Oh Hi!
I’m Alice Karolina
It’s so nice to finally meet you.
I’m right there with you…
…learning to trust myself, use my voice, and walk my talk.
I started my career in the late 90’s, working my way through most communication disciplines: illustration, graphic + interior design, media, marketing, copywriting, wayfinding – and packaged it all into an amorphous art form combining digital illustrations and writing.
In my day job I’m a creative director for our local non-profit arts org where I get to plan, program, and share other people’s art. The best of all worlds, some might say.
I am a dual citizen. Born, raised, educated in Switzerland; settled on S,DÁYES (Pender Island, BC) because I like who I am here.
After spending the last few years building and growing an online brand strategy + design business and an ethical marketing movement, 40 rushed into me with a deep need to focus on being vs. selling. Art vs. content. Being in-sync vs. a-sync.
Everything I do is infused with my need to create culture that values meaning over more.
We are the storytelling animals. Let that be our role in this vast ecosystem.
Let that be my role.
My Values
Courage
I will always challenge the status quo, embrace change and vulnerability. I will not support a mindset that reinforces outdated systems born out of fear.
Presence
I will always focus on what is right in front of me and take deliberate, thoughtful action in the here and now. I will not let outside influence guide my path.
Imagination
I will always look beyond what is apparent or even possible. I will not let how it has always been determine what we can create in the future.
My Story
(...made beautiful by Caroline at Switchblade Lemonade)
No vision is too big. The cultural constraints we’re working in are too small.
In Switzerland, creative children start their formal arts training early.
At fourteen, my drawing lessons began, and by eighteen I’d know that form follows function, and even something as arbitrary as colour can sway a consumer to choose one laundry detergent over another.
It was a challenging program. Combine that with a desire to please, feelings of inadequacy, drive, overwhelm, and youth and you’ll have a kid burnt out as quickly as they were lit up.
But I’m lucky. When needing a break, I had the means and the family support to take one, which included a view of a different horizon. Travel is a learning experience too.
And learn I did...
Leap out of the systems that cradle you and what happens? You face what it cradles you from.
In Bolivia, the disadvantaged throw rocks.
I travelled to La Paz to live with a godmother on a cliff where an armed guard stood at the gates that shielded the privileged from the reality on the other side.
But I walked around reality all the time, young and naive, hardly comprehending such merciless poverty. Sure, it was dangerous at times. That said, the very mindset that can get you killed is the same one that calls bullshit on “the way it is”.
If you see a broken system and call it by its real name, you’re at the fight. But choosing to work and use your skills to reimagine what’s shattered – that’s how you enter the ring.
I returned to Europe and quit design school, its motivations for consumerism and profit too disappointing in light of what I’d just witnessed. It was the education that defined me and the future I’d been training for.
To quit school was to quit my life.
But I went on to live nine others.
In Canada, a Swiss designer lives abroad, where multiple educations, countries, and languages pulse within me.
Some of us need to go around the world to learn how to build our own.
I made my way back to design – but to use its power differently. Our personal development, our experiences, as well as the things we care about, the impact we want to make, and our expertise – it all goes into building a world with the integrity we hunger for in a culture that forgets the real cost of building cheap.
I despise: Get rich quick. Follow these formulas. Fake it till you make it.
Like the real world, the virtual one can no longer afford its illusions.
As the globe continues to shrink, the gates that separate ugly truths from comfortable fantasy are too obvious to ignore, and change makers in all industries are grasping the size of their task. It won’t be easy, but we can’t change the world by continuing to participate with how it currently operates.
I’ve been in the ring. My people are there too. And we’re envisioning new standards that shape the world we want.
Hollow voices need not reply.
But to the change makers? Come and join me.
My Movement
I’m here to disrupt the cycle of consumerism by creating a culture of meaning instead of more.
I believe the way we sell is feeding the same loop that keeps widening the wealth gap and perpetuates the ways people have to buy in order to get by. And that in turn creates an economy based on cheap production + cheap labour, which leads to a society based in competition and scarcity – and that is the perfect breeding ground for our environmental and humanitarian crisis.
Instead of looking at how we buy, and leaving it to the consumer to try and make conscious choices, I want us to reimagine how we sell.
We use psychological manipulation tactics in order to generate an insatiable appetite for more, which over a few decades has created a society swept up in instant gratification. This more-more-more mentality is so powerful, and yet of so little value if we look at the next ten years, fifty years, or even our entire lifetime and that of our children.
But we are getting wise to it.
This is the time to start creating a different marketplace – and in turn, a different world.
Businesses that stand out in a conscious society tell stories of substance and share products that serve the world; they take responsibility for their corner of the industry and sell with integrity.
It takes courage to leave the status quo, the hustle, the shiny objects behind and create a business rooted in purpose and vision.
Which is why we built a community for us to share this work – so we can create the change that is so sorely needed.
I founded The Ethical Move for us to collectively take a stand for transparency, responsibility + honesty – because we can’t fake our way through this anymore.
We’d be honoured if you joined us. Take the pledge
