Sean Adams

By the early 1990s the state of design, communications and strategic planning had reached a point that could be best described as ‘baroque.’ The messages, vehicles for delivery, and thinking were convoluted, oblique, and purposefully misleading. Let me back up further. The anti-commercialism and mistrust of the corporate and governmental structure in the 1970s manifested itself with, not a retreat from mass production, but an attitude of disguise. If the products and messages could be disguised as ‘non-materialistic, non-corporate, non-establishment’, perhaps they would sell.

As this idea is in contradiction to the stated purpose of mass-production and consumer activity, the messages and visual manifestations of the message became schizophrenic. The excesses of the 1980s reversed the trend of anti-consumerism, but the reaction of the design world seemed only to grasp the idea of excess. Visual work became more complex and layered, the messages followed the same dysphasia. Seeping into this chaotic and complex system was the idea that the makers of the visuals were complex and troubled artists, or creatives with a language incomprehensible to the non-designer.

In contrast to this schizophrenia and contradictory messaging, the idea of AdamsMorioka began, fittingly on the PeopleMover in Tomorrowland. After years of traversing the decaying system, Noreen Morioka and Sean Adams sat on the PeopleMover, somewhere between Tomorrowland Terrace and America 360 Vision, these words were crafted: clarity, purity, and resonance. The words’ power lay in the absolute contradiction to the then convoluted approach of creative work and basic marketing concepts. Work, messages, thinking, and collaboration should be clear and easy to grasp. There was nothing wrong with plain English that could be understood in a contract or printed piece. In 1993, as society had grown cynical and distrustful of the messages being provided by much of the creative world, a pure and honest approach was the only viable option. And finally, without the idea of emotional resonance, a return to ideas, not meaningless collage, these fresh ideas would be cold and meaningless.

American Pragmatism
The basic principles of Modernism, design for the masses, simplified forms, form follows function, are typically attributed to European influences such as De Stijl, and the Bauhaus. The American evolution of Modernism adopted these items, and combined them with basic American attributes of honesty,
plain-speaking, democratic ideals, and a simpler aesthetic. AdamsMorioka’s aesthetic and conceptual approach is based on this mutation. A straight line can be drawn from the Puritans of 17th century New England, to the 18th century Shakers, 19th century western pioneers, 20th century International Style designers, to AdamsMorioka’s brand of American Pragmatism.

Ripples
AdamsMorioka’s initial venture into a larger public arena was met with surprise and excitement by clients and end users. It was also met with anger, hostility and resentment from much of the design world. This could best be exemplified with two situations. At a meeting with a C level executive at a large corporation, a mistrustful and angry face changed to a wry smile when Noreen said, ‘It’s okay to like what you like.’ And, in an article from a newsletter for the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, this cliche, ‘children should be seen and not heard. AdamsMorioka’s ideas are immature and unrealistic. I’d like to hear what they say after ten years in this industry.’

Ten years later, that same C level executive had maintained a successful relationship with AM, and the author of the newsletter article had publicly admitted to being ‘mistaken.’ Over the next ten years, the message of clarity, purity, and resonance slowly rippled through the profession. Design leader and publisher William Drenttel talked about the renewed idea of clarity at a national conference in 1995. Several large design and strategy firms publicly stated that they were revising their contracts to read in plain English. A leading furniture and interior designer recently stated that her business followed the philosophy of ‘Clarity, purity, and truth.’ Finally, several years after retirement, noted design legend Jim Cross was quoted, ‘AdamsMorioka kept the faith.’

More Clarity, Purity, and Resonance
This does not mean that all work at AdamsMorioka became simple with easy to read type and heavy white space. Or that strategy returned to a simple 1920s General Motors approach. This message of clarity, purity, and resonance mutated itself to fit the environment. The general Zeitgesit of the time reflected a need for simpler, more honest communications. The democratization of technology enabled widespread dissemination of designers’ tools. Pretending that typesetting was a secret and technical world was no longer possible when children use Garamond, Times Roman, or Helvetica. The AdamsMorioka philosophy can express itself with a simple black and white poster, or a multi-layered marketing plan. The unifying theme of honesty always pervades.

Visual Resonance
AdamsMorioka’s approach evolved, incorporating familiar forms on visuals to create a sense of reassurance. Collaborators like Fred Seibert at MTV, and Jan Fleming at Disney and Sundance, introduced them to a world beyond making only. We began to tackle the design, not just of printed pieces and visual systems, but of corporate culture, internal and external. The idea of a system evolved beyond the standard logo and manual, and became a tool for creative inspiration and reexamination of product and the market. Sean Adams explained this at a speaking engagement in Buenos Aires in 2000. ‘We live in a visual world. All of us-designers, the general public, and our clients-were raised looking at and responding to images. To provide a long-winded grey slab of text in 200 pages to a client may seem like a catalyst for change, but it is irrelevant. One of the most powerful approaches we can use to reach all aspects of a client’s business is to utilize visuals to explain, and visual systems to lead a transition of thought.’

Utopia vs. Distopia
We are given the opportunity to affect lives. If we do our job well, a client’s business succeeds, a product sells better, or an event is a success. This enables individuals to work, make a better living, send their children to college, expand their lives. Each of us provides one more grain of sand to tip the scales. AdamsMorioka has believed, since its inception, that the world may be complex, messy, and contradictory, but design can help recreate that world.

“Place yourself in the background,” Wrote William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White in The Elements of Style.  The directive to the writer was to focus on content rather than style. By extension if we think of typography as pictures of words, then by designers of text should not decorate words, but use them plainly and directly, too. In a pre computer typographic environment, this directive was fairly easy to enforce. The typographic education of designers followed clear and methodical practices. A well-established history of teaching specific skills based on agreed upon standards was adhered to. Typography teachers were assured, then, that graduating design students could make a clean chart, or set body copy with a correct line length, not exceeding 52 characters, or use display fonts only for display, or not use Hobo in any context.

The Modernist approach to typography followed educational models of the Bauhaus and incorporated the pragmatic American concept of plain speaking. Eliminating decoration or flowery language is based on the desire of 18th century American colonists to distance themselves from Europe. Early Americans associated corruption in European government and business with ulterior motivations hidden behind a baroque vernacular. By speaking directly, we would shed corruption and deception. This idea develops further in typography by teaching designers to utilize only functional or “honest” typography, they would create work that spoke clearly and authentically.

A lack of options was key to this modernist approach.  I know from personal experience. In 1982 during my first year at CalArts a metal type shop was donated to the school. My work/study job in the type shop consisted of cleaning and organizing the metal slugs and type cases. During my first week, “bad” typefaces, as judged by the faculty, were emptied into a large bucket. The fonts discarded and removed from our menu of choices were primarily odd display fonts, fashionable during the 70s. What remained were fonts considered “basics” at that time: Bodoni, Baskerville, Garamond, Franklin Gothic, Futura and Univers. The intended result, for students to use a limited palette of agreed upon classic fonts was enforced. There was no room for font choice error.

“Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating,” continue William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White in The Elements of Style. And when applied to typographic education, we perpetuate basic American pragmatism and enforce “good design”, however, in the bargain we ignore the possibilities of digital technology. There is definitely a motivation, in many students’ typographic work today to embrace style and excess as opposed to intelligent reasoning and conceptual thinking related to content.

We can blame the digital technologies and mixing of mediums, from print to interactive for this instinct, but it is more about information and the way this information is delivered and processed that informs contemporary typographic solutions.

Victorian book typography is dense, tight and often gray. The primary delivery vehicle of information in 19th century western civilization was the newspaper. In the early 20th century, concurrent with the advent of radio, there was a relaxing of typography, looser leading and stronger contrasts. Black and white television paved the way of classic “big idea” design, which gave central image predominance and predicated the typography to remain simple and unobtrusive. Our processing of information under a barrage of messages in the digital age has opened the door to multiple typographic messages, often dissimilar or schizophrenic, complexity of form and a relaxing of standards in relationship to letterform design.

“Work from a suitable design,” caution William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White in the  The Elements of Style. To ask a student in the current design curriculum to set this process of receiving and re-presenting information aside and work from a strong structure, international style Swiss grids, for example, is a valuable exercise. Yet to forbid them to investigate new ways of seeing and making meaning is archaic. Here, then, is one of the principle dilemmas of current typographic education. In order to break rules; a student must know the rules. In order to choose odd letterforms and compositions to promote unexpected meaning, a student must know which letterforms are not odd.

When I asked a student, recently, what typeface she used on a cookbook assignment, she could not remember. “It was one of the fonts in the ‘A’s on the CD.” she told me. This CD-ROM, is surreptitiously passed between the design students and is said to contain 2000 bootlegged fonts. Many of the students cannot remember most of the font names, and tend toward use of fonts with names like Alpaca, Andover, Bora and Collier. The choice of fonts on projects is inspired, not by a specific criteria, historical relevance, formal associations or oblique conceptual issues, but on which fonts are listed first on the CD  hence the predominance of fonts beginning with “A, B or C.” Allowing students to have access to all 2000 typeface choices with no sense of a grid or proportions may achieve surprising, even appropriate, results with a very personal energy and spirit. But this is the exception, not the rule.  There are just too many choices.

“Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity,” affirm William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White in The Elements of Style. The relaxing of typographic standards is common. There is little need for fine details in a 72-dpi broadcast or web environment. Kerning is often damaged by technical restrictions in these environments, and the difference between a badly cut version of Firmin Didot and a beautiful cut is often undetectable. The democratization of typography has also led to the personalization of letterforms. Making a custom font is like a signature. It reflects the author’s personal concerns and issues. If a sloppy curve on a capital “G” is considered to be part of the personal vision, and reflection of the author, then we cannot fault it. Our ability to critique based on aesthetic concerns is impaired.

It is possible to forgive these offenses as personal exploration. But typography is a craft and the quality of a finished piece is often dependent upon a skilled typographic hand.  Conveying this to a student can seem at odds with the need for personal expression. The student working in several digital environments is drawn to the eccentric because it is easy to create. Typography, like all graphic design, is a tightrope walk between discipline and freedom.

In a school environment, mistakes and explorations are encouraged. Graduating a student who has never moved beyond the comfortable and expected is a disservice to the student and the profession. This student should be interested in and anticipate change. They should be able to typographically express an idea in print, online and in motion. The results should be unexpected yet appropriate; the typography should be well considered, whether it is minimal or complex. The decisions made, in addition to the obvious technical issues like small serifs on the screen, should be deliberate. To reach this place, the typographic education of this student must have included the same skills taught throughout history, addressing issues of structure, form, hierarchy, meaning and context. Today it must also place a priority on expression, experimentation, personal understanding, process and a willingness to be subversive. Combining these often-alternative ideas is not easy. It is a challenging task.

“Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. What you are, rather than what you know, will at last determine your style,” conclude William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White in The Elements of Style.  Armed with clear guidelines for excellence, based on traditional skills, encouraged to explore and expand with a belief in his/her value, the student is ready to face the profession. Perhaps it is presumptuous to assume that they will be missing out on something valuable. Perhaps the subtext of typographic anarchy in a digital environment is not a comment about the current state of design education, but rather about the promises we made to ourselves as students that we may have forgotten under the guise of maintaining order and tradition.

Excerpt from How to Grow As A Graphic Designer by Cathy Fishel

When they opened their office, designers Sean Adams and Noreen Morioka were like many young designers: They had a mission.

“Our goal was to clean up the world. We had very specific ideas about what design should do, and that was the engine that drove us for a long time,” says Adams about their start in WHAT YEAR.

Then one day, they looked around and found out that the portion of the world they had control over had been cleaned up. It was time to set some new goals.

The partners sat down and conducted a very basic assessment of what they wanted, in the form of a chart.

“We had been saying for a while that it would be great if we had more office space or could hire more designers-these were just abstract thoughts. So we wrote down everything we were at the time: 1,000 square feet, four designers, our client base. Then we wrote down what we wanted to be: 2,800 square feet, eight designers, a more global client base. We even wrote down things like buy that Eames sofa for the office that we always wanted,” Adams says.

Then they began to connect the dots. To reach the sofa goal, they needed to bill an additional $1,000. That seemed quite possible. To get a bigger space, though, would require additional revenues of $50,000 per year-that was bit further out. Hiring more designers would cost even more. To partner with different clients would mean a substantial investment of time and making cold calls, something the partners had never had to do. That was even more out there.

Over time, though, things began to fall into place, and soon they found themselves sitting on their new sofa in a new space discussing new clients. “It could be that we were more open to possibilities or that we were more cognizant to opportunities that led us in directions we wanted to go,” Adams recalls.

But writing down their goals also made them seem less daunting. If they had just considered everything they wanted to do as a mass, the end goal would have felt overwhelming and out of reach. “It would have felt as though we couldn’t have the sofa until we had the space, and we couldn’t have the space until we had the clients. But not all steps have to be grandiose and huge. We realized that we needed to take baby steps,” the designer says.

Designers, perhaps because they are big dreamers, can scare themselves out of reaching goals because the overall plan seems much too huge. But strategic moves or changes in direction do not have to be large. Adams recalls something that Saul Bass said. “You don’t need one splashy success after another. A long career is made up of consistently good decisions. It takes longer, but it lasts longer. You have to be able to sustain the effort.”

Another factor to overcome is self-defeating arguments. Adams uses the example of a friend whose life seems to be one problem after another. Her boyfriend isn’t working out, her car always needs to be fixed, and so on. But when Adams asks her, for instance, why not just replace the car, she has 10 valid reasons why she can’t do that.

“I can give you 12 valid reasons right now why you shouldn’t cross the street, but that doesn’t mean you should never do it,” Adams says. “You have to make the leap of faith-not be reckless or wild, but you do have to throw yourself out there and just do it. It is scary, and you might fail, but that is all the more reason to do it. That’s what makes life exciting. That’s what let’s you know you are really pushing.”

Of course, not every goal is achieved. Even worse, sometimes a goal, once in hand, is not as desireable as it looked when it was still far away. When Morioka and Adams had been in business for about three years, they were asked to merge with another company. It seemed like a fantastic idea at the time: The partners and their existing accounting systems were overwhelmed with the amount of work coming in. The partnering company would provide AdamsMorioka with the infrastructure it needed to keep up with billing, cash flow, and other operations the two young designers did not necessarily enjoy monitoring.

“This was our goal: to become the design moguls of the West Coast and to have 40 employees on staff,” Adams remembers.

The partnership lasted about six months. Bigger was not better. Adams and Morioka felt that the quality of the client base dropped dramatically, as did the quality of their work. They were turned into managers and did not enjoy the process of design anymore.

Luckily, they had held on to the lease and phone number of their old space. They found themselves a little stunned and wondered what in the world they were going to do. Their old clients were gone: Everything that they had worked so hard for for three years was gone.

“I remember sitting in a restaurant over lunch and Noreen would not stop crying. I tried to comfort her, and even the waitress came over to see if she was OK,” Adams says. “I went home every night despairing and wondering if anything would every work again.”

In the midst of this turmoil, the young partners were still being invited to address art and design groups on what the audience still believed to be their happy careers. Adams would leave the office exhausted and overwrought, then put on a happy face for his speeches. It felt fraudulent and schitzophrenic at the time, but being forced to put up a good front had a curious effect. First, clients started to come back once they could see that everything was still OK at AdamsMorioka.

Second, they were able to convince themselves that everything would be OK. “Staying positive helped us to believe in ourselves again,” Adams says.

What they realized later was that their goal of “bigger is better” had divorced them from what they truly wanted. The solution to fixing their overwhelmed accounting system was to get a new accountant, one who could handle the level of work they were bringing in. Bigger might have meant more power or money, but they did not go into design to be politicians or get rich.

What they truly wanted was to do good work with like-minded people. Quantity was not better than quality, they now knew.

There is a necessary sacrifice of dreams when a goal is abandoned, not to mention a very personal sense of failure. “You begin to think that someone else out there has the secret to success that you don’t have. You start to think that everyone knows but you, and you are forced to just guess your way through,” Adams says.

The secret, he discovered, is that there is no secret. Everyone makes mistakes-sometimes big ones. But instead of trying to battle it out and make things right, sometimes it’s best to simply let that dream go. When a situation starts to affect the quality of your life and creativity, it’s time to change plans.

Evolution happens-personally and globally. You and your goals are going to change, Question yourself all of the time, even weekly, Adams advises, to make sure what you are doing makes you happy.

“We question client’s motives all of the time. Why won’t we do that for ourselves?” he asks. “Life is too short. I don’t want to think I spent what could be the last week of my life working on something I hated, or working with someone who is disrespectful of what we do.”

Sean Adams interviews Cheryl Heller, Published in Step Magazine

Lou Danziger once said, “A career is based on a series of solid successes, not one big splash.” Cheryl Heller exemplifies this idea explicitly. Clearly, the easy path for Cheryl would be to continue do stellar work that is exceptionally crafted and skilled, mixed with extraordinary and challenging thinking. But that is not enough for her. Cheryl is in the process of creating a revolution by creating and teaching a process that enables corporations to play a leading role in alleviating the social and environmental issues facing the world. I spent time with Cheryl in Sedona recently while we judged the Mohawk Show together. A major fire raged in a nearby canyon. Erickson S-64 fire fighting helicopters buzzed over us as the smell of burning wood, and a dark haze of smoke descended on us. Somehow this seemed a fitting mise en scene that included the energy and intensity of Cheryl’s presence.

SA: Cheryl, it’s easy to blame the business world, current cultural attitudes, clients, other designers, and your parents for a lackluster design solution. It’sthe attitude of “Blame others, deny everything,” The undercurrent of your thinking with corporations and the public good, and your thoughts on a successful design practice seem to point to a different idea of responsibility. Your work clearly points to the idea of taking responsibility. For instance, I’m a huge fan of the Ideas That Matter program. How did that come about, and what are you most proud of in this instance?

CH: That was one of those moments in time that I’ll never forget. I was in Johannesburg, South Africa, when Eugene Van As, the Chairman of Sappi, showed me a wall calendar with endangered species that they had been doing for clients there, and asked if I would develop something like it that could be used globally. I told him that we should have as a goal developing a program that had more specific relevance to Sappi customers, and a stronger connection to what Sappi stood for as a company. Knowing that designers are by nature inclined to want to work for the public good, and that many of them are already involved in various causes, I developed the concept for this program, in which designers can receive grants to work on whatever program they choose, as long as it is for the public good, and involves paper.

For the first two years I vetted all the entries as well, which was fascinating. I’m pleased that the program is still around, and that they’ve given away so uch money over the years. What I didn’t realize at the time, is that this would be such a clear prototype for the types of things I want to do now. I have just always enjoyed inventing programs like this, that when they work, take on a life of their own.

SA: It’s easy to talk about Franklin Gothic, or Warm Red, but you transcend that discussion. This idea of not just making parts, but inventing the whole permeates much of who you are. Can you apply that thinking personally? How would you define your life overall?

CH: Frankly, I don’t think about it. I don’t think anyone can sum up a life accurately and without pomposity. Except if you are Hemingway and you can write something like, “Only bullfighters use themselves all the way up.” But I can’t think of anything like that right now and anyway I am not a bullfighter.

SA: One thing I love to do is look at the corners in portrait photos. To see the objects around the subject: the cereal boxes on the refrigerator, the Hummells, the objects in a room that start to define the subject. Maybe that’s a better way to get to the “wholeness.” So where are you and what are you doing today?

CH: This particular day is Sunday and I am in our house in Connecticut (as opposed to New York City). It’s been a beautiful day, and I have spent the whole of it at my computer, since about 7:30 this morning. Tomorrow we have a big presentation to World Wildlife Fund, and since I have been traveling last week, I ran out of time. That gives you the wrong impression, though, because actually I usually work 7 days a week. Anyway I decided to take a break around 3 o’clock and take pictures for you of some of the things I like looking at when I’m here. Besides, one of the things I really love to do is take pictures.

SA: When I look at these images, my first thought, as a shallow materialist, is, “Cheryl’s got some very cool stuff. I need that bowl of rocks.” But these images say, in a very clear message, that you have a varied and full life, that your interests, environment, and relationships define you, not the last logo you made. And that you have taken time and energy to make this happen. Where does your professional life fit into this?

CH: I have spent my life helping companies grow. All because it was my job and I thought I had to. Here’s some important advice for young designers: you have much more choice than you can ever imagine at the time. Many clients I believed in and still do. Many I love. Some of them didn’t matter one way or another. Some of them were jerks. (Schmeckel heads in fact.)

SA: The article you did for Adobe Proxy, “A Seat at the Table,” explored the ways a designer could achieve a level of respect in relation to real issues, not just Cyan and Hobo. First, why do we want a seat at the big table, and then how do we get there?

CH: This relates to much of what I’ve said about choice and responsibility, and the notion that life is about systems, not individual parts. Being connected to real issues is the only way to ensure that your work impacts real issues. If that’s important to you, the way to get there is simply to develop an interest in the larger world outside of design, and begin the conversation.

SA: Your interest in the public good is clear with your long-standing relationship with AIGA. You were a national board member, organized conferences, and your recent little (only in size, not ideas) book for AIGA is a remarkable distillation of very complex ideas into a simple and universal publication. What was your thinking in this instance?

CH: Actually, the introduction was the hard part, and it has relevance to everything we’re talking about today. It occurs to me that it’s all about context. The process for innovation (in the AIGA book) is only useful if you understand what it’s for and why it’s a good thing. Which is what the intro tries to do. Without that context, it’s just another 10 step-like-program, and it’s actually meaningless because you don’t know how it relates to you, or how to use it. We as designers say we solve problems. But unless the solution works in the context of the company’s objectives, in the context of the audiences’ interests and means, it’s not a good solution.

My friend Paul Polak, who founded an organization that helps people earn their way out of poverty, talks about products that are designed for poor people. If an irrigation system for a farmers field is the most exquisite thing ever designed, but it costs $2,000 and the farmer makes $300 a year, then it doesn’t work, because it doesn’t work in the context in which it is needed. But the point is that you have to really work sometimes to understand that there are contexts out there other than your own. And that’s where the awareness and interest in the larger world comes in.

The same thing applied to the Ideas That Matter entries. It was important for the designers who entered to understand and be relevant to the context in which their work will be seen. Many designers submitted proposals saying they wanted to design a poster campaign, with no thought as to what it would say, where it would hang, who would hang it or what someone was supposed to do when they saw it. They just wanted to design a poster.

SA: What I find incredible, is that you’re out there on the road and in print imparting these thoughts. You’re not just complaining behind a desk.

CH: You could say that all the things I spend so much time thinking and talking about are to try to help designers understand that in order to create work that is seen, appreciated, relevant and successful you must understand the context in which it will be used. And to do that, you must have a ‘seat at the table’ so that you can see and understand the picture that’s bigger than your fabulous 26″ flat screen Mac Monitor (upon which I happily write).

SA: I know I may seem obsessed by this idea of responsibility, but it appears to be the subtext of much of your work. You seem to be excited by exploring the ways a designer can achieve a level of respect in relation to real issues, not just squiggly lines and die-cuts.

CH: One thing is very clear to me now. Human beings are not a sustainable species. We are destroying the planet that supports us through greed, stupidity and laziness, and taking all other forms of life along with us. To quote Ishmael, “the earth is lying bleeding at our feet.” So I’m trying to use whatever I have ever learned in terms of creativity, or how to move people, or guts, to try to help corporations do the right thing now because it’s the only hope we have. I am still doing all the things I used to do but I only do them now for companies that tell the truth.

SA: That’s brave. It sounds easy, but it requires letting go of a large piece of potential business, and changing your role from a “type-maid” to a conscience. Is that what we do today as designers?

CH: I’m not sure what designers do, and evidently neither are many of them. We recently ran an ad in Craig’s List for a junior designer. We were overwhelmed by responses from smart, talented, energetic and ambitious young men and women with books exemplifying varying degrees of perfection in type handling, good use of stock photography, cleverness and overall neatness. But what are they going to design? None of them seem to know.

SA: So let me see if I’m getting this right. Design is not the Holy Grail? It won’t solve every problem known to man? Darn.

CH: Design is only a means to do something. It isn’t an end in itself. Unfortunately, design doesn’t always translate into vision. And what we need now is to see more clearly than ever. To see that it’s not ok for some people to spend $28 million on an apartment when so many have nowhere to live.

SA: What is the most common mistake we make as a profession?

CH: We make the same mistake that every profession makes. We become insular. We see ourselves as specialists because that makes us feel special. We may be special as hell, but that kind of thinking also makes us myopic. We are communicators, and great communicators understand their audience and are conversant in all the necessary languages. Great communicators have important things to say. I think we can all work on that.

SA: So back to this idea of the gestalt. I think it’s easy for many of us to go to work day after day, and then wake up and realize twenty years has gone by and we’ve designed a lot of brochures. What kind of advice would you give to allow a designer to experience a more substantive process?

CH: I think the most important thing is to tell the truth, to see that there is no “someplace else” anymore, that the boundaries we create between professions, life, love and work, between one company and another and even one person and another are nothing more than boundaries we create. They are arbitrary, and inhibiting. Also, most importantly to me, I believe in systems rather than events. That everything is connected – that “everything is in everything” as Peter Senge says. That every cell contains our entire DNA.

So what is my sage advice to designers? I’m not sure what a designer is. I think there are only whole people, and that every whole person has to see that the stakes are higher now, and has to try to be a force for good (I don’t mean typography).

Sean Adams interviews Kali Nikitas, Published in Step Magazine

There are some people with an innate quality that can command attention when they enter a room. Recently, when Kali Nikitas was in Los Angeles, I invited her to lunch at Swingers, the hip diner-du-jour. Kali’s entrance brought a room filled with “young hollywood” to a stop. As we ate salads next to Don Cheadle and a group of actors from Grey’s Anatomy, we talked about god, love, money, and design. These are not normally subjects for polite society, but Kali faces the world head-on. She is willing to talk about ideas that most of us keep in the dark far corner of our consciousness. This directness is mirrored in her work with a vision that is exuberant and energetic, complex and contradictory, and always willing to explore uncomfortable terrain. Kali recently joined Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and will chair its communication arts department this fall.

SA: I was at a design conference a few years ago, and one of the speakers talked about her faith and its impact in her work. At the reception, most of the attendees seemed horrified that she discussed this. So, let’s start with a subject in the design world that is the equivalent of an unattended bag in an airport, God. How would you describe faith, and how it affects you and your work?

KN: What a way to start an interview! Some people can handle life easily without fear or anxiety. I’m not one of them and that’s why I need faith. Knowing that I am not in charge of everything gives me great comfort and freedom. Is this where I declare that I am not a fundamentalist or affiliated with a religious organization?

SA: You’ve mentioned that seeing God differently, and in extraordinary terms, saved your life once. How? What happened?

KN: When I was in my 20s and I looked to the future, I didn’t see myself living a productive life. I saw myself in a room with four white walls—not good. The reasons don’t matter. I just knew that I needed to make a change. My mother and brothers had managed to find inner peace, self-love, and self-respect in their lives, and they helped me just by the fact that they defined their faith on an individual basis. So I guess you could say that I grew up with faith but didn’t pay attention to it until I was in my 20s. Have I lost face yet?

SA: No, being a designer is hard. Being a human being is hard. It’s easy to talk about Franklin Gothic. But it’s important to talk about our internal lives. That brings us to love. In design, so much of what we do is made logical and rational; there is little room for love. Does love really matter in design?

KN: Yes. I think love matters in all aspects of life. If I love my work, then I have a chance of bringing passion and soul to my projects and work relationships. Now, this is not always a good thing. Sometimes, I wish that I had less love and more logic.

SA: As designers, we’re trained to be critical and we often look for the negatives. What are your thoughts on design and criticism?

KN: I have become very interested in the process of debate and engaging with new ideas. It is no longer about right or wrong, but rather making an attempt at understanding things better or challenging something in hopes that an idea or project can be used to facilitate new ideas.

A friend once taught me the value of looking at a body of work—not one piece or project, article, or book. Since then, I have tried to avoid making sweeping judgments. Instead, I want to engage in a conversation about progress and the development of one’s career. I find it more forgiving, more productive, and more interesting. In turn, hopefully people will do the same with me and look at the larger picture, not just the individual failures or successes.

SA: Have you always felt this way?

KN: No. I have learned over time that being generous feels better.

SA: I think I first came into contact with you when you were at CalArts. What made you decide to go back and enter the graduate program? Did that change your life for the better or worse?

KN: I went to graduate school to be a better graphic designer. What did that mean? I didn’t know. Undergraduate school sparked a deep need in me to be better. Period. I needed more schooling, an intense environment to grow. Be careful what you ask for. … People made great-looking work at CalArts and that inspired me. But once I got there, I realized that there was much more to the program than simply adding to a formal toolbox. Of course, I have no regrets. It changed my life absolutely, and for the better.

SA: For me, it’s hard to separate you from your work. Like you, personally, your work is wildly energetic, unexpected, exciting, and remarkably focused. Talk to me about your work, and its relationship to you as a person, and the things you do.

KN: Thank you, but this is when I want to say, ‘You’re just saying that to be nice,’ and we both know how great the work is of so many other people. It’s hard for me to think about anyone liking my work (how’s that for humanness?).

I do not see my work as anything other than attempts to strengthen my skills as a thinker and form-maker, and I try to defi ne my practice based on the choices I have made. For instance, what does an educator and an administrator do with the few opportunities they have to create? What would distinguish me from the others who practice this combination?

Listening to lectures by artists who discuss their work and process is immensely helpful to me. For instance, Felix Gonzalez Torres spoke honestly about infusing his everyday life into his work. He invited the listener into his world and stimulated self

SA: I was at a design conference a few years ago, and one of the speakers talked about her faith and its impact in her work. At the reception, most of the attendees seemed horrified that she discussed this. So, let’s start with a subject in the design world that is the equivalent of an unattended bag in an airport, God. How would you describe faith, and how it affects you and your work?

KN: What a way to start an interview! Some people can handle life easily without fear or anxiety. I’m not one of them and that’s why I need faith. Knowing that I am not in charge of everything gives me great comfort and freedom. Is this where I declare that I am not a fundamentalist or a≈liated with a religious organization?

SA: You’ve mentioned that seeing God differently, and in extraordinary terms, saved your life once. How? What happened?

KN: When I was in my 20s and I looked to the future, I didn’t see myself living a productive life. I saw myself in a room with four white walls—not good. The reasons don’t matter. I just knew that I needed to make a change. My mother and brothers had managed to find inner peace, self-love, and self-respect in their lives, and they helped me just by the fact that they defined their faith on an individual basis. So I guess you could say that I grew up with faith but didn’t pay attention to it until I was in my 20s.

Have I lost face yet?

SA: No, being a designer is hard. Being a human being is hard. It’s easy to talk about Franklin Gothic. But it’s important to talk about our internal lives. That brings us to love. In design, so much of what we do is made logical and rational; there is little room for love. Does love really matter in design?

KN: Yes. I think love matters in all aspects of life. If I love my work, then I have a chance of bringing passion and soul to my projects and work relationships. Now, this is not always a good thing. Sometimes, I wish that I had less love and more logic.

SA: As designers, we’re trained to be critical and we often look for the negatives. What are your thoughts on design and criticism?

KN: I have become very interested in the process of debate and engaging with new ideas. It is no longer about right or wrong, but rather making an attempt at understanding things better or challenging something in hopes that an idea or project can be used to facilitate new ideas.

A friend once taught me the value of looking at a body of work—not one piece or project, article, or book. Since then, I have tried to avoid making sweeping judgments. Instead, I want to engage in a conversation about progress and the development of one’s career. I find it more forgiving, more productive, and more interesting. In turn, hopefully people will do the same with me and look at the larger picture, not just the individual failures or successes.

SA: Have you always felt this way?

KN: No. I have learned over time that being generous feels better.

SA: I think I first came into contact with you when you were at CalArts. What made you decide to go back and enter the graduate program? Did that change your life for the better or worse?

KN: I went to graduate school to be a better graphic designer. What did that mean? I didn’t know. Undergraduate school sparked a deep need in me to be better. Period. I needed more schooling, an intense environment to grow. Be careful what you ask for. … People made great-looking work at CalArts and that inspired me. But once I got there, I realized that there was much more to the program than simply adding to a formal toolbox. Of course, I have no regrets. It changed my life absolutely, and for the better.

SA: For me, it’s hard to separate you from your work. Like you, personally, your work is wildly energetic, unexpected, exciting, and remarkably focused. Talk to me about your work, and its relationship to you as a person, and the things you do.

KN: Thank you, but this is when I want to say, ‘You’re just saying that to be nice,’ and we both know how great the work is of so many other people. It’s hard for me to think about anyone liking my work (how’s that for humanness?).

I do not see my work as anything other than attempts to strengthen my skills as a thinker and form-maker, and I try to defi ne my practice based on the choices I have made. For instance, what does an educator and an administrator do with the few opportunities they have to create? What would distinguish me from the others who practice this combination?

Listening to lectures by artists who discuss their work and process is immensely helpful to me. For instance, Felix Gonzalez Torres spoke honestly about infusing his everyday life into his work. He invited the listener into his world and stimulated self

The short answer, “No.”

SA: If you had to name some of your heroes, who would they be?

KN: There are many: My mother, who showed my brothers and I both the heaven and hell of life and who died with tremendous grace 15 years ago; my siblings, for reasons they know and I cannot divulge; my husband, Rich (it’s a secret); Bono, because he uses his celebrity in admirable ways; the working men and women who get up every day with the courage and willingness to make an honest living without benefits, little pay, and a lot of hope that they’ll still be able to support their family.

SA: Are these your primary inspirations? What else inspires you?

KN: This is a list that could go on for days. But, what comes to mind today is Holland (not unusual for anyone who knows me). Having just returned from Amsterdam this week, I simply cannot ignore [what I experienced]: the street fashion, architecture, interiors, flower stands, the approach to living, and so on. It’s very inspirational. It truly affects my personal and professional life.

SA: You’ve made a clear commitment to education. Why?

KN: I started teaching because it was going to allow me to practice in a more selective way. Administration grabbed my attention because it was/is an opportunity to design a living and breathing project. Building an entire program that would affect the lives of many is tremendously exciting.

SA: Have you seen any change in the type of students, their goals, or values since you began teaching?

KN: Yes. Education is now so cost prohibitive that students are really concerned about their future. They wonder if they will be able to make a living once they graduate. This has drastically changed the spirit of education. In some cases, and for obvious and understandable reasons, academic development is affected by professional opportunity. However, I am interested in education for the sake of providing skills that can make students citizens of the world, active members of society, people interested in being of service to others, and of course, qualified practitioners. This is why Otis College of Art is going to be a great opportunity. It’s an institution that is growing quickly and believes in the power of advancing society through art and design.

SA: What is the best thing about returning to Los Angeles, in one word?

KN: Love.

Sean Adams interviews Laura Shore, Published in Step Magazine

One comment I hear from designers is, “there should be a television show about the design world.” If there were, everyone would grow to love the lead character of design client and that character would be based on Laura Shore.

As senior vice president of Creative at Mohawk Fine Papers, Laura embodies all of the traits that all of us dream of finding in a client. She’s smart and creative, has great ideas and doesn’t mind if you steal them. She’s patient and trusting, fair and measured. Behind the scenes, in the rough and tough world of a paper mill, Laura understands her multiple audiences, knows when and what to tell them and how to balance creative freedom with hard numbers. Clients can often seem like they are speaking Icelandic and making decisions based on whims. We all wonder why one firm was chosen over another or what a client really expects. After some prodding and begging, I convinced Laura to spill the beans from the other side of the presentation.

SA: Laura, let’s start with what you actually do. I know you hire designers and make paper swatchbooks and promos, but what about the rest of your job?

LS: Is your Icelandic translator here? Hiring designers is actually a small part of what I do. I manage an incredibly capable in-house team—10 people if you count the intern, more if you count outsourced marketing support—who handle everything relating to PR, marketing communication, advertising, product positioning, the web, printing, signage, trade shows, events and national design sponsorships. In addition to that, since the acquisition of the IP Fine Papers brands in 2005, all of our internal processes have been overhauled. Lately we’ve been working with the IT group to redesign internal computer systems that relate to publishing product information and reporting.

We don’t have a formal organization chart in our company, so each of us wakes up every day and does the smartest thing we can think of. Our team is complemented by an equally caffeinated group dedicated to product and another focused on the environment. We support their initiatives and try to give structure to their ideas so they can be brought to market effectively. Our team is always involved at some level in product development, research, strategy and selling. We bring designers in at various points along the line in a project, but it’s our breadth of engagement at Mohawk that allows us to keep the process focused and bring the right level of information to the design part of the process.

Forty posters for the Yale School of Architecture: When Mohawk learned that Michael Bierut of Pentagram would be receiving the AIGA medal in 2006, they wanted to do something to honor their work together over the years, as well as Bierut’s efforts on behalf of AIGA and the design community. This small book is the result; it is black and white, like the ten years’ worth of posters he designed for the school. Attendees at the Associated Gala received this book as a gift. Copies are now available through Winterhouse Editions, with profits going to support the Winterhouse Award for Design Writing & Criticism.

SA: I’m going to ask the hardest question first. You see promotional pieces and portfolios from an enormous number of designers. How do you decide whom you’re going to work with on a specific project?

LS: If the type looks like I could have set it myself, they’re out. Times Roman, out. Unintentional clichés, out. Plagiarism, out. Irony, if I don’t get it, out. Bad writing, out. Is a designer good at developing stories out of thin air? Do they love information design? Is their attitude in sync with the intended audience? Do they avoid jargon? Is the work memorable? Is the work original? Is it too far ahead of the audience? Is it always the same, regardless of the client? Do they respect all of our audiences? Do they know how to work with uncoated paper? Are they curious? Are they interesting? Can we have fun and still get the job done? Do they make us look smarter than we are?

In the end, it’s a terrifying leap of faith. Each project is so different—with unique audiences, information requirements, production budgets. I believe one of the most important things a design client can do is understand the true capability of the firm they’re hiring and to match that capability to the project. Get it wrong and it’s like a bad marriage. Endless changes. Arguments about the budget. Thinly veiled disdain on all sides. If you get it right, then everything sails through. Few revisions. Everyone’s a genius.

SA: It’s easy to think that if my work is cool, or clever, or aesthetically innovative that clients will, of course, be jumping over each other to hire me. But, unfortunately, the real world doesn’t work that way. Do you find that designers can put too much priority on what their work looks like?

LS: I actually think how the work looks is really important. Particularly with a product like ours. Design details and production excellence matter to our audience. What we deliver has to be incredibly well made. And if it’s not, I’ll get a phone call within hours of distributing a new piece.

That having been said—if we’re talking about paper promotions—everything in the process is important. Designers need to do the homework and get outside their own preconceived notions about the audience. Designing for a design audience is not the same as designing for yourself. Research. Back up your assertions. We operate at a pretty fast pace and while each project is important, a project manager will have several projects operating simultaneously. It’s important that deadlines are met. We also bring a lot of production expertise to the project and are willing to research almost anything if we agree that it’s interesting. Yet our budgets are set out clearly up front, and we have a great process in place to ensure that we come in on time and on budget. Designers have control over the architecture of the project, so we don’t have a lot of sympathy for designers who overdesign a project and then whine about the budget or deadline.

SA: When I’ve judged competitions, a common event is the judging of paper promotions. Let’s face it: Some are gosh-darn awful, but others are remarkable. When I’ve voted for a paper promo, one of the other judges will argue, “Come on, it’s just a paper promo. You can do anything you want.” But the operative word in paper companies is companies. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about designing and producing a paper promo?

LS: For many years, it was not uncommon [for us] to receive visual essays on subjects like toy trains, ducks or vintage fruit labels from people I’d never met, with the earnest hope that I would use the work as a paper promotion. Pick a paper, any paper. Thankfully, that practice has diminished—I suppose with the decline in the number of mills—or maybe designers are just busier now.

As you know, Sean, you can’t do “anything you want” in a paper promotion. You have to appeal to a range of audiences, from just-out-of-school designers, to print sales people, to merchant sales guys who golf. We’re not a publisher, and a paper promotion is not a book—it’s a conversation starter. Done right, a paper promotion can energize an entire channel, giving sales people a reason for a call, creating opportunities for events, bringing a product or brand to life. Oh, and I gave up on design competitions a long time ago!

Mohawk ad series: High readership scores bear out the strategy recommended for an image advertising campaign developed by VSA Partners. The sophisticated yet whimsical illustrations by Klas Fahlen and thoughtful copy challenge conventional thinking about paper and the paper industry, reinforcing Mohawk’s approach to the business.

SA: You’ve pulled together a powerhouse stable of designers. You’ve worked with the best, from Pentagram, VSA, Vanderbyl Design, the Valentine Group, Willoughby Design … almost every well-known name in the country. First, was this a plan? And secondly, wouldn’t it have been much cheaper and faster to hire Carol’s Country Copy Shoppe in Albany? Why take the effort to create this group?

LS: Hey, don’t knock Carol! My first job was at a quick printer in Albany. … We actually work extensively with a very talented local designer, Jennifer Wilkerson, and a number of local printers. However, working with world-class design talent has been one of the great joys of my job. It’s also a great way to build brand affinity throughout the community. The more interesting question is, how do we keep our identity intact, working with designers who are generally retained by clients who want to reposition their brands?

SA: OK, so how do you keep your brand intact?

LS: I believe that a brand is more than design execution. In our case, it’s about being interesting to the design community. One of the ways we do that is by working with amazing people who interest our audience. We start by keeping identity projects with Pentagram New York. We’ve worked with them so long that they can read our minds. After that, we branch out and use leading designers for specific projects or brands, depending on the attitude we want to communicate. Good designers are actually incredibly careful about situating their work within the larger context of the brand.

SA: You have a deep and long-standing relationship with AIGA. You’re a National Sponsor, and you fund events and exhibitions regionally across the country. Why does Mohawk think this is important?

LS: Supporting AIGA is essential to our business. We make a premium-branded product that must be specified for us to survive. For this we need a healthy, educated design community. Organizations like AIGA and trade journals like STEP are incredibly important to us. We began supporting AIGA back in the mid-’80s when it was clear that it was the one design organization that could speak for designers at a national level. As our lives have gotten more complex, faster and more computer-dependent, the need for community involvement and real human interaction has only increased. I honestly can’t understand why any designer wouldn’t want to be a member of AIGA—or why any supplier wouldn’t want to support the organization.?

SA: So, tell me what drives you nuts about working with designers. This isn’t the McCarthy hearings—you don’t have to name names. I know most designers probably have no idea that they are doing something that might be making a client insane.

LS: Designing something that can’t be produced within the budget. Designers who come to a solution before they’ve heard the problem we’re trying to solve.

SA: The idea of sustainability has become critical to most designers and many of our clients. Obviously Mohawk thinks this idea is important. Can you explain your strategy?

LS: I think it’s not only important but a very exciting opportunity for designers. As specifiers, designers have the opportunity to shift paper purchases in a sustainable direction. Our use of postconsumer fiber has tripled in the past few years as our customers realize the environmental benefits of using recycled paper. Many specifiers have used our environmental calculator to help their clients understand the impact of specification.

But more important today, clients who are interested in sustainability are potentially interested in changing everything about the way they operate. More than ever, they need design thinking that opens up new possibilities. One of our recent projects by Ann Willoughby does a great job providing case studies for designers who may lack the confidence to ask tough questions or suggest new ways of thinking to their clients.

SA: How does a paper company create products that contribute to the “green” effort?

LS: We’ve had environmental products for a long time. After a lot of R&D, in 2003 we were finally able to produce new Mohawk Options PCW, an Inxwell grade with 100 percent postconsumer waste. The performance benefits of Inxwell, combined with environmental benefits of windpower and FSC certification, have unlocked a huge latent demand in the corporate community. This demand inspired further product innovations like our new carbonneutral, FSC-certified Beckett Expression and Concept lines.

SA: You make it sound easy, but it requires commitment, and probably shortterm loss of profits. How did you convince Mohawk to go down this path?

LS: It wasn’t me. Mohawk has a long history of sustainable manufacturing, which helps us run more effciently and cost effectively. Because we view everything holistically, the money we save on energy conservation, for example, allows us to spend more on product development and promotion. Do windpower credits cost more? Yes. Does recycled fiber cost more? Yes. Do we charge more for the paper? No. By providing customers a reason to choose branded products over commodity products, we’ve created a new market for text and cover papers. We’re a business, and demand fuels innovation. The enthusiastic response by designers and their clients for sustainable solutions will foster more product innovation in the future.

SA: Let’s say I have a client who is hell-bent on printing something the most toxic way possible and hates recycled papers … a client who wouldn’t mind creating the three-eyed mutated fish from The Simpsons. What could I do or say to change his mind?

LS: You could buy him a copy of An Inconvenient Truth. … You have to assume that nobody hates the environment. However, your client is probably under a lot of pressure to control costs and meet budget numbers. He probably doesn’t want the hassle of trying to sell through environmental benefits to superiors if there’s a trade-off in terms of convenience, cost or quality. Here’s how I’d approach it. What are his issues? Cost? Quality? Product availability? Is he getting a financial incentive from his printer or his mill to use a particular paper? I would figure out what kind of paper he’s using now and ask your merchant to recommend similar cost/quality papers that have measurable environmental benefits. If there’s still a cost premium—say he’s moving off of a really cheap foreign coated sheet—then I would ask where his paper comes from and do some internet research to find out if there are issues with that supplier. He may not care about the environment himself, but he may want to avoid the potential for negative PR down the road. Alternatively, you might consider design changes that would result in less paper use, which would save him money and make you a hero. And if he’s in the premium paper category already, you could show him print samples on Options and run the environmental calculator so he can see that the environmental benefits come “free” with print performance.

SA: You have the unique perspective of seeing the design world from a different angle. What do you find is the most common mistake we make as a profession?

LS: Wow, that’s a really broad question—like what’s the most common mistake lawyers make as a profession?

I’m not sure it’s a “mistake,” but an interesting shift I’ve seen over the years is away from craft and the responsibility for “making” [something]. Fifteen years ago, I would have said there is an overreliance on craft. Designers would obsess about production details that were basically irrelevant to the client. Today, the pendulum has swung the other way, and many designers seem to have an overreliance on technology and have given up control over the details. Our department has compensated by taking over print production, but I fear that some of the designer’s intent gets lost in the process. Also, as I look at the Mohawk Show entries, it seems that this reliance on software, scale and workflow efficiency has created work that tends to move toward the middle. The work is all decent quality but there seem to be fewer print pieces that are truly memorable or that show the hand of their creators. Of course, even as I say this, quirky, interesting pieces come to mind. …

SA: What excites you about the design world right now?

LS: I love convergence. I am a lateral thinker by nature, and I love the fact that everyone I know is doing everything: print, web, product, environment, systems, strategy. The boundaries between disciplines always drove me crazy. Technology has empowered us all to be dangerous in many different fields, and this, I think, is very exciting.

SA: And finally, who’s your most favorite designer in the entire world? Did you get the flowers I sent?

LS: Hélstu í alvöru að ég myndi svara þessu? (You didn’t really think I’d answer that, did you?)

Sean Adams interviews Martin Venezky, Published in Step Magazine

I mentioned to a friend recently that I was interviewing Martin Venezky, and she responded with shock. How could I, in her words “the king of neat,” interview Martin, “the king of chaos”? Oddly, I thought the same thing. But once I began talking with Martin, I realized how easy it was to assign labels and cubbyhole each of us to fit easy classifications. At first glance, Martin’s work is a jumble of forms and images, seemingly random in their placement. On further inspection, though, a sort of multilayered meaning becomes apparent. A piece is not a one-note boy band tune, but a discordant harmonic triad.

SA: So, Martin, what’s with the controversy? Why do you think you and your work elicit such strong opinions from the design community?

MV: King of chaos? No, Sean, no! I don’t think my work is chaotic at all! Rambunctious and jubilant—sure. But “a jumble of forms”? As for controversy, that always surprises me, since I imagine that my work flies well under the general design radar. I realize the kind of work I do isn’t right for everyone or every project, but then again my work is much broader than most people realize. A lot of it is really very refined and respectful. The most extreme or radical aspect of my work is the time it takes to make these things. And, except for the obvious dismal financial ramifications, I can’t imagine why that would upset anyone.

SA: Is it justified or misguided?

MV: Some folks may see my work as a car wreck, but I think it is more like a busy, urban intersection. There’s a lot to see, but it all flows with its own logical order and gets you where you need to go.

SA: One of the markers for success in our industry is to become a “famous designer.” One aspect overlooked in that ambition is that for everyone out there who thinks you’re swell, there is someone else who really hates your guts. What do you think about the idea of celebrity, good and bad, in the design world?

MV: I think that for celebrity to have any meaning it requires commitment and sharing. That commitment could be for the absolute craft and integrity of the work, or it could be as a teacher or writer or sponsor.

SA: You mentioned the word melancholy in an interview once, and it seems to follow you around like a lost puppy. I’m not sure I see that as a driving force in your work. There are many other emotions and ideas being expressed. Where did the melancholy idea come into play?

MV: I titled the lead essay in my monograph “Design and Melancholy,” so I’m not reluctant to use the term. But as I frame the argument, melancholy is a motivation for the processes I employ, rather than the feeling expressed by the end product. Collecting discarded ephemera, working with delicate materials and anticipating the inevitable unraveling of my surroundings—these are all aspects of my process and my need to create. But I wouldn’t expect anyone to decipher that from looking at the work itself.

SA: I see humor in your work all the time. Is that intentional, or am I just completely misreading it?

MV: Yes, definitely. Humor is a direct result of objects coming together in unexpected ways. The humor I enjoy the most is not the literary joke-telling sort, but the surprising relationships that reflect and encapsulate the external world.

SA: Your work has such a powerful and personal voice. Has it always? What were the forces that helped shape that voice?

MV: I’ve always been an interior sort. That is, I’m used to looking at the world as a somewhat misinformed observer—curious but unsure, preferring to look through a window rather than walk through a door. That has given me a lot of time to think about how the world gets stitched together, and to examine and poke at the structures beneath the spectacle.

SA: And how has that voice evolved over the life of your career?

MV: The biggest evolution has been in seeing my own eccentricities and “outsider” status not as a handicap, but as a valuable point of view worthy of expression. It’s unfortunate that design marginalizes the eccentric because I find these unexpected creative bursts essential to invigorate what could be a dreary profession.

SA: Talk to me about your relationship with your clients. A question I get often is, “How did you get away with that?” This sort of presumes that the client is an enemy, which I don’t agree with. But, really … how do you get away with that?

MV: Most of my clients contact me because of the work they’ve seen. My clients are usually passionate about what they do, and that already establishes some common ground. If I am thinking of an unusual approach, I discuss it with them right away rather than save it for a formal presentation. So not only are they free to say no, but they become a part of the creative process right at the start and can watch and comment as ideas develop and mature. I know some clients insist on it, but I really hate the whole “provide us with three ideas in a formal presentation and we’ll choose among them” routine. It is so antithetical to creative inspiration and is probably what makes enemies out of clients.

SA: So your perfect client. Who would that be? What kind of work would you do if I told you could do any project in the world? Just so you know, I don’t really have this power.

MV: I’ve really liked the kind of work I’ve been doing and the people I’ve been doing it for. But now and then I would love an opportunity to prove how my way of working could translate into larger campaigns with larger audiences. This may surprise some people, but I’ve never been opposed to commercial work. However, I have been dismayed by the narrow scope in which most of the commercial world operates.

SA: Now to the People magazine section of this Q&A. What’s your personal life like? Do you work continuously? Raise chickens? Watch endless amounts of reality television? I’m trying to get to what defines you as a person, not just a designer.

MV: Well, my working life does consume a lot of my time, but for me work and play are so completely entwined that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Because I teach a lot I try to keep an eye towards what is happening in popular culture; not that I feel the need to embrace it, but it is valuable to consider the messages that my students receive through the media. I guess that means that even when I attend movies or theater or concerts, I’m still working. It’s that curiosity of trying to understand why things are the way they are—why people dress the way they do, where peoples’ convictions and beliefs come from, why they buy what they buy. The world is such a fascinating, complicated place with so many forces pushing against each other, and almost all of it is designed in one way or another.

SA: Carol Hanisch’s essay in Feminist Revolution [1969] discusses the idea that personal problems are political problems: “There are no personal solutions at this time.” Your work does combine the political with the personal. How do your politics influence your solutions or the choices you make as a designer?

MV: In my opinion anything that divides people into groups or separates one group from another is political. Design is extremely political in that it uses all sorts of techniques to stratify a population. Designing a label that suggests a product is “gourmet” or “old fashioned” is as political as a get-out-the-vote poster. Designing a restaurant that dissuades certain economic classes from participating is as political as creating a country’s flag. In many ways the more insidious the design strategy, the more powerfully it works as a political agent. People have a hard time defending themselves against something they can’t see.

SA: So you’ve been at Cranbrook, lived in Providence and now Los Angeles. Has location had any bearing on your process and work in general?

MV: I don’t think so. I’m an inside person quite literally. I like the cold and the rain because I don’t feel guilty about staying indoors. The lovelier the weather the more I feel that my compulsion to be inside is at odds with the world.

SA: I was talking to Louise Sandhaus and Lorraine Wild recently, and we discussed the idea of doing a series of small events for AIGA Los Angeles that would focus on “the disenfranchised.” There seems to be a perception that there is a big design establishment —The Man—and another set of designers who are ignored because their work is too radical. Personally, I think this profession thrives on diversity, and there is room for all kinds of design, sort of like “dissent is the core of democracy.” You, on the other hand, engage in “radical” work, but stay involved with teaching at CalArts, working with AIGA, being part of the community at large. Why?

MV: I agree with you that the profession is broad and diverse. Things get complicated when design is seen strictly within the business framework. Granted, for most of us it is a business, but considering the fact that most design programs are associated with art schools rather than business schools, shouldn’t the artist model be at least modestly pertinent? I think that opinion is important to be voiced within professional organizations.

For many years, before I attended graduate school, I was doing painfully uninteresting work; work that I never show anyone today. It was in my bosses’ interest to keep me at the boards cranking this stuff out, so they were the ones telling me how fantastic my work was and paying me reasonable amounts for the effort. Looking back I regret the years I wasted wallowing in mediocrity. I feel obliged to teach with honesty and integrity … developing in [students] the tools of self-criticism, experimentation and invention so they don’t fall into the same trap. That’s my way of sharing, and it is very important to me.

SA: If a young designer came to see you to show his portfolio, what would you be looking for?

MV: I usually only hire former students, because I’ve had the chance to observe how they work, experiment and handle criticism. That being said, I hope that young designers can develop a portfolio that doesn’t try to be all things to all people. I’d rather see a body of work that explores a set of typographic ideas or questions in depth than a portfolio that has a bit of humor, a dab of roughness, a touch of corporateness.

SA: What are you working on now?

MV: I’m in the middle of designing two books—one on the history of the Burning Man festival and one on a collection of early travel albums and journals. I’m also finishing a poster for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and a museum catalog for Mills College in Oakland.

SA: And finally, what’s with the bear?

MV: The bear first appeared in an early issue of Speak magazine. I had wanted to keep him as a mascot for the publication. Dan Rolleri, the publisher and editor, declined the offer, claiming how much he disliked animal characters as mascots. OK, I thought, I’ll just save him for myself. So when it came time to run my own design studio, I had the bear before I had a name for the business.

To me, he looked a little hungry, so “Appetite” seemed right. I added “Engineers” to keep me from being confused with a restaurant, and also because, as designers, we are always called upon to engineer appetites for our clients’ wares.

Sean Adams interviews Bart Crosby, Published in Step Magazine

Bart Crosby is one of the nation’s most influential designers. His work is meticulous and intelligent, defining the height of craft and concept in the profession. Bart was awarded the AIGA medal in 2005 at the design legends gala in Boston. I sat down with Bart soon after he took the medal home to discuss his career and his civilian pursuits—like racecar driving and home life.

SA: You’ve been in the design business for a long time. What do you think accounts for your longevity? How do you stay excited and interested every day?

BC: First, I love design and designing. That means designing anything—from logos to interiors to furniture to cars. I’ve been doing it since I could draw. Sometimes it relaxes me, sometimes it excites me, and sometimes it frustrates me. But it’s who I am. Second, it’s a challenge. It’s like finishing a crossword puzzle, or solving a riddle. The mental exercises I go through and the things I learn in solving a design problem expand my thinking and, at the same time, generate a stockpile of new ideas. Third, it’s been a way of achieving recognition and self-validation.

SA: Is your outside life responsible for maintaining the high quality of your work?

BC: Everything I do (with the possible exception of raising my children) seems somehow related to design: my home, my garden, my office, cooking, the way my dishes and CDs are arranged, etc. I didn’t choose design—it chose me.

SA: Your car racing is a whole other life. Tell me about that.

BC: I’ve always had a love for cars. I bought my first car (a 1928 Model A Ford) when I was 15, fixed it up, and traded it for a 1950 Chevy coupe that I then put hundreds of hours into customizing. I was married and had children early, so the car thing had to be shelved for about 20 years. But in an impulsive moment, between continuously (and necessarily) owning station wagons and minivans, I bought a (very) used 1976 Porsche from a client in Memphis. It got me hooked on Porsches, but I had to sell it when I moved from the suburbs into the city. In 1995, I bought a new Porsche 993, and in ’99 a friend encouraged me to try a drivers’ education course at Road America (the longest, and one of the fastest, road courses in North America). I loved it and practiced as often as I could. Soon I was out-driving the car I had, and decided to build a new GT racecar. All the details— the wheels, exhaust manifolds, color, interior, instrument cluster, graphics—all of these relate to design, and when I’m driving the road courses, I’m convinced that my training in life drawing, painting, and hand lettering—the study of line and form— taught me how to better read sweeping turns and curves, and that my design training actually makes me a better driver.

SA: What’s your proudest achievement in racing?

BC: Probably the designing and building of the car. But a close second came last year when I had tire problems during qualifications for a major race and had to start in 52nd position (out of 55 cars). By the end of the race I’d moved up to sixth place overall and won the outstanding driver award.

SA: When I was in Chicago last May, I was able to trick you into having me over for dinner. Your house is fantastic. How would you describe your design philosophy when designing the house? How did it impact your work, or your work impact the house design?

BC: The house is simple, open, modern with no frills, and pays homage to the past. It’s an 1885 National Historic Landmark that had been botched up in a ’70s remodeling. I restored the exterior to its original quality and totally gutted the interior, leaving much of the space wide open (the living/dining/kitchen area is 16 x 64 feet). I also remanufactured all the interior moldings to match the original, and integrated lots of stone, stainless steel, and mahogany. I’ve always been fascinated and influenced by the Bauhaus, and the house is kind of Queen Anne meets Marcel Brauer. It also reflects how I work—simple, few frills, organizing things, fixing things up.

SA: The one common element in both the house and the work is the reductivist concept. Is that purposeful?

BC: I don’t think I’m consciously reductive, I just don’t like having lots of things. I have a couple of collections but even those are very contained. When I can get things/ messages/images down to their simplest form, they become more meaningful and impactful, thus easier to understand and deal with.

SA: There’s something incredible about your work in that it doesn’t rely on an excess of decorative forms, it just is. What’s the best job you’ve ever worked on? Why?

BC: Probably my first comprehensive identity assignment (Arvin Industries), because it was my first comprehensive identity assignment! I was 24 years old, and it was thrilling to see a system I’d created proliferate across everything from packaging to signage to products and advertising. Others include the work we did for Champion International’s sponsorship of the Olympic Canoe and Kayak Team—where we created the team’s new logo, uniforms, and the venues for 8 to 16 events per year for over 10 years—and the Chicago Millennium Celebration branding program.

SA: What’s the hardest lesson you’ve learned about the design business over the years?

BC: That design is a business, and at times, especially the hard times, there are really tough decisions to make—many of them involving people’s lives.

SA: I’m not asking this as a competitor, but as a friend: Have you ever thought of closing your firm? Or taking on a partner? Or selling out to a larger company? Did any of those things happen?

BC: Yes. Yes. Yes. No. I did have a partner, Bill Bonnell, for the first two years of the business. Most people see me as a very stable person. That’s because they don’t live inside my head every day. All of these thoughts have occurred to me—sometimes more often than others. Running a business is a difficult proposition, and while it’s immensely interesting and I’ve learned a great deal about both business and myself, at times it can also be extremely frustrating and lonely.

SA: You just received the AIGA Medal. It’s the highest honor the profession can bestow. I know it must have felt great to get the call, but did you have any reactions that surprised you?

BC: When I got the call I was overwhelmed—completely surprised, elated, and mystified —it was a pretty emotional moment. I had to leave the studio.

SA: Do you make your staff bow to you now?

BC: I dislike bowing—so we’ve created what I call the “half genuflect”—it’s more like an exaggerated curtsey.

SA: Do you teach design?

BC: I’ve taught an Identity and Branding class at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I never attended college so creating the syllabus was quite a learning experience for me! I haven’t taught for nearly two years, but I want to get back to it. I was amazed at what my students were able to accomplish, and I learned at least as much as they did.

SA: The range of your interests and inspirations is wide and deep. Do you think specialization in graphic design is a good thing or not? Do you have a specialty?

BC: I think designers should pursue the breadth of their own interests and talents. While I specialize in identification and branding, I’ve also designed interiors, packaging, videos, tennis racquets, clothing, sports and television venues, paper stocks, and furniture. Some people specialize because it gives them the ability to concentrate on and refine a single discipline, or so that they can capitalize on a single, repeatable process. A lot of design thinking and design processes are transferable from discipline to discipline. I happen to be cursed with a mind that’s in constant motion and I’m personally interested in doing a variety of things.

SA: Who are your heroes and why? You don’t have to mention me.

BC: There are a lot of people, for a lot of different reasons. Some of them for who they are, some for what they’ve done, some for their design, some for their personal or business skills, and some for their courage and tenacity: Massimo Vignelli, Paul Rand, Bradbury Thompson, Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar, Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Saul Bass (each of whom I’ve carefully studied and copied); Chuck Kasak (my first boss); John Massey, Joe Hutchcroft, and Tomoko Miho (my mentors at the Center for Advanced Research in Design); Jay Doblin, who taught me the importance and function of design planning; Robert Vogele and many of my own clients (from whom I learned how to better run my business); Colin Forbes, who showed me that you can be tough and kind at the same time. The list goes on and on.

I’ve been a member of AIGA since 1976, but in 1983 I went on the national board, and it was truly a life-changing experience. I discovered dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people that I was able to learn from. Up to that time, I’d seen the work of people like Woody Pirtle, Kit Hinrichs, Henry Wolf, Arnold Saks, Lou Dorfsman, April Greiman, Jack Summerford, and others in magazines, but now I was able to actually meet, talk to, and learn from these people. To name those whom I consider heroes and mentors would take at least a couple of pages. Even today, I’m amazed by and learn from designers who are 20 and 30 years younger than I am. For me, there are lots of heroes.

SA: Besides the AIGA Medal, what’s your greatest professional accomplishment?

BC: Longevity.

SA: There is so much great work being done in Chicago now, and there are so many good firms like VSA Partners, SamataMason, Studio Blue, and Tanagram, among others. Why is your town so great for design? Does it influence your work?

BC: I grew up in Michigan City, Ind., and I’d been to Chicago a few times as a kid, but to me it was a gigantic, exotic, glamorous, intimidating place. I attended school there at the American Academy of Art, and when I finished, a small agency in Indiana offered me a job. But by then I was kind of hooked on Chicago—I figured if I could make it there, I could make it anywhere (I hadn’t heard the New York thing yet). I was married at 20, and had three children by the time I was 25.

Chicago’s very livable for a big city—it’s like New York on Prozac. It’s a nice, affordable place to raise a family. By the time my children were grown, I’d already started my own business, spent over 20 years in the Chicago design market, and had built a good reputation.

While design in Chicago is generally plentiful, it isn’t always highly visible. Chicago companies are relatively conservative, and many don’t seem to value design as a business tool like many companies in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Since my style is fairly conservative, it seems to fit the market, but some of the most exciting projects have come from out-of-town clients —those in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and California, and from others in Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Nebraska where, for them, Chicago is the glamorous big city.

Chicago is both a beautiful and unusual city. Its lakefront, architecture, and symphony are unrivaled. It has great theater, great universities, great museums, great neighborhoods, and wonderful restaurants. And even though it never gets quite the recognition it deserves, you can get almost anywhere in the country in less than four hours by plane. And that ain’t a bad thing when you’re looking for clients.

SA: How would you define success for yourself?

BC: Achieving personal satisfaction (whatever that means). Consistently having the confidence and trust in myself and my abilities to overcome life’s daily trials and anxieties.

SA: What key things do you think make a designer successful?

BC: Design is a life, not just a job—you have to love it. Knowing why, not just how. Being able not only to design, but to articulate the value of those designs. Trying something new often. Reading. Writing. Never leaving well enough alone. A sense of humor.

SA: Looking over the course of your career, is there anything that you would do differently?

BC: I attended art school, but never college. It’s something I feel I’ll always miss.

SA: So what are you doing for the rest of today?

BC: I’m working on a bunch of projects that you’ll never see in a design journal. It’s called “What I do most of the time.”

Sean Adams Interviews Jens Gehlhaar and Jonathan Notaro of Brand New School, Published in Step Magazine

I spend a large part of my life in the entertain­ment world… mostly watching television. All kid­ding aside, working in Los Angeles is like working in a salt-mining town; eventually, you’re going to end up working in the salt mines. In 2000 Jonathan Notaro founded Brand New School in L.A. And was soon joined by Jens Gehlhaar and a team willing to work until dawn. They quickly became a major force in the screen-based design world and opened another office in new york. Now, picture yourself watching Battlestar Galactica. The screen fades to black and a commercial begins. If that commercial makes you stop and think, “that’s pretty great,”it probably is a brand new school creation. Their work spans from broadcast and online to exhibi­tion spaces. The common thread amidst a list of blue-chip projects is a lightness, and a playful attitude that looks deceivingly effortless.

SA: Jonathan, let me start with you. How did Brand New School begin?

JN: I was working as an art director at Fuel/Razorfish in 2000. Dur­ing that time I was fortunate enough to have the confidence of the owner to touch lots of different projects. In February of that year my father passed away suddenly of his first and last heart attack at age 52. As you can imagine, this hit me hard and forced me to eval­uate all aspects of my life. My father had been put in a similar posi­tion, losing his father to a single heart attack at age 58. I concluded it was time to break the trend and create a working lifestyle on my own terms, in hopes it wouldn’t take a similar toll on my life. I called on old friends and met new ones along the way. They’ve all had a hand in the successes of Brand New School, most notably Jens.

SA: Jens, both you and Jonathan went to CalArts in the graphic design program, not the film and video department. Looking back, was that the right route? How did that program and a graphic design education form your process and work differently than a film and video education?

JG: Well, the film and video department at CalArts is not very commercial, so I don’t think it would help you much in becoming a commercial director. In general, graphic designers have a very good chance to get into advertising—your education prepares you well for mass communication and branding. Directing commer­cials is then maybe more about advertising than it is about film­making. At the end of the day, however, we’ve only come to where we are because we’ve done it for six, seven years. We’ve all gone to the Brand New Film School during that time.

SA: What a happy coincidence that School is part of the name. I look at portfolios, or reels from new directors, and I see so many motion pieces that are frenetic, dark and use loud techno music. The work you create at Brand New School is—and this is a high compliment—softer. It’s seductive and unexpected. Where does that come from?

JN: Darkness—it’s simply not in my nature. Reality is plenty dark, and techno sucks. I’d prefer to make someone smile. That is not to say that we lack emotion or avoid it; we seem to like to tell playful stories, straying away from the pretensions often associated with “serious design.”

JG: I think it is because we do see it as advertising, and the whole idea of making people buy crap they don’t need only becomes tol­erable when it is funny or witty. If it takes itself too seriously, it becomes forced and pathetic. At the same time, we jump at every chance to make something darker or more dramatic when it comes to music videos or network packages.

SA: There’s also a sense of playfulness in all of the work. It never sinks under its own importance and has a touch of humor. How important is humor to you in your work? You do realize that the design world won’t take you seriously until you do something in the nude, or deeply dark and disturbing? I’m being facetious, of course.

JN: Sean, as a matter of fact, I’m trying something very dark right now that also involves some nudity, so we’ll see how that goes.

SA: Darkness and nudity does work better than fluorescent lights and nudity.

JN: Good point. Once upon a time, humor was unique in graphic design, and it solidified the Brand New School voice way back when. Those types of scripts and opportunities tend to trickle in even since we’ve made the transition from designers to directors. I’ve never cared that much about the design world; it’s notoriously late with the love and wears too much black for my tastes.

JG: To me, it seems like the design world won’t take you seriously unless you live in New York. The playfulness comes from being in Los Angeles and close to the entertainment industry. Content is king, and design doesn’t matter in this town. Stories do.

SA: I don’t remember the exact statistic, but a huge proportion of design businesses fail within the first year. What’s been your secret to longevity?

JG: Jonathan?

JN: There are many factors, I think, but perhaps this one weighs heaviest in my mind: We’ve developed quite a bit over the years as individuals and as a company. There’s been talk about Brand New School actually being a school, which I can’t completely disagree with. This has a lot to do with our success. So the theme is really a continuing education and a place that allows for it while earning a living as well. For me, that is quite a timely perk.

SA: Your work has such a powerful and personal voice. How do you man­age that with a team of creatives? What were the forces that helped shape that voice?

JG: The four directors at Brand New School, who essentially run all jobs, have been together for five or more years. We share a lot of the same excitement and interest in the same things: a fluid witti­ness and a strong sense of art direction. On top of that, the kinds of scripts we get from agencies have the same attitude we have. And the kinds of freelancers we attract share the same energy and ideas.

JN: Jens, you just made that question your bitch.

SA: I love the IMF [International Music Feed network] identity proj­ect. I know you designed the identity and typeface, as well as the CG and motion. How often do you overlap into identity or print?

JN: I think synergies between broadcast, print and web is a trend that agencies are starting to explore more often. The question then becomes, who do you go to first to create the vocabulary? Usually print follows television, but I think the web will drive everything in the future. For some damn reason, we underesti­mate the demands of the print on every single project that over­laps with the web and/or television. Regardless, this strategy can be either impressively unified, or tedious and boring.

JG: We’ve done a bunch of freebie magazine contributions over the years and have designed print components for identity projects such as Fuel TV or IMF. Now it’s started happening more often that we are asked to design elements for print advertising that complements and is driven by television ads. We’ve done print jobs for Jeep, Vodafone and Target.

SA: Talk to me about your relationship with your clients. Most of your work involves intense collaboration, both internally and with clients who are often also creative. Do you throw chairs across the room to get your way? Cry? Beg?

JN: The greatest creative relationships between Brand New School and agencies tend to be based on trust. Once that is estab­lished, everyone wins. The irony and frustration peaks when we are called upon as professionals and treated like amateurs. This is where things tend to go sour. For those instances where there is a lack of trust, we have great armor called producers. They provide sound, creative diplomacy by deflecting the bullshit grenades and telling us when to retreat. For myself, maturity has come with age, and there are fewer holes in the walls from flying chairs to prove it … sorry, Andy. These days there are empty boxes of tissue.

JG: We’ve had a few ugly experiences where we felt abused by clients. It comes down to respect. As designers, we are very open to the pro­cess of feedback and revision—we are not the prototypical asshole directors. But when our clients don’t acknowledge this and simply ask us to change something without telling us what the underlying problem is, we get mad. We might be able to offer a better solution. When we’re treated like a production service, we pull out.

SA: What do you think the most successful collaborative project you’ve done has been, and why?

JN: Without a doubt, Brand New School has been my greatest project. My wife and daughter have been my most successful col­laboration. I know that’s kind of dodging the question, but I’m trying to look at the whole thing through a wider lens.

SA: No, that answers it nicely. Jens?

JG: The best experiences were with the better network clients, such as MTV, Fuel TV and IMF. They don’t have to answer to anyone else, which leads to a more unexpected and uncontrolled output. We also have mutual respect with those clients. There is an acknowledgement that one cannot force innovation by writing a brief or listening to focus groups. Most of the time, we were only asked to “make something cool,” and that’s the best brief ever. It also led to some of our best work.

With our agency clients, the situation is different. While we enjoy being given creative freedom, it only benefits the project if there is respect and openness from the client. Most of the time, however, there is too much money and risk involved for that to happen. So the best situation in advertising is to have a great script that everybody loves, that is approved, and then to make it into a kick-ass ad.

SA: Jens, one of our favorite typefaces is Alfa Sans—that you designed. Let­terform and type design takes a specific mind-set that I imagine is very dif­ferent from a fluid medium like motion. Do you still design typefaces? Is there any connection between the thinking and process in motion and type design?

JG: Funny you should ask. I just released my first family in more than 10 years. It’s called Capricorn, and it’s available through Die Gestalten Verlag. So yes, I am still doing it, and I have a lot of unfinished ideas sitting around waiting to get done. Most of them have come out of Brand New School projects, such as Brand New Sans, originally designed for the IMF project. For me, there is always a connection between all creative efforts. The overall emotional tone provided by formal or narra­tive references connects to the structure and the logic of putting it all together, which connects to the craft of actually making it. At the same time, there are the obvious differences that I enjoy: Type design is very solitary, and filmmaking is a huge team effort. I enjoy switching between these extremes.

SA: You stole one of our favorite interns years ago. He’s always said how fantastic working with you was. I know he worked long hours, which motion work tends to need. Do either of you have personal lives? If so, what do you do outside of work?

JN: Who was this intern? It’s been a long last couple of years for me, as we’ve been pretty short-staffed in New York. However, I wouldn’t have changed it for the world. The personal life is kick­ing; I’m happily married, and with the birth of my daughter—first child—in November, life could not be better. There’s a tendency for creatives to worry that marriage and children will impede your creative life, but I’ve found that’s not the case with me. What it does is force me to work smarter and manage my time more efficiently, while giving myself perspective. I’m reminded daily there are some things far more important than my company or my work.

JG: It’s all a matter of delegating. Sometimes it’s bothersome, if Jon and I spend so much time caring about whether all creatives on our team are used effectively and appropriately, then we are left with too little time to work on the actual project. Too often, our job is leading a team rather than making stuff by ourselves. At the same time, we do work with great designers, filmmakers and ani­mators, and they can do a lot of things better than we can. If I am comfortable delegating to them, and they are stoked that they get that responsibility, then I get to go home, which is great.

SA: Jonathan, soon after starting Brand New School, you were in a seri­ous car accident. How did that change your outlook on life, work and love?

JN: I think the car accident, coupled with my dad’s death, were some serious character-builders for what was to come. After my close flirt with death, I found myself working more than ever and determined not to fail and disappoint those around me. It wasn’t until I looked up and married that I allowed for anything to come between my work and myself. Is that a personal enough response for you?

SA: Absolutely. Thanks for being so candid. On another note, for the past two years AIGA has been shining a brighter light on diversity in the design profession. I’m hoping that we can also expand this into creative diver­sity as well—that is, by being “platform-blind,” working across media and defining ourselves by how we think, not by what medium we work in. Your office has a strong sense of diversity in terms of ethnicity, gender and cul­tural identity. Is that a purposeful approach in management?

JN: A lot of the humor at Brand New School comes from this cul­tural variety. I don’t know that we’ve ever purposefully managed that aspect of the environment, but we used to joke that we were lacking a Cantonese hermaphrodite and an albino Aborigine on the roster.

JG: We’ve always had a lot of foreign-born creatives working for us … including me. It’s just a reality in Los Angeles, especially at Otis and Art Center, both schools with a massive percentage of foreign students.

SA: If I had just graduated—as opposed to the reality that it was in 1901—and came to you with a portfolio, what would you be looking for? Would I need all motion design?

JG: What I love to see is solid, smart and sexy graphic design with a focus on illustration and image-making. Sometimes, that’s enough if it is really strong work. When it comes to motion, I’d prefer to see experiments in filmmaking that show an ability to tell a story, rather than crappy animations.

JN: I agree with Jens. I also love to see great writing and visualiza­tions of that writing. So little of what we do today has to do with graphic design. For this reason, concept artists and illustrators are becoming quite the hot commodity at Brand New School.

SA: What’s the project you’re enjoying the most right now?

JN: I’m really enjoying developing and directing this car commer­cial for Mitsubishi right now that involves flying fish and naked people. That’s always good fun in my mind.

JG: The last half-year has been amazing for me: I finished that typeface, Capricorn, we went to Seoul to design an exhibition of our work, and we directed a piece for Microsoft. That piece involved a rig with five high-definition cameras on a boat in the San Francisco Bay. I love that mix of things in this job.

SA: Rumor has it you’re moving closer to being filmmakers. What’s with that? When I see you at Sundance with your first film will you ignore me?

JN: Agreed, pencil us in for a hot toddy in 2012.

JG: We won’t ignore you, Sean. We think you’re more handsome than Robert Redford.

SA: You just moved to the top of the Christmas list. And thanks; I’ll let him know.

Sean Adams interviews Carin Goldberg, Published in Step Magazine

A few years ago I was a judge for the New York Art Directors Club. Judging can involve conflict. There’s always someone who disagrees with you on everything. Fortunately for me, they’re always wrong. Then there are the judges who agree with me—the smart ones. That afternoon, there was a strong voice that seemed to echo my thoughts consistently. Of course, I loved that person immediately. Fortunately for me, that person was Carin Ggoldberg. Carin has been called a modernist, a postmodernist, a post-postmodernist and a multitude of other labels. The true story is that no label can apply for more than several minutes. Carin’s work is vibrant and clear. She fearlessly explores ideas and aesthetics when most of us would be frozen, concerned about others’ opinions. The result is a mix of some of the most seductive, exciting and unexpected work being produced today.

SA: I want to start with a story that made me admire you from afar for many years. At the AIGA Conference in Austin in 1989, Tibor Kalman accused you of “pillaging history.” Obvious reactions would be to defer to the voice of Tibor, or become defensive, deny the accusation and cite examples. You did neither of those. You agreed and pointed out the fact with remarkable humor that, at that time, “We were all pillagers.” So, where did that courage come from? Why not just roll over?

CG: Well, first of all, I was given the chance to respond to Tibor’s comment several years after the conference, when Ellen Lupton interviewed me for a feature article in Graphis. I responded by saying that we are all “pillagers” and added that Tibor pillaged vernacular imagery just as aggressively. I am very suspicious when artists or designers claim they never “pillage.” Not possible. It’s to what degree and the context and intent that matter.

I did not attend the [Austin] conference and didn’t hear about Tibor’s tirade until years later. At the time of the conference I was entrenched in both work and motherhood and wasn’t paying much attention to stuff like that. I have to admit, amazingly enough, that I really didn’t care at the time. I think I was just too preoccupied with work and life to really let it bother me. I wasn’t about to indulge Tibor by feeling hurt or defensive. I suppose if I was paying attention at the time and gave it some real thought, I would have really resented his using his colleagues and peers to further his reputation as an opinionated, self-righteous “bad boy.” Plus, I was in very good company. He also lambasted Paula [Scher] and I think Louise [Fili], so I didn’t feel singled out. The transcript of the event and his criticism is in Tibor’s monograph if anyone is interested.

SA: Back to the idea of appropriation. Your work liberally accesses motifs, styles and artifacts from the past. While many designers argue that we should be creating only the “new,” I don’t think that’s possible within the context of our oversaturated visual culture. Talk to me about your thoughts on appropriation or historical references.

CG: Well, it all has to do with where a designer “is”—literally and figuratively—during their formative years. I think that we are somewhat powerless regarding how we think and what we do as artists in regards to our social, cultural and political influences at any given time. Yes, I do believe we should always be trying to reinvent and surprise and make new things, but I also think that our culture and our personal experiences are very influential—sometimes insidiously—[as] to how we think, no matter how rebellious we would like to be. I was also pretty young at the time … and, again, very influenced by my peers and mentors and my day-to- day life. … I was learning and trying new things in an environment that allowed me to play. Simply. There was nothing forced or contrived about it. It had an open, organic quality that I treasure.

SA: It’s interesting that you were able to take a little of this from one mentor and a little from another and synthesize something very personal.

CG: I was working at CBS Records with Paula Scher, Henrietta Condak and Gene Greif in the late ’70s. I had come from CBS Television under the tutelage of Lou Dorfsman shortly before that, where it was all about corporate identity and highly finessed typography. Lou was a fanatic about detail … lucky for me. I learned the craft of design from Lou and his designers.

CBS Records was like a mini atelier/art school and we were all searching for new ways to make imagery. I would say that Henrietta was the first there to introduce historical vernacular in her gorgeous covers for the CBS Masterworks Series. We were also blessed with an amazing library of new and vintage art and design books and had access to magazines like vintage Gebrauchs-Grafik, Life and Fortune. We were looking at Cassandre, Herbert Bayer, Italian Futurism, Russian Constructivism and De Stijl for inspiration. Push Pin was a huge influence on all of us. We were educating each other daily. All that stuff totally thrilled us. And I think what made these references compelling and exciting was that it worked so well in the context of record packaging at the time.

In answer to your “synthesis” question: If you work hard at your craft and keep your eyes and ears open to new ideas it is inevitable that a personal style or sensibility will unfold. It’s not something that you can force or make happen.

I studied fine art at Cooper Union and thought I would be a painter. I approach my work as a series of experiments—don’t tell that to my clients—that inform each other along the way. Maybe that’s why the personal finds its way into the work.

I did not study formal design at Cooper. I learned on the job. My mentors were my teachers.

SA: That’s a surprising combo. How did that work?

CG: It was all about context and form. These influences inspired our desire to do more formal work as opposed to just being art directors and smacking tasteful type on a gorgeous photograph by Avedon or Reid Miles or Norman Sieff. We were bored with that and wanted to actually make stuff—paint, cut, paste and play. Unknowingly, we were right in the thick of the beginning of what only a few years later was labeled “postmodernism.” Who knew? Our experience had a life of its own. We weren’t trying to be academic or pointed. We wanted to have fun and make stuff. Unfortunately, we are now stuck with the label of postmodernists or worse, “pillagers.”

SA: And that migrated into the post-record work?

CG: These influences certainly continued when I started doing book jackets. Very often I was given titles that screamed for historically referenced and stylistic solutions. I was designing books written by Rilke or the Beat poets. I was designing biographies for many historical figures. Especially those in the arts. There were a slew of books written about Cold War and post-Cold War Soviet Union. And always nine or 10 books about the Holocaust.

The controversial cover I designed for Ulysses was the one that Tibor targeted. The very specific brief that I received from the editor and Judy Loeser, the art director of Vintage Books in the 1980s, was to design the cover in the tradition of the previous Ulysses cover, designed by McKnight Kauffer in 1949. The trajectory of the Ulysses covers is well documented in the book By Its Cover by Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger. I was specifically asked to play with a big capital U and to maintain the typographic direction of the previously published Ulysses covers. There wasn’t much of a hook or a concept to work with. The content of the book was specifically irrelevant [to] the brief. Therefore, style was the only way to approach the thing. I designed several variations and, again, my references came from modernist typographic posters. I rationalized that Joyce was a modernist. That was my hook.

Was it a total rip off of an original poster? No. It was homage to the poster and to the period. In the same way that Vintage Books was paying homage to Joyce and republishing the classic Ulysses, I was paying homage to classic works of design. At the time there was hissing and booing from my detractors. Still is. I say, tough. Leave me alone already. In the meantime, that cover is considered a classic, for better or for worse. I moved on the day after I handed in the comp. Next!

SA: You have a sublime sense of humor. How does that intersect with your work?

CG: You flatterer, you. Truthfully, that is the ultimate compliment. I try to instill my sense of humor in much of what I do … if not a sense of humor, then at least a particle of hope, humanity or joy. No matter how sophisticated or cool or modern and sleek I would like my work to be, I simply can’t help inserting some humor or wit or humility into it. I struggle with the desire to be a populist and an elitist, an intellect and an entertainer.

SA: When you were at CBS in the mid-1970s, it must have been a “boys club.” What was that experience like, both working at CBS during a historic time and being a woman in a male-dominated culture?

CG: Strangely enough, it wasn’t as bad as it is now. The men I worked with at CBS Television were, for the most part, really generous, wise, fatherly mentors. And when they acted in a creepy way—and they did—it was always out in the open and surprisingly harmless. The advantage of being a young woman designer in the ’70s was that the expectations of appropriate behavior had not been politicized yet. I am not suggesting that it was a feminist utopia by any means. But for the most part, there were a lot of classy, smart, talented people there, and the focus was on craft—making good work. The really disgusting, chauvinist behavior was more overt when I worked in the music division in the late 1970s.

SA: I remember being in college and having instructors who designed record covers for the big labels in Los Angeles. It seemed that they were all living in stylish houses previously owned by television stars and working with unlimited budgets to do things like making a cover out of fake fur. You were working at CBS Records around the same time. Did you buy a huge apartment from Linda Evans or make covers with ostrich feathers?

CG: Not even close! I will say, though, that as a staff designer at CBS at the age of 27, I made more money than I ever dreamed I would make—$27,000, and I had an expense account. I lived in a tiny studio in the West Village that cost $350 a month. That was considered a lot then. And I did buy expensive shoes on occasion. The budgets at CBS were really big at that time, but, as I said earlier, we often rejected the opportunity to have obscenely expensive photo shoots and opted to do more hands-on, formal solutions when we could. Fortunately, we had the option. No fake fur though. We left that up to Tommy Steele.

I started in the CBS music division as an art director. At the time the creative director was Myron Pollenberg. He was a force and a visionary. Although fairly young and inexperienced, I was hired and given the opportunity to collaborate with smart writers and art direct some great images for music ads. I was given the budgets and the freedom to do almost anything I wanted to do and worked with my heroes like Duane Michaels and Art Kane. This experience enabled me to segue into the package department—with a year stint in between at Atlantic Records—where I worked for Paula and Henrietta and John Berg.

SA: Why did you strike out on your own?

CG: I had enough with the shenanigans and bad behavior I witnessed in the music business. Again, the creative environment in my department was as good as it gets. There was energy and a free-spiritedness that I treasure and nostalgically remember. But it was definitely the height of “sex, drugs and rock and roll.” It was one big cliché: sexism, hubris, hedonism and generally bad behavior.

Creatively, it couldn’t have been better. Politically, it sucked. I was a staff designer at CBS, but when I started my own small firm I did record covers for pretty standard fees. I designed Madonna’s first cover for $2500. She was completely unknown at that time. I suppose if I had designed the second cover I would have been able to get tons more. That first record was her breakthrough album, and it went through the roof. I am sure she was not about to ask me, the girl hired by her record label, to do the second cover. She had the money and the power to work with anyone in the world. There was no indication of loyalty or thanks. I didn’t expect it, so I wasn’t disappointed.

SA: What you’re best known for is the book jacket work. There are an enormous number of book jackets on the shelves, but yours always jump out. What do you think the key elements of a good book jacket are?

CG: Since I haven’t done a book jacket for years—by choice—I feel a bit distant from that particular process. While I was doing book jackets by the zillions, I knew that it was important to entertain and educate the reader. And “jumping out” was imperative. Covers are displayed among hundreds of others. … My job was to make sure the covers I designed [stood] apart from the rest.

The fashion/style and expectations change every 10 years or so as to what makes a “good” cover. I was lucky enough to be one of the few designers able to work in a medium that was a bit under the radar at that time. The rock stars like Chip Kidd and Dave Eggers didn’t exist yet. But I do believe that we—me, Louise Fili, Fred Marcellino, Judy Loeser, Jo Bonney, Lorraine Louie and Paula—made a huge impact on changing the face of jacket design and shifted the paradigm. Phil Meggs wrote an article about this in Metropolis titled “The Women Who Saved New York.” Plus, record covers were on the decline in size and impact, and book jackets became the new opportunity to do experimental work. Marketing wasn’t as involved or invasive, and computers were not ubiquitous, so the expectations for speed and multiple designs and revisions were fewer.

Both book jackets and album covers are opportunities to respond to and, in some way, interpret the art of music and words. It is my responsibility to aspire and pay homage to the art and intelligence that exists between the covers. I think it is a very noble job.

SA: How do you get there? In other words, what’s your process?

CG: Well, for music you listen. For books you read. I would read only half or three-quarters of a fictional book—never the whole thing. I did not want to become too emotionally invested in the story or the writing at the risk of not being able to solve the problem objectively. … My job was to find the best way to make an image that illuminated the voice of the writer or the musician. It’s often a more subtle or suggestive interpretation of another artist’s voice.

I rely on visual innuendo and iconography. The key is to tell a story without telling the story. Covers are more conducive to image making and do not rely on a narrative. Entire books do—that is when storytelling happens. It’s a more cinematic medium. Doing book jackets and album covers was the closest to making posters. At the time, that was the ultimate medium. I was happy making mini-posters.

SA: I have fallen hopelessly in love with the jackets for Mother Said and the SVA book. How did you come to both of those solutions?

CG: Hal Sirowitz, the author of Mother Said, is a very deadpan, minimalist poet. His writing is stylishly style-less. It is comic and Freudian and tragic and totally without pretense. I wanted the cover to look like it wasn’t designed. I wanted the type to look sloppy, just kind of plopped in. No finessing. Very “un” and generic, tonally. I did have Ed Ruscha in the back of my mind at the time. The image of the pocketbook came from a 1950s mail order catalog and conjured the memory of my mother’s handbag.

That bag always had a clasp that made a loud snap! when [it] closed. It was always something that symbolized caution, privacy and secrets. It was an extension of my mother and her personal life, and it was verboten. Hal had a very ambivalent, Woody Allenish response to his mother in his poems.

SA: What about non-book-jacket projects? Do you approach them the same?

CG: Not always. I try to bring an artful touch to all of my work, but I am very aware of the criteria and responsibility I have to the client as well as to the reader or viewer. But I always see everything I do as an opportunity to educate, illuminate and elevate the reader and the client visually. I try to be responsible to the subject while contributing a new or illuminating perspective.

SA: Your husband Jim Biber, a partner at Pentagram, is a gifted architect. It’s not surprising that your own apartment is such a spectacular space. What I like about the apartment is that it’s an exciting collection of objects, cultures, design and art. It’s not the sterile, cold environment that most of us imagine an architect living in. What was the process for designing the space with Jim?

CG: We always lived in a small one-bedroom in the Village and never had the space or the means to really express “us.” We did collect art and posters and furniture over the years, so when we finally bought our house in Brooklyn, we were able to design the space around all the stuff and ideas we collected over the 25 years we’ve been together. The house gave us the room and the palette to make a space that really reflected our aesthetic.

I have to admit that our collaboration was a very pleasant experience. We really did have fun thinking about each room and agreed with each other on most decisions. Jim’s experience and talent enabled us to design the space on a very small budget. We aren’t decorators. Much of what we own and collect are things that have some meaning to us. We travel a lot and much of what we have comes from our trips. I will admit that I like to curate the space, and I get a bit obsessed with the placement of tchotchkes. Jim is less particular about the small stuff. It works well for us.

SA: It’s clearly made for a family. How do you juggle the work, the need to stay inspired and fresh, and the family?

CG: I’m not sure it’s really made for a family. It may not be too perfect or expensively renovated, but my son Julian has complained that we live in a museum.

How do I juggle? With great difficulty. I will say, without going into a 17-page feminist diatribe, that having a family and a marriage and trying to be a thoughtful/relevant/ designer/professional/ human is really hard. … If I’m not happy with the work I’m making/doing, I am not easy to live with. I get cranky, bitchy and at times morose. I tend to be very hard on myself and have very high expectations regarding my work and success as a designer. That’s not always very compatible with family life—or particularly cheery. I want to be a great—not just good—mother and wife and a great—not just good—designer. I’m not sure that’s entirely possible. Bottom line, my family’s happiness and well-being come first. I am very lucky to have a supportive husband who believes in me and actually still likes me a lot. Knock on wood. I don’t think I will ever be resolved about any of it—maybe a bit less tortured, but never resolved. Inspired? Fresh? God knows, I try.

SA: Tell me about the most exciting thing in your life today. It’s not required that it be a design project.

CG: Exciting? That’s a tall order. I’m not Jane Goodall. I am very happy with my life, and I am lucky. My son just finished his first year of college and is thriving. That is exciting. Jim and I are resolved and certain that he is now officially smarter than we are. That’s the way it should be. We are really proud of him. And I am still very happily married. That’s [as] exciting as it gets.

I am still excited about my work but often very disappointed with the [opportunities] to make lots of work for good clients. … The days of many consecutive covers or jackets are over. Although many failed and some succeeded, I relished the chance to learn from my failures and successes. It’s the continuous flow and the process that I miss. I have a short attention span and need to juggle lots of work. Otherwise I get bored.

SA: You teach at SVA, you give time to cultural organizations; you’re the current president of the AIGA New York chapter. Why? You’d have so much more time to catch up on TiVo if you stayed at home.

CG: I do both. I am a TiVo devotee. I can’t imagine life without it. I love TV, and I’m proud to say it. Plus, how can a designer not watch TV? It’s our culture, like it or not. TV is an important point of reference just like anything else.

I am a social person. I like being with people who are likeminded. I like doing things that are meant to inform and elevate. Teaching gives me the opportunity to inspire and be inspired. It forces me to stay on my toes and practice what I preach. Plus, I want my students to understand the importance of what we do as designers and to respect the profession. I hope they will become designers who learn to think about what they do as professionals and as responsible human beings. If I am going to encourage students to enter a profession of making stuff, that stuff better be beautiful, responsible and smart. Otherwise, we don’t need it.

I enjoy being president of AIGA/NY. Although it can be incredibly time consuming, the experience has mostly been a joy. I love collaborating with my peers, and I’m given the chance to raise the bar and give the membership some real bang for their buck. Generally, I hate “clubs” of any kind, but if I have the opportunity—and the power—to shape the content of the programs and the overall tone and attitude of organizations like AIGA, I feel I am doing a service—once more, it is an opportunity to educate and inspire. Fun and a few laughs are also a big part of the payoff.

SA: Objects can define a person very well. What’s your working space like? I’d love to know the contents of everything on your desk this minute.

CG: My desk is very boring. I miss the days of mess. I have fallen into the computer/automaton workspace. I sit in an Eames lounge chair with my laptop—on my lap—answering e-mail or writing stuff like this more often than I’d like these days. I spend much more time tending to the “business” of design and career maintenance than I would prefer. To quote Joni, I am always plotting to “get back to the garden,” so to speak. I keep thinking this is temporary, and that I will eventually get back to “the work” once this phase is over. In the old days—BC, before computers—I was buried in papers and images and stuff. Good fodder. I do have a magnetic wall that has a revolving display of images. And I have shelves of books and boxes of scrap I have collected over the course of my career. All that visual “stuff” gives me both pleasure and a sense of security. It makes me happy and gives me hope.

SA: Designers are compulsive collectors. I’m always starting a new one, then dropping it. It’s a bad habit. What is your prized collection?

CG: I have mini-collections. I like my eraser collection. I like my very small, old, twisted flower frog collection—they look like little Calder wire sculptures. I have a nice hatpin collection and a small collection of book covers with cryptic/perfunctory one-word titles—“secret,” “shop,” “focus.” My art and design books are very important to me. They ground me and humble me. When I travel and go to flea markets the hunt gives me a mission and a problem to solve. But I’m not obsessed. Really.

SA: And finally, what’s the best place to eat in Brooklyn?

CG: Frankie’s Spuntino. 457 Court Street. Great meatballs.

Sean Adams interviews Chip Kidd, Published in Step Magazine

A few months ago, I was in New York and invited by Debbie Millman to see Chip Kidd’s new band. We headed downtown and found our way into a dark club. Chip wasn’t performing yet, but it was clear he was the headliner. There was standing room only, an audience populated by the young and hip and, judging by hair and eyeglasses, design-minded. Chip’s fans, all. Entering the club was similar to the scene in any western when the stranger walks into the local saloon. The doors opened, we walked in, all heads turned toward the door. I was immediately aware that, in that context, i looked like a wayward father looking for his runaway teenage daughter. But in his typically gracious way, Chip saw us and pulled us into his booth. This is the problem with Chip. He is a great designer, writes books, has remarkable personal style, is in a cool band, and is, unfortunately, gracious and charming. It is unfair for one person to be all this. I was determined to find the flaws. But, in the end, I have yet to find one.

SA: Chip, we first met at a dinner during the AIGA conference in Las Vegas. You wore a beautiful coral-colored shirt. I remember thinking anyone who wears coral deserves high marks. Which leads me to a shallow question: You have such a unique personal style. Most designers opt for the standard black uniform, but you don’t. Where does this come from?

CK: First of all, before we get started, I just want to remind you that at that conference in Vegas, you left your socks in my hotel room, and I never got a chance to return them. If you want them back, let me know … except now there are holes in them. Sorry.

Anyway, I’ve just never been inclined to wear black, except for formal occasions where it would be rude not to do so. I’m not sure where this comes from, but one possible explanation is that someone gave me The Official Preppy Handbook when I was in the 10th grade, and it totally changed my life. Seriously. It woke me up to class difference in America and how it works. And looks. This was just as Ralph Lauren was “coming into power,” and to this day I wear more of his clothes than any other designer. This is hardly unheard of, except my rule is I won’t wear anything with a visible Polo logo. That still leaves a lot of great stuff, believe it or not.

That disdaining black frees me from the cliché of “looking like a designer” is just a by-product, not a goal. The clothes that inter­est me, for myself, are what I would call Classic But Interesting, which means there has to be some sort of color involved. But I also buy very much for the long term, so whatever it is, it has to be wearable five years from now, 10 years, 20, etc. It should be noted that I try to apply this rule to my book jackets as well.

SA: OK, first, the polka-dot socks were originally Dana Arnett’s. I stole them. Second, talking about your clothing choices may seem stupid, but it points to an aspect of your work. You seem incapable of simply following trends or imitating others. The work you pro­duce has a strong understanding of image as language, and it has a unique vision. Where does this originate?

CK: Most likely from a childhood fortified by a steady diet of after-school television, a tidal wave of comic books, album covers, movies, commercials, etc. “Image as language” was instilled in me, however subconsciously, since I was post-fetal. As it has been now to anyone born in the Western World since, what? 1960?

SA: Good point. I know that Sarah T.—Portrait of a Teenage Alco­holic drives most of my work. There are many camps in the design world: designers who are interested primarily in form, design­ers who eschew formal issues and focus only on the conceptual, designers who follow only one narrow vision or set of rules. Your solutions use a wide range of formal choices, always are based on an idea and typically employ a degree of wit. Is that variety a necessity in the context of book covers?

CK: The necessity has as much to do with me not getting bored as it does with any kind of needs—specific or otherwise. But really, of course they all have to be different: The books are all different.

I honestly don’t understand why any designer, of anything, would want to impose the kinds of restrictions on themselves that you mention, unless it’s some shtick that pays well—but even then, how soul-deadening.

SA: What do you enjoy about book covers over other assignments?

CK: I’m just an old-fashioned print guy, frankly, so that’s a start. But I’m also inclined to never throw anything away, so by extension I don’t want anything I design to be thrown away, either. I sort of walked backwards into a book design career, but it turns out it’s perfect for me, because it’s all automatically archival. Or is supposed to be, at least.

SA: In addition to the many nonfiction books you’ve contributed to, you now have two fiction books under your belt as an author: The Cheese Monkeys and The Learners: The Book After “The Cheese Monkeys.” How did you come to the decision to write books yourself? And what led you to the narratives in your books?

CK: I was very lucky, because I happened upon two stories I wanted to tell that actually hadn’t been told before in a novel. Which was rare and key, and also why, for now, I’m pretty much stymied on writing a third.

In The Cheese Monkeys, I wanted to recreate for the reader the experience I had at Penn State—taking the graphic design classes I took and, more important, sitting through the critiques. I thought that if I could do it right, it would be just as compelling—and harrowing—as a good legal thriller. Because, really, during a critique you are very much on trial.

With The Learners the goal was to take this idea a step further via the Stanley Milgram Obedience experiments, which put the subject—the reader—on trial to prove his/her very humanity.

And in both books I played it all for laughs.

SA: Obsessions are always difficult to explain. Everyone has their own, and they are rarely logical. I have a disturbing obsession with “It’s a Small World.” Trying to explain it leaves people staring at me and slowly backing up. Given that, can you talk about Batman?

CK: OK, let’s hold that thought a sec. So, just what does an obsession with “It’s a Small World” entail? The lyrics tattooed onto your thighs? Sneaking after-hours into the ride at Disneyland? Little Dutch Boy outfits? Spill, dude.

Anyway, as for explaining my Batman jones, anyone can get plenty of that by Googling, so I won’t repeat myself here. The main thing to stress about this—along with the other things we’ve talked about—is that my design work for Batman- and comics-related projects grows directly out of a deep love and respect for the material. In short: Passion makes great design. This is borne out again and again in graphic design history. David Carson loves to surf and creates Beach Culture; Dana Arnett rides a Harley Davidson and ends up completely redefining—and saving—the company; Abbott Miller’s enthusiasm for dance results in 2WICE [an award-winning semiannual periodical and foundation that supports art, film, dance and performance]. This is one of the best messages we can impart to design students—that by combining a passion for something with skill, we can preserve and sustain it.

SA: See what I mean about the Small World thing? You’re not going to return my calls now, and since I mentioned it, nobody will return my calls.

CK: Yes, Noreen had been urging me to get up on stage with her at the gala, and I was afraid if I did, we’d spontaneously combust. I get the “You should do stand-up!” thing all the time. But let me tell you: Having friends who actually are in that area of show business, I really don’t think I’m cut out for it.

Says Kidd, “The Fur poster is one of my rare forays into the movie biz, and the film has the dubious distinction of being the single least successful movie of both Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. Do I have the magic touch or what?” Photo by Geoff Spear
You see, here’s the difference between cracking people up at a design lecture and trying to do it for a living at 2 in the morning in front of three dozen drunken NYU students at Caroline’s Comedy Club: The former carries no expectations of levity whatsoever, and the latter is weighted with far too many of them. No one goes to a design lecture to heckle … yet, anyway.

As for humor being important, yes, of course. I’d rank it right up there with food, oxygen and duct tape.

SA: I often get requests from around the country for opinions on potential speakers. Usually a “rock star” is needed, and you’re typically at the top of the list. So, what’s it like being a rock star? Do people throw money at you and offer romantic liaisons?

CK: Oh, no “Hampton Inn sword fights” for me. First, I’m in a relationship going on 14 years now. Second, for better or worse—OK, better—my romantic ideal (older, grayer) is not the kind of person who routinely shows up at my lectures (younger, largely body-hairless). This works out best for everyone, especially my boyfriend, who is older and grayer and very, very patient.

SA: Damn your good morals. I was hoping for licentiousness. When you’re out there speaking or judging competitions, or just seeing design in general, what do you think about the current state of the industry?

CK: I’m terrible at this kind of question. I never feel like I have my “finger on the pulse” of what’s going on, especially since I haven’t really taught for 10-plus years now. I’m perpetually clueless, really.

Although: Living in New York City helps a bit, because you’re exposed to so much interesting visual information, whether it’s the new Roundabout Theatre campaign or a stencil of a wrongly-imprisoned Zimbabwean someone has spray-painted onto every street corner in Soho. The problem with most of it is it’s almost never clear whom or what is responsible for the work.

But since you bring up judging, I have to say that the depressing thing about it, especially regionally, is that those with the most money to enter things tend to be those with the least amount of taste and skill. I think all design competitions should have a pro bono work category that doesn’t cost anything to enter. That would very likely bring in more interesting stuff that deserves recognition.

SA: I’ve been doing this column for quite a while now, and there are consistent threads that link all of the designers I talk to. Typically they all have a remarkable amount of energy and are not satisfied doing one thing only. Obviously you have this trait. You have a job, write, make music, maintain a relationship. And god knows what else you’re up to. I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me you were working with the Peace Corps on the weekends. How do you do this? And, why? You know you could just lie around and eat ice-cream sandwiches.

CK: If I ever tell you I’m working with the Peace Corps on the weekends you will also know hell has frozen over, because that would mean I’ve finally become a responsible, compassionate adult—and babies, that’s just not in the cards.

I’m a selfish, narcissistic pig, stuck in a hedonistic limbo of perpetual post-adolescence. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not in denial about it either. As for getting all this stuff done, the shocking thing is that if you hung out with me for an entire day, you’d be even more amazed—no one can piss away time like I can, no one. I appall even myself.

But there are several logistical factors that enable me to actually produce. Chief among them is I don’t have a family to take care of, not even pets. So, basically that means I can work any time, and I do—evenings, weekends, etc. And for all intents and purposes, I’m married to a workaholic who’s even busier than I am, so the dynamic is inspiring and functions well.

SA: The “Who are your heroes?” question seems wrong for you. Maybe a better way is to ask who has affected you in life, outlook and in work?

CK: I hate to name-drop, but this reminds me of something Madonna once told me. She said, “If you don’t stop trying to follow me, my bodyguards will make you sorry you were ever born. I mean it, dick-stain.” Actually it was one of her assistants who told me that—shrieked it, really—but it was just the most amazing piece of advice I ever got, and it’s always meant so much to me. So I’d say in terms of influences it’s pretty much her … and Paul Rand, who told me the same thing.

SA: There is a need for the public to pigeonhole individuals with notoriety. We tend to assign one-dimensional archetypes easily: Britney Spears is shallow, George Clooney is smooth and suave, Jennifer Aniston is nice. This happens in the design world also, and it’s easy to be assigned a character. But all of us are three-dimensional, complex individuals. Are you always in good humor? Do you have a dark side that you’d like to reveal?

CK: Oh, my god, how much time do you have? Actually, I only show my dark side to my proctologist. Rim shot! Sorry.

Not that this has much of anything to do with your question, but the fact I’m still referred to in articles as a “wunderkind,” however flattering, is frankly kind of odd. I’m 44.

SA: But you are a remarkably well-maintained 44. I’m 44, and people congratulate me on turning 50. So, tell me about a typical day for you.

CK: Frankly, I really didn’t think STEP was that kind of magazine—dwelling on cheap, tawdry sleaze. Shame on you.

SA: It’s not STEP, it’s me and my sad need to live vicariously through others. Do you have fun when you’re working, or are there lots of screaming and weeping?

CK: Tell me, who exactly said you can’t have fun while screaming? Didn’t you ever hear the expression, “That was a total scream”?

Yes, I love working, especially when one achieves those brain­gasms. Which leads to the weeping.

SA: Yesterday an interviewer asked me why I became a designer. My first impulse was to joke and say I’d probably be working at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, or maybe I could be a senator if I weren’t a designer. But I actually think—and yes, this is corny—design chose me. I didn’t have a choice. If you weren’t designing, what would you do?

CK: It’s funny that you brought up Kentucky Fried Chicken—I have a great story about that. Less than a year ago this friend of mine was in line at a KFC on East 14th Street, and at the front was this skinny little guy who ordered three 20-piece buckets of Original Recipe. So the woman at the counter rings him up, and says, straight-faced, “Is that for here or to go?” Now, this man was obviously there alone and would be taking all of it to some sort of party or whatever, and he said: “Are you fucking kidding me? How would I eat all of this here, now, by myself?” To which, the woman replied, sharply, “BITCH, I DON’T KNOW YOUR LIFE!”

This has since become my new mantra, replacing, “This is a nightmare. A total, endless, nightmare.”

I love that story. Bitches, I do not know your lives.

SA: That is fantastic. And you are so good at answering a different question than the one asked. What was your favorite project? Why?

CK: I never know how to answer this one either, because I’ve been so tremendously lucky regarding the things I’ve been able to work on and generate. By now I’ve had so many favorite projects, I should be put against the wall and shot for excessive ecstasy.

The novels, the books on Batman and Peanuts, designing everything for Cormac McCarthy, James Ellroy, Michael Crichton and Haruki Murakami—I often worry it’s all downhill from here.

SA: It’s been said that adult life is exactly like high school but with more money. We all just become a more exaggerated version of ourselves when we were 16. I have a twisted habit of imagining all of my friends as they were in high school. Noreen was the funny girl who played basketball and everyone liked. I was a jerk and will forever be making up for the horrible things I did in high school. How about you? What were you like?

CK: Exactly what you’d expect: I was the skinny band-fag who made people laugh in order to be accepted and not get beaten up. Which of course in no way guaranteed that I was either accepted or not beaten up.

SA: Unless you’re getting smacked around backstage at conferences, you’ve gotten past that. Finally, you’re not shy about pushing people’s limits. I truly admire your fearless approach. Have you ever gone too far, crossed a line you regret?

CK: I do regret that I threatened to kick Ann Coulter in the vagina when we both appeared on the Today show. That just wasn’t fair to Matt Lauer. After all, it’s his show, not mine, and he should’ve had the first chance. Other than that, I really can’t think of anything.

Sean Adams interviews Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel, Published in Step Magazine

Almost 14 years ago, at the first AIGA business conference, my partner Noreen Morioka and I did our first speaking engagement. To say the lecture was awful and potentially career-destroying is generous. As 20-something designers, we panicked. In the midst of the deluge of criticism, Bill Drenttel and Jessica Helfand reached out and gave encouragement, even inviting us into their home. Frankly, this was the thing that kept us going. Their seemingly innocuous act of hospitality goes to the heart of what Bill and Jessica are. Their careers have been motivated by work for the public good and the encouragement of a liberal, educated and critically informed design world. Their remarkable talent and intelligence could easily have led to lucrative careers at Halliburton, but they chose another route: leaving new york 10 years ago and setting up a studio in rural Falls Village, Conn. There, they design, write, engage and continue to encourage. Their energy and commitment to the design world and the greater culture inspire every designer to personally be far more than he or she believes possible.

SA: Bill and Jessica, let’s back up a few years. Bill, you were at Drenttel Doyle Partners and Saatchi & Saatchi. Jessica, you worked with traditional print media and seemed to be on a direct course to corporate identity and publications work. Then something changed. You packed up, headed north and focused on other ideas: new media, writing, advocacy and cultural institutions. Was there a specific epiphany or event that initiated the transformation?

WD: If there was a transformative period, it was the advent of the internet in the mid-1990s, a couple of years before we moved to the country. Jessica had already forsaken print design almost and was working on The New York Times’ first website. I came home one night and realized I was a lot more interested in her “new-media” work … than in doing another national packaging or identity program. Despite having great partners and a successful firm, I quit my job soon after this to work with Jessica. She was the trailblazer. Only months later we were hired to redesign Netscape and a suite of websites for the Times of London. We spent our first year together in business with me commuting to California and Jessica to London.

JH: If there was any epiphany, it also happened smack in the blur of new-parenthood. When our son was 1 year old, we bought a country house and ironically found we were hugely productive when we got out of the city. Two years later, Bill was briefly enter­taining the thought of becoming a college dean when, shortly following the birth of our daughter, we just threw caution to the wind and moved up to the country full time. I suspect, looking back, we had some general premonition that fresh air and milk from the farm would be good for the children, though it is likely we were just as selfish about finding space for all our books. It turns out, though, we were right about the productive part: I always feel I have to apologize to our urban friends about the distance from Starbucks—about 18 miles—but we do spend a great deal less time stuck in traffic and a great deal more time making work.

SA: I could manage without a Starbucks, but good Chinese food? That would be a problem. Now you’re living in a rural setting a couple of hours north of New York City and are relatively isolated. You must have one of the largest design libraries in the region, and your studio space is extraordinary. Clearly this would never be possible in midtown Manhattan. Your library is remarkable. I need to visit and distract you while someone packs a suitcase of books. Does living and working in Falls Village make a better environment for inspiration or experimentation?

JH: Both.

WD: We’re obviously less distracted by the joys of city life, and by the constant barrage of events, meetings and lunches that characterize a more urban practice. We also travel extensively, both in the U.S. and abroad, so our frame of reference isn’t only Falls Village. Mostly, though, we stay home: If we’re productive, it’s because of this simple fact. If there is completely, more experimentation, part of it is probably explained by those long winter nights.

SA: You have a tight and efficient crew. I picture an Ethan Frome setting in the winter: daily sledding with evenings trapped in a warm room. Did I get that right? How does the studio work?

JH: We have one designer and one office manager, plus the two of us, and occasionally an intern. We’ve found over the years that it’s not so easy to get a designer who appreciates the complexity of our practice, yet at the same time enjoys the simplicity of a fundamentally rural lifestyle. But when we do, it’s utter perfection, and we’ve been blessed by an amazing series of talented people coming through our studio. It’s true that the winters are long, and you have to drive a lot, and you have to be utterly fearless when it comes to things like snow tires. It helps that teaching and publishing—and, in particular, things like Below the Fold: and Design Observer—help to keep us in touch with the world on an ongoing basis and in a fairly international way.

WD: Our practice is more personal than professional, and Jessica and I don’t always care about the same things. However, the best design work we’ve done generally has both our hands on it. We try to give our staff the same freedom and respect. I’m not sure we are so efficient: We simply work long hours. It’s a tight team, but hardly a tight work environment.

SA: I’ve found a common thread with all of the subjects of my STEP Q+As: You all share an unbelievable amount of energy and succeed not just at one thing, but at many things. From the studio’s design work to Design Observer to writing books and serving on boards, both of you must not sleep. This needs to stop because you’re making everyone else look lazy. This might seem like a question that would be asked on The View, but how are you accomplishing all of this?

JH: Bill will be the first to tell you that I don’t willingly stay up past 10 p.m. What he casually omits is that I get up at 5. Bill, on the other hand, is the ultimate night owl, so together we make one really whole person. The longer answer is that we operate on a kind of divide-and-conquer system; this is the only way to write, publish, make things, run a practice and—oh yes!—raise a family. I suppose if I were asked the question on The View I might reverse the order. The one thing we do together is lecture—it’s a good excuse for us to take stock of where we are and assess where we’re going, plus we famously disagree about pretty much everything, a detail that can make the podium a relatively interesting public arena.

WD: The question of productivity is ultimately a question of pas­sion. We love what we do and are continually amazed at the ways design—as a methodology, as an end-result and as a community—leads to powerful results. As individuals, we love making things, but we also want design to be something larger than our own efforts. Building large initiatives and programs with social impact puts us in a world beyond our village, beyond our small staff, beyond our own experience.

SA: Talk to me about Design Observer, which is the largest online design publication in the world, with over a million site visits a month. How did this come about? It’s a format that relinquishes editorial control and allows for multiple voices and points of view. Does this drive you nuts?

JH: Almost 5 years ago, Bill approached Michael Bierut and me—and Rick Poynor, the other founding editor—and suggested we start a blog. We arrived at two main criteria quite early: one, that we cast a wider net and write about design for a more general and ideally more global audience; and two, that if we agreed to write thoughtfully, we might actually encourage more thoughtful com­ments. And while we were initially criticized for being too elite—too much in the style of, say, the academic lecture hall—this is largely what we’ve become. One thing I am especially proud of is the degree to which students participate in Design Observer. Every time I am a guest critic at a school, this is the first question I am asked [about]. And for students, the opportunity to read and participate in a conversation with us, and with our other contributors, is really quite a remarkable thing.

WD: The fact that we are a blog with numerous contributing writers and guest observers does not mean there is no editorial control. In fact, what distinguishes Design Observer from most blogs is our focus on the writing. Ultimately, we are not blogging in the con­temporary sense of the word. Rather, we are publishing 150 essays a year within the context of something that looks like a blog. The fact that a few of our readers also make comments also makes it a blog, but … only a tiny fraction of readers comment. Michael, Jes­sica and I do not necessarily agree with the views presented in all of these essays—or necessarily with each other’s writings, for that matter—but we do take responsibility for everything that’s pub­lished on the site. In this light, Design Observer is a more controlled and considered editorial product than it might otherwise seem.

SA: Bill, you were national AIGA president, and Jessica, you’ve driven multiple initiatives that contribute to the greater commu­nity. You both founded the Winterhouse Institute, which incorporates a range of programs including the Polling Place Photo Project, a collaboration with The New York Times; Below the Fold:; the Contents book; the Wolfsonian project and AIGA Winterhouse Writing Awards. Don’t you know how much good television exists?

WD: Beyond believing that designers have many ways to participate in social and political culture, it’s not so interesting to generalize here. Every project has its own motivations, a specific history and, in many cases, additional collaborators and even part­ners. Our own paradigm shift was simply to ask ourselves why we needed clients in order to produce work that we care about? Why can’t we initiate our own initiatives? These days, we still have clients, but now half our work is of our own making.

SA: That leads me to a basic question: Why is writing and critical thinking important in the design world?

WD: Neither Jessica nor I went to art school, but we did our undergraduate work in large universities—I went to Princeton and Jessica to Yale—so it’s more than likely our orientation is informed by … this background. We both share a deep respect for the liberal arts; an abiding curiosity in the humanities; a love affair with history, with science. Across all of these disciplines, language in general—and critical thinking in particular—remain fundamental components. So, yes, writing is a significant aspect of our practice—of how we define ourselves as designers—and we would probably go so far as to say that without a sense of how words can be orchestrated, design stands a pretty good chance of going nowhere.

JH: I’d answer simply that it is because writing and critical thinking are important in life, period. I often hear people argue that these activities are impediments to creating things, to making work. But I’d argue they’re complementary activities. For me, I have always found that I work some things out by writing, and other things by resolving formal issues in the studio. The third component for me is teaching. I’m better when I do all three; take one of them away, and I feel less connected to what I’m doing and less productive as a result.

SA: A common question I hear when I’m speaking at an AIGA chapter is, “How did you convince a client to let you do that?” Typically, the projects they are referring to are self–generated and authored. It gives us a chance to explore ideas we typically wouldn’t encounter. You’ve taken this one step further and have become a publishing house. I think you’ve made the idea of self-authorship concrete to many designers. Why did you decide this was a good direction for a design firm? Was it difficult to make happen?

WD: Acting as publishers has created endless opportunities for us as designers—to design literary works and nonfiction that we care about, and to reach audiences we wouldn’t otherwise. While we’ve published many books at Winterhouse, we also have partnered with a number of university presses to publish design works, social history and German literature. The reasons to pursue such avenues are ultimately simple: to exert more control over projects, in their selection, their content, their form and their distribution. There’s another way to think of this: publishing, along with writing, as integrated aspects of a design practice.

SA: There is an inherent European influence in your work. I love that it combines a clear and honest American pragmatism with European traditions, formal and conceptual. How often do you travel? And does that have any influence on your work?

WD: In the past year we’ve been to Europe a half dozen times, plus probably visited 10 U.S. cities. Now that our children are older, we are hoping to again make longer trips to India and Asia. But while we travel a lot, the game plan is not to be on the road constantly, so we schedule travel in well-organized bursts. For us, it’s a dose of speed once a month. I don’t think either of us would say our work is particularly “European,” except perhaps in a pluralistic, literary sense. Europeans are less threatened by things with historical implications—and by ideas that might be called “intellectual.” We’re increasingly comfortable with the notion that we have a practice that seeks to engage ideas on these levels.

SA: Jessica, I wrote a letter a few months ago describing your scrapbooking project. I hadn’t considered its impact until I was forced to articulate the project. Your work looks at scrapbooking through a historical and sociological lens, while tracking visual evolution as it mirrored societal and design movements. You’ve uncovered remarkable personal stories and complex narratives buried in scrapbooks from the 19th century to today. This is a ground-level sense of history told, with images, text and ephemera providing an emotional connection typically lost in traditional historical research. What are you doing with this information?

JH: This book [Scrapbooks, published by Yale University Press] is the fulfillment of more than 20 years of thinking about two things: one, how to make history in general—and design history in particular—meaningful and memorable to a general audience; and two, how to inject something human and palpable, and I would even go so far as to say dramatic, into a discussion of graphic design. I spent nearly three years looking at hundreds of scrapbooks, photographing them, reconstructing their internal stories, and finally writing and designing this book. Now we’re doing a website, and there’s been some interest in a documentary film. But on the other end, I’ve been working in my studio with real ephemera and this newer, “reproduction ephemera”—yes, that’s an oxymoron, but these facsimiles are stunningly convincing and will last a lot longer than their authentic counterparts—experimenting with them and making things that push the boundary of new and old paper. It’s sort of like being a director, in which you use the manipulation of paper to stage something. Put another way, I know a lot of designers, myself included, balk at the idea of contemporary scrapbooking having anything even remotely to do with what we think of as graphic design. But if you just isolate some of the materials and begin to think about them as you would any other visual set of forms, there’s a kind of interesting transformation that starts to happen.

SA: So what’s next for you in your lives and careers? In 10 years when you’re empty nesters, where do you see yourselves? Will you stay in Connecticut?

WD: In some ways I think we’ve finally figured out what we do well, and the projects and opportunities just keep getting more interesting. Unless the next life-changing epiphany emerges, I suspect we still stay focused on a few amazing clients, grow the impact of Winterhouse Institute projects, and publish selected titles that catch our fancy. Yale University has become sort of second home for us, as Jessica has returned to the School of Art after a year’s hiatus, and I’m now teaching at the School of Management.

JH: Our children are 10 and 12 now, and we do occasionally wonder if this is the best place for us. I have this fantasy that we take Winterhouse—the institute, the studio, the imprint—and we get absorbed in some university community where we can continue to do what we do, on a slightly more public scale, and within a community of like-minded people. Because I really do see the practice as not so much growing [larger] as morphing into something more collaborative and maybe more culturally diverse. We’re thinking about an extended tour of duty overseas sometime in the next few years—a mini world tour for the children, some teaching for us and a change of perspective for everyone. I can’t quite process the children out of the house, nor do I want to. But I personally see myself making increasingly more experimental work, having fewer clients, reaching into different areas where we haven’t yet extended our reach.

SA: Rumor has it you’re planning on fixing American politics, solving world poverty, putting a poem in every person’s hand [see winning web work from Winterhouse in STEP’s Best of Web] and in general changing the world. You definitely follow Harry Truman’s description of Americans as people who “see the world not as it is, but as it ought to be.” What’s with the small goals?

WD: Designers have always wanted to change the world—it’s hard-wired in our DNA. Maybe it’s time to collectively organize our efforts to really begin to make those contributions. In the meantime, our little enterprise will continue just for the joy of the effort.

Sean Adams interviews James Victore, Published in Step Magazine

“Never go on stage with children or dogs” is a common rule in the theater world. The design world equivalent is, “never follow james victore as a guest speaker.” I made this mistake once, and i felt like mister rogers next to che guevara. James transcends the easy classification of designer. He is an unrepentant communicator and activist. His work is strong, humorous, and unforgiving. This courage is rare in a time when alternative points of view are positioned as “unpatriotic.” James victore clarifies the idea of personal vision and perspective, and reminds us of the importance of communication in a pluralistic society.

SA: I spoke at Portfolio Center recently, a month after you were there. Before the lecture began, one of the students asked, “Do all designers swear a lot?” What did you say to those kids? Remember this is a prime-time magazine.

JV: Swearing for me is like punctuation.

SA: I know we’ve discussed avoiding the design-star mill questions, so I thought we’d hit it right away. This “rock star” idea seems to be floating around the design world these days: Victore’s a rock star, Sagmeister’s a rock star, Scher’s a rock star. I don’t know where that puts Mick Jagger in the rock-star world. So, what’s it like being a rock star?

JV: I think it must be lots of fun, but all the crack has left my brain a bit addled. Ask Stefan.

SA: That’s funny, Stefan told me to ask you. Now for an abrupt change of topic: We live in a time when the world is painted very black and white—you’re good or evil, you’re with us or against us. You clearly have no problem taking a clear stand on an issue that may not be the polite or politically correct approach. Why risk the criticism?

JV: First of all, there is no criticism. I think most folks are afraid of the perception of criticism, so they take no chances. I’m very spoiled. I work with smart, sexy, brave clients who want to make powerful statements, and I get to be myself in the process. I don’t have to disguise my voice just because I have a commercial client. I am not a politician, I don’t need or even want to make everyone happy. This allows me the freedom to make work that comes from Victore and not some empty vessel.

SA: Have you always been interested in work that is political? And I mean political in the cultural and societal way, not the Democrats and Republicans.

JV: You can’t change anything by riding the fence. I don’t make many real politically charged works. Not as much as I’d like, but I do try to make my everyday work charged or energized or pregnant with meaning. Humans are curious and interesting and diverse, yet we tend to call them a “market.” I think that’s not only atrocious, it’s just rude. I want to be a storyteller, I try to envision more of a one-on-one scenario with a viewer and my work. With my subway posters for the School of Visual Arts I try to think what would really inspire or entertain someone riding the train. How can I make my work a gift to them? Thinking like this means that the work’s about me and my opinions, but it has to be. This is about connecting to real people. I don’t see enough designers putting themselves into the work.

SA: How does this attitude translate to different clients, from SVA to Aveda?

JV: It doesn’t have to. That’s the interesting part. My clients work with me because of our alignment. We share the same goals. My studio wants comrades, not clients. Whether it’s a large company, like Aveda, that has a social/environmental agenda, or an illustration for The New York Times, I like to try to find that tiny kernel of truth that makes it all interesting. James Joyce wrote, “In the particular lies the universal.” Which means that the more authentic and genuine you become in your expression, the more others can relate to it. So, if you want love, attention, and appreciation, you need to give love, attention, and appreciation. You need to put it in the work. I think this is what separates great work from the herd. Working with the truth, and not just a trite design motif like CSA clip art takes a bit more effort, but also makes my work and life worth it. And I have found it also excites other people.

SA: When you’re out there judging competitions, or just seeing design in general, what do you think about the current state of the industry?

JV: This conversation turns to the idea of mediocrity run amok in our business. I know that in the end business rules, but business does not have to be so butt ugly. It only takes a little effort. It’s not as if that’s what the public wants. It’s what Marketing wants. Marketing seems to run on fear and self-doubt. I’m sure the public would love something better, but nobody gives them the chance, nobody gives them the benefit of the doubt. We constantly second-guess the public and end up pushing the safe status quo. When I started in this business I thought— rather naively—that if I worked really hard at developing my craft and my ability to tell a story, I would have clients flocking to me. It would seem to be a rational thought, no?

SA: Is that the fault of the designers, or the clients?

JV: Neither. And both. The saddest three words in the English language are It’s just business. Because of business, primarily the fear of losing it, clients—and by trickle-down effect, designers—cannot afford to have an opinion. What a lousy position to be in! How the hell can anybody make anything of value without an opinion? It relegates us to picking colors, typefaces, and some regurgitated clip art from the ’50s.

SA: I find a common error I see in design, our work included at times, is that the work is constipated. Not restrained in a good way, but safe and recessive. It’s symptomatic of the culture in general, and the reluctance to do or say anything that is contradictory, complex, or difficult. I know you must have some jobs that you keep hidden in a flat file like the rest of us, but the work I see from you is brave and bold. How do you maintain this?

JV: Thank you for the compliment. In the studio, we work very hard to have fun. My objective—with every job—is to try to take it where no one else would ever go. To invent. To surprise myself, and hopefully my audience. Of course, there are some jobs you do for God and some you do for money, and I approach every job as if it is for God, but when it turns into a money job we get it done. The trick is to find brave clients who you like and who trust you and have lots and lots and lots of money.

SA: There’s a fine line between admiring a designer and simply reproducing. The “Who are your heroes?” question seems wrong for you. Maybe a better way is to ask who has affected you in outlook and in work?

JV: To answer honestly, the other folks who drive me, who remind me to stay on course and try to ring true, are musicians. We listen to lots of different music here, but we always come back to Johnny Cash, Bob Marley, and Neil Young. The visual artist that inspires me most these days is the English graffiti writer Banksy. His work doesn’t seek approval. It is fearless, attractive, smart, and funny—everything I want in my work. Like Cash, he’s badass. I like badass.

SA: What’s life like out of the studio? Are you screaming at strangers in the park? Watching endless repeats of The Facts of Life?

JV: This is a good time to dispel the myth. People feel that since my work has passion and a resonance, that I am the “angry old man.” Sean, I am a happy guy. I work hard and have a good life. I’ve got a great, sexy wife and a wonderful boy. I like surfing and motocross and have lots of fun, when I can squeeze it into my day. And we don’t have a TV. And I’m not old.

SA: Talk to me about activism. Do you consider yourself an activist? Is it, to paraphrase, “Disgusting or delightful?”

JV: I’m not an activist, but maybe I’m a dreamer. I still believe that design can change the world.

SA: I was asked at a speaking engagement recently about “selling out.” I’ve never understood what that meant. It seems to have a liquid definition. First, is it a good or bad thing? Second, what does that mean to you? Third, how would you cross that line?

JV: Selling out does seem to have two meanings. If my plates sell out and I have to make more, this is a good thing. But if I claim to give a shit about the world, but I pay my rent by designing for a cigarette company, that’s a bad thing. It is very difficult to be true these days. And, of course, one should never cross that line.

SA: Tell me about a typical day for you.

JV: Most of it is so typical I won’t even bore you with it. My favorite part of the day is 5 a.m. I wake early to read and study. This is my time to “sharpen the saw.” I don’t know enough about philosophy or economics or even myself, so I read and study these things. I try to turn my weaknesses into strengths.

SA: You seem to have an endless amount of creative energy and passion. Do you have fun when you’re working, or is it like, “Cheese and crackers, another message piece?”

JV: The first rule of being in business for yourself is “Have fun.” I love my job and I take it very seriously. I get to make myself laugh for a living. And if I do a good job, a lot of other folks laugh, too.

SA: If you weren’t designing, what would you do?

JV: I’d be designing. Of course I’d love to spend the rest of my life on a warm beach surfing, but I have found my dharma, my unique talent and purpose. And this makes me endlessly happy. All I need to do is find the right comrades [read: large corporations] to work with in order to multiply this excitement.

SA: What was your favorite project? Why?

JV: My son Luca is always my favorite project. It’s the one job that is most difficult and most rewarding.

SA: When I’m in New York, where should I eat?

JV: My house. My wife, Laura, is an excellent cook. And I have gotten very good at using that wine-opener thingy.

Sean Adams interviews Jamie Koval, Published in Step Magazine

I’m not prone to envy. Dig deep enough and you’ll find we all share similar issues and daily problems. After leaving the offices of VSA partners in Chicago, however, I felt that green monster on my back. Badly. In the past month, three different well-known designers told me that VSA was the country’s leading design firm. Jamie Koval is one of the partners driving this creative engine. Jamie’s work is deceptively simple. The solutions seem effortless and clear. This betrays a reality that is complex, multilayered and very smart. The same can be said of Jamie personally. One of the most pleasant surprises in life is meeting a designer that you’ve always admired and finding him affable, charming and humble. Recently, Jamie and I took a break on the lawn at the Sundance resort in Utah, and I grilled him. Being the affable, charming, humble person he is, he answered my questions without duress.

SA: Jamie, before we jump into the work, I’d love to know some basics. Where are you from, where did you go to school, what was your first job?

JK: I grew up in Winnetka, Ill., part of what’s known as the North Shore, a stretch of towns along Lake Michigan just north of Chicago. For college I chose to go to Kansas—yes, that graphic design epicenter known as the University of Kansas—because I wanted to attend a university with a strong design school rather than art school. I received a degree in Visual Communication with a minor in Journalism. After I graduated, I traveled to Switzerland to attend a summer program with Kent State University and studied design just outside Zurich.

My first job in the industry was working for a small advertising agency on Michigan Avenue. It was a summer job, I was a senior in high school, and I loved it. I was already a teenage workaholic. I would take the train from home into the city, ride a commuter boat from the train station up the Chicago River to the steps of the Wrigley Building. I thought I had arrived. The agency was small and adorned with personalities, like an ad-agency version of WKRP in Cincinnati. It was a great place to gain perspective.

SA: And how did you end up in design?

JK: Probably like most designers, I was blessed and cursed with the ability to draw, and that kept leading me to design. Even when I was really young, I loved type. I knew I was going to do something with art. I remember being 11 years old and painting with my grandfather on Saturday during the winter months. I sold one of my oil paintings to a very good friend of my father. He paid me $50, and I was convinced I was rich. Or at least commercially viable.

SA: So, if your first job was at WKRP in Cincinnati, VSA seems like The West Wing. I’ve always been confused about how VSA works. Whenever I’ve been in the office, it seems like a well-oiled machine filled with amazing talent. But you have several partners and lots of people. Do you have teams; do you share projects, who has the final say on a direction?

JK: Here in Chicago, which is our first and largest office, we do function primarily in separate teams. There are four creative partners, each of whom manages between 10 and 15 people. Our teams are a pretty interesting mix of designers who think strategically, writers who can think visually, strategists who can write, and account people who can strategize… all of whom see design as the means of solving a communication or business problem. People who come into our office have compared it to a newsroom, grad school or air traffic control. Most often the partners run our teams independently, but we collaborate from time to time to share resources or respond to the demand of a major program.

As a partner, my role is multifaceted, starting with business development, creative direction, through staffing and leading my team. Although my team is amazing, I have overall responsibility for everything we produce, so I’m involved in every design decision. Which is what I love in the first place.

SA: So much of your work is large scale, long term corporate projects. These involve large scale politics. How do you handle this and maintain the ability to do unexpected, exciting work?

JK: You make it sound like road construction. To a degree you’re right, because large scale corporate assignments naturally attract attention from multiple internal stakeholders with differing agendas: lawyers, accountants, HR, corporate brand managers, internal designers. Did I mention lawyers? And then there are process challenges: budget, timing, research, testing, approvals. But what’s exhilarating to me about these enterprise-scale engagements is that there is so much at stake for the client’s organization. And we have a seat at the table with leadership in making a change. In these types of engagements, companies are trusting us not to produce more stuff, but to deliver something of real, lasting impact. My greatest success in building big, corporate branding or communication assignments comes when we lead with strategy and then produce beautiful, compelling work.

It sounds simple. But how you scope and stage an assignment is critical to its outcome, which is why research and strategy are elemental to our work. And then once the stage is set, you need to deliver something that you find compelling and that you know will resonate with the market. Creating the unexpected is always about combining intelligence about the audience with instinct for the right aesthetic.

Oh, and it helps that I just enjoy it. I’ve done programmatic work for clients large and small, emerging and established, and I like getting my fingers into everything, from positioning, to identity and naming, to every visual expression imaginable. I also like variety and transferring what I know in one industry to a different set of challenges in another. That’s why I intentionally try to vary my clients, industry sectors and types of assignments. The common denominator is that I try to choose assignments where there is creative opportunity, where I can work with and learn from talented people and have a chance to raise the trajectory of a company or brand.

SA: That’s what makes your work rare: It is smart, but it’s also incredibly skilled. One of the other aspects of VSA’s work that I admire is the commitment to craft. Within that is the ability to not fall into the current groovy trends. The latest promotion you did for Mohawk, the Strathmore promo, is a perfect example of this. What was your thinking on that project?

JK: You know how you can look at a house built in the 1920s, and it makes perfect design sense, even today? It’s never going to be seen as trendy or faddish. It’s timeless. It stays relevant. It has integrity. I see my work as never really in fashion, and hopefully never out of fashion. I’ve always gravitated toward classic sensibilities in my work not only because I like it, but because that’s how I’m wired. I just see things this way. So there has always been a timeless quality about VSA’s work that I really can’t explain. I’ve heard it termed “responsible.” Others have said it’s a Chicago thing, but I don’t think that’s it either. I just like things to feel current, not new. I like modern, but not state of the art. Familiar and accessible, but a little hard to peg. I suspect it all comes back to the desire to create something of lasting value rather than something disposable.

Launching Strathmore for Mohawk was a dream assignment. It was strategic, programmatic and creative—everything I enjoy. My goal was to begin by offering emerging designers an insider’s perspective on writing and identity. These were two types of projects that happen on Strathmore paper, a story that hadn’t been told effectively in the marketplace. We developed an aesthetic for the program that was bold and recognizable to a more commercial, less design-savvy market, and added a depth of detail, wit and finishing so that a more discerning audience might respond as well. See? There’s the creative not falling far from the strategy again.

SA: We’ve been hearing for years about the death of the annual report and the switch to electronic communication for corporations. What are your thoughts about printed matter? How is it changing?

JK: Well, the reports of the AR’s death aren’t necessarily exaggerated. They’re just missing the real story. I think there will always be certain companies that believe the purpose of an annual is simply to fulfill a regulatory requirement. And those reports will naturally devolve to a non-designed print version or static online presentation. But for those who see a strategic purpose in the report, they’re looking for new ways to leverage it to reach more a specific audience or send a specific message. And those tend to be the AR clients VSA attracts—although in the interest of full Sarbanes-Oxley-style disclosure, I feel compelled to point out that annuals are an increasingly small percentage of VSA’s overall business as we’ve diversified our work over the years. I am under oath here, right?

Anyway, what we see first and foremost is that annual reports are no longer a one-size-fits-all proposition. In some cases, companies pursue a full annual, others choose a summary report, a 10K wrap or just an online report. There are companies that communicate both in print and online. Which is why we address each company differently.

For instance, Ameritrade was a client that had historically produced both a print and an online report, and we migrated them exclusively online because it was appropriate to their business and brand. For GE’s annual report and website, we converted what would have otherwise been financial tables into an online experience by adding interactivity to them. Then there are companies like our client BP that see corporate reporting as a library of print communications that combine to address financial, social and environmental performance.

So companies need to assess whom they’re talking to and what’s the best way to facilitate a conversation that shapes perceptions among their audiences. My favorite thing about the annual report is that it forces public companies to have internal and external dialogue on an annual basis about where they’ve been—and more importantly, where they’re going. And that need isn’t going to go away.

SA: But you’re able to make the leap from corporate America to the other side. You’re kind of a nonprofit junkie. You’ve committed time and resources to AIGA and Anderson Ranch Art Center, Dance Aspen, the Northern Suburban Special Education District, you served on the board of the Chicago Art Foundation. Why not just go home and watch TV?

JK: First off, I watch plenty of TV… by the way, I love Dennis Weaver’s work. Secondly, if there’s a cause or an organization out there that I believe in and they can use some support, I am always willing to help. It goes back to your question earlier. I like to focus on a range of assignments. For example, I am a board member of the Chicago Art Project, and I recently finished the identity program for this group dedicated to raising visibility and exporting Chicago artists. I also just agreed to design the program for the Dalai Lama’s May visit to Chicago, hosted in Millennium Park.

SA: Is the house finished? Talk to me about that process? Were you a good client? Did the design of the house influence your work, or visa versa?

JK: Yes, the house is finished after three years and, believe it or not, we actually live there. I could make a comparison to putting a man on the moon or painting the Golden Gate Bridge, but let’s just say… it’s done. Coming from a world where we shape companies or launch global brands sometimes within months, this process seemed quite laborious. And it didn’t help to have experience working with interiors companies such as Interface and Baker Furniture. I almost know too much.

For the architecture and interior perspective, I think I was a good client. I challenged our architect and my input helped the house quite a bit. On the construction side, I’ve made myself a necessary nuisance. As a designer, you expect everything to be perfect and done immediately. And the construction industry just doesn’t work that way. In the end, the house is a true reflection of my design approach and sensibility—the exterior is old, part of the landscape, romantic; the interior is open, clean and modern.

SA: I like that this is a concrete example of melding your creative with your family. Your family life is clearly your priority. How do you balance these massive projects and their time and travel demands with family?

JK: It’s a challenge, because the pull of doing great work constantly competes with the pull of building a great family. But I do my best. Fortunately, I have a wonderful wife and kids that are understanding and very supportive. And maybe [they have] a little of my design genes, so they get it. They let me pursue what I enjoy, and we take a lot of vacations.

SA: Since coming to VSA in 1990, what was your favorite project personally —and it’s not fair to be politic about this and say “all of them.”

JK: How about “the next one”? How fantastically diplomatic would that be? I guess if I were to step back and think about it, I’d look to see what the criteria for a favorite project would be: moves market, good partners, creative freedom. That’s a tough question. I have to say I don’t fall in love easily, and I typically am most excited about what I’m doing right now. So today, it’s the identity program for Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics. But if I were to look back, one of my most favorite assignments was the first assignment I did with Mohawk Fine Papers to promote Superfine called Luna Bella Luna. It was a project I developed with my good friend, photographer Paul Elledge, and it was just wonderful on every level. It came together quickly. It was well written. The story was true to the people from this remote little town in Italy, and people loved the book. It was the beginning of a 10-plus year relationship partnering with Mohawk, and to this day I still like the piece.

SA: Without naming it, what made your least favorite project not work for you?

JK: Sorry, did you say something?

SA: You’re good. OK, if I were trying to be hired by VSA, what would you be looking for? And don’t tell Noreen I asked this.

JK: First, the interview process would be oddly similar to this. We spend a lot of time looking for something intangible called fit,” and it generally surfaces in conversation rather than on someone’s resumé. And it greatly depends on the level. With an entry-level designer, it’s pretty straightforward: Good communicator? Highenergy? Decent computer skills? Understand typography? With more senior people, it’s trickier. Where have they worked? How strong is their portfolio? Are they a cultural fit? Can they think like clients? Do they understand typography? Oh, by the way, when can you start?

SA: Before I start, you must know I will only use Tiffany on all projects. So, we’ve established that your work is focused and exquisitely clear, but my big question is can you find anything in your office?

JK: What do you mean? You can find almost anything in my office. My office is sort of an exploded view of my mind. When I’m outside, the world looks clear and linear, but inside, my office needs to be full of stuff—inspiration, business trends, pure imagery, forms, notes, textures, color. And my kids’ drawings. A depth of stuff, because you never know what unexpected connections you’ll need to make. Maybe not knee-deep, but still…

Sean Adams interviews Jennifer Morla, Published in Step Magazine

For the last 20+ years, Jennifer Morla has been one of the profession’s most visible designers. Her merging of form and concept with an explosion of color and energy changed the landscape of design, inspiring designers internationally. She is a doyenne of design in san francisco amidst a sea of “michaels.” she has created visual landmark icons that have significantly changed our definitions of right and wrong, good, and bad. Her work for clients ranging from levi’s, to the mexican museum to apple computer incorporates our cultural preconceptions and rearranges them. Recently she became the Creative Director at Design Within Reach.

SA: So, back to the beginning. How did you end up in design? Not a dentist or a flight attendant?

JM: Although being a secret agent held the promise of excitement for an 11-year-old girl in the mid ’60s, one of the many advantages to growing up in Manhattan was my early exposure to the design and architecture wing at the Museum of Modern Art. It was there that I became familiar with graphic, product, and architectural design. More importantly, I became aware of the history and origin of design—the sensual beauty of a Bang and Olufsen turntable, the shocking geometry and color of the Rietveld chair, the typographic and photographic collages of the Russian constructivist posters. I also loved to draw and did so since I was a young child. My mother let me attend the Art Students League at around the same time I was considering being a secret agent. It was at that point that she knew I was going to be an artist and, perhaps because I was a girl, I was allowed to pursue my artistic sensibilities. Drawing was easy and natural for me and has served me well in being able to communicate ideas quickly to both my staff and clients. It also allowed me to quickly consider any number of solutions based on conceptual intent without the hindrance of stylistic tools that I find distracting when working on the computer at the beginning stages of the design process.

I must say that the political climate of the late ’60s, the Johnson/ Nixon administrations, the Vietnam War, and the cultural institutions that reflected this new radicalism were all extremely influential in my decision to become a designer. Design could communicate dissent, provide a discourse, and attract the public to new ideas through the beauty of type and imagery. The posters of Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast, as well as random posters plastered on city barricades, were all extremely influential in determining my career path.

SA: You’re very identified with San Francisco; people would probably be surprised to know you’re from Manhattan. You moved to San Francisco in 1977. What drew you there?

JM: I was attracted to San Francisco for many reasons, the first being the multidisciplinary approach to design that was embraced by San Francisco design studios and fostered by entrepreneurial clients. I was attracted to the nonconformity of Bay Area design. San Francisco seemed to embrace, on both a cultural and visual level, a verve akin to those formative years in NYC.

New technology was also booming in San Francisco and I wanted to be a part of this. Prior to being the art director at Levi’s, I was senior designer at the San Francisco PBS station, where in 1980, the Quantel Paintbox system was being developed for television —a platform that allowed the designer to move type, create graphics, and integrate live action. It opened up a new world of design possibilities beyond a 000 Rapidograph! And finally, Chez Panisse. Before moving to San Francisco, I met with a handful of Bay Area designers that had studios at that time—John Casado, Marget Larsen, and David Lance Goins, who illustrated exquisite posters and letterpressed them himself. He was a friend of Alice Waters’ and designed the menus for [her] new restaurant called Chez Panisse. I ordered a salad and, suffice it to say, East Coast iceberg lettuce was a thing of my past.

SA: When you first came to San Francisco, the market was very male dominated. I remember stories about Marget Larsen in the 1970s, and how hard it was for her as the only woman art director at the time. Was that an obstacle, or a nonissue?

JM: Marget’s studio is a perfect example of that multidisciplinary approach. I was taken by her bold environmental signage that created a destination, elegant print collateral, and sharp wit.

I visited her in 1977—she was engaging, funny, and extremely talented. Although I only met with her for a couple of hours, her influence stayed with me. I can’t say that being a woman was an obstacle. A bigger obstacle was being only 28 when I opened my studio in 1984. I had a couple of extremely large jobs that seemed unusual for a person my age to be handling from start to finish.

SA: Anyone starting out in this business could always use a little help. It’s unusual to start with as big of a bang as you did. How did you get some of those early clients?

JM: At Levi Strauss & Co., I had worked with all of the division presidents. They were familiar with my design approach and professionalism. They also knew that I took an unorthodox approach to marketing their product. While at Levi’s in 1981, I proposed having famous artists depict the 501 classic, which, up until then, had been shown only in a western imagery context. I contacted David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. Warhol started the series, and I had the privilege of spending a couple of days with him while he worked on the final canvas.

Early clients and jobs were a result of these professional relationships. And working on fashion is wonderful in that it provided an opportunity for me to explore all areas of design: high-end trade brochures, photo art direction, branding and creating brand extensions, store design, furniture and fixture design, book design, and multimedia.

SA: I’ve always wondered if you ever sleep. You make amazing things in every medium, raise a family, travel, teach, and now run a corporate design department. Is it huge amounts of coffee? Crack? How do you maintain this level of energy?

JM: One makes time for the things one loves to do. A morning latte and afternoon espresso keep the creative juices flowing.

SA: Whenever we speak, it seems like you’ve just returned from a trip somewhere exciting. You have a rare ability to handle cultures like paint on a palette. Does that come from travel? How does it impact your work?

JM: Being interested is the foundation of inspiration.

SA: What place was the most inspirational for you?

JM: Some remembrances of things past: Thailand’s temples covered in broken porcelain with massive reclining Buddhas made me rethink scale and the repurposing of materials; Barcelona for its vibrant design vision back in 1982; Japan for the retail inventiveness; Rio for the sensuality of the curving terrazzo boardwalk that parallels Ipanema beach; Buenos Aires for the architectural wonderland in the Recoleta cemetery; Siena, Italy, for the graphics of the Palio; London for Vivienne Westwood; France for the colors of Giverny; and Tanzania for the sheer beauty of the zebras.

SA: One of my favorite pieces of yours is the Mexican Museum poster. The color is remarkable. There’s fearlessness with color—a willingness to let color be unexpected like a Fillmore poster or a Picasso during the blue period. Where does that sensibility come from? Where are you looking to create these amazing palettes?

JM: That’s hard to identify. Some is intuitive, some is based on appropriateness to subject matter. I can say that growing up in the ’60s exposed me to how color could be used as a primary design element. Yet surprisingly, I always investigate if the solution could be clearly communicated in black and white. The Mexican Museum poster needed color both as a point of cultural reference and to reflect the nature of the programming, while the posters for the CCAC Institute benefited from the typography forms best expressed in black and white.

SA: Your work navigates a variety of cultural concepts, producing solutions that are clearly appropriate for the client’s specific culture. None of the work ever feels like it is a veneer. It all seems to grow organically from within the project’s origin and criteria. Is that one of your priorities for significant design?

JM: It is the priority. I always strive to find the appropriate narrative so that the solution doesn’t turn into a stylistic conceit.

SA: Last month, when I was in San Francisco for an AIGA lecture, you were very gracious and asked me over for dinner at 10 p.m. on a school night. The house you and Nilus (Nilus De Matran, Jennifer’s husband) designed is another example of your sensibility. I’ve heard that graphic designers make the worst clients for architects. Spouses come in second. You had both. What was the idea behind the house? How did your work influence the space?

JM: It was a wonderful collaboration. Nilus can work on a limited budget and make it look extraordinary. The interior is a juxtaposition of modern elements (floor to ceiling windows, concrete walls) with classical details (stone fireplace, maple floors), and the unexpected (roses taped on the living room wall). I had the roses created for a photo shoot I did with Matthew Rolston. I brought the roses home, had a dinner party the following night, broke out the Scotch tape, and had my guests tape the roses to the wall.

SA: Tell me about something you’ve done recently that really excites you. Remember children may be reading this.

JM: As you know, I had wanted to change the focus of Morla Design for a while and concentrate on creating work for arts organizations and educational institutions. When Design Within Reach offered me the creative director position, I knew this opportunity would allow me to implement this change. My studio also recently finished a large-format poster series for the postgraduate literature department at Stanford University. This was a perfect project—or more specifically, a perfect client—that gave us the opportunity to formulate a conceptual solution that communicates the essence of a literature lecture series.

SA: How did the creative director position at DWR come to you?

JM: Rob Forbes, the founder of Design Within Reach, and I have been business associates for many years. We love to talk design and have enjoyed previous working relationships based on our design interests. A few years back he asked me to design a tabloid targeted to the architectural design community. It was a great experience. DWR is one of the few design-driven companies I know of. Strategic marketing goals are based on design education and communication. What attracted me to their offer was the potential of the job—to create a design language for DWR’s over 50 stores, make that language a dynamic web experience, and enhance the catalog by infusing it with authorship and design history. In addition, I am involved in product development and the launch of all new brands. But my quintessential “kid in the candy store” moment is having access to the archives of Le Corbusier, Eames, and Nelson.

SA: How are the challenges of being an in-house department different from running a design firm?

JM: The challenge is to make an in-house department run like a design firm. Instituting primary contacts, sign-off procedures, production schedules, you know the drill. But most importantly, creating a system that allows enough time for designers to design.

SA: Seeing that you have so much free time, are you still teaching?

JM: I have been teaching Senior Design Thesis for the past decade at California College of the Arts (CCA). I also serve on the Thesis Committee. Why am I still at the school? The talent of our students consistently humbles me. I learn from them perhaps more than they learn from me. And because I hope that I can let them discover how design can tell a story.

SA: What’s been your proudest achievement professionally?

JM: There are many: Teaching for 12 years at CCA, being included in the upcoming edition of The History of Graphic Design, being a part of the permanent collections of MoMA and SFMoMA, and having a solo exhibition at SFMoMA and DDD Gallery in Japan.

SA: And this is a tricky one to pinpoint, but do you have a favorite piece?

JM: I am perhaps most proud of the work I did for Levi’s.

SA: Community has always been one of your special interests. We first met when I asked you to come to Los Angeles to do a lecture. You’ve been one of the best supporters of AIGA for years. Why does community matter to you? Does it really help anyone professionally?

JM: Community is our collective voice. It provides a forum for the discourse of ideas and the avenues to share those ideas outside of our community. My involvement with AIGA has been, and continues to be, one of the most enriching aspects of my professional life.

SA: Are you involved with any other organizations?

JM: I am on the Board of SFMoMA: Architecture and Design, as well as New Langton Arts, a progressive art venue that promotes both emerging and more established conceptual artists. By being involved in promoting architecture and design at the Museum, I hope that future generations will have the opportunity to experience their own design epiphany. My support of art organizations is more selfish. I get thoroughly inspired by the intersection of art and design mediums.

SA: How do you stay inspired and keep from burning out?

JM: I go to conceptual art galleries and performances to keep from burning out—Peter Brooks Mahabarata at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Zaha Hadid’s architecture, John Baldassari’s art are forms of inspiration. All make the ordinary extraordinary.

SA: What’s your favorite cocktail?

JM: As a Northern California girl, a good glass of Pinot. Being an East Coast girl … there’s nothing like a gin and tonic on a warm summer evening.

SA: Favorite book?

JM: I tend to like fiction laced with a touch of the existential. Ian McEwan is a current fave, while Joan Didion did it for me back in the early ’70s. Orlando by Virginia Wolfe is exquisite. But if you’re looking for a good dose of pure existential melancholy, read Kobo Abe’s Woman in the Dunes.

SA: Favorite shoes?

JM: Any shoe that gives good toe cleavage.

Sean Adams interviews Jeremy Mende, Published in Step Magazine

Last year, I was asked by Adobe to produce a series of podcasts on the subject of design. What I learned was that lighter shirts make you look fat on camera. I also gained access to talented designers I’d never met before, including Jeremy Mende. It’s an easy temptation for designers to begin to sink under the weight of their own self-perceived importance; the conceptual thinking behind a project can become so dense that audience access is precluded. Mende has a strong commitment to the conceptual aspects of his work, yet his touch retains lightness… No easy task. I cornered him at an afternoon pool party—yes, it is L.A.—at my house and, amidst the splashing and shouting children, we talked about his work and vision. Since Mende is from San Francisco, he never did venture out from under the umbrella.

SA: Jeremy, what’s your story? Eric Heiman [of Volume SF] introduced us, and I was blown away by your work. Where did you come from, and how did you start as a designer?

JM: I really was not aware of design until later in life. I remember that designed objects were around-my parents had an Eames lounge and the like-but at the time I understood design as having something to do with status and taste, and not as a medium for expression or something one could build a personal connection with.

Without much of a plan I went to UCLA and studied psychology. I was very interested in how people make sense of things, but I kept looking for ways to translate that into something visual. In reality, I just wanted to make images, and I was looking for a reason [to do that]—somehow I was taught art was something you had to have a reason for. I tried painting but didn’t have the technical skill. A friend of mine was studying design. It was the first place where I saw intention and the act of making fitting together. It made sense to me, and I convinced the school newspaper to give me a layout job. While working there, I discovered some early-generation Macs, and I was fascinated with the control the machine afforded. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had an intuitive sense that the way something looked influenced the way it read. At the time I just enjoyed the opportunity to make visual things. But in hindsight I realize this fed back into my interest in psychology and perception.

SA: After I saw your Giant Robot figurine, I asked you to explain it. Your response was so clear and analytical. Is basing your work on critical and conceptual thinking important to you?

JM: Thinking conceptually is important to me, although my definition of what a concept is has changed rather dramatically. Good work, whatever the medium, is driven partly from an authentic idea and partly from a unique way of expressing it. [A concept] has to result from something more than just the idea or the expressive method. Otherwise the result is at best clever but never really satisfying. This notion of a personalized and whole gesture-one that can’t be broken down into “parts”—is what I find compelling. In this sense, the concept is really how idea and expression are fused.

SA: How do you keep your work from feeling too “heavy”? It’s not so dense in critical theory that nobody can access it. There is an aesthetic sense of beauty in the work. Isn’t that appreciation for aesthetic form verboten in some circles?

JM: I think it’s this interest in what I’m calling an “authentic gesture.” Theory can be a great tool to unpack complex forces, but it isn’t intuitive, and it isn’t the work. All really powerful impressions are felt intuitively—not cerebrally. One either achieves an authentic gesture or one doesn’t, and the work either elicits the feeling or it doesn’t. Getting the work to “feel” right is really my present interest … the feeling is the meaning.

SA: You’re working in one of the most saturated design markets in the world. Every time I go up to San Francisco, it seems that there is nothing left that hasn’t been designed. Tell me what it’s like to work and live there.

JM: There are a great many designers, but for all the density, there is not much discussion as to what the role of graphic design should be aspiring to. I was lucky enough to work in Holland and Switzerland, and in both cases, design occupied a much more social, less commercial place. Designers there are very aware of what others are working on—where the collective spirit of innovation is focused. The scale and pedestrian nature of cities like Zürich and Amsterdam allow people to come across graphic design much more often. And there is a kind of silent dialogue between designers. It’s very energizing, and I think my interest in the poster as a medium comes from this tradition. In San Francisco there are a number of us who are invested in design as an expressive medium, aside from its commercial potential. We share a few cultural clients, and watching what we each produce for them has begun to generate a similar conversation. It isn’t widely inclusive yet, but my hope is that it gains momentum and challenges designers to reach for more unexpected results.

This is a bit Utopian, but I believe we can have a vastly more dynamic visual culture than we currently have. Expressive methods go beyond opportunities for designers and create opportunities for anyone who is watching and reading to make personal sense of the world. It seems to have been forgotten, but beauty does have social value.

SA: I know you can’t be spending your entire life in the studio. What’s the rest of your life like? Anything really licentious?

JM: Aside from staying out too late and the odd hangover, not so much to say in the lawless and immoral category. In terms of lifestyle, I take a kind of reactionary pleasure in what amounts to an anti-design aesthetic: no black, no mid-century furniture, no tattoos, no pets, no collections of “vernacular” street signs, no “ironic” thrift store art. My car has become something of a joke among my friends, because it would be difficult to find one with less visual appeal. It’s definitely become a conscious choice, and I have to plead guilty to a reverse-vanity here.

SA: You’re also involved in public art. Don’t you have enough to do? Why is that important to you?

JM: I’m interested in exploring the means and potential impact of visual communication. To do that one needs an audience. “Public art,” as we’re calling it, has that opportunity built in. And when I say visual communication, it’s not that I am so interested in messages per se. I’m more interested in creating something that projects an atmosphere or feeling. Language—spoken, written, performed—is based on signs. But contrary to the assumptions of linguistic theory, I believe in an intuitive reading. Forms convey a sense of something. People will argue that this is still a learned, sign-based system, but to a certain extent I disagree.

Jung talked about a collective unconscious—a constellation of shared images and ideas. I am interested in a way of speaking graphically that is less about the mechanical relationships between signs and signifiers and has more to do with innate deciphering. Some forms just project certain meanings, before language and before rationality.

SA: I’m going to touch on something here that might cause designers to throw this magazine across the room: I’m intrigued by your “style.” Now, I don’t intend to imply a shallow veneer, but there are common themes of integrity and unexpected visuals in your work. What’s your process like on a typical project?

JM: It’s very important for me to have opportunities to break new ground, and in that sense we are always trying to identify new ways of working. Two questions we find ourselves asking over and over again: “Is this direction a move for us?” and “Does it add anything to the larger design dialogue we’re interested in?” If the gut answer to both of these questions is yes, we’ll keep looking at it. When possible we try to slow the process down. We just finished something for the AIA [American Institute of Architects] that really illustrates this. The budget allowed us to look at many things and follow some directions that were very abstract. What we ended up with was an approach much more like painting than designing—more intuitive mark-making than logical construction. It was not a particularly efficient process, but committing to it led us somewhere new. These kind of discoveries are the most rewarding.

SA: What is the hardest lesson you’ve learned since you’ve been in the design field?

JM: The one thing I find myself thinking about is the relative lack of power graphic design has in terms of eliciting strong reactions from people. One goes to see a film and, if it’s a good one, it’s an experience—it affects you. I’m interested in making work that tries to deliver something experiential, not informational. Unfortunately, print graphics are a kind of archaic, peripheral element in people’s lives. People overlook them in favor of more animated media. For those of us really invested in this, that’s a hard realization. I once told a class I want to make graphic design that’s like a car alarm-hard, elemental, impossible to ignore. Stylistically, I’ve rejected this, but that impact is something I’m still looking for.

SA: Are you involved in other media besides print? You’re a whippersnapper, so I assume you’re crossing platforms all the time. What kind of challenges does that present?

JM: We’re finding that an ever-increasing percentage of our work is online. The challenge for me is to try to develop a similar connection to the web as I have for print. This has not proven to be easy. The best analogy I can come up with is if one has experience writing novels, and then you’re asked to write a screenplay. Both are writing, but the mechanics and techniques used to create narrative space are very different. It takes a few times to sort it out and a willingness to be a student again. I’m lucky in that I have some employees who have far more web experience than I do. One in particular, Amadeo DeSouza, has helped us rethink our way of working so we’re designing much more with the grain of the medium than we used to.

SA: Give me a specific example when cross-platform designing and thinking was especially challenging.

JM: Country Music Television [CMT] hired us to do the national campaign for one of their new TV acquisitions: the Miss America pageant. You have an incredulous look on your face—and you’re right to. The subject matter and audience were huge departures for us. Developing a way to dramatize the product in a way that didn’t feel like we were being totally disingenuous was a challenge. Happily, both CMT and their brand are very flexible, and irreverence is part of who they are. Irony was a natural lens for this, and we developed what came to be called the “Crowning Moments” campaign. The key visual was a grid of deliberately awkward portraits we selected from video of all the previous crowning ceremonies, and it really captured the emotional spectacle that is the pageant. It was funny, visually memorable and worked to question our culture’s fascination with beauty and the cult of celebrity.

It also helped to recast the whole thing as reality TV rather than “national coronation.” That felt like a much more honest way to represent it, as well as an honest way for us to approach it.

SA: I heard inspiring feedback about the AIGA Next Conference in Denver last year. One woman said she’d been planning to drop out of school, but the conference changed her mind; she was re-energized and reclaimed her passion. My favorite was an e-mail I got that said, “Thank you—the joy is back.” But it’s a scary time; the definition of what a designer is is rapidly expanding. What do you think? Is the future bright for designers?

JM: There is probably good evidence of an increased emphasis on design by industry and commerce, and in that sense there will be more work. In terms of how design is consumed by culture, however, I am less optimistic. As a medium for representation, graphic design is credited with having a great deal of persuasive power. This is true in some applications, but design is used mostly to sell commodities, not ideals. This isn’t to say that it can’t be used to promote ideals, only that the greatest call for its service is commerce. Designers are trained to make consumption attractive and not to be ideologues or advocates. It disturbs me that as a profession we have largely accepted this, especially when there are huge environmental and social problems that compelling communication could help to change.

The good news is there is a growing ethos on the part of design to be proactive and actually identify problems as well as potential solutions. Last year we wrote and designed a book for Public Architecture’s 1% Solution that looks at the design industry’s lack of a formalized position on pro bono work. The book, The 1% User’s Guide, presents a best-practices model for how designers and nonprofits can structure pro bono projects in mutually beneficial ways, with the ultimate goal of increasing the positive social impact of the nonprofit sector.

Our hope is that the profession as a whole adopts a more formal and committed stance to social and environmental engagement. It is happening, but good models are needed, and they are only just now emerging.

SA: Tell me something about yourself that is surprising, something others may not know. And it can’t be “I really love Cooper Black.”

JM: I once got so frustrated with design, I left it to go work in an emergency room. Sometimes it’s valuable to scratch the surface of something just to learn it’s really not for you.

SA: OK, here are my questions that are not design-related, but very important: Favorite book? Favorite movie? Favorite restaurant in San Francisco?

JM: The best short-story writer that ever lived was an Argentinian by the name of Jorge Luis Borges. His story “The Aleph” holds in just a few pages the essence of love, pride, language and the infinite. This is both one of the smallest and largest pieces of narrative fiction ever written. Favorite movie: Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. He managed to create something beyond story and style that felt poignant and real-like he actually cared if he got the humanity of it across. Favorite restaurant in SF? I could break this down … but in the end I keep going back to the places where you feel the commitment of the chef in creating an authentic and personal experience- where food, wine and environment seduce you as fully as possible into the moment. There’s an analogy about design in there somewhere.

Sean Adams interviews Michael Bierut, Published in Step Magazine

At the AIGA 2006 Design Legends Gala, Paula Scher introduced Michael Bierut, recipient of the AIGA medal. Scher discussed Bierut’s many accomplishments and then said, “mention a designer and Michael knows the most recent project they’ve com­pleted and their first project, how they’ve changed, how they haven’t, who influenced them, who they influence, and he sometimes will make a little sketch or diagram of their work.” when asked about Bierut, his Pentagram partners and other designers will begin with his magnanimous nature and generosity to other designers. These things are true. He does know who is doing good work, he is engaged with the community and the first person to promote another designer, and he is a true champion of the next generation (designers, not Star Trek: TNG). But these things are diversions from the actual rea­son Bierut received the profession’s highest honor and is a household name in households where Franklin Gothic might be discussed: he is a remarkable designer. It’s that simple.

SA: Michael, let me start with the obvious. In my view, there are two kinds of designers in the world: the ones who maintain their positions by holding other designers back, and the ones who confidently promote other designers. This interview might be more caustic if you were the former kind, but you’re the first one out of the gate to find young designers and encourage them. Why? Wouldn’t it be easier to be grumpy and complain about “those damned kids”?

MB: I really like graphic design. I like doing it, but I especially like it when other people do it. I don’t have any particular point of view that design has to be done a certain way, and nothing makes me happier than to see someone else do something great, particularly if it’s something I would never have thought of. I suppose this is one of the reasons I like being a partner at Pentagram: It’s great to have 16 really talented partners on your side. Graphic design isn’t a zero-sum game. Every time someone does something good, all of us benefit.

SA: Did you have the same experience of support and encouragement when you were starting out?

MB: Yes. I had great professors at the University of Cincinnati like Gordon Salchow and Joe Bottoni, and worked as an intern under Dan Bittman of Design Team One and Chris Pullman at WGBH in Boston. Then my first real job out of school was with Massimo and Lella Vignelli. I learned so much from all of them, just as I learn from all the people I work with today.

SA: You’ve been identified as a New York designer for so long, some people may not realize you’re from Cleveland. You’ve mentioned the local library only had two design books—Armin Hofmann’s Graphic Design Manual and Milton Glaser: Graphic Design. How did you go from being the only person repeatedly checking out Milton’s book from the library to your first job in New York at Vignelli Associates?

MB: I’m relieved to hear that some people don’t know I’m from Cleveland, because I’ve been accused of belaboring the fact ad nauseam. I got my first job in New York the same way that every one seems to get their first job in New York: by accident. At one of my internships, I had worked with someone who had been a college roommate with someone who worked at Vignelli. I was between my junior and senior years and visiting a friend who happened to have an apartment on the same street as the Vignelli Associates offices. I tried to visit my ex-colleague’s former roommate—connections!—but he was busy, and I had to drop my portfolio off instead. Massimo happened to be around, happened to see it and happened to like it. And nine months later, a week after graduation, I was working there.

SA: After you left Vignelli Associates, you joined Pentagram. You’ve been a partner there for 18 years. You must like it, or they have dirt on you. Why does it work for you?

MB: The way Pentagram is set up it combines everything I like about working as a designer and edits out everything I don’t like. Every partner runs a small team. I work directly with my clients and directly with my designers. No account people, no hierarchies. On one hand, it’s as if it’s a small eight-person office. On the other hand, my team is one of seven in New York, and one of 17 in our offices around the world, so I get constant stimulation from my partners and the work they’re doing, plus the work and recognition that comes from the international profile of Pentagram.

SA: Try as we might, we can never change how the place we’re from defines us. Being raised in northern Nevada guarantees I’ll never lose the phrase, “That’s real good. Real good.” How did Ohio define you, and how has that benefited you in your life?

MB: I think I am very polite, which I’m told is a positive Midwestern trait, but sometimes I wish I could be ruder. It’s really hard for me to tell a client to take a hike, for instance, no matter how incorrigible they are. I admire people who can get angry in a direct and honest way. Sometimes I worry that what I call politeness is actually cowardice. But I really didn’t have any role models growing up to teach me how to yell at people, so I’m stuck, I guess.

SA: Whenever I come across a piece you’ve designed, I’m struck by the intelligence, craft and wit. The idea may not be unexpected; at times it is the perfect realization of the expected in a completely new and compelling way. Confidence, however, is at the core of each piece. The solutions share the trait of being presented to the world with no apologies, straightforward and direct. Do you ever have moments of doubt?

MB: I’m very pleased to hear I’ve created the illusion you describe. Rest assured, not only do I have moments of doubt, but I actually make mistakes—some quite visible—and have regrets of some kind or another about nearly everything I’ve ever done. My guess is some of what you’ve observed comes from the fact I’ve never been the kind of designer who can spend a long time working toward a solution for a problem. Paula Scher once said that if it’s taking a long time to make an idea work, maybe it’s a bad idea. All my best work involved solutions that were fast and almost easy to conceive—although the follow-through may not be.

SA: That’s a great point. I’ve found that laboring over whether the type is 1 pica to the left or 2 picas to the right is usually irrelevant if you have a crummy idea. So much of your work is large-scale, long-term corporate projects. These involve large-scale politics. How do you handle this and maintain the ability to do good work?

MB: Any time you’re working with people, you’re working with politics, power struggles, turf battles, personality clashes. I realized early on it wasn’t enough to have a good idea or do a good design. You have to be able to persuade other people that your idea is right or your design is good, or else it’s never going to exist. This kind of persuasion depends on a number of things. Does the client trust you? Have you been listening to the client? Can you make your work understandable on their terms? Can you help them negotiate what may be an unfamiliar decision-making process? Unless you take all this stuff very seriously—and, more importantly, learn to take pleasure from doing it right—you are going to have a hard time getting anything done. I simply love this part of my job.

SA: It’s easy as a designer to feel a dearth of ideas, to have those moments when it feels as if you’ve used up every last idea in the tool kit. From the Fashion Center identity to the Yale School of Architecture posters, you seem to have an enormous “Big Gulp” of ideas. Can you talk about your conceptual process? Where are these ideas spawned?

MB: This sounds like a cliché, but I get my ideas from the client, or the subject matter, or from the problem itself. I know for a fact this is true because I am helpless when I have an open “just be creative” kind of brief. Most designers seem to love that kind of job. I hate it.

SA: Since coming to Pentagram in 1990, what was your favorite project personally? And it’s not fair to be politic about this and say “all of them.”

MB: If I had to pick one that has a special place in my heart, it would be the “What is Good Design?” call-for-entries poster I did for the American Center for Design in 1992. My daughter Liz hand-lettered it when she was 5 years old. This June she graduated with honors as a poli sci major from Swarthmore College. Time flies.

SA: At lunch today, my partner Noreen Morioka and I were deciding our top two worst career choices. What would you have done differently if you could go back and change it?

MB: Funny you should ask. If I had to do it over again, I’d go to a liberal arts college like Swarthmore first, and then get a design degree. There are things I’m never going to learn now, that I missed back then.

SA: I have to be honest with you. When I’m on the road and doing a lecture after being awake for 24 hours, or sitting in an airport at 5 a.m., I think about you and realize I need to keep going. You seem to have endless energy and enthusiasm. What’s the secret? Crack? Red Bull? Red Bull mixed with Mountain Dew?

MB: In my earlier days I seemed to need less sleep than most people, at least less than my lovely wife Dorothy. Not so true anymore. Living outside of Manhattan has been a real help to me. I commute to and from the city every day, and I get a surprising amount done on the train.

SA: Your family life is clearly your priority. How do you balance these massive projects, AIGA, writing, and the time and travel demands with family?

MB: I’m ashamed to say that I’ve worked more late nights and been on more out-of-town trips than I’d care to count. I’m proud to say, on the other hand, that I haven’t gone in to work on a weekend for over 15 years. Thank god I have a great family at home and a great staff in the office. They have made it all possible for me to do so much.

SA: A few years ago you founded DesignObserver.com, the most successful design publication online. This seems to be a clear outgrowth of the democratization of design, not in the sense of making work that is accessible to everyone, but in the idea of multiple voices and opinions creating a richer culture. It’s a brave move. You can create content, but you can’t control the responses. And they’re not always glowing, congratulatory comments. Why did you take on this challenge, and how has the experience differed from your expectations?

MB: I love working on Design Observer because I can write on my own schedule, publish it as soon as I’m done, and get immediate feedback. I enjoy reading most of the comments. I don’t take it seriously when they get out of hand, except on those occasions when people start being mean to each other. Then I’ll try to step in to calm things down a little. I really never imagined in a million years we’d be getting 275,000 site visits a week. It’s intimidating. Bill Drenttel and Jessica Helfand are great collaborators and actually do most of the real work involved with the site.

SA: We’ve talked about the fracturing of the design media and multiple outlets available to a designer today. There was a time when a small handful of magazines, AIGA competitions and speaking engagements were the only venues to become aware of someone’s work. Now there are entire sections of books in bookstores devoted to graphic design, countless websites and an increasing number of magazines and competitions. Is this good?

MB: As far as I’m concerned, the more books, magazines, competitions, websites and major motion pictures, the better.

SA: I’ll be boiled in oil before asking you what the future of design is, or what’s next for you. I know this is impossible to answer without sounding like a beauty pageant contestant: “In five years, I see myself helping others.” But what are you doing now that most excites you?

MB: After teaching for almost 15 years in the graphic design program at the Yale School of Art, earlier this year I added another responsibility: co-teaching a class with Bill Drenttel in the Yale School of Management. This is an attempt to teach the value of design to MBA students, with case histories and very informed class discussions. It’s hard, intimidating and—like doing anything new at age 50—very satisfying. If I could figure out something new to do every year from here on out, I’d be a very happy person.

SA: And finally, what’s the story with the accordion and piano? Rumor has it you play a mean jazz piano and kick-ass polka.

MB: There are rumors about me playing the accordion? Playing blues in C on the piano like I do is easy. Anyone could do it—my best friend Charlie taught me how in the sixth grade, and I actually haven’t made much progress since then. But have you ever even held a real accordion? It’s really hard!

Sean Adams interviews Michael Carabetta, Published in Step Magazine

Almost every designer has had the experience of walking into a bookstore and picking up a book because it looks extraordinary. Let’s admit it, we’re visual beings, and although we care about the content, we’re slaves to our own aesthetic temptations. As the creative director at Chronicle Books, Michael Carabetta marries remarkable visuals with unexpected and compelling content. And, as providence would have it, that book we pick up because it looks extraordinary typically turns out to be a chronicle books project that Michael has touched. While I would love to say that Michael and I sat down for a long chat in a musty rare bookstore, I can’t. He’s a busy person, and i was lucky to capture his attention while he was between meetings with architects and contractors as chronicle prepared to move into new quarters in San Fancisco.

SA: Michael, you’ve been in the design business for a long time. I know you were at Landor when Noreen [Morioka] was there. How did you transition from identity and systems to books?

MC: I left Landor on a Friday and began work at Chronicle on Monday. I love the thought of a fresh new week, and in this instance, a fresh new job. In that respect the transition was seamless. There was, of course, much I didn’t know about publishing, but I found the principles of design I had learned and practiced were readily transferable from identity systems to books—theory and practice made real.

SA: Tell me about your job. I know you don’t design every book, but beyond that, I’m fairly clueless—no jokes here, please. So what do you do exactly?

MC: One of my former colleagues called me a “black box.” And an old publishing crony of Michael Korda’s, upon being introduced to me, remarked, “So, you’re Chronicle’s ‘secret weapon.’” Both comments amuse me, but then there’s always a grain of truth in humor.

My working life at Chronicle—we spend most of our waking hours at work, so isn’t that life, too?—is a skein of people and projects. When I began in 1991, there were three designers, one big-screen computer, no color printer, and “mechanicals” were still pasted up with wax. You can imagine the anxiety of having to insert a comma with an X-Acto knife while the production manager impatiently tapped her foot, waiting. I brought us into the late 20th century, which at that time meant Mac IICs, QMS color printers and Syquest hard drives to produce mechanicals digitally.

There were a few other projects, too. The boss stopped me in the stairwell one day and asked if I could do something about our identity. Sure thing. Not long after that, “By the way, can we redesign our tradeshow booth?” Natch. Next, “Shouldn’t we have someone to design our ads, catalogs and whatnot in-house?” Check. “Website?” Roger. And so it went. So did Chronicle.

That year we had our first New York Times bestseller, Griffin & Sabine. The success of that book was a springboard to growth. That meant upgraded workstations and designers to sit at them. The entire company grew, and with it, the design group. Then, the company numbered 50 people with three designers. Now, 15 years later, we’re 170 with 25 designers and five design Fellows.

I’ve added other functions to my black box: in-store retail displays, four generations of tradeshow environments, our own retail shop in San Francisco and managing our new office design project. Those are the tasks. The goal was, and remains, to maintain a high level of design in all that we do, from the business card to building architecture to all the books and products in between. It’s all design, and it’s all Chronicle.

SA: If that’s the goal, you’ve succeeded. I’m sure most designers think of Chronicle as a design-oriented publisher. Beyond the design, how much input do you have with content or determining the books to be published?

MC: Unless I’m personally involved in a book project, typically I don’t have a lot of input on the content of books. That’s the purview of the editors. However, I do take part in the editorial board discussions over which books we intend to publish. My comments, and those of the designers assigned to the books, center around what we know best—design—though we don’t refrain from speaking, since designers are by vocation and avocation knowledgeable about popular culture, art, food, music and fashion trends.

SA: Is your outside life responsible for maintaining the high quality of the work?

MC: Yes, I think my life outside of work informs my views and approaches to problem solving. We live in a visual culture, one that’s being redefined and refined every 20 minutes, or whatever the refresh cycle is for the web and 24/7 media. So, like other designers, I read, look, travel and assimilate. I also design and build furniture. That teaches me about quality and attention to detail, not to mention humility: Measure twice and cut once.

SA: I know it’s impossible to pick a favorite out of all the projects you’ve handled. But which ones were the most enjoyable and fulfilling personally? And you can’t answer, “The next project.”

MC: The two that come to mind are, perhaps, the largest and smallest books we’ve published: The Beatles and Watching Words Move.

The Beatles is a physically large, all-encompassing autobiographical tome by “the boys” themselves. It was a project that came with lots of strings attached to it, as you can imagine. But it was an exhilarating book to have produced and published, initially in eight languages and now translated into a dozen. The planning resembled a military campaign. All facets and departments of the company were recruited. The depth of detail was fascinating—down to how many books packed to a carton to conform to OSHA guidelines on lifting. It was also a media event—the mayor of San Francisco declared Beatles Day when the book was launched.

At the other end of the scale is Watching Words Move by Chermayeff and Geismar. The original Watching Words Move was a modest, stapled booklet that was self-published in 1959*. For me, it was the little book that could. It not only influenced me, but a number of my peers in the design profession.

Chermayeff and Geismar reproduced the original booklet for a retrospective exhibition of their work at Cooper Union. I credit Kit Hinrichs [of Pentagram San Francisco] for suggesting that we reprint it as a book. Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar were enthusiastic about the idea, so I took it to our editorial board, where I proposed it. They approved. Ivan and Tom wrote a new introduction, and I got Kit, Steve Heller, April Greiman and George Lois to join me in writing appreciations for the book. This book is an example of “size doesn’t matter.” Its influence far exceeds its diminutive proportions. Buy it.

SA: Watching Words Move is a favorite with us. Are there any projects that completely shocked you? That is, ones you thought would sit on the shelves and nobody would want to buy? Or, you were sure would be huge hits, but didn’t work?

MC: Speaking of little books that could, I don’t know that anyone in our company imagined that The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook would take off the way it did. The original has spawned 16 books and 12 other products in the series. It’s been translated into 26 languages and sold 8.5 million copies. It’s the yellow book that came out of the blue.

Conversely, and based on our success with The Beatles, we reasoned a similar book on the Rolling Stones would be a sure-fire hit. It wasn’t. Hypothesis: Stones fans don’t buy books.

SA: Well, you can’t always get what you want—sorry, I couldn’t resist. The book world is very different from the rest of the design world. There’s something very special about making a book. They have permanence that a brochure or poster could never achieve. What is it about that work that you find so compelling?

MC: I think you answered your own question. As a culture, even in the media-saturated one we live in, we have a reverence for books. Books have substance, and for us at Chronicle, it is the notion of “book as object” that intrigues us. It raises the philosophical question, “What is a book?” And how far can you stretch that concept? Books are more than passing fancies; they are meaningful, they inform and entertain, no downloading required.

SA: What’s the hardest lesson you’ve learned about the design business?

MC: [With respect to] graphic design, that the product of our efforts is subject to change. It’s impermanent. That can smart when you’ve invested so much of yourself in the work. Architecture entails more to dismantle, but it too is subject to the wrecking ball. The bright side of this object lesson is that design—our work—is always evolving, and that is energizing.

SA: I like hearing the bright side. Plus, nobody should ever lose his or her mind over a business card. What’s something surprising about your career, job or you personally that people don’t know?

MC: Being an early Baby Boomer, I was drafted into the Army. Because of my art school education—let’s hear it for art schools!—I was classified an “illustrator.” I ended up assigned to a psychological operations—“psyops”—unit in Saigon. One day one of my fellow GIs invited me to lunch with a former classmate of his, Al Gore. Al was in the Army, too, as a reporter for the Stars and Stripes newspaper. I think we had iced tea and club sandwiches at the enlisted men’s club.

SA: So now I need to be careful about what I’m thinking when I see you. Do you teach design?

MC: I have taught on a formal basis—book design, of course, at CCA [California College of the Arts]; conducted a workshop at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design] on the book of the future—any ideas out there?—lectured at San Jose State, Cal State Chico, Portfolio Center, School of Visual Arts and the Stanford Publishing Course.

SA: The range of your interests and inspirations is wide and deep. Do you think specialization in graphic design is a good thing or not?

MC: I feel fortunate that the first job I had was in an industrial design office. I was aware of product design, but not the nuts-and-bolts practicality of it. That was an invaluable experience that left a lasting impression. When I find myself asked to develop 3D displays or tradeshow fixtures, I have some background to draw upon. I’ve also had the opportunity to work in an architectural firm. I absorbed knowledge there, too. Lately I’ve been directing the design for our new offices.

Of course, graduate school at Cranbrook under the McCoys [Michael and Kathy McCoy] didn’t hurt. They professed a multidisciplinary approach to design. So, while there’s nothing inherently wrong with pursuing graphic design per se, I am biased towards an education that exposes one to the related design disciplines, and today I expect that would include visual media studies. As a consequence, for me, the answer would be specialization—at least in one’s formative years—isn’t a good thing.

SA: Knowing that you’ve worked in 3D explains some of the groundbreaking forms Chronicle has published. I’ve always thought of a book as a sculpture with words. Here now, the dreaded question: Where are you getting your ideas? Who are your heroes and why?

MC: Actually, this is a welcome question. For me, ideas come from almost everywhere. It could be from something I’ve read or seen. I read outside of design because I think it’s more enriching. For instance, a report in The Economist or a profile in The New Yorker can give you insights into business, technology or the life of an artist unattainable in the design press. This is not to demean design journalism, but it is by definition self-limiting.

I am interested in the world around me. Design is one aspect or microcosm of this world. Knowing the context or macrocosm in which design fits gives me a base of knowledge to operate from.

Heroes? Mine is a an eclectic assortment: Frank Lloyd Wright, Eric Gill, Jean Prouvé, Ellsworth Kelly, Allen Ginsberg, Charlotte Perriand, the Eameses, Aaron Copland, Jean-Luc Godard, Bob Dylan, Allen Lane [founder of Penguin Books], Steve Jobs, et al. Why? Their contributions to art, technology, literature, music and design broke ground and left an impression on society and culture. … They worked within the constraints of their respective disciplines but transcended those constraints to produce lasting work.

SA: In the last 30 years book design seems to have exploded. My first job was at the New York Public Library, and we designed books that were beautiful but very traditional. You know—classic margins, all Bembo, all the time. Why did the renaissance in book design happen? Who do you think is doing great work in the book world? What are some of your favorite books?

MC: This is a more difficult question to answer, as the number of books published in a given year is staggering—and more books are published each successive year in this digital day and age. … Nonetheless, I am favorably impressed with what I see from Phaidon, Taschen, Assouline and Princeton Architectural Press. I’m speaking here of publishers who have devoted their editorial energies and design prowess to the illustrated book—books that are essentially visual.

My hypothesis is that the renaissance in book design has occurred in parallel with the explosion of, and counter to, digital media. Books are physical objects and therefore a more satisfying information and entertainment experience.

SA: You and I know each other primarily through AIGA. You’re an extraordinarily busy person that seems to be preternaturally prolific. Why do you stay involved with AIGA and the community? Why does it matter?

MC: For me, it’s critical that the design world should have a touchstone—a network, a forum, a congress for design and designers. AIGA does that by giving designers across the country—and now outside our borders—a sense of community. I think that sense of solidarity sustains us as a group, and individually.

SA: How would you define success for yourself?

MC: I don’t know that I set out to be “successful.” The pursuit of success for its own sake seems self-aggrandizing. For myself, if what I’ve envisioned has satisfied the brief or definition of the problem and attained the desired effect, and done so in an aesthetic manner, then my efforts have succeeded.

SA: OK, that being the case for you personally, what key things do you think make a designer successful?

MC: If a designer can define the problem to be solved, conduct the necessary research, develop design concepts that respond to if not answer the brief—and possess aesthetic appeal at the same time—that would make for a successful designer. In simple terms, preparation, design research and development and implementation—those are the principles to bear in mind.

SA: Looking over the course of your career, is there anything you would do differently?

MC: No.

SA: Succinct and to the point. Very nice. I have to ask this. I know it’s a little Vanity Fair: What book is on your nightstand right now?

MC: Moby Dick.

SA: I’m not going there.

Sean Adams interviews Greg & Pat Samata, Published in Step Magazine

Many years ago, Pat Samata called me with an invitation to join the Appleton Paper Design Council. I was sure she’d mistaken me for someone else. On the tiny plane to the meeting in Telluride, Colo., I began to feel sick. Now this could have been caused by the extreme turbulence. But it was probably due to my nervousness at meeting two of the design profession’s most honored and respected design­ers. I’d seen photos of Pat and Greg. They looked confident, beautifully styled, composed and elegant. I admired their work. I’d heard their name mentioned with highest praise by other designers. So I expected to be greeted as if meeting British royalty—probably chilly, with a dash of condescension. OK, so obviously the meeting turned out the opposite. They were nice—but that’s an understatement. Pat found me in the lobby of the hotel, and I was met with a smile that would make anyone melt. This was followed by a huge bear hug from Greg. Uh, like, you know it’s me, Sean, you’re saying hello to, not Michael Mabry? Pat and Greg are globally recognized designers, but they are the type of people you can call when you need a true friend.

SA: Pat and Greg, I’m going to presume that most of our readers have a computer and can go to your website to see your work. This lets us talk about some other issues. So if you don’t mind, I want to talk about you, not how much you love Univers. First, let’s get this cleared up: You are mar­ried and run a business together. Don’t you get tired of each other, 24 hours a day together?

PS: If we go back in time and explain that Greg hired me right out of school, the relationship may make more sense. In the begin­ning, I would work on projects while Greg was attempting to pitch new clients. But we discovered early on that one of us improved whatever idea the other was working on. There was a flow to the way we worked together. We complement each other because our ways of problem-solving are often the same.

GS: Sure, we absolutely get tired of each other. Well, she more than me. I can be more challenging to be around than Pat. For 20 years we worked side by side, and what happens is someone always emerges the lead on a project or an issue. And then the other per­son either concedes that this is the way it should be or a battle hap­pens. After we stopped taking every issue personally, it worked.

SA: You’ve been in business for three decades. What’s the secret to longevity?

PS: Respect for one’s partners and their abilities.

GS: Actually Samata Associates began in 1974. Our partner Dave Mason was the single solidifying factor that allowed SamataMason to continue to grow and develop over the past 12 years. Kevin Krueger also became a partner in the firm eight years ago.

SA: Do you all work together on every project? How does it work?

PS: We worked on many projects [as a couple] over the years, but as our staff grew, we branched out and collaborated with other designers in our firm too. My work with our foundation has also taken me in different directions and the same can be said about Greg’s films. But we still influence each other; we are still sound­ing boards for one another.

SA: I am deeply jealous of your office. It’s huge. AdamsMorioka is the size of a dollhouse in comparison. Did you design the space?

PS: We had outgrown our old space—that was a Victorian house—and put a bid in on a local bowling alley that was on the market. After the bank took our offer, we had terrible buyer’s remorse. The space was disgusting, filled with smelly old shoes and rancid, half-drunk beer bottles. But we worked with two friends, Tom Reed and Dayanne Schurecht, who are architects and space planners. And together, we came up with a wonderful plan that has suited us well for many years.

GS: It’s not that big, Sean! We purchased the bowling alley more than 21 years ago. The main floor space was 8500 square feet. We gutted the building when we purchased it. It was six months late in finishing and 200 percent over budget. After 20 years of what looked like excess, the market catches up, and we look like geniuses. In reality, our staff has remained consistent from 12 to 18 over the last 20 years.

SA: Yes, Greg, it is that big. In the 1950s Lester Beale moved his offices from Manhattan to a farm in Connecticut. I love the image of him, in a suit and tie, holding a lamb. You’re outside of Chicago in Dundee, which has the same rural, farm-like setting as Beale’s studio. Why Dundee? Wouldn’t it be easier to be on Michigan Avenue in Chicago?

PS: It was Greg’s idea to build the business out of the city. We love Chicago but decided we could make a life for ourselves in this picturesque, 1800s river town that was beyond suburbia. In the beginning it wasn’t easy being outside of Chicago, but we never made the distance anyone else’s problem.

GS: A personal hero, Lester Beale! First, to have what we have in West Dundee would be a fortune in any major city. So a small town was appealing because we could actually do something with scale and of interest that was affordable. Second, raising three kids in a rural area was a choice we made a long time ago, although our 13-year-old daughter Tate wants to move to Manhattan. And let’s not forget the sheep!

SA: Oh, the ones you keep in that cubicle at the office. In addition to your bowling alley offices, your house is magnificent. You both suffer from that skill that the rest of us can’t stand—the ability to do many things at the same time and make it look effortless. How much input did you have in the design of the house?

PS: What our house has in beauty it lacks in energy efficiency. With 60 percent of our exterior walls being glass, you don’t want to see our gas bills in the winter. Remember, we’re not in L.A. But we do enjoy the space, and the land around us is such a luxury. It’s like living in a park.

GS: It’s neurosis. I designed the house and its layout of space on my laptop. Then we hired a very talented architect, Karen Hol­lander, to make my feeble attempt work. It becomes a freak show, having graphic designers designing their own houses. There is a reason you hire an architect. Ours would have been smaller and more energy efficient—and half the price—if it weren’t for the “designer curse.” Logic and reality did not enter into the process.

SA: You’re joking! Designers, suffering from hubris? Amy Vanderbilt named her farm Daisyfields. My family is guilty of house names like Cas­tle Hill, Meander, Edge Hill, even-yes, embarrassingly-Adams’ Apples. Does your house have a name yet?

GS: Black hole, money pit, Greg’s folly? Our friend Matt Eyerman calls it “Casa Samata,” but other than that, no.

PS: Many of our neighbors have named their homes, but we don’t take it quite so seriously. Personally I like Casa Samata because it forces us to laugh at ourselves a bit.

SA: You also founded Evan’s Life Foundation. How did that start and what does it do?

PS: Evan’s Life Foundation began in 1992 in response to the sud­den death of our young son. Two fellow designers, Arnie Goodwin and Dana Arnett, were responsible for coming up with the idea of using Evan’s memory to help less fortunate children. The founda­tion has an 11-member board that administers funds to individual children on a case-by-case basis. We follow up with the families, and 100 percent of the donations we receive go to assist kids. The foundation is run out of the SamataMason office, and we have aided over 10,000 children in the areas of counseling, drug aware­ness, medical assistance, education and summer camps. We sup­port children who fall through the cracks of the large government agencies. So although Evan’s life was short, it had and continues to have an incredible impact on thousands of kids he never knew.

GS: Pat is the driving force behind its success. It has touched the lives of thousands of kids to date. Pat, board secretary Nancy Essex and the other board members deserve all the credit.

SA: I’ve spent time with children of creative types who are driven to school in limousines, winter at Gstaad and are pretty awful to be around. Your kids are some of the most down-to-earth, friendly and polite children I’ve met. How do you juggle all of it?

PS: They love you and Noreen. You took them to Disneyland, so of course they’re polite to you! But seriously, the kids are pretty grounded. They have made site visits with me for the foundation, and it has opened their eyes. They have been given a lot of oppor­tunities, but they understand they have an obligation to give back to others less fortunate. I’m big on teaching my kids respect.

GS: Thanks for the compliment, Sean. We paid them $100 each when you were at our house to suck up to you. For me, the patience of parenting is a struggle. I am forever saying to them, “Hey, knock it off.” And I am constantly telling Pat, “I do not have the tools to deal with this!” Now that they are teenagers, life is more challenging. But we are always reminding them that they need to appreciate the life that they were given.

SA: As if the business, the foundation, the architecture and family weren’t enough, Greg, you’ve begun a successful filmmaking career. Why?

GS: Successful? Well, we are working on it. After hundreds of annual reports and thousands of design projects over 30 years, I was facing a reality that maybe it was time for me to find a new challenge. When I was 15, I saw Antonioni’s film Blow Up, and I told myself that one day I would make movies. So one of the key factors in becoming partners with Dave Mason was to allow me to make films. Noisemakerfilms was born, and to date Luis Macias, a brilliant film editor, and myself have completed six documenta­ries. I also shot a feature-length film on post-tsunami victims in Thailand that’s sitting in the can yet to be edited and scored. Dave has been totally supportive.

SA: Do you see the filmmaking eventually replacing the design work?

PS: That may be true for Greg. But really, one leads to the other and back again.

GS: Film and video have seamlessly integrated into our business. As long as I am of value as a designer to SamataMason, having fun, and my partners want me to participate, I will. But, yes, I am focused on making films.

SA: What film are you currently working on?

GS: I have made a conscious decision to move beyond documenta­ries for now and create my first feature film. It is called Spazm, and I intend to shoot it this year. It’s important to me, because I am looking for a wider audience and different challenges than docu­mentaries can give … also, the chance to work with young, talented actors is something I’m looking forward to.

SA: Everyone in this business has the challenge to stay charged and excited creatively. I’ve certainly had those days when I ask, “How many times can I use Pantone Warm Red?” Greg, your office has a wall that must chal­lenge the Library of Congress for its amount of images and clippings. What recharges you?

GS: The human condition. Creating something that for me is new in film. And the idea that someday we will walk down the red car­pet, of course!

SA: And Pat?

PS: Pantone Warm Red.

SA: Good choice, Pat. I’ve been concerned lately about the defection of some of our best designers from design, as they get older. There’s an under­tone of bitterness I’ve heard when discussing their departures with them. Both of you, however, seem to become even more enthusiastic. For example, I see you each year at the AIGA Design Legends Gala. You buy a table and support the initiatives like scholarships and business outreach. I know it’s a trek to New York, and you can’t just lock the kids in the house, but you make the effort to be involved. Why?

PS: I have always believed that we are lucky people to be in this industry. Design has been good to us and allowed us to lead an exciting life doing something we love. Greg and I have traveled the world for our work, and we have made incredible friendships with clients and within the design community. And the disciplines we learned long ago can be applied to other interests, as we con­tinue to branch out and grow in other areas. Just the other day, my 15-year-old son Parker was wearing a shirt that read, “Design will save the world.” Now, that’s exciting!

GS: I love our industry, the people in it, the friends we have made and the rich life it has given me. I am forever excited about expanding my own disciplines and trying to do new things. I also believe there comes a time when your contribution to design can wane, either because of age, creative desire, economics, repeti­tiveness, client relationships or boredom. The bitterness of others may come from this. Lets face it: To be at the end of a career in graphic design is not like getting an Academy Award. Going from “King of the Hill” to not feeling relevant almost overnight is a psychologically painful end. You have to be personally secure in an industry where few are.

SA: I agree. That’s why recognition for all designers is so important. Right now, as we’re talking, tell me what your obsession is, the first one to come to your mind. You can’t edit it or make it safe, as in, “I’m obsessed with world peace.”

PS: My obsession would have to be the presidential election. After all we’ve been through as a country in the last seven years, I am trying to understand why everyone wouldn’t vote for Obama.

GS: Two: First, getting *!#% and getting #&@% … my children may read this. Second, making sure our kids grow up to be solid, productive, happy human beings. I’m not sure about the order.

SA: I knew I could count on you to tell me something real. And let me make a tiny detour back into work, because I’d love to know this: What has been your favorite project, and why?

PS: I would have a hard time choosing only one. A project I really enjoyed was a piece for Evan’s Life called “One Boy,” created in collaboration with a wonderful designer friend named Steve Kull. I loved working with Steve, and even though we worked on it from a distance, the project came together exceptionally well. But undoubtedly the main reason I liked this project so much was the message. It was a real story about a little boy whose life had changed for the worst because of circumstances beyond his control. But with intervention, this child was recovering and finding himself. It was simple but very effective, and the feed­back was tremendous.

GS: Wow … that’s a hard one for me. Don’t know if I have a favor­ite. Standing on the Great Wall of China, wrapping the shoot for The Hot 8 film, creating music for my latest film, Flood Street, or maybe the strategy for Strategic Hotels. Couldn’t say, really.

SA: You know I have to ask: least favorite?

PS: There are some—too many—corporate pieces I have done with empty messages and no soul. They were disasters from the start. Why do you have to ask?

SA: Because I’m nosy.

GS: Sitting in meetings recently with people in high places who do and say the dumbest things and don’t care about the outcome of their project or our work.

SA: And finally, because this is the big question anyone who’s met Greg wants to know: What’s the best cigar?

GS: For my money it’s Arturo Fuente Hemingway Classic. A beautiful thing!

SA: And for you Pat?

PS: The fact that smoking is no longer allowed in bars and restau­rants in Chicago. Now that’s a beautiful thing!