questioning yourself constantly, questioning the world, questioning yourself, the sense of justice which aligns with tikun, you know, repairing the world. Neurode divergent people have a very strong sense of justice. Uh we have a radar for integrity and people that do not have integrity. Those are things that are that we are very sensitive to. And so for me, you know, I’ve always had a bit of a an activist soul. Uh it’s always been a present in my life in one way or another. And uh again, something that is very present in in Judaism and in Jewish culture. So I’ve made a lot of those connections throughout my life and again spec specifically the last two years where I’ve been embedded in the Jewish world. And so I’ve spent a lot of time learning more about us, about me, and all of it. Yeah, that’s fantastic, Alex. Like really an excellent trajectory and story. Could we ask you though a little bit about uh like where where you’re at now in the in the Jewish world, the work you’re doing, your spirituality, like kind of where where things stand? after so after October 7th what happened was that I threw myself into I I was actually like I had hit a burnout I was literally in the process of trying to take like a sbatical from my career so that I could take time off from work rest and also I wanted to finish writing my book which I’m publishing very soon and then a week after my doctor basically told me like you need to take a break cuz you’re burnt out October 7th happened and I threw myself into acti into activism and instead of taking a sbatical from work. I took a sabbatical from work so that I can be an activist. And after, you know, six months of doing that complete transparency, I ran out of money. I was just like, “Okay, well, you need to go back to work because you’re a single mom. You know, you’re a business owner, you’re a house owner, you have to you have to, you know, pay your bills.” But I also didn’t want to stop what I was doing. And I wanted to find a way to combine the two. And so I started, you know, putting some feelers out there with other creatives. I also, you know, I just made myself open to, you know, any type of collaborative work that could come my way from the Jewish community, you know, any kind of initiatives that maybe we could get going. I started, you know, talking to different people and I got to know the community. Started doing little things here and there, you I I started my uh a line of Jewish merch uh where I was doing like, you know, fun Jewish t-shirts and hats and sweatshirts and things like that. At some point, I was starting to think about creating some sort of like Jewish art collaborative thing. I ran out of time and energy to do that, but it’s still on my mind. And then one friend that I met actually um through our content creation on Instagram reached out to me and she had uh already started this little design agency and uh after you know multiple conversations and exchanging and meeting also her second partner we decided to start to work together and try to maybe target the Jewish community with the idea of you know there’s a lot of creatives non-creatives people that are being pushed out of different spaces, people that feel sometimes unsafe working with certain other people because they are visibly Jewish, all that stuff. And so, not that we wouldn’t work with somebody who’s not Jewish, but we wanted to create a design agency where Jewish owned business can come and feel safe and comfortable expressing their needs and their concerns without having to censor themselves. And so, uh, that’s where Mishmish was born. Uh, and that’s what we’re doing now. So, you know, we’re still we’re we’re in our first year. We’re starting off, but we’re excited. We have a few projects that we have started to work on. We have actually one project that we posted about today, which is a short film. A friend came to us a few months ago. She is doing a short film called Jewace, and we helped her with the poster, the branding around the film, you know, the tone and the voice and the visual language. that’s going to be used for the film and we’re very proud of being part of that project. It’s amazing and it’s beautiful. And then we have other projects down the line um that are that we’re working on right now that I can’t speak on a lot because I don’t like to talk about projects until the clients themselves have have actually put it out there. Exciting stuff. And then there’s my art which when Octo so before October 7th parallel to my graphic design career uh my art career was starting to take off. I started to do digital painting in 2018. It took off like wildfire. I did like three art shows between 2018 and 2023. And I was starting to do really well when it came to, you know, selling my art and getting, you know, gigs to create commission arts art and, you know, I was getting approached to do murals and that kind of stuff, which is ultimately my dream as an artist is just to do that 24/7. And then October 7th happened, I guess because of the trauma, I was completely unable to create art anymore. I stopped completely. The only art that I created for about two years were just portraits of our hostages, right? And so a few months ago, I picked up my my Apple Pen again because now I you know I I I create art with an Apple Pen on my iPad rather than a paintbrush. But I picked up my Apple Pen and I’m like, “Okay, you got to get back to it.” But I no long I wanted to get back to what I was doing before, but everything I’m doing now is now through this new lens that I have since October 7th. And so all the art that I’m putting out there, you know, I’m not necessarily doing art that’s, you know, only, you know, stars of David and muzas and maps of Israel. A lot of the art that I’m putting out there, not now, has some sort of Jewish component to it. I did a portrait a few weeks ago. If you look at the portrait, there’s nothing Jewish about it, but it’s a portrait of a girl and her name is Leo, which is a Hebrew name. So, there’s, you know, there there’s something it’s there some some in in some capacity. Put like a some sort of Jewish imprint of sorts on what I do. like there’s even if it’s a very subtle sort of watermark in the background, something that’s not very apparent to you, but it’s there. It’s important to me. That’s really interesting. So, um, when you’re when you’re kind of applying this this marker, right? Like it’s almost like you’re kind of creating an entrance point for folks as they’re engaging your work, right? Now, all of a sudden there’s this Jewish entrance point, right? That allows us to to connect. Can we look at this through a neurodeivergent and uh Jewish uh lens? Do you feel like your your addition of those things to you know what seemingly pop art objects right that the everyday do you think that that adds like a sacredness to things? Do you think it how do you think it alters do that? Uh that’s definitely part of it. I think without knowing how to express it I think what you just said is also a big part of it. the entrance point where you know it’s not overtly Jewish like having you know portrait of a rabbi or a synagogue but just having those little symbols invite people to have a conversation. It’s it’s an like you say it’s a door. It’s it’s it’s it’s an opening to reflection to conversation to different schools of thinking to all kinds of things to to disagreement even which we encourage. So yeah, that’s definitely one big way to look at it and I think sacred yeah to a certain extent there there is that and you’re approaching things in you know all parts of your art and design career all these mediums right yes do you think that has to do with uh being neurode divergent let me ask you this like do you feel like certain media allow you to express yourself in certain ways like when you have certain ways to say something let’s say or how do you kind pick when you’re uh choosing to express. I think so. For me, my visual art has always been a way for me to channel emotion, not necessarily opinions or streams of thought more. It’s more an emotional thing for me. The writing is more where I’m able to express my thoughts clearly because again I often struggle expressing what I’m thinking by speaking. I all I I often find that I lose a lot in translation. But when I can take my time to write and pick the right words like it’s not, you know, it’s not like in real time. It’s like I’m taking my time and I can choose my words and I can research and I can be like, “Oh, no. Let me let me find another word to say this and I can go back and forth and correct and change.” And that’s huge for me. That’s very big for me. And I think that that started really early because I started writing poetry. I was I think eight years old. Wow. So writing has also been always been present in my life. I see connections with Jewish life and and Judaism. You know, there’s so many things about the creative process that is the Jewish process. There’s the multi-disiplinary aspect of it also um that I see as very much part of what we’ve inherited as Jewish people in you know the things the way we were forced to develop defense mechanisms and survival mechanisms has made us be really good at multitasking or at dealing with certain situations. We are born problem solvers. That a lot of that comes from the fact that you know we were chased and we were people wanted to kill us and we had to survive. Right. And again it’s so connected to the way a neurode divergent brain functions. Yeah. Absolutely right. the the the seemingly outsiderness of exactly neurode diverency right this is amazing vantage point and I think exactly exactly like you’re saying well put Jews also have had that historically right where where we can see things from a just a vantage point nobody else really conforms exactly exactly another thing also symbolism so I’m symbolism works for me I gravitate to it symbols um Like for okay for example not a super religious person but for me lighting candles on Friday night the symbolism of it what it signifies what it means the the whole symb symbolism of you light up the darkness you put light into the world like I could cry just saying that because it’s such a beautiful symbolic I’m a neurode divergent as neurode divergent people that’s a way the way that’s how we understand the world the world that really a lot of neurode divergent people will resonate with symbolism that has a meaning that they you know that that that can that they connect with. Symbolism is a huge part of Judaism. Fact that um letters have uh a number attached a numerical value attached to them and the whole thing of numerology in Judaism blows my mind. There is that too that again so many a lot of connections. One thing that occurred to me while you were talking about that is I think the the the pure sensory nature of Jewish ritual, right? Like when those candles strike, you smell the carving. Exactly. Right. Of the of the striking of the match and like the glow of the light. There’s something special. Um my kids love because I get these funny eyebrows from my glasses from the light, you know? Mhm. Um, but like the the taste, the smell, the the touch, you know, like I think because so many of that is connect is connected in that moment, it just runs deep, right? Like you embody that. That’s beautiful. I think that’s really really wonderful. Thank you for conjuring that vision in my mind. I wanted to ask you about um you know you have this agency now and you you get to kind of control things and this like you know you’re you’re this wonderful conduit from the from the community to the space of advertising right mass communication. Let me ask you like a question beyond that right like scale your agency up. What would a a neurodeivergent centered Jewish creative community look like to you? I think I would want to create something that is first of all completely different than anything we’ve seen. I think I would want to create spaces. the sensory. It’s funny because the sensory thing that you brought up earlier is very much part of of my notes actually that I wrote in reference to this is that creating more interactive kind of experiences for creatives is something that I would love to do rather than you know the typical you know one-dimensional kind of rigid way that we have done things in the past. multifaceted, a lot of room for collaboration and for different interpretation of things. It’s very abstract in my head right now. So, I’m I’m having a hard time, you know, kind of turning that into words. I’m seeing things in my head, but it’s hard for me to express. Great. I mean, keep keep dreaming here. You know, this is I can I can see it crystallizing too in your face. Let me ask you just as you’re you’re thinking about that, creating a new community requires design and decisions to be made. So like with your experience and your emotional intelligence, right, from being a neurode divergent person and just your intelligence from being a Jewish person, like if you could redesign something or or or invent something that we could have today that would like enhance uh communal life, ritual, um you know, how would you as a creative director, how would you kind of what would you reimagine? You didn’t know we’d be doing this visionering, did you? So, in the last two year, I don’t remember when, but when I was just brainstorming last year, maybe the year before about, you know, what I all the things that I would want to see happen in, you know, the Jewish creative community and that could I maybe eventually launch. You know, one of the things that came up once was creating, you know, they have now these immersive experiences, like different themes and you go and you’re in this like huge space that’s immersive and you get to touch and smell and hear and listen and see. Um, I thought I I I was thinking of like what if we created like Jewish immers immersive experience where I don’t know people can experience but do it differently like you know take a story that we’ve been telling the same exact ways for 3,000 years and tell it differently. Tell you can tell the same story like a million different ways. And I don’t know, like I was imagining, you know, people walking through an immersive experience that’s about Shabbat. Oh, okay. Okay, cool. Do a little guided meditation with us. Alex, tell what does it look like? Right. Is it, you know, like I don’t know. like they go through a room where they get to experience the power of lighting candles without making it a religious experience but making it like I don’t know you know they walk into a room that’s completely dark and it feels you know making that emotional connection with you’re lighting up the world you know they walk in and it feels hostile and it feels cold and it feels lonely and then you light candles and there’s a sense of warmth and community and you know so having different rooms having a room where you you know you walk in and I don’t know, it smells like chicken soup. I don’t know like but there’s different ways to apply that but like or you know taking a story of the Bible and give it giving it a modern twist and it turning it into an opera. Like I I can see different applications of different things. Like I just find that for me there’s so much fun again in finding a different way to tell a story. It’s actually what I’m doing with my book now. Why not explore that, you know, and like like we talked about like injecting the sensory component and making it rather than, you know, you’re sitting in a chair, you know, in a in at a at a seminar and listening to a person speak, make it, you know, interactive, make it immersive. When you do that, you allow people to connect on an emotional level with with what you’re trying to, you know, to show them. Um, which I think is amazing. Yeah. I love that. I mean, you know, part of what I’m interested in with Jewish futurism and why I think it connects really well to to neurode diverency is is you’re right, like we possess so many of the skills uh that are considered deficiencies, right, in a in a neurotypical world. Yeah. Yeah. Right. We realized u and I I agree. I think the idea of world building is super important. Speculative design is one of my favorite things to do. That’s why I was like, “Let’s do this, Alex. Let’s let’s let’s try to right now dream it up.” That type of of divergent thinking is we’re it’s already built in for us, right? It’s it’s a little bit harder for us to come down to Earth, you know, like we we need crisis to take us out, right? But oh man, I I could totally imagine it some immersive world that feels warm, you know, like I don’t know about you, but I love to play the game where it’s like what happens in your mind, your imagination when a Jewish ritual is happening. So it sounds to me like candles are lit that for you it’s like we go into this we like immerse down into this warm golden pool of Exactly. And how, you know, how how do we how how do we create something where we can where people can come in and and experience that feeling, right? Whether they’re Jewish or not, that could be super cool. Uh there’s so many things like that I you know, things about Judaism that I love. Let me try to find another example right now so I can, you know, visualize in my head. But like okay like the the migvey okay you can’t obviously I don’t know about creating necessarily an immersive experience around you know that would be a migvey but the concept of it the con concept of going into water and the rebirth and all of that like imagine taking that and building an immersive experience around that I think it’d be amazing I mean I right went into a mikvah at the bottom of the mountain in spot and that was like woo you know. Yeah. Super super epic and spiritual and very holy, you know, like I I really felt like I could I could totally see that. Maybe we need to be in one of those um deprivation chambers, right? Or VR or uh Exactly. I mean, this this sounds fantastic. Like super super cool. Let’s do it. Yeah. Right. Seriously. But, you know, imagine like I love the idea of it being something that we could make as an art show or whatever, right? And and people can go like I remember the the Van Go experience came to our town here, right? I’m sure some some go to yours. Yeah, I went Yeah, I go to these a lot with my kid because I think they’re awesome. So, yeah, I went to that one. But, you know, for example, the Nova exhibit, the Nova is exhibitmer. It’s an immersive show, right? They did a phenomenal job with it. I’m not sure if you got to experience it. Obviously, that one is, you know, it’s traumatic unfortunately, but that concept of inviting people in as not as a religious experience, but more as an immersive experience. Come, you know, come experience the Jewish world um in some way. Uh could be really, really cool. Another link between neurode divergence and and the Jew the the my Jewishness is um humor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Both sides of me um cope with humor, the Jewish side and the neurode divergent side. Like it’s Yeah, it’s it’s so intertwined. No, you’re right. You’re right. Because like I don’t know about you, but me being neurode divergent, I tend to hear things very literally first. Yes. Before before like getting the nuance and the fun part of it. Um, so, so I I tend to lean towards that like vaudeville or like a you know, what do you call it? Like borch belt type of humor where like somebody mishars somebody, you know, and they get the word the word play wrong, you know, type of thing. And it’s like we’re just dealing with with an idiot here, but like really, oh, I just really missed it, you know? Yeah. I really thought you meant what? like and I think that that again divergent type of thinking is is what makes that comedy so great, you know. So that’s awesome. That’s a great point. I hadn’t thought yet about adding uh Jewish humor to the list. I think that’s that’s awesome. Um yeah I had I had here on my uh list and even some of the things that you had you had mentioned here is that um you know I think Jewish culture like already assumes multiple thinking patterns right like exactly our is one of the coolest graphic design like systems in history um right pre predating the Swiss grid so um I think that’s that’s already built in Right. It’s like it’s made for us. Uh we talked about pattern recognition, you know, I think that seeing symbols, motif as you would describe, right? That’s really important for you to add to your work. Very right. It’s not just a skin. Yeah. Um there’s also so and and another thing why uh why I I’m loving what I’m doing right now also is so I have a bit of an obsession with fonts. Oh. Um, I’ve been I have been absolutely obsessed with fonts for 30 years now. uh before we had, you know, the font systems that we have now where you had to actually go looking for fonts and download them. But I I started like hoarding fonts and I had like an external hard drive with like 30,000 fonts on them because I was just collecting them and I was like, I might need this one day, so I’ll just take it, right? I’ll just download it. And I would literally like even when I wasn’t working just for fun, I would like sit at my desk like smoke a joint and just download fonts like for hours and them. Um and I because I there’s first of all I think they’re beautiful. Second of I’ve always seen so when I design one of the things that I excel at is layout design. So editorial design like magazine, you know, where there’s a mix of visual where you have to there’s text and then there’s visual elements and you have to combine a sense of aesthetic with also legibility of the text. So I that’s where I geek out. I love that. And I’ve always seen for me I see I don’t see text as words that I’m reading. When I go into my design cave and I start working on layout, for me, text is just another highly graphic visual element that I could play with and that I that’s beautiful that I can use to enhance the poster. It’s not like, oh, this is text, it’s the ugly part of the poster. It’s like, yeah, it’s text. If you find a perfect font, it can be beautiful as well, right? And then you have Hebrew, Hebrew fonts, too, right? I mean, Hebrew is just graphically is just so beautiful to work with. And you feel the history in every letter. Like, it’s just it carries the history in it. It’s just I don’t know how to explain in any other way. And so that to me is I love it. It’s beautiful. Like I love working with Hebrew letters. And I never I didn’t get to do that. I I got to do that once actually for a project for a client years ago where they actually had to do a pamphlet in like 30 different languages. And so I had to do a Hebrew version of it. But other than that, until recently, I had never I I didn’t have many opportunities to work with Hebrew. And now I’m doing stuff with Hebrew lettering, and I’m loving it. It’s awesome. Oh, that’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. I’ve always thought of fonts as like um as accents that you can apply visual accents that you can apply to a word. Totally. And like I and I make my students so they can learn typography is to like just capture the vibe from like what you think this font is, right? Like what do you think? Why do you think it was stylized this way? And then I want you to like do an impression and say the word, right, that we stylized with that that creep and then make an accent. And I get like, you know, I get like, “Oh, hello.” And like, you know, people doing bad German accents for, you know, Gothic script and stuff. Um, or robot voice or things like that, you know, like that are really uh I had one student who did like some heavy metal and they like they like roared. They’re like roar, you know, as they said it. And I think what’s really interesting is, you know, I’ve been teaching graphic design history now 20 years I’ve been teaching this subject. You know, we always talk we always start off talking about ancient languages and trying to understand how hieroglyphics work, how Chinese works, you know, even Hebrew is a certain kind of of a writing system. Um, and I think in the west because we don’t have like we just have alphabet and we sound out everything our syllables and all the words uh from letters, you know, while other languages have uh their syllabic or they’re logo based, right? Um, so I think like when we use fonts and maybe our obsession with fonts is like that’s the closest we’re going to get to having that kind of those kinds of features in western Latinbased language. So I’m with you, right? Like those are the accents, those are the the the rapper, you know, that like kind of takes language and does something really special with it. So actually I just thought of a great example. Um, I just did a logo. Uh I actually I did the second iteration of it just this week. I did a logo a few months ago for uh someone who came to me in the Jewish community that needed a logo and even the a name I helped we helped come up with the name as well. Um and I and then she came back to me uh a few weeks ago because there were some small changes with the name and we had to kind of redo a new iteration of the logo. But basically the logo um the name this is for um a Jewish community hub um that uh exists here in Toronto where there’s Jewish events, Jewish Shabbat dinners. Uh there’s it’s it’s also a co-working space, all kinds of things going on. And they called it Makum, which in Hebrew means the place. Um, just to add a little depth to the logo, I added the Hebrew dot like I forget what it’s called, but the dot the accent below the O to gave it to give it the O sound. Yeah. So, there’s no the word is spelled out in English makum, but below the O, there’s the Hebrew, the nikun. Exactly. There you go. The nikun. Uh, below the O. And you will not know what that is if you’re not Jewish or you don’t speak Hebrew. So it’s a very subtle call to to Hebrew to Jewish culture. And I would have probably never thought of doing that be you know two three years ago you didn’t even know it but you were you were conjuring mly crew at this time right? we just add add the the two dots, right? And it, you know, it it worked for them. And I think that’s a beautiful that’s wonderful, right? Because that’s the nod, right? It’s like, how how do we Exactly. How do we speak to the world and to our community at the same time, right? Yeah. That’s a that’s a beautiful thing. Well, Alex, this has been a delight and you are so wonderful to share your gifts and talents and insights with us today and being so open and honest about yourself. I think a lot of people, a lot of people in the Jewish creative world are going to absolutely appreciate and look to you as somebody like, “Alex did it. I’mma do it.” Thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you for having me. These are conversations that I want to have more. So, I really appreciate being here and giving me this opportunity. Before we go, is there Yeah. anything cool that you can share with us that’s not too top secret that you’re working on? Well, you know, I can tell you about my book. Um, my book um I’m really busting my ass right now to um to wrap it up and publish. It’s it’s supposed to come out March 9th. Uh March 4th. March 4th in an ebook and March 9th in paperback and uh hard cover. It is the biggest creative project of my life. Biggest creative accomplishment of my life. So, let’s just hope it turns into a bestseller. Uh I don’t I listen I don’t know I have no idea how you know what’s going to happen after this. But um it’s very very meaningful to me and uh and it’s a Jewish story. So it’s fiction. It started off as a memoir originally when I started writing the book, I was writing my own story. And then for all sorts of reasons, I decided that I was going to turn it into a fictional biography. And once I decided that I was going to go fictional, I was like, well then if I’m going fictional, then I can tell the same story, but I can tell it differently. As soon as that happened, there’s a story that just came. I woke up one morning and I just was like, “Oh my god, this story.” So I kind of merged the part of my story that I wanted to tell with this fictional storyline which touches on Jewish gener generational trauma reincarnation. It’s a story it’s a Jewish story of coming home. So I think it’s going to resonate with a lot of people right now. That’s beautiful. It it sounds like you’ve created this genre of the the meta autobiography. Let’s hope so. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Yeah. Yeah. So, wish you the best. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much.