Friday Wisdom 

Artist and high school teacher, Todd Stahl, gives his students “Friday Wisdom” at the end of each school week. On a sheet of paper he writes a quote representing elements of hope, inspiration, creativity, unity, and love. He explores hand drawn typography and uses simple drawings to emphasize parts of the quotes while leaving his personal touch. 

In October of 2006, Stahl made his first “Friday Wisdom.” It was a while before his next, but after several rounds he began to hear from his students that they were hanging them on their walls or on their refrigerators. At some point he realized there was an opportunity to form a community through Friday Wisdom, so it became a more regular thing.

When deciding what quote to use, Stahl doesn’t really have a formula. It can come from his own wisdom, a conversation with a student or a friend, a desire to speak on current events, or simply drawing from the folder he keeps of quotes he has stumbled upon. He takes inspiration from religious figures, singers, artists, coworkers, parents of students, students themselves, etc. He wants to amplify the voices of deep thinkers who are trying to guide humanity in a positive direction, and that can really be anyone.

As an engaged member of his community and advocate for social justice, Stahl tends to implicitly touch on political and social issues through Friday Wisdom in hopes of instilling kindness and civic participation in his students. While he cannot explicitly invoke political rhetoric on his students, he finds that by bringing up moral principles that relate to current events and contentious topics, he can still do his part in encouraging his students to think deeply and with empathy. 

Friday Wisdom may not be a conscious practice of graphic design, but it falls into the category of visual communication. Graphic Design is often viewed as being super technical and having lots of rules. While this may be the case for certain sectors of graphic design, the principle is about conveying messages through visuals and text. 

There is something to be said about the touch of a human hand that can get lost in a lot of graphic design work, especially in the age of AI. As someone who deeply cares about humanness, Stahl works primarily in manual media and Friday Wisdom is no exception. He even keeps his mistakes in, like misspelling a word, and makes little annotations like, “whoops lol!” as a reminder that mistakes are OK. It’s the imperfectness that shines through in Friday Wisdom that allows it to resonate more deeply and feel more personal. 

Friday Wisdom is a symbol of how art and creativity have the capacity to communicate messages in a more tangible way than words alone.