Speaker 1:
Rick Griffith is a graphic designer who specializes in letterpress printmaking. In 2020, he was PRINT Magazine’s first artist-in-residence, and his work is in the permanent collections of several American museums. Griffith lives in Denver where he co-owns and operates MATTER, which is simultaneously a design studio, a typography laboratory, and a bookstore. He spoke with Debbie at the HOW Design Live conference in Denver back in September.

Debbie Millman:
Rick Griffith, welcome to the HOW Design Stage.

Rick Griffith:
Hi.

Debbie Millman:
This is my first question.

Rick Griffith:
Okay.

Debbie Millman:
I want to take you back to a moment in time. You’ve eight years old. You discover screwdrivers and their ability to unlock and reveal. What happens next?

Rick Griffith:
My brother and I are 360 days apart. I am the second born child. My brother was raised in South America in my father’s homeland called British Guyana, and I was raised as an only child in London. I can put on the accent if you like. It doesn’t matter to me, but I found a screwdriver, I found a cassette deck, and I took it completely apart, and to the point where I could just see all the bits moving and I could accidentally zap myself with a little bit of electricity and everything. I mean, it was really just one of the greatest early experiences and memories of my young life, so yeah, I took apart the tape deck. That was really my kind of weird recording memory device in my young analog childhood. Yes.

Debbie Millman:
You mentioned that you were born in London. You were born and raised in Southeast London where your parents instilled a real love of reading and literature. You were introduced to Chaucer, the Bible, the Koran, the Torah and more. They also insisted, if I’m correct here, that you read the complete works of Shakespeare and Brontë before you were 12.

Rick Griffith:
Shakespeare, Brontë, Dickens, and Chaucer.

Debbie Millman:
Okay, so why?

Rick Griffith:
My parents immigrated to the United Kingdom from the British colonies, and they had a sense that education was transformative and that they wanted to educate their children. They weren’t a hundred percent sure that I was going to get everything that I needed, so they bought a fireplace that had these tissue paper editions of all of those authors. It was like a one-piece fireplace with books in it. That’s pretty much what it… and it was a gas fireplace with glowing logs and pretend heat. It was one of those, and whenever I said I was bored, they said, “Go read that book or go read that book.”

Debbie Millman:
You were bored a lot?

Rick Griffith:
Well, I didn’t have my brother and I was a young kid who was fairly sheltered and my parents believed that any downtime was going to be spent studying for entrance exams so that I could go to a private school because they couldn’t afford to send me to a private school, so I had to study for a scholarship.

Debbie Millman:
Now, you also included Dickens in this list.

Rick Griffith:
Yes, very much so.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve also described your childhood as a bit like a Dickensian novel. Which one?

Rick Griffith:
Even my adulthood.

Debbie Millman:
Oh really?

Rick Griffith:
Even my adulthood. I still have this resonance with The Life and Times of Nicholas Nickleby, and most recently, I don’t know if anyone’s seen it, but if you haven’t, I highly recommend it, there is a Dev Patel version of David Copperfield, which is a very play-like adaptation of the book. It’s really beautiful, it’s multicultural, and that is my anchor. The thing is is that over time, if you live long enough, you take off to the city for your fortune, you escape tyranny. If you live long enough, sometimes you outlive your spouse. All sorts of things happen, and having this anchor in literature, particularly in Dickens, this Victorian novelist, it really felt like I could put myself safely into a Dickensian plot and I would come out the other side with a tiny bit of triumph. That’s my hope.

Debbie Millman:
I sort of felt that way through my experience reading Jane Eyre as a young teenager. My family, for a very brief moment in time, did some family therapy and we weren’t all together in the family therapy. We’d go one at a time, and so when my mother was in there or my brother was in there, I would be in the waiting room and I discovered Jane Eyre. I remember there’s a scene at the very end of Jane Eyre where she’s talking to Mr. Rochester over the ocean. I felt like if I could do that, I could bring my world out into a bigger place that maybe I could be saved, too. It’s interesting how books give you that sense of hope.

Rick Griffith:
Yeah, it’s your imagination does a lot, and if you have literature stories in your mind and sort of moving around your psyche and your heart, what happens is you feel safe inside of those stories as if you’re not alone. I really feel like that was one of the things that was like, “Well, things are pretty shitty, like objectively bad right now, but there are so many amazing plots that take a twist for the positive and some benefactor shows up.” You’re like-

Debbie Millman:
Yeah.

Rick Griffith:
… and so in the client world even, as a designer, every now and then I would bump into an amazing client that would last 20 years. Those clients are not just clients, they’re benefactors, they’re trusted collaborators, and that kind of stuff gives you hope, and also employees that would stick around for five years.

Debbie Millman:
Well, that makes sense to me because I can only imagine that you’d be a good employer. What are the tenets of a 20-year relationship with a client that you might be able to share some best practices for the people in the audience that would also like to have a 20-year relationship with a client?

Rick Griffith:
It’s hard. I couldn’t tell you if it’s entirely possible given the kind of atmosphere that we’re in right now, which has a certain reliable quotient of acrimony and greed and things like this that kind of get in the way, but being able to carry a deep conversation in the area of expertise that your client has should be a thing of great joy. Every client that came to me when I was a young person that said, “Oh, we want you to work for the Chamber Music Association of America,” I was like, “Great.” I became a method designer. I started listening to chamber music. I had an opinion about chamber music. I had an opinion about 20th century composers. All of these things developed quite naturally because I enjoy these relationships so much. They would throw tickets at me to Carnegie Hall or to other venues, Symphony Space, or some tiny little 30-seat theater downtown and say, “Tell me what you think. Tell me what’s up with that.” The 20-year-long relationships look like you caring enough about them to know what they’re into and what they’re working with, and then them trusting you to continue to grow with them over time. Neither person resists the value of each other, and that’s just the beauty of those things. They can last longer. 20 years is something, but my partner, Deborah Johnson, she also brought to the practice clients who were with her for 20 years as well, so it’s not an uncommon thing, but-

Debbie Millman:
Oh, I think it’s an uncommon thing.

Rick Griffith:
Oh, you do?

Debbie Millman:
I do.

Rick Griffith:
Okay, so that’s the kind of people we are-

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I think [inaudible 00:09:11].

Rick Griffith:
… I guess is what’s going on. We really love being method designers, if you like.

Debbie Millman:
Your family moved to D.C. when you were still quite a young chap-

Rick Griffith:
Yeah, teenager, yeah.

Debbie Millman:
… and at that point you began to develop a number of different passions. You got involved in the graphic design scene while working at a local record store. You were really drawn to punk rock. Talk a little bit about that formative period and what you were imagining your life was going to be at that point.

Rick Griffith:
Oh my goodness. For context, it’s like London in the ’70s, Washington, D.C., in the ’80s, New York in the ’90s, and Colorado since the mid-’90s, and if anybody here knows what was going on in 1984 in Washington, D.C., it blew my mind. I mean, I still resonate with the punk DIY ethos of the ’80s. My family imploded. That helped a lot. My family completely imploded. I had no like-

Debbie Millman:
As it often does.

Rick Griffith:
… I had no actual family in the ’80s. My parents went through a terrible breakup. I went through a terrible experience with my father, and I found myself leaning into communities of punk rockers in the Fairfax County/Suburban D.C. Area, which includes Dave Grohl and other punk rockers of the time. We had the best time ever being in community, being in difficult questions, and being in the center of it all, being against Reagan, being traumatized by the AIDS epidemic, really being in the center of America at a time when various types of neoconservative perspectives were being formed that we would be experiencing right now in its its fullest state if you ask me. It was a great place to get articulate about the struggle, about the truth of what was going on.

Debbie Millman:
It’s so interesting that you just chose the word “articulate” because I was thinking every now and then when I do my research before an interview, I’ll find something out that really surprises me about that person. With you, it was that you dropped out of high school-

Rick Griffith:
Oh yeah.

Debbie Millman:
… and you are the most articulate, erudite designers in the world as far as I’m concerned, so to learn that you dropped out of high school to go to punk, Queer New York in the East Village-

Rick Griffith:
Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
… to get your first big job in design, which was at Kinko’s, was a real surprise.

Rick Griffith:
Let’s not get carried away. Kinko’s is not a big job in design, but I was a graveyard shift worker at Kinko’s of Georgetown University. I was also a bike messenger and a part-time DJ. Just ever so briefly, I worked as a DJ at the original 9:30 Club at 930 F Street, and when I left Washington, D.C., I went to beautiful, Queer New York. I somehow in the transcript from Kinko’s of Washington, D.C., and Georgetown University, I went to Columbia University’s Kinko’s and somewhere in the transcript, I became the graveyard shift manager, which meant that I was earning a full like $10 more an hour for the first time in my life. That would mean that for the second time in my life, I could afford to go to therapy, which was amazing. Yeah, I know, the giggle, the therapy giggle. You got it. It is a real thing. I trust therapy, I believe in therapy, and I’ve been in therapy many times, and this is why I’m here is because I have, yes, I dropped out of high school. I took a couple of college courses. I’m matriculated at Cooper Union and at the new school, Parsons at the time, and one at CU Boulder here in printmaking, but mostly I’m self-taught because I have incredible curiosity about the world that we have inherited or the world that we’re created, or the things that help us thrive in a creative atmosphere, which means that everything that my creative collaborators are interested in, I automatically want to become interested in, too.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve said that your biggest skill in design is not design, but your ability to interrogate.

Rick Griffith:
Yeah, that sounds a little like I can be the person who canceled fun, so it sounds a little bit like that’s what I just did was canceled fun. Interrogate is true, but there’s also this notion of I have a great sense of when to develop a question, and that’s what’s brought me forward as an intellectual or as a person that’s not afraid of reading and studying and getting involved in my own education. That is that I trust that what college is for, I sent both my daughters to great colleges, what college is for is for framing the questions, and if you take responsibility for your education, you find the answers in a number of different directed ways. I knew my own questions and still do. I have a burning question today that I’m trying to get answered.

Debbie Millman:
What is that question?

Rick Griffith:
The question is this, because of the post-caste movement of Sikhism from Hinduism, how many creation mythologies live in Hinduism that makes the caste movement in Southeast Asia so prevalent outside of the religious framework of Hinduism? How does it continue to create oppression inside of a Muslim minority country or in a Sikh minority country and so forth? I really want to know more about creation mythology, and to that end, whenever I teach, I try and tell my students, “If you’re interested in being in creative work, you should have at least one or two or three if you can find them creative mythologies to draw from. You don’t have to just use the one that you were raised with. You could find out more about various religions and their concept of how magic happens, how creation happens.”

Debbie Millman:
How does this fuel your practice? How does this fuel your design work?

Rick Griffith:
Quite recently, we swore off collaborative projects that were largely concerned with capitalism.

Debbie Millman:
What else is there?

Rick Griffith:
I said largely concerned with. We have to draw-

Debbie Millman:
I mean, that’s the time-

Rick Griffith:
… the balance.

Debbie Millman:
… we’re in, but yes.

Rick Griffith:
Yeah, exactly. It’s baked in the cake. I don’t know how many other ways to just kind of in some way surrender to the presence of capital. I mean, we have a bookstore right outside the doors. Come on. I think it’s quite real, but when we swore off a number of different relationships and different types of projects, I started to treat the bookstore like it was my biggest client.

Debbie Millman:
Yes.

Rick Griffith:
… and that is now part of what I’m continuing to interrogate. The bookstore absolutely cares about graphic design and it cares about design and it cares about art, and it cares about creative thinking. We carry the Rick Rubin book and we carry Debbie’s books. We carry lots and lots of creative people who we trust and enjoy. We carry their products, but we also carry the products of Black, feminist, Queer intellectuals who are writing about their circumstance and what they believe is going to pull the communities that are Black and Queer and women or Black and Queer and Asian or just Asian. Pull them out of a negative circumstance or pull them into more unity with other groups of people so that we could survive this together because our sort of general philosophy is that we need to share strategies to either cope or flee.

Debbie Millman:
Well, it’s interesting that you bring up the word strategy as well because having spent a couple of hours in your store on Sunday, it feels very intentional. Every single decision about how you and Deborah, who’s your partner in life as well as your partner in business, have created this environment. I read a very funny anecdote about somebody that had come into the store asking about the latest Agatha Christie book.

Rick Griffith:
Yeah, I’m afraid we don’t carry that. It’s like top of shelf for Barnes & Noble or the Tattered Cover, whichever words you’d like to use to describe our largest bookstore chain in Denver, it’s top of shelf for them. They’ll be happy to get it for you. The thing that we carry that is mysterious and magical and strange might be Paul’s autobiography.

Debbie Millman:
Paul Sears?

Rick Griffith:
Yeah, Paul Sears. Or Rick Rubin’s book on creativity. There’s magic and there is really interesting language inside of that for us to grow from as a community. So we just lean into that slightly more rare object and we basically want to be known for that slightly more rare object. Or for any of the super uber nerds out there, we have Vision in Motion on a shelf in the reading room, which is the sort of posthumously published book from László Moholy-Nagy from the Bauhaus whose wife, Sibyl, wrote and compiled this book after his death became the kind of unofficial curriculum for the founding of IIT in the Illinois Institute of Technology. We have those design documents that if we go back far enough into these documents, we find absolutely magical concepts of how we could perform our function with our skills, with our attitudes about design and do it in a way that is big and interesting and challenging, and that’s where we want to play.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I actually think having spent a good amount of time there, that there is a sort of palpable energy of magic there. Now, it’s not just your bookstore and it’s not just your practice that is all situated there, it is also your letterpress printing environment that is incredible. You said that your activism really showed up when you got your first printing press in 1997. Now, I’ve taken a full tour of your entire space and you have many printing presses now and have been printing for many decades. Talk about the evolution of that. What first drew you to letterpress printing? How did that fuel your activism? How has it extended your activism?

Rick Griffith:
Okay. I’m going to go really fast, okay, guys, stay with me. When I was young… I was so much younger than today. When I was younger, I wanted to be the best graphic designer in the world. Anyone share that? Yeah, it’s a dumb idea to try and be that, especially if you’re studying it and you’re like, “That’s really, really good. That’s really, really good. That person’s really…” Especially if you want to identify other people’s talent, it’s a greedy concept. So eventually, I was like, “I don’t want to be the best graphic designer in the world.” Catch this. I changed my mind and I said, “I just want to be in the best conversations about design that I can find.” So thank you for this.

Debbie Millman:
Anytime.

Rick Griffith:
But I did want to specialize, and I specialize on type. When I specialize on type, I kind of hit a wall and I was like 26 years old and I was just jamming hard. I hit a wall and I was like, “I know as much as I can know about type, this is a digital era.” I was in Fontographer 1.0. I was in all this hardware-software stuff, and then I realized that I was accidentally in a conversation with these guys who were letterpress printers who were 20 years older than me, if not more. And what they were doing was stuff I had no idea about and it was all type. So instead of going forward into digital type, which wasn’t going very far very fast, I went backwards into analog type and I realized that with a couple of really great mentors and gifts from really super generous people in our community, Tom Parson is one of them, and Jason Wedekind is one of them, and also this guy, Brian Allen, was the first person to stick their hand out and say, “It looks like you might be interested in this.” So I studied letterpress printing with these guys and they taught me and continue to teach me, John Finch is the latest guy, and he’s 81, they continue to teach me about type through the analog letterpress community and the analog letterpress tools. So I’m constantly learning. Now I’m simultaneously learning how to run a slug typecasting machine in my garage, and I’m also in a Python class with the letterpress archive.

Debbie Millman:
That’s range.

Rick Griffith:
That’s range. And I’m so excited to still specialize or still have a specialty in type, but the activism is what comes with an awareness of your circumstance, which means that I experienced in my young life less racism because I had less ambition. The moment I started to express ambition, I experienced more racism. Anyone feel like that, or sexism, anyone else? Right? The minute you want something, that’s when the walls start to show up. So that awareness and that activism that held the circumstance of people of color and the circumstance of women and queer people and anyone that in any way had a prejudicial experience, that became very interesting and important for me because what else would you use a printing press to do, except for say, “That’s fucked up. That’s objectively fucked up.” Because everything else was being printed. So then I was like, “That’s cool, I’ll do that.” So I started using that, but I also decided what I wanted to do was learn how to be a better writer, which is a very big struggle.

Debbie Millman:
Why is that such a struggle?

Rick Griffith:
Probably confidence issues. I say probably, exactly confidence issues. Confidence, anxiety, all those things, depression, all the stuff that no one should feel alone with, just so you know, no one should feel alone with that, that gets in the way of being confident about your writing, especially when you’re reading things that are really well written. You’re like, “That’s really good. I can write two sentences that could meet that, but an entire article is pretty stressful.” So the activism comes alongside my awareness and the printing comes alongside my deep desire to know more about type in analog and digital forms. And as a designer, I stopped caring as much about digital kerning pairs, which I cared a lot about at one point, and I moved into caring about acquiring wood type and figuring out how to make posters on the fly and how to make printing an extension of my writing practice. I have my bag off-stage, but I wanted to give the front row a bunch of stuff that I printed yesterday because-

Debbie Millman:
That’s really hard with this kind of space.

Rick Griffith:
I know. It’s like a gigantic gap. I would have to fling it and then someone would get a paper cut and then I’d be inflicting harm. So afterwards I will stand-

Debbie Millman:
Or maybe by the bookshelf.

Rick Griffith:
I’ll be by the bookshelf for a minute and I only have 20 of them. Be honest, care a lot about what we’re doing, and then you can have one. It’s a challenge, right? I say be honest and care a lot about us, and you can have one. I have 30.

Debbie Millman:
Well, everybody here is going to care a lot, and we all have different degrees of honesty. And I assume-

Rick Griffith:
That’s true.

Debbie Millman:
No, but I’m assuming in this like-minded community that everybody’s trying to bring their best self to a place like this. And in many ways I think designers, because we have so much empathy, have to have some sense of optimism for what’s possible. Otherwise, why would we want to be creating things in the future for the future?

Rick Griffith:
Yeah, I mean there’s that.

Debbie Millman:
You don’t believe me. We’re on stage, but I can see in Rick’s head because we’re friends that he’s like, “No, no, no, I don’t agree, Debbie.”

Rick Griffith:
I have to be honest.

Debbie Millman:
Please.

Rick Griffith:
It was hard. And I think that young people, especially if I hear them tell their stories, I feel some young people are experiencing the same, if not a worse experience than what I experienced just trying to enter into the field of design. So my heart breaks every time someone’s suffering in that way. It harms us all to be gatekeeping opportunities from people who have deep love of the magic that can be graphic design and a deep expression of creativity and joy. It breaks my heart that people aren’t having the best possible experience. So yes, as a group, we should be pretty good, but someone’s still drinking water out of a plastic bottle today. And that plastic bottle shows up in Africa. It doesn’t show up in Orange County. And if it did show up in Orange County, it would be banned from our grocery stores. We’re not doing enough to really think about other people’s circumstance. We’re not doing enough to think about the world that we’re creating. And if we’re not doing enough and we’re harming other people’s children, other people’s children could even just be the person next to you’s children. We’re just not evolving fast enough to care a lot about each other and about our relative geographies. It hurts me.

Debbie Millman:
I agree with you, Rick. And I do think that we have to think about the continuity of every single one of our actions. However, I teach both graduate and undergraduate students.

Rick Griffith:
For sure.

Debbie Millman:
I’ve been doing it for a very long time. I don’t know how young people can take care of others or take care of the future when they’re having trouble taking care of themselves.

Rick Griffith:
I 100% agree. It’s something that people have inherited. Absolutely. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
And I see a palpable, alarming, using that word, alarming difference in the students that I taught 15 years ago and the students that I’m teaching now.

Rick Griffith:
Yeah, I agree.

Debbie Millman:
In some ways, the reason I still teach is because I feel it keeps me young, it keeps me current.

Rick Griffith:
The same.

Debbie Millman:
I get to hear what young people are thinking about and what they’re struggling with.

Rick Griffith:
It keeps us sharp.

Debbie Millman:
But there’s a-

Rick Griffith:
Keeps us totally sharp.

Debbie Millman:
… different level of struggle than there was. There’s a level of struggle and connection. There’s a level of construction and being able to get the kind of jobs with the kind of pay that they need. So I can’t blame young people for not caring enough about the earth. I blame my generation, which you’re a bit younger than I am, so it might include you, but I’m actually blaming my generation for not setting up structures that would better support them.

Rick Griffith:
With a handful of notable exceptions, I’m also blaming your generation.

Debbie Millman:
Bring it on.

Rick Griffith:
Exactly. And this is a gesture towards what we call power. It’s really a gesture to what we call power. Those who are hanging onto the power are basically who we’re kind of blaming. But here’s the one thing I’m so cautious to do is to alienate people in the present for stuff that we are just inheriting. I want to be really careful because the compassion that I believe in also extends to people who didn’t have the choices that we have now, and they didn’t have the well-developed psyches and sensitivities that we have now and access that we have now, and emotional framing that we have now. Imagine the conversations of parents about sex three generations ago and imagine the necessary conversations about sex, reproductive rights, about OBGYN objectives, all of those things have changed so much. This is just a dad whose proudest moment was taking his youngest daughter to her first adult OBGYN appointment and arguing with the doctor for her contraceptive objectives, and that’s true.

Debbie Millman:
I would’ve loved to have been a fly in that room.

Rick Griffith:
Right. I trust and I love my children, therefore, I’m going to treat them like they’re trustworthy and I’m going to advocate for them wherever they are.

Debbie Millman:
Yes, let’s clap for that. It’s an important one. So as we’re in this, and I see it in many ways as a Venn diagram of everything from the past and everything from the future, and we’re in this little zone, my feeling is my generation has to get the hell out of the way of the upcoming generations because there’s no student that I have, while they might be suffering, there’s no student that I have that’s like, “Yeah, we need more plastic,” or, “Yeah, we need more laws around women’s bodies.” No, they don’t. They’re the most activist, open-minded generation in history. So how do we allow for that let’s get out of their way?

Rick Griffith:
It’s not sit down and it’s not get out of their way, it’s hold hands and use the power that you have in the generation that you belong to to listen and to answer to their queries about the world that they’ve already inherited and tell them that you will try and do better with the time that you have left on the planet.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, he’s so wonderful. I love this man. We’re out of time. When I was in your studio on Sunday, you were showing me some of your recent letterpress printing posters. You showed me what seemed to me like a bit of a manifesto, and I read a little piece of it that I asked if you would share on stage today as a way to close our episode, so I’m wondering if you can do that. This is a piece that, because I know Rick struggles over every word, he has written so beautifully that I really wanted him to share that with you.

Rick Griffith:
Newsflash, I edited it about half an hour ago. I printed it in order to stop editing it, and then when I looked at it this morning, I was like, “Oh, needs a little bit more.” There is only one struggle. It is the struggle not to be colonized, lied to, not to have treaties broken, land stolen, and to survive a genocide. It is the struggle not to be manipulated by marketing in the study of human psychology. It is the struggle to avoid physical injury. The struggle not to have your body legislated. The struggle not to have your voting rights in jeopardy. The struggle to live free of the pollution that the powerful have put in your community. The struggle to name yourself and claim yourself. The struggle to be a woman everywhere. The struggle to be black anywhere. The struggle not to be characterized by the worst of the people who look like you. The struggle to survive grief, anxiety, and depression. The struggle to die without a knee on your neck or a spike in your vein. The struggle to farm the scorched earth. The struggle not to have your body or your labor exploited. The struggle to be educated and have your children educated. The struggle to belong. The struggle to know the history of your circumstance. There’s only one struggle.

Debbie Millman:
Rick Griffith. Rick-

Rick Griffith:
Thank you.

Debbie Millman:
… thank you so much for making so much work that matters in so many ways, and thank you for having this conversation today with me on the HOW Design Live stage about Design Matters.

Rick Griffith:
Thank you. Listen to this lady’s closer. What’s your closer? Listen closely. I know you might’ve
heard it 100 times in the podcast, but-

Debbie Millman:
We can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference or we can do both.

Rick Griffith:
There you go.

Debbie Millman:
I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Speaker 3:
Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The
interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts
in New York City, the first and longest running branding program in the world. The editor-in-
chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.

The post Design Matters: Rick Griffith appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:
Scott Dadich is a designer, a magazine editor, and a filmmaker. He was the Creative Director of Texas Monthly magazine before he became the Creative Director of WIRED magazine. He worked with Apple and Adobe to create the WIRED tablet edition and oversaw the development of Conde Nast digital magazine storytelling, which included the New Yorker‘s iPad edition as well. Scott was then appointed Editor-in-Chief of WIRED magazine where he brought someone named Barack Obama in to guest edit an issue, and he did this while Barack Obama was still President. Scott has created and produced the multi-Emmy nominated series for Netflix called Abstract: The Art of Design. More recently, he founded and is now CEO of Godfrey Dadich Partners, a brand strategy and design company. Scott Dadich, welcome to Design Matters.

Scott Dadich:
Debbie, thank you so much for having me. This is a total thrill.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, for me too. Scott, I have a quite specific first question for you. Is it true you measure the precise temperature of the water that you use to brew your coffee with?

Scott Dadich:
This is true. Yes, this is true. I was gifted a beautiful Fellow kettle a few years ago by its designers, very good friends of mine, Josh Morenstein and Nick Cronan over at Branch. And I found out that once I got that temperature right to 187 and had been starting to measure my beans, that it was the perfect pour over ritual for me. So a combination of strength of coffee and speed of delivery and yes, I’m just a little bit obsessive as you can tell.

Debbie Millman:
I kind of like that. I will share some of my obsessive tendencies with you as well to even more deeply bond. But curious to know if you really can tell the difference between 186 and 188?

Scott Dadich:
That is not a thing that my palate is so finely tuned to. This is a bit of laziness. This is the exact temperature that I can start drinking it as soon as I finish brewing it, I don’t have to wait for it to cool off. So if you extra beans in there and you get the strength you’re looking for, but the speed of caffeine intake is augmented.

Debbie Millman:
I also understand you organize your sneakers and your iPhone apps by color and it bothers you when the canned beverages in your office refrigerator aren’t positioned so that the labels all face outwards.

Scott Dadich:
Oh, boy. Yes. You have your sources, don’t you?

Debbie Millman:
Well, I was so happy to see this because I’m like that too with labels. So in my shower, all of the shampoo and soap and all of that, all of the bottles need to be facing outwards, and all the sort of pumps need to be facing in a certain direction. And when Roxane and I first got together and she saw me do that, she was like, “Whoa.” A little Sleeping With the Enemy I think- [inaudible 00:03:24]

Scott Dadich:
This is entirely irrational-

Debbie Millman:
I don’t know if you’re familiar with that movie.

Scott Dadich:
Yes.

Debbie Millman:
Like, “What do you mean? It has to be neat. It has to be an-” [inaudible 00:03:30]

Scott Dadich:
This is how the world works or it should work.

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely. I can tell when something is a millimeter off on a table, if the vase is not in the right position or the glasses aren’t exactly right, and when I saw this I thought, “Oh my god, my kindred spirit.”

Scott Dadich:
There are more people like you, Debbie. Yes, I am one of them.

Debbie Millman:
Scott, you grew up in Lubbock, is that how you pronounce it-

Scott Dadich:
Lubbock.

Debbie Millman:
Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock, Texas.

Scott Dadich:
Yes. Lubbock, Texas.

Debbie Millman:
And what you’ve described was a house stacked with magazines. What was your family reading at that time?

Scott Dadich:
My mom was a nursing instructor and professor at School of Medicine at Texas Tech, so she always had textbooks around. My dad was a voracious reader as well, so there was always ephemera and my mom was grading papers, but magazines were a big part of that reading and that sort of lifestyle. I remember very explicitly having Martha Stewart Living show up at the house and I don’t remember the exact year, but it was a revelation to go through those pages.

Speaking of finding joy in ordering things and color organization and the sort of frameworks that Martha and Gail were providing in its pages, that was just an amazing discovery for me. But I remember getting Texas Monthly at the checkout stand at the local grocery store. I remember the first time I started subscribing to Road and Track magazine and having that come in the mailbox every month. It just felt like this blast from the future, this sort of letter from the future that got to arrive and what was a pretty sleepy sort of town and a simple lifestyle, simple people, good people, but it was getting that window into what felt like a much bigger and broader world that was so compelling.

Debbie Millman:
I loved when Martha Stewart repositioned housekeeping to home keeping and I felt that was-

Scott Dadich:
Yes. Wasn’t that brilliant?

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, so much more respectful to the craft.

Scott Dadich:
Well, and finding a joy in a study, a photo study. Looking at the different hues and colors of eggs. It was just like, what a beautiful idea, and it just caused you to slow down and take life in a different way and really take and note the observations of form and color, utility in ways that I don’t think I’d ever contemplated before.

Debbie Millman:
I read that you discovered quite a bit of joy in the pages of Martha Stewart Living and now I understand. I was going to ask you why and eggs. That’s all we need to know, eggs.

Scott Dadich:
Eggs. It all comes back to eggs.

Debbie Millman:
Now, the first magazine you bought yourself was the August 1994 issue of WIRED magazine. Why that magazine and why that particular issue?

Scott Dadich:
Oh my God, I remember that really explicitly. The chance to be at Book People, this wonderful bookstore in Austin and I didn’t have any money at all and I would scrape together coins out of the couch cushion to basically go and see what magazine I could buy. And my roommate and I were obsessed with Myst, the PC game. And I think this magazine had random Robin Miller on the cover of it was Blue, it was that classic sort of WIRED severe photo angle and neon inks. And I probably stood there reading the magazine at the bookstore, but it was one of those that absolutely made it to the cash wrap and I think the $4 left in my pocket to make sure I took that back to the dorm, that magazine, it was a really compelling moment for me to sort of understand that there were these huge worlds out there and people creating those worlds, designing them and the sort of compelling packaging of that experience. And that magazine in particular was just a total revelation for me.

Debbie Millman:
You said that at that very moment you fell in love with what magazines could do and reading that reminded me that I had one of those moments as well. My mom always got McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal and I loved reading them. I loved the Betsy McCall paper dolls that you can cut out in the back of the magazine and of course, can this marriage be saved, from Ladies Home Journal. But she had a very, very wealthy friend named Carolyn, and every now and then she would invite us over to swim in her pool and I must’ve been about 12, 13 years old and Carolyn had a subscription to Vogue and that is the moment I fell in love with magazines and could not believe that women looked like Patty Hansen.

Scott Dadich:
It’s such a transformative moment. It really feels like… Our friend DJ Stout calls that variations on a rectangle, but I still love that idea that that page, that rectangle can transport you in time and space to meet these fabulous people like Patty or Randa- [inaudible 00:08:44]

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely.

Scott Dadich:
There’s something really special about that format.

Debbie Millman:
Now, you were also interested in cars and racing and you built so many model cars, your entire bedroom looked like a model making factory. And you’ve said that the magazine Motor Trend and Road & Track also became what you described as a lifeline out of Lubbock, and I’m wondering why you felt like you needed a lifeline?

Scott Dadich:
That’s a great question. I found so much joy in making and craft and I started probably with model planes, but the cars ended up speaking to me more because probably some of the design elements, the flashy colors and the swooping curves and the sort of sex appeal of sports cars and being able to design them and make them myself with my own hands in my bedroom was an amazing discovery for me. If I’m honest about growing up in Lubbock, while there were wonderful people and it was a very safe and sort of quaint place to grow up, there wasn’t a lot of activity. I remember being bored quite a bit. It’s a farming town, really honest folks working the land and trying to do their best to make it in sometimes a very harsh environment. The weather is strange and the storms are big, but when you look at the landscape, I don’t remember seeing a mountain or big trees for a long, long time, probably into middle school or high school, and I don’t remember going to the ocean until I was probably late high school.
So the idea that there was this world out there, again, that sort of perspective into other fields and pursuits, and I think probably I’m not alone in finding so much vision and appeal in motor racing in particular. The sort of white knuckling and the thrills and the crashes and also the design elements really spoke to me. That’s why I love F1 today, and the deliveries, and the performance issues, and the off-track drama, and the racing line, and the physics of it all. It really sort of tied together so many passions and interests for me.

Debbie Millman:
At that point did you consider doing something professionally with cars, whether it be a driver or designer?

Scott Dadich:
I didn’t in terms of a racing career, I’d never had the resources even to contemplate that, that could be a possibility. But I definitely got the bug around car design and I remember that I was good at math, and science in school and I had good grades there, and speaking to high school guidance counselors and friends and being encouraged to look into that idea. And again, the magazines that I had been exposed to were really vehicles to think about how that might be possible, whether that was going to engineering school, pursuing mechanical engineering, getting a job in Detroit, that was one of the… I remember one of the early ideas that could be a path for me to pursue that passion. Ultimately, it wasn’t the math part of it. While I was good at it, I just didn’t find the interest in it and it wasn’t sort of the vector into what ultimately I was able to discover in design being my passion.

Debbie Millman:
Well, you excelled so much at math and science. Your high school guidance counselor really encouraged your parents to push you towards a career in mechanical engineering and you ended up getting a scholarship to I believe the University of Texas.

Scott Dadich:
That’s right.

Debbie Millman:
Did you turn that scholarship down?

Scott Dadich:
Eventually I did. I went the first year as a freshman and began that coursework. University of Texas, a great school, but what I found really through that first and second semester, that wasn’t the right school for me. I was in massive math classes with a thousand people in beginning coursework and then doing homework late hours and early hours. And the sort of complexities and it was really the first time that I was pulled away from ultimately that safe environment of Lubbock. It was a lot. I was also sick. I was suffering from anorexia at the time, so I wasn’t eating and I wasn’t healthy. So it was sort of a combinatory effect of being in the wrong path, needing to focus on getting well and addressing the issues underlying the anorexia. And finding something a little bit closer to what would ultimately be my path.

I dropped out of engineering school and dropped some of my math coursework and started to look at radio, television and film and took some classes there that spring semester. But ultimately it was a decision and supported really by incredible healthcare providers at University of Texas to withdraw and re-enroll at Texas Tech and basically start over. I moved back in with my best friend from high school and we got an apartment. And just basically start with a clean slate and figure out what was going to be my path because engineering wasn’t going to be it even though the skill mesh was sort of there on paper.

Debbie Millman:
How did your parents feel about this pivot?

Scott Dadich:
I don’t know. I think they were pretty upset. We didn’t come from any means and my mom worked really hard, as did my dad. So to have a scholarship provided to me and the grades that I had worked hard to get in high school that facilitated that, that was something I had to put on the shelf and walk away from, I think was pretty tough. Ultimately though, they were supportive of the decision and provided me with the space to go figure it out. And as I was becoming an older human being and making decisions for myself, they really stepped back to let me make those mistakes and make those affirmations and make the choices that ultimately would lead me to some success.

Debbie Millman:
As I was doing my research and came across some of the information that you’ve just shared, I was struck by how hard that must have been, but also how much courage it took to really take a stand for your own life despite not knowing what could unfold. That’s really, really incredible to say I don’t want to do what’s come so easy to me, to do something I yet have discovered I want to do. It really is quite remarkable, especially what ultimately how your life has unfurled.

Scott Dadich:
Well, thank you, Debbie. It was scary. I remember basically feeling that I had no choice and that if I stayed on that path and kept doing what I was doing that I wouldn’t survive. Just to be really blunt about it, I remember trying to walk up the hill from my dorm room at University of Texas to the cafeteria to get my one meal a day and not being able to go up the hill. I literally couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength to go up and there were a couple moments where I was like, this has got to stop. So something profound has got to change and again, that I had great healthcare at University of Texas to be able to support that decision. Saved my life. I mean, full stop.

Debbie Millman:
You moved in with your best friend that you just mentioned and he was working at the very first bagel shop in all of Lubbock and you got a job there as a bagel maker. And went in every day at three in the morning, made the bagels, got everything ready for the day and then went on to school. How did you manage that pace?

Scott Dadich:
That was a lot, but I think coming out of the trauma of being ill and the reset on schooling, it provided me with a new sense of control and it’s been a lot of therapy to unpack this and the control issues that often are at the root of an eating disorder, like the one that I’ve struggled with. That safety of that space to come in, open the shop up, I’m the only one there. It’s dark. I can put some music on and I can create and make with my hands in a very sort of solitary and focused and controlled environment and that my delivery was important. That I had to be there and the shop had to get opened up and Phil and Mary and the owners of the shop would be there and get the cash register going in the morning. I felt a great sense of responsibility.

So it put some new guardrails in place where I think I was looking for other kinds of guardrails and other mechanisms and behaviors. And I would also credit that environment and the structure and the culture and the support that I got from my bosses, the owners of the shop and my colleagues there was also part of my healing journey. And also to be around food again honestly, and to be making food actually provided me a little bit of safety to contemplate what I was doing as an individual.

Debbie Millman:
I’m wondering if you can tell us about the day the owner, I believe Marian told you about a sign painter arriving the next day to make signs for the bagel shop.

Scott Dadich:
This was one of those, you can’t believe it kind of moments, but I’ve talked to Marian about this since then that she did. She let me know that there’d be a sign painter coming in and the shop was new. I mean this was a completely new enterprise, Phil and Marion, these wonderful people who had just recently moved to Lubbock and had this dream to open this bagel bakery. So there were various improvements happening all the time. A fresh coat of paint here or a new cash register there, some new tables and chairs. So it was a very entrepreneurial effort. It was like a very family literally a mom-and-pop shop. And Marion told me about that sign painter coming in and I was struggling. I was working hard as I could, but still I think probably making it on four or 500 bucks a month in pay, and I just leapt at the chance to make a few extra dollars.

So I offered to Marion to say, “Whatever, you’re going to pay that sign painter, pay me half and I’ll do it because I’m good at lettering and my engineering coursework.” And just having some experience in liking to draw in high school, I figured that I could do that and had some facility to do that. So Marian called my bluff and said, “Well, okay, well here’s the menu boards. I’ll get you some markers and chalks and you can go at it.” So I stayed up all night one night and bled into the morning making the bagels the next day and had the signs all ready to go.

And one of our regular customers, a woman named Sonia Aguirre came in and she asked about the new boards. “Oh, I love the new menu boards, who did those?” And Marion points at me in the back and I’m there making bagels, and I think at this time I’m 19, maybe just 20. And Sonia came back and she said, “I started my career as a sign painter and you’ve got some skill kid.” And she gave me a business card and she said, “I’m an art director at this ad agency in town. You should come see me and maybe I’ll set you up with an internship.” And I didn’t know at all what an art director was. I didn’t know that that could be a job let alone that this would be one of my life’s passions. Went to go see Sonia and sure enough she saw kindly on me and gave me an unpaid internship. So my first task was to learn QuarkXPress-

Debbie Millman:
Oh, QuarkXPress.

Scott Dadich:
She and the design director, this guy named Mike Meister that gave me… My first job was to set classified ads, so those little three-line classified ads looking for a dog groomer, selling a car, and I just loved typesetting and the rest is sort of history. It was that opportunity from the bagel boards into classified ads where my love of letter forms and setting type was affirmed just through some random happenstance of a sign painting incident.

Debbie Millman:
Now I understand you also became enraptured with Photoshop.

Scott Dadich:
Oh. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
And tell us about those collages.

Scott Dadich:
Well, this was probably a few months later, maybe even a semester later because after I had taken the design internship, Mike and Sonia actually offered me a job. So I was able to work less at the bagel shop and actually start working at the agency and I shifted my major. I actually went into a design communications track and one of the first and early coursework pathways there was in the Macintosh and learning the creative suite, and this was brand new at the time. I remember the instructor at the time had just procured eight new Macintosh’s for the computer lab, and this was a radical delivery for the design school at Texas Tech. And we had lab hours and the whole nine yards, but Photoshop really captured my attention. We had one scanner and I’m still a hardcore reader of Road & Track and Car and Driver, and I would take my magazines in and scan them and then start creating Photoshop collages that were the rage at the time.

You would see these terrible ads in their pages, and I would try to recreate those. The Viper GTS with this electric blue and these big white racing stripes really captured my fancy and I would just go and spend hours and hours and hours scanning and working in Photoshop and adding layers. And that was another sort of passion point for me where the things started to click together between the love of cars and design and the technical aspects of design, the tools of design. And the technological aspects of having new tools like a Macintosh and the Creative Suite, I don’t even know if it was called the Creative Suite. We had Photoshop, we had Illustrator.

Debbie Millman:
Exactly. Yeah. Well, I think you thought at the time that you could make a whole career out of making the collages and you called it becoming a Photoshop jockey.

Scott Dadich:
I don’t know where I came up with that, but…

Debbie Millman:
I love that so much.

Scott Dadich:
I had to be… I thought this… There were still these lingering dreams of getting to Detroit and getting into the car business and this was sort of one hair-brained idea that maybe I had not been able to pursue the engineering pathway, but maybe the artistic one would be the one that ultimately got me there.

Debbie Millman:
During your senior year at Texas Tech, you were recruited to produce some communication materials for the university, and I believe this is where you first met the legendary designer DJ Stout, who was at that point, the longtime art director at Texas Monthly and was also a Texas Tech alum. What was that first meeting like with him?

Scott Dadich:
DJ came into one of our design classes, so Frank and Jane Cheatham were the August leaders of the design communications program at Texas Tech, and DJ was even then just a legendary alum. So much so that there was a case or bulletin board the sort of the shrine to DJ and his work, all of his layouts and posters and ephemera and magazines at the time produced a lot of those materials and books to sort of support the publication. So all of those got pinned up and I remember one day we were told that the guy who did all of that with the big point toward the shrine, the DJ Shrine was going to come talk to us, so you better be at class that day. And sure enough, DJ came in. There must’ve been 12 or 15 of us at a tiny class, and DJ showed us some slides and he had a whole presentation and talked about his path and his design process and showed us his sketchbooks and working with people like Dan Winters and I just was absolutely smitten.

So the dots started to click for me that even thinking back to Martha Stewart or Texas Monthly, this thing that had been on the coffee table at my parents’ house was made by folks like this guy. I just made it a point to get to know him. So approached him after the talk and asked for his email and asked to stay in touch. And DJ and the enormous generosity that he’s always provided me and so many other students, again, kind of like Sonya took kindly on me and agreed to meet with me. So that was the first meeting of what ultimately ended up being many and a conversation that has gone on for years and years. I actually just talked to DJ last week, so it’s just such a treat to have him in my life and what a privilege that he has been so generous with me.

Debbie Millman:
In early 2000, DJ left Texas Monthly to become a partner at Pentagram and recommended you for the job at Texas Monthly. What was that like for you?

Scott Dadich:
That was even to this day, even reflecting you described that moment, I still get chills about that. I remember so explicitly getting that email from DJ. So we had stayed in touch and with the alumni communications and the work I was doing at Texas Tech and for Texas Tech at that time, I had good reason to sort of be down there and be in touch with him and I would send him layouts. I was working on the university’s research magazine, a science magazine called Vistas. So I would seek DJ’s input and send him the latest issues and he’d say, “Good job,” or “You missed the mark on that one.” And he was very, very kind with his time and we had met or something, he had indicated that some change was going to be coming ahead and when it came time for him to leave and he announced and he let me know that he’d be going across town to open the Pentagram office, he had introduced me to the leadership and the editor in chief Greg Curtis. So I made my way down and was invited to an interview.

Debbie Millman:
What do you think DJ saw in you at the time to make that recommendation?

Scott Dadich:
That’s a great question. I look back at the work and I don’t see it. I don’t know what I was… Probably a curiosity enough. There was no craft there. I was still a student really in trying to figure out my own design voice and frankly, most of the layouts that I was producing for Vistas were just copies of WIRED magazine. Literally trying to duplicate what I was seeing in other forms and formats, bringing in colors and grid systems and working with great photographers like the ones I was able to at Texas Monthly. I started to learn how to direct and how to assign the craft of a magazine. So perhaps it was curiosity, perhaps it was a bit of passion, certainly a bit of hubris and thinking that I might be capable of doing something like that. But I think there’s also something about young folks growing up in Texas and being close to the land and the place and the ideas that are shared in that publication that I had an affinity for the stories that were being told, it was much more probably that overlap than it was anything craft related.

Debbie Millman:
You spent six years as art director of Texas Monthly and have said that Evan Smith, the editor-in-chief, taught you how to be a journalist and how to write and how to edit. How did he help you do that in your role as art director?

Scott Dadich:
Evan was and has been like a big brother to me. It was funny, because I interviewed with his predecessor, Greg Curtis, and then I got the job. And then I think it was like a week later, Greg announced that he was retiring and that Evan was taking over. So Evan as a first time editor in chief, me as a first time leader in the creative department, we had a bit of figuring out to do. And I remember we’d had just in incredible rouse and arguments and shouting fights about design theories and headlines and who wanted to win this battle versus that and what was going to go on the cover. And there was a great affection I think there that developed really quickly and I just saw what an incredible mind Evan was, but even more what a masterful newsroom, what an incredible group of journalists was able to do together.

People like Pamela Colloff or Mimi Swartz or John Spong or Skip Hollandsworth, Greg and Gary Cartwright. Getting to read these manuscripts and seeing these and knowing these people as human beings and knowing what the reporting cycle and process was. And then watching Evan work as an editor to help shape and hone a lineup or a headline and the generosity commitment to supporting one another, “And this could be a little bit better. We could do this, but this layout could be more easy to understand or this headline could be clear.” There was just a real generosity in the interplay between all those different disciplines.

Debbie Millman:
You were there for six years and then went on to become the creative director at WIRED. Was that something you pursued or was that another serendipitous type of experience in your life?

Scott Dadich:
It was a little bit of both. I remember feeling a bit restless at Texas Monthly at that point. I had started to enter some of our layouts into design competitions and I was invited to the Society of Publication designers in New York and had started to meet other folks like me in the magazine business. And was really starting to hear the siren song of the New York publishing scene and had many, many friends saying, “You can do this. You should come out, try to get a job out here.”

And I’d interviewed a couple of times, I remember being close and in some contention for a job at Esquire at one point and not getting it and feeling pretty low about that because Esquire at that point was really one of the great magazines in my life and something I really enjoyed consuming every inch, of every word within it. So I was down in the mouth and probably pouting a bit and being a bit of a spoiled brat when I got a call from some folks at WIRED that there was an opening coming up, and unfortunately, Darren, the previous creative director, had passed away. So there was a search and there’s sort of a moment of pause and reflect and think about what the future of WIRED was going to be. So again, sort of serendipity and kind of can’t believe it back in reflection that that opportunity existed at that time.

Debbie Millman:
You started at WIRED in 2006 and speaking of awards, beginning in 2008, you became the first person to win both the National Magazine Award for Design and the Society of Publication Designers Magazine of the Year Award for three consecutive years. How did you get so good at designing magazines?

Scott Dadich:
This was a team sport. I mean, just through and through some bizarre combination of time, and place, and team, and having colleagues around me that loved magazines as much as I did. Whether that was Wyatt Mitchell or Bob Cone, and again, that sort of spirit and esprit de corps of an incredible newsroom coming together that every word could be argued over, every color choice, every design decision could be obsessed over.

And being at a point in my life where I could work 18 hours a day and had the stamina, and had the interest in doing that and getting an apartment literally across the street from the magazine, so I could roll out of bed and go to work and do it all over again every single day. Wyatt was so important to that work and really shared in all of those successes in particular as a manager, as a friend, as a leader, as someone who could mentor a team of younger folks coming into their craft, of me who was probably too precocious in many ways and too ambitious on a bunch of other ways, but it was entirely a team sport. This was nothing to do with an individual achievement.

Debbie Millman:
Nevertheless, it is a feat as someone who has judged those competitions numerous times, not back then, but more in the last couple of years. Those are hard awards to win and the competition is fierce. You’re talking about the New York Times and New York Magazine and list goes on and on and on, New Yorker. So it is quite a feat, and I don’t want our listeners to not understand that part.

In any case, in the summer of 2009, two years after the launch of the iPhone, you went to Apple headquarters. And the rumor at the time was that Apple was working on a larger touchscreen device, and I read that you commissioned an actual physical mock-up of what you thought and expected it to look like. Estimating everything from the screen size and aspect ratio to the weight of the battery, then devised a visual design user interface and interface architecture for the still hypothetical touch screen tablet. And then presented the mock-up to Apple along with a video presentation. So I have like 8 million questions for you. What gave you the impetus to do this? And then I guess the next question is what was their reaction?

Scott Dadich:
Well, it all started with a conversation with Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief at the time. It was during a performance review, so I was having my annual review and Chris was always keen to say, “You need to step it up and what are your next ambitions? And this is WIRED. We have to always be inventing, always be pressing ahead. If we don’t have the future here yet, we need to invent it, we need to go make it.” And I had sort of had these rumblings thinking about what a high fidelity magazine experience would look like in a touchscreen, and having had used the iPhone at this time for a couple of years really could start to see how this would work. There was also a factor where, again, speaking of control issues, the wire.com experience was not actually overseen by the magazine staff. So we’d send the magazine to the printer every month and then we’d put it on a series of discs and print it out in a binder and literally walk it across the hall to this other team, and they would put it on the internet.

And that felt bad for everybody I think. It didn’t give us the design agency, it wasn’t journalistically sound, it really wasn’t a fit for our readership. So there was a lot of thinking about what if we could just control the whole chain and what if the same team of people could actually apply the magazine vision and the magazine process to something that felt more akin to the glitz and the precision and the immersion of a really beautiful printed magazine experience. So one of my colleagues, a designer that I still work with today, Margaret Swart and I, we carved off some of our monthly illustrator budget and took a couple extra cycles to think about, “Well, what would this do and what would this look like and how would we lay out a magazine?” And we produced some digital prototypes and animated them and actually rendered out what basically looked like a giant iPhone at that time.

And that ended up being a thing that we narrated and we had some video capabilities at WIRED, and put together basically a little sizzle reel demo thing. And there were a lot of vision demos on starting to crop up on YouTube at that time, so by no means a unique phenomenon, but through the Conde Nast relationships, through emergent conversations that we’re starting to develop at Apple, at Adobe, we found ourselves in Cupertino that summer and meeting with certain executives that took interest in it I think to a point that we began a conversation that emerged later with what became the WIRED app.

Debbie Millman:
So you began working with Apple and Adobe to first create the WIRED tablet edition. How much of your original mocked up design was similar to what Apple had already been making or creating as they were developing their tablet or developing the iPad?

Scott Dadich:
Yeah, I think a key distinction here is that Conde Nast as the magazine side of the equation, as the creator side of the equation had a really strong relationship with Adobe as the tool authors and the tool creators. So we were paired with a really brilliant team of designers, and producers, and technologists to think about the technical aspects of that, and that’s really where the iPad or the tablet vision was starting to form in terms of what is this device? If it’s not Apple, someone’s going to do this. We had met with HP at the time, and there were many, many conversations about large touchscreen devices.

The Apple conversation was distinct and Apple and Adobe were not getting along at the time. So there was some brokerage of us saying, “As the narrative designers, as the journalists, as the magazine makers, we need you both to play nice because there is something at the heart of this idea.” And it came from that, and ultimately it didn’t look exactly like what we had sketched out that summer before, but there were a lot of commonalities and there was certainly a lot wrong with it. It was a very much a 1.0 idea and expression, but a lot of that we were able to think about, “Well, that’s one issue. Let’s try it again in the next issue, we’ll move on.” That goes away and we get another chance to try it again. So it was a highly iterative season and for ultimately what ended up being several years.

Debbie Millman:
Shortly thereafter, you were named Vice President of editorial platforms for WIRED parent company, Conde Nast, and there you led the development of all of the Conde Nast Digital magazine storytelling. This was fairly epic as it was the first example of a major publisher re-imagining the print experience for the touchscreen format. And at the time you just talked about the experimentation and the iteration and 1.0 and so forth. Did you have a strong sense of what you wanted this platform to be, and then work to iterate toward that? Or were you iterating each sort of phase to maximize the potential of each individual phase?

Scott Dadich:
A little bit of both or a little bit of all of it. In the assignment to work with the whole portfolio of Conde Nast publications, we found and we designed a series of experiences and feature ads that were specific to the platform. So for example, Golf Digest is as a magazine predicated on service journalism on teaching. So you can imagine having video formats and how-to’s and explainers for the game of golf would push the tooling and would push the technical aspects of what we were actually delivering in the file format. And what we’re delivering in the experiential side of is this more of a video experience or is this something you continue to read versus the New Yorker, which would be a weekly, and really text driven, and needed to be lightweight, and needed to download in the background, and needed to be assimilated into a highly technical weekly printing process. Make sure that that magazine is hitting people’s mailboxes and newsstands that Monday morning.

So there were different technical challenges as we worked our way through the building, but then there were also narrative challenges and there was also a sort of platform challenge that we needed this to scale. So that really came full circle when we started working with colleagues and even competitors in the industry across town at other publishing houses, trying to lever Adobe and Apple into creating some standards that would make this process easier. It would make it easier for consumers to consume, make it easier to download, make it easier and better for readers. So it was a series of efforts that was fairly byzantine looking back on it, but had everything to do with really trying to push the boundaries of the journalistic experience as much as anything.

Debbie Millman:
In 2012 during Hurricane Sandy in New York City, you found out that the editor-in-chief of WIRED was going to be moving on. What made you decide to throw your hat into the ring for the job as editor-in-chief/

Scott Dadich:
I never fell out of love with WIRED. I was asked to move to New York and take that platform’s job on in the digital space, and it was a thrill for me because I was dating this amazing woman named Amy. So there was a pretty good reason… She was living in New York, so it was a pretty good reason for me to be in New York a lot more. I was also going out to the West Coast a lot to meet with Apple and Adobe. So it felt like my colleagues and I were always on the West coast and I always had one foot in WIRED, and even as I was seeing the folks after me continue to care for WIRED, including Chris Anderson.
So it was a pretty easy feeling and something that really was right under the surface when I found out that Chris was going to move on and start his own company, for me to go to Tom Wallace, the editorial director and raise my hand and say, “If you’d have me, I would love to be considered.” And it just so happened that that Hurricane Sandy moment came and the conditions were right, and again, a series of circumstances that I kind of can’t believe looking back on it, but ones that ended with me back in San Francisco and this time with my wife Amy.

Debbie Millman:
In your first editor’s letter you wrote, “Let’s blow some shit up.” Do you think you did?

Scott Dadich:
Yeah, we probably did. We definitely sure as shit tried, as we’d like to say in Texas.

Debbie Millman:
Under your editorship. Speaking of awards, WIRED earned 10 Webby Awards, more than 100 medals from the Society of Publication Designers, a James Beard Foundation Award, Foreign National Magazine Awards for Design. You tripled WIRED‘s reach on social media, increased traffic to wire.com by 50%, and racked up over 1 billion annual page views to the site. 1 billion with a B. That’s a pretty spectacular run. Did you feel invincible or did you worry that you had to keep that degree of success consistent year-on-year?

Scott Dadich:
Certainly there was an intense feeling of not doing well enough, of really being on a treadmill and really feeling pressures competitively because during those years there were such an explosion of other activities threatening the magazine landscape and ultimately the attention model that magazines had thrived under. It used to be that your eyes and your attention to read a magazine were sufficient to support the economic imperatives of the business by buying it, by subscribing to it, by having advertisers commit. But when a thing called Instagram can also deliver that attention and engagement, that’s a threat. When a game can capture your evening instead of reading an article on wire.com or when watching a Netflix show is going to be just as enjoyable.

I think those were the imperatives that really pushed us forward much more so than saying we have to do better than our competitors across the street. So it was a pretty intense time, and I think given the platform imperatives, given that we did have to operate a print magazine, a daily website publishing 50 or 60 stories a day, full social media channels, a retail business at the holidays and events business, bringing people into live contexts. There were complexities that were sort of staggering, so it felt like a sprint every single day.

Debbie Millman:
Some of your biggest accomplishments at WIRED were the collaborations you forged with guest editors and your exclusive interviews, and somehow you were able to get an exclusive sit down interview with Edward Snowden in Moscow, and you wrote this about the experience. “Just a few people on Earth know where I was and why in Moscow to sit down with Edward Snowden, it was a secret that required great efforts to keep. I told coworkers and friends that I was traveling to Paris for some work, but the harder part was covering my digital tracks. Snowden himself had shown how illusory our assumption of privacy really is, a lesson we took to heart. That meant avoiding smartphones, encrypting files, holding secret meetings.” Scott, how did you get that interview in the first place?

Scott Dadich:
That was a process that took probably the better part of eight or nine months. My very dear friend, Platon longtime collaborator dating back to my earliest days at Texas Monthly, and I had talked about this as a get, this is a thing. And we thought in first terms of the visual and we thought in first terms of the cover, very much in a George Lewis kind of condition like we need to make an iconic cover, and this is a moment, an individual who would deserve such a treatment. Then came the very real practicalities of what he had or had not done, and the arguments in the newsroom about our obligation to cover his actions, whether we agreed with them or not, whether we could reach him or not, but it was my responsibility as the editor of WIRED to reach out and to find a channel appropriate to find him.
We were looking at news reports and wire clippings and the access that The Guardian was getting and what we’re seeing on channels like social media and Twitter. So we had some indications, but ultimately got a connection that Platon and I had raised to an individual who knew his lawyer. So we’ve got a communication over to him and we waited and we checked in and we waited and we checked in. And I don’t remember the exact date, but we got a communication back that if I were to be in Moscow on such and such a date and such and such a time at such and such a hotel, maybe conditions would be right for a meeting.

Debbie Millman:
And you and a photographer went, I believe?

Scott Dadich:
Yeah, so Platon and the photographer, we packed up some cases and his assistant and our photo editor, we all met in Moscow. And the secrecy and the sort of skullduggery of it seems over the top or maybe to some seemed over the top at the time, but I did have to communicate to a couple of my colleagues at Conde Nast, and I also sought the advice of several of the other editors in chief that I had trusted very deeply and have very strong relationships given my previous work with them. So I just sought some advice and it turns out that a couple of them, and one of them in particular had been over in Russia and had been hacked and had his smartphone compromised and banking details and all the sort of things that you can imagine would be really terrifying to encounter. So there was a very real cautionary tale about why the secrecy was going to be required, whether it was from people chasing Snowden or other actors or government officials. We just didn’t know, and there was a lot to be careful about.

Debbie Millman:
Did you know for sure he was going to show up or was it… Were you just hoping he’d show up?

Scott Dadich:
We really didn’t, and we were hoping, and I did… We stopped in Paris and I met Platon at Charles de Gaulle and at the gate, and I had sent my iPhone in a FedEx packet back to Amy in San Francisco. So I was phoneless until we got to the Moscow airport. Platon and I bought burner phones and no one knew those numbers, no one knew how to reach us. We were there. We did not bring computers, we were not online, we left no digital signatures. We checked into that hotel and we waited. We sat and we waited and sure enough the phone rang and it was Ed himself, this voice on the phone at the pre appointed time called out and said, “I understand you’re in room so-and-so, and I’ll be there in about an hour.” Sure enough, there was a knock at the door about an hour later, like the longest hour of my life, waiting to see if that was going to happen, and he ended up showing up.

Debbie Millman:
Scott, as an interviewer, I need to ask this question. It might not be as interesting to my listeners as it will be to me, but I can’t resist. How did you prepare for that interview?

Scott Dadich:
Well, obviously we had just read everything we could get our hands on, stayed as current as we could on news events, on government positions and what the Obama Administration was doing. Obviously, we had an incredible amount of opinion and reporting background from our colleagues in the newsroom, so you feel pretty well-prepared. I was there not only to meet with him, oversee the photo shoot and then facilitate the interview for Jim Bamford, our incredible journalist who’s going to write the profile. So Jim was also there and meeting with him the next day, but Platon and I ended up having the very first interaction with him in that hotel room, which lasted about four hours that afternoon.

Debbie Millman:
You also oversaw issues guest edited by Christopher Nolan, Serena Williams, Bill Gates, JJ Abrams, and as I mentioned in my intro, President Barack Obama while he was still in office. How much collaboration did you do with President Obama on this issue?

Scott Dadich:
Quite a bit. That was an issue that came about in the spring of 2016, and looking back on, I’m actually shocked how much cooperation and collaboration we got, not only from the president, but from his team at the White House. It was always the case that these individuals, these guest editors had to given their stature, given their responsibilities, rely not only on the WIRED newsroom, but on also usually the guest editors team or chief of staff or communications leaders. So there was always a very collaborative approach. Again, that team sport in making a magazine is a precondition of the engagement.

But when we pitched the idea to the team at the White House and this wonderful leader named Jason Goldman, chief digital officer who really got us in the door and really saw and understood what this could be, getting us in front of folks like Jen Psaki and knowing that this [inaudible 00:52:50] still, this could not be propaganda and this had to be a journalistic exercise and there would be preconditions on our side. It was still a process where we got the president’s fingerprints on manuscripts, and specific notes, and story lineups, and comments on headlines, and even very good edits to the stories themselves. He’s a great writer, obviously has just a wonderful command of language and of ideas. So it was just a pretty magical experience, I think for our newsroom and for the entire team got to work on it.

Debbie Millman:
Did you have to edit the president or kill any of his ideas?

Scott Dadich:
We didn’t kill any of his ideas. He definitely killed many of our ideas, and that’s sort of the way that it works. We provide a big slate and a big pathway for us to explore together. So the saying no to things is actually part of how the guest editorship really takes shape.

Debbie Millman:
You conducted an interview with President Obama for the issue, and this was in 2016, and when I reread it in preparation for an interview, I was struck by this statement he made. “Traditionally, when we think about security and protecting ourselves, we think in terms of armor or walls. Increasingly I find myself looking to medicine and thinking about viruses and antibodies. What I spend a lot of time worrying about are things like pandemics.” This was in 2016.

Scott Dadich:
Wow. I’ve not reread that. I’ve not gone back to that in many years, certainly before. Wow, that is uncanny, Debbie.

Debbie Millman:
Right. I got shivers when I saw it- [inaudible 00:54:33]

Scott Dadich:
I just got chills. I just got chills [inaudible 00:54:36]. That’s amazing. It’s not surprising. He is just so brilliant, and so well-read, and so curious. And obviously had such incredible access to so many vectors of information, but that is just absolutely breathtaking to hear those words again.

Debbie Millman:
Another of your initiatives was launching WIRED by Design, which was a three-day design retreat at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch, and two of the attendees there, Dave O’Connor and Justin Wilkes approached you and asked if you had any thoughts about how to transform what was on stage into a documentary or a series. That I believe was the seed of Abstract, your television show. Is that correct?

Scott Dadich:
That is exactly right. There were a number of threads that had started Abstract, including a conference event that a number of my friends and I put on together in Portland, Maine in 2011. It was an idea that we needed to get up and stage and share our creative process and talk about creativity in order to progress the creative process. So that’s actually where the name abstract started, and it was actually a live gathering well before I was editor-in-chief of WIRED. The WIRED by Design element was really interesting because we were able to gather a really intimate group of folks. I think there were about 300 folks at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, this legendary place, and it fostered a really warm embrace for creative discourse and having folks like Dave and Justin there alongside luminary designers like Bjarke Ingels on stage, or Christophe Neimann or Wyatt Mitchell, and having those individuals talk about the design process and the design decisions that had to be made felt really interesting.

And it was a moment where Netflix was investing pretty heavily in documentary formats, especially in documentary series. And Dave and Justin in particular were really well suited to think about how to bring a production like that to life. So it wasn’t long after that that we started talking with our friend Morgan Neville. Obviously incredible documentary filmmaker, director, producer, Oscar-winning for Twenty Feet From Stardom, and Morgan got the idea just right out of the gate as well. So Morgan co-created with us, and it was sort of like kismet to think about having all those ideas come together and into that documentary format and go chase and follow some of our design heroes and tell their stories.

Debbie Millman:
The show was actually green-lit by Netflix on the spot, and the full title is Abstract: The Art of Design, and it was structured as an eight-episode documentary series about visionary designers who shaped the world around us from architecture to illustration, cars to typography. And just some of the guests in the first season were graphic designer and artist, Paula Scher, illustrator, Christophe Neimann, stage designer, Es Devlin, Nike shoe designer, Tinker Hatfield. Scott, what was the criteria for choosing the designers you did? There was a real collaborative spirit in **+each episode, and I was wondering if that figured into how you made the choice about who to feature?

Scott Dadich:
That’s an awesome question, Debbie, because when we would approach potential subjects that collaboration was one of the things that really had to be there. Even after our first conversation that we had this notion that we wanted them to almost co-create the episodes with us, but because they were designers, they had a process, because they were designers, they knew how to tell stories, because they were designers, they were connected to subcultures of the design. So you pretty quickly got to create a list of things that we viewed as requirements for what we ended up calling a casting matrix and knowing that we had an eight-episode order, we wanted to approach designers from different fields, maybe even from fields that most folks wouldn’t even consider as design or contemplate, like meet back at the bagel shop, but didn’t even know that you could be an art director and that was a field that you could pursue.
But we had to be able to see what these folks did, and we had to see that over the course of time. We had to see their works develop and sometimes not develop or sometimes fail, and they had to be willing to bring us into their worlds from a production standpoint. So that mix, finding the right diversity of backgrounds and as individuals and of creative practices ended up being the thing that helped us take a list of probably 300 people globally and whittled that down into the eight yeses that ended up being the first season.

Debbie Millman:
Wow, that’s an effort. I had no idea that there were that many designers in consideration. With the designers that you ultimately chose, how hard was it for them to sort of have that peak under the hood? It didn’t seem like it was in any of the episodes. In fact, there seemed to be quite a lot of joy in expressing their process or their methodology or even just the way that they went about practicing their craft. Did you find that something that you had to foster or help bring about, or was it something that was harder for them?

Scott Dadich:
It was a little bit of both. I maybe put my thumb on the scale with some of the casting because Christopher Neimann was the first person that I called, he’s one of my most dear friends for 20 plus years. So there’s just a preexisting trust and a companionship and a creative comradery that we had leaned on for many, many many years. So I don’t even think Christophe even heard the rest of my sentence when I first asked him to join us versus incredible luminary heroes like Paula, who I just couldn’t even believe I was getting to meet, let alone follow her process. And we didn’t have a preexisting show to point to and say, “it’s going to be like this, just trust us. And I know this camera is right in your face while you’re trying to work, but I promise you the shot is going to be flattering and it’s going to be illuminating to the process.”

So it was a bit of both and some of it’s sort of a wild hair and to say to Platon, “I want to go see the Village you grew up in Greece and why that actually ended up shaping your creative process.” Versus being with Bjarke to say, “I need to be with you for a full year to follow this design process and all the way up to the construction of the Serpentine Gallery.” So it was a different process based on each individuals versus something like Christophe, where we just decamped to Berlin and filmed every day for a week, and then went to New York and filmed for a couple more days and that was it. We shot the whole episode in one week. So it was quite a diversity of trust building and creative process on both sides of the camera.

Debbie Millman:
One of my favorite aspects, aside from seeing these luminous designers making what they make was also seeing a little bit about who they were as human beings. I loved how you featured Paula and Seymour and captured the dynamic between the two of them was just perfection.

Scott Dadich:
Just such a wonderful relationship, and to see them half bickering over what’s for lunch as Paula is going to head back to the studio in the afternoon, those are the real moments. I think showing some of the rough edges and showing that we’re all humans and you got to feed yourself at some point, or Ralph and Doris going dancing for dance classes and that salsa night. That’s what makes us people and that’s what makes design interesting I think.

Debbie Millman:
Abstract was released in 2017 and was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2018. The second season of Abstract launched in more than 190 countries in over 30 languages for 150 million Netflix subscribers in 2019. Season two was also nominated for an Emmy Award and was also named Best Episodic Series of 2019 by the International Documentary Association. And you’ve said that making Abstract was one of the most joyful periods of your entire life. Will there ever be a season three?

Scott Dadich:
Oh, please, Debbie. I really hope so. Funny enough, we were casting season three when the pandemic hit.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I read that.

Scott Dadich:
You talk about the scale of Abstract and the precision and richness that Netflix imbued in it and the investment that they made in it, such that we could travel the world and meet these amazing people. That takes a huge crew. So to make a season of Abstract was about 300 people and we were in 17, 20, 25 cities per season, so obviously the pandemic shut that down. And a lot changed during those years when we couldn’t travel and certainly viewing habits changed and things like Tiger King and true crime really came to dominate Netflix’s business model, but I will never say never. We still stay in touch with our friends and maybe if your amazing listeners will raise a chorus, we can get that third season green-lit.

Debbie Millman:
Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Scott Dadich:
It sure would, count me in.

Debbie Millman:
Now while you were working on Abstract, you were still at WIRED for some of that and as you worked on the series, you began to feel as if it were time to take your own next step in your own creativity and you stated this, “Can I do this for myself? Can I choose to work with people where we go chase an idea in the way that we were trying to profile it with the subjects of Abstract?” At this time, were you thinking, “Okay, it’s a defining moment, it’s a fork in the road.” Did you have a sense that this was what you needed to do and go off and do something on your own?

Scott Dadich:
I definitely felt compelled by those motivations that you just described. I think at that point I had been at Conde Nast 10, 11 years, WIRED for most of those years, and there’s something that happens when you’re at WIRED. You meet all these incredible founders and they come into the office and we get to interview them or they get to talk to the staff in and off the record or we get to create a photo shoot around them. And you gain some proximity and you get to talk to them and understand their creative process. And even where WIRED is, the actual physical location here in San Francisco, there’s a coffee shop across the street where you would see the founders of Twitter and you’d be in line with Jack, and then you’d be using Twitter that afternoon. It was sort of crazy and heady this mix of people making things and chasing dreams and following their passions.

Abstract, really supercharged that for me. And I was talking to a friend the other day, we were actually just reflecting a bit on our career paths and what gets us to here as we get a little bit older. And I’ve come to understand that it’s sort of these eight and 10 year arcs where that yearning for discovery, that sort of restlessness really does sort of grab hold of me. So those were certainly feelings that I was having, even though I was having the time of my life at WIRED. And then paired with the moment of working with the president, I felt like that was sort of the pinnacle. I couldn’t really think of things that I hadn’t wanted to try and hadn’t been able to achieve, whether that was meeting with Edward Snowden in Moscow or sitting down with the president in the Roosevelt Room. So the boxes sort of felt all checked, and I think those were probably some of the ingredients that led to me casting my eye to the horizon.

Debbie Millman:
As you were casting, did you have a sense that you wanted to start your own agency or that there were somewhere else you wanted to go? What gave you the courage and confidence to make that decision?

Scott Dadich:
There were a couple different ideas. I still think about all the different thoughts in my head about what I want to do with my creativity, with my creative impulses. Whether that’s being stationed in a leadership position at a technology company, that’s something that gets talked about a lot out here. You just bump into leaders and get to know leaders at all these amazing companies that really shape the future here in Silicon Valley. I had conversations like that. I had conversations with friends about a different kind of magazine path or a way to pursue the filmmaking path full-time.

And then ultimately meeting some friends at this agency across town that ultimately were very, very helpful in shaping WIRED‘s vision, shaping WIRED‘s editorial craft, and setting the editorial charter and vision for WIRED that enabled that growth that you described earlier. And having seen them do it and having seen them build this firm and help clients from all stripes solve storytelling challenges, narrative challenges, brand challenges, design challenges. And to be able to do that in a way that could also bring abstract into the mix ultimately was the path that felt like the right one. It was scary. I remember seeing you about that time as we were launching, but it was also felt like the right sort of mix of ingredients even though we maybe weren’t quite sure what we were going to be making with those ingredients.

Debbie Millman:
You started your agency, Godfrey Dadich Partners on February 1st, 2017, and at Godfrey Dadich Partners, you seek to bring together the best of strategy, design, product and journalism to build story-driven brands. One of my favorite projects of yours is the Nike film you did with Billie Eilish. What are some of the projects you would say you’re most proud of now after nearly eight years at Godfrey Dadich?

Scott Dadich:
I love that film. That was directed and produced by a brilliant colleague of mine named Paula Chowles, who actually used to be the executive producer for video at WIRED. So we worked together for more than a decade, and that was in the height of the pandemic in a tough production. We’ve been trusted by Nike a number of times over the years. Probably my favorite Nike project, aside from working with Tinker on the Abstract episode, was a series of films and really one key long-form documentary about their sustainable manufacturing process called Space Hippie. Where we got to go into the factories in Vietnam where the shoes are manufactured, where in the space kitchen in Portland, where Tinker and his colleagues were inventing new fabrics and new design methodologies and new methods of making sustainable shoes.

So that was about a two-year process as well. That really sort of scratched a lot of the processes we built in making Abstract, but to do that in a context that told a very important story about sustainability and resource management and the sort of choicefulness that we need to operate within as designers. So that was something that a lot of folks saw at the time, maybe in the SNKRS app, but it was also a very important storytelling tool within the halls of Nike.

Debbie Millman:
As you mentioned, you are in your eighth year running Godfrey Dadich, which is the longest you’ve ever been in one position. You said in an interview that your dream job is one that you felt you could do for the rest of your life and not run out of challenges. Is that this job?

Scott Dadich:
I think it is. I really hope it is. I feel challenged every day if that’s one of the things that needs to be considered. I love the access to challenges that we have. I love the clients that we get to work with, whether that’s the folks inventing new modes of generative AI up at Microsoft or quantum computing at IBM. It’s kind of breathtaking to get to continue to have a lot of the access that we had at WIRED, but in these new contexts and new storytelling contexts. So there’s a lot to love about this and I hope to be lucky enough that my colleagues will keep me around and the challenges will be plentiful enough that we can keep the lights on.

Debbie Millman:
I was reading something about your thoughts on AI and you used the term extended intelligence as opposed to artificial intelligence, and I thought that really changes the way in which you think about the relationship of this kind of intelligence.

Scott Dadich:
That’s absolutely true. There’s so much changing. It’s such a rapid clip. We talked for a number of years at WIRED about the concept. Obviously this is a very old concept in computing and something we’ve covered for many, many years as journalists, the artificial intelligence. But we started to talk about augmented intelligence and more recently extended intelligence because AI and generative AI in particular is such a powerful tool that it is changing the nature and shape of work. That is really at the heart of our assignment and partnership with Microsoft on Work Lab, talking about the future of modern work and how tools like AI are shaping that. And really what it’s doing is raising the bar for us as individuals, as collaborators, as creators. It’s breaking through the career ceiling. It’s changing the very nature of how we collaborate and that we’re starting to see people, power users in particular, extend and reshape their workday in ways I think we couldn’t even conceive of even just 18 months ago.

Debbie Millman:
I find it so interesting, some of the conversations and objections that I’m hearing. I’m a bit older than you are, Scott. So I went through the transition from working on a drafting table to working on a desk with a monitor-

Scott Dadich:
Now, now Debbie-

Debbie Millman:
… and at that time now-

Scott Dadich:
… I did that too. I remember the Ruby lift and sending the copy out to the service bureau. We’re not that different my friend.

Debbie Millman:
But I don’t know. I mean, do you remember some of the same fears about the computer taking away the soul of what we do and-

Scott Dadich:
Totally.

Debbie Millman:
… taking away jobs. And we’re hearing the same arguments now, and I’m just remembering how many jobs were created because of the new technology and how that has fundamentally changed our ability to make things in ways we never thought possible in the early eighties. And now here it is at another tipping point.

Scott Dadich:
Isn’t that amazing? Never conceived of the differences that we’re encountering today. It is pretty breathtaking and it’s really thrilling to test some of the boundaries of it and see how it’s helping us envision new creative outputs. Literally last night, some friends and I were having dinner and talking about, I was describing what you just did, the pay step board and remembering in my first days at Texas Monthly, we had to send the copy out to the bus station on a zip drive. So that the service bureau in Houston could help put the inches of copy and we’d measure the length of his story and column inches and then get to paste that back up. There was a guy whose job it was to drive that disc to the bus station, and you think about, “Well, that’s a job that doesn’t need to exist anymore.” But you think about all the other new roles that get created, it’s almost breathtaking to conceive of where we’re headed.

Debbie Millman:
Well, this actually teased me up for my last question. What haven’t you done that you still want to do?

Scott Dadich:
I want to direct a feature film. A narrative film. One of my heroes is a guy named Jeff Nichols, very, very dear friend of mine, and he has a new movie coming out just a couple of weeks called The Bike Riders that I’ve been talking to Jeff about that film, probably eight or 10 years that he’s been trying to make, and it’s amazing. I got to see it. But everything that thrilled me about Abstract, but in the fully created world of narrative, cinematic storytelling feels like an avenue that I really have to figure out at some point in my career. So if I can figure out a way to do it, that’s going to be something that I’m certainly keen on chasing.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure out how to do it-

Scott Dadich:
One way or another-

Debbie Millman:
And then personally and selfishly, I’d love to see Abstract the magazine. I think that would be just delicious-

Scott Dadich:
Wouldn’t that be fun? Yeah. That-

Debbie Millman:
Oh, my God.

Scott Dadich:
… would not be the worst thing.

Debbie Millman:
Full circle. Scott, thank you so much for making so much work that matters, and thank you for joining
me today on Design Matters.

Scott Dadich:
Debbie, it’s an absolute honor. Thank you for this podcast and for inspiring so many of us for so many years. What a thrill.

Debbie Millman:
Thank you. To see the depth and the breadth of Scott’s work, you can go to godfreydadich.com. This is the 19th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference. We can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Scott Dadich appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:
In the fall of 2022, ChatGPT was unleashed on the world. And ever since then we’ve seen an explosion of interest in artificial intelligence and an explosion of worrying questions. Will AI eat my job? Will AI destroy humanity? And for many creative people, the specific worry has been, will AI steal my work? Or on a more hopeful note, will it help me do my job? I recently had an opportunity to pose such questions to someone with some clarifying answers. Brooke Hopper is the principal designer for machine intelligence and new technology at Adobe. I spoke with her in front of a live audience on March 9, 2024 at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. Welcome, Brooke.

Brooke Hopper:
Thank you.

Debbie Millman:
So I understand you grew up in an isolated rural area in Kansas and your aunt who was an interior decorator was one of your first artistic inspirations. And I’m wondering if you can share in what way?

Brooke Hopper:
Yeah, my aunt owned an interior decorating and design store and when I was eight, she gave me the opportunity to design the storefront. And I don’t know if that was a brilliant idea or not, but it got me into this idea that creating was a big part of who I was. My father was also a food scientist. He did R&D. And so I think creativity and being creative has just been a big part of who I was, regardless of where I grew up.

Debbie Millman:
I understand that when you were 12 years old, you begged her to hire you and she did, but though you thought she did this out of pity. So tell us what kind of work, aside from the work that she asked you to do at 8 years old you were doing by the time you were 12.

Brooke Hopper:
I was doing some accounting stuff. Again, more it was filing papers. I was helping her clean, just general help around the store, but I really wanted to be immersed in the patterns, the colors, the textures. It’s something that I was just enamored with.

Debbie Millman:
Now, the accounting that you did for her, is that what inspired you to originally go to college for finance?

Brooke Hopper:
I thought I needed to be smart about what I was doing and that I should make money. And as far as I knew at that point, I actually, again, I had no idea what graphic design was. I don’t think I’d even heard of the term, which shows you how isolated of an area I grew up in, but I thought I needed to make money. And that seemed like-

Debbie Millman:
Well, graphic design is the big sort of pile of money in the sky just waiting to be grabbed.

Brooke Hopper:
Right. It is to this day. No, I thought I needed to be smart and I needed to make money and to me, art did not equal money. And so finance equaled money.

Debbie Millman:
You got your BFA from Purdue University, then you went on to get an MFA in design and interaction from the California College of the Arts. You graduated in 2015 and then you got your job at Adobe where you’ve been ever since. You started as a senior experience designer, then moved up to lead experience designer in drawing and painting, then principal designer in drawing and painting. Since 2022, you are now the principal designer in emerging design, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Brooke Hopper:
Yep, that’s correct.

Debbie Millman:
So the first question I want to ask you about all of that is a simple one, and I want to apologize to the audience in advance if any of these seem fairly rudimentary, entry level, but I think it’s important to really start at the ground level. So the first question is really a simple one. What is the difference between artificial intelligence, machine learning and generative AI? And what are some examples of each?

Brooke Hopper:
I love this question because my favorite thing to ask is how many people in this room use spell check? And I better see everyone’s hand go up because you do it every single day. That is artificial intelligence. We’ve been using artificial intelligence for decades across all different sectors of our lives. Banking relies on artificial intelligence to detect numbers, banking fraud. There’s this whole big bucket that is artificial intelligence that we use all day every day, and we don’t even realize it. As a subset of AI is machine learning. And that is essentially just machines understanding and recognizing patterns. Speech detection is an example of machine learning and then there’s deep learning. And then below that, these are all just circles within each other, under deep learning is actually generative AI. So generative AI is a smaller subset of machine learning and deep learning. And so they’re all very different and I think one of my big passion points is helping people understand what AI is because I feel like we throw around this term AI, it feels like it’s new and it’s actually not new at all. We’ve been using it forever.

Debbie Millman:
Is it possible to teach machines morals, empathy, or compassion?

Brooke Hopper:
That is also one of my favorite questions to answer. I love to quote a woman, Ovetta Sampson. She’s amazing. And she says, “Data comes from humans and humans have bias.” And I think that’s one thing to remember is these machines rely on information that we as humans put out into the world. And so humans are biased ultimately. Whether we try to be or not, we are. And so therefore the machines are. And so we need to do things in order to mitigate that bias and the issues that come along with candidly being human.

Debbie Millman:
So, how has AI been impacted by human bias?

Brooke Hopper:
I think we see it today. I think one of the biggest issues, I think just broadly within the banking industry, I know that they deal with a lot of bias when it comes to approving people for loans and mortgages and things like that. I think that’s probably one of the biggest ones from a general term. When we’re speaking about generative AI, we still see tons of issues. I think it was last week there were some issues on ethnicity and racial diversity in the outputs. I was just listening to one of the keynote sessions before this and we’re still generating white male CEOs. And so there’s a lot that has to be done, again, to mitigate a lot of those patterns that the AI is seeing within what’s being put out online or in the world.

Debbie Millman:
Is it actually possible to ensure that the data that’s being used to train AI is actually fair?

Brooke Hopper:
Oh yes, absolutely. Right now there are a lot of AI’s that are just trained from data on the internet that’s not licensed, the copyright isn’t owned. And I think that’s one of the very most important first steps that we should be taking is these machines should be trained on data that’s licensed and that you do have ownership of content that is public domain that isn’t copyrighted necessarily, or we have access to use. And this is one of the big passion points of mine is we were joking before about the loads of money available in graphic design.

Debbie Millman:
That was sarcastic.

Brooke Hopper:
I know. Art and design is not a high paying industry. And a lot of times… I was principal designer for drawing and painting. And so I worked with a lot of illustrators and many of them have to have a regular full-time job just to do their hobby or their passion, which is illustration. And so I think the thing that’s difficult for me to see is their content being used to train the machines that are outputting content that looks very much like what it is that they’re trying to do and trying to make a living on.

Debbie Millman:
So how do we enforce that? How is it enforceable for AI to be relegated to only being able to use non-copyrighted or a commons type of license?

Brooke Hopper:
Yeah. And I think there’s a couple ways that that can be approached. One is just companies saying, “Hey, look, I’m going to sign up for this. I am willing to train my models on data that I have license to use.” I think there’s a couple other things that being from Adobe we’re doing. We started the content authenticity initiative in 2019 to help with avoiding some of the deep fake issues that were going on, but that also includes embedding metadata in the content that’s being created that tells how and when it was being created. In addition, being able to tag content with do not train credentials. And so there’s other companies that are also working towards this, but I think just laws and rules and regulations aren’t going to cut it. We need to actively be pursuing ways that we can make sure that there are artist protections and that creators are being protected.

Debbie Millman:
One of the things that I learned a long time ago when signing on to a site that needed passwords was the quizzes that they would give you about writing a word or picking a stop sign or a streetlight. And I found out fairly recently that all of those tests were being used to train AI. And it would have been nice to know that I was providing this information, not that it would have changed my ability to do it or not do it. If I wanted to get into the site, you’re forced to do it. But I’m wondering if there will ever be a way for layman people just on the internet to be able to decide what they’re contributing to or not?

Brooke Hopper:
Absolutely, there should be and I know that there’s a lot happening right now in Congress and the Senate to help protect just normal people with their data. I don’t think any of us want that information being out there. Unfortunately, we live in a world where our data is being taken all day every day, and that’s not the point to get into that part of it, but I think there’s a couple things. There’s the transparency and on the end of the companies who are using that data. And then I think there’s also an education piece for people who are signing into those sites or being part of this because there will be bad actors, there always will be.

We can’t stop them, but if the general population is educated on how to spot a deep fake, how to know if a website is not secure. I think there’s a lot of us that we look for the HTTPS on the end of something and that’s, “Oh, this website is secure.” And so I think that there are things that will need to happen and are honestly probably actively happening right now to help us understand how when to spot things that are either a deep fake or content that’s created in the style of X creator who didn’t actually create that information or that content.

Debbie Millman:
That actually is inspiring me to ask a question that I hadn’t thought to ask. And that is how do you or how can you spot a deep fake?

Brooke Hopper:
Hands.

Debbie Millman:
Hands?

Brooke Hopper:
For generative AI. But I think that that’s something that we’re still grappling with because as the technology to create deep fakes gets better, and unfortunately it’s the same technology that’s helping people create new and different content, I think that a lot of it is going to have to boil down to information that is behind the scenes embedded in that content somehow. And I don’t have the answer to that. I wish I did, but my knowledge is that I know Adobe has, our chief legal officer is in Washington DC advocating for things like this and so are many other companies. And so like I said, I don’t have the exact answer other than looking in detail, but I am very hopeful that as a society and as a culture and as a human population, that we will grow to overcome some of these issues that we’re dealing with.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. It’s one thing when somebody makes a deep fake sex tape of Taylor Swift. It’s quite another thing if somebody decides, “You know what, I’m going to make a deep fake sex tape of Debbie’s sister.” And Taylor can go out and say, not only, “Don’t look at this,” but she can somehow get her Swifty clan to pull it down. My sister can’t. So do you know of any protections in some way of thinking about how to enforce personal privacy?

Brooke Hopper:
There is an act called the Fair Act that, again, I feel like I’m a marketing commercial for Adobe, but there is a lot that we’re actually doing on this front because it’s a super important issue. And so there’s the Fair Act, which is giving humans the rights to go after the person who is creating the deep fake. And so there is a lot happening on that front because it affects everyone. It could affect me, it could affect you, it could affect anyone in the audience, and that’s not right.

Debbie Millman:
Actually, it leads me to something that I am just learning about. I do a lot of work with an organization called the Joyful Heart Foundation and the Joyful Heart Foundation is in existence to eradicate sexual violence. And I work very, very closely with Mariska Hargitay, who’s the star of Law and Order SVU to help eradicate sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, and the rape kit backlog. And we’re just beginning to become aware of and start to work against something that’s being called image abuse, which is when your image is being used without your permission in some nefarious way. And so it’ll be interesting to see where AI fits into these new laws that we hope to bring into Congress to be able to pass to prevent things like this legally. Morally we know it’s terrible, but if nothing is done legally, then morality is always a little bit of a slippery slope.

Brooke Hopper:
Yeah, right. I think the thing is is, look, throughout history, there have been people doing things that are not right. It’s not okay, they’re copying someone else’s work, they’re copying someone else’s likeness. It’s sort of same story, new technology situation. And I think a lot of the is how do we combat what the technology is enabling because there’s always going to be bad actors. And I think it’s about approaching that.

Debbie Millman:
You mentioned transparency before, data transparency, and I’m wondering how can humans ensure transparency in how AI makes decisions?

Brooke Hopper:
And I think that is encoding, and again, I feel like I’m repeating myself, but it’s true and I’m super passionate about this, is embedding that information that this was made using AI. Here is what AI did to help me in this process. And again, that’s something that as Adobe we’re doing. So we have a generative family of tools called Adobe Firefly, and what we do is anything that is created with Adobe Firefly, we embed directly in the metadata, “Created with Adobe Firefly.” So there’s no question that that was created using generative AI. And we believe it’s important that, and there’s work on the copyright of this, that a human needs to substantially modify something created with generative AI piece of content in order to consider it theirs.

It has to have a significant amount of human editing done to it, and so we’re doing that. And if you open Photoshop today, you can turn on something called content credentials and it actually tracks everything that you did to that file and it embeds that in the PSD, which is amazing. And so we’re trying to lead with this piece of transparency to make sure that we’re tracking this stuff. And I think transparency is key to all of this.

Debbie Millman:
I see questions coming in and I always love when people have questions that are better than mine. So I want to ask a couple of them. “What existing AI first design products do you value as a design principle at Adobe?”

Brooke Hopper:
There are a lot of AI first products, and I’m not if the question is outside of Adobe or not. But I would say at this point, and it’s hard because I need to say okay is it AI first? Is it generative AI? But pretty much everything we use is AI. Most of your favorite tools are very AI centric.

Debbie Millman:
How so? That’s something I don’t understand.

Brooke Hopper:
Yeah, that’s a good question. So I always use Photoshop as an example because most people are familiar with it, but there is so many features in Photoshop that are AI. So there’s something called content aware fill, which has been around for over a decade, which helps you smartly fill in content when you’re selecting something or expanding the crop on something. That’s AI. And so we use it all day every day. I know there’s a lot of people here who probably use Figma. Figma is super AI first. So, there’s so much that we do. It’s just become an innate part of creativity, so much so that we don’t even realize it.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, the first question that came in was, “Can you share a moment when you thought, how did I ever live without this?” And I thought, there’s so many things that I can say at one point in my life that I couldn’t do without that are now obsolete. And I’m wondering how healthy is it to become so dependent on a machine helping you create something that might have been more creative if you did it on your own?

Brooke Hopper:
Are you ready for my take on all of this?

Debbie Millman:
Yes.

Brooke Hopper:
So here’s the thing is AI is a machine. Machines are created to recognize data and repeatable patterns and continue those things. As humans, the major benefit of us being human is you have a completely different perspective of the world than I do, a machine can’t replicate that for every single person in the world. We have emotions, we have experiences, we have things that make us innately human. And so when I think about machines and humans coexisting together, let the machines do what the machines are good at, and also take the information that the machines are maybe bringing up to the surface. There’s a ton of harm and bias issues, like we talked about previously, all the issues of wow, there’s a lot of white people being generated. That’s bringing to the surface patterns that weren’t necessarily immediately recognizable to us previously.

I think that’s a good thing. This is an opportunity for us to address some of those issues. But when it comes to being creative and things being more or less creative with a human, it’s all about your perspective. It’s about your emotions. It’s about breaking the rules. Machines don’t know when and how to break rules. They follow the rules. And so that’s what we lean into. One of the biggest design principles is you have to learn the rules in order to break the rules. And breaking the rules is what makes something creative and enjoyable. And so it’s that serendipitous rule breaking as well that feeds into creativity.

Debbie Millman:
So, how is it possible to ensure that AI doesn’t fail?

Brooke Hopper:
Can you explain that a little bit?

Debbie Millman:
So, you said that AI follows the rules. What happens if they don’t? They, as if. But what happens if AI doesn’t follow a rule or disobeys a rule? Is that possible?

Brooke Hopper:
I’m sure they could be, it could be trained. They again, it could be trained to randomly break the rules, but it’s all about patterns. You could say every five whatevers do this opposite thing or randomly take from this certain thing. But it’s still a rule that it’s following.

Debbie Millman:
And it’s still a prompt. I want to talk about plagiarism. How can educators ensure that students do not use AI to write their papers?

Brooke Hopper:
I love this. I think it’s less about ensuring that students don’t use AI to write their papers or create their design work. I think it’s actually flipping the question. I read somewhere that for paper writing, there was one instructor who, rather than having students write papers, they would actually give them papers and ask them to make the corrections and find the mistakes. And I was like, I love that. I think that something similar, I guess for one, for design professions and design students, if they use it, they use it. And maybe they will go on to make a career of generating only content to make money. If they do, that’s fine, but ultimately-

Debbie Millman:
But I don’t want to give somebody a degree to do that.

Brooke Hopper:
Exactly.

Debbie Millman:
And that’s what I concerned about from an educational perspective.

Brooke Hopper:
Exactly. And I think that’s where some of the stuff that we talked about before, which is transparency and making it easy to understand 10% of this thing was used with generative AI. And I know a lot of universities are putting AI guidelines into place, but it’s hard and it’s one of those things that we’re still grappling with. And I think right now we’re in probably the most difficult part of this because it’s been fairly widely adopted at this point. We’re trying to understand, we’re at this point in technology where people are adopting it. We’re not really for sure how to handle it. And I think that that’s the point that we’re at right now, and I think that we’ll get over that hump. And I know that’s probably the worst way to describe that, but we’ll understand how to deal with this as time goes on. But we’re grappling with these really hard questions right now and I don’t have the answers to all of it.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, no, I know. And I don’t know that anybody does yet, which is both terrifying and exciting. I run a graduate program at the School of Visual Arts, and the students have been using AI with our permission for research purposes. And in some cases it’s been really interesting to see how young people are able to adapt to this new technology or the new parts of this technology to help them generate images and ideas. We did a project where students had to think about how the Archie brand, Archie comics could be repositioned in the future to be more inclusive, to have more diversity. And AI was able to do something that the students wouldn’t have been able to do, which is to imagine Archie as a trans person, to imagine Betty and Veronica as a lesbian couple. It was super interesting to see how AI could generate these images fairly quickly with very specific kinds of prompts.

But then we caught one of our students writing a paper that I suspected was AI. It was missing a certain kind of soul. It was missing a voice. It was missing a real point of view that didn’t feel very generic. And I asked the student, “Did you do this with AI?” And fortunately, they cop to it and then redid it, but not everybody’s going to cop to it. I hope that people can see it. But are there ways in which you can view something and know that it was generated by AI or using machine learning?

Brooke Hopper:
Yes, you absolutely can. I mentioned the content authenticity initiative previously. We’ve also created a content credential website where you can upload any image, screenshot, doesn’t matter what it is, and it will actually search, do a quick search, and it will tell you whether there is other content out there that to a certain extent matches this. And I think those types of things are super important. Again, this is part of the education that we’re trying to do as Adobe and that I’m super passionate about. Again, I know I keep saying how passionate I am about this, but I really, truly am. I care a lot about education. I care a lot about creativity. I care a lot about the creative field, and I think it’s so important to make sure that we are setting ourselves up to be successful.

Debbie Millman:
Min Jin Lee, the writer Min Jin Lee, she wrote Pachinko, Free Food for Millionaires. She was very vocal on social media when she realized that her books were being used to train. What can we do to protect the rights of writers that are being used? Apparently now there is a website where you could go put in your name and see what books you’ve written that might have been used to train AI. Is there anything that can be done about that?

Brooke Hopper:
I think it’s just an extension of that technology, putting in your name to see if my books were used to train AI all the way to somehow marking that content to, “Do not train this, do not train on this. I do not give you permission.” And I think that as we go on, I think that I am very hopeful that companies will start respecting this point of view.

Debbie Millman:
There’s a question here that I love. The question is, “What contemporary artists are using AI in any of its forms in interesting, creative, or productive ways?” There are two that I know of that I will share, and I’d love to know if you have some as well. There’s a woman named Pum Lefebure of Design Army. She’s a phenomenal art director and designer, and she recently used AI to create an entire ad campaign. Now, Pum is very image driven, very highly styled photography in her work that she does, and you would never know. And it had such a Design Army look to it that you would never consider the possibility that this was AI. And she was very forthright about it and she got a lot of press about it because of how good it was. So she’s one.

And then Marian Bantjes is working in Vancouver, Bowen Island actually, and she’s doing art generated AI. Heavily, heavily patterned work, very surprising and is really challenging AI in a lot of ways to make things that she didn’t think were possible to actually make. So I would recommend those two Pum Lefebure of Design Army and Marian Bantjes. Do you have others that, because you know so many people and work with so many, who do you see as really on the cutting edge of doing work in design and advertising, branding and creativity or fine art that’s pushing the boundaries?

Brooke Hopper:
Yeah, so I was hoping you’d ask this question because I’m actually working with an artist right now who’s getting ready to do a show at MoMA. And he’s a furniture designer and he wants to use generative AI to reimagine what it would look like if furniture that we consider iconic furniture, what would it look like if it was created by designers of color? And so we’re actually using generative AI to reimagine not just patterns and the aesthetic of it, but the entire form factor. And it’s such an exciting project because it allows us to imagine what would happen if there were more equity among the types of designers. For such a long time, design was a white male industry. And I remember coming in as a female being the only female on design teams. I’m sure you were in a very similar situation. And so what if that was expanded to designers of color, different cultures, all these different things, and I’m so excited for the project. I believe it goes into MoMA in September.

Debbie Millman:
And do you know who that artist is?

Brooke Hopper:
Norman Teague.

Debbie Millman:
Wonderful.

Brooke Hopper:
Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
So, part of what is so wonderful and mysterious about creativity is that it’s all imagination fueled. You also need skill, you need talent, but the ideas all come from one’s imagination. Some of it is combinatorial creativity, some of it is original. How does AI enhance or compete with that? With imagination?

Brooke Hopper:
I think it sits alongside of it. From my experience and some of the artists that you mentioned, Marian Bantjes is being able to push and break and do things that maybe we didn’t think were possible. What I love about what AI does is it gives you some really, really weird results sometimes. You’re like, “What is going on here?” One of my favorite images, it was during early Firefly, and I use this in some of my talks that I do. Firefly wanted to put human faces on any living thing, and so there was an image of this chihuahua with a human face and it was terrifying. You see these things, and that’s what I love is it’s not that I would actually use a dog with a human face. It’s that that sparks something. It’s that serendipitous spark to go in a specific direction. That’s what I really like about it. You see things, you’re like, “Oh, I could do this.” And you’re not just taking the thing for what it is, it’s giving you the idea to go in a completely different direction.

Debbie Millman:
How do you ensure that AI enhanced imagination is actually original?

Brooke Hopper:
I don’t know if you can. I can have an original idea or what I perceive to be as original, and it could be a very similar look and feel to an original idea that someone across the world had. So, I think it’s hard to determine that. I think it’s all about intent really.

Debbie Millman:
Do you believe that AI enhances ideas or does it just fuel variations?

Brooke Hopper:
I actually think it might be both. And I don’t know if that’s a cop out answer, but as I just mentioned before, it can spark some sort of completely different direction that you wouldn’t have thought to be possible. Then when it comes to variations, I know a lot of artists and a lot of agencies who use AI in the beginning process because clients want to see X number of variations. And as we all know, the number of variations you show a client is a much more curated set than what you already came up with. And so they use it as a tool to generate a lot of different directions and variations and then make edits to those and maybe push them in different directions. So I think it’s a combination. I actually think that that’s where generative AI is super useful is within the ideation phase because that’s when you’re generating tons of ideas and imagine being able to generate literally and figuratively even more ideas and more different directions to be able to come to such a better end goal.

Debbie Millman:
One of the jobs that AI has made possible is a title called prompt engineer, which I kind of love and I’m also terrified by. How do you become a prompt engineer and what are some of the best in class techniques that you’re aware of for feeding information to AI to get the best possible results? Whatever I’ve done so far has failed miserably. So, I’m just curious if you can help me with some ways of thinking about how to become a better prompt engineer.

Brooke Hopper:
Well, you’re actually in luck because a lot of the sites, I know Midjourney and a few others are actually moving away from this concept of prompt engineering. But the way it came about is speaking a natural language to a machine didn’t really work because it has this whole collection of knowledge that it’s been trained on, camera angles and lenses and all this other stuff, and that’s really how prompt engineering came to be is that you can put all of this information in it, very, very detailed specific information to get the exact result that you want. Now they’re moving away from some of that, and I don’t know exactly all of the details behind how they’re doing it.

Debbie Millman:
But why are they doing that?

Brooke Hopper:
To make it more accessible, I believe.

Debbie Millman:
So, for people like me that are just really flummoxed by the entire thing.

Brooke Hopper:
Yeah. The way Adobe dealt with it is we made everything much more visual and listed it out. Maybe we have a couple of different lenses that you could apply to it, different visual effects that you could apply to it. We talked about style references previously. And so there’s a lot that we’re doing to make sure that you can get the result you want, but creativity ultimately is about control. And I don’t about you, but there way is no way I could write a sentence that would describe any piece of design work that I’ve made. It’s really hard.

And so having different modalities to be able to, using Gen AI to assist you as a tool, and I want to be very specific about that as a tool, as part of your tool set to get what you want. And so a lot of times you’ll say, I’ll give an example, “I want a basketball and I want the basketball to be in the bottom left corner.” And even still, I’m sure that there’s prompts that can get you close, but to be able to get the exact style of basketball, with the exact lighting, with the exact angle, with all these details that you have in your head that you want to achieve, it is difficult, if not impossible to get that using text. And so being able to have different modalities or something called control net that allows you, which sounds terrifying. The first time I heard that I was like, “What is this??

Debbie Millman:
What is it?

Brooke Hopper:
So, it’s coming for us all. It basically allows you, we talked about style reference, so it’s taking the visual, but control net allows you to take maybe the depth of a photograph. So say I have an image of some buildings and I want to reimagine those buildings, those exact buildings. What that can do, it can take basically the outline and all the depth of a photograph and keep to that structure. So being able to, we call it multi-modality, but you can imagine having a 3D model and being able to place it where you want it. And then describe the materials on different parts, going back to the basketball, the material on different parts of the basketball or a handbag or something like that. So, it’s all about control and using gen AI in context that I think is going to be a super important piece of this where we haven’t… We’re still working towards that, candidly.

Debbie Millman:
I’m old enough to remember when computers were first being used to help designers. Quite a lot of elder states people thought that that would signal the demise of creativity and the elimination of a lot of jobs. And in some ways, it did eliminate a lot of jobs, typographers, retouchers, et cetera. However, it also created probably 10 times as many jobs for the people that were making all the things that go into the computers and the programs and so forth. A lot of people have been talking about the job elimination possibilities for and with AI. Are you worried about that at all?

Brooke Hopper:
I think this is something that we deal with with every wave of technology. You mentioned some of it, the transitioning things from analog to digital. I was speaking with someone who worked at Pixar in the early days where they were still drawing out by hand and some of the digital animation tools came to be. And half of the people there, he said half of his cohort were terrified, “We’re going to lose our jobs.” And then he was part of a group of them that were like, “You know what? We’re going to dig in and we’re going to learn this and we’re going to become the best digital animators possible.” And they’re still there working and doing it. And so I think part of this is creatives will become the best at using whatever technology it is that we’re using in context. And we see this already.

I like to joke that I can put in the same prompt as a non-designer and somehow mine’s going to look better in the end. And it’s just because there’s a sensibility and a visual aesthetic that I am aware of and I have that attention to detail. And so I think that, again, I mentioned this before, but I think we’re in the most difficult part of this right now. And I don’t know how long that’s going to last, but with every new technology, there are jobs eliminated, but new jobs are created, to your point. And we’ve seen this throughout history all through the printing press, the camera, the digital camera, and I think we see this all the time. And so I’m curious to see where it goes.

Debbie Millman:
It’s interesting, whenever there’s any type of new or original thinking or art or performance, people somehow get really insecure about what that means for our future. That somehow we will lose something as opposed to gain something. And I think that’s just a lot of what it means to be human and be uncertain about the future. Generally, people don’t think, “Oh, change, woohoo. Let’s do something that we’ve never done before and really succeed at it.” Most of the time we’re much more nervous about that. What do you see the potential for AI being able to do for designers, for artists, for writers that we might not be able to realize yet on the side that we are, that we might be able to do?

Brooke Hopper:
I think it’s going to be able to allow us to work in more mediums and media that we don’t know. I am not a 3D designer at all. I’m not. And I think that gen AI is going to allow me to be able to explore things in 3D, whereas previously and right now, I would terrify someone if I… I tried to make something in my master’s thesis where I was like, “I’m going to 3D print this thing.” And the 3D printer was like, “You are definitely not printing this thing.” And so you can imagine that gen AI could help me 3D print that thing. That’s not to say that I’m going to become a professional 3D artist by any means, but it allows me to work in medium and media that I wouldn’t be able to or would struggle to previously. And that’s what I’m super excited about.

Debbie Millman:
I know a lot of your thesis was about experimental typography. How would you see now, looking back on creating a piece of work that was all about experimenting, would you see AI being able to have enhanced that? Aside from the printing part?

Brooke Hopper:
Oh, it would have been amazing. I was literally generating by hand some of this stuff. I was going back and forth from Illustrator into Photoshop and doing blends and doing frame by frame animated GIFs. And if I would’ve been able… It would take me, I’m not kidding, it would take me five hours to do a animated GIF in Photoshop. And I could have done so much, I could have explored so much more. And at the end of that two years, I felt like I had so much more that I could have done, but it was literally a matter of time limitation for me. And so it would almost be kind of fun to revisit that in a way.

Debbie Millman:
One of the things that people talk about when thinking about the potential for AI is that it could never be sentient. It’s not possible for us to be able to create the trillions upon trillions of neural pathways in our brains into a machine. And I always come back to this sort of imagination. If you gave AI a prompt, make it more imaginative or make it feel more original, could they answer something like that? They, it?

Brooke Hopper:
I think that, and again, this is based on what we have today, and so I can’t speak to the future. But whatever imagination is is what the machine learned through all the patterns and data that it already has. And so I would imagine it would literally go to something that had imagination in it and try to replicate that.

Debbie Millman:
So, it couldn’t really do that.

Brooke Hopper:
I’d be curious to see what it came up with. It could spark some imagination definitely, but it’s hard to say.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, it would be an interesting prompt, “Use your imagination to…”

Brooke Hopper:
Yeah, it might just ignore that word, candidly.

Debbie Millman:
There’s a question that’s gotten a lot of love that’s here, “Are the AI models impacting creativity and creative people? In the battle between artists and AI who wins?”

Brooke Hopper:
When it comes to creativity, I have to say, as humans, I truly believe is to be human is to be creative. I think that is a core part of who we are, whether or not you consider yourself a creative person. And as I mentioned before, it’s our emotions, it’s our point of view, it’s our life experiences, it’s spontaneity, it’s deciding when and where to break the rules. And so I do think that there is a coexistence of humans and machines. I really do think so. And I think that humans do what humans are good at and we can make the decisions. And ultimately those machines are learning from us. We have to give them that data. At this point in time, they are not making up data on their own. They’re simply taking the data. It is taking the data that we feed them, breaking it down, and then recreating it from noise. And that’s a very dumbed down version of what gen AI does, is it takes all the data that it’s been trained on, it destroys it, and then it rebuilds it from noise.

Debbie Millman:
You said that you don’t think that AI could falsify data. Do you think that there’ll be a time when it could?

Brooke Hopper:
So AI definitely can falsify data because, well, if you’re talking about gen AI, and that’s the thing is because gen AI is taking the data that it has, it destroys it and it rebuilds it. It’s literally called hallucination. And so it is nearly impossible, and I don’t want to say impossible, it is nearly impossible to get the same thing twice with gen AI. And so that’s why with things like ChatGPT and large language models, it used to be you could go say some obscure knowledge like, “Who was the designer of XYZ font?” And it would give you literally three different answers. It is not built to be a factual database.
It is good for giving you travel plans, giving you ideas for different ways of phrasing a sentence or writing something, but it is not a search engine. And so I think that that’s the thing to always remember is it’s not a fact machine. Even Google search, we’ve been trained to, if you say, “Is this current event actually true or not?” You have to sift through that information. And so I think we need to remember that as gen AI becomes more a part of how we interact with the world, that you can’t just believe everything that is there.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I think we’ve all learned that via using Wikipedia, that not everything is true on Wikipedia. I want to talk for the last couple of minutes that we have about the future. How do you envision a world with AI in the next 10 years and maybe the next 100 years?

Brooke Hopper:
Oh, wow. 100 years. I don’t know if I can speak to that one, but I think in the next 10 years, I think we’re going to see an explosion of more creativity and content and I think more awareness. I always think about this from the creative angle just because that’s what I’m in and that’s what I do every day, but I’m really excited about the possibilities of more immersive art, more immersive design and experiences that will be allowed with some of this stuff.

So I’m going to a museum and currently you view the pieces or in some instances you get to go inside of something and it feels immersive. But what happens when you’re potentially interacting with the artist in this piece or you become part of the piece? I think a lot of this is very speculative, but I think that there’s so many opportunities to have art become a bigger part of our culture and our society, and no longer be something that you go to see or you go to do or that you make the intentional decision to go create or observe. That it just becomes a part of who we are. And I think that’s really exciting. Thank you.

Debbie Millman:
My conversation with Brooke took place at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas on March 9, 2024. This is the 19th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Brooke Hopper appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:
Welcome to Creative Mornings. I’m Debbie Millman, and today I am conducting a live episode of Design Matters with one of the most acclaimed designers of our time, Stefan Sagmeister. Stefan was born in Austria, but has been based in New York since the early 1990s. Over the course of his illustrious four decade career, he has created unorthodox, provocative, multi award-winning designs for campaigns, for album covers, posters, and books that upend the status quo and have taken the design discipline in new directions. He’s won two Grammy awards. How many designers do you know who’s won two Grammy awards? And he has received the 2013 AIGA Lifetime Achievement of Medal. Solo exhibitions of his work have been mounted all over the world.

This is my fifth interview with Stefan. Seems to be endless amounts to talk about, and today we’re going to be mostly talking about his new book titled Now is Better. The book combines art, design, history, qualitative analysis, and data sets into beautiful visualizations that are part artwork, part infographic. And in doing so, Stefan presents unexpectedly optimistic statistics about improvements in life, expectancy in education and the future of humanity. We’re going to talk all about that today. Please join me in welcoming to the stage Stefan Sagmeister.

Stefan, after five interviews together, I actually discovered something about you in my research about your history that I had previously never come across.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Oh, my.

Debbie Millman:
Is it true you got your first job in design at 15 years old when you went to work at an Austrian youth magazine named Alphorn, which was named after the traditional alpine musical instrument?

Stefan Sagmeister:
That is true. But this was a tiny magazine, I started to write for them. Not very well, but then the guy who, or the person who used to do the layout for the magazine left and nobody else wanted to do it and so I tried and it turned out that I liked it much better than the writing and it was a start. Also, I think importantly because the magazine also did some cultural events like music festival or a demonstration against something and all this stuff then needed graphics, needed a poster, needed this and that, and so considering I already did the layout, I did those too, which really was important early on because let’s say we would do a music festival and I would design a poster, not very well. One of them I totally ripped off a local designer, not because I was nasty, because I knew so little that I didn’t know that you couldn’t rip off another designer.

Debbie Millman:
Well, imitation is sort of the sincerest form of flattery, right?

Stefan Sagmeister:
But it was great because when you did the poster and we, of course, put the posters up ourselves with wheat paste and then 500 people would show up to that concert and the only information that they had about it was that poster so you really saw the effect of the work that you did, which was fantastic, and I think a super great learning experience for later on that the stuff that you do really matters.

Debbie Millman:
One of my favorite tidbits I found about this experience at 15 was you originally found out about the magazine from a sticker on a friend’s bicycle, and you subsequently joined him and the rest of the magazine staff for an editorial meeting in the boys basement.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Yes.

Debbie Millman:
So very official.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Yes. Oh, totally.

Debbie Millman:
And I believe it was at this early stage of your career that you discovered your proclivity for using your own handwriting, mostly because most of the headlines you were writing at the time, or designing, you were using Letraset, but it was used Letraset that had been donated and all the E’s would be missing.

Stefan Sagmeister:
It just turned out that it was easier to write the whole headline by hand then to painfully carefully reconstruct all the E’s of whatever. I think Cooper Black was a favorite typeface at the time. Does anybody know what Letraset is?

Debbie Millman:
So that’s my next question because I was thinking about this.

Stefan Sagmeister:
How about Cooper Black? Oh, yeah.

Debbie Millman:
So for those young ones in the audience that might not know, tell them about Letraset.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Well, Letraset used to be a extremely important company on the, this was a brand on as well known among graphic designers as Adobe.

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely.

Stefan Sagmeister:
The Letraset catalog meaning was the holy grail, was the Bible. And basically, it was sheets of rubdown letters that you did headlines with. You couldn’t… It was too time-consuming to do body copy, but headlines were ultimately body copy you had to send out to be type set. But headlines, you did yourself with Letraset and they were quite expensive so we, as a magazine, we were so small we couldn’t afford it. That’s why we had donated Letraset sheets from small advertising agencies from the area. But if you could afford it, they had their own custom cabinets with the various typefaces ordered by alphabetically, and there always was a sheath in between. There was a certain smell to it, meaning I’m not nostalgic about them.

Debbie Millman:
No, not at all.

Stefan Sagmeister:
They were a pain in the ass. But when they were old, they crackled or the…

Debbie Millman:
Well, when you burnished the letter down, it would have a bump in the plastic sheet. I found one of those files on eBay and I have it. It’s this yellow boxy file and you open it up and there are all the sheets with the blue paper in between. So I have a lot, if you want. The E’s are there if you want to use them.

Stefan Sagmeister:
No.

Debbie Millman:
You grew up in Austria. Your parents had a big store in a small town, and you described it as the place where you could buy work clothes if you wanted quality work clothes, but also your Sunday suit for church. Did you also work in the store?

Stefan Sagmeister:
I did not. Well, we helped out for, let’s say now, before Christmas on Saturdays, the whole family was in the store, everybody, because everybody had to help out because Saturdays before the holidays were the busiest time of the year. But my parents were full time, full-blooded salespeople. Not so much my dad, my dad was doing in the back, but my mom loved it. My mom’s dream was to have a store was a good reason why she married dad because he had a store and she was…

Debbie Millman:
Ah, love.

Stefan Sagmeister:
She would be the first to say so. I had a discussion with her once where I told her, “You know that among scientists, or artists, or educators, they don’t think having a store is the best thing.” She said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “Well, like, you know…” my sister is an educator, and I asked her, come over like, “Among educators, teachers, they think teaching is the most valuable thing.” And my sister agreed and my mom thought about it for a second and she said, “Yeah, but having a store is best.”

Debbie Millman:
I love the idea of thinking that what you do is the best. So many people I know want to be somebody else or want to do something else or have this vision of what they will be in the future. How remarkable that both your mother and your sister are utterly content with what they are and what they do and who they are in the world.

Stefan Sagmeister:
I think my dad was not quite there. I think my dad took over the store from his parents who took over the store from their parents, and there were at least two generations, my granddad, who actually was educated as a sign painter, meaning a graphic designer. At that time graphic design didn’t exist and he was not allowed to really practice sign painting because he had to take over the store. And my dad-

Debbie Millman:
Couldn’t he do sign painting for the store?

Stefan Sagmeister:
Well, you know what, if he did, then those signs didn’t survive. But I have a big sign of his hanging in my apartment here on 14th Street, and he was very conservative at that time, but sign painting also meant you had to carve the wood with the ornaments. I mean, this was real craft. This was not something trivial.

Debbie Millman:
This wasn’t electricity.

Stefan Sagmeister:
So I think that my dad allowed everybody to do what they wanted from his own experience. And so my sisters went into education, two of them. Two of my brothers took over the store, but they didn’t have to. And because they didn’t have to, they actually did so successfully and they now have, I don’t think they probably have 20 stores among them.

Debbie Millman:
Is it called Sagmeister?

Stefan Sagmeister:
It is called Sagmeister. So if you go to Western Austria it’s the store that’s the big deal.

Debbie Millman:
What was your relationship like with your parents as you were growing up?

Stefan Sagmeister:
I liked very much the whole situation that I was in. I was the youngest of six kids. Both of my parents worked, so I had a lot of freedom, specifically, as a very young boy. My mom didn’t know when grade school stopped. So as long as I was home for dinner, it was completely fine. She had no clue if we had school at the afternoon or not.

Debbie Millman:
So she wasn’t a helicopter parent.

Stefan Sagmeister:
She was not, which served not so well for my oldest sister who thought that she was getting too little. It served me fantastically. It was exactly… Like I felt incredibly privileged that I didn’t have to be home at any time until it was 6:30 when dinner never served. I think, in general, growing up in a small pretty town, we were middle class possibly in the town, probably even upper middle class as far as not money is concerned, but definitely as far as status is concerned, because my mom had status. If you went through town with my mom, everybody was like, “Oh, [inaudible 00:12:17] Sagmeister…” You couldn’t get anywhere, everybody knew her.

So it was a good time to… It was… Yeah, no, I definitely won the lottery by… Austria is a very, they of course, are complaining like crazy, but in general, specifically seen from the outside, now it’s a very well-functioning country with high rates of overall satisfaction. Vienna routinely is voted the most livable city in the world. I think their kind of social democratic system is actually one that I specifically, with a distance, really think works very well. There’s relatively high taxes. People are complaining like crazy, of course. But I think, ultimately, that seems to be a good system for a society to live together.

Debbie Millman:
Your parents encouraged your creativity and you went to art school.

Stefan Sagmeister:
They were completely supportive. I think because of the granddad example who kind of went in that direction but couldn’t. So when I showed some interest in there, and I had, at that point, when I graduated from high school, I had a portfolio of printed pieces. They were not very good, but they were out there. But I still didn’t get into the school that I wanted to, The University for Applied Arts, meaning I failed the entry exam and I went for a year to a small out school to basically train myself to get through the entry exam of the school that I really wanted to and then the second time around I got in.

Debbie Millman:
After university you got a job in the Hong Kong office of Leo Burnett and then came to New York City to work for the late great Tibor Kalman at M&Co. And you specifically came with that ambition working for Tibor, who in many ways was really at the top of his game at

that moment in time. What would you say was the biggest thing you learned in Tibor’s stewardship?

Stefan Sagmeister:
Well, Tibor had this fantastic knack to give you advice that you could hear, better than almost anybody I’ve ever met.

Debbie Millman:
Really?

Stefan Sagmeister:
Yeah. The way he worded it, the way there was always a put down somehow in there as well. But I’ve seen him once at the Whitney Museum where he designed the exhibit about Keith Herring and there was a long line of people standing in line to talk to him and he was holding a little court. And I stood next to him and it was unbelievable. He had something interesting and advice and clear to say to everybody. And so to answer your question, an important one… Actually, I’ll tell you two things. When I went to Hong Kong, I already knew him before, so we had sort of like a loose friendly relationship. When I went to Hong Kong, he said, “I know they’re going to pay you a shitload of money and don’t you dare spending that money because you’re going to be the whore of the ad agencies for the rest of your life if you do.” Excellent advice.

Debbie Millman:
Pithy.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Excellent advice. And I didn’t. I saved it. But almost all of my colleagues in Hong Kong are still working for ad agencies, and I’m sure many of them very unhappily. When I opened the studio after M&Co, he said, “The only thing that’s difficult in running a design studio is to figure out how not to grow. Everything else is super easy.” And I took that advice too. I definitely took it. Then of course when I partnered with Jessica, she sort of wanted to grow and we got some growth anyway. But for me, I think that’s the three to five people studio is the most pleasant. It just seems that that’s a studio size that is able to get maximum quality together with maximum joy.

Debbie Millman:
It’s interesting. I was expecting you to say something about how Tibor was able to identify the right kind of people to come work with him. So he did have a small-ish studio, but he hired Alexander Isley and Emily Oberman, and the list goes on of just extraordinary designers still working today and you in many ways have done the same. You had Hjalti Karlsson and Jan and Matteas Aaronsberger, really extraordinary people working for you, Jessica, of course, Jessica. How did you know that those people would be the right people to not only help you support your vision, but then go on and do great things on their own in the way that so many people did with Tibor?

Stefan Sagmeister:
I mean, I think that Tibor was in a specific situation as in that he really couldn’t design. He had an unbelievable vision of what good design is, but he couldn’t do it himself and that freed him, that freed a lot of time up for him. And I think that also installed a lot of confidence in the people who worked for him because they really did it. And so I don’t think there ever was a design company like M&Co in New York where are so many other design companies came out of meaning a dozen easily, I think.

Debbie Millman:
Well, you now have four, five and you’re still going.

Stefan Sagmeister:
But I think that that’s not as many as M&Co. And I think that had to do with the people being quite autonomous with the design.

Debbie Millman:
Let’s talk about this brilliant new book. There’s so many things that we can talk about. I took a peek at my watch in horror and realized, oh, my God, we’re halfway through. So fast-forward what you’re doing today. You have, undisputedly, had a career that has influenced others, inspired others, and in many ways defined a sort of benchmark in what design is capable of being able to do in our culture. You’ve created extraordinary work. You’ve won hundreds of design awards, you’ve made several films, mounted countless art exhibits, and published what I believe is now six books. I think your latest is your most conceptually and visually ambitious. It’s titled Now is Better and it is a visual exploration of human progress over the last several centuries. Why this book at this particular moment?

Stefan Sagmeister:
Well, there is a story how it started. I was at the American Academy in Rome as a design fellow or as-

Debbie Millman:
You won the Rome prize.

Stefan Sagmeister:
And it’s a great situation. You get a fantastic studio, view all over Rome, and the best thing about it really is that the food is great which means other than it’s good food, but much more importantly is it means that everybody comes for lunch and dinner. And it’s 70 people there, archeologists, filmmakers, artists, architects, designers, and so you have a salon like thing twice a day and that in combination with you working in the studio all day is just a fantastic situation. You are sitting next to somebody else all the time. And one evening I was sitting next to a lawyer, he was the husband of a invited artist, and he told me that what we are seeing right now in Poland, in Turkey, in Brazil, really means the end of modern democracy.

And I kind of thought it was interesting, didn’t really comment much, but looked it up that night. And when I Googled it, when did modern democracy start? How did it develop? It turned out that 200 years ago there was a single democratic country, the U.S., a hundred years later, right after World War I, there were 18, and now the UN officially says we have 86 Democratic countries that the UN says these are democratic countries. In 2016, we reached the absolute peak of democracy. It’s the first time in the world that more than half of all humanity lives under a democratic system so my lawyer could not have been more wrong and that seemed like a very juicy situation to pursue as a communication designer because so many of my friends feel like the lawyer.

And when I looked into it just seemed that there really are two opposing ways to look at the world. One is from the short term, which is basically how all media looks at it. The media cycle has gotten much, much shorter allowing things, by design, to be more negative to come through because to shorter the cycle, the more negative the news because negative things happened very quickly, catastrophes and scandals, and there is a completely different way to look at the world, which is long-term like what I did when I looked up democracy. Yes, it is true in the short term, at that point, Poland, Brazil turned into a non-democratic direction. But even now, five years later, both of those countries are actually turning in the other way again. So from the short term he was correct. It went a little bit less democratic, but from the long term 200, he was completely wrong. And when I looked into other directions, that seemed to be true for a lot of directions.

Debbie Millman:
So let’s talk about short-term versus long-term for a moment. It’s very easy, I think a lot of us, maybe everyone in this room is feeling the intensity of the world right now.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Sure.

Debbie Millman:
And it’s very hard, in the moment, of anything, to think long-term. Whenever we’re in something we tend to think, humans tend to think this is how it’s going to be forever. Why is it that we, despite all the positive things that you point out in this book, which are real and documented and empirical, do we all feel like civilization is doomed?

Stefan Sagmeister:
Well, I think there’s many reasons. One is the amygdala. It’s a small part in our brain like the size-

Debbie Millman:
The amygdala.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Yeah, that basically is designed as a shortcut for negativity. It comes from our pre-historic ancestors that really needed to be kept safe from the lion that would attack and it didn’t really have the same need for the banana that you didn’t see because there might be another banana around the corner. So that amygdala was designed by evolution to keep us safe. Now, we developed much faster than evolution originally thought so, and I feel that if we would look as we should look at all the short-term news, but if we would look and spend more time on the long-term, we would actually get a much fuller and better informed picture of the world.

Debbie Millman:
Despite the many terrible, horrible things happening in the world right now and for many of us in our personal lives. After reading your book, I’ve come to realize that almost any data point that’s measurable, most things are better than they were 100 years ago. I’m wondering, in an effort to sort of buoy the audience a bit on this Friday morning, can you share some of your favorite statistics and examples from the book?

Stefan Sagmeister:
Well, I’ll share some lighthearted and some more important ones.

Debbie Millman:
Perfect.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Lighthearted would be amount of guitars per million people. In the sixties, that’s the earliest that they’ve been counted, 600 per million people now 11,000. There’s just a better chance that something comes out of it and you’ll see that in other numbers there’s so many more people making their living as a musician, even though it’s very difficult to do so, than ever before.

Debbie Millman:
So Spotify hasn’t killed that?

Stefan Sagmeister:
Has not killed that. Yes. But they have to hustle, sell T-shirts and whatnot. More importantly, I would say if I can quickly get the big things out, like everybody in this room I think would agree that we would rather be alive than dead. We would rather have food than be hungry. We would rather live in a democracy than in a dictatorship. We would rather be healthy than sick. And all of these things actually can be measured and for all of these things, there are excellent numbers from the United Nations, from the UN that have measured these things over 200 years and all of these things, demonstratively, have become better. And so these are kind of just the basic things. But if I go into detail, if you lived in France 200 years ago, the average calorie count of your diet was the same as it was in Rwanda 200 years later when Rwanda was the most malnourished country in the world.

So it literally means, in Europe 200 years ago, you were very much likely part of the 90% that the UN would now say is extreme poverty. Extreme poverty. Right now, I think that means you have to live your day for under a inflation adjusted dollar a day. And so 90% of Europe lived in extreme poverty ruled over by 10% of basically the king and the court. And that was reduced now worldwide to 10%. We went from 90 to 10, it used to be 9% before the pandemic. We did go up to 10. It got a little bit worse. For full disclosure, democracy also went a little bit worse the last seven years, mostly driven by India.

That was the biggest junk that got less democratic. So it’s not a… Progress, obviously, is not a straight lineup. It’s almost like two steps forward, one step back. Also, when we make progress, we tend to have side effects that we haven’t anticipated. Those side effects have to then be taken care of or addressed before we can move forward again. But it seems that on most fronts over time, we actually moved forward, specifically, on the very, very, very important things.

Debbie Millman:
Stephen Pinker wrote the forward in your book and states, “The nature of journalism combines with our availability bias to guarantee that well-informed readers will be systematically diluted about the state of the world and the way in which it’s going. The news is a non-random sample of the worst things happening on earth at any moment. A collection of lurid anecdotes and images and narratives.” And Stefan and I were talking about the role of the news before we got on stage today, and I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about why we have this sort of availability bias and why, for example, the nightly news always starts with the most catastrophic local event that’s occurred that day in that neighborhood or city.

Stefan Sagmeister:
It’s because we love it. It’s not because the people who make the news are particularly mean or terrible. It’s because we, and by we, I mean everybody in this audience, including myself, we just love bad news.

Debbie Millman:
Why?

Stefan Sagmeister:
It’s juicier. It’s true. Look, if I go to amazon.com and look at the comments on this book, there are 16 good ones and one bad one. I zone in on the bad one. That’s the one that I really find the juiciest, my former client and definitely acquaintance, David Byrne, has this beautiful organization called Reasons to Be Cheerful. And, of course, I follow it. I never read it. It’s just too boring. It’s like all this positive news. When we…

Debbie Millman:
I love that you’re admitting that, by the way.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Well, when we edited for two years our film, we had sent the whole crew at significant expense to Austria to interview my many brothers and sisters. And I stayed purposefully out of those interviews because I didn’t want them to be stopped of saying anything negative for us all. We wrapped it up, went back home, looked at the footage. My brothers and sisters only said positive things about me. It was completely unusable. Not a second was bound up in the film because it was unbelievably boring. Now, if they would’ve said what a fucking asshole I was as a 6-year-old, that would’ve been so juicy. It would’ve been so good for the film. And actually, to wrap this little theme up, there is very good… There’s a beautiful study that actually Pinker has in his book from Harvard that shows that the film critic who hates the film is always seen to be much more intelligent than the film critic who loves the film.

Debbie Millman:
Yesterday on Lit Hub, there was an article that they published the 12 most scathing book reviews of the year.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Juicy.

Debbie Millman:
It’s only juicy unless you know someone whose book is on that list.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Oh. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
And then it’s rather horrific. All of the cleanup that goes into having to buoy that person back up and despite 450 other good reviews, that one review is going to be one that just haunts this person.

Stefan Sagmeister:
One hundred percent. And that unbelievable article that Tom Wolfe wrote about Leonard Bernstein, I saw an interview with Bernstein’s wife and she said this review or this article in New York Magazine was the single worst event of her life of her entire life. Everybody else got a huge kick out of it because it was very funny. It was very well written. It made Tom Wolfe famous. But yeah, there is this thing in us. I’m not proud of it. It’s surprising to me that I would still fall for it considering I’ve been working for five years on this book and I’m so aware of the mechanism. But I think it’s something, yeah, it comes from our DNA, it comes from the amygdala, it’s hard wired in us. It’s not just some psychological surface.

Debbie Millman:
Well, I think one interesting thing about at least being aware of it is perhaps we can take it less seriously.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Yes. Yeah. I will have to admit, I just, literally this week, did remove the New York Times app from my phone.

Debbie Millman:
Really?

Stefan Sagmeister:
Yes. And I’m still subscribed for it for the weekend, but there I find it is much more of an entertainment value because we read it in bed with breakfast and it’s very nice to have the printed New York Times there, but I just removed it from my phone. And I really do believe, when I think about it rationally, let’s take a subject. I followed the New York Times and let’s say Trump over the last eight years over every daily scandal and silliness that he was saying, I would be much better off having ignored all that. And now, reading two Trump books by Michael Wolfe, I would be much better informed about how that all developed with some distance and get a much better idea of how these years were than having followed it every day and having worried about it every day. Because, ultimately, even in something as important as our President, I didn’t really change anything. None of my actions really influenced that world one way or another.

Debbie Millman:
Do you think that this amygdala is also lit up by some of the witnessing of nastiness that seems to be so much a part of the daily news and our daily politics and our daily lives? It seems that people, and maybe this is a short-term view and it isn’t something that will pan out, but at this moment in time, it seems like people are just a lot ruder to each other and I think that started with Trump, but I could be wrong about that.

Stefan Sagmeister:

I mean, I think it’s a mixture. Also, I think that the rudeness also, of course comes quite a bit from social media simply because I’m sure that many people who write terrible things on social media would never tell that to that person in the face. Meaning you just said your partner got death threats.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah.

Stefan Sagmeister:
I’m a hundred percent sure that that same person who sent that death threat over social media would never say this at a dinner party in the face.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah.

Stefan Sagmeister:
And I think in that case, social media is sort of like road rage, but even more, you are even more encapsulated. You’re even further away, meaning people already behave much worse when they’re in a car because they’re in their own thing than they would to your face. And I think social media is like triple road rage. And beyond that, I don’t know if people got ruder in general, maybe they do. I mean, people on planes definitely seem to be ruder.

Debbie Millman:
And smellier.

Stefan Sagmeister:
And yeah. There I actually believe, specifically on airports I actually think that it has… But I think it has also something to do with the architecture. I, for example, feel that if you go to LaGuardia now, people are nicer than they used to be five years ago. I really think that. Check that out and see if you can see something similar.

Debbie Millman:
I think that every airport should play on repeat 24/7 Brian Eno’s Music for Airports.

Stefan Sagmeister:
You know that Haneda does that. Haneda in Tokyo, with a formerly New York designer was creative director there. They actually had Brian over and they are playing Music for Airports in the airport. I know that through my partner that in all Polish train stations, they only play Chopin, which is not bad.

Debbie Millman:
Some long-term lessons to be learned here. I want to talk to you about the artwork. The artwork in the book are compositions. They include paintings on canvases that some of which belong to your paternal great grandparents, Gerhard and Rosalia Sagmeister who open and ran that first small antique store in the 1870s. The things that your grandparents didn’t sell were stored in the attic of your childhood home, and you used some of those to make some of the work featured in the exhibits in the book on some of the fashion something that you’re wearing, for example. What made you decide to mine your family’s attic for this work?

Stefan Sagmeister:
Well, once I thought I should do a communication design project about long-term thinking, about the long-term, the next thing was what media should I do it in? The thing that went out immediately was everything digital because I can’t open my files from 15 years ago. So that was clearly didn’t seem to be a good way, both from a long term as in it doesn’t stay around for a long time, but also from a how we don’t seem to be concentrating on it for quite a long time.

Debbie Millman:
It’s so interesting. I wanted to ask you about that. The last time I looked, this book was not available on Kindle. Is it still?

Stefan Sagmeister:
It’s still not available on Kindle.

Debbie Millman:
Will it ever?

Stefan Sagmeister:
I’m not sure. We actually did one book under great effort to be downloadable also for the iPad, and these books don’t do very well because they’re so heavy as far as data is concerned, and it takes so long to download it. The system is not great so I don’t think it will, no.

Debbie Millman:
I was wondering if you weren’t offering this digitally because of the long-term and the fact that chances are 100 years from now those files will be obsolete.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Yeah, I think it’s both. So when I looked for media that would work in the long term, 200 year old paintings seemed to be perfect and we had some in the attic. I asked my brothers and sisters, “Yeah, yeah, go ahead, do whatever.” And so those were the first really, and I cut them up, meaning it was not just that we over painted all of these things. They have gigantic holes in them. New things are set in. What you probably don’t see well on the pictures is that the new things are very different in surface than the old thing. So the old thing is a canvas that’s 200 years old. The new thing are highly polished pieces of wood, many, many times polished and sanded so they’re highly glossy. They almost look like a piano.

And that just seemed conceptually neat to me that these things were actually physically around when we started to collect the data.

Then we did many other very long-term things where we did a mosaic for a bike path created by a company that already worked for the Bavarian King set into concrete very much for the long term. We did tunnels for hospitals in Toronto or we did a watch that is so… Mechanical watch that’s so crazy expensive that I know just from the expense that it’ll be repaired and cared for a long time. It just made sense to do that also for the long term. And I have to say these things, and that’s why I really think that they are pieces of design. There is a goal. So meaning like this, the paintings, the goal is that they’re exhibited then shown in media and then that somebody buys this to hang on their wall as a reminder that what they just saw on X doesn’t really mean the end of the world.

And if that, let’s say we had the first exhibition, actually here you see it, this is Thomas Aerborn in Chelsea. If we would not have sold anything, I said, “Okay, this strategy is not working, let’s do something else.” But we sold all of the paintings and I like the process, so I kept going. I also, and I think we talked about this for a second before, I also love this situation that I’m now kind of allowed to really go deep in this subject, not just from a content point of view, but that’s true, I’m now much better at getting juicy pieces of data because I have more venues, strategies available, but also from a formal point of view. It’s we are getting better at making them. I have a small team in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, four people, but I can try out different things or maybe the inserts should be transparent. We just did the first one.

Or maybe the inserts can be 3D that they are C and C’d, or maybe we can even 3D print the inserts if we can get a long-lasting material so that there is some surface to them. So it’s just, from that point, it’s somewhat a bit different from the usual graphic design office because it allows us to basically keep on one subject for quite a long time and try to make it better.

Debbie Millman:
I love that you’re using the paintings that you got from your great grandparents because I also love that you include a statistic in the book that they themselves are a statistical anomaly being among the 15% of the world’s population, at that time, 15% of the world’s population at that time, your great-grandparents were able to read and write. And today, 86% of the world’s population is literate.

Stefan Sagmeister:
And I mean that’s just a couple of generations, you know. Five of their children still died. Crazy to think about. The worst thing that could happen to parents is your kids dying. And from my great-grandparents, five of their kids died completely run-of-the-mill for their time because only 60% of all children reached adulthood. Everybody else, and this includes Maria Theresa, the German Empress with the best… This was Austrian Hungary empire that basically with the best healthcare in the world, half of her children died. It was just what happened.

Debbie Millman:
Stefan, you have a section in the book titled, “The Environment is Not Totally Fucked,” and it’s really enlightening. And I really encourage, aside from the fact that there’s also a piece of art in this book, a limited edition piece of art, the information is so profoundly provocative and enlightening. But I do have this question. How do we align the idea that things are getting better and the data that shows that things are, in the longterm, getting better with the data of climate science experts that are telling us that the earth is in almost irreversible danger.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Glad you bring that up. That’s definitely terrible and it’s, without any doubt, we didn’t have a climate problem a hundred years ago. We started our climate problem 200 years ago with the Industrial Revolution. All the CO2 that came from the industrial revolution is still up there, which also means that if you look at it from a per capita point of view, Europe is the single worst polluter out of all parts of the world because they’ve been doing it the longest but the fact that it’s a problem is new. And I still think that even in a crazy situation like this, it’s beneficial to know that we’ve accomplished quite a bit in other areas that allow us to tackle this new unbelievably giant problem then from a situation of doom and gloom. I’ve actually done this talks four weeks ago in Lviv in the Ukraine. There’s a lot of caveat.

I definitely said, “I never thought I’m going to do a talk about this book in the Ukraine because as you said in the beginning, if bombs fall on your head, you might not have the space in your brain to listen to this.” But it actually went over so incredibly well. We had an hour’s worth of discussion afterwards that we are now talking about the Ukrainian version of the book and even bringing the exhibition there, meaning I was surprised that they actually had that space, but apparently it’s possible. But I’m a really big believer, and I have, it’s not just that this is a gut feeling. I actually have evidence for that. And if you look at big social change that happened in the past decades, I think one of the biggest and most incredible is the non-smoking campaigns. Unbelievable change. Many countries, including this one, cut the amount of smokers in half, even though those people were all addicted.

And when you look at what strategies led to this, it was positive reinforcements and negative warnings. So you had all the awful pictures on your cigarette pack, but you also had the promise of better health. You also had the possibility for therapy in many countries of patches and so on so it really was both the positive and the negative that led to that change. And I really do believe that if we want to tackle the big questions of our time, and climate change is definitely in the very forefront of these questions, we do need the positive and the negative. And the news are clearly doing a fantastic job both in social media and the official news in delivering the negative and I think that I and a couple of others, like Steven Pinker, and there’s a fantastic guy at Oxford called Max Roser, who has a wonderful site called Our World in Data, and some others are trying to give little itsy bitsy bits of positive injections in there.

Debbie Millman:
I can add to the reason that the anti cigarette smoking campaigns have done so well and it also has something in common with seatbelt laws, which have also really improved mortality rates and driving, children. Children are being educated at a very early age that smoking is bad and that you have to wear a seatbelt. And so when older people get into a car and they don’t put their seat belts on, the children in the car will say, “You have to put your seatbelt on,” which gives me an enormous amount of hope when looking at the data in your book that this next generation behind us, so the generations behind us now, are so much more concerned about the environment, or so much more aware of the environment, and the need for more democracy that perhaps we’re not fucked, as you say.

The last thing I want to ask you about is the content of the work in Now is Better. And you stated that since all the content is based on long-term data, it made sense to express it through a medium that can be reasonably expected to stick around for a long time. Talk about the types of paintings that you’re using as the foundation of the work. I know that not only are you using the paintings that were found in the attic of your childhood home, you’re also acquiring paintings in auctions and places like that so tell us about that.

Stefan Sagmeister:
So I buy… I’m a very good customer now from many tiny auction houses in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Holland, a little bit of northern Italy. I try to stick with Central Europe because that’s where I come from. That’s where I know the things. It’s to my advantage that 18th and 19th century painting is unbelievably out of fashion so I can afford it. I try to get the best quality that I can from the painting quality or none of these pieces is truly art historically importance of this is not about destruction. I, for myself, kind of answered the question, if somebody would buy my work, including this work 200 years from now, and it stand for sale at a small auction house in Austria and somebody in the year 2,200 wants to buy it and make a new piece out of it that makes sense for that time, be my guest and more power to you.

These paintings come to my place. I take the frames off, I photograph it, I put it in my files. I then, in batches, deliver it to our studio, the Brooklyn Navy Yards. They take it off the stretcher. We have a full-time restorer as part of our group. She basically tries to, if it’s possible, sometimes these canvases are doubled and tripled up, so you can’t really work with it so we try to get rid of the double and triple canvases. And then I designed the inserts from the composition, the shapes, the colors. We cut new stretchers out of MDF from that with a computerized machine so that we can get very exact shapes. The inserts are many times lacquered and sanded and ultimately covered with resin and then are carefully inserted. And then the whole thing needs to be restored because in handling it stuff falls off and when you bend it things come off so it needs to be restored. But the restorer, she’s fantastic, and I can’t see which part have been restored and which part have not. But when you would see some of them in the process, they look quite dire.

Debbie Millman:
So is there a benchmark of where you will allow yourself to destroy a previous work? I assume that you wouldn’t do something like that to a Rembrandt.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Of course not. But basically, the chances that I’ll buy a Rembrandt for my budget at a small auction houses-

Debbie Millman:
It’s happened. But I think it would be so cool to, I mean, maybe not a Rembrandt, but I mean there’s something so wonderful about combinatorial creativity, just as an idea, that it doesn’t necessarily have to be an unknown artist that you then collaborate with, ultimately, in the work that you’re making.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Well, there’s a history of that sort of idea. At one time, Rauschenberg bought a de Kooning drawing and erased it. There is a fantastic piece by Kippenberger who bought a Gerhard Richter painting and made a coffee table out of it and called it Interconte style, nastily.

Debbie Millman:
I bet people loved it.

Stefan Sagmeister:
So I’m not sure if I need to contribute to that genre. It’s been meaning specifically the Kippenberger Richter thing I think is fantastic and I don’t think I could top this, but I do have a dream of doing very, very large paintings which come to auction very rarely because these very large paintings were very expensive to have been done. Like if you had a portrait to be done, a face portrait was one price, a bust was another. A full portrait, which you’ll see very few full portraits was very expensive you paid extra for another hand. If one hand was hidden, it was a cheaper portrait than a double hand.

Debbie Millman:
Hands are difficult to draw.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Exactly. They’re pain in the ass and had to be drawn often by the master of the studio as opposed to an assistant who could do the dress or the trousers. And so they come to these kind of auctions that I’m dealing with less so, but I would love to do a big historical painting or so but most of them have been commissioned by institutions. And of course, the reason these smaller auction houses have so much work is because they come from private houses and the grandchildren don’t want what was in the attic and give it to an auction house.

Debbie Millman:
Well, maybe they will now.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Who knows? Yes.

Debbie Millman:
I love what you said about the year 2200. 2200, so yeah, 2200. Yeah. I’m not good at math. Data visualization is not my specialty. I like to look at it, but I don’t understand any of it. So it’s a hundred years from now. I’d like to think that another interviewer will be interviewing a designer and an artist about how their work was inspired by an Austrian designer working in the 20th and 21st century, who tried to persuade society that we weren’t totally doomed in 2023.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Well, let’s hope for that.

Debbie Millman:
Yes. Stefan Sagmeister.

Stefan Sagmeister:
Thank you.

Debbie Millman:
Thank you, thank you for writing. Now is Better, and thank you for being this very special guest on this very special episode of Design Matters at Creative Mornings. Tina Roth-Eisenberg. Thank you.

The post Design Matters: Stefan Sagmeister appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

When you think of Chris Evert, you might think of her many years at the very top of women’s tennis, of her double handed backhand and her way of dominating the baseline. You might remember her epic matches with tennis legends, including Billy Jean King and Martina Navratilova. Or you might think of her as an expert tennis commentator on television, where for decades now she’s been displaying her deep knowledge of the physical and psychological aspects of the game. Along with being central to the development of women’s tennis as a major sporting event, she has also other creative passions, including jewelry design. Today, we’re going to talk about her new line of tennis bracelets and her groundbreaking legendary career. Chris Evert, welcome to design matters.

Chris Evert:

Thank you. I’m so happy to be here with you,

Debbie Millman:

Chris, I understand when you were five years old, you were in the live audience of a popular children’s program called the Skipper Chuck Show, and the audience was all kids. And there was a segment where in Skipper Chuck would ask questions. It just so happened that on your one appearance on the show, Skipp put a microphone in front of you and asked what your father did for a living. You lied. What did you say? And why did you say it?

Chris Evert:

That was my first performance on TV and you’re right, I did lie. And I think at that time, my father was a teaching tennis pro and I was embarrassed because all these other kids were saying, my dad’s a doctor, my dad’s a lawyer. So I was embarrassed. I’ll just put it out there. So I said, he’s a painter.

Debbie Millman:

Where did that come from?

Chris Evert:

And I don’t even know if I meant, did he paint houses or was he an artist or what? You got me. I was thrown off. I didn’t want to say he was a tennis pro or instructor because there were very few of those in those days and I wanted to be more mainstream. So I said he was a painter. I hope you’re not saying this set me up for the rest of my life.

Debbie Millman:

Oh my God. No, not at all.

Chris Evert:

Because it could be something there.

Debbie Millman:

My mom was a painter when I was growing up and I remember I once lied and said she was a receptionist.

Chris Evert:

Oh, thank heavens. I’m not the only one that lies. Okay, good.

Debbie Millman:

What did your dad think of being recategorized?

Chris Evert:

I think he laughed. They were just laughing. It was like what? They were in the audience and he just laughed. And I just was very shy at that time and I didn’t like attention. And I just didn’t want to be controversial and different than anybody else so I just went mainstream with the painter word.

Debbie Millman:

Yep. Your dad was first introduced to tennis as a ball boy for the legendary player, Bill Tilden, where he honed his skills on courts made of wooden boards. And he received a tennis scholarship to Notre Dame where he was a captain and played number one singles. What made him decide to become a tennis coach?

Chris Evert:

Well, I don’t think he had any choice because he played number one for Notre Dame. And he also played on the men’s tour, professional tour, well, it was amateur tour in those days. But he actually won the Canadian open. He won the national indoors. He was really starting to make a name for himself. And then he got drafted and he went into the Navy for two years. And when he came back, he realized that he had to get a job and he had to make money and he had to earn a living. It was time to be serious and get a serious job.

Debbie Millman:

Your dad worked at holiday park in Florida and started coaching you and all your siblings when you were each five or six years old. And you’ve all made tennis a significant part of your lives. All that being said, you’ve stated that your dad might have been prouder of not having to pay for college for any of his kids than he was of your specific success. And you’ve also written about how when you were very young, you preferred to swim with your friends than play tennis and remember being very mad at him because he took you away from that. Did you resent playing tennis at first?

Chris Evert:

That was interesting. Yeah, I liked to have my friends. And every day after school, I would go over to Kara Bennett’s house. She was my best friend and she had a pool at her house and we did not have a pool at our house. We were not that lucky and we didn’t have that much money. So I would go over to her house and swim and then we’d have barbecues. And all of a sudden, one day my dad picked me up from school and he brought me to holiday park. And I’m like, what the? Of course, I wasn’t thinking that. But I was like crushed. I was crushed. And he started bringing me over to holiday park every day. And there was no more Kara Bennett pool parties except maybe on the weekends. But even that fizzled out when I started playing tournaments on the weekend. So I was definitely resentful in the beginning, as resentful as a five-year-old or a six-year-old could feel, but it’s not a nice feeling.

            I couldn’t voice my opinion because my dad, he was a very dominant kind of a guy and you didn’t say no to him. He was very strict. And I do remember feeling resentful. But then, time went by and I developed new friendships with the girls at holiday park. I mean, it took a little while, but then I started to have some friends there and started to play well. And I started to have something that I was good at. So the thought of Kara Bennett and the barbecues kind of went out the window within a year or two. And I started to establish the fact that I was a good junior player.

Debbie Millman:

When did you first realize you had talent?

Chris Evert:

I think you have talent when you play tournaments and you measure yourself against other girls and you see the results and winning matches, and then you get to the semifinals and then you get to the finals. And I was always, even in the 10 and unders, one or two in the country, and the 12 and unders, I was one and 14, I was one. And so I was a very successful junior player. It was really good for self-esteem. At that young of an age, I think kids need to feel good about themselves. And every time I was on the court and I was winning matches and I was focusing. And I was really perfecting my craft at a young age, it made me feel valued and it made me feel really good. And the other thing is, I was making my dad happy. I think that was a big part of my tennis too.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I read that a big part of your drive to succeed early on was partly due to a desire to get praise from him. Was he a tough coach?

Chris Evert:

No. When I look back, my father never yelled at me once because I lost. He only got mad one time when I gave up and I just gave up. I was so discouraged that I just gave up in a match and then he got mad. But he was one of the better tennis dads, no pressure. He didn’t even go to tournaments to watch. He sent my mother because he got too nervous, but he was strict. It’s like, okay, practice time’s at eight o’clock in the morning. You’re going to practice four hours today. After it rains, you’re going to practice. No, you cannot go to a sleepover because you have a tournament the next day. I mean, in that respect, he was pretty strict. But to me, strict is different than dominating or the fact that he didn’t give me any freedom to do anything.

Debbie Millman:

Your dad taught you something that has become instrumental to your success. He taught you how to bottle your emotions during a match and never give your opponents an indication of how you’re feeling. And I read that he taught you that any time you show emotion, you give your opponent an opening to play you as well as the game, to exploit your mood and coax you into poor strategic choices. And I was wondering, how did he teach you that?

Chris Evert:

I think he just watched me in practice one day and I like banged my racket or threw it or something, which I did often in practice. And finally he said to me, he goes, “Chrissy, you got to stay calm. You got to be cool out here.” He goes, “Because you don’t want to let your opponent see that you’re upset because they’ll have that aha moment. I’ve got her. And they’ll gain more confidence.” And I became known as the poker face after that, like little miss poker face because I would not let my opponent see if I was discouraged or not. If I was not was mad, if I was unhappy with the way I was playing, I just had that placid of look on my face. And I think that won me a lot of points, a lot of matches, and a lot of grand slam titles, just having that temperament. It really did work. Because whenever I played a girl and I saw that she was upset and banging rack and discouraged, I mean, I knew I had her. So that’s really sending a message across the net to the other player.

Debbie Millman:

How were you able to manage that? I just was watching the new series, a league of their own and that famous line, there’s no crying in baseball shows up again in this series, which made me really happy. I can’t control when I feel emotional. Just preparing for a show like today, I can’t imagine being on the world stage and having that kind of pressure and being able to control your emotions. And so few athletes actually can. Was there techniques that you used to be able to do that?

Chris Evert:

Well, you said something very important. You said you maybe have tears before the show or whatever. It’s just during that performance that I’m like placid and I try to turn the emotions off. Because I’m a firm believer, and I tell all my kids that I mentor in tennis, I tell them when you get too emotional, the mind turns off.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I can relate to that.

Chris Evert:

You’re feeling, feeling, feeling, but you’re really not thinking. And you have to think when you’re a tennis player. It came easy to me. And I say that not in a boastful way, but in a way that I wasn’t the naturally strong quick athlete of a Martina or a Navratilova, or a Steffi Graf, or a Serena Williams. So I had to compensate and find other ways, other edges. And I realized at a young age that my temperament by being calm and cool on the court, by being present in every single point, and trying to win every single point, and having just a good mental, being strong mentally, I felt that, that was the strength of my game. But trust me in my personal life, I’m a wreck.

Debbie Millman:

It makes me feel a little bit better.

Chris Evert:

And then you raise kids and you go, what the heck? What do I do now? My hands are up in the air all the time. So I think that was the only place that I could control myself and I could be in control. So I find that the players that have a lot of talent are the ones that somehow don’t always make the right decisions in their game because they have too many choices or maybe they’re a little too emotional. There are players that are very talented physically, very talented mentally, and very talented emotionally. But it’s great if you can have all three

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that because you were small and not the type of player who was going to pile up winners, your dad built your game around minimizing errors. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what that means?

Chris Evert:

Well, I couldn’t blow anybody off the court with my power because I was small. Even as a pro I went and that really annoyed me because I did everything Martina did. I went into the gym like she did and I trained like she did. And it’s funny, we used to train together and she did 35-pound weights and I did 15-pound weights. So that was the difference. But I did everything. The reps were the same. But you just have to really be aware of your strengths and your weaknesses and have that self-awareness of yourself. And I tried to be consistent and I tried to get every ball in the court and I tried to place it well.

            I tried to move my opponent from side to side. I tried to out steady them. I tried to drop shot. I used my drop shot, my lo, I had some variety in my game. And I just feel like nowadays with this power game, everybody talks about, oh, so and so hit 35 winners. Yeah, well they hit 45 errors. It kind of balances. You lose a point when you make an error and you win a point when you make a winner. So I was winning more points, forcing my opponent into making an error than I was make making winners.

Debbie Millman:

Is it true that your two-handed backhand was developed out of necessity more than desire?

Chris Evert:

Yes, because at five years old we didn’t have the children’s rackets back then. We used adult rackets so they were heavy. And I was fine with my forehand, but that backhand, when I had to come over here and use it the back of my right arm, very often the rack would fall out of my hand. So I just got frustrated one day and just gripped it with two hands and started hitting with two hands. And it was mainly for strength reasons. But at the same time across the world, Bjorn Borg was doing it. And in Belleville, Illinois, Jimmy Connors was doing it. And so it was like, I think the three of us, if anybody really started that trend

Debbie Millman:

So much has been written about the impact that your father has had on your life. But your mother was also very influential as well. What was the most powerful or enduring lesson that she taught you?

Chris Evert:

Yeah, it’s interesting you say that. Because I do a lot of interviews and mainly it’s about my career and I talk about my dad a lot. He was my inspiration when I played, he taught me how to play, he was my coach my whole life. And I think I did an interview two weeks ago and talked the whole time about my dad. And I looked at a picture of my mother on the wall and I just burst into tears.

Debbie Millman:

Oh.

Chris Evert:

I know. Because I don’t talk about her enough. And she was the glue to the family. She was someone who was the opposite of my dad. She was very sweet and very calm and thought it was very important that we were normal kids and that we did other things besides play tennis. But in those days in the ’50s and the ’60s, the wife had her place. And her place was to honor my dad and really sort do what… He was the boss of the family. But she went travel to Therma with me, thank heavens. And because she was so relaxed and she didn’t know a lot about tennis, it actually kept me relaxed. And we’d go to museums and we’d go sighting in Paris. I would never have done that with my dad. So my mom helped to keep me more well balanced and calmer, I think that my dad ever could have done. She never said a bad word about anybody. She was a saint in my eyes.

Debbie Millman:

Well clearly, you’re the product of good parenting.

Chris Evert:

I had good parents, but you can also have good parents and not turn out well.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, that’s true. Or you can also have terrible parents and turn out well.

Chris Evert:

Yeah, great. You just never know. But I was very lucky to have, especially nowadays when in tennis there have been parents that haven’t been so great with their kids. So I feel very fortunate.

Debbie Millman:

You started playing state tournaments when you were about 10 years old. And I read that one of the favorite family trips was piling into the family station wagon complete with a bed in the back to head to the USTA national open for girls under 12 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. How old were you when you won your first title?

Chris Evert:

I was 12. I was runner up in the 10 and unders, but I won the 12 and unders in Chattanooga Tennessee. And yeah, we’d pile everybody in the car and it was such a thrill to stay at the Holiday Inn.

Debbie Millman:

I read that you love the vibrating beds

Chris Evert:

Because the bed vibrated, it cost a quarter, but we would just jump into bed. And that was such an experience. And then it had a pool. So after our matches, we were allowed to go swimming. I mean, that was a thrill. That was a thrill for us

Debbie Millman:

Of all the Evert children, you became the biggest tennis star. What gave your dad and mom the sense that you had what it took?

Chris Evert:

We didn’t really talk about that. How come Chrissy became number one and nobody else did. I mean, we really didn’t talk about it much. And I have to say, when you brought up earlier about, Drew is my oldest brother and then John’s my other brother and Claire’s my youngest sister. And the three of them played number one for their college. And my dad never had to pay a cent. So I think he was probably as proud if not more proud of them. And then Jeanie and I, my late sister and I, turned professional. So I think I had more hunger. I think my other siblings were more normal and they wanted to go to football games and they wanted to go to college and it wasn’t life or death when they lost a match. And I think that for me, I don’t know. I just sensed at an early age that I started winning nationals and uh-oh, better watch out. I’m going to maybe turn pro one day. And then when I turned pro, I took off, I just took off. And it’s the first time you win a big title and you win those trophies it’s like, you’re on top of the world and I like that feeling.

Debbie Millman:

What advice would you have for parents that are nurturing their children’s athletic talent? When do you know if there really is an opportunity to be a star or when it’s just a dream?

Chris Evert:

I’ve had a tennis academy for 25 years now. And that question comes up a lot. As far as there are a lot of pushy parents. There are a lot of parents that want it more than the kids. I’m just like, whoa, be their mother. Be their father. Don’t be talking all the time about tennis. They’re putting enough pressure on themselves inwardly. Your role is to take the pressure off. Your role is to reconfirm I love you so much and I’m just so happy. I’m very proud to go out and watch you play. And win or lose as long as you try, we’re so proud of you. That kind of a message. But not all parents do that because they kind of want it for themselves or they want it too much for the kid. And then I say, leave it to the coach, leave the coaching to the coach. Certainly, you can be involved in this situation. We include you. Any of your thoughts, we include you, but talk to the coach and it’s a tough balance. It’s a tough balance, fine line, it really is.

Debbie Millman:

By the time you were in eighth grade, you became the number one nationally ranked player in the girls 14 and under division. And one year later in 1970, and I remember this, you defeated the number one ranked women’s professional player in the world, Margaret Court by a score of 7-6, 7-6, and Margaret had just recently won all four grand slam single titles in the same calendar year, a feat that had been accomplished only five times in the history of the sport. Yet you thought of your win as a fluke. How and why did you think that?

Chris Evert:

Did I?

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen it in a few different interviews that you thought, your win of her in that moment was just a fluke.

Chris Evert:

I mean, I beat her fair and square on. It was on clay, which was my favorite surface. My best and clay was her worst. I mean, I think she had a lot going against her. I think she had just won the grand slam. She was tired. She had committed to playing that tournament after the US open. So probably she was drained from the year. And what really impressed me was that night there was a cocktail party and she was gracious enough to go to the cocktail party. Where I’m telling you nowadays, if you lose a match, there aren’t any cocktail parties that you go to.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. But you were 15. I mean, what did you make of that? I mean, aside from it being a fluke, how did that feel? 15 years old.

Chris Evert:

It wasn’t a fluke. If I said that, I was probably just trying to be humble. But now looking back, it wasn’t a fluke because I continued to beat her.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Chris Evert:

I mean, I had many more wins over her and I remember beating Billy Jean King six, love six, one on clay. Now, if I had played her on a grass court or a hard court, it probably would’ve been a different result. But I think it was because it was the clay, that was what I was brought up on. The women in that day pretty much only served and volleyed and they didn’t have good ground strokes. And I was raised in the new generation to have good ground strokes. So I just outstudied her and won the match.

Debbie Millman:

One year later at 16, still in high school, you made your major tournament debut at the 1971 US open. You beat Eda Bunting, six, one, six, zero. Your next three matches went three sets with you coming back from behind each time to defeat Mary-Ann Eisel, Françoise Dürr, and Leslie Hunt, before eventual champion, Billy Jean King, who was 27 at the time stopped your streak. And in the process, Chrissy, you became the youngest semifinalist in US open history. All of that being said for the first two years on the tennis circuit, you said that none of the women on the tour would speak to you. Why?

Chris Evert:

Because I was getting all the press. I was on the cover of Newsweek. I was the it girl at that. Nobody had seen a young girl until then do so well, a young school girl, an all-American girl. And I was a promoter’s dream. I was a sponsor’s dream. And the reason why was because basically they, the other women professionals had done all the work. They had done all the work to provide a professional tour for women, for 200, 300 women. They had provided a way to support the sport, to support the women. They knocked on sponsors doors and got great sponsorship. I think Philip Morris was our first sponsor. So they did all the work and I kind of came slithered right in there and started beating them. And they then turned their attention to me. So I 100% understand why they felt the way that they did. There are some of them that were nice by the way.

Debbie Millman:

Well, ultimately it was Billy Jean King who helped change their attitudes.

Chris Evert:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

How did she do that?

Chris Evert:

I wasn’t there, but supposedly she had a meeting with them, with all, with Rosie Casals, and all the other women, professional players. And actually Rosie was very outspoken about not kind of liking me. And then she ended up being one of my better friends after that. So it’s funny, we all became friends after that. But I think she talked to them and said, “Listen, Chrissy is putting money in our pockets.” I remember that quote. She is bringing more people to the table. She’s bringing more people to the matches. She’s bringing more sponsorship, more money, more publicity, more TV. And this is very important for the growth of the game of women’s tennis. You should be lucky that she’s there. And I think that kind of changed their philosophy a little bit. So it was Billy Jean that, she was the one person that wasn’t threatened by me. It was nice of her.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Chris Evert:

Because she had vision. She always saw the long term. She always saw what could happen, which was great.

Debbie Millman:

Are you good friends to this day?

Chris Evert:

Great friends, yeah. Great friends with Billy Jean. Great friends with Martina. We all stuck together through thick and thin and we just have always supported each other. I think women should support each other.

Debbie Millman:

You turn professional at 18 in 1972 and began what can only be called an assault, an all-out assault on the record books. And I want to share a short list of your extraordinary accomplishments now. You became the first player, male or female to win 1000 singles. You won 18 grand slam singles titles, 157 single titles, and 32 double titles. In your 303 tournaments played, you reached 273 semifinals with a win loss record of 90.1%. You are ranked the best female tennis player in the world for 260 weeks. You were the year end world number one singles player in 1974, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, and 81. You won the US open six times, Wimbledon three time, the French opened seven times, the WTA tour championships four times and helped the US win the fed cup eight times. Just like bow down, Chrissy. I’m bowing down.

Chris Evert:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

Congratulations.

Chris Evert:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve changed the world of women’s sports in such a profound way. And I actually have to say I’m six years old, I watched all of it. You were such a hero to so many young women then and now. Do you have a sense of what that means or do you just feel like it was a fluke?

Chris Evert:

When I look back, sometimes I don’t recognize that person, that person was a-

Debbie Millman:

Why?

Chris Evert:

She was so, or I was so disciplined and so dedicated and committed to one thing, and that was to win. When people ask me, what do you think you’ve done for the game of tennis? And I’d always say, oh my gosh, I go, I had two huge trailblazers in my era, Billy Jean King and Martina Navratilova. And Billy Jean just opened the doors to equality and equal pay. And she just was such a visionary and such a great leader to all of us. And Martina coming out as gay. And she had her own leadership and she had her own path that she followed in a very, very authentic way. And I kind of was a girl next door. I mean, I was like, okay, that’s kind of like white bread. I kind of got lost in that shuffle a little bit.

            But when I look back, I realized that what I helped to do was to encourage young girls to become tennis players. To say, “Hey, it’s okay to be athletic. It’s okay to have muscles. It’s okay to be tough.” You can still be feminine. You can still have your friends. You can still wear your jewelry, which we’ll get into later. You can still be yourself. Because when I first came on the scene, having muscles and being tough was not attractive.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Chris Evert:

It was taboo. I mean, when you look at it, it was taboo. So I think that I helped to bring some more tennis players to the table. And also, I think what I did was I think I made people realize that, or young girls realize, hey, you don’t have to be the biggest, the strongest. You don’t have to hit the hardest. You don’t have to be the most powerful. You don’t have to move the quickest. That if you work hard and you put your mind to something, you can still excel. Look at me, I’m five foot six and I couldn’t blow anybody off the court. So just giving inspiration to young girls, I think. Even more than the records, I think means more to me.

Debbie Millman:

Your domination of the game and your sort of steely demeanor on the court earned you several nicknames, including things like the ice princess. What did you make of that?

Chris Evert:

Those nicknames were formed the first year I went over to Wimbledon the British press.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, they thought a school girl should be giggly. And so they dubbed you the ice maiden.

Chris Evert:

Exactly.

Debbie Millman:

Ice maiden.

Chris Evert:

I was called little miss metronome because all I did was just hit every ball back. I was called little miss money bags when I was speaking out for equal pay after Billy Jean kind of tutored me on that. But little miss icicle because their interpretation was that I was cold on the court. But I was just mentally tough and I was keeping everything inside. And as I said to you, before I realized at a young age that the more emotion you feel, it shuts you down. It shuts your mind down, it shuts your body down and you cannot play, relax, great tennis.

Debbie Millman:

Do you think that those types of nicknames might happen now? How do you think the press impacts the way tennis players play now?

Chris Evert:

Oh, no. It would be very inappropriate. That’s the word now. Inappropriate. I mean, I know that as a commentator, I have to watch everything I say about a player. If I say someone’s very athletic, that can also mean that they’re not mentally tough. Trust me, I’ve been told these things. So it’s like in this day and age, I have to watch everything you say. In that day, you could say anything you wanted to. You could say somebody was a clown and you wouldn’t get in trouble. You could say the bad boys of tennis and-

Debbie Millman:

Elenas Dassi was nasty dasasi. Yeah.

Chris Evert:

Nasty. Right. He was nasty. Jimmy was the bad boy. And John Macro is the bad boy. And now it’s like, Kyrgios is sort of the bad boy, but they’re very cautious with how they explain it. It’s just so different now, which I don’t know good or bad, I don’t know which one. I don’t know which is better. I don’t know. I think we’re gone over a little bit too far with the… As a commentator, I would like to say, if somebody’s not playing well, somebody’s playing poorly even, if they’re really playing bad instead of saying, oh, I guess it’s not her day. Somebody’s playing poorly right now. She’s a much better tennis player, but you’d get blasted if you said that.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. How did you feel when you weren’t playing? Well, how did you sort pick yourself up after losing a match?

Chris Evert:

I played a match once when I was 16 against Nancy Richie and I was down six, one, five, love, 40, love. And I won the match. Think about that, six, one, five, love, 40, love and I won the match. And I think if a player comes from behind in a match, they remember that. And that’s the beauty of tennis unlike any other sport. I mean, you look at skiing or you look at all these Olympic sports, you make one little mistake, you’re out. You can be down six, love and still win a match. You can always come back. You can always change the momentum of a match. And if you truly believe that, you lose six, love, you sit down on the side of the court and you think, okay, what can I do different? You’ve got to go to plan B. You have a plan B, you still might win the match.

            The only time I was negative on the court is when Martina Navratilova, she beat me 13 times in a row. And she was so dominant she just blew me off the court for two and a half years. And I’d walk on the court and I’d go, I just, like I knew I was going to lose and it’s not the right way. I wish I hadn’t felt that way, but she owned me during those two and a half years. I don’t know how. But that 14th match, I beat her. And then after I beat her, I beat her again and again and again. So I finally realized I just was so stubborn, I didn’t want to change my game, but I changed my game and I beat her.

Debbie Millman:

Your rivalry would come to define women’s tennis for years over the course of 16 years, you played each other 80 times, 60 of them in finals. And Billy Jean King said that your rivalry is not only one of the most important rivalries in tennis, it is one of the most important rivalries in all sports. The two of them took the baton from our generation and moved the sport forward. They took tennis, not just women’s tennis, to a new level. Did playing Martina change your game? I mean, what was it that turned that 13th loss into a 14th victory?

Chris Evert:

Yeah, we made each other better. Because before I had her number the first few years, and she gets mad at me when I say this, but when I first saw her, she was a little chubby and she had a little bit of a temper. She would cry on the court and she didn’t move that well. And I had her number and I would beat her. And then all of a sudden, she got together with Nancy Lieberman, who later became her partner. Nancy, as you know, was a great basketball player. And Nancy watched a match where I beat her six love, six love, I think on clay. And Nancy jerked her off the cord and said, that was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m going to get you into shape.

            So the next year Martin got into great shape. And then that started her two and a half years of dominance. So we both had our periods where I dominated, she dominated. And at the end, the last third of our rivalry, I think we were pretty even, I beat her at the French open twice. She beat me at the US open. And as it ended up, we both ended up winning 18 grand slam titles, which we look at each other we go, yeah, that was only appropriate that we ended up with the same amount of grand slam titles.

Debbie Millman:

I read at sort of towards the end of your playing each other, you sort of felt bad when you beat her. Is that true?

Chris Evert:

Yeah, we did. Because at the end of the day on Sunday when the finals were being played, we were the last two in the locker room. And it was always a little tense and we’re getting ready for the match and we’re getting stretched out and we’re talking to our coaches. But one of us would win, one of us would lose, we’d go back in the locker room. And one of us would be comforting the other one. One of us would be probably crying and the other one would come over and put their arm around. How can you not get close when you are in that situation for years. And same with Billy Jean, there’s a really deep connection between the three of us.

Debbie Millman:

Do you think that the younger tennis players have that kind of intimacy?

Chris Evert:

I don’t know. I think that we had that kind of intimacy because our generation built a tour and we worked hard to build that tour. We did a lot of press. We talked to a lot of sponsors. We promoted women’s tennis. This generation is different because in a sense they’re reaping the benefits of it, but in their own way, because of social media, they have a lot of other pressures that we didn’t have. And there’s more money now in today’s game, everybody has their own teams. You got the coach, you got the hitting partner, you’ve got the physio, you got the mental coach. Now there’s so much money that they can pay for teams that can work on their bodies and work on their minds. And it may extend their career for another 10 years. Serena’s playing at 40 years old right now, there are a lot of players that are playing in their late ’30s. In our day, usually early ’30s was the retirement age. And they’re under the microscope even more so just with the social media. The price of privacy is, you kind of wonder if it’s worth it.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I mean, the scrutiny is, I mean, I can’t even imagine the pressure and how to contain that. Chrissy, you retired from professional tennis in 1989 and at the time of your retirement, I found this quote, John McEnroe stated, “She was an assassin that dressed nice and said the right things. And meanwhile, just cut you to shreds on the court.”

Chris Evert:

I saw another quote where he said, “Cut you open, take your heart out and then put it back in and sew it up.”

Debbie Millman:

Another one, yeah.

Chris Evert:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Well, good old John.

Chris Evert:

No, he had it right.

Debbie Millman:

He was your father’s favorite player, right?

Chris Evert:

He was. He and I didn’t really get along when we were playing on the tour because he thought because I said the right things that I was fake, I thought that he had a bad temper. So we didn’t get along that well. But then we started working with each other for first NBC now, ESPN, and now we’re close. Now we kind of laugh, he’s meld a lot. And I have stronger opinions, so he likes that too.

Debbie Millman:

Since retiring, you founded the Evert tennis academy with several family members, including your brother, John, and your dad. And the academy trains both talented high school students and full-time professional level players. What kind of teacher are you now?

Chris Evert:

I’m more of an encouraging. I try to be so encouraging. Because I just know the frustrations that these kids go through. I think I’m more suggestions, like I make suggestions to them instead of talking down on them and saying, this is what you should have done this, you should have done this. And I ask them, I said, do you think that was the right choice? So I like the mentor part of it more than I like to give instruction. I like the mentoring, I like the mental aspect of it. I talk to them about pressure. I mean, that’s one area that I can really give good input about what pressure does to your body and how you have to be aware of what it does and sort of compromise with it. You have to go with it. You just can’t not have pressure.

            You just kind of have to go with it. Don’t go for the lines and don’t go for the big first serves if you’re feeling shaky. Just kind get your groove back and sort of get some more rhythm in your game and maybe play a little more conservative if you’re shaky. And then when you feel confident, then pull the trigger and go for your shot. So I kind of have a more of the mental aspect of the game. Because when it comes to the grips and open stance, that’s another generation. Even though I know how to teach it, I let our coaches at the academy deal with that.

Debbie Millman:

I want to talk with you about something new you were part of that was inspired by an on the court experience in 1978. During the 1978 US open, you were wearing a diamond bracelet which fell off while you were playing. And at the time I believe that play was temporarily halted. And when asked about it, in the post-match interview, you stated, oh, that was my tennis bracelet. And since then, diamond bracelets have been called tennis bracelets. After all these years, you have partnered with jewelry designer, Monica Rich Kossan to bring the first authentic and original tennis bracelet rooted in its founding story to find jewelry for the first time. How did this partnership come to be?

Chris Evert:

I actually reached out to Monica because I’ve always been a fan of her jewelry and I like the message behind it, a lot of it’s empowerment. And so I reached out to her and I said, there is one time, I think 40 years ago where I put my name on a diamond bracelet for a year, but had no collaboration, had no creativity. It was like an endorsement that all athletes did. They slapped their name on something. They got their pay, but they had nothing to do with it, I said. And I just been thinking a lot about it now where I feel like there was a collaboration that we could join together and create an authentic tennis bracelet and reveal the real story. And she said, “Okay.” She goes, “So what do you remember that day?”

            And I said, “I remember playing on center court. It was a green court, the white lines. I remember sweat on the court. I remember my diamonds sparkling.” And she said, “Interesting.” And she mocked up a bracelet that I was knocked my socks off. Because each of the bracelets had a little pear shape drop or a white sapphire, which signified sweat. Then three of the bracelets have a little emerald in the middle of the diamonds that signify the green court at the end there’s a little CE. But it was important for me. And I don’t apologize for this. Some people might say, oh, please, but it was important for me to be feminine when I was playing.

            Because I was playing a very rugged sport where you were sweating, you were falling, you had to develop muscles to be strong, to hit the ball. But I also liked wearing my hair in a braid or wearing ruffle bloomers or having a diamond bracelet. The press were all, what happened, what was going on out there that play was suspended? And I said that it’s just my tennis bracelet broke. And I’ve never had my story out there. And I’ve never had my voice out there to explain exactly what happened. So I think I’m excited about it. I’ve seen the pieces, 13 pieces so far, and it is genuine to me. It’s not slapping my name on an endorsement. It happened to me.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, they’re beautiful, beautiful bracelets.

Chris Evert:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

I covet them.

Chris Evert:

Yes, they are.

Debbie Millman:

Did you have a lot of back and forth with Monica? What was the creative process like? Did she show you sketches?

Chris Evert:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

Talk about how that worked.

Chris Evert:

Yeah, we did. We did it together. I mean, look, I’m not in the jewelry business, but I know what I like. I know what I like. And the first one, was just an all diamond with the little drop with the sweat and the green emerald. And it was pretty. And then she said, “Well, what kind of shapes do you like?” And I go, “I’d like to see a brace that with not just all diamonds and not just a $30,000 bracelet, because I don’t think the younger generation can afford that. Let’s make dainty. Let’s make them not fragile, but dainty so they can stack them.” Because that seems to be what everybody’s doing now with the necklaces, the rings, the bracelets they’ll be less expensive. I would like to have one bracelet that the diamonds are all different shapes, not just round. And space them out, they don’t have to be all together because that’s going to be more expensive. Although there is one that’s all together that’s gorgeous, but we tried to make the pricing for everybody as well.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, they’re absolutely beautiful. And they’re really unique. I’ve never seen the way that you’ve designed these stones in these different shapes makes it super creative and much more innovative sort of as a statement piece. It’s not just the sort of standard “tennis bracelet”, they’re really beautiful pieces that feel like they have stories in them.

Chris Evert:

And like you said, the standard tennis bracelet was all diamonds.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

Chris Evert:

And you can get $100,000 bracelet that you get 30,000. But it’s like, for people like us, because, look, I was born in a very middle-class family. I could never have afforded something like that. But let’s spread the diamonds a little bit and let’s still have it a beautiful bracelet. And then, okay, a year down the road, you get a raise. You want to stack it with another one. And it’s just a nice look. We want to cater to the younger generation as well.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. I think you’ve done that for sure. Chrissy, the last thing I want to talk to you about is your health. You were recently diagnosed with stage one ovarian cancer and went through or going through a course of chemotherapy. How are you doing?

Chris Evert:

I’m doing really well. I actually did my six courses of chemo. They got it early because my sister thank heavens, and in a nutshell, I’ll just tell you the story. My sister, Jeanie, passed away three years ago of ovarian cancer because they got it too late in her and has spread to every part. Ovarian cancer is insidious and it’s hideous. And there are no signs that you have it. And she just started to get tired at the end and said, I better go check this. And sure enough, she was stage four ovarian cancer. So what happened was she agreed that they saved her blood and they put it in a file away. And that’s what genetic testing basically is because they saved her blood. And when another variant came on the scene, they tested her blood with that variant. And that variant showed that she was BRCA positive. I was tested. I was BRCA positive, but it was early stages. So what my doctor said, within a month, I had a hysterectomy for preventive.

Debbie Millman:

So you didn’t know anything about having any cancer at that point?

Chris Evert:

No, I had all my tests. I had blood tests for ovarian cancer, it was negative. I passed every test with the flying colors. So they went in, it was everything out. And then three days later I get a call from my doctor and he said, I’m shocked. I had no idea. He goes, you have cancer in your fallopian tubes and your ovaries.

Debbie Millman:

Oh my God.

Chris Evert:

And in the wash. The wash, which was fluid. We’ve gotten it all out, but we have to go in and just test the lymph nodes. We have to get 15 lymph nodes out and then look around the other areas. So I was like, “Okay, so what you’re saying is it’s either going to be stage one or stage three or four.” And he said, “Yeah.”

Debbie Millman:

How do you handle news like that?

Chris Evert:

I don’t know how I handled that. I don’t know if I was in a fog or what. But I don’t remember specifically how I felt about that. But I remember thinking I could be like my sister. So three or four days later, I get the call and he said clear, clear as can be. But I still had to have six courses of chemotherapy for prevention. And now I have a 90 to 95% chance that it won’t come back.

Debbie Millman:

That seems to be your number, Chrissy, 90% of your matches won 90% chance.

Chris Evert:

Yeah, right.

Debbie Millman:

Do you have any advice for folks who have questions about the BRCA gene testing or what they need to consider for their own health if there’s ovarian cancer in their histories, in their family’s histories?

Chris Evert:

Absolutely. If anybody has ovarian cancer in their family, they have to go get the BRCA test that. It’s just a blood test. Everybody has a BRCA gene, by the way. It’s not just, oh, you have the BRCA. It’s either negative or it’s positive. If you are positive for BRCA, your kids have a 50% chance of being positive for BRCA.

Debbie Millman:

Wow.

Chris Evert:

So if there’s anybody in your family, from your aunts, to your grandmother, to your mother, whatever, you should get tested for ovarian cancer. One thing being that ovarian cancer is you don’t have any signs. Breast cancer, you get a mammogram, then you get an ultrasound and you can detect easier. So you just need to be very on top of your family history, medically 100%.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that your sister’s death saved your life.

Chris Evert:

My sisters’ ovarian cancer and by her death and the fact that they kept her blood filed, saved my life. And I should never complain about anything for the rest of my life after that.

Debbie Millman:

Chrissy, you’ve said that playing a tennis match is very like life. If you’re down in a tennis match, you can still change the course of the game. Tennis teaches you a lot about hanging in there and not giving up. And it teaches you a lot about belief in yourself. And I just want to thank you for showing the world just how true that is in the way that you’ve lived your life. And I want to thank you for changing the way tennis is viewed in our culture and showing the world why tennis matters. Thank you so much for joining me on design matters today.

Chris Evert:

Thank you. I enjoyed our talk very much.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you.

Chris Evert:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

You can see the new line of beautiful jewelry Chris Evert has created with Monica Rich Kossan at monicarichkossan.com and see everything that Chris is doing at chrisevert.net. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting design matters. And I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we could make a difference or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Best of Design Matters: Chris Evert appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman (00:00:00):

Chip Kidd has been on the podcast before. Four times, actually. I went back to the archives and counted. He’s been on to talk about a novel he wrote. He’s been on to talk about the fabulous book covers he’s been designing at Knopf for decades. He’s been on with Chris Ware to talk about graphic novels.

Debbie Millman (00:00:19):

More recently, he’s been on to talk about his book, Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design. That book is now out in paperback, and there’s so much more to talk about like his Batman exhibits, and his cameo in the last Star Wars movie, just to mention, two of his latest projects. Chip Kidd, welcome back to Design Matters.

Chip Kidd (00:00:44):

Thank you so much. I can’t believe you wanted me back again, but I-

Debbie Millman (00:00:48):

Of course.

Chip Kidd (00:00:50):

I’m so grateful, and I just want to say thank you for creating Design Matters. What an incredible, incredible achievement. It’s just-

Debbie Millman (00:01:01):

Thank you.

Chip Kidd (00:01:01):

Yeah. Thank you. And I’m proud to call you my friend.

Debbie Millman (00:01:03):

Oh, Chip, you know that I call you my brother.

Chip Kidd (00:01:07):

Well, all right. Then, that-

Debbie Millman (00:01:10):

You’re my family.

Chip Kidd (00:01:10):

I’m proud to call you my sister then.

Debbie Millman (00:01:12):

Absolutely. Absolutely. And hi there, Mrs. Kidd.

Chip Kidd (00:01:15):

Hi, mom.

Debbie Millman (00:01:16):

Chip, I want to start by asking you about something that I seem to have missed in our four previous interviews, which I’ve subsequently regretted, and wanted to ask you about now. You designed the original Jurassic Park book cover in 1990, which subsequently was used in the 1993 movie directed by Steven Spielberg.

Debbie Millman (00:01:40):

And since then, that same logo has been part of the five additional movies. The most recent being the blockbuster summer hit Jurassic World Dominion. It’s also on thousands, if not millions of merchandising and promotional items. Is it true that the original Jurassic Park book logo was really dark green?

Chip Kidd (00:02:07):

Oh, yeah. First of all, just to clarify, the original book jacket is just the typography and then the drawing of the dinosaur. And the drawing of the dinosaur, which I did both, but the drawing of the dinosaur is what they used for the logo. So, the lettering is by somebody else and all of that.

Debbie Millman (00:02:25):

Okay. Yes. We must be accurate about every bit of the credit.

Chip Kidd (00:02:28):

Yeah, I think so.

Debbie Millman (00:02:29):

Absolutely.

Chip Kidd (00:02:31):

But yes, I don’t know what I was thinking with a couple things with that cover. The drop shadow on his name, why is it there?

Debbie Millman (00:02:42):

Design regrets.

Chip Kidd (00:02:43):

Maybe somebody had said his name needs to pop more or something. But yeah, from a distance, the dinosaur looks like it’s black. But then when you get up real close to a first edition in the unforgiving light of day, you can see that it’s a dark green. And I think what I was thinking was something about primordial ooze. Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:03:09):

What is the strangest thing you’ve seen the logo on?

Chip Kidd (00:03:13):

A human body.

Debbie Millman (00:03:15):

Really?

Chip Kidd (00:03:15):

Oh sure. Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:03:16):

So, people have tattooed.

Chip Kidd (00:03:17):

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:03:18):

I thought you were going to say something about the toaster. I know there’s a Jurassic Park toaster.

Chip Kidd (00:03:23):

Well, which you were so sweet to give me. They made a toaster that upon putting the piece of bread in and pushing the button, when it pops up, the logo is on it. And I will admit, I have it in the box, but I haven’t opened the box.

Debbie Millman (00:03:39):

It’s probably worth more not opening it.

Chip Kidd (00:03:46):

The kind of guy I am, but yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:03:46):

All of the history of the logo and the identity is now shared in another new book that’s come out about Jurassic Park that actually has been published by Topps, the card company.

Chip Kidd (00:04:01):

It’s actually been published by Abrams.

Debbie Millman (00:04:04):

Okay.

Chip Kidd (00:04:04):

But Abrams publishes these… and they’re beautifully done, these collections of Topps collector cards. So, they’ve done Star Wars, and Wacky Packages and Mars Invades. So, then, they were going to do Jurassic Park, and the editor of this series is my dear friend, Charlie Kochman at Abrams. And he suggested, I guess, to Topps and including Universal, that I write an afterward.

Chip Kidd (00:04:32):

And so, I did, and they had to vet everything. And I basically just explain again how this happened with photographic evidence, and they published it. So, for me, it’s a very meaningful hallmark for me because it’s the first time that Universal Pictures is acknowledging that I did this because I’m never in the movie credits and-

Debbie Millman (00:05:02):

Haven’t received a penny of the proceeds.

Chip Kidd (00:05:02):

That is certainly true. So, there it is. It’s in print with the stamp of approval by Universal Pictures. I’m glad that it’s at least acknowledged that way. I did two Ted talks and the first Ted talk was basically like, this is who I am and this is what I do. And I very much wanted to make creating Jurassic Park a big part of that because I want this… I was going to say I want to own it. I want to own the fact that I did it.

Debbie Millman (00:05:38):

Absolutely, as you should. It’s one of the most recognizable logos of the 20th century. And now, it’s continuing into the 21st. It’s so interesting that they rebooted the movie. They rebooted it with all new actors, only in this third movie are Laura Dern and some of the rest of the cast back. But the logo has been there-

Chip Kidd (00:05:59):

But the logo is the same.

Debbie Millman (00:06:00):

… for all six movies. That’s incredible.

Chip Kidd (00:06:02):

It is. It’s amazing.

Debbie Millman (00:06:03):

Even the Star Wars logo has changed a bit over the years. But the Jurassic Park logo hasn’t.

Chip Kidd (00:06:08):

No.

Debbie Millman (00:06:09):

And the new book is really beautiful. One thing I found in my research that I didn’t see in any of the previous times that I’ve interviewed you is a fax that Michael Creighton actually sent to Sonny Mehta, which it has the normal heading of a fax, the to, from, the date, et cetera. And then, in giant typewritten letters, it says, “Wow, fantastic jacket.” And I thought that was pretty cool too.

Chip Kidd (00:06:38):

Yeah. Boy, those were the days, faxes.

Debbie Millman (00:06:40):

Faxes. Chip, you were born in Shillington, Berks County in Pennsylvania. And I know as a child, you were enthralled by pop culture. And I love to remind you that in the prologue to your first monograph, you stated, “I did not grow up yearning to become a book designer. What I wanted to be was Chris Partridge on The Partridge Family.”

Chip Kidd (00:07:05):

Absolutely.

Debbie Millman (00:07:06):

I still don’t understand why you were so fascinated with Chris, especially since two actors played the same character.

Chip Kidd (00:07:13):

I know. And that was fascinating too.

Debbie Millman (00:07:14):

What was it about Chris that enthralled you so?

Chip Kidd (00:07:17):

I wanted to be a drummer, and that I did sort of become. But the idea that he’s eight years old or whatever it is, and he’s the drummer of this band. I was just obsessed with that show.

Debbie Millman (00:07:32):

I was, too.

Chip Kidd (00:07:33):

And the music was so good. In that sense, it was sort of like The Monkees. It would be so easy to write it off, but the music was terrific.

Debbie Millman (00:07:42):

Yeah. I think the music actually holds up. I think Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque is one of their great unsung hits that deserves a lot more recognition. I loved that show. There was something about the dynamic of this family without a dad, with-

Chip Kidd (00:08:02):

Which they never talk about.

Debbie Millman (00:08:04):

Never, never. With these little kids being part of a big band. I had a massive crush on Susan Dey, but I also had a bit of a crush on Danny Bonaduce as well. I love them all. Bobby Sherman, still to this day. I love Bobby Sherman.

Chip Kidd (00:08:21):

Right. Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:08:23):

Your mom was very supportive of your interests. And I think in many ways was the catalyst to a lot of what you ended up loving. I know she made you Batman costumes every year for Halloween. And talk about how she influenced your thinking about cartoons, and comics, and characters.

Chip Kidd (00:08:48):

Well, it was my mom and my dad. Actually, when it came to the cartoon characters, it was much more dad than mom. Because he wasn’t trying to taunt my brother and I, but he would tell us that he had Superman #1. He had the Superman #1 comic and the Batman #1 comic.

Chip Kidd (00:09:07):

And he had all this stuff when he was a kid, but then it all got tossed into the paper drive for World War II. But he was a terrific cartoonist who pursued chemical engineering instead. But I remember going up into the attic in the house that I grew up in, and just poking around, and I would find his old chemistry textbooks, and he would have cartoons in the margins.

Chip Kidd (00:09:34):

And I was just fascinated by that. I think the difference between my parents and me is that I felt I could pursue an actual career doing something creative. Whereas, I think for them, they were much more pragmatic. Like I said, my dad was a chemical engineer. My mom was what used to be called a personnel manager, which we now called human resources.

Chip Kidd (00:10:02):

And they both did creative things on the side for fun. And I wanted to do a creative thing as my main job, hopefully, for fun that hopefully, to get a salary. My mom, her brilliant creative thing was she was a seamstress. When we were really little, she would make our clothes, my brother and I, brother Walt. And she would make our clothes, and there would be these little junior league fashion shows.

Chip Kidd (00:10:29):

And we’re like three and five years old, tramping down the runway in these little onesies that she made, and it’s so funny. But yeah, then when we went to elementary school for Halloween every year, my brother and I would think up what we wanted to be. And for about, I’d say five to eight years, they would figure out what we wanted to be.

Chip Kidd (00:10:54):

It was Batman and Robin right away. Then, for me, Captain America, Zorro, Captain Marvel, the DC Captain Marvel, my brother wanted to be Hawkman one year. There were these dolls, the silver knight and the gold knight. They were like GI Joes, but they were knights, and had all this armor, and he wanted to be, I think, the gold knight. So, they were very nurturing, and loving, and sweet in this regard. Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:11:26):

You recently gave one of the costumes to Anderson Cooper, talk about why, and the worldwide sensation that that costume has become.

Chip Kidd (00:11:41):

Well, I thank you. You’re exaggerating a little bit.

Debbie Millman (00:11:46):

Not really.

Chip Kidd (00:11:47):

I had designed book jackets for Anderson’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt for what seemed like forever, since 1991. And that came about because she was published by Knopf. And somehow, her jackets started getting assigned to me, and that’s how I got to meet her. And she was just amazing, and fascinating, and sweet, but this window into this whole other world.

Chip Kidd (00:12:19):

One of the book covers that I designed for her was called A Mother’s Story, which was her memoir of her older son with Wyatt Cooper taking his own life. I was just tremendously affected by that. And so, through the years, she would make a book, and I would do the cover. And then, Anderson was publishing his first memoir, which was just after Katrina.

Chip Kidd (00:12:45):

And he wasn’t out yet. And it was published by HarperCollins. So, for me, that was a freelance job, and that’s how I met him. And he was just amazing. I went to his office at CNN, and I’ll never forget he had a mouse pad that was the Wonder Twins from Super Friends, Zan and Jayna, shape of this and form of that. And I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s the Wonder Twins.”

Chip Kidd (00:13:13):

He’s like, “You know what the wonder twins are?” I said, “Yes, I love the Wonder Twins.” So, I did the cover of that book. And then, in the middle of the pandemic, I got an email from him. I think it was like June 2020, that he was going to be working on a history of his family, The Vanderbilts. And it was going to be the Schwartz and all thing.

Chip Kidd (00:13:45):

And he was inspired to do it because he had conceived a child through a surrogate, Wyatt. So, long story short, I did the cover. He really liked it. He sent me this text video of him with the book. I hadn’t seen it. And he wanted me to do the end papers too. And I made it coordinate with the jacket and all this stuff.

Chip Kidd (00:14:08):

And he was all excited, and I wrote to him and I said, “Could I come by your house, and meet Wyatt, and get you to sign a book for me?” And he said, “Sure.” And then, I started thinking, I have a couple of bits of these costumes that survived over the years, amazingly, that my mom made.

Chip Kidd (00:14:31):

I have the Batman cape, and I have the Robin tunic, but I had this other blue cape that was… I’m pretty sure it was used for my brother’s gold knight costume. But it looks like a Batman cape. And I thought I’m going to take this and give it to him then. And then, I had this vintage Batman, Japanese, 1966, like a Halloween mask, but it’s for a little kid. It’s small. And I thought I’m going to bring that too.

Chip Kidd (00:15:00):

And so, I did, and it was just the most lovely experience, but hilariously, I thought… and he starts filming, and there’s the nanny there. It’s like, that’s it. It’s like us three or four. I’m wanting to take pictures, but I’m thinking this is a private thing. But he starts taking pictures, and he starts taking little movies and stuff. And I said-

Debbie Millman (00:15:27):

And so, the baby is in the actual costume and he’s-

Chip Kidd (00:15:32):

Yes, he’s in the mask and the cape. There’s something about capes. And by, I guess last fall, he would’ve been 18 months. So, you’d put the cape on him, and then he’s just running around. There’s just something magical about that that I think literally empowers a child. For whatever reason, I don’t know. But he starts filming that. And then, I’d like, “Can I?” He’s like, “Sure.”

Chip Kidd (00:15:55):

So, I start filming and taking pictures. And then, he signed a book for me, and he signed a book for my mom, and we just had a lovely, I don’t know, it was like an hour, hour and a half. And I just thought that was just a lovely private thing. And I’m going to have to figure out a way to tell my mom, but I’m just going to wait because I knew, and Debbie, you know my mom.

Chip Kidd (00:16:23):

As soon as I tell her, she’s going to want to get on a bus, and come up to New York, and see little white… and I should say in the past, I was supposed to have lunch with Gloria. I believe it was the fall of 2016. And Gloria had suffered a fall, and she couldn’t do it. And so, she wrote to me, “I’m so sorry.”

Chip Kidd (00:16:46):

And Anderson wrote to me and said, “Look, I’m really sorry that she can’t do it, but is there anything that I could do?” And my mom and my aunt Syl were coming to New York. So, we were his guest at CNN for two hours. He’s just the best. He is exactly what you see on TV. He’s just a great, great guy.

Chip Kidd (00:17:10):

But anyway, so I just thought, I’m going to tell my mom, but I was just putting it off because I’m sure she was going to call the local paper and have them put it on page one. And so, the following week, my mom goes to this meeting of… she’s on one of these committees for the local symphony, for the Redding symphony, it’s the lady’s committee or whatever they call it.

Chip Kidd (00:17:34):

And one of these women said, “Well, that’s really something about Anderson giving the cape that you made for Chip to his little boy.” And my mom is like, “What are you talking about?” The previous day, he had gone on CBS Sunday Morning. I think it was Gayle King said, “What are you going to do? Are you going to take him out for Halloween?”

Chip Kidd (00:17:59):

And he said, “I’m not sure, but if we do, I have the perfect costume.” And he told the whole story. And so, that cat was out of the bag. And then, he told it again on Drew Barry Moore. And he told it again on Stephen Colbert. And I just-

Debbie Millman (00:18:15):

Your mom is now getting orders for little Batman costumes.

Chip Kidd (00:18:18):

No, I got the biggest kick out of it. But I should add, that evening after I had given him that stuff, he texted me and he’s like, “Are you sure you want to give this away? Because if you want it back, I will totally understand.” And I said, “This means so much to me that you have this and that he has it.” And I said, “Oh, and by the way,” and I sent him a couple other pictures of the stuff that I still do have.

Debbie Millman (00:18:45):

Well, it’s giving whole new life to these wonderful things that were handmade with lots and lots of love.

Chip Kidd (00:18:51):

Yeah, exactly.

Debbie Millman (00:18:53):

Talk about your love of Batman. You’ve been called a bat maniac, which I’d never heard. I’d never heard that term until I did the research for this show. What fuels it? What fuels that passion?

Chip Kidd (00:19:06):

I feel at this point, it’s such a universal thing. But I think the gateway drug was the Adam West 1966 TV show. And the fact that I have a brother who was two years older, I think I was two when the show came out. So, he would’ve been four. We were the perfect audience for it at the perfect time.

Chip Kidd (00:19:29):

And it was just so mesmerizing as a kid, and exciting, and like this crazy other world where they… I think it’s the escapist aspect of it. And part of that is that he’s a billionaire. You start to fantasize, like it would cost money to be Batman to do it properly with the car and all of that. And then, as I was growing up, there were all these other… the show came and went. That was pretty quick.

Chip Kidd (00:20:03):

But then, the comic books really picked up on the much darker origins of the strip. And DC Comics was very good about constantly reprinting the original stories. So, that was a revelation to me, that it was dark, and scary, and the Joker was really scary, and killing people in mysterious ways, and announcing it on the radio, and just fascinating. And I don’t know, I just never got over it.

Debbie Millman (00:20:36):

Which is your favorite Batman portrayal? Aside from Adam West.

Chip Kidd (00:20:40):

Right. The cop out answer is the voice actor, Kevin Conroy, on the animated series. I think he’s near perfect. I think in terms of the movie portrayals, it’s just so hard to say, because at this point, there’re so many. I was very impressed with Robert Pattinson, I would say, yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:21:03):

Yeah. My nephew too. He’s-

Chip Kidd (00:21:04):

I was impressed with him, and I thought the costume was great. Yeah. And this is a whole other geeky discussion. I think Christian Bale was the best Bruce Wayne. Again, I love the millionaire playboy carefree aspect of that. So, that’s his disguise that you would never guess that he was this other thing. And they did away with that in the most recent movie. And I wasn’t so crazy about that.

Debbie Millman (00:21:31):

You recently curated an art show at Artspace in Louisiana titled Batman: Black and White. And it features an extraordinary selection of over 150 original Batman drawings that you commissioned from artists, including Alex Ross, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Ross Chest, even Gloria Vanderbilt.

Debbie Millman (00:21:53):

And the project really began back in 2012. When DC comics invited you to write a story for their Batman: Black and White anthology comics title, which was based on their hugely popular 1996 publication, how did it grow into an exhibit of this significance?

Chip Kidd (00:22:14):

It was a total accident, and I don’t know how easy this… or effectively I can explain this on a podcast. But basically, when issue number one that had my story in it came out, by then, I think it was October 13. It was New York Comic-Con, and they issued it with different covers. And one of the covers is what’s called a blank variant.

Chip Kidd (00:22:40):

So, it’s this uncoded card stock cover that is just blank white, except it has the logo of the comic on it. And the idea was, is they do it to this day, you get that version, and you go to a convention, or you go to a show, or you go to whatever where there’s artists, and wait in line, and get Neal Adams to draw on it, or get your favorite artist to draw on it.

Chip Kidd (00:23:09):

And so, as is my temperament, I became completely obsessed. I started buying these things up on eBay, just thinking of like, “Who?” And it was a really interesting exercise. And first of all, there had been people who I wanted to draw a Batman for me for a long, long time who don’t normally draw a Batman.

Debbie Millman (00:23:31):

Like who?

Chip Kidd (00:23:32):

Well, Art Spiegelman, this Dutch cartoonist, Joost Swarte. So, a lot of the raw artists, Charles Burns, Kim Deitch, Gary Panter. It was this strange opportunity to at least tug on their sleeve and say, “Would you do this?” And 165 people said yes.

Debbie Millman (00:23:54):

Isn’t that incredible?

Chip Kidd (00:23:55):

It is.

Debbie Millman (00:23:56):

What surprised you most as you were collecting these pieces of art from these extraordinary artists?

Chip Kidd (00:24:05):

What surprised me the most? Well, what surprised me is what they’ve come up with. Some people would say, “What do you want?” And then, others would have some crazy idea that they just wanted to do. One of the most recent ones that I got over the pandemic is by this amazing artist who goes by R. Kikuo Johnson. He’s just a brilliant illustrator.

Chip Kidd (00:24:29):

And he does covers for The New Yorker, and he just released a new graphic novel. He uses a very clear line, and I had been wanting to get in touch with him for years to try and publish a graphic novel by him at Pantheon. Finally, he did a cover for The New Yorker called Waiting. And it’s this sole Asian woman alone. I don’t know if you remember it, on the subway track, looking at her watch.

Chip Kidd (00:24:54):

With this furtive look on her face like, “Train, please get here now.” And it was just so timely and moving. And that’s what finally nudged me to like, “Come on, get ahold of this guy.” But he’s like, “Yeah. All right. I actually have an idea for that.” So, I’ve sent him the book with a return slip, and it’s brilliant.

Chip Kidd (00:25:20):

So, Batman is laying on his back, and he’s trapped by this giant chicken that has the Joker’s head on it that’s menacing him. And it’s brilliantly done, but it’s like, “Where the hell did that come from?” What does this mean? And he’s just like, “I’ve just always been fascinated by this idea.”

Debbie Millman (00:25:46):

Interesting. Well, that’s what makes him the brilliant genius he is.

Chip Kidd (00:25:51):

He is. He is, indeed.

Debbie Millman (00:25:52):

There was also a rather risqué cover of Batman and Robin kissing.

Chip Kidd (00:25:58):

Yes. That’s Art Spiegelman.

Debbie Millman (00:26:00):

Talk about that, if you can.

Chip Kidd (00:26:01):

That’s a reference to his, I guess, infamous New Yorker cover where he has the Hasidic man kissing the African-American woman. Plus, he did it in color. That was the interesting thing. If people wanted to do things in color, that was fine with me.

Debbie Millman (00:26:17):

You’ve written extensively about Batman, your books about the Cape Crusader include Batman Collected, Batman Animated, which garnered two of the comic book industry’s highest awards, the Eisner Awards and Batman: The Complete History. Do you anticipate a Batman: Black and White will also become a book?

Chip Kidd (00:26:37):

I would love that, but the problem is it would be a permissions nightmare. I’ve actually pursued it. It got as far as somebody at DC had drawn up a release form, I got a bunch of the artists to sign it, but there was a bunch of them that would not sign it. They’re like, “If you want to use this in a book, fine, but there’s no way…” because I can’t remember what the release language was.

Chip Kidd (00:27:01):

But it was basically, the artist can’t republish it without DC’s permission, and DC can’t republish their art without their permission. One day, I will try and self-publish it just so that it exists, but that would be a lot of work. But I’d really like to do that.

Debbie Millman (00:27:18):

Yeah. I think it should be. It should be made, or maybe a catalog from the shows.

Chip Kidd (00:27:23):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:27:24):

Batman is not the only comic character you have worked with. You have also designed the trilogy, Superman: The Complete History and Wonder Woman: The Complete History for Chronicle Books, several books about the art of Alex Ross, which are magnificent, Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, and so many more. One of your upcoming projects is a book titled Spider-Man: Panel by Panel. Tell us about that.

Chip Kidd (00:27:55):

Well, that is going to be again, that’s Abrams and my friend, Charlie Kochman, who made the connection, because it all has to be sanctioned by Marvel. Spider-Man first appeared in a comic book called Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962. And that was an immediate hit. And then, Spider-Man #1 quickly followed. And so, what we’re doing is a photographic reexamination of both of them.

Chip Kidd (00:28:29):

So, going super close up with the camera because by now, my God, a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 just sold for like $3 million. It’s just insane to try and find original. But Charlie hunted down or found a collector, who had this that had not sealed it in Plexiglas, who allowed us to photograph it. So, it will allow the fans to see what it was like to have this comic book in 1962 up close.

Chip Kidd (00:29:01):

It’s almost like you’re under the covers in your bedroom with a flashlight looking at it. That’s the kind of effect. And plus, some mysterious donor had the original art by Steve Ditko to the Spider-Man origin story from Amazing Fantasy #15, and donated it to the Library of Congress. They were going to allow us to photograph it, but COVID restrictions prevented that, but they’re photographing it to our specification. So, you’ll get to see the original art, which is always so fascinating.

Debbie Millman (00:29:36):

Speaking of original art, in 2019, you collaborated with JJ Abrams, different from Abrams book publisher, JJ Abrams, the man on the comic Spiderman #1, which featured a unique die cut. How did that project come about? And how did you go about making that cover?

Chip Kidd (00:29:58):

JJ is a friend. Well, he hired me through Paramount Pictures to do a print campaign for a movie that he was producing called Morning Glory. And this was quite some time ago. The movie didn’t do much business, but the experience was great, and the print campaign turned out really well. And we became friends from that.

Chip Kidd (00:30:22):

And he and his son, one of his sons, Henry, I guess pitched to Marvel, we want to do our own take on Spider-Man, and it’ll be six issues long. The first one had three or four variants, and they asked me to do one of the variants. And so, I researched what had been done before in terms of really zooming in on the Spider-Man mask, and the classic eye.

Chip Kidd (00:30:48):

And so, I decided to do that, but I wanted to see if they would allow a die cut whole so that when you open it up, there’s something else revealed underneath. I did what you’re really not supposed to do as a freelancer. I sent it to JJ first, before sending it to Marvel. And so, he fell in love with it, and Marvel didn’t want to spend the money because it’s extra money.

Chip Kidd (00:31:13):

And JJ insisted. And so, he prevailed, and it totally sold out. And so, then the Marvel art director approached me and said, “Well, actually, we’re doing a new Wolverine #1, and we’re doing a new Spider-Woman #1, can you do die cut covers for those?”

Debbie Millman (00:31:31):

One of the most unique things about you is how you’re able to make things happen through the sheer will and creativity of your spirit. And one of my favorite stories that I really want you to share with our audience, because it really is about manifesting a reality that you want to make happen is your experience with JJ Abrams, and your cameo in the last Star Wars movie. If there was ever a story about persistence, and grit, and manifesting something that you want more than anything, this is the story.

Chip Kidd (00:32:18):

Well, I have to say, it’s hard for me to talk about this. It’s really a story about a friend helping another friend grieve. So, my wonderful, beautiful husband, Sandy McClatchy had be… we’ve been together for 20 years, and he became ill, and I was a caregiver. And through that time, JJ would write periodically because he had met him, and we had spent time, and how are you doing, and how is he doing?

Chip Kidd (00:32:53):

And so, by the summer of 2018, I was alone. And I got this notion actually from Chris Ware who had visited the set of The Force Awakens. Because when he was over in England getting some sort of award, and they were filming that back then, and Chris had told me about this experience. And I just wrote to JJ out of the blue and said, “You know, actually, I’m going to be in London for a while this fall, could I come by the set, and maybe be a Storm Trooper or something?”

Debbie Millman (00:33:30):

Or something.

Chip Kidd (00:33:32):

And he wrote, he wrote back and he said, “We’ll figure something out for you. And I’m going to hand you over to my, my AD, Josh, and you can work it out with him.” And so, for two weeks, November into December of 2018, I was on the set in Pinewood, and they’ve thrown together this costume for me. But they also-

Debbie Millman (00:33:58):

So, you weren’t a Storm Trooper, you actually-

Chip Kidd (00:33:59):

No, I wasn’t. Yeah, I wasn’t a Storm Trooper.

Debbie Millman (00:34:01):

You show up on screen as not you, but you know-

Chip Kidd (00:34:03):

Right. I mean-

Debbie Millman (00:34:04):

… your face is Chip Kidds’ face.

Chip Kidd (00:34:07):

I have a beret and a leather trench coat. The thing is if you don’t know to look for me, I’m actually in it three times. But if you don’t know to look for me, blink and you’ll miss it. But I’m in what passes for the Cantina scene, where three of the leads are sneaking through trying to evade Kylo Ren, but it’s Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac, and Anthony Daniels is C-3PO are sneaking through this bar. And as the band is playing, and I’m sitting at the bar chatting with this giant creature thing. And that was just wild.

Debbie Millman (00:34:46):

So, not only did you have this wonderful costume made for you, I know that they also gave you a book to hold.

Chip Kidd (00:34:53):

They gave me a prop book. They took my book, Go, and they made a Star Wars version of it. It was just so touching, the effort that they went to. And that was all JJ.

Debbie Millman (00:35:06):

I know you’ve been a Star Wars fan since you were quite young. And when you were a little boy, you made a Star Wars scrapbook. Talk about that. Why are you laughing?

Chip Kidd (00:35:19):

Yes. I made this scrapbook and it had, for some reason, David Prowse, who was the physical embodiment of Darth Vader, I guess was doing this tour. This was way before Comic-Cons existed. This would’ve been the late 1970s. And he came to our local department store, Boscov’s, and I waited in line, and got him to sign it. And this scrapbook that I had that… it was not a scrapbook, it was a notebook.

Chip Kidd (00:35:46):

It was a spiral notebook that had Darth Vader on the front. And then, I started putting stuff in it. Many years later when I was helping my parents to move, I found it in their storage unit. So, when I went over on the set, I gave it to JJ as a present.

Debbie Millman (00:36:04):

Could you imagine what little Chip Kidd would’ve thought when he was making that scrapbook that one day, you’d end up on not only on the set, but in three scenes in the movie, the final chapter of this-

Chip Kidd (00:36:21):

What can one say?

Debbie Millman (00:36:23):

… nine-film saga?

Chip Kidd (00:36:25):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:36:26):

I know that it’s a hard story in that you were grieving quite terribly during that time. But I also think it’s a really beautiful story about manifesting something that you really want to help your spirit.

Chip Kidd (00:36:42):

Yeah. And something that he was willing to giving.

Debbie Millman (00:36:44):

Yeah. Shows JJs generosity, for sure. I want to talk about Go, but I also want to talk about so many of your other books. You attended Pennsylvania State University where you graduated in 1986 with a degree in graphic design, which you’ve written about in The Cheese Monkeys and in The Learners, your novels. Afterwards, you were hired as a junior assistant designer at Knopf where you still work today all these years later.

Chip Kidd (00:37:12):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:37:13):

In addition to working as the associate art director now, you are also editor at large for their graphic novels division. I think it’s safe to say that you’ve designed over 2,000 book covers, book jackets.

Chip Kidd (00:37:28):

I would think at this point, yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:37:31):

Yeah. Because in our last interview, which was several years ago, it was at the 1,500-, 1,600-mark. So, I was trying to do the math. So, the covers include work for Cormac McCarthy, David Sedaris, Donna Tartt, Whoopi Goldberg, Oliver Sacks, John Updike, James Ellroy, who stated that you are the world’s greatest book jacket designer, and he’s not lying, time out.

Debbie Millman (00:37:53):

New York stated that the history of book design can be split into two eras before graphic designer, Chip Kidd, and after. So, I’d like to talk about some of your recent covers because you really are in a whole new zone now with some of the work that you’re doing, which is magnificent. First, you designed Billy Jean King’s memoir, All In, which immediately became a New York Times bestseller. What was that process like? What is it like to work with these legends, living legends?

Chip Kidd (00:38:22):

Well, I’ll tell you. The process was so different because it was by then, we were in the pandemic. And I was down in a little studio in my apartment. So, it was all virtual. I think had the world not changed, I would’ve been taking meetings with her at the office. And as it was, there was a lot of Zoom. It’s interesting when you work with somebody at that level, they have a team.

Chip Kidd (00:38:55):

And she very much wanted the team involved. And it turned out fine, but it was just a lot of time, talking to this person, and that person, and then explaining why I was doing what I was doing, but she was great. And she knew Charles Schulz, and they were friends. And so, I don’t know, somebody did their homework, and knew that I had that history.

Chip Kidd (00:39:23):

So, I think that helped. The big question was what image of her would we put on the front? And we, as a publisher, really, really wanted a vintage action shot of her on the court. And she was saying, “But that’s not who I am anymore. I’m an activist now. That was 30 years ago, 40 years ago.” And so, you have to listen, no matter who the author is.

Chip Kidd (00:39:57):

You have to listen to them if they have strong ideas about what they want. And so, we tried, I tried a couple of options where, “All right, here you are now on the front, but look at this amazing shot of you nailing this.” And so, she, I guess acquiesced is the word. And so, we put a big photo of her now on the back, and this great action shot on the front. And I think it really did what it was supposed to do.

Debbie Millman (00:40:30):

Rodrigo Corral, another great book designer puts up a lot of rejected covers on his Instagram, which is so interesting to see. Many, many, many times, I think some of the rejected covers are far better than what ended up going to market.

Debbie Millman (00:40:47):

How do you present different options to a client, whether it be Knopf, whether it be one of your freelance clients, that shows a range of work that both provides the type of work that the client might be expecting to see, but then also, takes them to a whole other place that surprises them?

Debbie Millman (00:41:13):

Because that’s really what you’re known for. You’re known for breaking paradigms, doing work that’s never been done before. How do you get clients to feel safe enough to take those risks?

Chip Kidd (00:41:25):

Because in most cases, we’ve been working together for so long. So, like Haruki Murakami just trusts me. This latest new one for Cormac McCarthy, he just trusts me. Now, sadly, after doing this for almost 36 years and counting, a lot of the authors are gone. Michael Crichton John Updike-

Debbie Millman (00:41:49):

They had it in their contracts that you were their designer for their book.

Chip Kidd (00:41:53):

Some of them did, Oliver Sacks. I think if you have a reputation that you’ve built up over a long time, people will at least look at what you’ve done, thoughtfully consider it. And then, it goes from there. The editor has a say, the publisher has a say, sales has a say, marketing. But I think with me, I have a certain reputation. So, they’ll at least take it seriously. But again, no matter what kind of reputation I have, if the author doesn’t like it, that’s just it. And you have to start over.

Debbie Millman (00:42:34):

How often does somebody like Murakami or Cormac McCarthy say, “Mm-mmm, sorry, Chip. This isn’t a winner?”

Chip Kidd (00:42:42):

It happened with Cormac McCarthy on the road. And that’s hard to explain. What it came down to was that book was so personal to him. And it was an allegory about something else in his life that he started micromanaging it in a way that he didn’t, on the other four books that I designed for him. He didn’t want his name on the front, which made our editor in chief’s head explode. And it can become very tricky.

Debbie Millman (00:43:12):

You recently worked on three book jackets for Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular, Murakami T, and Writing as a Vocation.

Chip Kidd (00:43:22):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:43:23):

Were they all different types of experiences?

Chip Kidd (00:43:27):

Completely, completely.

Debbie Millman (00:43:27):

In what way?

Chip Kidd (00:43:28):

Well, and what I love about designing for him is that you start from scratch every time. Those are three completely different books. So, First Person Singular is short stories. Murakami T is this little gift book that’s about his t-shirt collection. And he’s got all these stories about them. It’s really interesting. And then, the new one that’s coming out this fall is Writing as a Vocation. It’s precisely what it’s about. It’s about his writing process.

Chip Kidd (00:43:58):

So, those are three completely different things. And you just have to consider what’s the book about, and how are you going to convey to the reader what’s Murakami doing now. The new one, Writing as a Vocation, I made the letter M into a huge labyrinth. So, writing as is going into the labyrinth, and then coming out at the bottom is a little arrow, a vocation. And so, the visual metaphor is going through all these starts, and stops, and false endings to get finally where you need to go.

Debbie Millman (00:44:36):

Do you start by sketching? Do you start on the computer? How do you work?

Chip Kidd (00:44:40):

You know what? I’ve never been a sketcher. Back in what, a sophomore in college, one of our graphic design classes, we had to keep a sketchbook. And that was work. Doing the actual assignments, that was much easier than actually having to document them in a sketchbook because it’s just not my temperament. I do all the sketching up in my head.

Chip Kidd (00:45:07):

And if there’s something that I need executed by somebody else, like a photographer, what have you, then maybe I’ll make a sketch and say, “Hey, we want a monkey raising his hand or something like that.” But-

Debbie Millman (00:45:18):

It’s so interesting when people work in their heads like that. My wife, Roxanne writes an entire essay in her head before she starts typing.

Chip Kidd (00:45:27):

Now, that is amazing because writing is a whole other thing for me. Yeah, no, no. I need to be at the keyboard, and writing, and writing in InDesign.

Debbie Millman (00:45:39):

Well, what’s interesting is that you’re not only just a designer, you’re also a writer and an editor. You’ve written several novels, and you’ve edited two important books over the last year, Original Sisters by Anita Kunz and Our Colors by Gengoroh Tagame. How do you pivot back and forth between these different vocations?

Chip Kidd (00:46:01):

I’m hugely grateful for it. Especially, in the last two years, I’ve been so grateful to have work to do, because I was just in isolation for so long down in my place in south Florida. And how do you pivot? I’m a fan of all of it. I really love it. And so, that really helps. I can’t imagine how people work on things that’s assigned to them that they don’t want to do. And that’s most people.

Chip Kidd (00:46:36):

Occasionally, I’ll have to do a book cover for something that I’m not all that interested in, but I can get interested in it. Computer coding in 1940 or whatever, that’s not something normally I would-

Debbie Millman (00:46:51):

You and Michael Bierut have that ability to find something interesting about anything.

Chip Kidd (00:46:54):

Well, anything that’s thrown at me.

Debbie Millman (00:46:58):

How do you go about finding and inquiring books? Because you do that, you look for graphic novels to publish.

Chip Kidd (00:47:05):

It’s a totally organic process. In the case of Original Sisters by Anita Kunz, I had known her for a long time. I had known her work for a long time. I think she’s absolutely brilliant. It had never occurred to me to publish any of her work because she’s not what we call a sequential artist. She’s not a graphic novelist, which is mainly what I’m looking for.

Chip Kidd (00:47:27):

And so, a couple months into the pandemic, I got this proposal from her on email. And she had originally called it The Originals. I was stunned. It’s a book of portraits of women in history, some of whom you know, but a lot of whom you don’t, and then her researching of them. And so, you have people to bounce things off of.

Chip Kidd (00:47:51):

And so, I sent it to some of my colleagues and said, “I think this is kind of great. What do you think?” And they’re like, “Yeah, we think this is really kind of great.” And so, that’s a submission. The Gengoroh Tagame, Our Colors, I pursued that, and we had published him previously and very successfully. So, that makes it much easier to do the next project.

Debbie Millman (00:48:14):

How involved are you in the editing process when you acquire a book?

Chip Kidd (00:48:18):

That’s a really good question. Sometimes not at all. Sometimes intensely, like I’m publishing this graphic novel by this guy, Wonderful Toronto, a cartoonist and illustrator named Maurice Vellekoop. And he was just in town, and we were working on that, and it’s really one of the first graphic novel, because usually, we get them fully formed. And I’ll have a couple of ideas.

Chip Kidd (00:48:45):

And we have a copy-editing department that’s going to take care of that stuff. But with this, the book by Maurice Vellekoop is called I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together, and it’s a memoir, and he had a difficult family, and they were very conservative, and he was gay, and he wanted to be an artist, and they were all upset about that. We’ve been working on this thing for 10 years.

Chip Kidd (00:49:10):

I think it’s finally going to come out in the spring of what, ’24, but that this is one I’ve really been putting input into, really, actually editing. Usually, editing a graphic novel, for me, means being an ambassador for it, into the publishing house. And you have all these duties that you have to do. You have to do an audio presentation for the salesforce so they can listen to it in their car or now, at home. That’s part of the editorial process at Pantheon and Knopf.

Debbie Millman (00:49:44):

You have a book that has been recently published. It is the paperback version of Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design. Congratulations.

Chip Kidd (00:49:55):

Thank you.

Debbie Millman (00:49:55):

What made you decide to create a book about graphic design for kids in the first place?

Chip Kidd (00:50:00):

Well, as I’ve said in every interview about this, it was not my idea. I cannot claim ownership of the idea. It was this amazing woman named Raquel Jaramillo, who by now is much better known by her pen name, R.J. Palacio. And she had been a book cover designer of great renowned. She did everything for Thomas Pynchon. And then, she became an editor at Workman.

Chip Kidd (00:50:27):

And she called me, I don’t even remember what year it was, 2010, 2011 and said, “Do you want to have lunch? There’s a project I want to talk to you about.” And I said, “Sure.” And I just thought it would be a book cover that she wanted me to do. And so, we met and she said, “Okay. Unless I’m mistaken, no one’s ever created a book to teach graphic design to kids.”

Chip Kidd (00:50:51):

And as soon as she said it, this flash went off in my head, I’m like, “Oh my God, you’re right. I can’t think of one.” And she said, “Yes. And I think you should do it.” I probably said this in the last interview we did about this, but I thought, “Okay, I don’t know any kids. I don’t relate to kids. I don’t like kids. Sign me up.” Because I just thought nothing is going to put me outside of my comfort zone like this.

Chip Kidd (00:51:26):

But what was great about it, and at time is frustrating was okay, rethink all of this. I learned these things in college, but now, what do I say to a 10-year-old? It forced me to rethink about what graphic design is, about what the components are, how to teach somebody about it, who doesn’t have a lot of life experience.

Debbie Millman (00:51:53):

How do you go about doing that? How do you go about teaching somebody something where they don’t really have the construct in which to potentially envision it on their own?

Chip Kidd (00:52:06):

One of the things that Raquel said from the beginning was don’t talk down to them. Don’t talk down to your audience. And I had figured that out with kids, despite all of what I just said. It’s like talk to them like they’re a peer and not like they’re 10. And they’re going to take you a lot more seriously, and listen more effectively to what you have to say.

Chip Kidd (00:52:29):

And then, it’s imagination. I have to think about, “Okay, if I was 10, what would I be able to comprehend about this?” And I’m sure I’ve also said in the other podcast about it, the challenge became not so much what to put in the book, but as to what to leave out. Because when I learned about graphic design in college, we studied the history.

Chip Kidd (00:52:55):

There are all these important historical moments and contributions in the history of graphic design, which is mainly the 20th century, that I did not want to get into with a 10-year-old, war propaganda, pornography, sex sells. And in fact, I didn’t want to make any of it about selling something, really.

Debbie Millman (00:53:18):

That’s hard.

Chip Kidd (00:53:18):

Yeah. It is hard.

Debbie Millman (00:53:19):

It’s really hard.

Chip Kidd (00:53:21):

We touched on it a little bit, but not really. It’s more about form, and content, and concept, and typography. Think about the alphabet. Do you realize what a miracle the alphabet is, and how it’s used? But message sending and-

Debbie Millman (00:53:40):

It’s really, for me, a blueprint for creating visual language in a lot of ways. I learned a lot reading it. I learned about numbers and the history of numbers.

Chip Kidd (00:53:50):

I learned a lot too, because I had to look all this stuff up. Because I thought, “All right, who created the written word?” That’s pretty important. And I didn’t know. You do a lot of research, and then you figure out, all right, now I’ve got to explain this to a 10- to 12-year-old kid.

Debbie Millman (00:54:09):

Had Raquel written Wonder at that point?

Chip Kidd (00:54:12):

She was writing it at the time, which I didn’t even realize until towards the end because she… I forget the context, but we put the cover of Wonder in Go, which I think was a way of showing something metaphorically without showing it literally.

Debbie Millman (00:54:33):

Well, that’s one of the things I love about the book that there are visual examples for everything that you talk about. So, people can, not just read it, but actually see it, and learn it from examples.

Chip Kidd (00:54:45):

Yeah. And they’re all examples of real actual printed work.

Debbie Millman (00:54:48):

So, did Raquel also edit it?

Chip Kidd (00:54:51):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:54:51):

Because she has that way of talking through the eyes of a child that so-

Chip Kidd (00:54:58):

And she actually had children. So, every now and then, I can’t think of it… oh, there’s a spread where I’m trying to teach the difference between sincerity and irony to a kid, and using two different words, and then depicting the words in different ways. It was something like fastidious and filthy. I think it was a different one, but she was like, “Let’s not use fastidious. That’s too complicated.” And so, we changed it.

Debbie Millman (00:55:30):

A word with many syllables.

Chip Kidd (00:55:31):

Right. And then, there are the projects for the reader to do at the end. And she was really great about coming up with some of those.

Debbie Millman (00:55:39):

Yeah. They’re really fun. You added new material to the paperback version. Talk about what is different.

Chip Kidd (00:55:44):

Well, what’s different is the timeline in the front. And I have to say, Workman approached me about doing this. And again, it was the middle of the pandemic, and I get this email from them out of the blue, and they said, “We never did a paperback version. Do you want to?” And I said, “Sure.” And they said, “We’ll treat it as a new publication, and you can fiddle with it a little bit.”

Chip Kidd (00:56:10):

We have four extra pages that we can put in it because now, we don’t have the end papers, and you can use. And so, I expanded, there’s a timeline, just a couple little highlights of the history of graphic design. Then, I was able to put two more spreads of them in.

Debbie Millman (00:56:27):

What things did you add?

Chip Kidd (00:56:29):

I added the on-off button, which I didn’t even realize is a combination of a one and a zero. And I ended with the street painting both in Washington and in New York city of Black Lives Matter in the street because that was just such a brilliant use of graphic design. At that point, there was a different editor I was working with because Raquel had left to pursue her career. And I said, “Is this too political?” They said, “Well, let me check, and we’ll get back to you.” And they said, “Let’s do it.”

Debbie Millman (00:57:05):

That’s great. It’s an opportunity to teach kids, while they’re learning about graphic design, about the power of imagery, and what this means to our society and our culture.

Chip Kidd (00:57:16):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:57:17):

I have one last question for you.

Chip Kidd (00:57:20):

Okay.

Debbie Millman (00:57:21):

Thor: Love and Thunder will have just come out when this interview is published. Are you excited about seeing the film, and any predictions for the storyline?

Chip Kidd (00:57:33):

Well, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, but I’m excited about seeing it because I’m going to see it with you. I’m trying to think what I’ve heard. I haven’t tracked this one that much. I know that Jane becomes the new Thor or at least at some point.

Debbie Millman (00:57:51):

Yes.

Chip Kidd (00:57:51):

Which is a theme in the comics, and that Christian Bale plays some crazy freaky villain.

Debbie Millman (00:57:58):

Creepy looking villain.

Chip Kidd (00:57:59):

Yeah. Very creepy looking.

Debbie Millman (00:58:00):

Speaking of creepy, I actually wanted to ask you about your new cover that you’re designing for Bret Easton Ellis next spring. It’s coming out. It’s called The Shards, sounds rather sinister as well.

Chip Kidd (00:58:10):

Yeah. It’s a very personal book for him. It’s a prequel to Less Than Zero. I’m thrilled with the cover. I think he is too because he just post… I think he just posted it on Twitter. It’s really interesting. I would say it’s one of the first cinematic covers that I’ve done that involves sequential imagery. I’m really excited about it.

Debbie Millman (00:58:35):

I’m running to Instagram after this interview.

Chip Kidd (00:58:39):

And again, my God, I’ve worked with him and for him since, I think The Informers in 1995, ’96.

Debbie Millman (00:58:48):

I lied. I do have one last question for you before we sign off. You also have designed the upcoming Cormac McCarthy books because there’s two. And I have seen those, listeners, and they are magnificent. Talk just a little bit if you can. Give us a little tease about what you’ve done with these novels.

Chip Kidd (00:59:11):

Well, first of all, as a publishing house at Knopf, we were just so thrilled that he delivered this manuscript. He’s been working on it for a long time. He’s 88 years old. We didn’t know if we were ever actually going to get it. It’s complicated. It’s a two-book story. And one of the books is called The Passenger. And the other book is called Stella Maris.

Chip Kidd (00:59:33):

And they’re the story of a brother and a sister. It’s complicated, but there’s mathematics. There’s deep sea diving. There’s the atomic bomb. There are all these themes in it. And the brief to me was we’re going to publish them individually. Then, we’re going to publish them together in a box. It all has to look like it goes together, but both the individual jackets and the box set, when they’re together, the books have to look like they belong together.

Debbie Millman (01:00:04):

And when they’re apart, they have to look like they can stand on their own.

Chip Kidd (01:00:08):

Right. To me, they also have to look like they need each other, which is a big theme in the book.

Debbie Millman (01:00:14):

Will they be coming out at the same time or are they coming out separately?

Chip Kidd (01:00:17):

Staggered over three months. So, The Passenger comes out in October of ’22. The second, Stella Maris comes out in November of ’22. And then, the box hit comes out in December.

Debbie Millman (01:00:31):

Chip Kidd, thank you so much for making so much work that matters in the world. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Chip Kidd (01:00:38):

Well, thank you my friend, and my sister, Debbie Millman.

Debbie Millman (01:00:42):

Chip’s upcoming exhibit, Batman: Black and White, will be opening at MICA in Baltimore this fall. And his latest book, Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design, can be found wherever books are sold. You can keep up with all things Chip Kidd and all his latest projects at chipkidd.com. I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Best of Design Matters: Chip Kidd appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Ben:

Us designers know. I think we have weapons at our disposal that non-creative people don’t have.

Jack:

I’m too far into the art side of it, but I’m not taking my pieces and selling that at art galleries either. It’s like, this is for nobody but me.

Recorded Voice:

From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Milman. For 18 years, Debbie Milman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do, how they got to be, who they are and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, we hear from musician Jack White and designer Ben Jenkins about their business collaboration.

Ben:

Baseball bats are really simple thing. I bet I could figure that out.

Jack:

I’d seen these baseball bats and I remember thinking, “Oh wow. What an obvious idea, of course.”

Debbie:

Jack White has been on the music scene for over two decades. First in the band Goober & The Peas, then in the duo the White Stripes, then the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. He’s also released his own solo albums and produced music for artists including Loretta Lynn and Beyonce. He’s won many Grammy awards and three of his albums have reached number one on all of the charts that matter. Ben Jenkins is a different kind of rock star. He’s a former baseball player turned designer, turned entrepreneur. In 2011 he started a company that manufactured baseball bats named Warstic. What brings these two gentlemen together here in person is that in 2016 Jack White became an investor in Warstic, and the company now makes way more than baseball bats. Jack White and Ben Jenkins, welcome to Design Matters.

Jack:

Hi, thank you for having us.

Ben:

Thanks, Debbie.

Debbie:

Jack, is it true that you don’t have a cell phone?

Jack:

That is true. Yeah.

Debbie:

Have you ever had a cell phone?

Jack:

No, I’ve never had one, but I do think my days are numbered. I think time is running out because there’s so many things nowadays I’m discovering last, just since the pandemic hit, for example, where I’m not going to be able to get through a day without that.

Debbie:

How do you do that now? It’s hard for me to even imagine somebody not being able to look at their phone for directions or for Wikipedia.

Jack:

Yeah, I use email and I text on my laptop, so I’m on my computer a lot. So that handles, I think, the big brunt of it. And then there’s just the, I don’t know, old fashioned way of just leaving the house and driving away and you’re not going to see me for a couple hours. That’s how it goes.

Debbie:

Was it a decision that you made when cell phones first came out? Like, “No, I don’t want to be part of this on all the time lifestyle”?

Jack:

I was scared of, for example, I’ve never smoked marijuana, for example. It’s not some sort of judgmental thing against people who smoke marijuana, I could care less and what other people do, whatever. It’s not the thing itself, it’s the things that are attached to it. So it’s not the cell phone itself, it’s just the idea that I’m going to be on it all day long, and I’m going to have it charged, and I’m going to have to wake up in the morning and… It’s all the ancillary things, those are the things I have fears, ancillary things. It’s not the gun, it’s the bullets.

Debbie:

Right, it’s not the phone it’s the addiction?

Jack:

Yeah.

Debbie:

You were born Jack Gillis in downtown Detroit. Your mom is Polish, your dad is Scottish Canadian, and they both worked for the church. You are the youngest of 10 siblings. What is the range between you and your oldest sibling?

Jack:

My oldest sister, Maureen is 21 years older than me. I’m 46, so she’s 67.

Debbie:

My youngest brother is 26 years younger, but it’s from different mothers.

Jack:

Oh wow. So you know the… Yeah, it’s very similar.

Debbie:

Yeah, I felt very much like I raised my little brother or helped raise him, and I know you felt that way about your older sisters as well.

Jack:

Oh yeah. They used to say whenever they would take me out and everyone thought that they… People would say, “Oh, your mom, ask your mom for ice cream,” or something like that. They would always treat them like they were the moms, and they pretty much were. The whole family was very much like that, it was like having a lot of parents. The ninth kid is seven years older than me, I’m way at the end.

Debbie:

So you were an accident?

Jack:

Most definitely, but the Catholic kind. There are no accidents in giant Catholic families. It’s like, “What’s that?”

Debbie:

Yeah, your parents really liked each other.

Jack:

Let’s just call it unexpected, let’s call it that.

Debbie:

Your six older brothers were in a band called Catalyst and you began to play their drum kit when you were five. What drew you to the drums specifically?

Jack:

I didn’t think I had any talent for the other stuff, guitar and bass.

Debbie:

But at five?

Jack:

At five, it felt like drums were just whatever, I’m not doing anything serious. I just like music and this is something I can actually do. And as I got older, I started to play a little bit guitar, but I was always playing something. I didn’t learn, nobody taught me, I was self-taught on these instruments so by the time I was in my 20’s I was thinking, “Oh wow, I actually can play a little bit of piano, I can play a little of the guitar.” But I never thought about that way. I thought always with music, if it ever came to a thing where, what do I would like to do as a musician? I was like, “Oh, I like to play drums in a band.” And by that I always meant a band that plays a gig once a year at a bar in Detroit, that there’s no way you could ever do anything bigger than that, and that I would just do upholstery for the rest of my life.

Debbie:

Well, actually I’ve read, and I don’t know if this is true. I read it fairly consistently in all of the research that we did that because you never really thought you could make a living as a musician, you decided you wanted to become a priest and were accepted at the seminary.

Jack:

That’s true, it’s just slightly convoluted. The acceptance at the seminary was when I was 14. So, that was deciding what high school to go to, and I applied at a seminary in Wisconsin and they accepted me and I was planning to go there. And about the summer before it happened at the last second, I found out or heard by word-of-mouth, “You know you can’t bring your guitar and amp to that dormitory in Wisconsin?” And I thought, “Ooh, that might be a deal-breaker.” I was just getting into music in a way where I was starting to record in my bedroom and things like that, and I thought, “Oh, wow. Am I going to give this up for four years, I’m going to not play music?” I didn’t know, I didn’t actually double-check to make sure that was true. It was just that rumor was enough for me to go, “I think maybe this isn’t the right idea.” So I went to a public school in Detroit, which was its own kind of own weird universe.

Debbie:

Well, you went to a technical high school, but did you at any point really want to be a priest?

Jack:

I thought about it. What they call it in the Catholic world is you get the calling. So you go and you see if you’ll get the calling eventually. So you don’t decide your life at 13 or 14, you just go, “If you head down this one path and then if you get the calling down the road, then it’s the thing.” That’s the nice thing about… As many flaws that the Catholic church has, there’s a nice thing about the Catholic church growing up through it was, they didn’t force that kind of stuff on you. It wasn’t like, “Oh, you want to be a preacher? Cool. We’re setting you up right now at 13. Okay, good. Your rest of your life you’re going to be a priest.” They’re not really like that, and they’re not going out and pushing their stuff down on other people’s throats.

Jack:

So that was a cool, niceness of that environment where you did feel like, “Okay, I was thinking about it but I changed my mind.” I did the same thing with the Marines coming out of high school, in senior year I had signed up for possibly going to the Marines or the air force. They come to your class and recruit you in class. But then again I thought, “Oh it’s not for me, I don’t think it’s the right move for me.” But upholstery, I would have dropped out of high school and just done upholstery if I could have. I don’t think anybody around me would have been very supportive of me dropping out.

Debbie:

You grew up with a Polish grandmother and your parents were in their 60’s when you were in high school, you lived in a Mexican neighborhood and went mostly to an all black high school. And you said it would’ve made just as much sense for you to play in a Polish polka band or in a hip hop group, or in a Mexican mariachi band. What was the first music you were really interested in playing?

Jack:

Rock and roll because that was what my brothers were really into, but our family liked all kinds of music. My parents were into big band music and Nat King Cole and Sinatra and all that stuff. And my brothers were into rock and roll a lot, but also Johnny Cash and folk musicians as well. And so, it was a pretty healthy mix. And then of course, all the friends on my block were all listening to hip hop and house music and Latin music. So, any of those could have been interesting, but I think there was, your older brothers and sisters are going to win out as influence.

Debbie:

By the time you were 15, you were a business major in Cass Technical High School. And you had an upholstery apprenticeship with Brian Muldoon who was a family friend and a former neighbor who ran an upholstery studio. And I read that you remember first being intrigued by Muldoon’s studio as a little boy riding around on a big wheel.

Jack:

Well, our two houses were right next door to each other. So you could ride bikes or big wheels in between the houses and look down into the basement if the door was open. So, I would see him working on furniture down in that basement all the time as I rode by. So it was just by chance that when I was a teenager, he moved next door to my brother in another part of town in Detroit. And then hanging out on the front porch we started talking, he was a drummer, so we started talking about drums, and then he gave me some Modern Drummer magazines. And then he eventually asked me, “Hey, do you want to come and work after school and sweep up in the shop a couple days a week, maybe learn how to do some upholstery.” And I thought, “Wow, what a cool job at 15?”

Jack:

And by the time I got to 18 though, I got around into it, I was really starting. I had gotten so immersed in the furniture and designers and mid-century modern, and arts and crafts and I’ve become really in love with film. So I thought it would be great to take some film classes, maybe end up possibly working in film and directing in film somehow. You discovered quickly that was like, I got… I became a PA on car commercials and stuff. It was mostly car commercials because it’s the big three and it’s Detroit and that’s the industry of film in that town except for art projects.

Debbie:

Had you ever thought about going to Cranbrook or any of the amazing schools that are in Michigan?

Jack:

I would’ve loved to had anybody actually offered this idea to me. I’ve never even knew that was a possibility, I didn’t know about Cranbrook and all that until it was in my 20’s. It’s indicative of a lot of things, the environment that I grew up in the ’80s and early ’90s which it was still crazy. There’s just a lot of things you see now with modern parents and I’m a parent and I have a lot of friends with kids, that you just see how much is put in front of them. Like, “You can do this, you can do that. And this is an option and that’s an option,” and none of these things were put in front of me. And no one even told me when they would see me recording and getting super involved in music like, “Wow, you could press your own record, there’s a record pressing plant in town.”

Jack:

Nobody said that to me, nobody said, “Oh by the way, you can go to this design high school instead of the high school you’re going to, or design college.” When I was 21, I opened my own upholstery shop. And if I saw a 21 year old kid do that now I’d be like, “Oh my God man, congratulations. High five, whatever. Do you need any help?” Or whatever. And I didn’t see a lot of that, I saw a lot of people giving you this look like, “Okay, whatever.” Thinking this is going to fail in a year or so, I don’t know what they were intending, what they were conveying, but it wasn’t pats on the back, let’s put it that way.

Debbie:

Well, it’s a little bit obscure.

Jack:

It is kind of strange, yeah.

Debbie:

It’s a bit of an old school kind of discipline. My grandfather was an upholsterer, by the way.

Jack:

No way.

Debbie:

Yes.

Jack:

Wow.

Debbie:

But it’s not something that I’ve ever heard anyone say, “When I grow up, I want to be an upholsterer.”

Jack:

No, it’s very, very niche. And I definitely think that through going to the upholstery supply places when I was coming up, I pretty much determined that I was the only person under 45 doing that trade in the metropolitan Detroit area.

Debbie:

I would say maybe even in the world.

Jack:

There’s not many.

Debbie:

There’s not many. You began to write notes and poetry inside the furniture, like a message in a bottle. Has anybody found any of the messages over the years and the poetry that you tucked inside the cushions?

Jack:

We did. I don’t think anyone’s found any of my pieces of things that I’ve done in them, but people have found… Two people found this work I did with Brian Muldoon who I learned from. We did for his 30th anniversary of his shop, we did 100 records that we made together. We were a band called The Upholsters and we made 100 records and put them in a 100… He put them in 100 pieces that year. So two of those have been found. People have notified us they found those and they’re keeping them and they didn’t publicize it or sell them or whatever.

Debbie:

That’s incredible. It’s absolutely incredible. While working at the apprenticeship, you were also a drummer in two different bands. You were recording music in your bedroom, as you mentioned. And you also became close friends with Megan White, who you married in 1996 and took her last name. Very forward thinking, very ahead of your time. What made you decide to do that? Was it just because it was a cool color?

Jack:

I don’t have anything to say about that category, sorry.

Debbie:

While you were doing that, you decided to open your own upholstery shop. As you mentioned, you named your business Third Man Upholstery. The slogan you chose for your business was your furniture’s not dead. And you wrote some of your bills out in crayon. And I was wondering if that was a design decision or if it was more arbitrary, because that was the writing utensil you had nearby?

Jack:

I see it now when I work on furniture pieces that they’re more sculpture than they are furniture, really. And it’s something that was happening to me in the final year of my upholstery shop, which was, it was becoming more art than it was a way of sustaining a business and making money. I didn’t care about the money anymore, I was more interested in the fact that I was wearing a yellow shirt and a black pants with a white belt and delivering it and giving the bill in crayon. And I’d gotten obsessed with certain artists and there was this one artist, I can’t remember his name, but he was making counterfeit money. He was hand drawing counterfeit bills, one sided, and his art was to go buy things with that money. And he wanted to buy the object and they would give him the object and the receipt and the change, and that was part of the artistic transaction. And I got obsessed with this and I started writing my bills in crayon, and then all this stuff. And it’s not the way to make business in Detroit doing people’s furniture. That was very-

Debbie:

Performance art.

Jack:

Yeah, it was bizarre. And I knew I started to get to too far. I got this incredible piece which was a psychiatrist’s chair and couch. This was a great moment, I got to do this and she didn’t like dealing with me by the end of it I think. It wasn’t serious and commercial enough for her. And she had gotten, I had a guy upstairs from my shop was building furniture frames. It was like the perfect marriage, this guy could build frames. And she got another set made and took it to a different upholster, and I knew I had blown it with this client and I’m like, “This is a sign, I think I’m too far into the art side of it. But I’m not taking my pieces and selling that at art galleries either.” It’s like, this is for nobody but me.

Debbie:

By 1998, you were playing in bands including the Hentchmen, the Go, Two-Star Tabernacle, and the freshly minted White Stripes which you started with Meg. Did you feel conflicted by pursuing these two very different paths, upholstery and music?

Jack:

I just always assumed the music part was just going to be a small thing and not anything that would bring in any money or pay bills, or be able to have it as a lifestyle or a choice, artistic choice. I always assumed that the upholstery part was going to be how I paid the bills. So I didn’t take any of those any more seriously in that, yes, I would rather be making music, or I’d rather be making sculpture, but my assumption was always, “Oh, we got to gig this week, but probably six months from now, we’re not going to get a gig anymore.” So, but those assumptions started to slowly prove wrong, and it became more and more that I was now being taken away from the shop and working on music and making records and the artwork that went into that, and trying to get studio time and figure out a way to pay for that, and balancing those two. And yes, slowly the upholstery shop was fading away. But I remember people from the garage rock scene, musicians and friends, coming to hang out at my shop while I was working. They coincided for a while there.

Debbie:

In 2001, after releasing two somewhat under the radar albums, the White Stripes exploded during a visit to the UK when DJ John Peel said that you were the most exciting thing he’d heard since Jimi Hendrix, and life really hasn’t been the same since. What did it feel like at the time to go from zero to 60 in three seconds? Suddenly you were world-renowned.

Jack:

It was very strange because we had planned a trip to England. We thought we were just going to play with some other garage rock bands from England and Billy Childish, his whole group and Holly Golightly and all that. And we thought we’d play a couple gigs with them and it would be a nice trip. The trip would pay for itself, and we’d be off. That was not the case. By the time we had landed and what John Peel had been pushing, it was very incredible. It was, we were showing up to his studio and he had a live audience and there was a buzz in town. It was a big deal that we were there. And Meg and I were shocked, we had no clue why this would be happening this way. But John Peel was the last of those real DJs who played whatever he wanted to play and was an influencer and really his taste, he was a tastemaker.

Jack:

So if he played it was good to so many people, and he really loved us. And matter of fact, they’ve end up when he passed away, they had his box. He had his 45 box that he would take to DJ gigs and take to certain things, and they made actually a little documentary on it. But in that box of whatever it was, 150 records or something, there was 12 of my seven inches that I had been a part of. And so I don’t know why, but I connected with this guy. And when we met, we bonded fast. But God bless him because he had a huge impact on my life.

Debbie:

You were also the creative director for the band and were influenced by the De Stijl modern art movement, so much so that you even named one of your albums after the term. And De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands by Pete Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg. What intrigued you about the ideals of De Stijl?

Jack:

Something occurred to me. I had bought a book called De Stijl and I was reading it. And when I found out the time period it existed in, it seemed like it was the exact same time period that American blues music was happening, and it seemed to apply to what we were doing with the White Stripes so definitively. And I had never heard of this movement, De Stijl, I thought it was something that nobody had heard of because I just found this book and didn’t realize if you went to art school, you would’ve read about it just like you’d read about Bauhaus or whatever. So I was, in my own little world, was making a correlation between this and blues music of the 20th century, of breaking things down to the absolute essentials of blues just being stripped onto one person against the world, one person a guitar, one person a piano, one person and a mandolin.

Jack:

And it’s the same thing they were doing, Mondrian and Gabriel Viardot doing with their furniture and paintings of breaking things down to simple shapes and simple colors. So I just thought it would be nice for us to put that together and feed off of that idea, so we did that. Which was funny because I think at the end of the day I remember seeing, who was it? Ann Powers or somebody like NPR of New York Times or something giving us a big thumbs down saying, “This band, they’re pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes. These are obviously art school students and this is art school 101 and this is pedestrian at best. And they’re pretending that they’re above everybody else,” or something like that, some connotation that this was a ruse.

Jack:

Again, this is my ignorance as far as whatever the rest of the world had known about their take on things. I was so insular back then that… You guys understand from the environment of Detroit that you’re in, nobody likes the same stuff that I like or the people that I am around. It’s very solitary, so you just make assumptions. I made a lot of incorrect assumptions that people didn’t know about that, people didn’t know about this, or whatever. But it was nice that I did that because I ended up creating things that it spurred me on and inspired me to think, “Oh, this is very unique,” at least it’s unique to me, something I’m getting an inspiration from.

Debbie:

Well, you didn’t necessarily need to know that the way that you were directing the creative for the band was based on De Stijl, it was just really compelling.

Jack:

It seemed to fit.

Debbie:

Creatively, the use of red, white and black. The red, white and black signified the White Stripes aesthetic. You’ve used green for the Raconteurs. Now you use blue. Well, you’ve been using blue for your solo career.

Jack:

Solo stuff, yeah.

Debbie:

So, talk a little bit about this visual positioning because it’s really, really well done.

Jack:

Oh, thanks. It’s usually the three colors of black and white being, white being all colors and black being the absence of color, and then whatever primary color makes sense to that. And this came from a designer of currency, again, that designed currency in the Netherlands where each denomination was a different color. So you instantly knew in your hand what you had, you had a 10, or you had a 20.

Debbie:

Yeah. Classic branding, by the way.

Jack:

It’s good in that sense, right? So the Raconteurs was not my band, so I suggested these colors of copper and green, but that wasn’t as strict in Dead Weather and Raconteurs with the color scheme.

Debbie:

The White Stripes broke up in 2011 and you’ve gone on to a prolific and often bigger career in other bands, you’ve worked as a solo artist and you’ve collaborated and produced music with a range of artists from, as I mentioned in the intro, from Loretta Lynn to Beyonce. And you’ve said that Loretta Lynn is the greatest female singer/songwriter of the 20th century. What was it like to work with her and then win two Grammy awards together? And why do you think she’s a better singer/songwriter than somebody like Joni Mitchell?

Jack:

I don’t think Joni Mitchell is very nice, and Loretta is very nice.

Debbie:

I’ve heard that.

Jack:

No, I don’t know much about Joni Mitchell, actually. I shouldn’t say anything like that, but I’m just really joking. But Loretta just exudes a charisma in person since I have met her, that is just undeniable. There’s a bizarre brilliance that she doesn’t realize is brilliant. There’s part of her that really realizes and really understands something, and another part of her that has no clue as to how brilliant it is. And it’s so interesting to talk to her because those two sides have this… They don’t meet up and it’s very unique. And most people who are that smart and genius at what they’re doing, have a full 100% capacity to understand all that. That’s a good idea, and that’s where it came from and whatever, blah, blah, blah. She has these brilliant ideas and knows they’re good, but another half of her personality does not know how genius that really is when it’s outside of its own realm.

Jack:

She thinks maybe it’s like, “Oh, that’s a really clever title. And then when I say the next lyric, I’m going to say this because that goes along with that. That’s great.” “That’s not just great Loretta, that’s absolutely genius, and people cannot do what you just did.” That’s the feeling you have when you listen to her talk, this feeling I had at least. And so you experience that, and on top of that, just to have her incredible voice. And then I have the same this rags to riches story, this coal miners’ daughter’s story as well. Goodness gracious, it’s just outstanding.

Debbie:

You said that Loretta Lynn has an unique way of writing songs that is nearly impossible to replicate, and declared that you tried as much as you could to learn from her on the craftsmanship, but couldn’t make your way around it with a compass.

Jack:

It’s very strange. She says, “Oh, people say I write backwards.” And whatever you want to call it, there’s some bizarre double choruses of her songs. It would be like, “Women like you, they’re a dime a dozen. You can buy them anywhere. For you to get to him I’d have to move over and I’m going to stand right here.” To most people that would’ve been the chorus, and then she goes another one, “It’ll be over my dead body, get out while you can. But you ain’t woman enough to take my man.” And either of those would’ve been someone’s chorus, but for her to have both of those in there. For her to say, “Oh, that’s not good enough. I’m going to push a little bit farther and write more.” This is someone who is not trained musically. I don’t know, it’s just a diamond in the rough that people take her a little bit for granted and they need to explore her a little bit more because there’s something going on there that a lot of country writers even then, and today do not have.

Debbie:

What is the biggest thing you learned from her?

Jack:

The biggest thing I learned from Loretta is really just keeping it very simple, that it applied to her lifestyle too. I thought it applied very well to the White Stripes and what made people shockingly connect with that band. But it connected with her too. She was always like, “Okay well, the dress needs to be pretty, or the lighting needs to be good, or that guitar player needs to play louder.” It was always real simple decisions and not overly complicated that seemed to instantaneously work. And I’ve seen that too when I’m working with the Rolling Stones a little bit and acts that, I don’t know, you would think there’d be a lot of deeper discussions about exactly the perfect way to get this thing enacted. And a lot of that, you’d say once they’ve done all the groundwork earlier on when they’re younger, that they’re… It’s easier to just make these simple decisions to put these things in action, which is easy to say, isn’t it? It’s easy to say, “Oh yeah, just keep it simple.” You have to have that groundwork though underneath it all.

Debbie:

Oh, it’s the hardest thing to do. Keeping things simple requires so much education.

Jack:

Sure. You need to learn, go through 10 years of using every color in the pallet to decide to just use green on this one thing and nothing else.

Debbie:

You now run Third Man Studio which includes Third Man Records, books, pressing, mastering, a photo studio and a design studio. Third Man is DIY to the max. The only two things you don’t do in records is to produce and manufacture the paper sleeves and the metal mother stampers. You also still do upholstery and furniture construction. How much hands-on work do you do?

Jack:

I like to do as much as I can. The hard part is having a pressing plant where you own the place, and I would love to go in there and just mess around and make my own records. And you can’t do that with a real factory, we build around the clock, but at the same time I like the idea of that that’s a train that’s already in motion that I’m just overseeing. And you’re trusting a lot of people who are talented and they’re the ones driving the train on the daily. And it’s great, it’s just great to be a little bit of a part of something like that. The end of the day, you can get investors and you can charm people and get a bunch of people in a room to spend a bunch of money and make something. Big deal, who cares? I guess there’s a lot of people who would say it’s an unique position for a lot of people to be in, but at the same time it’s not impressive to me. What’s impressive is actually making something unique and beautiful that money is the last thing on the menu about why you’re doing it.

Debbie:

Before we talk about your work with Ben and Warstic, I want to ask you about your current music. You just released the album, Fear of the Dawn and have another album coming out this summer. Why two albums in a matter of months?

Jack:

I don’t know, really. Just a lot of songs kept coming out of me and they didn’t want to be split up. They didn’t want to be meshed together, they didn’t want to be left to the side, they wanted to both exist. And they both came out as two finished albums and I thought, “Well, that’s not a really good business model in the music world.” You put out an album and then release another one in a year or two later. And I thought, “Well, by the time that comes out, that second record, I might have already moved on to something else.” Which is the whole reason the pandemic was a little bit scary for me was that, “Well, we’re not going to be touring, then why make a record? And then if I’m going to get excited about this record, it’s not going to come out for a couple years and maybe I should just move over to something else.” And I did I really moved over to design and furniture. So by the time I got finally back in the studio, I think it was this floodgate opened and a lot of songs came out. So I thought, “It’s not a good business model, but I’m just going to do it. And I’m going to release both those records this year.”

Debbie:

You made both of these albums during the lockdown, during which time you initially played and recorded all of the instruments yourself. You said that the seclusion of the pandemic helped you reevaluate artistically, and you ended up pushing yourself into new areas you’re really proud of. Does that include the music, or is that really more or the design and the furniture building and a lot of the other things that you’re doing?

Jack:

Starts with free time, just haven’t had free time. And I think that was another thing I learned from Loretta Lynn was, she was very much on it. “Once you stop, they forget about you. And once you stop moving this train, the train comes to a complete screeching halt.” And she sacrificed a lot in her life with her own world and her own family and all that, trying to keep that train running. And I give her a lot of credit for it, that’s a hard decision to make. And that’s what happens with music especially, or if you’re an actor in films, like that.

Debbie:

I think any creative person.

Jack:

Yeah, and if you’re getting a lot of stuff happening and a lot of attention for it, you’re making big mistakes if you take too big of a break from it. So that absorbed, the idea was “Okay, well I want to do this, I want to direct short films and I want to design more things on furniture and interiors, et cetera. But I can’t stop this music train right now because if I do that, then I’m not going to be able to pay for any of these other ideas down the run, I won’t be able to afford to do it.” So you just keep that train moving, so that was the one nice thing about the pandemic for me in my own little world was that I had a lot of free time now to finally work on some of these other things.

Debbie:

Fear of the Dawn actually shows up in several different places on the album. It’s not just the name of the album, it’s also the name of a song. It’s also, you use the scientific word for another one of the songs, and I’m wondering if you can share that word with us, tell us why you decided to choose it, and then why… Do you have a fear of the dawn?

Jack:

You’re talking about the word eosophobia and that was the word I read in an article somewhere, and I wrote it down saying, “Oh, I’ve got to come back and read about whatever that is.” I do that a lot when I’m reading and I’ll just save them into a folder on my computer and go, “I’ll check on this later.” And that was something when I was working on a couple of songs, I saw that word pop up and I thought, “I don’t know what that is,” and I had to reread the definition of it, intense fear of the dawn. Which I thought, what a horrible thing to have an intense fear about, it’s going to happen.

Debbie:

There’s so many other things.

Jack:

It’s not like a fear of something that might happen or probably isn’t going to happen, that’s going to happen.

Debbie:

Every day.

Jack:

Yes, every day. So, what a horrible thing if that’s a true feeling. I don’t know if there’s people out there who really have this fear. It reminded me of something I’d read about people who don’t experience pain, who have the inability to experience pain and how dangerous their lives are. And I got more and more into an idea of how dangerous this idea would be about being fearful of the dawn or having anxiety attacks when the sun would come up. Then I didn’t realize, maybe to other people it was just a simpler concept, more of vampires. I didn’t even think of the vampire connotation of that until later, but I just got a lot of thought out of it, I guess.

Debbie:

It’s a great album. So inventive, so unusual, and really so crafty.

Jack:

Thank you. Thanks.

Debbie:

Let’s talk about Warstic. How did you meet Ben Jenkins and what made you decide back in 2016 to invest in a business designing and manufacturing baseball bats?

Jack:

That’s a great question. It’s interesting, I got really involved in baseball. I had gone through a divorce and I was going through a long lonely period that I was spending a lot of time by myself, and I ended up watching baseball games, Detroit Tigers games, for the first time since I was a teenager. So, that started then in 2013 area somewhere. But I’d seen these baseball bats in a design website that I was reading, and I saw these different colored bats and I remember thinking, “Oh, wow, what an obvious idea. Of course, baseball bats that you could get in any color you want, why haven’t they… What took so long for that to be a thing?” And then down the line, we were opening The Third Man records building with Shinola Watches together in the same building in Detroit.

Jack:

I co-bought the building with the owner, Tom Kartsotis of Shinola and they were doing a bat with Warstic, they were doing a Shinola baseball bat with Warstic. And I went into their shop and I was looking at stuff I said, “Oh cool, I know that company. I’ve read about those guys. That’s really cool that you’re doing that, Tom.” Then I came back to Nashville, what it was a few weeks later and somebody in the art department there said, “Hey, we have this idea about some ideas for new merchandise for the store.” Because we’re always trying to think of something interesting to turn people on, and somebody said, “Look at this, there’s this company doing… We could do these yellow, black and white bats. Third Man Records baseball bats, would that? Since you like baseball, Jack, would you be interested in that?” I said, “Oh my God, I am and I like that company, but I can’t do that because Shinola did that with them already, so we can’t have that.”

Jack:

These Warstic bats in both these stores right next to each other, it looks like we’re ripping off Shinola’s collab they did. So just tabled that. And then he had reached out, I think Ben would have to tell you what takes place next. I think that he might have reached out through Ian Kinsler who was a Detroit Tiger, who was now co-owner of Warstic that something about, I don’t know why my name came up, but I think Ian mentioned my name to him.

Debbie:

So Ben, how did it happen?

Ben:

I like to explain to people that I definitely would’ve never thought of it just out of the blue. What he doesn’t remember probably is that Third Man Records had reached out literally like, “Hey, would you make like a cool black and yellow Third Man bat with Warstic?” And I was like, “Yeah, we’d love to do that.” But I did go, “Hey by the way, who at Third Man knows about us?” Because I was just very curious.

Debbie:

Oh, of course.

Ben:

And the guy was like, “Oh, Jack found you on the internet.” And I was like, “Sick.” But, it’s funny thinking back that was enough for me. I actually felt for one of the first times in my life that, “Oh, I made some art that a really great artist thought was great art,” and maybe patted myself on the back a little bit and I thought that was it. When I met Ian a couple weeks later, that’s when it got weird which was, I mentioned that to him because he was exploring what Warstic was about and he said, “Why is it cool?” And I said, “I don’t know, it’s just cooler than other baseball bats which aren’t cool, these are cool.” And I said, “Jack White reached out and wanted to do something, no big deal.” And he goes, “Oh, I know Jack a little bit.” I joked, “Oh why don’t we reach out to Jack and see if he wants to be the big investor, wink, wink.” And he laughed, and then we looked at each other and we’re like, “Oh, why not?” And that’s very much all of our personalities, to just explore what’s happening and go for it. He emailed him and then we were in Nashville meeting the next week and it was very quick and natural.

Debbie:

So, before we talk about how you both worked together for and with this brand, I’d love to just go and talk a little bit about your background and how you even got to developing a baseball bat manufacturing and design company. Ben, you were raised in Texas where your mom encouraged your creativity, and your dad as a lawyer inspired your work ethic. And you’ve said that you grew up with a complete razor-sharp focus on two things, you loved playing sports and you loved being creative. How did you manage to do both at the same time? They seem to come from very different parts of the brain.

Ben:

Yeah they did, and in Texas you don’t do those things together in public either because you have two sets of very distinct friends as well. I was in bands with this set of friends and my jock friends, they didn’t know each other and I was this weird in between thing that I’d bounce back and forth. But you go play sports games, you can’t play sports all day, it’s tiring. And when I would go home very much at home, right? That’s what I did at home in my room, I would draw just like so many of us did. And I just would put the other thing down and do one or the other, and for some weird reason I loved to do both, but they never concurrently happened.

Debbie:

By the time you got to high school, you were playing football, baseball, track, and you also enrolled in architecture and art classes. At that point, what did you think you wanted to do professionally?

Ben:

100% architecture.

Debbie:

Oh really?

Ben:

Yes, because I think my dad, it’s not that he ever discouraged my art, but he’s a great businessman, he’s a great worker, he provides for his family and it’s like, “Okay, art, cool. But how are you going to provide for your family? A lot of people draw a line to architecture because it’s practical.” And I did love architecture, I loved building things with Legos and making things and things like that. So 100% I went to college on a baseball scholarship, but I made sure that that school had architecture until they kicked me out.

Debbie:

They kicked you out? Tell us about that.

Ben:

Two years into it, with architecture you have these intense afternoon studio classes. Well, that’s when also when you practice college baseball. I would petition the school and I would try to get classes moved, and it got to the point where the Dean was like, “Look, you’ve got to quite architecture or you’ve got to quit baseball,” and I was like, “Can’t quit baseball, I’m here to play baseball. I’m on a scholarship and I’ve got to do that.” And so it was really disturbing at the time because I was like, “This is…” I thought I had it all figured out, I’m a baseball player, I’m an architect. I’m going to just do both until one tells me to do the other, I guess, was my plan. But what happened instead was I was forced to pick a different major. The only thing I could think of that it was even relatable was to go to the art school.

Ben:

And I was very much for a year just painting and drawing. I didn’t even know what design was, and a painting teacher that I’m still great friends with to this day who I owe everything to, his name is Brent [Vanderberg 00:39:22]. Great painter himself, gently took me aside and said, “Look, you’re a good painter for sure. But I’ve seen you work and you have this crazy obsessive compulsive habit of you care about composition and moving things around more than you do the brushstrokes.” He dragged me into the design studio and introduced me to Jamie [Mixon 00:39:40], my other important professor in my life. And I was like, “No way man, I’m painting. I’m a fine artist. I am not doing this computer stuff.” And this was back when the computer was just emerging for graphic designers. But man, I hit that command Z and boy did my brain love that function of being able to try some things three steps forward and then go three steps back. And I was hooked probably within a couple of hours.

Debbie:

Yeah, you can’t do that in upholstery, but you can do that on a computer.

Ben:

But I felt stupid because I was like, “Oh he’s so right.” This is what I love about this stuff was finding that composition until things felt right. And I’m naturally just, I’m a perfectionist, like I’m sure a lot of designers are. It’s the worst thing you could ever be in baseball. There’s so much failure in baseball, if you’re a perfectionist you drive yourself insane which I was very good at. The mentality of design actually much more naturally fits me than what you need to do in baseball, and so that even shook out.

Debbie:

Well, you graduated from Mississippi State University with a degree in architecture, but went straight to the minor leagues to play for the Martinsville Phillies during the 1996 season when you were 22. So, how did that all work? How did that happen?

Ben:

I just went. Baseball was my identity, I think my identity as a child was very much still first sports, that was my public persona. I was thought of as like, “Oh, it’s the quarterback and that’s the jock.” I’m a nice guy, but no one really knew about my art except maybe my band mates, but no one came to see us play so no one knew about it, so baseball always came first. So I did well enough in college to get a pro offer, and I went and did that for a while. But like I said, my perfectionist mentality did not really allow my true athletic ability to come out. So eventually they just say, “Hey, sorry, this isn’t what you’re doing, you’re cut,” and I got cut. So for the first time… I got cut one time in my life when I was, I think I was 23, almost 24. And I had sports every day of my life until that day, and it’s like, “Boom, you’re done,” and it was disturbing.

Debbie:

Well, you’ve written about and talked about how you went through a depression after that.

Ben:

Oh absolutely, because my identity was, it was just not available to me anymore. The goal was no longer they’re available to pursue anymore. And it was one or two things, either really force it which a lot of guys do and they end up playing until they’re 30 and not developing anything else. I did have enough common sense to go, “Hey, I have this other thing I love, and I’m lucky that I have it. I should go put all this energy now into that one thing.” And that’s what I did and I wasn’t a good designer at that point at all, I had barely really dabbled in it. So I just got out one of those US News and World reports and started looking at design schools and, “Hey, this was probably one of it.” And I applied to like the 10 best ones, and I got into The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. And I just said, “I guess I better go,” and so I went. And so I went directly from baseball to that, but the baseball took two or three years to get out of my system enough to just fully function and not worry about it.

Debbie:

Well, there’s so many things to talk about regarding this. There is one really important thing which is, you went after a dream.

Ben:

Yeah.

Debbie:

And so many people are afraid to do that because they’re afraid of failure and then spend the rest of their lives wondering what if they had pursued that dream?

Ben:

Yeah. Really getting cut actually is probably really good because it was very like, “Hey.” It was very, “You’re cut. You’re fired, you’re cut.”

Debbie:

Bye, bye.

Ben:

You shouldn’t be doing this.

Debbie:

It’s so hard. Oh my God.

Ben:

It’s like, “You gave it a shot.” Getting turned away, I think that helped me flip the switch on everything else. And creativity was the thing, and I put all that competitive nature, unfortunately for many clients, probably into that one firm versus another and things like that. For 10 years I grinded on competing, OneFastBuffalo, my design and branding firm, against other people. I had that competitive nature and it served me hugely well, I was not afraid to work. If anything, some of my design teachers even would say, “Hey, this kid right here, he’s going to outwork you guys.”

Debbie:

So interesting. Michael Bierut talks about the same thing that it’s really his work ethic that has propelled him into the stratosphere. And that he’s just worked so hard he has more, and you’re going to love this, at bats.

Ben:

Yeah, time in the water I say with surfers, and there’s so many things, the 10,000 hours, whatever you want. I think I spent from age then 25 to 35 getting good at it, and understanding that that was okay. And that I enjoyed the process of getting better.

Debbie:

Sports is such a black and white De Stijl equation in that there’s a winner and a loser. Well, the interesting thing about sports that I try to imbue when I’m teaching my students is how often you do fail in sports, even when you’re winning. And so you have somebody like Babe Ruth who was successful 60% of the time, he had one of the greatest batting averages of all time. But that also meant he was unsuccessful 40% of the time. Same thing with Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan was able to shoot 35% of the time the ball into the basket. That meant 65% of the time he was unsuccessful.

Ben:

Yeah. So design was easy. Honestly, comparatively, it’s more like Babe Ruth succeeded 30 to 40% of the time and failed 70% of the time.

Debbie:

Oh, I got that.

Ben:

It’s actually even worse.

Debbie:

Even better, right?

Ben:

It’s three out of 10 times success in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Debbie:

Right?

Ben:

Yeah. When you fail, what you have to do is see it as an open door to something else that you need to learn, you need to see failure as something that you need to learn. And if you can do that and have that mindset, every time you fail you’re going to get better, or you can just quit. So there was no quit in me. Once I got into design, it was like, there was absolutely no way I was going to give up on whatever the goal was I wasn’t sure, but I just wanted to do it. And I wanted to get one project and do good so I can get a better project so that I can get a better project, and I just focused on one project after the other until I felt like, “Oh, these are the kind of projects that I’ve always wanted,” because the first ones were obviously bad.

Debbie:

Well, I think they mostly are for everyone?

Ben:

Yeah.

Debbie:

While you were in grad school, you went to an Indian reservation in South Dakota as part of a film project. And this is when you first encountered buffaloes. In my research, I learned that buffalo are surprisingly fast, I had no idea. In fact, they’re as fast as horses. So talk about your intrigue around the buffalo and how that impacted you at that time?

Ben:

Just the physical nature of them, and as a designer just the shape of them alone probably first was like, “Damn, that’s just badass. Look at that thing.” But then learning about, probably specifically back then, the Sioux people about the uses of the buffalo and then how every part was used, and it was used for food, water, clothing, shelter, all these things. And then I ran across… When I first started freelancing, I just called myself something really bad like Ben Jenkins Productions, Inc. Probably the worst name I’ve ever-

Debbie:

BJPI.

Ben:

Oh yeah, there was a BJ logo, all that. It was bad and I did that for about a year. And then I thought, “You know, I probably should name this something cooler,” or something like that. And at that time, probably didn’t even understand the concept of what branding was. But my first branding project was to name myself something bigger than myself and I had the sense that I wanted it to mean something to me and maybe be a little mysterious and people not understand it and stuff. And I’d read a story that… I love the survival story of buffalo that we got down to one herd through us killing buffalo to basically essentially wipe out native people, we killed all the buffalo. And we got down to a really small herd. And how fascinating is it that one herd though survived and today it’s come back.

Ben:

And I just, I always love the underdog story. That’s just natural to my personality. And so, just like we do, I’m scratching on paper and this thing OneFastBuffalo comes out. And then I realized later I was like, “Oh, I think this is branding.” And the process of doing that part, I love the logo part of this, but that process of naming was fascinating to me and fun, and doing it from a place that had meaning to me or the client. And that’s when I started graphic design, cool, but branding is this useful thing. It’s used for something, and getting into the meaning and what you’re to designing and then flipping it to say, “Hey, I can’t really write well, or even spell.” People that know me know for God’s sakes I can’t even read what I’m writing in a text, I can’t spell, but I strangely design out of words. I love to grind and write until I find the words that then narrow down the word that tell me, “Hey, this is where you should be playing with this.” And that’s strange to me to think because I’m just not a word person, but I actually start all designed with writing.

Debbie:

What made you decide to go straight into creating your own agency as opposed to working for someone else first and apprenticing?

Ben:

Well Debbie, no one would hire me.

Debbie:

Why?

Ben:

I don’t know. I came home from grad school and part of it was, I did so many things. I was like, “Oh, I’m an animator, I’m a filmmaker. I do graphic design.” I did too many things which I’d loved doing, and no one could say, “Oh, we could hire this guy as a web designer. We could hire the…” Probably that was it, but I could not get a job. I tried for about five, six months back in Texas. And literally just out of necessity, I convinced probably some family friends to give me some really bad design projects and I made a little dough, 200 bucks. But I loved that transaction. I was like, “Ah.” It took about three little things like that and I just had the confidence to say, “Hey, you know what? I think I can do this.”

Debbie:

You practice what you call the art of brand manufacturing. Can you share more about what that is and how you go about doing it?

Ben:

Oh man, I liked the word manufacturing because I liked the idea of building something. I loved graphic design, but I loved more the idea of building something that would become a living, breathing thing. The 2D nature of that is one aspect of that identity. There’s the… So the name, the identity, all that stuff. But then beyond that, how does it talk? How does it walk? What are the rituals that it has? So really helping for a long time at OFB what I focused on with clients and my business partner, Christine Edgington, who’s amazing and a brand strategist, and now the president of Warstic, ironically. We would pitch to companies that we could help you build what you are not able to get out of your brain to a point where then you can take it and then go run it, and of course then do the really hard part. But it takes something that didn’t exist before and now it exists and now we can call it this. I’m fascinated still by that.

Debbie:

Right? Same.

Ben:

I’m still obsessed with that. Creating the identity. It’s just, I don’t know, there’s something about it.

Debbie:

It’s bringing something to life.

Ben:

Yeah.

Debbie:

It’s interesting though. People always ask me how I define branding and I say, I believe it’s meaning manufacture. And so I’m attracted to that word too, that something about that construction that I find so rich and intriguing.

Ben:

I just love complex systems and then trying to, like Jack said, trying to take complexity and things that don’t seemingly work together naturally, and finding where they do work together and simplifying them down and to then a new thing that then can exist on its own. And because at this point we have so many brands, for God’s sakes. We’ve almost got to put two or three things together now and then make them a new thing, right?

Debbie:

Yes, absolutely. You’ve stated that OneFastBuffalo as it stands today more than ever, is an independent singular underestimated built for survival creative force focused on the relentless search for clear vision. Why do you think you’re underestimated?

Ben:

I don’t know because I don’t think we play in the design world. We’re not in the magazines, we’re not in the-

Debbie:

But you could be, Ben.

Ben:

Well, I know. And it wasn’t that I was like, “Oh, I don’t want awards.” It just never really occurred to me because I was too competitively focused on getting the next client to give me the cool project to express for them what we could do, and we just ran under the radar like that. I like being underestimated. I think it’s the fun of life honestly, is to come out of nowhere and go, “Wow, look what they did.” Being the underdog fuels me, to be honest with you.

Debbie:

Well, that’s certainly a big part of the Warstic brand.

Ben:

It’s probably all built on that concept.

Debbie:

And it’s so interesting because that hunt and being the underdog and hunting for being better than maybe what you are, why did you find that to be something that you wanted to be so much a significant part of what the brand stands for?

Ben:

I think it goes back to my years of working with client and realizing the brands that worked were the… There was a lot of guys and girls that came to us and say, “Hey, we got this great business idea. It’s going to make a lot of money,” but they weren’t passionately individually personally connected to that idea. And the ones that were passionately connected to their business ideas were the ones that got through that first three, four years grind to actually make it succeed. Because no matter what, how good of an idea, it’s three, four years of just horrible grinding on it. So I knew when I started something like Warstic or started getting the idea that I should do my own brands as mostly an outlet to not doing client work, that it should be something I really cared about, right?

Ben:

So, my first inclination was, “Hey, baseball’s boring looking. I think I can bring a more exciting aesthetic to it.” But as a branding person, I know it needs to have meaning to people, and so I went to that underdog. What we tell parents is that we’re hoping that the kids that use Warstic, and we’ve seen this really come to fruition as there’s kids that just don’t believe in their ability, and they’re very shy and they just, they haven’t come out of that shell yet. Our tagline is literally, it’s not the weapon, it’s the warrior, which is crazy. I’m selling you a bat and I’m telling you, it’s not the bat that’s going to make you better, it’s you.

Debbie:

It’s the person.

Ben:

And I’m super proud of that because we have so many kids over the last however many years this has been, that actually has happened. And the reality is those kids are probably not going to play in the Major Leagues, but to see kids blossom and to have more confidence, confidence is a great gift to any kid. And you can do so much more after that.

Debbie:

In a sport where the brands have been around for centuries, what made you decide to pick baseball bats?

Ben:

Well, it was a world I knew and I knew the lingo. I could say, “Hey, I could hit [Alina 00:54:10].” These things that normal people in the street don’t know, but us baseball players in the deck out know. So I was well one, I know the lingo. I know the world, I know how the players think about their equipment. So that’s a good place to start any business, it’s a niche. Someone had brought it up to me as a client idea, some guy called me one time and said, “Hey, I want to do a baseball bat business.” And he is like, “How much does it cost to brand?” And I was like, “Well, I’m good at this, it costs XYZ.” And he’s like, “Oh, I can’t afford that,” hung up. I don’t know if that guy was real or some kind of angel or some weird thing, but that is the first time I thought, “Baseball bats are a really simple thing, I bet I could figure that out.” And I spent 500 bucks getting them done, there’s a lot to it but I designed the website myself, I designed the brand in three… I did the whole thing in three months and I launched it.

Debbie:

The Warstic logo is a simple two line symbol you’ve deemed war stripes. So, talk about your design aesthetic.

Ben:

Oh boy. When I was in my 20’s it was just way too much, was my design aesthetic, so much. And this logo’s probably the best example of the opposite idea, more the Eastern idea of taking things away until only what needs to exist can exist. Or the idea that I use the least amount of pixels and create the most amount of impact. Most baseball bats, they put their brand name on the front of the baseball bat.

Debbie:

You put it on the back.

Ben:

Say [Jenkins’s 00:55:34] baseball bats or whatever, you put it on the front because that’s the billboard and everybody wants to see it. And I was like, “Well, you know what? That doesn’t look cool though.” And when I’m staring at a hundred mile fastball that might hit me in the head and kill me, I like to look at something that actually helps me calm down in that moment and not freak out, and seeing your name on the baseball bat isn’t going to help me do that. So I thought, “Well, let’s put the name on the back like a great piece of…” A modern piece of furniture, the designers is not sticking it on the front and ruin it, he puts it on a cool label on the back. So it actually said Warstic on the back, and the line started as just a feeling, literally a décor on the bat that to me would be calming.

Debbie:

So it’s like a focusing mechanism?

Ben:

Actually, we teach kids now that is a focusing method. We have a breathing technique where they go, they count down from one to 10, going up one line and then back the other. So we do pitch it as a focusing tool, but we teach kids and it’s amazing what kids pick up. Six-year-olds going, “Hey, what’s the logo mean?” “Well, the left side means the past and the right side means the future. And it’s all about staying in between the lines, being in the moment.” So it tears me up it because it… I can super plan it like that, but that’s real to kids. It is, and I understand-

Debbie:

And you’re helping them become who they are.

Ben:

Yeah, and I understand how hard it is to be in the batters box. But then to see kids go through much more traumatic things than I ever had to go through where there’s native kids we work with or something like that. But they get that it extends beyond stupid sport of baseball. So it’s the dumbest, simplest logo I’ve ever designed that just had the most meaning. And it’s just so cool to see it permeate kids’ lives like that. So it’s super cool.

Debbie:

You have a Warstic creed where you outline how there is an ongoing conversation happening at Warstic with your tribe about helping future generations of stick warriors connect mind and heart with mechanics. So it seems like while you’re selling sports equipment, you’re also really helping to train young minds to be able to use sports to become stronger as people.

Ben:

Absolutely. And that goes back to me being a bad baseball player and realizing that. On paper, I actually did have the physical abilities. I was super fast, I was strong. I could hit the ball a long way. I could throw the ball like a rocket. I had all these physical abilities, but my brain did not let those things work often enough because of perfectionism, because of lack of belief in my own self for, I don’t even know what reason. And I’m very aware of that. Once I finished playing, I really looked back and go, “Oh.” And knowing Major League players now, I clearly see the difference. It’s not the physical, especially in baseball, it’s the mental, that’s the warrior. A warrior is not so much, “Oh a big guy with a spear and he can kill you,” and this and that. It’s the mentality of a warrior that… I’m the biggest Karate Kid fan ever. I grew up in the ’80s, man. Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi, he didn’t teach the kid how to do all these techniques, he built self-confidence in this kid to do incredible things.

Debbie:

Yeah, he taught him how to think.

Ben:

Taught him how to think, right? So, I don’t know, that just felt like what it… I basically said, “Well, I’ll make this brand out of my weakness.”

Debbie:

In 2016, Warstic bats were approved for use in Major League baseball. How did you make that happen?

Ben:

I acquired two business partners at the same time. Jack White and Ian Kinsler. So I’m from Texas and everybody knows who Ian is. He’s a Texas Rangers Hall of Famer, this kind of thing.

Debbie:

How did you approach him? Because you approached him before Jack.

Ben:

Strangely enough, I had remained friends with the drummer of my high school band. And he’s a good businessman today and I said, “Hey man, I think I need to take this Warstic project seriously and make it a real company, but I’m going to need funds to do that. And I’m going to need partners.” And in brainstorming with him one day he said, “Oh, I know some pro athletes, would you want to meet Ian Kinsler?” And I was like, “Oh, why not?” So, how weird is it that my high school drummer introduced me to Ian Kinsler, who introduced me to Jack White? It’s just very strange.

Debbie:

And for my design listeners that might not be following baseball-

Ben:

Maybe not.

Debbie:

Ian Kinsler is the four-time Major League Baseball All Star and Texas Rangers great. So, he’s a big deal.

Ben:

Oh, he’s a big deal, and then played for the Tigers and stuff, so he’s one of the best second basemen that’s ever played the game. And he just looked at it in the same way that Jack said and said, “Hey, we need this in baseball. We don’t have cool stuff like this. We don’t have enough. We have these same old choices,” right?

Debbie:

Yeah.

Ben:

He goes, “I feel this. I can feel the energy from it. I relate to it.” So he then took that bat into the Major Leagues and risked his own reputation and proceeded by the way, to have one of his best years ever, which was scary. But he did it, and he proved it, and that’s his thing.

Debbie:

Do you think the bat had something to do with it?

Ben:

I think it actually, he was getting a little older at that point. And I do think it put a little new energy into him and he, Ian takes it into the highest level of baseball that you can possibly be and hits 28 home runs with it. And all of a sudden we’re like, “Oh, now we have both. We have performance, and Ian represents that, and we have creativity and Jack represents that.” And I tell them that’s why they’re the business partners. They represent the two halves of what Warstic is about, which would be just really great design and creativity and doing whatever we want, but paired with the highest level of performance. And that’s also, that’s the threshold that I wanted to cross was, I didn’t want to make toy bats or just things that you put on your wall or something like that. Uh-huh (negative), I want to make things you use in real life that happen to look beautiful.

Debbie:

Despite 300% year over year growth in 2021, Warstic operates with an estimated consumer awareness of about 20% in the baseball and softball markets. And as I mentioned, you’re really up against century old crusty brands, but you’re growing every year and your president Christine Edgington, as you mentioned, has stated that, “You know you’re ruffling feathers and you’re not letting up.” How are you ruffling feathers?

Ben:

Well, us designers know, I think we have weapons at our disposal that non-creative people don’t have. And those baseball bat brands don’t have those weapons. So, it’s just our creativity and our ability to express things in a more human way and exciting way than the other brands because branding 101, man, you can take, let’s say the biggest eight brands that have existed for 40 to 80 years, and you put them on the same bucket. You could throw any one name and the names are interchangeable because they don’t represent or stand for anything. And the best thing you can do in branding is stand for something. The other brands’ heads are spinning because we have a story. We have a conversation that we can have beyond, “Oh, this bat’s made out of a P99 alloy.” It’s so boring, it’s so boring talking about bats.

Debbie:

You’ve evolved from exclusively making bats to making equipment for lacrosse, skateboarding, skiing, snowboarding, surfboards, fishing. How do you envision the brand growing and evolving over the next 10 years?

Ben:

It’s funny, because this is a constant branding conversation we have internally, Christine and I, is if we would’ve been named something else, maybe it couldn’t extend to these other things. But the reality is, think about the name Warstic, in it’s simplest form it probably means warrior’s stick. I took the K off to make it its own word, which is an old branding trick. I don’t know, I owned that word in that way.

Debbie:

I’m so glad that you took the K off-

Ben:

Oh, it would suck.

Debbie:

So many people put K’s in instead of-

Ben:

But it’s an old branding trick, but it singularized it. It created a new word. Well, that word has nothing to do with baseball if you think about it. So, you really look at the different sports, there’s golf, tennis, lacrosse, and stick becomes this thing. I surf a lot and I’d be like, “Hey bro, you got a new stick?” We actually say that’s, that’s a thing. So a lot of things can be sticks at the same time, and it gives us these new pallets to play with. So hunting arrows, pickleball paddles. It’s fun, and then it’s funny because the mentality part of it, the message of Warstic, it plays no matter what. You’re a hockey player? You better have grit, you better have [crosstalk 01:04:08]-

Debbie:

Hockey stick, yeah. Absolutely.

Ben:

In lacrosse. I think it plays, and so we have a plan over the next five, six years to slowly, carefully, very intuitively enter those sports.

Debbie:

So, who is the big decision maker in your collaboration? Oh, they’re both pointing at each other. Oh, listeners, they’re both pointing at the other.

Ben:

The day I met him to be honest, and he said, “Hey, I’d really love to invest with you,” and he’s held true to this. He said, “I’ll never step on your toes.” And I thought in my mind, “It’s totally fine, man. Step on my toes.” I had such admiration for him as an artist, whether it be music, whether it be design, whatever. I did not care, and that was a big deal for me too.

Debbie:

Yeah, you’re a trained designer.

Ben:

We designers have egos, we all do.

Debbie:

Yes we do.

Ben:

And so I knew I had a sense that this could be scary. I did Warstic to get a little bit away from clients and to not have someone tell me what to do, what they like, or “Hey, you like purple? I don’t. I don’t care.” That’s why I did it. I wanted that freedom to just make whatever I want, whether I’m bothered or not. So that moment was I… But I bought into that moment because I said, “Hey, this is a chance to work with someone that I would love to collaborate with, and it’ll be crazy and it’ll be scary.” And 99.9% of the time, it’s totally fine because he’s a gentleman and he just is, and he has respect for other people’s art. And so I have to do a lot of the heavy lifting just because it’s my daily job and he has 1,900 things going, but it’s just a process of getting it going and then truly showing him what we’re doing and going, “Hey, does this direction feel good to you? Yes or no?”

Ben:

And it’s a true collaboration in every sense of the word. And the weird thing about Jack and I is, we’re very different when it comes to design. He loves primary colors, I never use primary colors. I use very earth tone things, and things like that more nature type stuff, but there’s always this 40% of things that we design, we show each other, “Oh, look at this sick thing I saw.” There’s a space where we both like the same things, and so a lot of it is just making sure that we find those things, but it is a brand.

Debbie:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), and it is a company.

Ben:

And it is my job to say, “All brands should evolve over time, but I have to keep it within itself too. But how do we make this art keep evolving?” Like you said, keep the train rolling for the business.

Debbie:

Jack, you invested a million dollars into Warstic. The company has dramatically grown since that investment. How do you think about the return on investments? Are you more of a long view kind of person? Do you expect quarterly returns? Talk about-

Jack:

It’s very hard to find an abacus for your living room wall that has a million pegs on it, that was the hardest part, but I check it off every day whenever in the morning I have coffee, I slide one of those beads over. When you love an idea, you just immediately your investment, you wash your hands of it immediately and just think this is not about bean counting or whatever, and expecting to see a profit. My investment’s always been the same thing, that if I could combine something that I actually love and feel a bit of a passion for, then it’s interesting to me. So, it was real easy with Warstic because it had so much potential and it’s such an untapped market.

Debbie:

And you’ve evolved now from exclusively making bats to making equipment for lacrosse, skateboarding, skiing, snowboarding, surfboards, and even fishing. I have one last question for you both, your flagship store is located at the corner of Malcolm X Avenue and Main Street in Dallas, Texas. Is that address intentional?

Jack:

It was just an added blessing, it seemed like. We found the building and it was so perfect, and that was also the cross street we thought, “Wow, how incredible is that?” And that neighborhood of Deep Ellum had such a deep musical history too going back to the early blues days. And it’s nice to be part of that, to exemplify and bring a little bit of that corner back to life.

Debbie:

Well, congratulations on all of your success. I can’t wait to see how you grow this brand together.

Jack:

Thanks so much.

Ben:

Thanks, Debbie.

Debbie:

You can see more about Jack White’s new album on his website, jackwhiteiii.com, or his entire body of work at thirdmanrecords.com. You can see more of Ben Jenkins’ work at onefastbuffalo.com, and you can find out everything about Warstic on their website warstic.com. That’s spelled W-A-R-S-T-I-C. This is the 18th year, first time I’m saying that, we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Milman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

Recorded Voice:

Design matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. Interviews are usually recorded at the School of Visual Arts Master’s and Branding Program in New York city, the first and longest running branding program in the world. The editor in chief of Design Matters media is Emily Weiland.

The post Best of Design Matters: Jack White and Ben Jenkins appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Alan Dye: We knew that if we were going to make a watch, it better tell time really, really, really well. And what that really meant was we should really understand timekeeping. And the beauty of a digital watch is that you can have multiple faces.

Speaker 2: From the Ted Audio Collective. This is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. For 18 years, Debbie Millman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, Alan Dye talks about designing new products like Apple Vision Pro.

Alan Dye: Only Apple can make a product like this. When you put it on, what you see is your world.

Debbie Millman: Alan Dye doesn’t give many interviews. The last time I spoke with him on Design Matters was 16 years ago when he first started working as executive creative director at Apple, the company that has done perhaps more than any other to make design sexy, essential and highly coveted. Alan Dye is now the Vice President of Human Interface Design at Apple, and he’s worked on a range of projects from package design to the iPhone operating system, as well as the introduction of the Apple Watch. He’s also been intimately involved in Apple’s brand new spatial computer launch, Apple Vision Pro. I recently got a chance to experience this brand new invention and it was transcendent. We’re going to talk all about that as well as his creative path on today’s show. Alan Dye, welcome back to Design Matters.

[01:54]

Alan Dye: Oh my gosh, Debbie, thank you so much. It’s so amazing to be here.

Debbie Millman: It’s so great to have you.

Alan Dye: It really is.

Debbie Millman: So I want to start way back in the beginning, and I understand that when you were a little boy, you loved to draw letters. And as you learned to write your first name, it really bothered you that you could never get the capital L in Alan to fit well with the second capital A in Alan. And I was really trying to envision this and I was wondering why was that so difficult?

[02:30]

Alan Dye: I think I had this innate understanding of letter spacing at the time.

Debbie Millman: Kerning.

Alan Dye: Kerning. And I was also a fairly obsessive little boy apparently. And I was kind of in love with drawing letter forms. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in love with design, I guess. I’ll be darned. The AL combination to the other A was just the toughest thing to make work. So sadly, it did bother me.

Debbie Millman: But at least you got through to the other side and accomplished doing it. When I was growing up, I had a real problem for whatever reason, writing the letter H. And my actual name is Deborah with an H at the end. And I had so many tantrums about being unable to do it that the solution was to actually call me Debbie instead of Deborah.

Alan Dye: Amazing.

Debbie Millman: At least you got through it.

Alan Dye: No, I think it was just a precursor of more obsessions to come, to be really honest with you. And I’ll tell you a funny story. My son, who’s now 14, he has this love of letter forms as well, and he has this word vertex that he draws over and over. And I said, why do you do that? And he goes, well, every letter form has these straight lines that I can make connect to one another. And it both freaked me out and warned my heart at the same time to see him doing that. Because it’s lovely when you see them have the same passions as you do, but maybe not so lovely when you can see they have the same obsessions. Yeah.

[04:00]

Debbie Millman: You were born in Buffalo, New York. Your father was a philosophy professor who put himself through school working as a photographer. He also taught world religions. Your mother was a junior high special ed teacher, and you stated that your parents were especially well equipped to raise creative people. And I’m wondering if you can talk about how they were so well equipped. What was it about them that raised two creative, really interesting men.

Alan Dye: I think first and foremost, I was just so lucky to have two parents that cared deeply about us as their children and our passions, what we were into. They recognized from an early age we were into making things. They themselves were into making things. My father had a wood shop in the basement. We had a small woodworking business kind of on the side. My mother drew calligraphy, so every year for her kids’ graduations, she would use calligraphy to draw their names on the diplomas. And so we were always around making. They also had a passion for art. And we were lucky enough to grow up in Buffalo, which has this great history of art. There’s a wonderful museum, there called the Albright Knox, and we’re pretty close to Toronto as well. And significant shows, we’d come up to Toronto, and we would always make an effort to go to them.

And so from a very early age, we were around art and artists and they really encouraged both of us to follow our passions. My brother’s a photographer, and then of course I studied design. And this is a time when there wasn’t a need to know what you were going to do when you were in high school or grammar school. It was just, what are you into? And I was so very lucky to have them as parents, as people who encouraged us to follow our passions regardless of where that led. And in both cases, it led to some really lovely things.

[05:57]

Debbie Millman: You mentioned that your father was a carpenter and had a woodworking shop. I understand his father also had one.

Alan Dye: That’s right.

Debbie Millman: Talk about some of your early memories working with him in his wood shop. I think you had a preponderance for making dioramas.

Alan Dye: I did. I think this started with, if I recall it correctly, there was a competition at some local library or something.

Debbie Millman: I think it was an aquarium.

Alan Dye: An aquarium. See, Debbie, how is it? I should be interviewing you about whatever it is that happened in my life because I think you know better than I do.

Debbie Millman: Yeah. It was an aquarium in Niagara Falls, I think.

Alan Dye: Yes.

Debbie Millman: Sources share.

Alan Dye: I do recall making a diorama about a dolphin, and we made the different layers of waves. True story, and it’s funny how these things stick in your head. The back of the diorama was a sheet of paper that I had drawn as the background, the sky and the clouds and maybe the mountains. And on the way I punched my hand through the diorama, the piece of paper. And of course it was heartbreaking. So I had to get some tape and that rip became lightning. So I don’t know what lemonade out of lemons kind of story that is, but I have a very fond memory of that episode.

[07:22]

Debbie Millman: I love that you were able to so quickly on your feet, come up with a reason for being for that tear. Now, this competition, your brother won first place, you came in second place.

Alan Dye: I can tell you caught up with my brother before this.

Debbie Millman: No, I swear I didn’t. I love Mark. I follow him on Instagram, but no, I did not reach out. He won first place. You won second. And I was wondering, was his that much better than yours

Alan Dye: It was. My brother is wildly creative. He’s really inspiring to me. He remains my best friend. We talk nearly every day. He’s a maker as well. I think we both had that gene. I have super fond memories of the two of us finding ourselves in that wood shop down in the basement just making things. And I think there’s this innate satisfaction that certain people have with starting with nothing and ending with something.

Debbie Millman: Looking back on it now, do you think that early woodworking influenced the approach you’ve taken to making the types of three dimensional objects you make now?

[08:29]

Alan Dye: I think for sure. I think one of the things, of course, I mean famously and my dad, there’s this famous quote, measure twice and cut once, we all know that quote. And I remember my dad talking about this, and it was very process driven. There was a series of steps you would take and there was a efficiency to the way you worked and to the way that you treated the product, because this is in finite supply. And so I think if anything, was that the most influential part of all of this for me was process. So thinking through what I had to do to get from the idea to the finished product. And so we think a lot about that. I mean, I’ve been very hopefully thoughtful about how we think about process as a really important part of the design, any design project.

Debbie Millman: Anytime you have to make a commitment to cutting something.

Alan Dye: That’s right.

Debbie Millman: Whether it’s a piece of wood. My mother was a seamstress and she really hammered that into me as well, because once you cut the fabric, that’s what you have to live with. You have to live with that decision. In high school, you had an avid interest in basketball, which makes sense given how tall you are. Did you ever think about becoming a professional athlete?

[09:43]

Alan Dye: Oh, I mean, of course. I was obsessed with basketball. I mean, I still sort of am for sure, and I think anybody who is dreams of those things, but I learned pretty quickly that probably wasn’t in the cards, which is okay. I still love basketball.

Debbie Millman: You’re still working on your jump shot.

Alan Dye: Still working on it. Still terrible. But yeah, it’s one of the ways that I turn my brain off, if that makes sense.

Debbie Millman: Absolutely. At that point in your education, you didn’t know anything about the discipline or craft of graphic design. At that point in my education, I didn’t either.

Alan Dye: No.

Debbie Millman: It wasn’t something that I think middle and high school students were really exposed to back in the eighties and nineties, certainly not in the seventies. But

you decided to go to Syracuse University to study painting and illustration. Did you also have hopes to potentially be a fine artist?

Alan Dye: I did. I’ll be honest with you, again, like you were saying, I don’t think I had a concept for what a graphic designer was.

Debbie Millman: Yeah, I didn’t even know that that existed. [10:32]

Alan Dye: Yeah. I mean, I went to a lovely high school, but I had to skip half my lunch to go to art class because it was like an elective. And we did do things that were graphic in nature for sure. But that terminology was foreign to me. And so I had a art portfolio. I was lucky enough to get into Syracuse, side note, great basketball program, probably half the reason why I wanted to go there, if I’m being really honest. And I got so lucky, Debbie, I got so lucky because during my freshman year, we were taking these foundation courses, and throughout the year, different professors would come in and talk about the different majors you could have, and you weren’t meant to really declare a major until your sophomore year. And the communication design professors came in one afternoon, and I truly remember this vividly as if it was yesterday, I could probably point to the seat in the auditorium where they gave a lecture on what communication design was and what graphic design is. And for me, I guess lightning is a theme of today’s discussion, but it was like a bolt of lightning. And I knew then, oh my gosh, this is what I’ve always dreamt of. And wow, you can make a career of this. And that became this amazing journey for me through Syracuse. And I was very lucky to have these amazing professors who pushed us. And I consider myself very, very lucky for that.

Debbie Millman: You’ve talked about one of your professors and mentors, Ken Hein, who helped you get what you’ve referred to as the creative out of your system. And I’m wondering how he did that.

[12:32]

Alan Dye: Well, the story that I recall vividly was as part of maybe our junior year course load. We had to obviously write a brief for our own projects. And one day during our critique, I had brought in all these designs for a logo. I don’t even recall what it was for.

And I was pretty ambitious at the time. And I filled the wall with all of my sketches and walked the class through them. And I looked at Ken, and Ken just looked at me and said, Alan, I am so glad you got all this bullshit out of your system.

Debbie Millman: It’s so awful.

Alan Dye: Now you can go off and make some good work. And Ken was a mentor of mine for me, and he was wonderful. I hope that doesn’t come off the wrong way.

Debbie Millman: Oh gosh. No.

Alan Dye: But it was such a lovely thing because it reminded me of the process. And for me, my process has always been, yeah, you have to iterate. You have to work through things. And that remains.

Debbie Millman: You’re of the age where your design curriculum included a lot of old school graphic design practices that are really no longer needed as a practicing designer. I know you were particularly good at cutting rubylith, as was I, a real skill that sadly we just don’t use anymore.

Alan Dye: We’re dating ourselves.

Debbie Millman: How do you feel now about that early training? Do you feel that those attributes or those skills were beneficial to the work that you still do?

[14:01]

Alan Dye: I think so. I guess I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I think the place think the most about it is, I guess image making. And what I mean by that is it’s easier now to access amazing imagery, maybe even amazing typefaces. When I was at school, we were very focused on the idea and the concept. The execution many times was pretty terrible. And what I mean by that is if we wanted to create a photograph for, I don’t know, a piece of packaging or something, well, we would come up with the idea for what that photograph ought to be, and then we would probably go find a photography student, go purchase the materials, set up the set, and create the image.

And that took a lot, but it also taught us a lot about process. It taught us a lot about ideas. Now I think it’s just a little bit easier to make things look great, to source that image. And so I think for me, I think the discipline that I came away with was, again, measure twice, cut once. But this notion of really focusing on some of the core ideas,

Debbie Millman: After graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in communications design, you had a number of job offers, one of which was as an entry level designer at Landor, one of the biggest, most prestigious brand consultancies in the world. And how does one go about getting a job at Landor immediately out of school, right out of the gate?

[15:32]

Alan Dye: Well, I’ll tell you one thing. I found my old portfolio recently, and I recall part of it was dragging this thing around the city. Speaking of dating ourselves, yes.

Debbie Millman: Those big foam leather plastics sheets.

Alan Dye: Yes. This was 400 pounds of plastic sheets, right? And it’s funny, I was looking at that work and I questioned myself, who would ever have hired me at the time?

Debbie Millman: Really?

Alan Dye: No, well, two things. One, there was a pedigree of folks from Syracuse who had worked at Landor. And secondly, I think they saw something, I mean, hopefully they saw something in that work and hopefully in me that suckered them into hiring me. Let’s put it that way.

Debbie Millman: One of the biggest projects you worked on at Landor was the redesign of the brand identity and the packaging for Molson beer. And I understand that it was really significant for a couple of reasons, mostly because you were able to describe what you actually did to your family.

Alan Dye: Yeah. [16:32]

Debbie Millman: It’s so interesting how people don’t always understand package design. I remember when I first started in it, I’d, I’d be sitting with my dad watching football, and a Pepsi commercial would come on and he’d like, you did that commercial, right? I’m like, no, dad. I worked on the design of the can. And he was so disappointed-

Alan Dye: That’s right.

Debbie Millman: …that it was so small.

Alan Dye: Yeah, I know.

Debbie Millman: And he was really hoping that it was like me that had gotten Britney Spears to do the dance.

Alan Dye: Yeah. No, it was a nice thing, especially because Buffalo is so close to Canada, and I think suddenly my friends and family sort of understood a little bit about what I did every day.

Debbie Millman: You said that one of the lessons you learned at Landor was this, if you show a client something you don’t believe in, they’re going to pick that piece. How did you learn that, and do you have any insight now looking back on it, why that is the truth always? If you show something to a client that you don’t like, they will love it. Why is that?

[17:32]

Alan Dye: Oh my gosh, Debbie, you probably know more about this than I do.

Debbie Millman: I’m always looking to get more sort of insight into it. What is it about the stars aligning a certain way?

Alan Dye: It does seem like that’s the case. I’d like to think, for me at least, that’s the rigor that we have to put behind the work because I don’t know, blame it on Murphy’s Law. I haven’t had clients in a long time, by the way, which is really quite nice.

Debbie Millman: Well, I would say that the whole world is kind of your client now.

Alan Dye: It’s true, it’s a big responsibility, but we hold ourselves to really high standards. I guess the way I think about it is if you don’t feel comfortable putting something up on the wall, then you probably ought not do that.

Debbie Millman: You left Landor for a job as a design director at Ogilvy Mather’s Brand Integration Group, or Big, which was founded and being run by Brian Collins. What made you decide to do that?

[18:26]

Alan Dye: Well, a bunch of things. One, Brian was this interesting kind of vibrant, creative leader who was pulling together a group of really interesting creative folks. I mean, it was a very special time within that group. Michael Lee and Kay was there, and David Israel and Barbara Klauber, some really amazing creatives that I knew that I could learn from, and of course, Brian as well. And the really cool thing was that it was the first sort of design group embedded within an agency. So it was also an opportunity to be part of this kind of experiment. And so I had an opportunity not only to learn from my colleagues there, but also to learn what it’s like to work at a larger agency like Ogilvy on those bigger clients and be integrated with things like ad campaigns.

Debbie Millman: Brian’s was one of the first groups that really was integrated into an agency, which we see a lot more now, more than ever.

Alan Dye: That’s right.

Debbie Millman: What was the biggest or most important thing you learned from Brian?

[19:28]

Alan Dye: Gosh, Brian. I learned so much from Brian. I think Brian’s reverence for the history of design and really paying close attention to where we’ve been, to know where we want to take the future of design is probably the thing I hold the closest.

Debbie Millman: One of the things that I find so fascinating about Brian is his eye. And how he seems to be able to spot the superstars before they’re superstars and sort of

helps them on the path to super stardom. Aside from his being a superstar, it’s such an incredible talent to have. Tibor Keleman had that also.

Alan Dye: Well, I don’t know if I’m at that level yet, but he certainly helped me along the way.

Debbie Millman: Wow. Yeah. So at this point, you were selected by Print Magazine as one of their new visual artists in the annual 20 under 30 issue. You also began working as an illustrator again for publications, including the New York Times and Wired. What inspired you to pick up the illustration moniker? Because I know that when you were at Syracuse, you felt really insecure that you didn’t think you were as good as the other illustrators and drafts people?

Alan Dye: Well, first of all, I was being offered these amazing opportunities to illustrate stories with REM at the New York Times or Brian Ray on the op-ed page, or Scott Dadich at Wired. And I learned that I could use, in many cases, typography to illustrate the things that were in my head using sort of graphic pun, stuff like that. I also love the immediacy of it.

Debbie Millman: In like two hours to do something for the New York Times when you’re working for the op-ed page, right?

[21:16]

Alan Dye: That’s right. So I would get a story in the morning, I read it, send over sketches by lunch, and then finals were due by 3:30 or four or something, and how exhilarating is that and how freeing is that? And you wake up the next morning and you’d see your work in print and then onto the next thing. It was really important work to me because it allowed me to exercise in that very immediate way. The process of making ideas, illustrating them, getting them down on paper, and then getting them out the door. And some were great, that I’m really proud of. Others, not so much, but that’s the lovely thing about it. In many cases, the daily nature of it.

Debbie Millman: We first met working together on the board of the New York chapter of AIGA, the Professional Association for Design. And at that point, you were leaving BIG to go work with Jack and Kate Spade to manage the overall brand aesthetic for both of those companies. And I believe this was your first in-house experience working directly on the client side. Was it very different from what you’d previously been exposed to?

Alan Dye: Yeah. I mean, it certainly was. And it’s a kind of funny thing now because going in house back then meant something very different.

Debbie Millman: Very different. [22:31]

Alan Dye: But I found it to be so appealing for a number of reasons. I mean, first of all, Katie and Andy Spade were amazing creative duo, and so obviously there was an appeal to go and learn from them. I think the other thing that was really appealing to me was up until that point, I was working at design agencies where we would care so deeply about the work that we were making. So maybe that was an identity program, a logo or packaging. But then once you saw that logo or that box out in the world, you understood that, oh, it’s defined so much by the context within which it lives. And if only I had the opportunity to design that store or that shelf or that sign out front or the website. If you could do all of those things, what would that mean? Also, I had a real fascination with and love for fashion, but the opportunity to go, I guess, in house and care so deeply about all of the things that make up a company or a brand, that was super appealing.

Debbie Millman: You also started to expand your capabilities beyond branding and advertising. You created films, a cool paper line. You published little art books made by the individual designers in the studio that you then sold in the stores. And for those, you said that there were no boundaries, no brief and no restraints. So it gave the designers a chance to be challenged. Was that a terrifying experience? A designer with no rules?

[24:08]

Alan Dye: Well, rules are helpful, but I think everyone had their own set of passions. Everyone deeply understood kind of the ethos of Kate Spade and of Jack Spade and the kind of sense of humor and the irreverence. So I think because we were careful about who was in the studio, everybody contributed all these amazing ideas.

Debbie Millman: That particular time in New York was a really special time in the sort of overarching New York design scene. It felt very much like the late eighties into the early nineties when the New York design scene was first really emerging and then sort of reemerged again. That was a very special time. And then after nearly three years working with Kate and Andy Spade in 2006, you surprised us all and were recruited to Apple. Tell us how that happened. Did you just sitting at your desk one day? Just pick up the phone. Hello, Alan Dye, we’d like to change your life.

Alan Dye: Well, I’ll tell you, we’ve got a couple minutes, right?

Debbie Millman: Yes, absolutely. [25:23]

Alan Dye: So there’s a few things here. First of all, I was very happily working at Kate and Jack Spade, with Kate and Andy. I do want to say it absolutely was a really special time in New York and at Kate Spade as well. I mean, we were making ads that didn’t have bags in them. We were making short films with directors that were about paper boys that had nothing to do with, it was a time of experimentation. And I think a time when we were actually having an influence on the world, and so many things that we did back then. I think that is, especially Andy and Katie were behind. The context is I was

really happy and loving in New York, and I was working with great people like yourself and Karen Goldberg, who was the president of the AIGA chapter when I was there, who again, I had all these unbelievable mentors and friends who were like family.

So I did got a phone call from Apple, and I recalled, and this still happens, by the way, when we call people, everyone thinks it’s a prank. So I had to do a little validation, but I started what became quite a long dialogue with the Apple design team. It was much more about getting to know one another and them getting to know me. And over the course of many months, I started to get a sense of what it might be like to design at Apple, to move out to California. But I had these reservations, and Debbie, this is where you come in.

Debbie Millman: Really?

Alan Dye: Yes. So I recall I was struggling with this decision. My wife, Bethy and I were wrestling with it because it was a big life change.

Debbie Millman: And she also had a huge job in New York.

Alan Dye: She had a big job here in publishing. And one night she’s out to dinner with some of her dear friends, Debbie Millman, Emily Oberman, I think maybe Barbara Darwildy.

Debbie Millman: Yeah, Barbara, [27:20]

Alan Dye: I don’t remember exactly who was there. She comes home from dinner and she’s like, you’ll never believe it. I finally told everybody that you have this job offer from Apple. And we had been struggling with this, Debbie, and she’s like, they all looked at me and said, what? Are you crazy? You have to go. And so when I think back to those times and all the deciding factors, this was a big part of it.

Debbie Millman: Wow.

Alan Dye: This is a big part of it. You played a big role.

Debbie Millman: That makes you me feel really, really happy. You were hired as an executive creative director, and I believe you initially were focusing on all things music. When I was looking at the dates now in hindsight, you started in 2006. Well, what happened in 2007? The iPhone was launched.

Alan Dye: Right.

Debbie Millman: Were you involved in that launch at all?

[25:07]

Alan Dye: Yeah. So that was a little part of it as well. They said there was these hints like, Hey, in case you need any convincing, we’re working on this product and we think you’re going to want to be a part of it. I mean, it was mostly you, Debbie, but there was this other little part of it.

Debbie Millman: Steve. Yeah. [28:28]

Alan Dye: There was this other part that said there’s this really exciting thing happening, and that was the iPhone. So I was originally brought out to really focus on marketing for iPod and iTunes, and then eventually took over marketing communications for the retail stores and the phone and all of our video works and brand communication, all of that. But without a doubt, it was a fire hose.

Debbie Millman: For those of us that remember, it really was a moment in time.

Alan Dye: It was.

Debbie Millman: That was before and then after. So talk about your attention to detail. How were you able to integrate the sort of elegance and finesse that you were doing in your branding work, in your design work, into an organization that had a very specific visual language, a very specific way of doing things? How did you integrate your own style into that?

[29:30]

Alan Dye: Well, it was interesting. I mean, I think in many ways it wasn’t about that, and that was something that I found a little bit of time. But there was this great liberty in not having to put your thumbprint on something, but rather to really focus on the story we’re trying to tell. And ultimately everything we do, and I learned this sort of day one, everything is in service of the product. The product is the story. There’s no sort of marketing on top of that. Of course, we tell stories that are really compelling about our products, but it starts with the product, if that makes sense.

Debbie Millman: Yeah. You had five years with Steve Jobs and worked with Johnny Ive until he left. What was it like working with these two men? Can you talk a little bit about what that dynamic was like?

[30:19]

Alan Dye: I can just speak in general and just say that I think that the thing that the most about is care and rigor and curiosity, a passion for design, a passion for products,

caring deeply, deeply, deeply about, I guess the user, the people that are going to experience them over all else. Design not being about a vaneer, but rather how something works. Obviously, Steve’s legacy is Apple. One of the great things we benefit from is all of the core principles and the ways of working and the respect for all the things I just spoke about is really what lives on to this day.

[31:03]

Debbie Millman: You were promoted to vice president of human interface design, I believe in 2012. What does human interface design actually mean?

Alan Dye: Great question.

Debbie Millman: Thank you.

Alan Dye: So human interface design at Apple is really, our team is responsible for designing how everyone interacts with our products, the experience of using an Apple product. And so we could call it interaction design. We like human interface because that’s really what it’s all about, is how people interact with Apple products. So of course, a big part of that is how our products look and how they feel, and maybe what’s on the screen. But again, we don’t think about it at that level first. In other words, of course we care about how things look, how the interface looks, but we really are mostly focused on what our products do, first and foremost, how they work. And so the most amazing part about what it is that we do is that we not only define how a product works, but also what a product is and what it ought to do. And that’s a really privileged position to be in.

Debbie Millman: Well, I was thinking about it and thinking about, I was doing a lot of research on what it means to be a human interface designer, so I could have a sort of fair conversation with you and know something about what I was talking about. And it kind of occurred to me that people interact with their devices, but their devices also interact with them. That relationship could be fraught as it sometimes is with me, as somebody who came to technology later in life, or it could be seamless and intuitive and easy. How do you account for the different ways that people interact with the design that you create?

[33:05]

Alan Dye: Well, first of all, I mean, we spend a lot of time using the products ourselves, and we think a lot about all the different users that will ultimately be using our products. We’re also very lucky in the sense that we’ve got a group of people who care very deeply about these experiences, many of whom have been with Apple for quite a long time. And so a lot of what we rely on besides hopefully our skills is intuition. And so we’ve learned a lot over time. We’ve learned a lot about people’s experiences. We’ve worked on these products for a number of years, and so I think we’ve gotten fairly good at starting to understand what people’s experiences might be with our products and knowing kind of how to design for that.

Debbie Millman: So when the app icons quiver, when you want to move them around the screen. That’s human interface.

[34:03]

Alan Dye: That is human interface. And this kind of might help to describe our team a bit more. It’s really all of the interactions you have with a product. So I’ll give you a few examples. You mentioned the icons moving, sort of jiggling to let you know that you can move them around. That’s very much a designed experience. We of course design all the icons. We design all the emoji, we design the typeface. That is our San Francisco typeface that we use in all of our interfaces, but we also design all of the animations, all of the sounds, all of the ways that products physically work together. So I’ll give you one example of something we’re really proud of that people don’t really think of in the same way that they think of maybe screen design, and that’s AirPods. We spent quite a number of years working on the AirPod project, which is essentially wireless AirPods.

And ultimately what is seen on the screen is actually, there’s not much to it, but we thought very deeply about what happens when you open up that case for the first time. What is the animated response that happens on the iPhone? How do people set it up? How do they pair? What happens when you first put it in your ear? Is there a sound that gets made to let you know that it’s connected? All of those small things that add up to an experience that hopefully doesn’t feel like a human interface designer was behind any of it. It just feels like, well, of course that’s the way it should be. How could it be done any other way? And yet a significant amount of work went into that. I mean, another good example I think is a few years back, we had this new technology that allowed for you to unlock your phone by scanning your face.

What that allowed for us to do from a physical form factor perspective is to remove the home button, because the home button at that point was serving as a means to unlock as well as to go home. So as a design team, we thought long and hard about, okay, well how do we replace this physical button, this button that people press hundreds of times a day? And it’s a muscle memory at this point. How do we replace that? So the team, of course, initially thought about things like a digital version of the home button. But we do what we try to do all the time and go back to core principles and think, okay, well, what would we do had we never had a home button? Well, I bet we wouldn’t want to waste that space, that valuable screen real estate with a digital button.

What if we came up with a gesture? And that’s how we iterated it for years to come up with this notion of a swipe gesture at the bottom of the phone to go home. And that’s, I think a good illustration of how we work as one studio. And I think this is what makes Apple very different. Human interface is part of one design studio at Apple. The other half is industrial design, and that’s the design of the physical products. And so we believe those two should be designed together, and that’s because we don’t know where one begins and the other ends.

Debbie Millman: I was going to say, how do you delineate? How do you delegate? [37:14]

Alan Dye: If you’re going to remove a button or add a button, well, why should you do that? What should it do? If you’re going to make a product, what is the experience of that product? What are the experiences that it provides? What does it do? And so we work as one studio.

Debbie Millman: So for example, with the little quivering apps, were there different ways in which you were signaling to people or that you were trying to signal to people that they could move these around? How do you determine what that ultimate design is going to be?

Alan Dye: So our design process is, I don’t think it’s very proprietary. I think it actually it resembles very much what my story about college.

Debbie Millman: Getting the bullshit out of the way.

Alan Dye: Sometimes we get it right early on, but most of the time I think the design process is an iterative one, and it needs to be. So we have a studio unlike any other, and we’ve got teams of designers caring so deeply about every one of these small details and iterating and sketching and trying new things out. That’s what ultimately leads to the final product. And usually we know it when we see it, and usually it takes a fair amount of iteration.

Debbie Millman: How much testing with people do you do, if at all? Alan Dye: It’s a complicated question. We don’t do any sort of- Debbie Millman: Consumer market research.

[38:40]

Alan Dye: No, not around the design work that we do. We do a lot of testing around what we call human factors. So we are working to understand how comfortable things are, things like that, things that are really important for us to understand and make decisions in a really informed way. But we’re certainly not asking people what shade of blue they like.

Debbie Millman: Good. I understand that the move from your being in the graphic design area to the human interface group resulted in your reimagination of the look of the mobile operating system, iOS 7 in 2013. What was that jump in disciplines and skills like for you?

[39:23]

Alan Dye: When Johnny and I took over design more holistically beyond just industrial design, but also software design, he had a really clear vision for where he wanted to take the software design, and that was to move away from the sort of more glossy 3D look and feel to something much more, I would say minimal. And so I had a great relationship with Johnny. It was a very ambitious project to redesign an entire operating system in short order. So I came over and joined what was an exceptional team that was already off and running on this. Yeah, I was very lucky to be part of an amazing team.

And it was very much trial by fire because along the way, while I think I was bringing my point of view and my craft and my kind of graphic design skills to this amazing team, I was also very quickly learning about interaction design, how applications are designed, how we think about user experience at Apple. In a lot of ways, it was trial by fire, and I still had my day job, which was kind of a-

Debbie Millman: Oh wow. So you’re doing both at the same time. [40:37]

Alan Dye: I was still doing the Marcom work for iPhone and the rest of it, but it was a really special time. And how lucky are we as designers that we get to learn, right?

Debbie Millman: Absolutely.

Alan Dye: And for me, this is a really steep learning curve, but it was an amazing time, and I learned a lot from that team.

Debbie Millman: I read that the seventh iteration of the iPhone’s operating system, iOS 7, was much more than a redesign of the smartphone and tablet software. It was an inflection point at Apple, and you and your team had to rethink every interaction, every animation, and every function. And this is for me as an interviewer, the million dollar question when I’m talking to creative people. How do you reimagine something that hasn’t been invented yet? Where does that magic come from? How do you get together in a group of people or by yourself and invent something?

Alan Dye: Yeah. I mean, I think for us, and it goes well beyond the work we did on iOS.

Debbie Millman: Oh yeah, we’re coming to some big ones. [41:53]

Alan Dye: I think we have some curiosity. And I think that’s something we look for a lot in the folks we work with, the folks in the team. And so we’re all very curious people about what the future might hold. And working at Apple, it’s great because we have a lot of curious people around us who help show us the way and introduce us to things, maybe new technologies, that might enable something interesting in the future. And so we have these at sometimes very vague sense of an idea or an ambition or maybe an

experience we hope to create. A lot of what drives us is to make products that become tools. I think we’re a group of creatives who make tools for other creative people, even if creativity is creating a spreadsheet. And so we have these vague ideas, and then I have to say that, there’s probably a better way, but for us, it’s a process of making and iterating.

And in the hardware side, it’s making models on our side, it’s making prototypes and sketching and that rigorous iterative process. And through that process, we always discover really interesting things. A lot of times we end up with something that goes nowhere. But the really funny thing about that process is oftentimes we put something down, and more often than not, we learn something maybe somewhere else in the studio on a completely different project that that study helped us with. That’s why we believe so much in this process of making and iterating and exploring.

Debbie Millman: It’s a portal almost. For me, for example, when the iPad came out, I thought it was great. I did some reading on it. Then I was in Berlin, I met Oliver Jeffers. Oliver Jeffers is like, Debbie, I want to show you my new book. Turns on his iPad and all of the illustrations are there. He created them on the iPad.

Alan Dye: Yeah. Amazing.

Debbie Millman: And I was like, what? Because anytime I would go on a trip, I’d bring all my art supplies and carry bags of things, and Oliver takes out his Apple pencil and starts showing me how he’s making this art. And then I’m like, my life has changed. I told Oliver, that moment changed my life because then suddenly I learned how to do something that I hadn’t learned how to do before. And that was well into my fifties, changed my life, changed the way I make art. Do you know that these things are going to happen, or do you just hope that they’re going to happen when you make these devices?

[44:40]

Alan Dye: Well, of course we hope they’re going to happen, but I think our job is to make products and make platforms. And we’re so lucky because we have this incredible community of developers who take them even further and bring their own ideas to the table. So we certainly hope so. And by the way, we’re better off for it. I’m so happy you discovered. We have Oliver to thank, because I have loved seeing your artwork and your books, and makes me so happy.

Debbie Millman: Everything is made now in this manner, which is fundamentally different. I was always hampered by the fact that everything took so many supplies.

Alan Dye: Well, we still have a love for the physical.

Debbie Millman: Absolutely.

Alan Dye: But at the time, we love it when hopefully technology gets out of the way. If we can make tools that help you express your art, I mean, for us, that’s the ultimate goal, and it’s a huge compliment.

Debbie Millman: Absolutely. So I understand that you still sketch quite a lot and a lot of what you created for the Apple Watch was done with your sketchbook.

[45:53]

Alan Dye: Yeah, I mean, again, for me it’s how I remember things. It’s how I know think is through drawing. So I am a pretty active sketcher, and the Apple Watch, it’s a project that’s really near and dear to my heart because it was the first product that we made from zero with this sort of newly formed human interface team, we really had an opportunity to create an interface and a product from the kind of onset. And this gets back to the nature of ideas. I think Johnny had a ton of conviction around this idea that computing would become a wearable thing. The wrist seems like a really natural place for that to be. He had some amazing ideas around what it could enable, but it was still vague. It was a vague thing. And we spent a number of years thinking through what should it do?

How should it do it? And I’ll tell you one really interesting thing was we knew that if we were going to make a watch, and this sounds so simple, but it was important to us, it better tell time really, really, really well. And so what that really meant was we should really understand timekeeping and all the ways you can keep time. And the beauty of a digital watch is that you can have multiple faces. So what if we deeply understood timekeeping, whether that’s through the sun or through hands on a clock? What are all the different ways we can understand timekeeping and express that digitally in a watch? And if we can do that really well, what are the rest of the things that we could do?

And of course, the watch had all this amazing technology that we could start to build from in terms of its capabilities, but such an amazing project to be a part of. And again, it’s an example of something that we continue to iterate on. I mean, we just made some amazing announcements about a redesign of the UI and a lot of the functionality. Nothing makes me happier than walking around and seeing it on people’s wrists as well as nothing makes me happier than knowing it’s doing good for people.

Debbie Millman: Well, I understand that one of the original intentions was to allow people to disconnect from their phone and not feel like they had to be tethered to it all the time. That important things could just come through the watch. Is that still an important aspect of the watch?

[48:14]

Alan Dye: I think so for sure. I mean, one of the great things about the watch, and I do this all the time, is you can grab your AirPods and your watch and be out in the world

experiencing the world and not really feel like you’re missing anything because you’re still connected.

Debbie Millman: Is it true that when you first started working on the watch, the first watch prototype was an iPhone rigged to someone’s wrist with Velcro?

Alan Dye: We do all sorts of things. Solutions early on are very, very inelegant. But yeah, we work a lot that way. We have very inventive people building prototypes and anything we can do to replicate that experience as quickly as possible is a really big part of our process.

[49:01]

Debbie Millman: So last week was the Worldwide Developers Conference, lot of big introductions and announcements. Definitely want to talk to you about the biggest one, but I want to ask you a couple of questions about the newest iPhone. I understand that the newest iPhone leverages something called transformer language model, which is improved predictions. And I might not get the pronunciation of his last name correctly, or as Craig Federighi, is that right?

Alan Dye: Yeah.

Debbie Millman: Federighi. Apples senior vice president of engineering said, when you just want to type a ducking word, it’ll learn. So what provoked you to take the language predictions in that way?

[49:51]

Alan Dye: Well, you’ve probably read a lot about large language models and generative AI. And I think this is just a good example of how Apple is using these new technologies in very useful ways. And in this case, it’s in auto correct, all of our favorite feature. And it’s quite amazing how much better it is now.

Debbie Millman: I found that it was just easier to type F apostrophe G, and then I got the word there, but didn’t have a-

Alan Dye: Like a good New Yorker.

[51:36]

Debbie Millman: So let’s talk about Apple Vision Pro. Apple Vision Pro was introduced to the world about a week ago. It is your first spatial computer. I’ve had the great fortune of having this new computer demoed. I’ve experienced it, but for our listeners, I was wondering if you can describe what a spatial computer actually is.

Alan Dye: Yeah. So Apple Vision Pro is, we’ve been interested in augmented reality for a long time. We’ve been shipping augmented reality for a long time. And spatial computing we think is the evolution of that. And that is bringing computing and digital experiences directly into your space. So this is very much not VR, we’re not taking you to some dystopian other place, isolated from the world around you. We’re actually allowing you to stay very much in your world, in your place, but bringing all of those digital experiences to you completely unbounded by a display. And then of course, as you felt, and I’m so glad you got in to see it, because you really have to see it, all controlled by somewhat magically by just your eyes and your hands.

Debbie Millman: Talk about the name. Most of Apple’s naming conventions have been very straightforward, the iPod, the iPhone. Tell me about the name, Apple Vision Pro.

Why pro by the way, and why vision? [53:13]

Alan Dye: Well, I think vision is a lovely name because it’s putting the digital world into your sight line, into your space. And vision is what this is all about. We don’t want to block your vision, we want to add to it. And so I think that’s how we got there. This is a full fledged computer. I mean, it is doing remarkable things in real time all the time. This is not a toy.

Debbie Millman: It’s game changer. This is a game changer. I mean, I experienced this yesterday. I felt like I went to another planet and came back, and now I have to try to describe what this future world looks like. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever encountered.

This headset that you are wearing, which is very easy and very light, it’s the the computer, that’s what it is. It allows you to view images and photos and movies with 23 million pixels. It’s also a computer with a web browsers and apps and programs that live in the air. They seem to just live in the air, integrate it into the rest of your life and world. It transforms the way you view movies.

It turns your environment into a personal movie theater with a screen that feels like it’s 100 feet wide. FaceTime on Apple Vision Pro unlocks new ways to connect and collaborate with who you’re talking to. You can see photos and videos in three dimension. It feels like you can re-experience memories, and it’s all controlled by the movement in your eyes and a tiny little tap of two fingers. How on earth did you make this? Just give me a little bit of insight, open the hood. Just give me a little bit of insight how you did this.

[55:06]

Alan Dye: Yeah. Well, first of all, this comes as the result of the most amazing teams of people across Apple. Only Apple could make a product like this. Some of the ideas were really hard to get to.

Debbie Millman: I would imagine.

Alan Dye: And maybe not even all that controversial. One of the big ideas we have is connection. Staying connected to your world, but then also connecting with those that aren’t with you. But then executing on that and doing that in a way that truly feels natural or bringing digital objects and content into your space in a way that it feels like it’s really there. And then allowing for you to interact with it. Just grab something and move it around just by looking at it and grabbing it.

Debbie Millman: Just by looking at it. Just by moving your eye from one little piece to another little piece, and it read your mind and tells you how to do that.

[56:03]

Alan Dye: I mean, this has been by far the most challenging design program we’ve ever had.

Debbie Millman: 5,000 patents.

Alan Dye: 5,000 patents. It’s incredible. I mean, everything in this product has been invented.

Debbie Millman: Why do we need this? Why do we need this product? What is it doing for the world?

[56:23]

Alan Dye: You mentioned it earlier, but the great thing is that it’s a computer. So the opportunities are limitless. The things you can do with it, I think people are going to use it for any number of, some people are going to be drawn to the entertainment. You talked about the a hundred foot screen. It is between the spatial audio and the display. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before in a theater or otherwise.

Debbie Millman: And it’s really hard to explain to someone that it’s unlike anything they’ve experienced, if there’s nothing to compare it to in terms of what they’ve experienced. And this was that sort of big question I was asking you before. How do you decide what big idea to pursue and to bring to life in a way that feels so important?

[57:14]

Alan Dye: Yeah, I mean, I think it comes back to core principles and the values we wanted to bring through in the product. I mentioned to you before, one of them was connection. So we worked really hard at allowing people to stay connected to the world that they’re in. That’s why this is very much an AR product. That’s why we worked so hard to make it such that when you put it on, what you see is your world.

Debbie Millman: And people see in and it just looks like you’re wearing goggles. It doesn’t cover your eyes.

[57:39]

Alan Dye: We created a user interface, our first user interface for the rest of the world. So a product that has a UI that is actually meant for those around you. So if I’m wearing them and you walk up to me, I can look up at you and you can see my eyes. I mean, this is a huge deal for us and took literally years of invention to come up with the EyeSight displays because we believe so fundamentally that you should not feel isolated. And so we spent a lot of time thinking about things like connection with those around you, but also connection with those that are in other places. And so obviously a lot of the work we were doing was during the time of COVID, and we were very obsessed with how do you bring people into your space digitally in a way that feels really authentic?

And I would see, for example, my kids, they would be having FaceTimes on their phones with their friends, but it wasn’t transactional. And what I mean by that is they might just have FaceTime open, sitting on their bed, facing up at the ceiling and they’re doing their work or what have you. But every once in a while they would check in with their group of friends on their group call. And I thought, that’s really interesting. And so we get a lot of that, but so much better when we can bring people in and be with them digitally and to have them sitting next to you.

And that the sound is so incredible because of what we’re doing with the digital ray tracing. It truly sounds like those people are sitting next to you in your space. So you’re asking, how do we get to some of these ideas? A big part of it’s like, what are those goals that we want this product to be able to meet for people. Another one was being able to relive moments in their lives in really meaningful ways. And so with this product, because we’re capturing a stereo image through two cameras that are eyes width apart, we’re able to capture video and photos in essentially 3D, and play them back to you in this product at life size.

[59:40]

Alan Dye: And when it’s your content, it’s quite profound and emotional and nostalgic. When we first started working on this and seeing some of this, it almost made a lot of us quite sad that we didn’t have this product when our children were younger or maybe when our parents were around. And so we’ve been so lucky this week we’ve been out here in New York sharing, we launched this last week and sharing it with some folks, and it’s been really great to hear people’s responses because they haven’t been the typical responses that you hear from folks interacting with technology. It’s been much more about people feeling an emotional response, a very human response, sort of buzzing with ideas for how they think they’re going to use it for their own creativity or their own experience. And that’s been really heartening to hear.

Debbie Millman: I’m really, really interested in seeing what people that might have certain disabilities that result in their not being able to use their arms or their legs are going to be able to do with this product because the immersive quality.

Alan Dye: That’s right.

Debbie Millman: For somebody that has locked in disease, for example.

Alan Dye: That’s right.

Debbie Millman: Only can use their eyes. I think it’s going to change the world for so many people that have restrictions that are things that they can’t control, and now can.

[1:01:20]

Alan Dye: We think about designing for accessibility in all of our products, and Apple has a great history of this, but we think about that from the very beginning. And this product is very much no different. We’ve known from the beginning that this can be a profoundly powerful product for everybody. And the idea that you can drive the

interface with just your eyes is a really big one. And so what do I mean by that? I guess right now the way that it works is your eyes almost act as a cursor.

When you look at buttons and things, they sort of glow and then you tap your fingers together to select, but we don’t even really need you to tap your fingers. And we have this feature called Dwell that you can turn on whereby you can just stare at a button and essentially we’ll bring up a little timer and you can look at the green check mark, if you will, and select the button. No need for any controllers or physical objects or even to be able to top your fingers together. So it’s going to be quite a powerful tool for everybody, and that makes us extremely proud.

[1:02:27]

Debbie Millman: Similar to the question that I had about how do you know how people are going to evolve and iterate the products you bring out? And the iPad was my example. In 2007 when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone, there were 11 apps at the top of the phone. I’ve been really looking at that photo a lot in the last 48 hours because one would’ve thought with his need for symmetry and elegance, they would be 12, not 11. Why were there three rows? Four, four, and three. So it was clearly asymmetrical, clearly uneven, that four at the bottom. And lots of folks speculated that this was space for what was to come, which was obviously the app store, which also changed the way we use our devices.

And yesterday when I was experiencing the Apple Vision Pro, I not only got the sense that I was experiencing this sort of mind blowing brand new innovation, I also got the sense that there was lots of room for more to come. And I know you can’t talk about future innovations, but will there be a way for third parties to integrate their own content into Apple Vision Pro? So I was like imagining, wow, maybe I can have my podcast and I can be in this room and then people could put the device on and see me talking to my guest. And not on YouTube, not in some goofy, ugly interface, but in this really elegant a hundred foot theater.

[1:04:02]

Alan Dye: Right. Well, I mean, think one of the reasons why we just introduced this last week at our developer’s conference. We got, I mean it’s crazy, 30 million developers out there. And one of the reasons why we introduced it when we did, because we want exactly that. We rely on our developers to come to the table, experience these amazing technologies, and then bring their own ideas to it. And so that’s a lot of what we’ve been doing in New York, talking to creative people and getting their… At the beginning of the conference, we had this video with the bubbles over developers’ heads, and we want to encourage that for this product and we’ll absolutely have.

Debbie Millman: We’ll talk about the podcast idea.

Alan Dye: Exactly.

Debbie Millman: Alan, I have two last questions for you. Oh, sure. I know you can’t talk about what you’re going to be working on in the Apple pipeline, but can you talk at all about what you’re working on right now?

[1:04:51]

Alan Dye: Sure. I mean.

Debbie Millman: That didn’t sound quite as enthusiastic as I’d hoped.

Alan Dye: No, we’re deep at work. Let’s just put it this way, we’re not done with yet with Apple Vision Pro. I mean, we’ve got lots to do there. We’re very much in the process of finishing that product as well as the rest of the software that we hope to ship later this year that we introduced last week. And then one of the most amazing things is, it’s worth spending a little bit of time on this team that we’ve got, because we’ve got the most amazing design studio full of the most curious and passionate and talented designers in the world. And I hope it’s not too much hubris there, but I really believe in it.

[1:05:42]

Debbie Millman: Oh, absolutely. And whether it’s Arem Duplessis or Bobby Martin or Jeff Close, I mean, I know so many people from the SVA community and the New York City community that have gone on and are doing amazing things.

Alan Dye: And it’s great because the studio itself is made up of all these different disciplines, and when we bring them all together with any sort of ambition or any sort of ideas, it’s pretty amazing what comes out of it. And I guess the crazy thing about being at Apple is without getting into specifics, I’m always so excited about what’s next. And there’s always something on the table. And I think you got a glimpse of this week with Vision Pro that makes you say, oh gosh, I can’t look at my display again. Now I see what the future might be like.

[1:06:35]

Debbie Millman: This is my last question for you today. Steve Jobs famously stated that some people say, give the customers what they want, but that’s not my approach. Steve believed that his job at Apple was to figure out what people are going to want before they even know they want it. What do you want people to think about when they think about Apple products in the future? What is the legacy of this company?

Alan Dye: Well, that’s a big question. I’m not even sure if I should be the one answering that, but I can certainly say, from my perspective, I hope they see that we’ve made products that inspire creativity, hopefully help people live a better day, hopefully make people, in some ways healthier, maybe inspire people to do great things like what you’ve

done with the iPad and the pencil, and hopefully make products that in some small way, bring people some joy. I think that’s a big part of it. We care deeply about this. And it’s a huge privilege to be in a position in some ways with this amazing team that we’ve got make products that find their way out into the world. So we take that really, really, really seriously.

Debbie Millman: Alan Dye. Thank you so much for joining me today on Design Matters. Thank you for making design matter in everything that you do. For more information about Alan’s work, you can simply go to apple.com. This is the 18th year we’ve been Podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we could make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

Speaker 2: Design Matters is produced for the Ted Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest running branding program in the world. The editor-in-chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.

The post Alan Dye appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

It’s not every kid who says to themselves, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a footwear designer.” Well, D’Wayne Edwards did. At 19 years old, he became the youngest professional footwear designer in the industry. More than 30 years later, he’s an award-winning, celebrated designer who has created over 500 styles of sneakers for the likes of Derek Jeter and Michael Jordan. He’s worked for many of the biggest brands, including Nike. Now, D’Wayne Edwards is also an educator. In 2010, he founded Pensole, the first academy in the country, specifically focused on the design of footwear and now, runs the HBCU Pensole Lewis College of Design and Business in Detroit, Michigan. D’Wayne Edwards, welcome to Design Matters.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Thank you very much. I’m very excited to be here and looking forward to the conversation.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you. Me too. I want to ask, is it true that you are from two cities of champions?

D’Wayne Edwards:

I am, believe it or not, two cities … from the city of Champions, twice 2200 miles apart from each other. One born in Joliet, Illinois and then raised in Inglewood, California. Both are city of champions.

Debbie Millman:

Your mom moved you and your five siblings by herself from Illinois to California. She moved you to Inglewood when you were three months old, and you’ve talked about how she thought she was moving you all to a better city because Joliet was pretty rough, but Inglewood was worse. In what way?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Well, I think the first part that was better was the weather. So I think she was looking at the weather first and then, just our environment that we were growing up in Joliet. Inglewood was different than Joliet. Inglewood is where really the rise of street gangs really started to become popular in the 70s and 80s. So, that was what she moved us into. She didn’t know, she was really just trying to create a better environment for us and California was going to do that for us.

Debbie Millman:

You and your two older brothers, Michael and Ronnie, were all born with a gift to draw, and your family knew about your talent because you drew all the time, but I read that you hid it from other people. Why were you keeping it a secret?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Well, I mean, at that point, growing up in a city like Inglewood, it wasn’t … drawing or being an artist wasn’t a cool thing that you did. So, I just kind of kept it to myself because I knew people wouldn’t necessarily understand, but that was my sanctuary. That was my opportunity to just disconnect and be creative. So I played sports, which I loved as well. That was also my sanctuary as well, but art was really the space where I was able to zone out and kind of really feel like myself.

Debbie Millman:

You drew your first sneaker when you were 11 years old, and you’ve written about how drawing sneakers then became your obsession. What kinds of sneakers were you drawing, were they original drawings of sneakers that you were imagining or were they realistic drawings of sneakers that already existed?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Initially, it was images of sneakers that currently existed. I just wanted to draw anything … I could draw, anything I could see. So, I started drawing sneakers that I wanted to buy myself, that I couldn’t. So, that became my hobby of really … and fascination really was drawing sneakers that I wanted and then, in high school, started imagining my versions of sneakers that were not available in stores. So if I got a chance to design a shoe for Nike or if I got a chance to design a shoe for Jordan, it would look like this.

Debbie Millman:

You also started buying your own sneakers and then, dying and customizing them so they’d be different from anyone else’s. What kind of designs were you making and do you still have any of those sneakers?

D’Wayne Edwards:

I wish I still had some of those things, but this was the 80s, this is the mid 80s, early 80s. My high school colors were green and white, and back in the 80s, sneakers didn’t come in green and white. They came in white, white-white, white-black, maybe white-silver. So I just wanted sneakers to match my basketball uniform. So I would go to a store that used to be called Builders Emporium. It was a precursor to Home Depot and go get my duct tape and X-Acto blades and then, I would go to the local shoe repair shop and get my green dye. Then, I would just tape up everything I did not want dyed. Dyed my shoes up and then, went to school and people were just freaking out because I had shoes they’d never seen before.

When you’re in high school, when you get that type of attention because of anything that you have on, you want to wear more of that thing, so that became my sneaker addiction. That was when it started, was when I was able to get people’s attention by having shoes that they never saw before.

Debbie Millman:

I read that when you were 12, you started to enter magazine competitions where you were asked to draw a turtle or a pirate. I remember doing that too when I was a kid. They were ads in the TV guide and so, I did a little bit of research to remind myself where they were advertising from. The ad was for art instruction schools, which is a Minneapolis based correspondence course. You mailed in your drawing and won a scholarship. When they found out you were 12, they stopped reviewing your submissions. I read that just winning gave you confidence and because I did this research, I found out that Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, also won a scholarship to go there, and he actually went. That’s where he continued to learn how to draw. He’s their most famous alum. So I guess those ads really worked. We both submitted and so did he.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah, yeah, that’s a good company to be in. That’s great. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

So Tippy, the Turtle was the name of the turtle that they asked you to draw. After drawing Tippy, you went on to drawing baseball and football cards, and I read that you first started drawing those types of cards because they always cut players off at the knees and you wanted to see their feet and their sneakers.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yup and my first time I saw the cleats were a 1981 Franco Harris football card and he was wearing pony cleats. It was just … for me, they were the biggest things on the card. So, that started my fascination with just trying to correctly draw the shape and proportion of your foot and cleats. That’s really the hardest part. It’s not so much the cosmetic visual, it’s the actual accuracy of the shape.

Debbie Millman:

Why is that so difficult?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Because the human foot is not the same shape any way you turn it. So it’s not symmetrical at all. So, you have to be very precise with every shape and every contour. It took me a few tries to get it right, but that was really my fascination with accuracy in trying to draw exactly what I saw instead of an interpretation of what I saw.

Debbie Millman:

So what were you doing with these cards? Were you showing them to people? Were you just saving them for yourself? Were you sharing them with your brothers?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Well, first of all, I stole them from my mom. So they were flash cards that she would use and recipe cards that she would use. So, I would just start to collect them and just have my own little stack of my own little portfolio, so to speak. All through high school, that was the same way I drew. I just drew on these three by five and Knicks cards on the … because one side had lines on it and the other side was clean and plain. So I would just draw on the clean side and then, on the backside I would date it and write my inspiration on the backside of it.

Debbie Millman:

Incredible. Please tell me you have these cards, please.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I don’t have one. I do not have one.

Debbie Millman:

D’Wayne, that just destroys me.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I wish I had them. I remember many times I was caught in math class, drawing shoes when I should have been doing work, and my seventh grade math teacher, Mrs. Weathers, she made a deal with me. She says, “Hey, if you do your homework on time or do your classwork on time, you could draw sneakers.” Whenever I didn’t do it, she would take the sneakers from me and keep them in her desk drawer, and many years after I graduated from high school, I went back to see her and she still had some of my sketches in her desk drawer.

Debbie Millman:

Good.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I mean we’re talking 10 years later and she would not give them to me. She made me sign them and she would not give me one of them. I begged her, which I was able to get one.

Debbie Millman:

Well, maybe you should reach out again or maybe at least she can take some photos of them for you. I know that when you were in school you tried to get a job at Foot Locker so you could get a discount, but they wouldn’t hire you. Instead, you got your first job at McDonald’s when you were 16 years old. Did you work all through high school?

D’Wayne Edwards:

All through high school?

Debbie Millman:

And I read that while you were still in school, you met with your guidance counselor after you decided you wanted to become a sneaker designer. You supremely excited at the time because you thought you figured out your life at 17 years old.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yup.

Debbie Millman:

Can you share it with my listeners what the guidance counselor told you?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah, it’s your senior year and you have to start taking things seriously, so you can graduate and move on to college. I knew I wasn’t going to attend college because I’m the youngest of six kids raised by a single parent, but I was like, “Hey, I can at least try to get into a college.” So I was really excited. The sneaker thing was going really well for me. I was customizing not only my own sneakers but my friend’s sneakers at school. So that became a little bit of a side hustle for me in high school. One day, I was like, “Hey, let me go talk to my counselor because her job is to help me figure out life after high school.” So I go and really excited because I’m clear on what I want to do.

I said, hey … her name is Ms. Wilson Jefferson. I said, “Hey, I would like to speak to you about the fact that I finally figured out what I want to do. I want to become a footwear designer.” She pauses and looks at me, dead straight in the face and says, “D’Wayne, no Black kid from Inglewood would ever become a footwear designer? What are you thinking? You need to come back and share with me something that’s more practical. Have you ever thought about joining the military or have you thought about continuing on at McDonald’s,” and I was deflated, disappointed. Her rationale and reasoning was partly getting out of the city alive, was a goal, right?

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

D’Wayne Edwards:

As a Black male, growing up in Inglewood in the 80s, getting to 18 and I’m still alive and not in jail is a success. Making it to 21 is almost a miracle. So, that was part of her message, but it wasn’t the type of guidance I was expecting.

Debbie Millman:

Shortly thereafter, you were looking at the want ads in the Los Angeles Times in an effort to get what you considered a more respectable job than the one at McDonald’s. At that point, were you thinking about going to college at all or was that just completely off the table?

D’Wayne Edwards:

No, it was off the table. One thing that Ms. Wilson Jefferson did for me though was she allowed me to create a thank you wall, of people who countless times told me I wasn’t going to do anything and I wasn’t going to be this or I wasn’t going to be that. I was literally at lunch, in my lunch break, at work, looking for another job, and there I saw the biggest ad I’ve ever seen in my life, even though it was the smallest ad you can place in the LA Times, and it was for a sneaker design competition that Reebok was hosting. Reebok at the time had an office in Santa Monica, California. They’re a Boston, Massachusetts based brand, but their entertainment office had a competition and I entered, it was basically … it was so small, it just had Reebok design competition and a phone number.

So I called the phone number to get the mailing address to send my actual submission. So I drew my versions of what Reebok should look like and about a month later, I get a phone call and they said, come meet us at the Reebok offices in Santa Monica. I show up, excited because they didn’t tell me if I won or lost, but I figured it was some good news. So, I go and catch the bus for an hour to Santa Monica and they were a little surprised that a 17-year old Black kid shows up and they were like, “Well, the good news is you are talented and you won our competition, but the bad news is you’re too young to work for us.” They said, “Come back and see us after you graduate from college.” That was deflating because I knew I wasn’t going to college.

So Reebok was also added to my thank you wall, because I was like, I legitimately won this competition and you discriminated against me because I’m young and Black and 17, and not understanding companies have rules and regulations, but I was just angry.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I was happy, disappointed, angry, all at the same time. I promised myself if I ever became a footwear designer, I would take it out on Reebok and make them regret that they passed on me at 17 years old.

Debbie Millman:

I’m sure they do now. You mentioned the thank you wall and the thank you wall is a collection of things that have both inspired you and also discouraged you.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

How has that sort of acknowledgement on the wall helped you understand both the encouragement as well as the obstacles?

D’Wayne Edwards:

I believe whenever you have people that tell you, you’re not going to do something or discourages you, you have two options, either you believe them or not. Then, you have the option of using it as fuel to prove them wrong or you can disappear in your own world. I chose to acknowledge it and I chose to use it as motivation because I wanted to prove something to those people that they shouldn’t talk to young kids like that. So, I developed a chip on my shoulder and I think when you have a chip one way or another, it makes you work harder and it makes you do things with more intent than you would have if someone didn’t necessarily do it, which is strange, right? You would think that you get all this support and encouragement, you’ll be more motivated to do it.

I had that on one side, but then I also had the negativity on the other side that outweighed the positivity because again, I’m in the 80s in Inglewood. I’m not seeing success that looks like me, so I’m not seeing the probability of me being successful or doing something. So I started to use the thank you wall as motivation because I wanted to get out of my surroundings and get out of my environment, and what really hit home was shortly after I turned 17, my brother Michael passed away in a car accident.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

D’Wayne Edwards:

So, when I saw him pass away and his gift, he never got a chance to really fulfill using the gift that he was born with. That really also woke me up as well, where I wanted to start taking life a bit more seriously because that was the awakening that it wasn’t … tomorrow wasn’t promised to you.

Debbie Millman:

Meanwhile, your manager at McDonald’s wanted to promote you to a swing manager and was encouraging you to have your own franchise one day. Was that ever, ever something that sounded appealing to you?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Maybe for about 15 minutes. There were conversations that’s sending me to Hamburger University in Chicago, Illinois, which is McDonald’s training program. Again, I’m 17 years old and that’s not what I wanted my future to look like, if it was a backup plan maybe, but I just couldn’t see it as my future. So I used her also, she was added to my thank you wall, because she was like, “Why are you going to try to become an artist, artist are always broke and you’re not going to become an artist, you’re not going to have a good living. You can make a great living here at McDonald’s doing this, and I’m not knocking anyone who works at McDonald’s and there’s been amazing Black franchisees over the years. That just wasn’t my future that I saw. I needed her though to make sure I didn’t go on that path, right?

So I wanted to make sure I proved her wrong as well, and if you notice, and I’m super competitive and I still use it to this day, the one thing you tell me is something I can’t do, and you just started something.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, but your mom also … I mean, it’s interesting she gave you a card after you weren’t able to start at Reebok, that I know went on your thank you wall. That was a greeting card that she bought you, that was about believing in yourself.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

And I can only imagine … I know she’s no longer with us now, but I can only imagine that she really wanted you to sort follow your passion.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Even if that meant not being as secure or as stable as she would’ve wanted you to be, financially.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah, the timing of that was right after my Reebok conversation, and shortly after my brother passed because I was just down and out, right? Again, I’m 17 years old, thinking my life is over and everything and yes, she went shopping and she brought me this 25 cent card and I can read it to you if you like.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

D’Wayne Edwards:

It says, believe, really big up top. It says, “Believe in yourself and the power you have to control your own life day to day, believe in the strength that you have deep inside and your faith will help show you the way. Believe in tomorrow and what it will bring. Let a hopeful heart carry you through, for things will work out. If you trust and believe there are no limits to what you can do.” I believe there, and I use that as fuel and every day, since she brought me that card, I’ve always carried that card with me. Every time I’m going to speak somewhere or I feel like I need a little extra something, I have it in my pocket. It’s also a card that I give all of my students when they complete our programs. So they do know at least one person believes in their abilities and who they are because that little bit of power can take someone off a long way.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. I had a teacher in college that was really the first person that gave me the sense that maybe I was smart. She believed in me, she believed in my intelligence, and it changed my life. It changed how I felt about myself. It changed what I thought I could do. You said that while you were working at McDonald’s, you learned that you weren’t just working at this one McDonald’s in Torrance, California. You were working at a big brand and they expected you to behave a certain way. What did this teach you?

D’Wayne Edwards:

So today, I guess in today’s terms, the kids would call it code switching, I guess. For me, I called it just knowing how to behave in the environments that you’re in, where I couldn’t show up to work with my clothes unironed and shirt untucked and you have to look presentable. I was able to make it to what’s called swing manager, which is an assistant manager. So I got to wear a button-up and a clip on tie. So, I had to look presentable because I was representing the restaurant. So, that taught me a certain level of personal responsibility for my appearance because it wasn’t just me, I was being accountable for, it was also this establishment that was counting on me and paying me to look presentable and be polite to customers, even if you have a bad day, right?

When you’re in the service business, especially an organization like McDonald’s, even if you have a bad day, the customer is always right. So, it did teach me that level of discipline and structure, even at a high school level, of just how to properly carry myself and conduct myself and speak to people that I didn’t know and people that maybe didn’t like me because they had a bad experience at the store, but I had to still present myself in a certain way to make sure I was giving off the proper brand representation that McDonald’s wanted me to project out.

Debbie Millman:

Shortly thereafter, you got a job working as a temporary file clerk in the accounts payable department of LA Gear.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

The popular footwear brand, LA gear. How did you get that job?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah, what’s funny is upon graduating from high school, I didn’t go to college. My friends … Me and my friend decided to sign up for this temp agency called Robert Half and Accountemps. He actually received the assignment to go to LA Gear first, but he didn’t want to work in Marina del Ray, which is where they were located. So he told the agency, he couldn’t find the place and so they were like, “Okay, well then you go.” So they sent me because he didn’t want to go. So, I found it because it was a sneaker company. Now, it wasn’t Nike, but it was still a sneaker company. I wasn’t in design, I was in accounts payable, right? So for me, I was like, “Well, I’m here. Let me see if I can try to get a job as a footwear designer.” This is in 1988. So no email, no social media, no internet. It was pretty much everything was hands-on.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

D’Wayne Edwards:

So, here I am filing my papers and filing all my receipts in alphabetical order. One day the company decided they want to increase morale. So, they installed these wooden suggestion boxes in every department with the idea of the employees dropping suggestions in the box that would help give the company new insights into what they should do different and what they should do better, how the employees could be better treated at the organization. As a non-full-time employee, I wasn’t told, I wasn’t able supposed to participate. So I decided to participate in my way, which was my three by five index cards.

I’m drawing shoes that I think LA Gear should do. So I would drop them in the suggestion box every morning before I go off and start filing my papers. About six months in, I hear this loud message over the intercom system. Again, there’s no email, so back then if someone wanted you in the company, the entire company found out.

Debbie Millman:

It’s like going to the principal’s office.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Pretty much, yes. So, I hear one day like, “D’Wayne Edwards report to the president’s office,” and I’m just like, “Wait, did I just hear that correctly first?” Because I’m invisible. I’m a temp employee, how does the president even know who I am? So, I reluctantly go to the president’s office and immediately walk in and apologize because I assumed it was because of what I’ve been doing to this box. He tells me to sit down and he said, are you the person who’s been putting shoe sketches in my suggestion box? I’m just like. “Yeah, I’m sorry, my apologies. I didn’t mean to do that. I just love to draw and I figured somebody would see it and maybe give me some tips on how I can become a designer one day.” He was like, “Well, I’ll tell you what,” he pulled out all 180 of my sketches, he had 180 of my cards.

He said, “I admire your ambition.” He said, “I would love to give you a chance to be a professional footwear designer. Would you be willing to accept an entry level footwear design job?” I was like, “Well, yes. How much do I have to pay you for this job, because this is definitely my dream job.” He goes, “Well, tell me a little bit more about yourself.” He’s like, “Tell me what college did you graduate from?” I was like, “Man, I just graduate from Inglewood High School seven months ago.” He was like, “Wait, you’re in high school?” I was like, “Yeah, I just left seven months ago.” He was like, “So you did this with no formal training at all?” I was like, “Yeah, I just love to draw. I’ve been drawing sneaker since I was 12.” He was even more impressed by the fact that I had no training at all.

So he offered me my job. So he said after the New year, report to the design department. So, I turned 19 in December and January, I reported in to my design job.

Debbie Millman:

You were the only Black kid there and you’ve talked about how some people were resentful and thought that you were a charity case kid, but when you heard that, you responded, “All right, that’s cool. I’ll take it. How did you have that sort of generosity of spirit?” I mean, I’m assuming they went up on your thank you wall, but what gave you the sense that it was … what gave you the strength to be kind about it?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Well, yes, they did become members of my thank you wall, so they were added. Honestly, it was me learning about Jackie Robinson. So, when I was in high school, I started looking into just sports and Black history, and I found a book on Jackie Robinson, it’s called, “I Never Had It Made.” The CliffNote version of his story is Jackie Robinson was selected to be the first Black baseball player to play in the major leagues. He wasn’t the best player, so back then, when we weren’t allowed to play in professional sports, we had our own leagues. So there was a league called the Negro Leagues that was found in 1920. It was a collection of some of the best Black baseball players to play, but they weren’t allowed to play in the professional major leagues.

So Branch Rickey, who was the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers selected Jackie and they selected Jackie because Jackie was a military man. He was a college graduate. He went to UCLA. He was the only and probably still, probably one of the only college athletes to letter in four sports. Baseball was his worst sport. So, he ended up becoming the first one, but it was told that Branch Rickey selected Jackie because he had the temperament needed to succeed. A part of his contract was that he was not allowed to fight back. He was not allowed to talk back. He had to take the abuse that he was going to receive, and he felt he was the right person that would be able to do that.

So, when I read his story and then, there was a movie that he played and I found the movie and I understood that if Jackie talked back, it would’ve taken years before other Black ball players would’ve had a chance to be in the major leagues because that was the goal. The goal was for the players to piss off these guys, to prove that they didn’t belong. So, I really understood Jackie’s temperament and I understood that, “Hey, I need to be a certain way. It was my McDonald’s training as a swing manager. I needed to be a certain way in this environment that I was in, and I had to put off a different aura than what they expected of me.” So that was really … really the mindset was keep my mouth shut and ask questions when I needed to understand, but soak up as much knowledge as possible.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that you forced your way into the world of Robert Greenberg, a white Jewish man who gave a 19 year old Black kid from Inglewood, with no college education, opportunity to design shoes for his company. What was the biggest thing you learned from him?

D’Wayne Edwards:

He didn’t discriminate against me. He didn’t care what I looked like. He didn’t care where I came from. He just saw someone with talent that he wanted to leverage for his company, to make his company better. He was my first professional mentor. For me, it was something that I value still to this day. I mean, before COVID, I would see Robert twice a year in Las Vegas at a trade show, and I would tell him “Thank you,” because he didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to give me a chance to prove that I belonged to be there. So, I really spent my whole career making sure he understood, “Hey, I appreciated what he did,” but also that he didn’t … make sure he knew he didn’t make a mistake, and that was really the beginning of my mentorship as a mentor to mentor other people.

That’s why when we have our mentor moments and we have our students, I put it on my students, you have to mentor two people and you make sure they mentor two people, because if it wasn’t for Robert, seeing just raw talent and challenging me to elevate up in this environment that I was going to be outnumbered in and uncomfortable in, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you to this day.

Debbie Millman:

Talk about your race to beat him into the office in the mornings.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah. Absolutely. Yes. So for me, I started studying him. So, whenever I would come in and he was always there and I would go by his office and see him reading the newspaper and talking into his Dictaphone. So, I’m like, “All right, cool. I’m going to try to get here before he does.” So for five days, it took me to beat him into work one day, and it was 5:30 where I got there at five, and he got there at 5:30. He was like, “What are you doing here?” I’m like, “I just want to come in when you come in so I can understand what do you do in the morning? Why do you come in so early?” He was like, “All right, well, come and sit with me.” So I sat with him and I saw his routine.

He would provide information for himself by reading the Wall Street Journal, reading footwear news, getting business insights, getting industry insights. He would then talk into his Dictaphone and talk about his day. He would outline, these are all the things I want to accomplish today, and he would give it to his executive assistant and she would type it out and put it on his desk. He would go about his day, checking off everything on his list. So, I started doing the same thing. For me, I would do it with post-it notes. I would write on the post-it notes, stick it on my desk so I could see it. I didn’t have an executive assistant. So I just post-it notes. That’s how I start my day, every day. I mean, still to this day, I wake up, I read information about the industry, read information about just life, in general.

I read inspirational quotes, I share those inspirational quotes and then, I have my to-do list and then, I check my email. I have a set routine that I do every single day, ever since I was 19 years old.

Debbie Millman:

You were the youngest footwear designer in the industry, the youngest Black footwear designer in the industry. After two years as a designer at LA Gear, you moved to Detroit to work for a small footwear company, but then Robert became the owner of Skechers and he asked you to join him his as head designer back in LA. What was that like for you to become head designer at that point?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Well, I mean, it was really a culmination of me soaking up knowledge from everybody that was around me. So my first few years at LA Gear was like my college, so to speak, but I was doing it in real time, as a real job. As you said, I did move to Detroit first time ever, I saw snow at 24 years old. So again, grow up in LA, an LA kid. So I never saw snow before. That lasted 10 months and I moved back to LA but the position was special because before I left, I was telling Robert, I said, “Hey, there’s some guys downtown LA that are really doing some really amazing things on the apparel side.” And I said, “If you ever get a chance to work with these guys, you should really consider it.” Those guys were two companies.

One of it was called Cross Colours, and the other one was called Karl Kani. They were the pioneers of streetwear fashion. What these kids see today, they pioneered this in the late 80s, early 90s, downtown LA. So, Robert received the licensing rights to do footwear for those two companies. So that’s what he wanted me to come back to LA and head up, to be the head of designing footwear for Cross Colours and Karl Kani. The blessing with that was here I am, I’m 24 years old and I’m designing shoes for these guys who are younger than me, by the name of Tupac and by the name of Notorious B.I.G. and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg and Puffy, and not knowing that these would become hip hop royalty, right?

I was just as young as they were, but here I am in the middle of it, working with these amazing, talented artists. For me, that was really the jump start for me to really advocate for more Black designers because I didn’t see any. In my whole time at LA Gear, I didn’t see anyone else that looked like me, but me and the design team. When I got to Skechers and I was working with these guys on the apparel side, I was seeing all these Black designers on the apparel side, still not seeing any on the footwear side. So, that really is what started my quest to diversify the footwear industry, was I need more people sitting next to me so I can teach and develop and grow folks, so we could diversify this industry.

Debbie Millman:

You launched your own brand under the Skecher’s corporate umbrella, and I believe it was called SITY, S-I-T-Y?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yup.

Debbie Millman:

Sporting goods business ranked your line as the number two brand to look out for behind the Jordan brand.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Is that what first interested Nike in your talents or you went to Nike, you joined Nike as a senior designer in 2000 and then, in 2001 joined Jordan as a design director. How did you go from Skechers to Nike?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah, so the license expired when he was licensing Cross Colours and Karl Kani footwear and he asked, “Well, what do you want to do now?” And I was like, “Well, I’ve traveled all over the world and I noticed that style is different in other countries and is different even in other states.” I said, “I would love to create at my own brand called SITY, with the S standing for style and using the influencers from different cities globally as the way that we would design the brand. He supported it, he backed it. It was under Skechers. As you said, it did really well, the first year in sporting because business does all these trend forecasts. They placed us as number two behind Jordan brand. Shortly after that happened, Skechers started the process of going public.

When they wanted to go public, they started to make the books look better, right? So they start to divest smaller things in the organization to clean things up. I was one of things that they divested in. Simultaneously, when that ranking came out, Nike was looking for someone to help them compete with Timberland to make boots because Nike was an athletic shoe company and they didn’t really know how to make lifestyle boots. I was doing that already for years under the SITY brand, but also under Karl Kani and Cross Colours. So, a friend of mine who ironically worked at Adidas in Portland, told his friend who worked at Nike about me and he was like, “Hey, you should probably get this guy up here for an interview.”

So they brought me up for an interview and I remember I had eight interviews in one day, which they didn’t do that anymore.

Debbie Millman:

I think they do. From what I know, there’s a lot of interviewing, it takes a lot of okays.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I did it all in one day and they were like, “Well, we will give you a call back in two weeks.” Two weeks to the day, I got a phone call from Nike and I accepted the job as a footwear designer for their lifestyle division. Then, two hours later, I got another call from Nike, offering me another job from another category. So I got two phone calls in the same day for two jobs, but I accepted the first one that called me. So, that was how I moved to Oregon. I mean, for me, the real opportunity was this is the best company. I need to gauge my skills against the best who work at that company too. That was really the driving force for me, moving to Oregon was, “Okay, I’m going to be next to the best. I mean, where do I stack up in that equation?”

Then, after a year at Nike, the Jordan brand was on the fourth floor where I was at, and they had an open position and they asked me to join. So, then I transferred from Nike to Jordan Brand.

Debbie Millman:

Now, you were stacking up against the best in the business. How did you feel you measured?

D’Wayne Edwards:

I’m not a conceited person at all, so I’ll say this with that preference, but yes, I thought I was better.

Debbie Millman:

Okay.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Primarily, I would say because I didn’t have a popular logo to work with and because they had a logo that everyone loved, you could put that logo on almost anything and it would make the shoe look better, right? So, I learned how to design without having the luxury of a logo to fall back on. So I had to pay more attention to design and give you something more interesting to look at. So I would just say from that perspective, I think I was just taught a different way. So when I was able to marry that creativity with a strong brand, the things that I did design kind of connected the dots completely for me, but at the same time, I’m there learning from all these amazing people that have had a 10, 20 year head start on me too. I was just as much of a student as I was as a professional.

Debbie Millman:

When you started with the Jordan brand, they were a 275 million dollar brand.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

You helped grow it to a 1.3 billion brand.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

And you said you put pressure on yourself by thinking that you were always the underdog.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

Why?

D’Wayne Edwards:

I’ve always felt that … I still feel that way. I mean, I always do. I think because I’ve never let success go to my head, I look at the word success as a past tense word, where it’s something that happened already and I shouldn’t be dwelling on stuff that happened already. When you work at Nike, you’re wired to focus on the future and you’re wired to think two and three and four years ahead of time. So I was always moving forward mentally. So my mindset was always never to rest on where I was. I remember one day I did something … I had a shoe that sell really well at LA Gear and Robert one day came over and he said, “Congratulations, take five minutes off and get back to work.” I’m just like, so I’ve always had that mindset of, okay, take pause for a minute, acknowledge it and then, let it go and get back to work.

I just never been one to be stagnant and stale. I’m a constant learner. I always want to improve. I’m always trying to learn something new every day, small or big, I’m trying to always move forward. I’ve always felt like I’m not supposed to be here, and that mentality has never left me because I’m not supposed to be here, mathematically, I’m not supposed to be here and that’s never been lost on me and it’s still never lost on me to this day.

Debbie Millman:

Shortly after you got the job with the Jordan brand, your mother passed away and despite the new job, you sat with your mother for the last 30 days of her life.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

What was that like for you?

D’Wayne Edwards:

The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life and the most valuable thing I’ve ever done in my life because I had a chance to be with her for her last moments and before she was unable to talk the last two weeks, I apologized to her, for leaving her because I left California to move to Oregon. She said, “Boy, if you would not have left, I would’ve beat your butt, if you didn’t go and follow your dreams.” I always felt guilty. I always felt guilty leaving her because I did miss out on three years of her life, even though I did go back home, regularly but I wasn’t there every day. I was comforted by knowing that she wanted me to be where I was. Then, as I continued to sit with her and I would talk to her and share and thank her for everything and she was able to nod and say yes, but it was tough.

If I could do it all over again, I would do it all over again. It felt like it was yesterday, but we just never had a really intimate conversations, and we did that for those 30 days.

Debbie Millman:

You said this about your mom in your TED Talk, “She took me from a problem child in Inglewood and turned me into a global problem solver. She turned my dreams into reality far beyond what I even imagined. She turned death into life for me. At the same time, she turned my destiny into a career and my career into a passion.” Were you able to tell her that before she passed?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Every single word, and more, and more.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that your relationship with your mom in that moment, in that time, made you look at your craft a little bit differently, how so?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Before my mom passed, my other brother, Ronnie passed away too.

Debbie Millman:

So you lost both your older brothers, Mike and Ronnie?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yup. Both of them passed. Both had the gift. My career became theirs, the one they never had a chance to have. My mom is the one who gave us the gift. She was the one the gift came from. So for me, I was just trying to make her proud. That was really my whole goal and still is to this day. Even though, she’s not here physically, I know she’s here with me as well as my two brothers are here with me as well, because there are times I have no idea how I made it home driving and sleepy and all these things. So I know I’m being watched over. So all of her life lessons she’s taught me, either verbally or indirectly, I paid attention to. It has shaped me for who I am today. I mean, for half of my life, when she was here, she was disabled and she never complained.

I never complained either. I don’t complain, if I’m tired. I don’t complain, if I have too much work to do. I don’t complain because she showed me what that should look like because she had every right to complain and she never did. So all of my strength I get from her.

Debbie Millman:

Over the course of your career at Nike, you developed more than 50 patents and you designed more than 500 footwear styles for artists including Tupac, Notorious, B.I.G., Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Nas. Your designs had been worn in six different Olympics and have graced all major league baseball, NFL and NBA stadiums by athletes including Derek Jeter, Carmelo Anthony and Michael Jordan. What was it like collaborating with Michael Jordan?

D’Wayne Edwards:

That was the craziest thing ever. So the Lakers played in Inglewood until the last maybe 20, 25 years. They moved downtown Los Angeles, but they played in Inglewood. Me and my friends would always sneak into basketball games and we would sneak in because in Hollywood they would leave in the third quarter, beginning of third quarter. So we would just stand by the door and just slide right on it or ask them for their tickets. The last game, I snuck in was the 1991 NBA Finals, the Lakers versus the Chicago Bulls, and they won the championship. The Chicago Bulls won the championship. That was my first time ever seeing Michael Jordan play in person, and 10 years later, I was on a couch sitting next to him, showing a design to him that I designed for him.

I got forewarned by my team that I worked within Jordan that he’s hard on young players, he’s hard on young guys. He calls all of the new employees, new jacks. So they were just pumping me up and preparing me for the barrage of questions that he’s going to throw at me because he’s just that kind of guy. So he was throwing them at me and I was answering them and I was taking them as he was throwing them, I was taking them. He eventually backed down because he saw that, “Okay, you know what you’re talking about. Okay, now I’m buying what you’re selling me.” Honestly, all he was doing is just making me better at my craft. No different than what he did to his teammates on the basketball court. If you’re going to be on the floor with him, you better be ready.

You better be prepared for anything. So I would say that time, that decade spending, working with him directly and some of the other guys too, Melo and Jeter and Roy Jones, it just sharpened my skills as a creative and as a person that I instill into our students to this day. It was that edge that I learned from Jordan, compounded with my already competitive nature, adding his competitive nature on top of it, that’s where I become a problem. If you cross me and it becomes a competitive thing, it’s going to be a problem.

Debbie Millman:

You said that one thing you didn’t realize when you were working at Nike was the trap of doing something you love. What is the trap of doing something you love?

D’Wayne Edwards:

The trap is because you are a designer and you’re creative, you could do it all day long and you wake up, I mean, you realize, “Oh wow, I forgot to eat today or I should probably go to sleep because it’s dark outside.” The trap to be careful of is that you love what you do so much, that it could become unhealthy for you. You could develop stress, which I did all of those things I just mentioned to you, to the point where I was in the hospital for a few days because of just exhaustion and high blood pressure, because I put the pressure on myself to work a certain level where there’s going to be people who will be better designers than me, but I can’t ever let someone outwork me. I took that to heart and so, by doing that, it damaged me and my health a bit. I think it’s partly because I love what I do. I would do what I do for free.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

D’Wayne Edwards:

When you do something like that, you get lost doing what you do and you don’t realize you didn’t take care of yourself. Now, I have a better understanding of balance, but it’s a certain wiring that you could achieve based on your drive to be great at something, and I have that drive.

Debbie Millman:

When you were at Nike, they gave everyone four weeks off after 10 years of employment, you got that four and then, you took another four. Yeah. What did you do during that time off?

D’Wayne Edwards:

So, I took the additional four because I never took any other time off. So I had so much vacation time built up. They forced me to take it, but a few things happened. One, I resigned as design director. I was tired and my body was not good, my mind was not good, and I knew I couldn’t do that job anymore. So, I told them I was going to retire as design director, I need this time off to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life and whether I’m coming back or not, I don’t know yet. That’s the point of the sabbatical is to disconnect. So, I took the time off and I want to try this idea of a footwear design class because during my 10 year at Jordan, I would meet kids online that are high school kids or college kids that want to be in design.

And I would mentor them on the side and help them become my interns because they couldn’t get footwear design education in college. So I would just do it and teach them what I knew because that’s what I wish I would’ve had if I had the internet and if I had access to people and now, kids had access to me, it was easy to figure out my email address at Nike and so, kids would always email me. So it just kept bubbling up like, maybe I should try this teaching thing and see what happens. So, I started teaching at the University of Oregon as an adjunct instructor. That was my first time at a college, teaching and I taught this class called Pensole, and I taught it the way I worked and I taught it in the most extreme way that we would work.

It was two weeks. It was every day for two weeks, roughly 12 to 14 hours every day straight through. I wanted to put students through the extreme case of what it feels like to be a designer, not look like, but feels like to be a designer and pay for 40 students tuition and housing to be a part of this program and they loved it. They didn’t want to leave. They went back to their respective schools or their respective homes and told everybody about what happened in Portland for two weeks. The beauty of it is one student documented every day and posted it up online. So kids started following along online and after it was over, I started getting all these emails from people saying, “Hey, can you show me how to do that?”

Then, school started emailing me and say, “Hey, can you come teach this at our school?” Here I am teaching at Art Center, which is one of the top product design schools in the country. The school I later realized, I would’ve attended if I knew it was there in Pasadena, California, which is only 30 minutes away from where I grew up. I’m teaching at this prestigious number one design school in the country and then, I get a call from Parsons, one of the number one fashion design schools in the country in New York City and then MIT, one of the top engineering schools in the country in Boston. Here I am, the kid who didn’t go to college teaching at some of the best colleges in the world.

I’m teaching what I actually learned for 25 years as a designer. That was my curriculum. It wasn’t like I had this secret sauce or anything. I just taught my process and I fell back in love with design. I didn’t realize how much the corporate side took from me, the joy and I fell back in love with it, because I was basically just sharing everything that I learned and just to see these young minds embrace it and then, do something with it, I didn’t want to lose that feeling, and I didn’t want to go back into corporate America because I loved that feeling. I did go back, but I told them on my first day back that I was leaving in six months. So, I gave them a head start that I was leaving and then, I permanently retired on April 1st, 2011.

Debbie Millman:

You launched your first class, I believe, on June 24th, 2010 at the University of Oregon, as you mentioned, of the 40 kids in that class, 34 are all employed as footwear designers today.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

You, as you mentioned, started to extend the classes all over the world. Then, you acquired a recently closed HBCU, titled the Lewis College of Business in Detroit, Michigan. What made you decide to do that?

D’Wayne Edwards:

So all of my time with the academy in Portland, we were solving the diversity issue in the footwear industry. In 2020, when George Floyd was murdered and the corporation started making these pledges to support Black communities, and they started making pledges to education, and then when some of those companies started to decide, “Hey, I want to support design education,” they realized we were really the only option out there that was putting together quality education and churning out quality diverse talent. So it went from us working just with footwear companies to apparel companies, to packaging companies, to furniture design companies, to multiple areas of design. Simultaneously, I was made aware of the college in Lewis College by an alumnus of Pensole who lives in Detroit.

He casually mentioned, “Hey, I think Detroit used to have an HBCU,” but I think it closed. I’m like, “Wait, what do you mean? Detroit had an HBCU?” I’ve never heard of that before. So, once I discovered Lewis College of Business, I was first ashamed. I never heard of Violet Lewis, who was the founder of the college. She was one of three Black women to found an HBCU, of all of them since the 1860s. She started it as a secretary of school in Indianapolis because she just wanted Black women to have the ability to work in corporate offices. That was her intent, and she received a $50 loan and borrowed typewriters and started her own college. This is in 1928.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

D’Wayne Edwards:

And I’m just like, “Wow, this woman is amazing, and how do I did not know about her?” So the school did extremely well in Indianapolis and so well, Detroit offered her to open a campus in Detroit, and it became very important to the city of Detroit’s economic development around diverse talent working in corporate offices. We were in the automobile factories, but never in the corporate offices. So, all of the first Black office employees for Ford and GM and Michigan Bell were all graduates of Lewis College of Business. So, over the years, it continued to flourish and the school was caught in this weird predicament because it wasn’t well-funded enough to create new curriculum. Because they couldn’t adjust with the times, they were left behind, and when they were left behind, they were forced to close their doors.

So they closed their doors in 2013. When I heard about it and I was reading all the interviews from the family that were trying to reopen the class but they were unsuccessful, I started investigating, and on the side of the building, I saw the realtor’s name and phone number. So I called and said, “Hey, I would love to speak to the family about possibly reopening the college.” And that was how I was introduced to the family. I flew to Detroit and introduced this idea of reopening the college as a business and a design school, because HBCUs don’t have a breadth of curriculum for design. They’re fantastic institutions around law and business and engineering and entrepreneurship, but design is not one of their strongest areas.

That was our strength. Our strength married with being a historically Black college, it met the needs of the industry today. They believed in my vision and I acquired the college. We renamed the college Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design, and we reopened the college on May 2nd, 2022 here in Detroit, Michigan, but it was a little bit of a challenge to reopen the college because there was no state laws in Michigan around if a college closed and wanted to reopen, what should you do? So we had to rewrite … well, we had to write laws and so we had to write two state bills. Both bills were passed in two and a half months.

Debbie Millman:

By the governor, right?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Governor Whitmer passed them in two and a half months, which was amazing, and that cleared our path to reopen the college here in Detroit.

Debbie Millman:

In 1989, you were the youngest designer in the footwear design industry, and you were one of three people of color in the industry at that time. During your 2014 TED Talk, you stated that there were still only about 175 people of color in an industry of over 5,000 people. What do things look like now, another eight years later?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Sadly, we’re a little over 200 now, I did a talk a few months back, I chronicled the history of the Black footwear designer and the first one, I would say started 1986. His name is Wilson Smith and you fast forward 36 years later, it’s amazing how an industry would allow 3% growth. There’s nothing in a corporation that they would allow 3% growth.

Debbie Millman:

No, not a thing.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Nothing. For one quarter, either they’re going to fix it or get rid of it, but for 36 years, almost 40 years, the industry was okay with 3% growth. So, for me, the troubling part to that is that diversity is the only thing that corporations try to do and get away with it. Imagine if you have a job and you say, “Oh, you know what? I’m going to try to do my job today,” and then you don’t, and you come up the next day. I’m going to try to do my job again today. Then, you don’t, right? So imagine that’s exactly what’s happening with diversity, as it pertains to all corporate industries, they keep trying and trying, and trying but the problem is there’s no accountability because there’s nothing else in that company that they try to do. They either do it or don’t.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, it’s a mandate or it’s not.

D’Wayne Edwards:

And so to me, that’s really my soapbox is when is diversity going to be as important as a company making money? When is diversity going to be as important as that CEO or any C-suite tied to their compensation? When is it going to be held accountable by individuals or corporation? Until that happens, it will always be something that they’re trying to do, and it will always be in single digits. It’s below 5% now, in all design industries, now that’s unacceptable, but until those corporations start to create some measures and take it seriously, then it will change, but until then, it just will be an afterthought.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I think though it’s sad to say the power lies with the people buying the products of those corporations to hold them accountable for these types of … and that’s the only way things are going to change. That’s the only reason that any of the corporations are behaving in any more sustainable manner. It’s because consumers don’t want to buy things that are unsustainable as much as they used to

D’Wayne Edwards:

You’re absolutely correct. The consumer has all the power.

Debbie Millman:

Yup.

D’Wayne Edwards:

They don’t realize they have all the power.

Debbie Millman:

Hopefully, people listening will start to feel that a little bit more.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I hope so.

Debbie Millman:

D’Wayne, the last thing I want to talk to you about is the result of your many different talents and passions sort of coming together in the creation of JEMS.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

And JEMS stands for the Jan Ernst Matzeliger Studio, who was he and why the name JEMS?

D’Wayne Edwards:

So he was an amazing man in 1883, he revolutionized the footwear industry?

Debbie Millman:

1883, I want my listeners to hear, not 1983, 1883.

D’Wayne Edwards:

1883. He was a cobbler and he made shoes in Lynn, Massachusetts, and he was making 50 pairs a day. The whole industry was make … the equipment was making 50 pairs a day, and he felt there was a better way. For the next few years, he created his own machine. It’s called the Automated Lasting Machine. Those 50 pairs a day evolved to 700 pairs a day, based on his patent that he got approval for. On March 20th, 1883, he revolutionized the footwear industry, here is a Black man in Lynn, Massachusetts doing it, and unfortunately, he only lived about six more years before he passed, so he never really got a chance to see his invention really revolutionizing industry completely. He has been someone that has been lost in our history books.

I can’t remember when he received his stamp but it was maybe 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but that was over 130 something years ago, he did that. So, he’s just now getting his due from quote-unquote, a stamp, about 30 years ago. When 2020 occurred and all the terrible things that happened with George Floyd and other senseless murders, corporations started to say, “Hey, we need to figure out a way to be more supportive of Black communities.” When major corporations, footwear companies, footwear stores, when they looked at, “Okay, how can we diversify our vendor base?” They realized they didn’t have any Black footwear brands. So, they reached out to me and said, “Hey, could you help us with this?”

DSW was one of those brands that we talked to and we shared, “Hey, we have an idea of diversifying this industry. We are training and developing future talent here in Detroit now, that can be better prepared to create their own brands and have their own success in our industry.” So I said, “Hey, what if we created a footwear factory that produced product for Black footwear companies.” So they said they love the idea and they supported it with an investment, and they invested into this factory that we called JEMS. We named it after Jan because it’s his acronym for his name. So initials for his name. Then, we added the S for studio, but we wanted to call it JEMS because that’s what these talented people are. They are coveted people that don’t exist, that we’re helping bring to life, and we want them to be treated as special as they are.

We also want them to create special products as well, that honors who they are, and it utilizes Jan’s original process, a form of his original process that he pioneered over 130 something years ago. The factory is being constructed now. We’ll have our grand opening March 20th on the 140th anniversary of him, receiving his patent is when we will open the factory.

Debbie Millman:

That’s incredible. D’Wayne, that’s just incredible. So JEMS is going to be the first Black owned footwear factory in the United States, and it will be providing young, aspiring Black designers an opportunity to create their own brands and see them come to fruition. Is that correct?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yes and be sold at DSW.

Debbie Millman:

And be sold exclusively at DSW.

D’Wayne Edwards:

For DSW to have that vision, that is what we talked about a little bit earlier, putting their money where their mouth is, right? They recognized that didn’t exist in their supply chain and they concretely wanted to do something about it. That’s what I’m talking about. Whether it was working with me or working with someone else, do something about it.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Don’t just say, “Oh, it’d be great if we had this or had that.” The good folks at DSW was like, “Yeah, this is important to us and we’re going to make this come to life.”

Debbie Millman:

D’Wayne, thank you for making so much work that matters. Thank you for doing so many things that matter, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Thank you very much. This was a great conversation, it made me cry a few times, reminiscing on some things, but thank you very much for this opportunity to share it with you and your audience.

Debbie Millman:

My absolute honor. To read more about D’Wayne’s work, you can go to pensolelewis.com. That’s P-E-N-S-O-L-E-L-E-W-I-S dot com. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening and remember, we can talk about making a difference. We can make a difference or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Best of Design Matters: Dr. D’Wayne Edwards appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Temple Grandin is a scientist and animal behaviorist, and she has had a profound effect on how humanely livestock in this country are treated. She’s also had a huge effect on the way we understand people on the autism spectrum. Drawing on her own experience as an autistic person, she has written or co-written many groundbreaking books exploring autism and celebrating neurodiversity.

Her first book, Emergence, was published in 1986, and it changed the way the world views autism. Her most recent book, Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions is changing the way people think about thinking. She’s been recognized on the list of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the world. She’s the subject of an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning biographical film, and she owns numerous patents for her original designs. There is truly nobody quite like her.

Dr. Grandin, welcome to Design Matters.

Temple Grandin:

It’s really, really good to be here today.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you. Dr. Grandin, is it true that you believe if they were alive today, Albert Einstein, Mozart, and Nikola Tesla would probably be diagnosed as autistic?

Temple Grandin:

Yes, definitely. Because Einstein had delayed speech. Today, and especially with the way that the people get services, to get services, he’d have to be put in an autism class. You can argue over whether or not he’s autistic, but he’d end up in an autism class today because that’s where most speech delayed kids are going. Also in my work on designing equipment in the meat industry, I worked with brilliant people that owned metal working shops, people that had maybe 20 patents, and one guy that built very important equipment for me, oh, he was definitely autistic. But he had grown up working on cars. So, then he discovered that mechanical things were interesting. But the problem I’m seeing today is kids getting locked into the label, and they’re growing up, they’ve never used tools. They don’t get a chance to work on cars. We have all kinds of need today for people that can do mechanical things like fix elevators, build equipment for factories.

Debbie Millman:

I experience that firsthand. The elevator in the college that I work in is perpetually broken and there seems to be nobody in New York City that can fix it. And you’d think New York City, elevators? That would be a rough thing to believe.

Temple Grandin:

And we need those skills. We got water systems falling apart, wires falling off electrical towers. You need these people that can fix things and design things. Engineering’s not all mathematics. There’s the visual, thinking part of engineering, and then there is the mathematical part. You need to have both. And my kind of minds get screened out because we can’t do algebra.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, I know. I was so heartened when I read that because my nephew, my 14-year… Well, now he’s 15. When he was 14 and in 9th grade, he had just a terrible time with algebra, just an absolutely terrible time. Everybody’s sort of been pulling their hair out, how do we get him to be more interested in math? And I’m going to give them a copy of your new book.

Temple Grandin:

Well, what we need to be doing is when a kid ends up with a label, he might be an extreme object visualizer like me. Or there’s another kid is an extreme mathematician and does it in his head and the verbal people are forcing him to do step by step. It’s not how they think. Then a lot of people are mixtures of different kinds of thinking.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, I love the test in your book.

Temple Grandin:

You’re not going to find an extreme object visualizer like me and an extreme mathematician in the same person.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I want to go back in history just a little bit before we talk about your book. Your full name is Mary Temple Grandin. When did you begin to use Temple as your first name?

Temple Grandin:

Used Temple ever since I was a child. For years, nobody knew my first name was Mary. It was only on my passport. And then TSA forced me to put it on my plane tickets.

Debbie Millman:

By the time you were three months old, you’ve written about how you began to stiffen in your mother’s arms and she realized you didn’t want to be cuddled. You’ve written that as you got older, you began to chew up puzzles and spit the cardboard mush out on the floor. You developed a violent temper, screamed continually, and by the time you were three, you weren’t speaking at all. Your mom took you to the world’s leading special needs researchers at the Boston Children’s Hospital. What did the doctors think at the time?

Temple Grandin:

Well, you got to remember, this is 1949. I was born in 1947. She actually took me to a top neurologist who immediately checked me to make sure I didn’t have epilepsy and he made sure I wasn’t deaf. Referred me to a little speech therapy school that two teachers taught out of the basement of their house. There was some down syndrome kids in that and they just said, “Well, this teacher’s just really good at working with these kids.” And I can remember some of those speech therapy lessons and it’s very similar to the things that they were doing now: always encouraging me to use my words, slowing down, because when the people talked fast, it sounded like gibberish. There was also a lot of emphasis on turn taking, learning how to wait and take turns, really, really important. Then by four, I was verbal; and by five I was mainstreamed in a normal kindergarten in a small school.

Debbie Millman:

Didn’t doctors originally think that you should be institutionalized?

Temple Grandin:

Well, actually, yeah, that was kind of what was done with kids that had my problems in the ’50s. See, the thing is, now what’s known is kids with autism, you look very severe when they’re very young and you don’t know how they’re going to come out. You got to work with them and do your early intervention.

Debbie Millman:

In the glorious HBO movie about your life, your mother is portrayed as your fiercest advocate.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

Someone who never stopped fighting for you. As you were growing up, did you feel her belief in you?

Temple Grandin:

Well, she always encouraged me. I was good at art. She always encouraged my ability at art and of course, art’s the basis of my design work. I would just draw the same horse head over and over again and she would say, “Let’s draw the whole horse. Let’s draw the stable.” She’d take my art ability and expand it. She suggested using other media like watercolors and pastel paints and pencils and draw different things. I actually got given a book on perspective drawing. I also, very early on, was learning to shop, learning table manners. This is where ’50s upbringing actually was helpful, much more structured.

Debbie Millman:

I read somewhere that you met an older student who had never used a pair of scissors.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right. In my book, Visual Thinking, I describe a conversation I had with a doctor who was pulling his hair out trying to teach interns how to sew up cuts and they had never used scissors. I had a girl in my class who had never used a ruler or tape measure to measure anything. We’ve got kids growing up totally removed from the practical world. Now, my kind of mind is an object visualizer. I grew up using tools. I would spend hours and hours and hours tinkering to make things like parachutes and bird kites. Did the adults make them for me? No, they just let me tinker.

Debbie Millman:

By the time you were in the fourth grade, you began to be bullied in school, and the kids called you chatter box because of what you’ve said was constant conversation on a particular topic.

Temple Grandin:

Well, yeah, I ask constant questions. My grandfather, when we visit with him, he was co-inventor of the autopilot for airplanes. We would just sit. We’d go in the other room, and while he’s smoking his pipe and eating some cheese and having a beer. He’d explain to me why the sky was blue. Why was grass green. So he liked telling me that stuff, and I’d ask him why tides go in and out. Why’s the moon have phases? And he would explain that stuff.

Debbie Millman:

How did you manage this dual world of family, your grandfather, your mother, your aunt being so supportive and loving, and yet the sort of bullying and really quite terrible behavior you experienced at school. How did you manage both of those at the same time?

Temple Grandin:

Fortunately, I didn’t have bullying in elementary school because Mrs. Deech, the third grade teacher, who was the head teacher for elementary school, explained to the other kids that I had a disability that was not visible, like leg braces. A lot of kids in the ’50s had polio and they had leg braces. It wasn’t something you could see. They explained to the other kids the need to help me.

High school was a disaster of bullying and teasing. I got kicked out of a regular high school for throwing a book at a girl who teased me. Then mother had worked as a reporter on doing public TV shows on mostly disturbed children. She’d actually researched all the special schools in New England. So, she picked out three of them and she let me pick a school. I picked the one that had horses and a farm. I didn’t care about studying.

You know what the school did? They put me to work running a horse barn. Now they said, let me get through my adolescence. Well, mother wasn’t too happy about backing off on academics. But what I’m saying now with a lot of these kids is they work really hard on the academics, no life skills. I’ve learned how to work. I was in charge of a horse barn, nine stalls every day to clean, put them in and out, feed them. I was responsible for it. Make sure the feed box is closed. I was responsible for that. I learned how to work. That was really important.

The other thing is the only place I was not bullied was friends through shared interests, like horseback riding, model rockets, and electronics. Really important. Today it might be robotics, 3D printing. It could be a sport. It could be a band, a choir, something where there’s friends who shared interests.

Debbie Millman:

The year after you were expelled for throwing a book at a girl who was teasing you, your parents got divorced, and several years later your mom remarried. You were able to spend a summer on the Arizona ranch of your stepdad’s sister.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

It was there that you noticed that some of the animals appeared to relax after a cattle squeeze shoot was applied.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right. I was introduced to beef cattle for the first time, and I watched them get vaccinated in a device that squeezed them. It’s called a squeeze shoot. I noticed it kind of calmed them down. So then I built a device where I could squeeze myself, and I eventually got it to operate with air cylinders and that was some of my skilled trades work, built it all by myself.

Debbie Millman:

Did you have a sense at the time about how or why it helped you?

Temple Grandin:

Well, deep pressure’s calming. You see, then in the early seventies, I met an occupational therapist named Lorna King. She was using deep pressure with things like cushions with autistic kids in Arizona to calm them down. Now again, deep pressure doesn’t work on everybody. It only works on some of them. The sensory issues are very variable. But that kind of validated me. I was great friends with Lorna and she and I did some early, early autism talks in the ’70s.

Debbie Millman:

The influence of your squeeze box or hug box can now be seen in things like gravity blankets…

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

… and even special pressure shirts to help dogs who experience…

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

… severe stress during thunderstorms. It’s called the Thundershirt. So thank you for that. It’s helped my dogs quite a lot.

Temple Grandin:

It did. The Thunderstorm help your dogs, and where it really seems to help is on separation distress, too. It seems to help.

Debbie Millman:

At this point in your life, were you aware that you had autism? Because I understand that you didn’t actually get officially diagnosed until much later in life.

Temple Grandin:

The psychiatrist, by the time I was five and six, yeah, was basically saying I was autistic.

Debbie Millman:

The summer after you developed the squeeze box, you began to attend Hampshire Country School in New Hampshire.

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

The school was founded in 1948 by a Boston child psychologist for students of exceptional potential…

Temple Grandin:

That’s right.

Debbie Millman:

… that have not been successful in a typical setting. It was there that you met William Carlock, a science teacher who had worked for NASA.

Temple Grandin:

Yes. I’d been there for about three years before William Carlock became a science teacher. What he did is he gave me interesting projects. The HBO movie showed all the things I built. The gate you could open from a car, the squeeze machine, optical illusion room that I had made, the dipping vat project. Then he gave me interesting projects. He says, “Well, then you have to study in order to go to graduate school and become a scientist.” I still couldn’t do algebra, but the other classes I was just goofing off. Then when I finally went to college, thank goodness, the introductory math class at that college was not algebra. It was basically called finite math, probability matrices, and statistics. The nice math teacher tutored me in his office. I asked for help right away. I didn’t wait until I had flunked out of the course. I failed the first quiz. I asked for help. Big mistakes students make, not asking for help soon enough. That’s something I did.

Debbie Millman:

Talk about why algebra is so difficult for some students.

Temple Grandin:

Well, I’m what’s called an object visualizer. This is described in the visual thinking book. You have object visualizers who think in photo realistic pictures. Then you got visual spatial, your pattern thinkers, your mathematical students. Then of course you get your verbal thinkers who think in words. The problem I have is algebra has nothing there to visualize. Now, I can remember a specific formula like pi times the radius squared describes a hydraulic cylinder. When I say that, I’m seeing a hydraulic cylinder. You see, that is not abstract. But abstract math I can’t do. You’ve got to understand different thinkers exist, and a lot of people are middle of the road. But that extreme visual thinker works in the shop who can build anything, we need those skills.

Debbie Millman:

In your 1995 book, Thinking in Pictures, you reveal that you thought that all individuals with autism thought the way that you did, in photographic-specific images or as you put it, thinking in pictures. Can you talk about now how your thinking has evolved a bit?

Temple Grandin:

Well, that was wrong. Amazon had just come out and I’ve read reviews. Several people on the spectrum said, “Well, that’s not true.” So then I started now thinking back to all the people I’d met and I started to figure out, yes, there are some that think in words and these tend to be the history lovers that love lists and facts and sports statistics, things like that. Then I was reading a book by Clara Claven Park about her daughter Jesse, and it was called Exiting Nirvana. It’s out of print now, unfortunately. But that was where I got the idea of thinking in patterns rather than pictures.

Debbie Millman:

What does that mean, to think in patterns?

Temple Grandin:

Well, Jesse would paint beautiful pictures of houses where she put all kinds of geometric shapes on a picture of somebody’s house. I’m going, “This is patterns rather than pictures.” Then later on, when I did the Autistic Brain, I was surfing in the middle of the night and I went into the reference list. I didn’t do the citations. A reference list, and I found this paper on two types of visualizers, and I looked up the paper and I go, “Wow, this describes my mind, and then the mathematical mind.” I then got that term off the title of paper. Then I found some other papers.

Debbie Millman:

By the time the expanded edition was published in 2006, you realized it had been wrong to presume that every person with autism processed information in the same way. In the 2006 version, you described three types of specialized thinking.

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. There’s three types of thinking, which now the correct names for, which back then I didn’t use the correct names for them because I didn’t know them at that time, was object visualizer. I was calling it photo-realistic visual thinking, is what I was calling it. Then there’s the pattern thinker. I was calling it a pattern thinker, mathematics, and that’s what the scientists called visual spatial. Then, of course, your think verbal thinker who thinks in words.

Then on the visual thinking book, the big thing that’s new in that is the huge skill loss problem we’ve got. I didn’t realize what a big skill loss we had until I went to four places in 2019, right before COVID hit. I went to two state-of-the-art pork plants where all the equipment was imported, mostly from Holland. I went to a state-of-the-art poultry plant, all of the machinery inside, it came from Holland in 100 shipping containers. And I went to the Steve Jobs Theater and the mothership building of Apple, and the structural glass walls are from Italy and Germany, and the carbon fiber roof is from Dubai. I have a picture of me standing in the middle of that, screaming, “We don’t make it anymore.”

Then I’m going, we’ve got a serious problem. 20 years ago, we made two mistakes in education. We took out all the hands on classes at some schools: art, sewing, woodworking, carpentry, auto mechanics, drafting. All those hands on things. So kids are growing up not using tools. The other big mistake that was made in industry, and I know the most about my industry, is shutting down in-house engineering departments. Back in the ’80s and the early ’90s, these companies had big shops where they could invent and patent equipment. Those were phased out, and they found it was cheaper and more economical to contract to work out. Now that’s coming back to bite them, and it’s now turning into a perfect storm on maintaining factories, on maintaining things like electrical towers, water supplies.

Debbie Millman:

You sound pessimistic. Do you think that this is something that could be reversed? How do you…

Temple Grandin:

Oh, absolutely. It could be reversed. What we need to be doing… Well, you got to have kids exposed to tools to get them interested in tools. You got to have them exposed to industrial design. So let’s look at college. You have industrial design. That’s the art side. You have engineering, which is the math side. You need both kinds of thinking. They used to say, “Well, the stupid kids would go to shop class.” I can tell you, the people I work with are not stupid.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I love shop.

Temple Grandin:

Mechanically complicated stuff.

Debbie Millman:

You call your most recent book Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions. So my very first question is, for my listeners, can you define what it means to do visual thinking?

Temple Grandin:

All right. There’s actually two types. There’s the object visualizer, like me, who are very good at things like photography, art, animal behavior, and mechanics. Because you just see pictures, and they’ll tell you to take the machine apart and then you just see how it works. That is my kind of mind. I call my kind of mind the clever engineering department. I mean, think packaging machine, think paper feed mechanism in your printer. Those are examples of what I call clever engineering. Those aren’t made by the mathematicians.

Then you have the visual spatial mathematical part of engineering. You’ve got to make sure the roof of the building doesn’t fall down; you have enough electrical power.

Then you have verbal thinkers who think in words. Now, I was shocked when I found out in my late 30s that other people think in words. Let’s say we’re designing something. An engineer, what it looks like and its function just go together. You look at the inside of the Space Station. There’s no aesthetics. Where you look at the stuff that Elon Musk has designed, I mean, the space suits are really cool. He got a costume designer to design them.

Debbie Millman:

So he’s working with a continuum of people.

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. That’s right. That’s what he’s doing. Well, first of all, they had a costume designer from a major movie design the space suits. Then they had to have engineers make those space suits work as space suits. So you’ve got both kinds of thinkers here. The object visualizer, the art person made them look cool. Then you had to go to the mathematical engineer to make sure those space suits would actually work. Or, you look at something like we’re using Zoom right now. Visual thinker like me designs the interface and then the mathematician programs it.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, you begin the book with a 1957 quote from the linguist Noam Chomsky. Uou talk about his book Syntactic Structures, wherein he claims that language, specifically grammar, is innate and his ideas have influenced thinkers for over 50 years. Do you agree that grammar is innate for humans?

Temple Grandin:

Well, in one of my earlier books, Animals in Translation, I looked at the research that was done by Sloganov, I’ve probably said that wrong, on prairie dogs and that in their calls they have a noun-like function. Well, is it a coyote? A hawk? That’d be a noun. An urgency function, sort of like an adjective, and the way they hunt: lurker versus going from hole to hole. So that’s kind of a grammar function right there. You’ve got a noun function, urgency function, and does this coyote go from hole to hole or does he lurk? But the other thing on some of this language-based stuff, I remember reading something about uniframes of something. All I could think of is special pallets they put cars on in the car factory, which I know is wrong.

Debbie Millman:

What gave you that visual picture?

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. That’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But I think some of the issues about animal thinking, they’re still arguing about consciousness. Now, I get to thinking about, I think it’s difficult for somebody who thinks in words to imagine the dog actually thinks or conscious. The dog is a sensory-based thinker. Smell is very important to dogs. There’s new research that shows that the nose has a direct trunk line to the visual cortex. Ooh, trippy. New Cornell research. It’s not in the book. It just came out on the dog’s smelling in three dimension. Wow. But it is a sensory-based world, not a word-based world. I think some of this, it’s hard. I think it’s hard for some verbal thinkers to imagine thought without words.

Debbie Millman:

Well, there are scientists or neurologists that think that thought creates consciousness.

Temple Grandin:

Well, yeah, I think what creates consciousness is a certain amount of association hubs in the nervous system. All networks form hubs, whether they’re Facebook, whether they are airlines, because I can remember airlines when there were no hubs. But those hubs organically form. Networks form hubs. So in the brain you’ve got hubs where you get memory information, incoming sensory information, signals coming up from the emulsion centers, the frontal cortex trying to sort through it, and all this stuff is all intersecting together in big hub. You have to have a certain amount of centralized hubs, I think, to have consciousness.

Debbie Millman:

You write how language is presumed to transform thought into consciousness, while visual thinking gets erased somewhere along the way.

Temple Grandin:

This has been very tricky for me because in the visual thinking book, this is a really good example of collaboration. Betsy Lerner, my co-author, is a total verbal thinker. What we would do is I’d write the initial drafts and, boy, she would smooth them out and straighten them out and organize them. So, that’s a perfect example of collaboration between a visual thinker and a word thinker. There’s things that she thinks completely differently than I do.

I can remember when she got a dog and I suggested for her to watch everything the dog does and what he smells. Then she started to get some insight into sensory-based thinking in a dog’s world. I see people yanking dogs away from things they want to smell. Well, that’s their life.

Debbie Millman:

There are dogs that have been proven to be able to smell cancer.

Temple Grandin:

Well, there’s a lot of things they can smell and they can be trained to smell and working for all kinds of detection purposes. Their nose is just super powerful. I kind of use what’s the most example maybe a human did? Well, I’ve read about some wine steward that could identify 2,000 wines. Okay. That’s maybe as close as a person ever got to a dog.

Debbie Millman:

You state that visual thinking is not about how we see, but how the brain processes information.

Temple Grandin:

Yes. Because it’s in my imagination. Like, right now, I’ve got to go over and I’m doing a lecture in the introductory animal science class and I’m going, “Ooh, I’m going to have to go to a parking garage and walk over there because I won’t be able to find space in our lot.” Okay. Right now, I’m seeing both places. Then I can start the feel carrying my briefcase and wishing I could have gotten a space by our building. You see that? Just thinking about something that simple. I’m now seeing the parking garage. Now, it’s associative. Now I’m seeing the broken sign where one of our students drove our meat refrigerated truck in there, and it was too high. Okay. You see it’s associative.

Debbie Millman:

Right. It sounds like you have a visual power of association.

Temple Grandin:

Yeah. It’s a visual power of association. Give me a keyword and I’ll tell you about how it associated. Give me something kind of creative. Don’t give me car or house or something like that. Think of a kind of a creative keyword and I’ll Google it in my mind for you.

Debbie Millman:

Egg beater.

Temple Grandin:

Egg beater?

Debbie Millman:

Mm-hmm. Egg beater.

Temple Grandin:

Well, as a child, I can remember beating things with the egg beater. Now I’m seeing the power mixer we had. Now I’m seeing eating cookie dough before we baked the cookies. That was really a yummy thing to do. Okay. Now, I’m seeing a cement mixer. Okay. The association there is egg beaters mix up things, cement mixers mix. Als,o cement mixers are something I’ve had a lot of experience with. So I have lots of images and memory. Now, I’m thinking about my first job and I can see that cement mixer really high in Phoenix. We had to get the steps made on this cattle ramp before that truck got too hot. I remember the engineer going, “We’ve got to get this concrete laid by 10 o’clock.”

Debbie Millman:

It’s like a flip book in your brain.

Temple Grandin:

But you see what I’m getting is a series of associations. But these associations have some logic to them, and that’s how I solve problems because it’s bottom-up thinking. I’ll associate back to things I experienced in the past. “Oh, we’ve tried that in the past. That didn’t work.”

Debbie Millman:

I want to read a paragraph from your book.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

I’m very verbal. In fact, I’ve been told that everything happens up here in my head to a point where the rest of my body doesn’t even exist and it’s so much about language for me.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

I want to read a paragraph about word-based thinking.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

And then talk about it.

Temple Grandin:

Okay.

Debbie Millman:

“Word-based thinking is sequential and linear. People who are primarily verbal thinkers tend to comprehend things in order, which is why they often do well in school, where learning is mostly structured sequentially. They’re good at understanding general concepts and have good sense of time, though not necessarily a good sense of direction.

“Verbal thinkers are the kids with perfectly organized binders and the adults whose computer desktops have neat rows of folders for every project. Verbal thinkers are good at explaining the stops they take to arrive at an answer or to make a decision. Verbal thinkers talk to themselves silently, also known as self-talk, to organize their world. Verbal thinkers easily dash off emails and make presentations. They talk early and often.”

Temple Grandin:

Well, I’ve noticed with verbal thinking, like on things like policy, they overgeneralize. They say, “Well, we have to have an inclusive classroom,” or something like that. But how do you do it? They have no specific examples. It’s very overgeneralized, top-down thinking.

Debbie Millman:

What is the difference between bottom-up thinking and top-down thinking?

Temple Grandin:

Okay. The main difference between top-down and bottom-up is bottom-up, concepts are formed with specific examples. Okay. Let’s start a very simple example when I was a child. I had to separate cats, dogs, and horses. So how did I do that? Well, originally I used size, but then our neighbors got a dachshund, so I could no longer sort dogs from cats by size. So then I had to find other features that a dachshund shares with dogs, such as barking, the smell and the shape of their nose. The bottom-up thinker works better. It’s just like an artificial intelligence program.

Let’s say you have an artificial intelligence program that diagnoses melanoma skin cancer. Well, you show it 2,000 melanomas and then 2,000 mosquito bites or whatever, other kinds of rashes, it learns to sort. It takes a lot of information to be a good bottom-up thinker because what you’re doing is taking specific examples and putting them in categories.

Debbie Millman:

So, visual thinkers are bottom-up and verbal thinkers are top-down?

Temple Grandin:

Visual thinkers are bottom-up. Even the mathematicians are much more bottom-up.

Debbie Millman:

You talk about how visual thinkers are really needed now in all kinds of potentially dangerous situations, and outline how some theorists describe the three main components of risk assessment. I want to share that with you, what you’ve shared in the book. The three main components of risk assessment as identifying the potential risk, assessing the potential damage, and figuring out how to reduce it.

Temple Grandin:

All right. Now, that’s very sequential. They’re doing what I do sequentially with words. See, there’s three parts of that. All right. Let’s go to the disaster chapter in visual thinking. The Fukushima accident. Now there’s just one step. They designed the plant, the nuclear plant, perfect to be earthquake proof. It’s shook and it’s shook and it’s shook and it’s shook and everything’s fine. 20 minutes later, the tsunami floods the site. I just see the water coming. As soon as I… Water coming over the sea wall, flooding the site, I said, “Watertight doors would have saved it,” because the electrically-driven emergency cooling pump drowned.

Now, I just see it almost like a movie. It’s just one step. Well, it’s been a shock to me as I’ve learned the mathematical engineer has to go through, or the verbal thinker kind of goes through this more complicated way, engineers calculate risk. Okay. You look at the historical data. There were tsunamis that would’ve breached that in the past, that 10-meter sea wall. I can’t design a nuclear reactor, but maybe I need to be working on the safety systems because that electric pump has to run when I need it, and it’s not going to run underwater. You see, I just see. It’s so obvious the water coming in there, and you see it busting the doors out, and five seconds later the basement’s flooded.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve observed that when engineers discuss risk, they tend to use language that is almost robotic and void of human detail. This was incredible when I read this. A crash is called impact with terrain. Major problems are called anomalies. During a rocket launch, when everything is working smoothly, it is nominal. When it isn’t, there are four levels of failure, which I’ve learned from your book: negligible, marginal, critical, and catastrophic. The Boeing 737 Max tragedy was labeled a common mode failure.

Temple Grandin:

To me, I just see an angle of attack sensor. When I found out what that was, and I looked them up online and my next flight, I’m at the airport checking out angle of attack sensor [inaudible 00:32:13] the different planes and I go, “You wired a computer that controls how this plane flies,” and not the regular autopilot. You wired this computer that the pilots didn’t know about to a single, extremely delicate, fragile sensor that a bird can just bust off the airplane. How did you do that? No one asks the simple question: If a bird snaps off the angle of attack sensor, what will the plane do?

Debbie Millman:

How do we begin to improve how language is used to describe scenarios? How?

Temple Grandin:

Well, I think what we need to be doing is have teams with different kinds of thinkers on the team. The first step is you have to recognize it. Now, I’m saying, well, they didn’t have there at Boeing is a gnarly old shop guy who would’ve walked into the CEO’s office with an angle of attack sensor and slid it down the conference room table and saying, “You can’t wire that computer up to one of these.” Period. You see, I’m kind of visualizing that as kind of a fun scene.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I am too. I am too. It’s like a little movie in my head.

Temple Grandin:

If that had happened, this wouldn’t have happened. The planes would still be up there. Then there were other mistakes made. They wanted to not do simulator training for the pilots, but if they’d wired the computer to two angle of attack sensors and it had the angle of attack disagree function functional on these planes, that tells you one of them was broken. What if the default setting should have been fly normally if it breaks off and return to the airport. When you think about it [inaudible 00:33:50] see how basic that is?

Debbie Millman:

It’s logic. But you’ve stated in the book, and this is something, as somebody who is very verbal, this book really impacted sort of the way I behave. You state that by default, verbal people tend to be the ones who dominate conversations. They’re hyper organized and social. How can verbal thinkers best communicate with visual thinkers and give them the space to even slide that connector down the conference room table?

Temple Grandin:

Well, we need all the different kinds of minds.

Debbie Millman:

So what do we do? How do we create scenarios where visual thinkers, verbal thinkers, any type of neurodiverse thinker can be more collaborative?

Temple Grandin:

I think the first step is we got to realize the different kinds of thinking exist. Combined teams is what we should be doing, recognizing the skills that they bring to the table. They have different specific skills. Let’s take architecture versus engineering. I was just reading an article about a famous architect today, and he wants to make a building that looks like a Jenga tower. Then the engineers have got to make sure that Jenga tower doesn’t fall down, and the engineers are going to, okay, the elevator’s going to work, water systems, power. The architect wants it to look pretty and look nice and not just be a box, but you need both kinds of minds.

Debbie Millman:

I want to ask you about the term neurodiversity. It’s a term that originated in the autism community. It really became a rallying cry for people who had been marginalized because of their difference. Proponents of neurodiversity strive to change the medical model that reduces people to their diagnosis or to their label. And you write that the central idea behind neurodiversity is to find a new paradigm for thinking about neurological disorders.

Temple Grandin:

Well, I tell business people that you meet these different kinds of minds. Now, I’m thinking of the Millennial Tower in San Francisco that’s tilting, that tilts another few inches and the elevators won’t work. I wouldn’t give you 5 cents for an apartment in that building. They were cheap, and they didn’t put the pilings down to bedrock. Well, if you listen to some old concrete foundation worker on the site to put the pilings down to bedrock, it would’ve been my kind of mind that would’ve gone, “Oh, man, those suits are crazy. Why are they doing this?” You need those different kinds of minds.

The other thing is, I worked with a lot of people that probably were autistic. I’m going to estimate that drafting people, designing entire factories, designing equipment, people inventing mechanical things and building it, 20% of them were either autistic, dyslexic, or ADHD. You know, undiagnosed. Now, the way I got ahead in the ’70s, I can tell you being a woman was a bigger barrier than autism. I made sure I was very good at what I did. What I did was I learned to sell my work. I’d show off my drawings, and there’s no way I can show off a drawing on an audio podcast, but I would show people my drawings. I sold Cargill. I designed the front end of every Cargill beef plant because I sent a drawing to the head of Cargill and pictures.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, I want you to tell my listeners how you learned to draw.

Temple Grandin:

Well, my mother teaching me to draw, and then there was a draftsman named Davey who worked at a construction company. I watched how he drew, But before I could learn how to draw from Davey, I had to learn how to read a blueprint. You look at a flat drawing and there might be a little square on the floor plan. Those squares are concrete columns that hold up the roof. I had to learn to read a drawing.

At the Swift plant, they gave me a copy of a beautiful set of hand-done drawings, very detailed. I walked around in that plant for two days until I could relate every single line on that drawing to a door, a window, a piece of equipment, a column, of course the water tower was easy. That was just a great big circle on the drawing. Then after I learned how to read the drawings, then I just copied the way Davey did it. It kind of appeared almost like magic.

I can remember in 1978, I have a drawing of a dipthat system. I remember drawing that and I’m going… I couldn’t believe I had done it because a lot of people thought I was stupid and they didn’t think I’d amount to anything. I remember looking at that drawing and I’m going, “Stupid people wouldn’t draw a drawing like this.”

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely.

Temple Grandin:

That really helped my self-esteem.

Debbie Millman:

Some of your drawings are included in your book, which I love. One of the things that I wanted to ask you about the term neurodiversity was the idea that people talk about neurological disorders, and do you think that we’ll ever dispense with this word disorder and just think about these conditions as different?

Temple Grandin:

There’s a certain amount of variation in brains and behavior. I think it’s just personality variant. When does geeky become autistic? You see, it’s a too continuous trait. So, a certain amount of this is normal variation. Now, obviously, if you’ve never learned to speak, yeah, that’s a disorder. The problem we’ve got with autism is you’re going from Elon Musk and Einstein to somebody who as an adult can’t dress themselves, and we call it the same thing? That’s horrible overgeneralization by the verbal thinkers. All I can say, the business people, we need these different kinds of minds. We need to be putting all the hands-on classes back into schools because we got infrastructure falling apart right now. Bridges falling down, all kinds of stuff.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, my last question is this. You write about how while autistic people may have problems in some areas, they also may have extraordinary and socially valuable powers provided that they are allowed to be themselves. Autistic.

Temple Grandin:

Well, they also have to be able to have access to… Okay. If you have a third grader who’s super good at math and you make him do baby math, he needs that old-fashioned algebra book out of the attic. I don’t need it. I need to have art and be growing up with tools. I got that, because if you’re not exposed to enough different things… Or, I was exposed to musical instruments and I had lessons. I couldn’t play this little flute, but I was exposed to it.

Debbie Millman:

Now, I understand that melodies are the only things you could memorize without a visual image.

Temple Grandin:

Well, you see, I see the flute when I talk about it, and I’m seeing the piano that I had some piano lessons on. See, there’s nothing abstract there.

Debbie Millman:

Interesting. It’s so fascinating.

Temple Grandin:

Seeing myself playing chopsticks on the piano. I got not much further than that. But at least I was exposed. Another kid, you expose them to that flute or a guitar, they’ll just pick it up and play it. How are you going to know you’re good at musical instruments if you’re not exposed? Music and math tend to go together.

Debbie Millman:

Well, music is really based on math in so many ways.

Temple Grandin:

It is.

Debbie Millman:

Dr. Grandin, I’d like to close the show today with a quote of yours from your 2010 TED Talk. You stated this: “If by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the Earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave.”

Temple Grandin:

Well, who do you think designed some of the first technology? Not the chit-chatters around the campfire. It would’ve been someone sitting in the back of the cave trying to make a stone spear or something like that, that you see the brain can be more social or the brain can be more interested in what they do. You see, I am what I do. The happiest times in my life is doing really interesting things in my career. Something that works, that improves treatment of animals, real things. How do we make real change and improve something on the ground?

Debbie Millman:

Well, I’m hoping that your book will really show people the important changes that we need to make and ways to think about the world and new ways to make it better.

Temple Grandin:

Okay. Well, it’s been great talking to you.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you, Dr. Grandin. Thank you so much for making the world a better place with your work, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Temple Grandin:

And thank you so much for having me.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. It’s been an absolute honor. Temple Grandin’s latest book is Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions. Her website is templegrandin.com. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. Remember, we can talk about making a difference; we can make a difference; or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Best of Design Matters: Dr. Temple Grandin appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

In the world of design, advertising, and photography, Peter Arnell is a pioneer. His work with high profile clients, including Donna Karen, Samsung, Home Depot, and PepsiCo, have put him at the center of some of the most successful and sometimes controversial campaigns of recent decades. His energy is legendary, and it spills over into collaborations with artists, architects, and performers, including Frank Gehry, David Hockney, Michael Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Tina Turner. A new two volume monograph brings together the extraordinary diversity of his work. It’s called Peter Arnell: Projects 1980-2020, and we’re going to talk all about the book and his storied career today. Peter Arnell, welcome to Design Matters.

Peter Arnell:

Oh, thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Debbie Millman:

Peter, you’ve written about how the earliest memory you have is still painfully clear, and you’ve described it as, “A snippet of a lost and forgotten eight millimeter film jerking all over the screen in front of an old Super 8 projector.” Can you share a little bit more about the memory and how it has impacted you since?

Peter Arnell:

I think that memory, which I think affected my work and my life, was seeing the riderless horse at the Kennedy funeral. And I didn’t know a lot of things that I know now years later, about the boots of a soldier in backwards, and what a riderless horse was, et cetera, et cetera. But what was fascinating was just during the news reels, it was quite amazing to see tens of thousands of people in crowds everywhere staring at this horse without any rider on it. And it must have affected me dramatically because I think I spent the rest of my life looking for what’s not there.

And I think when you are in the creative business, it depends on what era and what decade we’re talking about, but I think in the early days, I was always trying to do things differently by staring not at what’s there, hence the competition, but looking at new ideas or points of differentiation by seeing what’s not there. And it also, of course, creates a tremendous amount of curiosity. So when you start to look at both the process of developing an idea, as well as actually expressing an idea, a way to articulate in a very simple fashion the right question to the audience, the way you do it is by, I think, removing the very obvious, or the very expected that the customer, or the viewer, would expect in a piece of communication, and add a billboard, et cetera.

And I think that that impact of that riderless horse probably stuck in my memory somewhere, what are all these people looking at? What are they staring at? What is this celebration or sadness all about? And so as I went on in my career, I think we’ve been known here for launching campaigns and products and services without ever even showing the product in them, because we believe strongly that if you could create a conversation that touches people’s feelings or emotions, they will go much farther and deeper to a potential customer who, in the end, we are really asking to join our brand, not really buy the brand. That kind of long-term thinking, I believe, and that approach came from those early visuals of that funeral of Jack Kennedy.

Debbie Millman:

Your parents split up when you were very young. From what I understand, your father disappeared. Your mom wasn’t able to raise both you and your sister, and you went to live with your maternal grandparents. What is your relationship with your parents like now?

Peter Arnell:

Well, unfortunately it’s been quite a while since we put Nathan and Ada to rest. But I think the dramatic effects of all of these breaks or cracks in one’s life, I do think affect ultimately how you operate or think in life. I don’t know how they affect the psyche, I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’m sure all those things had tremendous effects on the way I operate, the idea of collecting how I try to keep everything, maybe the fear of loss, I’m sure they’re connected up somewhere.

Debbie Millman:

You collect quite a few different things, these are just a few things that I’ve read about, dried leaves and twigs from a memorable autumn trip, bottle openers from places you love, matchbooks, paper napkins, photos, postcards, and all sorts of mementos that help you remember a place, a time, and a feeling. And you’ve said that your purpose for collecting is for saving your life, literally and figuratively. And Peter, has somebody that has also over the years done quite a lot of collecting, including repurchasing my childhood library and all the toys I played with, I really fully understand the desire to do that. What was the first thing you started to collect?

Peter Arnell:

At 65 years old, I’m not exactly sure of what the first thing was, but I think it was matchbox cars. I still have a couple of them, I have a BP, British Petroleum, lime green and blue tow truck from that, and I have a British Leyland, a white ambulance. But the collecting I do helps me in building a library of thoughts and ideas that touch me at some point that I believe are applicable at some point later in my life, and that’s really what I do, all the things that I collect have a direct relationship to some event or some experience that I had in my life, as you mentioned. But it’s quite random, and it tends to be a lot of objects that relate to my journey.

I have these bags that are called, they’re in files called PPT, people, places, and things, and I bag and tag everything. I mean, if I showed you my desk right now, to your point, I just picked up a incredible collection of new leaves on my trip to Paris a couple weeks ago. And I don’t stop there, many times, I then work on displaying them and figuring out how they can actually be presented so that they can be shared with friends and family. So the house is filled with thousands and thousands of very odd things from all over the world.

I think that when I was an adult, I think probably in my early 20s, I started to study Eames, and I was fascinated, I was, by the incredible collections that they had, and how-

Debbie Millman:

You’re talking about Charles and Ray Eames, right?

Peter Arnell:

Yes, yes, and how they affected their designs. They were living with childhood memories and books and scrap art, and things they collected from all over the world, and masks, and it goes on and on and on. So I guess in a way that legitimized what I was doing. It does get quite complicated because then you have to find space for all of it, and space in New York City is not so available, so you have to find systems. I have a big storage facility out in Long Island, way out in Smithtown, that’s around 9,000 square feet, where everything from as far as I started collecting lives there. And it’s not just objects, it’s also how many magazines of how many ads that I ran an ad in, or it’s a swatch of some material that we developed, or it’s a prototype and a model, it’s everything and anything, I don’t throw anything away. In fact, we have no garbage cans in my office.

Debbie Millman:

Really?

Peter Arnell:

Yeah, we have one in the kitchen, which is, of course, needed, but I don’t know where that came from, it certainly makes things a bit complicated at times for everybody in the studio. But I just think that everything has beauty. Everything in life has beauty, if you seek it you’ll find it. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a crumbled piece of paper, and those days that I worked with Frank Gehry, watching him create the most extraordinary architecture from simple ideas or notions of building things on his desk, to broken things to artifacts, they all have value and they all have beauty, and there will be a time in everyone’s life where those things can and should be applied. So by keeping all of that, and keeping it well and preserving it and cataloging the fashion that you can access it, I found that to be a very calming situation for myself.

Debbie Millman:

Your grandparents lived between Brighton Beach and Coney Island on Shore Boulevard at the end of Sheepshead Bay. You’re a native New Yorker, I am too. We’re also in the same exact generation, you’re just a year or so older than I am, so I remember how all of those wonderful neighborhoods felt back then. At the time, I read that you thought of yourself as a New York street rat. Why?

Peter Arnell:

Well, maybe I need to explain first what a New York street rat was for me.

Debbie Millman:

Okay, because I know what they’re like.

Peter Arnell:

I come from very humble beginnings. My grandfather was a fishmonger in the Fulton Fish Market. If we wanted to do something, if we needed money, we had to find a job. I folded newspapers at Shelley’s Luncheonette on the corner of Neptune and Shaw Boulevard, I pumped gas at the Mobile station, I worked at Juniors cleaning dishes in lower Brooklyn. You had to hustle all the time in order to keep things going, or keep up with things that maybe, at that time although small, were dreams.

I think the streets also, in the late 50s, early 60s, were a place of community, in neighborhoods like Sheepsheads Bay, and especially around that area, by Manhattan Beach and Brighton Beach, there was a great sense of community, and people lived, weather permitting, on their stoops and in front of their homes, and that was the gathering place. People followed and watched people’s patterns, and when they came and when they went, and the policeman was on the horse and the horse was parked by the little building that was there on the island, temple-like building where the police officers used to sit watching the neighborhood. People entertained themselves by going to schoolyards and playing basketball and stick ball.

So when I say street rat, I refer to myself as someone who got savvy quickly, learned a lot about life and experienced things on the street. The home apartment, 3D, was a little tiny apartment. It looked bigger then than it really was in my mind as a child, but it was a small apartment, and the bed was right by the kitchen in the little pantry area. So being out with friends and by the bay, and the activity and the community and the Mister Softee, and all this stuff that was going on back then, it got me really comfortable with the streets in the sense of that’s where one would learn, one would grow, one would have experiences. So I refer to myself as a street rat just because most of my knowledge and experience on how to approach things, or how to move things through a timeline, come from those days on the street, watching, observing how things moved and how people were, et cetera.

Debbie Millman:

You mentioned your grandfather being a fishmonger. He was a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and he became a fresh water fishmonger in the Fulton Fish Market, and I understand you often accompanied him to his work, helping him pack trays of fish with ice. You’ve written something really beautiful about the experience and I wanted to share it with our listeners. You state, “We woke up before midnight to pile into my grandfather’s cream and butterscotch colored Buick Skylark for the ride to the Fulton Fish Market at the South Street Seaport. It was a thrill at that age, heading toward the gleaming skyline of Manhattan, though the ride often lulled me back to sleep before we rolled over the Brooklyn Bridge.

“We pulled off at the first exit in Manhattan and parked in grandpa’s regular spot under the bridge. My grandfather would yank open the driver’s side door of the Buick, that always woke me up. A boy of 14 or 15 or 16, still half asleep, I looked up at the Wall Street skyline, and at the span of the bridge stretching back towards Brooklyn, murky and mysterious and majestic, shrouded in mist. It was the most beautiful view I’ve ever seen, and it’s burned, engraved, into my imagination.” And you went on to write that the bridge like was a gateway to a fantasy land, and I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about how the bridge became that gateway to the fantasy land. What kind of fantasy land?

Peter Arnell:

If you lived in the outer boroughs, making a trip to Manhattan was like going into the big city. I mean, everything scale-wise seemed extraordinary. To this date every time I cross the Brooklyn Bridge I get a rush. I think that Roebling had an extraordinary vision. When you cross a body of water, the act itself on a bridge, especially back then, I believe was quite violent, because the East River, as it opens up the Atlantic Ocean, et cetera, it’s just this very calm, beautiful, elegant stream that is incredibly turbulent, but at the same time, from a visual point of view, quite beautiful and harmonic. And then you see this massive piece of architecture in a funny way divided, and it’s the most bizarre set of architectural elements of Gothic, it’s Renaissance, and he’s got everything going on there, along with modern technology to span this river.

And I think I understand it all, and I felt it all from an early age. And so I think it became this arrival into the big world, into adult world every time I crossed it, and this lingering to really be on the other side from Brooklyn, which some people might not call the suburbs, but they were back then, into the big city. And Lower Manhattan, with all Wall Street, and the movement, and the energy down at the fish market, and the boats and the harbor, it was breathtaking. It did offer me, in the end, an incredible contribution to my entire career.

My grandfather parked his car a bit away from the fish market, because the people who really couldn’t afford parked under the bridge. And of course the reason why people didn’t like to park their car there was there was pigeons and they did nasty things on your car all day, so if you parked your car under the areas where the pigeons were, the car was ugly and smelly by the time you went to pick it up. But that’s where he parked it, and he parked it very close to the, it must have been about 10 degrees off of the angle of the bridge, and that view, which I’ve seen so many times in so many different lighting conditions and weather conditions, it still remains to me one of the most beautiful images of discovery, of design, power, presence, of anything in the city.

And I remember one night I had the good fortune of meeting Donna Karen and her, at the time, head of marketing, and there were just two employees, I think, at the time. She had just began, it was days into her new career after leaving Anne Klein. And she went on and on and on about New York and all the things that I loved. I got along with her very well. It was late in the afternoon, and I thought to myself, my God, she’s talking about designing clothes for people who live in that place of which I understand and know very well, and the way she described it, and the way she described her dream and her ambitions, kept on leading my mind back to that spot with grandpa in the Skylark, looking up at the bridge.

So that night with a little Ricoh Instamatic camera, when the moon’s up high, 400 black and white Tri-X film, with the light bouncing on the river, it picks up the light quite beautifully. And I wanted so badly, I was being offered an opportunity to pitch for her business. And Kalman, I believe, is the other from M & Company.

Debbie Millman:

Tibor.

Peter Arnell:

Yeah, Tibor, who is one of the most brilliant people we know in our industry, God rest his soul. And it was him and I pitching, and I guess it was a very anxious Peter that night. And I went out, I went back to there. I also have been known to go there, there are benches there now, and speak to grandpa. Still to this day. But I went out, I shot a picture of the bridge at night, in black and white, in a period in the early 80s where color and fashion and red lips and big hats, and all this vivid stuff, imagine the antithesis of that was a photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge at about 10:30 at night, and I just was convinced that she would get it. I was convinced that she would understand that I knew how to launch her company. And I ran to Ja Brunell, he was a man who made Veloxes. I don’t know if you remember back when he did these Veloxes.

Debbie Millman:

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

Peter Arnell:

And with Optima type put New York under Donna Karen. She had been talking about, in the meeting, about Maud Frizon shoe boxes, and how they said Maud Frizon Paris. So I put all that together and I took this picture, and then I ran to her the next day. I showed it to her, and she started crying. She had the same emotional, incredible reaction to just this stupid black and white photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge, which I’m sure even that angle exists in postcards and tourist sites and everything forever. But it was the fact that we were displacing that to represent a hot new fashion company, of which the product wasn’t even designed yet, in a world that was all color, in black and white, no models, no clothing, and I guess in that conversation I just said, “This is it.” And she said, more importantly, “This is what I really believe is my image.”

And I’m not sure if I knew, or she knew, or anyone knew what we were up to at that point. I think we get too much credit for seeing and thinking things through with such depth, I think a bit of history and memory and informed intuition, and there’s a whole bunch of things operating, and then you’ve got to have the chutzpah to push it forward. So I went up there, God knows what she would’ve said, and then that began really my career in communications advertising. She gave me my first real chance.

I think that night, through Donna’s dream, and something that happened in the room between the two of us, the street rat was alive and well. The street rat was trying so hard to knock on the door of opportunity to say, I don’t know anything about fashion, and I know less about clothes and models and shootings and advertising, I don’t know that world. I was writing books at the time on architecture, and doing graphic design at Bergdorf Goodman for 300 little line ads to make money.

And at that point, it didn’t matter if I knew fashion, nor, in a way, did Donna care about that. It was just this other world we stepped in around ideas and thoughts, and if you always are holding on to the things that are so meaningful in your entire life, they will come back, not to haunt you, but to support you in a very, very powerful way. Especially in the arts and in communication arts, because the world turned into an entire visual economy with Instagram and social media, and everything, but back then, there was a process involved. There were croppers and layouts, and we’d have computers, and we had to use scissors, and all this other good stuff.

Debbie Millman:

Wax machines.

Peter Arnell:

Wax machines and T-square, everything. So the hand was involved, it was a craft, how you print a picture. So I think she felt that night that there was some connection, some bizarre connection between me and that bridge, my history, which I never talked about that night, nor with her for a long time. And being the grandson of an immigrant, and her being the granddaughter of an immigrant, it’s the whole thing. And her family growing up in the sewing, the garmento business, and mine, it’s all that stuff, and it began a journey of 40 years of extraordinary opportunity and luck to be invited into other people’s great work and collaborations, and so forth.

Debbie Millman:

You started working with Donna Karen in 1984. I graduated college in 1983. And I am a native New Yorker, I was born in Brooklyn as well, I lived in Queens, I lived on Staten Island, and I went to school in Albany. When I graduated I knew, the only thing I really knew for sure was that I wanted to live in Manhattan, and came and lived in a hovel, in a tenement building in Manhattan, and struggled to find my first jobs doing layout and paste-up in magazines, and was a magazine rat, for sure. My dream at the time was to work at Vanity Fair. But I have to tell you, I remember, I actually remember the first time I saw that Brooklyn Bridge ad, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you.

I was sitting at my desk at my little rinky-dink office, doing my little rinky-dink layouts with X-Acto blades and wax and whatnot, and I turned the page and there was this bridge, this almost hazy black and white Donna Karen New York, and I was hypnotized by it. I was hypnotized by it. And it became this aspirational little world I wanted to embody and live in. And went to Bergdorf Goodman, and it was so out of my reach, and so beautiful. That’s how powerful that ad was for me, for millions of women, especially the young working women of New York at the time that were really being seen as this generation of young women in the workforce for the first time.

You ultimately created an identity and a world for Donna Karen that created one of the most successful fashion brands of all time. You went on to create Donna Karen New York, which was another huge blockbuster success, and a career was ignited. What did you imagine when you were a kid that you wanted to do when you grew up? Because kids like us didn’t think about design, we didn’t even know about design.

Peter Arnell:

First of all, thank you for, it’s very beautiful what you said, and it touched me. People who purchased magazines back then, they just couldn’t wait until they come out, many couldn’t afford them. The September issue was always too big to carry, and it was the fights with the publishers about where you position that, and all this stuff, and what sections were good. And it’s so funny because of all the things I ever did in my life, that was the one project that I did where there was no cropping, there was no meetings about approvals, there was no discussions of where it’s going in the magazine. I think I was just so overwhelmed and proud that someone would actually print something that I had, in my own little way, contributed to this massive, incredible force called Donna Karen. She was, without exception, a leader of a generation, not just in fashion, but in spearheading the aspirations and drives for tens of thousands of women in university and Parsons and FIT, and she was really the guts of 7th Avenue for 20 years.

So when you speak about it, I have to say, I think I was acting much more as a documentarian that day than I was as an advertising person. I was acting as a New Yorker, respecting and demonstrating the values of our great city, but as it was slightly displaced over into fashion and into an ad, it exploded. And if you really think about what you’re saying, she started a business with, I want to say we had $14,000 budget that year, and she had less than a million dollars to start the whole business, so it was incredible, if you think about it, that such a powerful idea came to be known as a brand that then became this very highly regarded and very effective tool that’s taught in schools for those things that I did back then.

But they didn’t come along with a plan, they came along just with maybe, at the time, a fear that I would lose the opportunity to do something great and get an account. They came with relying on my childhood, and going back, not forward, to something that I really did believe was a gateway, and in the end it was, to my entire career. I mean, that bridge ends up becoming the reason why I go on for 40 years of getting all these chances to do interesting things. And I don’t believe that as a child I could have seen or put that together. I think that my father, my biological father, Alvin Arnell, did a book called Standard Graphical Symbols. It was when I was one year old, or something. But he designed what we now know as emojis for electrical, structural, and mechanical engineering, and he did a book, it was like a AIA standard graphical symbols for the engineering world.

So I have to say I did grow up with, there was something there in my genes or DNA, or in the environment or something, there was something there, even if it was for a short period of time. Of course later on I studied him. But I don’t think I ever had any thought about what I wanted to do when I was a child. And I would argue I don’t even know what I want to do today. At some point, I realized this incredible life of making and creating things permits me entree into so many worlds all over the globe of so many different industries and so many different challenges and solutions, whether they be Special Olympics, or whether they be Chrysler, wherever I work or have worked, that I’m able to roll my sleeves up and learn. And I think I ended up putting myself in a perpetual school. I’m always in school learning.

I’m not sure how much I know, but somehow I was able to aggregate friendships and associations, experiences, and they kept on building and building, and then at some point people believe in you, and they go from, “What do you do?” To, “I like what you do,” to, “I’d like you to do what you do for me.” If I had to do it all over again I would probably do some things over differently, because as you grow and expand at that young age, you just don’t have the capacity or experience or knowledge to know how to manage much of it. Now older, looking back 45 years, you see things so differently, you see things so differently.

Debbie Millman:

What are some of the bigger things you would’ve done differently?

Peter Arnell:

When you have nothing and you’re fighting, and you’re in a world, Madison Avenue, just nobody, it was a small little tiny company fighting against BBDO, and all these big giants, and my God, you just go. You just go, and you just are blind. Any opportunity was an opportunity, and you’re just banging down walls, and you’re ranting and raging, you’re just trying to get stuff done, and so on. And all of that, in the end, just a waste of time. One services one’s own growth and fuels it much better by looking in the mirror and reflecting on certain realities, and trying to understand and have gratitude for yourself before anything else, as a human being.

And I missed a lot of that stuff because I was going so fast, and building so fast. I mean, imagine 22 years old and you did that Donna Karen thing, and then years later, shortly thereafter, I was credited for coming up with DKNY, which was a massive shift in the fashion industry, because prior to DKNY, second lines were built as a cheaper fabrication of the first line, Anne Klein, Anne Klein 2, on and on. This idea of the other side of the same woman, that a woman who likes caviar also likes pizza, that women are spending a few thousand dollars for an outfit, could also enjoy putting on jeans and running barefoot, whatever. So that idea of extending the brand, and then taking Donna Karen New York, taking those letters out, it changed again. And I was young, and I was just on fire. We went on to work on second lines, and A line, and we were like B for beanpoles, it was almost like a comedy.

And then in the middle of it we were running to Paris, we were hired by Mr. Arno to work with Mr. Lacroix to start a couture house. And I was in Paris all of a sudden, and we were on fire. And when you’re on fire and when you’re growing and when you’re going that fast, you’re really blind to so much, especially when you’re young and don’t have experience, I think you tend to step over, or step around, things that are important in life as building blocks to character and knowledge, and so forth. So I would have gone through it differently by slowing down and enjoying more of it, less of a street rat and more of a well-mannered citizen of society, so to speak. And then we kept on growing. I mean, it didn’t stop, it went on forever. We were just lucky. And most people in our space, who was talking about brand in the early 80s?

Debbie Millman:

No one. Oh, well, if they were, they were accusing you of being a sellout and doing the devil’s work.

Peter Arnell:

Right, right.

Debbie Millman:

As I was accused. Do you think that if you knew what you know now about the speed in which you grew, the work that you would do well, the work that would be criticized, would you have done anything different, or do you feel that that has all led you to this moment? I once asked Seth Godin what he would tell his 30-year-old self, and he’s like, “Nothing, because if I did anything any different I wouldn’t be right here right now.”

Peter Arnell:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

He wasn’t talking about talking to me, he was talking about where he is in his life.

Peter Arnell:

Sure. I mean, there’s a certain, they always say 30% of my OCD triggers 70% of all else I do, you know what I mean? So if I wasn’t the same person, of course. But yeah, I was fearful of too many of the wrong things.

Debbie Millman:

Like what? Don’t go over that too quickly.

Peter Arnell:

I should have had more confidence in what I believed in in regard to my work than worrying about outside criticism or competition because the work. However, I was lucky enough to arrive at this ongoing month after month, year after year, successes around being associated with the early days of Nespresso capsule, and Listerine pocket packs, I mean, it goes on and on and on, The Gap with Mickey, Banana Republic, and the naming and launching of Allure for Mr. Wertheimer, Chanel.

Debbie Millman:

I mean, some of the greatest work of the latter half of the 20th century, without a doubt. Martha Stewart Everyday, Michael Jackson’s Invincible, Hanes Hosiery with Tina Turner, the list goes on and on and on.

Peter Arnell:

Yeah, so I think that I would’ve probably found more opportunity. I always think that the more time you have, and the more reflection you have, the better the work’s going to be, and I think the first thing is that I’m almost sure that almost, without exception, everything I’ve ever done could have been better. I see now many of the opportunities to have gone all the way, but I think there was a few there that I had reached a certain point that worked, so I was okay, and everyone was happy, and the client was content, et cetera. This idea of pushing yourself and working hard to just always try to seek the truth in a solution, there is an essence and a truth in every message and in every company’s culture that if you hold a mirror up correctly to, and you angle it to the audience, you will see there’s a spot there, a sweet spot.

Steven Spielberg said to me once that you really need to believe that sharks don’t have soundtracks, and that always stuck in my head about Jaws, that do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, I think without that soundtrack the shark wouldn’t have been very threatening. So I think there’s always this kind of expectation in the marketplace where people find the mix between familiar and the unexpected, the sweet spot, to be magical. And I think that, I wish almost 100%, that I would’ve spent more time in front of the camera, I would’ve tried to play with the leading on a piece of type for more hours, it goes on and on and on. So you only saw, and even if those things were whatever one would consider successful, were successful solutions for clients I had, I would think at the end the real hero in all that was the client who allowed those things to get to the marketplace, because many of them were so unbearably difficult to believe in or to follow.

There were many, many times where the art of the sale is as important as the art of the idea, which is as important as seeing the vision of what’s not there, and then putting all that together and solving a marketplace problem for a client, which then has to compete, and on and on and on, it’s very complex. And then when you put the billboard up, it doesn’t have your phone number, you can’t explain anything to anybody, it either works or it doesn’t work, in a split second, in a business where communication has to just get it, like Think Different, or Just Do It, just in a split second you get it, you have a community or you don’t. They do take time to build, but in the beginning if you entrench a brand in the right lane, right from the beginning, I think they are forever propositions, they don’t really need to change.

And so I think I could have done better many, many times, schedules, budgets, time, clients, relationships, all affect the result that ends up in the marketplace. It’s not just the idea. The other thing is that sometimes, I think as I got into my 40s, I don’t know if it was just psychological or age, but I felt like I was listening less and hearing myself more, and I think that tends to lead to problems, because you start out with Donna, who’s banging her chest about New York City, and then you do a picture, it’s so clean, simple, elegant. I came out of this background of editing and writing books on architecture, James Sterling, Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Aldo Rossi, all these books that I wrote and edited and laid out, that’s how we started our career in the studio.

And so I’m very academic. The academic side of me uses up, many times, too much time, versus the intuitive creative side, the artist side. And then when they bang heads the academic side always wins because it knows too much. And so I would do a lot less of the academic and a lot more of, again, I would not be fearful of making sure all my boxes were checked off, and everything was so picture perfect in both presentation as well as execution, and more time on the values that I would’ve built in, or the ideas, how to mask them. And I was very much also at that time into the win versus the journey with a client.

Debbie Millman:

Oh yeah, yeah.

Peter Arnell:

It was the 80s, it was Wall Street, it was the pitch, and then I would lose interest after a certain period of time. So I did hold onto, and worked for years with Samsung and Donna, and I had very long relationships, but they were few, and most of what I do and did were assignment based. So if you design the Pepsi logo, you do it once, then you finish, and that’s it.

So a combination of living in that world of either fixing or finding identity or expression, communication, idea, solution, strategy, marketing, whatever, and the pace of it all, and the hungry Peter, who was always looking for the next, and the world changing dramatically from the East Coast, to Silicon Valley and technology, all this was going on for… I mean, think about my life, was 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, each decade is just filled with major shifts in societal, crazy bell curves of amazing introductions, innovations, and movements that I was a witness to. So I was wanting to move and always keep up, and always stay in shape, and practice exercising the brain. But you get in your own world at a certain point, you closed down, because that’s your mission, is to survive, grow, contribute, win, be the best, and you lose sight sometimes of, not sometimes, but many times of the other parts of life that are truly valuable and also feed that.

Balance was never my thing. Someone said to me, “How do you vacation?” I said, “I tried that once, it didn’t work for me,” and it really is the case. I usually go to bed around 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, and I usually get up about 3:30, and I’ve done that most of my life. I’m known for not sleeping, I like to do two days in one, I like to win, I think that’s important. I don’t drink, I don’t go to nightclubs or bars, or things like that. So I work, and I still think I’m the grandson of an immigrant scared to not be able to pay his bills. I think it’s the same person who is just there always if you follow, it just never changes

Debbie Millman:

Your life now, and the work that you’re doing now, is very different than the work and the life that you had in the early part of the 2000s. You sold your business to, I believe it was Draft, and then bought it back, and then sold it to Omnicom. I also sold my business to Omnicom, so I understand what that was like, and then left. You had a breakup with Omnicom. And this all was around the time you redesigned Pepsi and then Tropicana. What happened with Tropicana?

Peter Arnell:

This might end up becoming the most famous podcast ever in the history of marketing if I answer this, not only truthfully, but accurately.

Debbie Millman:

Well, if you change your mind and you want to take it out, we certainly can, but I’d love to-

Peter Arnell:

No, no, no.

Debbie Millman:

I should tell you, Peter, I should tell you, I don’t know if you know this, so full disclosure, I really should have told your people before, but I worked on the design that you redesigned that Tropicana went back to, so there’s this incredible symmetry to this right now. But I don’t do that kind of work anymore either.

Peter Arnell:

So I’m going to try to give you a very simple narrative. So the chairman at the time, the chairperson and the president were enamored by our studio and the work that I was doing, and we got a lot of work from Pepsi. In fact, we got every brand, Mountain Dew, and I think the only thing we didn’t do was SoBe. Gatorade, excuse me. And Indro was, at the time, super excited about design. That was her thing, she went out to speak to Steve Jobs, she had a meeting with him, and she was really on the right track for many reasons. Indro came to her office one day and showed me a champagne glass. She wanted everything modern and clean and cleaned up, and so forth. And I tell many people this, but can you imagine, how does a designer get accused of having authority to change all the factory lines throughout the entire world? It doesn’t go down that way, it really doesn’t.

Actually, the way it goes down is you’re given an assignment and direction on a brief, and you follow it. And if the client is tough on that brief, you follow it by just illustrating with your talent the values or the objectives that are in that brief, which is what we did. And if you don’t want to pay to change the factories in the line to get a pet product, see through plastic, because it costs too much money, it’s a big investment, tooling and this and that, then somebody raises their hand and says, “Just put the juice up there. Put it in a champagne glass, it’ll look rich and valuable.”

So that instruction came from the company, that is the truth. And then we went ahead and we did thousands of images and pictures and layouts of moving all that thing around, we moved that around a lot, and they loved it. Not only did they love it, but how does in a big corporation, something get registered and trademarked and printed, manufactured and distributed, because an art director, no. So we were an easy fall, the lesson I learned was you need to do what’s right, that idea that was presented was never right. The idea that was presented was to redesign the packaging, which we did, which came out with Trop50, there was a clear pitcher-like bottle that I designed that came out years later, the half the sugar Trop50 version of that.

Debbie Millman:

Which still isn’t on shelves.

Peter Arnell:

Yes, yes, yes. But it all exploded, and then there was an article in the Newsweek with Danny Lyons that was hysterical, accusing me as public enemy number one in the design world. It just went on and on and on. And then the New York Times had this editorial with a straw coming out of my head saying idiot. So they got, what I understand, six or eight letters, and the gentleman who was running the company in Chicago, who was appointed by the chairman of Pepsi, he wanted to do what he wanted to do, and he really probably believed that it was a mistake to change the packaging. So within weeks there’s a famous Stu Elliott article that comes out talking about the campaign, and it was all about squeeze and love, and all this beautiful black and white photography, and the whole thing. And then weeks, days, I don’t remember, a week and a half later there was an article that Pepsi’s pulling the whole thing.

It was probably not necessary in the end. However, I think the lesson I took away from it all, back to my point about believing in myself, and fear and all this, was I should have just raised my hand early on. Although you’re in these contracts with clients, you can’t say anything. But I just should have kept my mouth shut and just simply say, “Things happen, mistakes happen in life, and people make the wrong choices.” Instead I said something like, publicly, “They paid me a ton of money, if they don’t know what to do with the work, that’s their problem.” I don’t think that went over big.

Debbie Millman:

Yikes, yeah.

Peter Arnell:

But certainly I got a lot of notoriety for being the biggest asshole ever. But I said what was on my mind. So I think at the end, the reason why it might have never been a success is because the strategy behind it was, in a way, a facade, because when you don’t have a shelf stable product, the colors change during the season, which is very hard for the consumer, and is it good, not good, et cetera, and then you end up with a lot of confusion. So if I had thought about it, I probably would’ve raised my hand and said to the management of Pepsi, “I don’t think that’s a good idea and I’m not going to participate in it,” but the pay was good.

Debbie Millman:

Having spent most of my career in fast moving consumer goods, I know exactly how hard it is to push back with a client that’s on a deadline, and you have a lot of people to pay, and you have a lot of sure deadlines that you have. And it’s funny, Peter, because at the time, of course, I was very dismayed that the package that my company had worked on was going away, and when I saw the packaging and I read the strategy I was like, this is not a bad strategy. Rather than show an actual orange, why not show what’s in the orange, the actual juice? And I remember talking to Paula Scher about it, one of the partners at Pentagram, and she was like, “Don’t gloat, Debbie, because this is not good for design. Because if we give in to people that are trying to keep change from happening, what kind of innovation will ever be allowed?”

And it’s always stayed with me, she’s one of my dearest friends, and for her to say at the time, and she was right, she was absolutely right, because as we see now, there’s almost no brand identity that’s launched these days that isn’t on some level picked apart and accused of being genitalia, people talk about it being female genitalia or male genitalia, and it’s the same logo, or looking like a swastika. So this happens, I think that people have become so terrified of anything that’s uncertain, that when they see something at shelf, nobody goes and says, “Oh my God, could you look at that? M&M’s redesigned, I’m going to try them now.” They go to the shelf, they see something’s changed and they think, why is that different? Am I getting less M&M’s for more money? Look what happened with the recent brouhaha about M&M’s.

Peter Arnell:

Right.

Debbie Millman:

But in any case, everyone has an opinion about everything, the very same identities that people ring their hands over, a year later when they are redesigned, the very same people ring their hands over it again.

Peter Arnell:

But it’s interesting because Paula’s right, we’re professionals. We work hard, we really care about our craft and how things really are put together. And we’re in an industry where everybody has an opinion about everything. I don’t know at what point someone felt maybe in our lifetimes we should have had more Paul Rand’s, because he knew early on he needed to be a tough one to get things through, and he was a tough one, as you know, he was a monster at both the pitch, as well as the control of the product. And everyone’s a designer, everyone’s a photographer now, everyone, everyone, but there are differences in the end, aren’t there? And when someone raises their hand and says no, in a way they don’t have a right to say no.

However, the world today has changed, and in a way they do have a right to say no, because their voice matters. In a way the industry and its value has been so demeaned because the authority, professionalism, quality, the power of the talent that’s out there, you talked about Pentagram, and the extraordinary artists, graphic artists, communication experts, video editors, brilliant talent, real talent, they have been undercut by someone shooting something on an iPhone, and other things, that I guess, in a funny way, I guess the sign of our times, but in a way the industry has let itself do that.

I always believe that what I do has incredible long-lasting value and it’s an investment, and I’ve always believed that, and I’ll always believe it. Not because I think my work is good or bad, there’s many, many others who do much more extraordinary work than I, in my entire career there’s always been giants around me, from powerful art directors to brilliant people. However, I’ve been always able to explain to people that what we do here is IP, and it has value, and it becomes the absolute flag, the banner, the lead of one’s organization in so many ways if you could actually integrate that into every touchpoint of a company and its dealings with consumers.

But there aren’t a lot, if any of me, ever, and still today, who actually go to the mat on the point that what we do might not be the best, or even close. But its competency is very high, its approach is very smart, and ultimately its results work. So it has value, it has the same value as an investment one would make into a corporation if it’s done right. So we maintain the industry’s original thinking that design is good business, as Paul said, and you think about all the corporations, CBS and Dorfman, and Seagram and Meise, and all these incredible iconic designers in all architects, that built these corporations, images, Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright, and they all had the same thing in mind which is go to a visionaire, or somebody who sees how to capture, either by mirroring or contributing newness, or freshness, or evolution, or reimagining something, and let them build it, let them expose it, let them have the time to develop it.

I think that’s why Bilbao became the building, and will always be the building of the century, because it permitted a world to understand that good design, and the power of supporting good design, can change a country, can change a city, can change the meaning of art. It has so much ramifications. Those movements, whether they be deco, Bauhaus, [foreign language 00:56:43], whether they be Cassandre doing a poster for a boat or shoes in Paris, or Dubonnet, whatever, those legendary moments don’t have a place today in our world. Those iconic moments, you go to the Museum of Modern Art, just 15 years ago, you would’ve seen design celebrated completely different.

And it’s not a sign of our times at all, it’s a sign of somehow technology, or Andy’s 15 minutes of fame mindset, somehow has taken over the craft and art of industrial graphic brand and packaging and corporate, the things that create the language, the visual and verbal language development for corporations, for products that have always been on the forefront of leading and growing companies, have somehow become secondary, or not even important in the way that a print shop isn’t important anymore, or Gar Lelard at Lab 57, printing black and white photo, it’s all gone. Most of it is gone.

And so that’s okay, you have to move all your times, but talent that exists, and great talent that exists, and professionals who have talent in the industry of corporate identity and branding and communications, the world and the industry needs to celebrate them more, and for the right reasons, because they move the economy, they grow businesses, they create extraordinary progress for enterprises. And we learned that from Steve Jobs, didn’t we? We learned that from Steve Jobs, that design was important. We’ve learned that from Braun, we’ve learned that from Knoll, from Florence Knoll, we’ve learned that from so many incredible giants of design industry, Jony Ive, God knows what this man has done to contribute to the landscape of design.

But somehow in most places it lost its value, and I will never let go of the relationship between the business of that business and the business of design, and those things to me connect strongly. And so I think the other and most important thing to say is that the economics around the industry need to come back in a very strong way, and people have to really start to generate the delta between the common and the unique, the highly available and the very, very exclusive talents that exist there to allow these superstars in the world of design to flourish in their own right and be successful and progress as they have toward others, and customers, and so forth. And I see that went away, but for the industry, like in architecture, architect’s roles, contractors took over and they became less the authority on their destiny in the built environment.

So I don’t know how we got off on all this subject, but it’s probably only to say that on the third point, regarding what would I have done different, I probably would’ve just said, “This thing isn’t for me.” Because at the end, if you really look at what we did with Tropicana, it wasn’t a great design. There was nothing magical or innovative about any of it.

Debbie Millman:

Well, the cap, the cap was.

Peter Arnell:

Well, I haven’t gotten to the cap yet.

Debbie Millman:

Okay, okay.

Peter Arnell:

But God bless you for raising it. But the graphic arts of it was just a glass with juice in it with, the world said, poorly placed type. But the cap was a great idea, the cap could have been their Snap, Crackle and Pop, it could have been the Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz, it could have and should have, and still could be. That idea of the hours and weeks and months of working with the packaging container companies to master the click of that cap and the squeeze to always touch the orange, and then I became like a buffoon explaining it to everyone. I was rattled, I came to a meeting late and went on a video, I was like, “And you touch the cap.” It wasn’t done the way I would do it today.

Debbie Millman:

For our listeners that might not be aware, the cap, because this was quite some time ago, I guess about 15 years ago, the cap was actually half an orange, and it was a dome, and it looked like an orange, and it was ingenious. It seems like you’ve learned a lot since that time. I was really intrigued by your inclusion of all the work that you’ve put in to your book, it’s been 40 years. First time ever you’ve published this monograph of your vast body of work. It’s a two volume hardcover book with a beautiful slip case. It’s 848 pages, it contains over 2,600 photographs and illustrations of hundreds of clients and collaborations. And it’s not just the greatest hits, it’s the work, it’s the life, it’s the evidence of a life in design and advertising and branding, with hundreds of projects, including projects for Unilever and Con Edison and Reebok and PepsiCo and Chrysler, and Commissions from Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Tom Brady. Did you leave any work out?

Peter Arnell:

I did.

Debbie Millman:

You did?

Peter Arnell:

Yeah, 25 to 30% of the projects didn’t get in.

Debbie Millman:

Wow.

Peter Arnell:

Because it was just growing and growing and growing.

Debbie Millman:

Also, you had to get their permissions, right? Didn’t you have to get permissions from everyone?

Peter Arnell:

Yeah, I don’t know if you realize, most of the photography in the book is my own.

Debbie Millman:

Right, I was thinking about that, because I did a book where I had to get permission from Coca-Cola for some of the images, and it took a year.

Peter Arnell:

Yeah, no, it took a while to get everything, all of the homework in order. But the photography stuff is always complicated, and we’ve always been very good at making sure that I have the rights to publish the work. But I think the big mission in that whole book is, because at the end of the day you like the work, you don’t like the work, isn’t really the point, and I’m not sure if I ever did anything important or relevant enough to be in a book like that, and that’s the truth. But it just seems like I tried my best every time, and I think the book just represents a journey of trying my best. That’s the most you can ask for from anybody.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely.

Peter Arnell:

And I think that when I wanted to take pictures they said, “Put the camera down, you’re not a photographer, you’re not a designer, you’re not a car designer, how could you be at Chrysler designing cars?” It’s just that world. But I don’t know, it’s been a big life, I probably have another 20, 30 years to go. So I’m not going to stop, I’m working on Fontainebleau now in Las Vegas.

Debbie Millman:

Well, they’re a repeat client as well, right? Didn’t you work with them 10 years ago?

Peter Arnell:

Yeah, I’ve done many things from Mr. Soffer at Fontainebleau. I think we started our relationship over 20 years ago. There was the Miami, and then there was the original Vegas, and then Vegas one stopped for a while because of financial turmoil, and then now it’s back and we’re reopening at the end of this year. But I’ve always done really simple things in the end, because in such a complexity of problems and people in the world, and competition, how do you take complexity and convert it into simplicity? Is a really very, very difficult job, consistently.

And I’ve been happy to be with my same photo assistant, Rune Stokmo, for coming up 36 years, and Dan, who’s the president here, who’s been with me for 22 years, and Yuko, who’s been here for 32 years. We’re still with a lot of the, what I call the old timers, the founders of the business. So we’re lucky to be here, and next step is the opening of Fontainebleau, that’s the next moment in my career here. I’m sure that’ll be met with an interesting public opinion, to open up a first casino and resort after. There will be a lot of stuff that’s interesting.

Debbie Millman:

Peter Arnell, thank you so much for making so much work that matters, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Peter Arnell:

Yeah, thank you so much for today, it was just such a pleasure to talk to you.

Debbie Millman:

Peter Arnell’s latest book is a two volume monograph called Peter Arnell: Projects 1980-2020. You can learn more about Peter, his work, and his book on his website, peterarnell.com. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters and I’d like to thank you for listening, and remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Peter Arnell appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

It’s not every kid who says to themselves, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a footwear designer.” Well, D’Wayne Edwards did. At 19 years old, he became the youngest professional footwear designer in the industry. More than 30 years later, he’s an award-winning, celebrated designer who has created over 500 styles of sneakers for the likes of Derek Jeter and Michael Jordan. He’s worked for many of the biggest brands, including Nike. Now, D’Wayne Edwards is also an educator. In 2010, he founded Pensole, the first academy in the country, specifically focused on the design of footwear and now, runs the HBCU Pensole Lewis College of Design and Business in Detroit, Michigan. D’Wayne Edwards, welcome to Design Matters.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Thank you very much. I’m very excited to be here and looking forward to the conversation.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you. Me too. I want to ask, is it true that you are from two cities of champions?

D’Wayne Edwards:

I am, believe it or not, two cities … from the city of Champions, twice 2200 miles apart from each other. One born in Joliet, Illinois and then raised in Inglewood, California. Both are city of champions.

Debbie Millman:

Your mom moved you and your five siblings by herself from Illinois to California. She moved you to Inglewood when you were three months old, and you’ve talked about how she thought she was moving you all to a better city because Joliet was pretty rough, but Inglewood was worse. In what way?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Well, I think the first part that was better was the weather. So I think she was looking at the weather first and then, just our environment that we were growing up in Joliet. Inglewood was different than Joliet. Inglewood is where really the rise of street gangs really started to become popular in the 70s and 80s. So, that was what she moved us into. She didn’t know, she was really just trying to create a better environment for us and California was going to do that for us.

Debbie Millman:

You and your two older brothers, Michael and Ronnie, were all born with a gift to draw, and your family knew about your talent because you drew all the time, but I read that you hid it from other people. Why were you keeping it a secret?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Well, I mean, at that point, growing up in a city like Inglewood, it wasn’t … drawing or being an artist wasn’t a cool thing that you did. So, I just kind of kept it to myself because I knew people wouldn’t necessarily understand, but that was my sanctuary. That was my opportunity to just disconnect and be creative. So I played sports, which I loved as well. That was also my sanctuary as well, but art was really the space where I was able to zone out and kind of really feel like myself.

Debbie Millman:

You drew your first sneaker when you were 11 years old, and you’ve written about how drawing sneakers then became your obsession. What kinds of sneakers were you drawing, were they original drawings of sneakers that you were imagining or were they realistic drawings of sneakers that already existed?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Initially, it was images of sneakers that currently existed. I just wanted to draw anything … I could draw, anything I could see. So, I started drawing sneakers that I wanted to buy myself, that I couldn’t. So, that became my hobby of really … and fascination really was drawing sneakers that I wanted and then, in high school, started imagining my versions of sneakers that were not available in stores. So if I got a chance to design a shoe for Nike or if I got a chance to design a shoe for Jordan, it would look like this.

Debbie Millman:

You also started buying your own sneakers and then, dying and customizing them so they’d be different from anyone else’s. What kind of designs were you making and do you still have any of those sneakers?

D’Wayne Edwards:

I wish I still had some of those things, but this was the 80s, this is the mid 80s, early 80s. My high school colors were green and white, and back in the 80s, sneakers didn’t come in green and white. They came in white, white-white, white-black, maybe white-silver. So I just wanted sneakers to match my basketball uniform. So I would go to a store that used to be called Builders Emporium. It was a precursor to Home Depot and go get my duct tape and X-Acto blades and then, I would go to the local shoe repair shop and get my green dye. Then, I would just tape up everything I did not want dyed. Dyed my shoes up and then, went to school and people were just freaking out because I had shoes they’d never seen before.

When you’re in high school, when you get that type of attention because of anything that you have on, you want to wear more of that thing, so that became my sneaker addiction. That was when it started, was when I was able to get people’s attention by having shoes that they never saw before.

Debbie Millman:

I read that when you were 12, you started to enter magazine competitions where you were asked to draw a turtle or a pirate. I remember doing that too when I was a kid. They were ads in the TV guide and so, I did a little bit of research to remind myself where they were advertising from. The ad was for art instruction schools, which is a Minneapolis based correspondence course. You mailed in your drawing and won a scholarship. When they found out you were 12, they stopped reviewing your submissions. I read that just winning gave you confidence and because I did this research, I found out that Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, also won a scholarship to go there, and he actually went. That’s where he continued to learn how to draw. He’s their most famous alum. So I guess those ads really worked. We both submitted and so did he.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah, yeah, that’s a good company to be in. That’s great. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

So Tippy, the Turtle was the name of the turtle that they asked you to draw. After drawing Tippy, you went on to drawing baseball and football cards, and I read that you first started drawing those types of cards because they always cut players off at the knees and you wanted to see their feet and their sneakers.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yup and my first time I saw the cleats were a 1981 Franco Harris football card and he was wearing pony cleats. It was just … for me, they were the biggest things on the card. So, that started my fascination with just trying to correctly draw the shape and proportion of your foot and cleats. That’s really the hardest part. It’s not so much the cosmetic visual, it’s the actual accuracy of the shape.

Debbie Millman:

Why is that so difficult?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Because the human foot is not the same shape any way you turn it. So it’s not symmetrical at all. So, you have to be very precise with every shape and every contour. It took me a few tries to get it right, but that was really my fascination with accuracy in trying to draw exactly what I saw instead of an interpretation of what I saw.

Debbie Millman:

So what were you doing with these cards? Were you showing them to people? Were you just saving them for yourself? Were you sharing them with your brothers?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Well, first of all, I stole them from my mom. So they were flash cards that she would use and recipe cards that she would use. So, I would just start to collect them and just have my own little stack of my own little portfolio, so to speak. All through high school, that was the same way I drew. I just drew on these three by five and Knicks cards on the … because one side had lines on it and the other side was clean and plain. So I would just draw on the clean side and then, on the backside I would date it and write my inspiration on the backside of it.

Debbie Millman:

Incredible. Please tell me you have these cards, please.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I don’t have one. I do not have one.

Debbie Millman:

D’Wayne, that just destroys me.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I wish I had them. I remember many times I was caught in math class, drawing shoes when I should have been doing work, and my seventh grade math teacher, Mrs. Weathers, she made a deal with me. She says, “Hey, if you do your homework on time or do your classwork on time, you could draw sneakers.” Whenever I didn’t do it, she would take the sneakers from me and keep them in her desk drawer, and many years after I graduated from high school, I went back to see her and she still had some of my sketches in her desk drawer.

Debbie Millman:

Good.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I mean we’re talking 10 years later and she would not give them to me. She made me sign them and she would not give me one of them. I begged her, which I was able to get one.

Debbie Millman:

Well, maybe you should reach out again or maybe at least she can take some photos of them for you. I know that when you were in school you tried to get a job at Foot Locker so you could get a discount, but they wouldn’t hire you. Instead, you got your first job at McDonald’s when you were 16 years old. Did you work all through high school?

D’Wayne Edwards:

All through high school?

Debbie Millman:

And I read that while you were still in school, you met with your guidance counselor after you decided you wanted to become a sneaker designer. You supremely excited at the time because you thought you figured out your life at 17 years old.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yup.

Debbie Millman:

Can you share it with my listeners what the guidance counselor told you?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah, it’s your senior year and you have to start taking things seriously, so you can graduate and move on to college. I knew I wasn’t going to attend college because I’m the youngest of six kids raised by a single parent, but I was like, “Hey, I can at least try to get into a college.” So I was really excited. The sneaker thing was going really well for me. I was customizing not only my own sneakers but my friend’s sneakers at school. So that became a little bit of a side hustle for me in high school. One day, I was like, “Hey, let me go talk to my counselor because her job is to help me figure out life after high school.” So I go and really excited because I’m clear on what I want to do.

I said, hey … her name is Ms. Wilson Jefferson. I said, “Hey, I would like to speak to you about the fact that I finally figured out what I want to do. I want to become a footwear designer.” She pauses and looks at me, dead straight in the face and says, “D’Wayne, no Black kid from Inglewood would ever become a footwear designer? What are you thinking? You need to come back and share with me something that’s more practical. Have you ever thought about joining the military or have you thought about continuing on at McDonald’s,” and I was deflated, disappointed. Her rationale and reasoning was partly getting out of the city alive, was a goal, right?

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

D’Wayne Edwards:

As a Black male, growing up in Inglewood in the 80s, getting to 18 and I’m still alive and not in jail is a success. Making it to 21 is almost a miracle. So, that was part of her message, but it wasn’t the type of guidance I was expecting.

Debbie Millman:

Shortly thereafter, you were looking at the want ads in the Los Angeles Times in an effort to get what you considered a more respectable job than the one at McDonald’s. At that point, were you thinking about going to college at all or was that just completely off the table?

D’Wayne Edwards:

No, it was off the table. One thing that Ms. Wilson Jefferson did for me though was she allowed me to create a thank you wall, of people who countless times told me I wasn’t going to do anything and I wasn’t going to be this or I wasn’t going to be that. I was literally at lunch, in my lunch break, at work, looking for another job, and there I saw the biggest ad I’ve ever seen in my life, even though it was the smallest ad you can place in the LA Times, and it was for a sneaker design competition that Reebok was hosting. Reebok at the time had an office in Santa Monica, California. They’re a Boston, Massachusetts based brand, but their entertainment office had a competition and I entered, it was basically … it was so small, it just had Reebok design competition and a phone number.

So I called the phone number to get the mailing address to send my actual submission. So I drew my versions of what Reebok should look like and about a month later, I get a phone call and they said, come meet us at the Reebok offices in Santa Monica. I show up, excited because they didn’t tell me if I won or lost, but I figured it was some good news. So, I go and catch the bus for an hour to Santa Monica and they were a little surprised that a 17-year old Black kid shows up and they were like, “Well, the good news is you are talented and you won our competition, but the bad news is you’re too young to work for us.” They said, “Come back and see us after you graduate from college.” That was deflating because I knew I wasn’t going to college.

So Reebok was also added to my thank you wall, because I was like, I legitimately won this competition and you discriminated against me because I’m young and Black and 17, and not understanding companies have rules and regulations, but I was just angry.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I was happy, disappointed, angry, all at the same time. I promised myself if I ever became a footwear designer, I would take it out on Reebok and make them regret that they passed on me at 17 years old.

Debbie Millman:

I’m sure they do now. You mentioned the thank you wall and the thank you wall is a collection of things that have both inspired you and also discouraged you.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

How has that sort of acknowledgement on the wall helped you understand both the encouragement as well as the obstacles?

D’Wayne Edwards:

I believe whenever you have people that tell you, you’re not going to do something or discourages you, you have two options, either you believe them or not. Then, you have the option of using it as fuel to prove them wrong or you can disappear in your own world. I chose to acknowledge it and I chose to use it as motivation because I wanted to prove something to those people that they shouldn’t talk to young kids like that. So, I developed a chip on my shoulder and I think when you have a chip one way or another, it makes you work harder and it makes you do things with more intent than you would have if someone didn’t necessarily do it, which is strange, right? You would think that you get all this support and encouragement, you’ll be more motivated to do it.

I had that on one side, but then I also had the negativity on the other side that outweighed the positivity because again, I’m in the 80s in Inglewood. I’m not seeing success that looks like me, so I’m not seeing the probability of me being successful or doing something. So I started to use the thank you wall as motivation because I wanted to get out of my surroundings and get out of my environment, and what really hit home was shortly after I turned 17, my brother Michael passed away in a car accident.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

D’Wayne Edwards:

So, when I saw him pass away and his gift, he never got a chance to really fulfill using the gift that he was born with. That really also woke me up as well, where I wanted to start taking life a bit more seriously because that was the awakening that it wasn’t … tomorrow wasn’t promised to you.

Debbie Millman:

Meanwhile, your manager at McDonald’s wanted to promote you to a swing manager and was encouraging you to have your own franchise one day. Was that ever, ever something that sounded appealing to you?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Maybe for about 15 minutes. There were conversations that’s sending me to Hamburger University in Chicago, Illinois, which is McDonald’s training program. Again, I’m 17 years old and that’s not what I wanted my future to look like, if it was a backup plan maybe, but I just couldn’t see it as my future. So I used her also, she was added to my thank you wall, because she was like, “Why are you going to try to become an artist, artist are always broke and you’re not going to become an artist, you’re not going to have a good living. You can make a great living here at McDonald’s doing this, and I’m not knocking anyone who works at McDonald’s and there’s been amazing Black franchisees over the years. That just wasn’t my future that I saw. I needed her though to make sure I didn’t go on that path, right?

So I wanted to make sure I proved her wrong as well, and if you notice, and I’m super competitive and I still use it to this day, the one thing you tell me is something I can’t do, and you just started something.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, but your mom also … I mean, it’s interesting she gave you a card after you weren’t able to start at Reebok, that I know went on your thank you wall. That was a greeting card that she bought you, that was about believing in yourself.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

And I can only imagine … I know she’s no longer with us now, but I can only imagine that she really wanted you to sort follow your passion.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Even if that meant not being as secure or as stable as she would’ve wanted you to be, financially.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah, the timing of that was right after my Reebok conversation, and shortly after my brother passed because I was just down and out, right? Again, I’m 17 years old, thinking my life is over and everything and yes, she went shopping and she brought me this 25 cent card and I can read it to you if you like.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

D’Wayne Edwards:

It says, believe, really big up top. It says, “Believe in yourself and the power you have to control your own life day to day, believe in the strength that you have deep inside and your faith will help show you the way. Believe in tomorrow and what it will bring. Let a hopeful heart carry you through, for things will work out. If you trust and believe there are no limits to what you can do.” I believe there, and I use that as fuel and every day, since she brought me that card, I’ve always carried that card with me. Every time I’m going to speak somewhere or I feel like I need a little extra something, I have it in my pocket. It’s also a card that I give all of my students when they complete our programs. So they do know at least one person believes in their abilities and who they are because that little bit of power can take someone off a long way.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. I had a teacher in college that was really the first person that gave me the sense that maybe I was smart. She believed in me, she believed in my intelligence, and it changed my life. It changed how I felt about myself. It changed what I thought I could do. You said that while you were working at McDonald’s, you learned that you weren’t just working at this one McDonald’s in Torrance, California. You were working at a big brand and they expected you to behave a certain way. What did this teach you?

D’Wayne Edwards:

So today, I guess in today’s terms, the kids would call it code switching, I guess. For me, I called it just knowing how to behave in the environments that you’re in, where I couldn’t show up to work with my clothes unironed and shirt untucked and you have to look presentable. I was able to make it to what’s called swing manager, which is an assistant manager. So I got to wear a button-up and a clip on tie. So, I had to look presentable because I was representing the restaurant. So, that taught me a certain level of personal responsibility for my appearance because it wasn’t just me, I was being accountable for, it was also this establishment that was counting on me and paying me to look presentable and be polite to customers, even if you have a bad day, right?

When you’re in the service business, especially an organization like McDonald’s, even if you have a bad day, the customer is always right. So, it did teach me that level of discipline and structure, even at a high school level, of just how to properly carry myself and conduct myself and speak to people that I didn’t know and people that maybe didn’t like me because they had a bad experience at the store, but I had to still present myself in a certain way to make sure I was giving off the proper brand representation that McDonald’s wanted me to project out.

Debbie Millman:

Shortly thereafter, you got a job working as a temporary file clerk in the accounts payable department of LA Gear.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

The popular footwear brand, LA gear. How did you get that job?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah, what’s funny is upon graduating from high school, I didn’t go to college. My friends … Me and my friend decided to sign up for this temp agency called Robert Half and Accountemps. He actually received the assignment to go to LA Gear first, but he didn’t want to work in Marina del Ray, which is where they were located. So he told the agency, he couldn’t find the place and so they were like, “Okay, well then you go.” So they sent me because he didn’t want to go. So, I found it because it was a sneaker company. Now, it wasn’t Nike, but it was still a sneaker company. I wasn’t in design, I was in accounts payable, right? So for me, I was like, “Well, I’m here. Let me see if I can try to get a job as a footwear designer.” This is in 1988. So no email, no social media, no internet. It was pretty much everything was hands-on.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

D’Wayne Edwards:

So, here I am filing my papers and filing all my receipts in alphabetical order. One day the company decided they want to increase morale. So, they installed these wooden suggestion boxes in every department with the idea of the employees dropping suggestions in the box that would help give the company new insights into what they should do different and what they should do better, how the employees could be better treated at the organization. As a non-full-time employee, I wasn’t told, I wasn’t able supposed to participate. So I decided to participate in my way, which was my three by five index cards.

I’m drawing shoes that I think LA Gear should do. So I would drop them in the suggestion box every morning before I go off and start filing my papers. About six months in, I hear this loud message over the intercom system. Again, there’s no email, so back then if someone wanted you in the company, the entire company found out.

Debbie Millman:

It’s like going to the principal’s office.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Pretty much, yes. So, I hear one day like, “D’Wayne Edwards report to the president’s office,” and I’m just like, “Wait, did I just hear that correctly first?” Because I’m invisible. I’m a temp employee, how does the president even know who I am? So, I reluctantly go to the president’s office and immediately walk in and apologize because I assumed it was because of what I’ve been doing to this box. He tells me to sit down and he said, are you the person who’s been putting shoe sketches in my suggestion box? I’m just like. “Yeah, I’m sorry, my apologies. I didn’t mean to do that. I just love to draw and I figured somebody would see it and maybe give me some tips on how I can become a designer one day.” He was like, “Well, I’ll tell you what,” he pulled out all 180 of my sketches, he had 180 of my cards.

He said, “I admire your ambition.” He said, “I would love to give you a chance to be a professional footwear designer. Would you be willing to accept an entry level footwear design job?” I was like, “Well, yes. How much do I have to pay you for this job, because this is definitely my dream job.” He goes, “Well, tell me a little bit more about yourself.” He’s like, “Tell me what college did you graduate from?” I was like, “Man, I just graduate from Inglewood High School seven months ago.” He was like, “Wait, you’re in high school?” I was like, “Yeah, I just left seven months ago.” He was like, “So you did this with no formal training at all?” I was like, “Yeah, I just love to draw. I’ve been drawing sneaker since I was 12.” He was even more impressed by the fact that I had no training at all.

So he offered me my job. So he said after the New year, report to the design department. So, I turned 19 in December and January, I reported in to my design job.

Debbie Millman:

You were the only Black kid there and you’ve talked about how some people were resentful and thought that you were a charity case kid, but when you heard that, you responded, “All right, that’s cool. I’ll take it. How did you have that sort of generosity of spirit?” I mean, I’m assuming they went up on your thank you wall, but what gave you the sense that it was … what gave you the strength to be kind about it?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Well, yes, they did become members of my thank you wall, so they were added. Honestly, it was me learning about Jackie Robinson. So, when I was in high school, I started looking into just sports and Black history, and I found a book on Jackie Robinson, it’s called, “I Never Had It Made.” The CliffNote version of his story is Jackie Robinson was selected to be the first Black baseball player to play in the major leagues. He wasn’t the best player, so back then, when we weren’t allowed to play in professional sports, we had our own leagues. So there was a league called the Negro Leagues that was found in 1920. It was a collection of some of the best Black baseball players to play, but they weren’t allowed to play in the professional major leagues.

So Branch Rickey, who was the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers selected Jackie and they selected Jackie because Jackie was a military man. He was a college graduate. He went to UCLA. He was the only and probably still, probably one of the only college athletes to letter in four sports. Baseball was his worst sport. So, he ended up becoming the first one, but it was told that Branch Rickey selected Jackie because he had the temperament needed to succeed. A part of his contract was that he was not allowed to fight back. He was not allowed to talk back. He had to take the abuse that he was going to receive, and he felt he was the right person that would be able to do that.

So, when I read his story and then, there was a movie that he played and I found the movie and I understood that if Jackie talked back, it would’ve taken years before other Black ball players would’ve had a chance to be in the major leagues because that was the goal. The goal was for the players to piss off these guys, to prove that they didn’t belong. So, I really understood Jackie’s temperament and I understood that, “Hey, I need to be a certain way. It was my McDonald’s training as a swing manager. I needed to be a certain way in this environment that I was in, and I had to put off a different aura than what they expected of me.” So that was really … really the mindset was keep my mouth shut and ask questions when I needed to understand, but soak up as much knowledge as possible.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that you forced your way into the world of Robert Greenberg, a white Jewish man who gave a 19 year old Black kid from Inglewood, with no college education, opportunity to design shoes for his company. What was the biggest thing you learned from him?

D’Wayne Edwards:

He didn’t discriminate against me. He didn’t care what I looked like. He didn’t care where I came from. He just saw someone with talent that he wanted to leverage for his company, to make his company better. He was my first professional mentor. For me, it was something that I value still to this day. I mean, before COVID, I would see Robert twice a year in Las Vegas at a trade show, and I would tell him “Thank you,” because he didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to give me a chance to prove that I belonged to be there. So, I really spent my whole career making sure he understood, “Hey, I appreciated what he did,” but also that he didn’t … make sure he knew he didn’t make a mistake, and that was really the beginning of my mentorship as a mentor to mentor other people.

That’s why when we have our mentor moments and we have our students, I put it on my students, you have to mentor two people and you make sure they mentor two people, because if it wasn’t for Robert, seeing just raw talent and challenging me to elevate up in this environment that I was going to be outnumbered in and uncomfortable in, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you to this day.

Debbie Millman:

Talk about your race to beat him into the office in the mornings.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah. Absolutely. Yes. So for me, I started studying him. So, whenever I would come in and he was always there and I would go by his office and see him reading the newspaper and talking into his Dictaphone. So, I’m like, “All right, cool. I’m going to try to get here before he does.” So for five days, it took me to beat him into work one day, and it was 5:30 where I got there at five, and he got there at 5:30. He was like, “What are you doing here?” I’m like, “I just want to come in when you come in so I can understand what do you do in the morning? Why do you come in so early?” He was like, “All right, well, come and sit with me.” So I sat with him and I saw his routine.

He would provide information for himself by reading the Wall Street Journal, reading footwear news, getting business insights, getting industry insights. He would then talk into his Dictaphone and talk about his day. He would outline, these are all the things I want to accomplish today, and he would give it to his executive assistant and she would type it out and put it on his desk. He would go about his day, checking off everything on his list. So, I started doing the same thing. For me, I would do it with post-it notes. I would write on the post-it notes, stick it on my desk so I could see it. I didn’t have an executive assistant. So I just post-it notes. That’s how I start my day, every day. I mean, still to this day, I wake up, I read information about the industry, read information about just life, in general.

I read inspirational quotes, I share those inspirational quotes and then, I have my to-do list and then, I check my email. I have a set routine that I do every single day, ever since I was 19 years old.

Debbie Millman:

You were the youngest footwear designer in the industry, the youngest Black footwear designer in the industry. After two years as a designer at LA Gear, you moved to Detroit to work for a small footwear company, but then Robert became the owner of Skechers and he asked you to join him his as head designer back in LA. What was that like for you to become head designer at that point?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Well, I mean, it was really a culmination of me soaking up knowledge from everybody that was around me. So my first few years at LA Gear was like my college, so to speak, but I was doing it in real time, as a real job. As you said, I did move to Detroit first time ever, I saw snow at 24 years old. So again, grow up in LA, an LA kid. So I never saw snow before. That lasted 10 months and I moved back to LA but the position was special because before I left, I was telling Robert, I said, “Hey, there’s some guys downtown LA that are really doing some really amazing things on the apparel side.” And I said, “If you ever get a chance to work with these guys, you should really consider it.” Those guys were two companies.

One of it was called Cross Colours, and the other one was called Karl Kani. They were the pioneers of streetwear fashion. What these kids see today, they pioneered this in the late 80s, early 90s, downtown LA. So, Robert received the licensing rights to do footwear for those two companies. So that’s what he wanted me to come back to LA and head up, to be the head of designing footwear for Cross Colours and Karl Kani. The blessing with that was here I am, I’m 24 years old and I’m designing shoes for these guys who are younger than me, by the name of Tupac and by the name of Notorious B.I.G. and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg and Puffy, and not knowing that these would become hip hop royalty, right?

I was just as young as they were, but here I am in the middle of it, working with these amazing, talented artists. For me, that was really the jump start for me to really advocate for more Black designers because I didn’t see any. In my whole time at LA Gear, I didn’t see anyone else that looked like me, but me and the design team. When I got to Skechers and I was working with these guys on the apparel side, I was seeing all these Black designers on the apparel side, still not seeing any on the footwear side. So, that really is what started my quest to diversify the footwear industry, was I need more people sitting next to me so I can teach and develop and grow folks, so we could diversify this industry.

Debbie Millman:

You launched your own brand under the Skecher’s corporate umbrella, and I believe it was called SITY, S-I-T-Y?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yup.

Debbie Millman:

Sporting goods business ranked your line as the number two brand to look out for behind the Jordan brand.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Is that what first interested Nike in your talents or you went to Nike, you joined Nike as a senior designer in 2000 and then, in 2001 joined Jordan as a design director. How did you go from Skechers to Nike?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah, so the license expired when he was licensing Cross Colours and Karl Kani footwear and he asked, “Well, what do you want to do now?” And I was like, “Well, I’ve traveled all over the world and I noticed that style is different in other countries and is different even in other states.” I said, “I would love to create at my own brand called SITY, with the S standing for style and using the influencers from different cities globally as the way that we would design the brand. He supported it, he backed it. It was under Skechers. As you said, it did really well, the first year in sporting because business does all these trend forecasts. They placed us as number two behind Jordan brand. Shortly after that happened, Skechers started the process of going public.

When they wanted to go public, they started to make the books look better, right? So they start to divest smaller things in the organization to clean things up. I was one of things that they divested in. Simultaneously, when that ranking came out, Nike was looking for someone to help them compete with Timberland to make boots because Nike was an athletic shoe company and they didn’t really know how to make lifestyle boots. I was doing that already for years under the SITY brand, but also under Karl Kani and Cross Colours. So, a friend of mine who ironically worked at Adidas in Portland, told his friend who worked at Nike about me and he was like, “Hey, you should probably get this guy up here for an interview.”

So they brought me up for an interview and I remember I had eight interviews in one day, which they didn’t do that anymore.

Debbie Millman:

I think they do. From what I know, there’s a lot of interviewing, it takes a lot of okays.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I did it all in one day and they were like, “Well, we will give you a call back in two weeks.” Two weeks to the day, I got a phone call from Nike and I accepted the job as a footwear designer for their lifestyle division. Then, two hours later, I got another call from Nike, offering me another job from another category. So I got two phone calls in the same day for two jobs, but I accepted the first one that called me. So, that was how I moved to Oregon. I mean, for me, the real opportunity was this is the best company. I need to gauge my skills against the best who work at that company too. That was really the driving force for me, moving to Oregon was, “Okay, I’m going to be next to the best. I mean, where do I stack up in that equation?”

Then, after a year at Nike, the Jordan brand was on the fourth floor where I was at, and they had an open position and they asked me to join. So, then I transferred from Nike to Jordan Brand.

Debbie Millman:

Now, you were stacking up against the best in the business. How did you feel you measured?

D’Wayne Edwards:

I’m not a conceited person at all, so I’ll say this with that preference, but yes, I thought I was better.

Debbie Millman:

Okay.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Primarily, I would say because I didn’t have a popular logo to work with and because they had a logo that everyone loved, you could put that logo on almost anything and it would make the shoe look better, right? So, I learned how to design without having the luxury of a logo to fall back on. So I had to pay more attention to design and give you something more interesting to look at. So I would just say from that perspective, I think I was just taught a different way. So when I was able to marry that creativity with a strong brand, the things that I did design kind of connected the dots completely for me, but at the same time, I’m there learning from all these amazing people that have had a 10, 20 year head start on me too. I was just as much of a student as I was as a professional.

Debbie Millman:

When you started with the Jordan brand, they were a 275 million dollar brand.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

You helped grow it to a 1.3 billion brand.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

And you said you put pressure on yourself by thinking that you were always the underdog.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

Why?

D’Wayne Edwards:

I’ve always felt that … I still feel that way. I mean, I always do. I think because I’ve never let success go to my head, I look at the word success as a past tense word, where it’s something that happened already and I shouldn’t be dwelling on stuff that happened already. When you work at Nike, you’re wired to focus on the future and you’re wired to think two and three and four years ahead of time. So I was always moving forward mentally. So my mindset was always never to rest on where I was. I remember one day I did something … I had a shoe that sell really well at LA Gear and Robert one day came over and he said, “Congratulations, take five minutes off and get back to work.” I’m just like, so I’ve always had that mindset of, okay, take pause for a minute, acknowledge it and then, let it go and get back to work.

I just never been one to be stagnant and stale. I’m a constant learner. I always want to improve. I’m always trying to learn something new every day, small or big, I’m trying to always move forward. I’ve always felt like I’m not supposed to be here, and that mentality has never left me because I’m not supposed to be here, mathematically, I’m not supposed to be here and that’s never been lost on me and it’s still never lost on me to this day.

Debbie Millman:

Shortly after you got the job with the Jordan brand, your mother passed away and despite the new job, you sat with your mother for the last 30 days of her life.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

What was that like for you?

D’Wayne Edwards:

The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life and the most valuable thing I’ve ever done in my life because I had a chance to be with her for her last moments and before she was unable to talk the last two weeks, I apologized to her, for leaving her because I left California to move to Oregon. She said, “Boy, if you would not have left, I would’ve beat your butt, if you didn’t go and follow your dreams.” I always felt guilty. I always felt guilty leaving her because I did miss out on three years of her life, even though I did go back home, regularly but I wasn’t there every day. I was comforted by knowing that she wanted me to be where I was. Then, as I continued to sit with her and I would talk to her and share and thank her for everything and she was able to nod and say yes, but it was tough.

If I could do it all over again, I would do it all over again. It felt like it was yesterday, but we just never had a really intimate conversations, and we did that for those 30 days.

Debbie Millman:

You said this about your mom in your TED Talk, “She took me from a problem child in Inglewood and turned me into a global problem solver. She turned my dreams into reality far beyond what I even imagined. She turned death into life for me. At the same time, she turned my destiny into a career and my career into a passion.” Were you able to tell her that before she passed?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Every single word, and more, and more.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that your relationship with your mom in that moment, in that time, made you look at your craft a little bit differently, how so?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Before my mom passed, my other brother, Ronnie passed away too.

Debbie Millman:

So you lost both your older brothers, Mike and Ronnie?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yup. Both of them passed. Both had the gift. My career became theirs, the one they never had a chance to have. My mom is the one who gave us the gift. She was the one the gift came from. So for me, I was just trying to make her proud. That was really my whole goal and still is to this day. Even though, she’s not here physically, I know she’s here with me as well as my two brothers are here with me as well, because there are times I have no idea how I made it home driving and sleepy and all these things. So I know I’m being watched over. So all of her life lessons she’s taught me, either verbally or indirectly, I paid attention to. It has shaped me for who I am today. I mean, for half of my life, when she was here, she was disabled and she never complained.

I never complained either. I don’t complain, if I’m tired. I don’t complain, if I have too much work to do. I don’t complain because she showed me what that should look like because she had every right to complain and she never did. So all of my strength I get from her.

Debbie Millman:

Over the course of your career at Nike, you developed more than 50 patents and you designed more than 500 footwear styles for artists including Tupac, Notorious, B.I.G., Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Nas. Your designs had been worn in six different Olympics and have graced all major league baseball, NFL and NBA stadiums by athletes including Derek Jeter, Carmelo Anthony and Michael Jordan. What was it like collaborating with Michael Jordan?

D’Wayne Edwards:

That was the craziest thing ever. So the Lakers played in Inglewood until the last maybe 20, 25 years. They moved downtown Los Angeles, but they played in Inglewood. Me and my friends would always sneak into basketball games and we would sneak in because in Hollywood they would leave in the third quarter, beginning of third quarter. So we would just stand by the door and just slide right on it or ask them for their tickets. The last game, I snuck in was the 1991 NBA Finals, the Lakers versus the Chicago Bulls, and they won the championship. The Chicago Bulls won the championship. That was my first time ever seeing Michael Jordan play in person, and 10 years later, I was on a couch sitting next to him, showing a design to him that I designed for him.

I got forewarned by my team that I worked within Jordan that he’s hard on young players, he’s hard on young guys. He calls all of the new employees, new jacks. So they were just pumping me up and preparing me for the barrage of questions that he’s going to throw at me because he’s just that kind of guy. So he was throwing them at me and I was answering them and I was taking them as he was throwing them, I was taking them. He eventually backed down because he saw that, “Okay, you know what you’re talking about. Okay, now I’m buying what you’re selling me.” Honestly, all he was doing is just making me better at my craft. No different than what he did to his teammates on the basketball court. If you’re going to be on the floor with him, you better be ready.

You better be prepared for anything. So I would say that time, that decade spending, working with him directly and some of the other guys too, Melo and Jeter and Roy Jones, it just sharpened my skills as a creative and as a person that I instill into our students to this day. It was that edge that I learned from Jordan, compounded with my already competitive nature, adding his competitive nature on top of it, that’s where I become a problem. If you cross me and it becomes a competitive thing, it’s going to be a problem.

Debbie Millman:

You said that one thing you didn’t realize when you were working at Nike was the trap of doing something you love. What is the trap of doing something you love?

D’Wayne Edwards:

The trap is because you are a designer and you’re creative, you could do it all day long and you wake up, I mean, you realize, “Oh wow, I forgot to eat today or I should probably go to sleep because it’s dark outside.” The trap to be careful of is that you love what you do so much, that it could become unhealthy for you. You could develop stress, which I did all of those things I just mentioned to you, to the point where I was in the hospital for a few days because of just exhaustion and high blood pressure, because I put the pressure on myself to work a certain level where there’s going to be people who will be better designers than me, but I can’t ever let someone outwork me. I took that to heart and so, by doing that, it damaged me and my health a bit. I think it’s partly because I love what I do. I would do what I do for free.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

D’Wayne Edwards:

When you do something like that, you get lost doing what you do and you don’t realize you didn’t take care of yourself. Now, I have a better understanding of balance, but it’s a certain wiring that you could achieve based on your drive to be great at something, and I have that drive.

Debbie Millman:

When you were at Nike, they gave everyone four weeks off after 10 years of employment, you got that four and then, you took another four. Yeah. What did you do during that time off?

D’Wayne Edwards:

So, I took the additional four because I never took any other time off. So I had so much vacation time built up. They forced me to take it, but a few things happened. One, I resigned as design director. I was tired and my body was not good, my mind was not good, and I knew I couldn’t do that job anymore. So, I told them I was going to retire as design director, I need this time off to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life and whether I’m coming back or not, I don’t know yet. That’s the point of the sabbatical is to disconnect. So, I took the time off and I want to try this idea of a footwear design class because during my 10 year at Jordan, I would meet kids online that are high school kids or college kids that want to be in design.

And I would mentor them on the side and help them become my interns because they couldn’t get footwear design education in college. So I would just do it and teach them what I knew because that’s what I wish I would’ve had if I had the internet and if I had access to people and now, kids had access to me, it was easy to figure out my email address at Nike and so, kids would always email me. So it just kept bubbling up like, maybe I should try this teaching thing and see what happens. So, I started teaching at the University of Oregon as an adjunct instructor. That was my first time at a college, teaching and I taught this class called Pensole, and I taught it the way I worked and I taught it in the most extreme way that we would work.

It was two weeks. It was every day for two weeks, roughly 12 to 14 hours every day straight through. I wanted to put students through the extreme case of what it feels like to be a designer, not look like, but feels like to be a designer and pay for 40 students tuition and housing to be a part of this program and they loved it. They didn’t want to leave. They went back to their respective schools or their respective homes and told everybody about what happened in Portland for two weeks. The beauty of it is one student documented every day and posted it up online. So kids started following along online and after it was over, I started getting all these emails from people saying, “Hey, can you show me how to do that?”

Then, school started emailing me and say, “Hey, can you come teach this at our school?” Here I am teaching at Art Center, which is one of the top product design schools in the country. The school I later realized, I would’ve attended if I knew it was there in Pasadena, California, which is only 30 minutes away from where I grew up. I’m teaching at this prestigious number one design school in the country and then, I get a call from Parsons, one of the number one fashion design schools in the country in New York City and then MIT, one of the top engineering schools in the country in Boston. Here I am, the kid who didn’t go to college teaching at some of the best colleges in the world.

I’m teaching what I actually learned for 25 years as a designer. That was my curriculum. It wasn’t like I had this secret sauce or anything. I just taught my process and I fell back in love with design. I didn’t realize how much the corporate side took from me, the joy and I fell back in love with it, because I was basically just sharing everything that I learned and just to see these young minds embrace it and then, do something with it, I didn’t want to lose that feeling, and I didn’t want to go back into corporate America because I loved that feeling. I did go back, but I told them on my first day back that I was leaving in six months. So, I gave them a head start that I was leaving and then, I permanently retired on April 1st, 2011.

Debbie Millman:

You launched your first class, I believe, on June 24th, 2010 at the University of Oregon, as you mentioned, of the 40 kids in that class, 34 are all employed as footwear designers today.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

You, as you mentioned, started to extend the classes all over the world. Then, you acquired a recently closed HBCU, titled the Lewis College of Business in Detroit, Michigan. What made you decide to do that?

D’Wayne Edwards:

So all of my time with the academy in Portland, we were solving the diversity issue in the footwear industry. In 2020, when George Floyd was murdered and the corporation started making these pledges to support Black communities, and they started making pledges to education, and then when some of those companies started to decide, “Hey, I want to support design education,” they realized we were really the only option out there that was putting together quality education and churning out quality diverse talent. So it went from us working just with footwear companies to apparel companies, to packaging companies, to furniture design companies, to multiple areas of design. Simultaneously, I was made aware of the college in Lewis College by an alumnus of Pensole who lives in Detroit.

He casually mentioned, “Hey, I think Detroit used to have an HBCU,” but I think it closed. I’m like, “Wait, what do you mean? Detroit had an HBCU?” I’ve never heard of that before. So, once I discovered Lewis College of Business, I was first ashamed. I never heard of Violet Lewis, who was the founder of the college. She was one of three Black women to found an HBCU, of all of them since the 1860s. She started it as a secretary of school in Indianapolis because she just wanted Black women to have the ability to work in corporate offices. That was her intent, and she received a $50 loan and borrowed typewriters and started her own college. This is in 1928.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

D’Wayne Edwards:

And I’m just like, “Wow, this woman is amazing, and how do I did not know about her?” So the school did extremely well in Indianapolis and so well, Detroit offered her to open a campus in Detroit, and it became very important to the city of Detroit’s economic development around diverse talent working in corporate offices. We were in the automobile factories, but never in the corporate offices. So, all of the first Black office employees for Ford and GM and Michigan Bell were all graduates of Lewis College of Business. So, over the years, it continued to flourish and the school was caught in this weird predicament because it wasn’t well-funded enough to create new curriculum. Because they couldn’t adjust with the times, they were left behind, and when they were left behind, they were forced to close their doors.

So they closed their doors in 2013. When I heard about it and I was reading all the interviews from the family that were trying to reopen the class but they were unsuccessful, I started investigating, and on the side of the building, I saw the realtor’s name and phone number. So I called and said, “Hey, I would love to speak to the family about possibly reopening the college.” And that was how I was introduced to the family. I flew to Detroit and introduced this idea of reopening the college as a business and a design school, because HBCUs don’t have a breadth of curriculum for design. They’re fantastic institutions around law and business and engineering and entrepreneurship, but design is not one of their strongest areas.

That was our strength. Our strength married with being a historically Black college, it met the needs of the industry today. They believed in my vision and I acquired the college. We renamed the college Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design, and we reopened the college on May 2nd, 2022 here in Detroit, Michigan, but it was a little bit of a challenge to reopen the college because there was no state laws in Michigan around if a college closed and wanted to reopen, what should you do? So we had to rewrite … well, we had to write laws and so we had to write two state bills. Both bills were passed in two and a half months.

Debbie Millman:

By the governor, right?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Governor Whitmer passed them in two and a half months, which was amazing, and that cleared our path to reopen the college here in Detroit.

Debbie Millman:

In 1989, you were the youngest designer in the footwear design industry, and you were one of three people of color in the industry at that time. During your 2014 TED Talk, you stated that there were still only about 175 people of color in an industry of over 5,000 people. What do things look like now, another eight years later?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Sadly, we’re a little over 200 now, I did a talk a few months back, I chronicled the history of the Black footwear designer and the first one, I would say started 1986. His name is Wilson Smith and you fast forward 36 years later, it’s amazing how an industry would allow 3% growth. There’s nothing in a corporation that they would allow 3% growth.

Debbie Millman:

No, not a thing.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Nothing. For one quarter, either they’re going to fix it or get rid of it, but for 36 years, almost 40 years, the industry was okay with 3% growth. So, for me, the troubling part to that is that diversity is the only thing that corporations try to do and get away with it. Imagine if you have a job and you say, “Oh, you know what? I’m going to try to do my job today,” and then you don’t, and you come up the next day. I’m going to try to do my job again today. Then, you don’t, right? So imagine that’s exactly what’s happening with diversity, as it pertains to all corporate industries, they keep trying and trying, and trying but the problem is there’s no accountability because there’s nothing else in that company that they try to do. They either do it or don’t.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, it’s a mandate or it’s not.

D’Wayne Edwards:

And so to me, that’s really my soapbox is when is diversity going to be as important as a company making money? When is diversity going to be as important as that CEO or any C-suite tied to their compensation? When is it going to be held accountable by individuals or corporation? Until that happens, it will always be something that they’re trying to do, and it will always be in single digits. It’s below 5% now, in all design industries, now that’s unacceptable, but until those corporations start to create some measures and take it seriously, then it will change, but until then, it just will be an afterthought.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I think though it’s sad to say the power lies with the people buying the products of those corporations to hold them accountable for these types of … and that’s the only way things are going to change. That’s the only reason that any of the corporations are behaving in any more sustainable manner. It’s because consumers don’t want to buy things that are unsustainable as much as they used to

D’Wayne Edwards:

You’re absolutely correct. The consumer has all the power.

Debbie Millman:

Yup.

D’Wayne Edwards:

They don’t realize they have all the power.

Debbie Millman:

Hopefully, people listening will start to feel that a little bit more.

D’Wayne Edwards:

I hope so.

Debbie Millman:

D’Wayne, the last thing I want to talk to you about is the result of your many different talents and passions sort of coming together in the creation of JEMS.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

And JEMS stands for the Jan Ernst Matzeliger Studio, who was he and why the name JEMS?

D’Wayne Edwards:

So he was an amazing man in 1883, he revolutionized the footwear industry?

Debbie Millman:

1883, I want my listeners to hear, not 1983, 1883.

D’Wayne Edwards:

1883. He was a cobbler and he made shoes in Lynn, Massachusetts, and he was making 50 pairs a day. The whole industry was make … the equipment was making 50 pairs a day, and he felt there was a better way. For the next few years, he created his own machine. It’s called the Automated Lasting Machine. Those 50 pairs a day evolved to 700 pairs a day, based on his patent that he got approval for. On March 20th, 1883, he revolutionized the footwear industry, here is a Black man in Lynn, Massachusetts doing it, and unfortunately, he only lived about six more years before he passed, so he never really got a chance to see his invention really revolutionizing industry completely. He has been someone that has been lost in our history books.

I can’t remember when he received his stamp but it was maybe 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but that was over 130 something years ago, he did that. So, he’s just now getting his due from quote-unquote, a stamp, about 30 years ago. When 2020 occurred and all the terrible things that happened with George Floyd and other senseless murders, corporations started to say, “Hey, we need to figure out a way to be more supportive of Black communities.” When major corporations, footwear companies, footwear stores, when they looked at, “Okay, how can we diversify our vendor base?” They realized they didn’t have any Black footwear brands. So, they reached out to me and said, “Hey, could you help us with this?”

DSW was one of those brands that we talked to and we shared, “Hey, we have an idea of diversifying this industry. We are training and developing future talent here in Detroit now, that can be better prepared to create their own brands and have their own success in our industry.” So I said, “Hey, what if we created a footwear factory that produced product for Black footwear companies.” So they said they love the idea and they supported it with an investment, and they invested into this factory that we called JEMS. We named it after Jan because it’s his acronym for his name. So initials for his name. Then, we added the S for studio, but we wanted to call it JEMS because that’s what these talented people are. They are coveted people that don’t exist, that we’re helping bring to life, and we want them to be treated as special as they are.

We also want them to create special products as well, that honors who they are, and it utilizes Jan’s original process, a form of his original process that he pioneered over 130 something years ago. The factory is being constructed now. We’ll have our grand opening March 20th on the 140th anniversary of him, receiving his patent is when we will open the factory.

Debbie Millman:

That’s incredible. D’Wayne, that’s just incredible. So JEMS is going to be the first Black owned footwear factory in the United States, and it will be providing young, aspiring Black designers an opportunity to create their own brands and see them come to fruition. Is that correct?

D’Wayne Edwards:

Yes and be sold at DSW.

Debbie Millman:

And be sold exclusively at DSW.

D’Wayne Edwards:

For DSW to have that vision, that is what we talked about a little bit earlier, putting their money where their mouth is, right? They recognized that didn’t exist in their supply chain and they concretely wanted to do something about it. That’s what I’m talking about. Whether it was working with me or working with someone else, do something about it.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Don’t just say, “Oh, it’d be great if we had this or had that.” The good folks at DSW was like, “Yeah, this is important to us and we’re going to make this come to life.”

Debbie Millman:

D’Wayne, thank you for making so much work that matters. Thank you for doing so many things that matter, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

D’Wayne Edwards:

Thank you very much. This was a great conversation, it made me cry a few times, reminiscing on some things, but thank you very much for this opportunity to share it with you and your audience.

Debbie Millman:

My absolute honor. To read more about D’Wayne’s work, you can go to pensolelewis.com. That’s P-E-N-S-O-L-E-L-E-W-I-S dot com. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening and remember, we can talk about making a difference. We can make a difference or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: D’Wayne Edwards appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

David Rockwell’s work is very theatrical, literally and figuratively. He has designed numerous Broadway and television sets and the restaurants, hotels, airport terminals, and other projects. He’s designed tend to be visual and spatial heart stoppers.

David is the founder and president of the Rockwell Group, which has offices here in New York as well as Los Angeles and Madrid. Two of his latest projects are theater related. He designed the sets for the recent revival of the Broadway show Into the Woods, and his company designed the new Civilian Hotel in Manhattan’s Theater District. He’s here to talk about those projects as well as his remarkable life and career. David Rockwell, welcome to Design Matters.

David Rockwell:

Thank you so much. Great to be here in person.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, in person. David, I understand you’re a collector of kaleidoscopes and that you started collecting them when you were a little boy. Why kaleidoscopes?

David Rockwell:

Well, I think I was initially attracted to them because I love things that move. I’ve always been fascinated by how things can reconfigure, probably driven by a life that was reconfigured a lot. I’m sure looking back, the fact that we moved around a lot as a young boy, as a young man, got me interested in new things.

And then as I started to really fall more in love with kaleidoscopes and have a chance to analyze it … and I just want to say, I think designers, in my opinion, do that a lot. They find what they love and then look in the rear view mirror and able to find how things line up and what they mean.

But my attraction was and still is, how they take things that are familiar to us and then jumble those to create entirely new pictures with the simple arrangement of lenses and objects. In the end of that frame, I think they’re the most amazing analog, changeable pictures that I still love.

Debbie Millman:

I understand you have quite a few original types of kaleidoscopes. I think you have about 75 at this point, and I read that one operates with a puff of air and feathers. Is that true?

David Rockwell:

It is true. And kaleidoscopes in many cases from the outside, don’t show how sophisticated they are on the inside because it’s a case where what is inside matters. And probably that’s some of the things that attracted me as well. Because in the building world I’m much more interested in how things engage an audience and how they behave than how they look initially, at least as a first way in.

So this particular kaleidoscope has a small plastic attribute, a fabric piece that you squeeze air into this beautiful cask glass container that has feathers in it. And you look through the kind of mirror assembly and what I do when I show it to people is have them look through it before they see what’s doing it. Because it’s a total kind of magical illusion.

Debbie Millman:

It is. It sounds amazing. David, you were born in Deal, New Jersey?

David Rockwell:

No.

Debbie Millman:

Okay.

David Rockwell:

I was actually born in Chicago, Illinois.

Debbie Millman:

Oh. My goodness.

David Rockwell:

Yeah, I was born as the youngest of five boys.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, I know that part

David Rockwell:

In downtown Chicago.

Debbie Millman:

When did you move to Deal?

David Rockwell:

When I was four.

Debbie Millman:

Okay. I think that we’ll keep that in just as is because it’s important to show that we sometimes make mistakes here at Design Matters.

David Rockwell:

It’s an interesting thing because Chicago is such a brief stay for me, but there are certain loyalties I have to that city based on family. But yeah, so we moved to the Jersey Shore quite young and that’s where I first experienced many things, including theater.

Debbie Millman:

Right. Now ,I believe that your dad passed away when you were two.

David Rockwell:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

So that was when you were in Chicago?

David Rockwell:

Correct.

Debbie Millman:

Do you have any memory of that?

David Rockwell:

No. I have photographs and I have stories from family members of a family that’s very different than the one I was brought up in because my mom remarried my dad who really raised me, my stepdad. And so as the youngest I got a very different experience than my oldest brother for instance.

But when I’ve gone back to Chicago, I’ve gone back to where we lived and done quite a bit of work in Chicago and it is one of my favorite cities. So I suppose there’s deep memories that I don’t have real access to that sort of come alive when I’m there.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. And pull you in. Your mother co-founded a community theater and you and your four older brothers all worked on the shows and you acted, played music, you worked on the sets, all four of your brothers were stage hands. You’ve said you were seduced by all the preparation and was intrigued by how the theater energized your very sleepy suburb. What was most fascinating to you about that sort of awakening?

David Rockwell:

What was most seductive was how incredibly inclusive it was, that for the time that it was happening, it activated every part of the community. And when I say sleepy it’s deal. New Jersey is a beautiful, beautiful place with lots of big homes where almost all kind of entertainment happened within these big homes. So there wasn’t a lot of public realm. There was the beach run and a beautiful beach club, but the community theater somehow got everyone to want to participate. And it was in our little elementary school, which I actually took my daughter back to not too long ago. And I couldn’t believe the difference between my memory of these incredible productions and the simplicity of what it actually was.

I think it was an early experience for me of something that I found inspiring in my work and that is the live experience of creating something like theater takes months or years of preparation. Community theater’s more months. Broadway shows can be years and buildings can be decades, but ultimately, we experience them as a live in real time experience. So it really felt like time stood still. It was amazing time with my mom. It just was a very powerful experience that was my first exposure to people coming together to create something that was ephemeral but yet had long lasting memories.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said in several interviews that your childhood was very much like the Christopher Guest film Waiting for Guffman and I’m wondering if you can share why.

David Rockwell:

Well, it’s such an interesting question because I just met Christopher Guest.

Debbie Millman:

Lucky you.

David Rockwell:

It was incredible. I didn’t quite know what to say because I think he’s such an incredible genius and he was so smart and in the moment and present. And I think the thing about Waiting for Guffman is it makes fun of everyone in such an honest, playful way where everyone’s included in on the joke.

And my mom and Larry Lowenstein, who was the director of the Deal Players, they were intent on creating the best work. Now whether they really were quite as delusional as they are in Waiting for Guffman, and I don’t think they actually thought it was going to go to Broadway, but the dentist in town wanted to be in the show. And that’s kind of the overlap of the truth of Waiting for Guffman I think is quite beautiful. But he does it in such a hilariously funny way. So it’s that line between fiction and reality.

Debbie Millman:

Right. I can’t come away from a Christopher guest film without just feeling sort of happy about being alive just because the movies make you laugh in such a self-referential way.

David Rockwell:

Totally.

Debbie Millman:

The house that you grew up in and before you moved to Mexico had a detached garage with a second story that became your laboratory of sorts and you collected safety cones and roller blinds and wind chimes and use them to make what you’ve referred to as Rube Goldberg-like installations, Halloween haunted houses, elaborate lemonade stands. What did your family think of this?

David Rockwell:

You know, I don’t know. I think they were happy I wasn’t doing it in the house. I think they certainly encouraged it. They didn’t squash any of those instincts. By the way, it’s the same thing when I think about my experience at Syracuse University, where in many cases I was an outlier in terms of the kind of modernist program that was being taught. But I felt like I was encouraged just enough. And I was given enough lateral movement to try and craft kind of my own point of view.

I think my parents weren’t happy about it when it started to spill over into the lawn and then we had a big front lawn where the installations would continue. So I think they quite liked keeping it contained. And it was a garage with the second floor space that no one else was interested in. And I think that’s interesting, is looking for spaces that are outside of the norm. And I think that’s something I’ve continued. When I first started out as an architect in New York, almost all the spaces I had to work with were upstairs or downstairs because of the real estate reality of New York, which really created a lifelong fascination with stairs for me in architecture.

I did a small Ted Talk on stairs. I think stairs and theater are fascinating because they are the transition from one piece to another. So I think having that second floor space where I could dream and play away from worrying about making a mess was really helpful and I’m grateful I had that.

Debbie Millman:

That’s so interesting what you say about stairs because as I was looking at so much of your work, so much of it has a transition into something else, which I kind of feel like stares and landings often are. I read that some of your favorite childhood memories involve theater and hospitality and one of the most memorable was seeing a production of Boris Aronson’s musical of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway starring the great Zero Mostel, which was your first experience of a Broadway musical. What was that like for you?

David Rockwell:

It was totally life changing. The day included coming into New York with my parents and my brothers. It actually was after Zero Mostel Left and it was with Herschel Bernardi, which I’ve gone back to kind of look at what theater it was at, because it played for so long, the experience of walking through Times Square, having my first meal at a New York City restaurant, which-

Debbie Millman:

It was Schrafft’s, right?

David Rockwell:

It was Schrafft’s.

Debbie Millman:

Right. Moment of silence. Right?

David Rockwell:

So amazing. Right? And I’ve gone back to research the menu and there was something about being together with other people in these instant communities that get formed in New York, which is I think one of the great things about the city, that’s been a lifelong love of mine. And then seeing Boris Sorenson and Jerome Robbins and Sheldon Harnick and Jerome Box collaboration, telling a story I didn’t know anything about, was life changing for me to see how music and design could come together and be so powerful.

And it was something I was pretty obsessed with and researched Boris’s work, I researched Chegall’s work, and when I went to Mexico, which happened shortly thereafter, I took a lot of that experience with me and kind of dissected it. And it really has been an extraordinary gift to have that experience, including later in life becoming good friends with Boris Aronson’s widow, Lisa Aronson.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I want to ask you about that in a bit because I know there’s some interesting symmetry to that.

David Rockwell:

But yeah, even now when I go to the theater, I went to the opening of the Met Opera, Madea, which was incredible. And just when you sit down among 1500 strangers and the music begins and there’s an opportunity to connect with that story and that’s sort to connect with an audience, I think it’s just a beautiful world of possibilities. And that’s when that opened up for me.

Debbie Millman:

My first Broadway musical, my dad took me to see A Chorus Line. The original performances. The original production. And I remember being in the audience and I was a teenager, a young teenager, and remember when they were talking about tits and ass. And I was like, “Oh my God, they’re cursing. They’re cursing.” And I was so scared and embarrassed. It was such an interesting moment. I’ll never forget it.

David Rockwell:

Do you have memories about that design?

Debbie Millman:

I just remember the sort of line of the actors and actresses sort of singing when they do that long line across the stage. But that’s really pretty much it. And the costumes. And the costumes, the great, great costumes.

David Rockwell:

Yeah. I mean that was an incredibly impactful design in that it held back. Michael Bennett is one of my idols and it held back Robin Wagner’s set, which was a mirrored wall, could rotate at the end to that gold starburst that went with a costume, so it saved that big moment for the very end, but it was mostly a line on the floor, and amazingly lit. And the first Broadway show, they used a computer board for lighting.

Debbie Millman:

Oh wow. I didn’t realize that. When I saw Rent and when they open the second act with Seasons of Love, it reminded, took me back to that moment of A Chorus Line.

David Rockwell:

Yeah. Yep.

Debbie Millman:

You mentioned it already, but when you were 12, you and your family moved to Guadalajara, Mexico. Why Guadalajara?

David Rockwell:

My dad sold his business and was an avid reader and had been reading about living in Mexico. And at 12, it’s just impossible, or it was impossible for me, to understand the depth of what that change was going to be. It was a trip. We were going to move. So we got in into station wagon and drove to Guadalajara, Mexico, which was really turning my entire world inside out, in what turned out to be such an importantly great way because there were so many things about it that were fascinating and different.

And so, I think the reason was he was interested in a different quality of life and there was something about both the climate and the culture that interested him. And it was just my mom, my dad, and one brother. Three other brothers were already out of college or in college. So we just packed up and moved to a place where no one spoke English. And …

Debbie Millman:

Did you learn Spanish?

David Rockwell:

I was fluent within about four or five months.

Debbie Millman:

That’s incredible.

David Rockwell:

Yeah, at that age you just absorb it.

Debbie Millman:

Can you still speak Spanish?

David Rockwell:

I can still speak Spanish, but of course the vocabulary is weak. The accent is good. I’m good for two sentences if I plan it.

Debbie Millman:

That’s the theater in you.

David Rockwell:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

You said this about the experience and I want to read something that you wrote. “It was like entering Oz. I loved watching the drama of urban interaction, how people shaped and energized a space, the quality of the light and the tone of the sky. The street was where so much of the activity took place. I began to notice how the theater of the everyday related to actual theater and I began cobbling together an index in my mind about how people connect in activated spaces.”

David, I read that this is when you began diagramming and analyzing space and transition and modulation and interaction. At that point, did you have a sense of what you wanted to do professionally? Was this the beginning of your understanding of what you wanted to be in the future?

David Rockwell:

No, not yet. At this point, I think I still was very interested in piano and I never studied as seriously as I’m now studying, because I have that privilege now. I loved piano, I loved drawing, I loved sketching. The interest in becoming an architect evolved over the next couple of years living in Mexico where there was so much going on in the world of architecture, my exposure to these bold cast concrete buildings, the spaces in between, as I talk about in the book between the bull ring and the Mercado. And one of the great markets in the world is in Guadalajara. I think it’s 400,000 square feet and it’s a kind of modernist 60s structure. But underneath that it is the most amazing sort of minimalist maximalist installation of everything you could imagine.

Debbie Millman:

Wow.

David Rockwell:

So that’s when I started to diagram spaces between buildings. And I think it was also my interest in choreography through my mom. And I started to think about outdoor indoor spaces. All of the restaurants were indoors, outdoors. Even the configuration of the homes, there were all pretty much walled off. But most of the public life happened in the streets. Soccer happened in and around outdoor spaces. And I guess I just knew there were things about it that I thought were extraordinary and I tried to understand them spatially. And then I got to know a girl whose brother was an architect and spent some time with him. And it just emerged as an interesting intersection of the things I was most interested in learning.

Debbie Millman:

Your dad died when you were two and then your mom passed away when you were 15. How did you manage losing both your parents at such a young age?

David Rockwell:

Yeah, losing my mom was very hard. We were incredibly close, so that was pretty devastating. And I suppose maybe I’m lucky enough to have some inner drive or some optimism. There are things certainly I took from her. My love of theater is directly from her, but it was a tough couple of years and there were great friends in Mexico who helped me through it.

And I also think, as I look back on it, there was the enormous change of living in Mexico just got me on a journey of discovering things. And so, as the year or two passed, and for a year or two I was really pretty paralyzed about that, I started to think about what’s next. And I felt going back to the East coast, I felt like coming to New York, where my mom had been from, I had two brothers there, I think the importance of the moment, the importance of the time my mom and I did spend together kind of moved me in the direction of realizing how precious that time is. So that was a big part of the decision to come back east. And I went to Syracuse University, which was close enough to New York that I could come in and see my brothers on weekends and go to shows and if I liked the show, second act it the next day.

I do think of all the people in my life, my mom would’ve been the happiest and most surprised with the fact that I found a way to merge the various things that I loved. I mean, I think it’s kind of an unlikely set of things, but I think she would get that.

Debbie Millman:

I think she helped create that foundation. I think she’d be proud. You studied at the School of Architecture at Syracuse University and I understand that in your second year you got in trouble for designing a townhouse with two different entry sequences along with narratives about who lived there and why they’d made the choices they had. Why did you get in trouble for this?

David Rockwell:

Well, I think part of being in architecture school is getting in trouble. I think if you’re not provoking a reaction to get in trouble, you’re not doing the right thing. But so it was a figure ground study that was of a vertical townhouse. And the goal of the exercise was to look at how two sets of compositions, you could divide a tall, like Raymond Abram’s amazing building, take a slice and divide it into two different pieces.

I spent the first couple weeks of the project writing the backstory of the two people who would live there and what they did and why they were there. And the teacher was not pleased. The professor was not pleased. And in studio visits he would challenge that I was avoiding the process of solving it. And I’ve just always felt like backstory, it’s not better or worse, but it’s my process and it’s my studio’s process, is to try and develop a rich kind of backstory.

Debbie Millman:

To like a narrative, right?

David Rockwell:

A narrative, which in theater of course, you don’t want the narrative. The visual story doesn’t want to tell the same story as the actor wants to set the story like a jewel, a background or setting for a jewel. But having a narrative I think allows you to then suggest specifics along the way.

So it was very helpful for me and it ended up, other than the fact that I was working all night the night before and cut my finger and dripped a little blood on the white foam core, and I did have a moment thinking, how do I incorporate that into the narrative or do I just replace that piece of foam core?

Debbie Millman:

What did you do?

David Rockwell:

I replaced the foam core.

Debbie Millman:

Oh. I think you got in trouble again during your senior thesis. You went off the approved list of buildings and subjects and wrote about Times Square. I’m wondering what made you decide to do that and what you wrote about.

David Rockwell:

Well it was a long time ago. I did write about Times Square, which I had collected photographs over the years of, and what I wrote about is an outdoor room defined by information, which I actually think is a very provocative idea that has relevance in many other applications.

So I looked at the scale of the communication and how it’s different at the ground floor, at the mid level, and at the super scale. And I looked at the evolution of that communication since the beginning of electric light replacing gas. And the great Rudy Stern who passed away who wrote Let There Be Neon, was someone I became friendly with in school. I became friendly with Jules Fisher who’s one of the most extraordinary lighting designers in the world in theater.

So I networked people who I was interested in learning from and I thought, much like Learning from Las Vegas, which kind of investigated something that had previously not been investigated, I thought there was something about the enduring quality of Times Square and its constant change and its inspiration for artisan and craftsmen that was worth studying, but it was nip and talk about whether that was going to be approved.

Debbie Millman:

But I assume it was.

David Rockwell:

It was.

Debbie Millman:

After graduating from Syracuse and studying abroad at the Architectural Association in London, you worked as an intern for lighting designer Roger Morgan. And you’ve said that working for him helped you realize you could pursue and combine your passions for architecture and theater. How did he help you understand that?

David Rockwell:

My first job with Roger was actually when I was still in school in a summer internship in 78 I believe. And I got that job through a recommendation of Jules Fisher who introduced me to him. And Roger is an amazing theatrical lighting designer but also a theater consultant. So he needed architectural draftsman. So while I was there to learn about theater, he thought I was there to draw pipe details.

Debbie Millman:

Trojan Horse.

David Rockwell:

[inaudible 00:25:16] be useful. So it was an interesting contract. And he was the most amazing teacher, really just he is still is. An extraordinary man who … the show he was working on at the time was Crucifer of Blood, which was a Sherlock Holmes drama with Paxton Whitehead in Glen Close and her theatrical debut. And I was really a glorified coffee getter, but I was there to draft as well. So I had some work to do and then I went to work for him after I graduated.

I learned a lot about collaboration and it’s one of the things I talk about in the book Drama is ensemble. Because in theater you have a number of people who are very focused on one element. Go back to Fiddler on the Roof, Jerome Robbins movement with Boris Aronson design with the costumes and the lighting all created something where everyone is bringing their best game to the table.

I think collaboration and architecture can move more into I’m the architecture, the engineer, and there’s no real crossover. So I think ensemble was something I learned from Roger very clearly. Also, I think my experience there convinced me that theater was not for me for the time being. It was interesting to be a part of it. I loved being a part of it. I learned. And I just thought I want to go back and focus on architecture.

Debbie Millman:

You also worked for William Ginsburg, and William Ginsburg Associates, which is an engineering firm. That was the go-to newspaper plant designer in 1975.

David Rockwell:

You’ve done a lot of research.

Debbie Millman:

I try. And you’re so interesting. It’s easy.

David Rockwell:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

You said you knew nothing about newspaper plants but had been interested in how things moved and connected since you were a kid. How did that specific experience influence you and where you were going to go next?

David Rockwell:

Well, I mean you could look back at the interest in the Rube Goldberg-like constructions. Everything I made in that second floor in deal New Jersey was about movement. So the rollers on the floor were to sit on top of doors, which were movable stages. And that’s true about kaleidoscopes. I was always taking them apart and seeing how they work and putting them back together.

Debbie Millman:

Did you ever have failure at putting things back together? I’ve sort of stopped taking things apart cause I never can put them back together.

David Rockwell:

I’ve often had failure. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Okay. I’m not the only one.

David Rockwell:

Then you have to make something out of the loose parts or just move on.

Debbie Millman:

Right. Pretend it’s back together and works even though it doesn’t.

David Rockwell:

Yes. Working for William Ginsburg, who was my best friend’s father, John Ginsburg, who I met first year in college. It’s one of those things when you’re an intern, when you’re starting out, there’s the thing you’re asked to do and then there’s all the things you can learn while you’re doing it.

It’s been interesting now where we have a lot of interns who work for us and I find the ones that are successful are the ones that are looking beyond what they’re just doing. They’re curious. There’s a built in curiosity. And so when it came to newspaper plants, I was kind of fascinated with the simplicity of the box of the plant because it wasn’t about what the thing looked like from the outside again, but it was about the machinery and the process and sequencing and I thought it was a kind of beautiful system of pieces that was interesting and inspiring.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve stated that when you moved to New York City, you realized that its buildings weren’t just buildings. They were collections of many different lives. Was this when you that weren’t only interested in structures and spaces, you were also interested in people and how they were impacted by structures and spaces?

David Rockwell:

I suppose that’s true. I think my interest started out on how people come together and how spaces encourage us to interact with each other. But moving to New York, the revelation you’re talking about, which was surprising and still amazes me when I leave town and come back, is the verticality of New York is really so many lives living within one structure and it puts extra, I think, importance on the public realm to be open and public. And it’s probably the thing that led me initially to be most interested in the ground floor of the city and the majority of our work early on was in and around the ground floor, which is the extension of the public realm.

Debbie Millman:

While you were working, you were offered the chance to design a house from the ground up as a freelance project, which along with a restaurant project, gave you the impetus to start your own firm in 1984. What was that like for you? Were you scared, were you nervous? Were you excited? All of the above?

David Rockwell:

There was no fear. It was just pure energy and adrenaline and luck. And actually, I was working for another architect designing a club that was a version of the Crazy Horse Saloon coming to New York. And for those who don’t know, the Crazy Horse Saloon is this very avant garde, projection based, long term historical strip show in Paris. There’s been documentary films about it, so sort of new ideas. And I was the project architect, so I went to Paris to research it. I was 23 or 24.

It opened up, The room was beautiful. The show was on a level of terrible that’s hard to describe. So you asked if I ever taken anything apart and not put it back together. So I could still today, though, sketch the carpet pattern of the SCOs wall because that was so hands on. And through that, I was offered a restaurant called Le Périgord. And actually, the person who hired us, George Briguet, who was a legend, just passed away. And it was a restaurant that had been around forever. It was getting ready for a food event and wanted to know could I renovate it in four weeks.

Since I had no fear, I brought in a friend of mine who ran the scene shop at La Mama and we renovated the restaurant in four weeks. And that led to an offer to do Sushi Zen, which was my first restaurant and this house. And so I borrowed space from a friend of mine. I had one employee. So no, I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t sensible. A little more fear might have been a good idea, but it was just all curiosity and excitement.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I started a business when I was in my 20s and I look back at that time and think … who was that person and why was I not more afraid? I think something happens when you’re in your twenties. I think you still have that sense of immortality and I can do anything. It’s only now in my 60s that I’m like, hmm. Maybe. Maybe not.

David Rockwell:

I totally agree. The way I look at that though is when you have nothing to lose …

Debbie Millman:

Right.

David Rockwell:

And I think that’s one of the things I try to replicate over and over again in our studio is taking risks. Because being safe is, I think, creatively, death. I think you have to keep reinventing and pushing.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. One of the projects that really brought you quite a lot of notoriety was the design of the restaurant Nobu in New York City in 1994. You’ve since gone on to design over 20 Nobu restaurants as well as Nobu hotels around the world. What do you attribute the success of your long term collaboration with Nobu Matsuhisa?

David Rockwell:

First of all, it is such an incredible gift. And it’s so rare, as you know, to be able to kind of iterate a vocabulary over time with … but Nobu is something I pursued. I was working for Meals on Wheels, which I’m now on the board of.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

David Rockwell:

And I was designing an event at the Seaport called The Feast of the Many Moons. And I was on a ladder lashing moons together. I had this beautiful moonscape. And part of since I was a volunteer is I got to try all the food. We had completed Vong for Jean-Georges Vongertichten. It was the first restaurant in New York.

Debbie Millman:

I have very fond memories.

David Rockwell:

Oh, it was one of my favorite.

Debbie Millman:

Absolute favorite.

David Rockwell:

And then I tried at this Feast of the Many Moons, Nobu Matsuhisa’s rock shrimp. And so I pursued the project through Drew Nieporent, who I knew a little bit. And he introduced me to Nobu Matsuhisa and to Robert De Niro. Those were the three partners. And I interviewed with both of them.

I mean, I really think of Nobu as a kind of brother. It gave me such momentum in thinking about backstory and looking at his food and his history and trying to create something that, as he wanted to do, was a Japanese restaurant that didn’t trigger all the visual clues of a traditional Japanese restaurant. No tablecloths. That in some ways was part of reinventing luxury. Because when it opened in ’94, I think, there were no three star restaurants with no tablecloths. It wasn’t a vocabulary that people were familiar with.

I was fully in about engaging in any way with him. And I think the reason it’s endured is it was very successful and I continued to work with him, as we did other Nobus, to still work with the inspiration of what he does, but not translate it exactly the same way. And I know as a chef, that’s what he does as well. So I think there was just a real meaning in the minds and it’s something I’m incredibly grateful for.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that part of what gives you the ability to have the many long term client relationships you have is that you allow them to have affairs if they want. So can you elaborate?

David Rockwell:

Well, I think one of the keys to a long term relationship, and there’s so many of them that are notable in theater, how Prince and Boris Aronson, the seminal Sondheim musicals were all done together. But in my world, if Nobu is in London and is doing a hotel and wants to do it with David Collins, who’s very talented, you have to sort of tolerate it and embrace it. And if you hold on too tight, you kind of squish the energy out of a situation.

The same is true in all the building work we’re doing. We’re doing a project right now for Johns Hopkins. It’s a fantastic experience. And as they get to other buildings, if they want to talk to me about other architects who might be able to do pieces or parts of the whole building, I think that’s something that you have to learn to kind of grow that ability to not hold on too tight.

Debbie Millman:

That’s very big of you. Since the start of your business-

David Rockwell:

You haven’t asked me if it drives me crazy yet though.

Debbie Millman:

Ah. Does it drive you crazy?

David Rockwell:

Not totally.

Debbie Millman:

I’m so jealous. I really admire that you have some sensibility about allowing people to do it. I’m so territorial. Since the start of your business in 1984, and this is really now just focusing on some of the restaurant work you’ve done, I want to talk about so much more, but you become one of the most coveted restaurant designers in the world.

In addition to working with Nobu, you’ve worked with Bobby Flay, as you mentioned, Jean-Georges Vongertichten, Danny Meyer, Melba Wilson, Barry [inaudible 00:37:30], you’ve been included into the James Beard Foundations of Who’s Who. One thing that really struck me was that you said that the design of a restaurant is as important as the food. And I’m wondering if you still believe that and if you can talk a little bit about if so, why?

David Rockwell:

Well, I say that for maybe not the most obvious reasons because I think in some cases, just having come back from Rome, the restaurants we gravitated to are the ones that were designed over time, collection of artwork that’s been traded for pasta dishes. Al Moro, for instance, which is this great tavern. The design was never highlighted or, in italics, designed. But the design I think has to do with smells and senses and where is the kitchen.

Design is can the food get to the table warm? Design is when you’re sitting down, what are you looking at and who else do you see? So I do think that, in the world of restaurants, the key element is a connection between the philosophy of the design and the food. It’s like the difference between a dive and a dump because the dive got there intentionally.

Debbie Millman:

Right. Well yeah that because that was my next question. What about the dives of the world? That if they’re done well, it’s intentional.

David Rockwell:

And if there’s a point of view about food and I think about Mikhail’s and the theater district, which was a great watering hole with these classic whiskey glasses, old patina bar. And it was really about the environment fitting the mood and the food.

And there are many chefs who will totally disagree with the design is as important as the food. But it’s one of the things I also tell theater directors and restaurateurs when they say, “Well I’m not sure we need that last feature you’re suggesting.” I say, “Well let’s just think about it because what if that’s the key feature? What if it turns out that that was the key thing?” So I think taking as wide a point of view as possible and having a real conversation about it where design and operations and service really meet is when you can have a good success.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, absolutely. And in some ways, you’re preaching to the converted, because I do think that the design is as important as the food because if the design or the lack thereof impacts your experience of the food. A bad fork, a bad bathroom, those things are going to be things that kind of dilute the experience. And why would you want that?

David Rockwell:

And think about a chair. There’s chairs that are good for 45 minutes and there’s chairs that are good for two and a half hours and you want to make sure which of those your restaurant’s going to be.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. Believe it or not, before we go to any restaurant, my wife looks online to see what the chairs look like. And that is really important to her.

David Rockwell:

That’s a design fan.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. So I want to talk about the similarities and differences between designing a restaurant, a hotel, and a Broadway show. And I want to start just by talking a little bit about some of the theater work that you’ve done. When you created the sets, I believe that your first show was the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

David Rockwell:

It was.

Debbie Millman:

In 2000. Now there are different dates online that I found. One said 1989, but most of the others said 2000. So I’m going to go with 2000. And when you did that show, I understand that you had been meeting with directors for years prior, but just sketching solutions. What were you doing with the sketches and why did it take you so long to sort of decide that you wanted to do a show if you had been doing the sketches all along?

David Rockwell:

Well, I had a successful architecture studio. And I was spending more time at theater with friends of mine in the theater looking at scenery. And I’d studied that as well. I’d studied scenic design post graduating on a kind of ongoing basis. So I spoke to two people, Hal Prince, the phenomenal Hal Prince, who was encouraging and said, “Just start to sketch out what your ideas might be.”

And I knew it wasn’t going to be a quick journey because I was going from a skill set where I had kind of proven myself over time into a different skill set. I would meet with any director I could, and there were a lot of them who were interested in meeting, sketching and talking. And what started to emerge out of that was my recognition that the real opportunity that was most interesting to me in theater was transitions.

I mean, theater is one of the few art forms where things change in front of your eyes. And so the set design and the lighting designer together are kind of the cinematographer, the experience crafting where your eye goes. And I loved transitions all the way going back to the Rube Goldberg constructions and things that it interested me. So it felt like very vital territory. I would go to the theater twice a week, really, my whole life in New York.

So it took a while to. There were a couple of fall starts. I was offered a show that I started working on. That show didn’t happen. And when I met with Jordan Roth, who I knew from restaurant and hotel work, and he introduced me to Chris Ashley, who’s really an extraordinary director. He directed Come From Away, which is just closing. And they mentioned the Rocky Horror Show. Having lived in Mexico during those pop culture years, I wasn’t familiar with it. So I went home and I rented the movie.

Debbie Millman:

It’s such a great movie.

David Rockwell:

And I went back to Chris and I said, “I’m not sure what the key is to making this work on stage.” And he said, “It’s about self-creation. It’s the audience really creating this in their mind.” And it seemed like the perfect first show. And we had a couple of fall starts at different theaters, and then we went to see the Circle in the Square, which is the most non-traditional Broadway theater there is. It has no fly loft. It has very little wing space. So it required invention just to get from one place to another. And it was just the most wonderful experience ever. It was a really a loving, wonderful, great experience.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve written that architecture and theater are both defined by the people that inhabit and animate them. Without an audience enlivening its streets, its museums, its restaurants, a city is only an empty frame. And I think this has been reflected in the way the pandemic has affected public space. Everything for quite a long time was feeling very lonely. When did you get involved in making the kits for the New York City restaurants to be able to extend their spaces into the outdoors so that they wouldn’t lose their businesses?

David Rockwell:

I was editing. Actually, I was at Nobu downtown March 12th, which was a day before restaurants shut down I believe. And it was a day that they were trying to go to 50% capacity in restaurants and see if that would work. And then of course, everything shut down. And I was in the process of editing drama for [inaudible 00:44:58]. And I would look out at the city and realized we were living in a period where we got to see what a city would be like if it was all hardware.

There was none of the life of the city. And it was brutal. It was such awakening of how cities are inert without people. And it sounds obvious in retrospect, but my office immediately went to remote and Zoom, and as we were brainstorming, I started to reach out to people I’d worked with around the country in different industries to sort of brainstorm about what might be some initial thought starters that would be helpful.

Of course, restaurants had many challenges. There was no customers who were willing to be outside and you couldn’t be outside. And to have that start to change, there’d have to be a safe way to get the restaurants to want to be back in business. So four seats on the sidewalk wasn’t going to justify enough business to get them back open.

So I started to speak to a number of friends all around the country. Melba Wilson was one of them who’s a longtime friend. And we started to think about what are little ways that could start to move things in a better direction? And outdoor dining was being talked about. And it was being talked about in a way that it might work in Europe, but it won’t work in New York. And there’s so much red tape and inertia.

So someone in city planning suggested the way to be helpful would be to try and develop a strategy and a prototype. So we came up with a 40 page deck together with Melba Wilson and Andrew Rigie, who was the head of the Hospitality Alliance, speaking again to restaurateurs around the country about a very simple system that would continue to allow the streets to function, but would be an immediate way to get, at a big enough scale, restaurants back in business, outside, in a safe way.

That document made it to the city. And then we decided to make all of that open source. So everything we had drawn was made open source. And then I realized what we really needed to do was help underserved restaurants because it was immediately evident that there was going to be those who could afford it and those who couldn’t. We looked at manufacturing techniques of ways it could be made less expensively, and we actually engaged with a lot of labor from the theater world that had no work at the time. Think about those pools of labor. And we set up a non-for-profit 501C3 and worked with the hospitality lines in the city.

Our outdoor installations were all non-for-profit for originally six restaurants, at least one in each borough, and then community installations, the first one in Chinatown where 12 restaurants shared it. And it led to doing that all over the country. And it was powerful. And reigniting that relationship with Melba who’s just extraordinary and a real true New Yorker.

Debbie Millman:

As you are. Thank you so much for doing that. It has really helped bring the city back in ways that I don’t think anybody ever expected. It’s only been two years and the city is, once again, I think it’s different, but it’s its vibrant spirit itself.

David Rockwell:

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think every moment leads with a different opportunity. I think the opportunity now is to figure out, well, you can have these semi-permanent structures everywhere, which is what people have done. They’ve sort of pushed the boundary way to the other end, and it’s going to require the city coming up with ways to actually engage zoning and legislation and safety concerns and deal with the fact that we’re not in crisis. But there’s something wonderful about that opportunity and I think that’s the next challenge.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I do. I think for now I sort of feel like let them make back some of that extra money with those extra tables that they can fill. But yeah, I think eventually some sort of format for doing this would be helpful.

David Rockwell:

I know this is something you think about a lot, but it’s also design of those things that you don’t ever think needs design.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

David Rockwell:

So DOT approached us about when they do open streets, they do it with these not very attractive barricades that look like barricades. And we created something for them called stoops, which takes the place of those barricades, but when it’s open, becomes a place to sit. So I think we were talking earlier before the interview about what is design. It’s kind of making the world more understandable and more pleasurable and functional and taking those things that you think maybe aren’t designed in realizing someone needs to design them.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, absolutely. After the success of the Rocky Horror Picture show back in 2000, that led to your appointment for the Broadway production of Hairspray two years later.

David Rockwell:

Oh my God. Can you imagine that?

Debbie Millman:

No.

David Rockwell:

Hairspray, the musical with John Waters.

Debbie Millman:

Yep. Incredible. It was incredible. You won the 2016 Tony Award for best scenic design for the musical She Loves Me. You have an additional six Tony Award nominations for Best Scenic Design. You have two Emmy Awards for production design for the Oscars in 2021, in 2010. You’ve worked on, I counted it up about 70 theatrical productions including designing sets for Kinky Boots. Amazing. Legally Blonde, amazing. A Normal Heart. Heartbreaking.

At this moment in time, I believe you have designed three shows that are either on or coming to Broadway. When you begin working on a new theatrical production, how does designing for an already existing story inform your work?

David Rockwell:

Well, there’s different ways it could in inform the work. One way in the case Into the Woods that we recently did, it just meant I was familiar with the material. I wasn’t so familiar with previous physical designs and I didn’t think I needed to. And there were so many specifics about the experience that was designed for encores, which was going to be a two week run, Stephen Sondheim had just passed away. Lear DeBessonet wanted to create this beautiful, and she put it, kind of optimistic, but still having a sense of loss for [inaudible 00:51:34].

And that was lots of research. What looks like a very simple set of 16 dimensional trees with cutouts with those three houses that are there before was weeks and weeks of research of lots of different approaches to synthesize down of the few things we could do. Given that it was encore, it’s what would we do that really set the stage.

There’s other previous productions when we did on the 20th century, had seen Robin Wagner’s original Tony Award-winning production, that was a case where I thought meeting with him and talking to him was helpful, which I did. Or a new project in the case of Take Me Out, which had been done 20 years ago, Scott Ellis and Richard Greenberg, the playwright, were very much interested in a new look at it. And so I just started from what they wanted to do and that’s the way we approach everything. It’s always trying to find a kind of unique narrative that evolves, that has surprise, that helps illuminate the powerful part of the story.

Debbie Millman:

I just saw Into the Woods. And I have seen Into the Woods before. I actually saw Into the Woods in 2012 when the production was put on Central Park. And I didn’t think a set could possibly surpass being in the woods to see Into the Woods. And yet it did. It is an extraordinary play. I mean, everything about it. The acting, the directing, the music, and of course the sets.

The limited run of the production in New York last year was moved to Broadway where it’s been playing to sold out houses every night. The show was also officially extended twice now through the end of the year, through January. And the show was often considered Stephen Sondheim’s most popular musical. And its original run on Broadway began in 1987. It was also taped for PBS. It was revived once before on Broadway in 2002, Central Park in 2012, performed in community theaters and schools all over the world. It was even turned into a Disney film starring Meryl Streep. When you’re working on a revival, how much do you consider previous productions?

David Rockwell:

I try to start fresh, but I don’t deny the fact when I’ve seen something in the past, there might be something you learn. But I don’t research previous productions and I don’t try and pretend I haven’t seen them. Now Into the woods, there was so much fertile territory, including the orchestra being on stage.

Debbie Millman:

That was my next question.

David Rockwell:

And we thought that surrounding the orchestra with those playing areas would make the music even more of the story than if they were just front and center without those surrounding platforms. With a musical, you start with research and the research is on the music, the period, the narrative. And then from all that, you have to put that aside and conjure some original vision that is going to kind of bring all that together.

Debbie Millman:

What’s so interesting about your sets is that they are in the play. The main character, or one of the main characters, the cow. The cow is so integrated into the play that I wasn’t entirely sure if the cow was a construction of the set or if the cow was a construction of the choreographer or a cow was a construction of the director.

David Rockwell:

So James Ortiz, the amazing puppeteer who designed Milky White, in early meetings with Lear as a director, she brought us all together so that everyone would be working from the same kind of pool of ideas. So the skeleton simplicity of the trees certainly is totally visible in James’ work for Milky White. But then even extended more with the actor playing Milky White, a Kennedy who everyone is inhabiting the same thing. It’s not so dissimilar from what we were talking about with restaurants, that if food and service and design come from the same point of view, you get the sense of an underlying intelligence and a kind of comfort that there’s a guiding point of view.

Debbie Millman:

But it was so integrated. The only time I’ve ever felt that there was this type of successful integration of a character that was an animal, so to speak, into a play with humans was Lion King.

David Rockwell:

Totally.

Debbie Millman:

And this reminded me of that. The integration felt so seamless and so real that the character is brought to life in a way that was, I thought, really remarkable. I loved Milky White. I thought Milky White was outstanding.

David Rockwell:

Milky White’s a-

Debbie Millman:

And never utters a word.

David Rockwell:

… total star.

Debbie Millman:

Yep. David, the last project I want to talk to you with you about brings together three of your passions, theater design, restaurant design and hotel design. And you recently created, designed, and just opened Civilian, a brand new 203 room hotel in the theater district. And it’s been described this way. An homage to the uniquely Manhattan experience of great theater and design can only be found in the breathtaking fantasy of David Rockwell’s New York. It’s a distinctly theatrical hotel, one that demonstrates a love for the stage and a celebration of the energy history and future of Broadway as nothing in New York has ever done. How’s that for review?

David Rockwell:

I think that’s a mic drop right there.

Debbie Millman:

Right? Congratulations.

David Rockwell:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

Now, I believe that this is the first project of this type, of this magnitude that you have done, where you’ve really looked at every single aspect, brought it all together.

David Rockwell:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Can you talk a little bit about what motivated you to create an entire hotel?

David Rockwell:

What I can tell you is, and I don’t know if this is true in your work or your observations, but I really believe in long thoughts. I think things don’t happen quickly. So I’ve been thinking for 15 or 20 years about how there’s no center to the theater community that kind of honors all the people that make it and make its own credible.

Even though in the book drama I talk about the importance of ephemeral and impermanence is a design strategy, recognizing things aren’t necessarily permanent, the world of design in theater is, it happens during the show and then is gone. So I’d been thinking for a long time about restaurants that are kind of watering holes, that welcome people in the theater district, and creating a center there. And most things, this was an opportunity that came along that was a different opportunity. The builder was building this hotel on 48th Street, just west of … it was a small parking lot.

And they came to me saying, “We’re wondering what kind of hotel this should be.” And I said, “Well, if you want me involved, I think it shouldn’t be defined by being a Marriott or a Moxy or a lot of great brands.” W, all hotels we’ve worked for. But something that is really about its own place and that honors what makes this neighborhood with these 41 amazing theaters totally unique.

And they went for it. They said, “Great.” So that got me motivated to reach out to many other theater makers and get them excited about it. Find a non-for-profit partner. And in this case, it’s the American Theater Wing, which is kind of the biggest tent of the theater world. It includes everyone. And it’s been just so inspiring to see, first of all, how designers want to participate.

The hotel has about a 350 piece collection called the Olio Collection that is constantly rotating and that includes commission pieces in spaces you’d never expect to see artwork. The elevator, the back bar, the rooms, the corridors. The restaurant and the Rooftop bar are opening, I believe the middle of October. They haven’t opened jet.

Debbie Millman:

I know.

David Rockwell:

So it’s just amazing. It’s been one of the greatest joys of my life to bring together these three passions and to do it in a way that kind of celebrates people who are not normally celebrated and have it be ever-changing. It’s like what I tried to accomplish on the second floor of my garage in Deal, but in a beautifully New York way with amazing creators and collaborators.

Debbie Millman:

Civilian is now host to a curated collection of Broadway memorabilia, drawings, and photography, including the original polo shirt and cast from Dear Evan Hansen a pair of red boots from Kinky Boots …

David Rockwell:

They’re staying.

Debbie Millman:

… perfume models from She Loves Me, shoes from A Kiss of the Spider Woman-

David Rockwell:

From Chitah Rivera.

Debbie Millman:

Oh wow. This is the one that’s going to make me get goosebumps, just saying it out loud. Elphaba’s hat from Wicked. Ah.

David Rockwell:

Amazing.

Debbie Millman:

Dueling pistols from Hamilton-

David Rockwell:

From the first.

Debbie Millman:

Original. The Off-Broadway.

David Rockwell:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

I believe that some of the memorabilia is in the blue room, is that correct?

David Rockwell:

Yeah. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Where you used your favorite blue, which is a deep purple-ish hue called Urban Blue, named for the architect and set designer Joseph Urban. So what makes that your favorite?

David Rockwell:

I think the depth of the color. It feels infinite. It feels both incredibly rich and present and like it just goes on forever. And it is my favorite color. I like many different blues. [inaudible 01:01:31]

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I was wondering about Yves Klein Blue. That felt like it would be a blue you might like too. Just a couple more questions. Wondering if you can talk about the sketches that will be featured of the 41 theaters that make up the Broadway universe.

David Rockwell:

Thank you for asking. So when I first really got on to doing the Hotel Civilian, there were a number of people I knew needed to be represented and one was Tony Walton, who was really one of the truly greats. Passed away this year. And he’s not only been one of the great designers, but one of the great people and supporters of the theater community.

So I went to him and I said, “I’m doing this crazy thing.” And he said, “Well, I don’t know if this is helpful, but I have 12 drawings that I did Broadway theaters from decades ago that I did for playbill. Let me send those over.” And they were these gesture sketches that perfectly, in each case, I thought captured what was special about that theater. And of the 41 Broadway theaters, I’ve worked in 20 of them and had a chance to renovate one of them, the Hayes Theater.

So I loved the idea that he had taken in what was special about each. And I asked if he would complete the collection to have 41. And he said he would love to do that, but just didn’t have the brain space to do that. And we sort of brainstormed about it. And then I reached out to every designer I knew and they would pick the theater that was most personal to them and do a drawing of them. And those sketches are etched into one foot diameter glass panels with a bronze surround into the light fixtures. So the very fabric of the restaurant is dotted with these 41 backlit fixtures that celebrates why this couldn’t happen anywhere else in the world.

Debbie Millman:

Wow, that’s incredible. I know that you said lighting is the thing that most hotels get wrong. How did you approach that idea in thinking about this particular kind of lighting?

David Rockwell:

Well, I am obsessed about lighting. And so one of the things that drives me crazy is bad lighting and eating in some of the great little pasta places in Rome where lighting is totally not important.

Debbie Millman:

Right. [inaudible 01:03:45] use [inaudible 01:03:47] phone [inaudible 01:03:47] can you believe how many people use their phones now to look at menus? It drives me crazy.

David Rockwell:

So what we tried to do at a civilian relative lighting is start with the most critical of lighting problems, and that is lying in bed trying to read and turn the light off from the bed stand. And it’s amazing how many designers get that wrong. The light isn’t bright enough to read and you can’t turn it off. So we started with the rooms and then went to the corridors, which are lined with beautiful custom wallpaper by Isabelle and Ruben Toledo, Paul Tazewell and William Ivey long. Isabelle’s Dream was to design a Broadway show.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, well thank you for bringing her that.

David Rockwell:

My pleasure. She [inaudible 01:04:30].

Debbie Millman:

What a loss.

David Rockwell:

Yeah. So in the case of the hall, we lit the photographs in the wallpaper. So I think the key to not having bad lighting is not the thinking of lighting is some independent alien thing, but understand what the object of the lighting is. So it all dims, including the kitchen, and we were able to make it just so. But I am crazy about lighting.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve stated that you’d like to design an opera house that doesn’t hide so much of what it takes to stage an opera.

David Rockwell:

Right.

Debbie Millman:

And you’d like to design an Olympics opening ceremony.

David Rockwell:

Right.

Debbie Millman:

Do you have any sense of what you might design for either?

David Rockwell:

Well, I can tell you the opera house note is based on whenever I’m with non-theater people, architects in a theater, the favorite view is what it looks like from the stage looking out, the potential of that. And of course, opera houses have this huge machinery backstage and I would just be interested in … it just has so many things that I love. There’s this ceremony of how to get to the seats. There’s the embrace of the house, there’s the ritual of the show. So hopefully someday I’ll get a chance to work on that particular scale.

And opening ceremonies, I didn’t have a dream to design the Academy Awards. I had done the theater in 2002 as an architect and was lucky enough to get a call from Bill Conden, who’s an extraordinary filmmaker and artist, asking about doing the Oscars in 2009. It was a chance to have a full circle experience of designing the building and then working in the building. So I think for Opening Ceremonies, it’s so much about embracing a city and how it unfolds and working with a director and a cinematographer. And I think it would be fun to do that in a totally unique, different way.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. Ugh, I love to see you do that. David Rockwell, thank you so much for making so much work that matters. Thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

David Rockwell:

Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.

Debbie Millman:

David Rockwell’s work can be seen on Broadway Into the Woods and about to be seen in Take Me Out and A Beautiful Noise. You can experience all aspects of his work at the Civilian Hotel in New York City, read about his work and his most recent book Drama published by Phaidon, and you can read all about nearly everything he’s done at rockwellgroup.com.

This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference. We can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Melvin and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: David Rockwell appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman (00:00:00):

Chip Kidd has been on the podcast before. Four times, actually. I went back to the archives and counted. He’s been on to talk about a novel he wrote. He’s been on to talk about the fabulous book covers he’s been designing at Knopf for decades. He’s been on with Chris Ware to talk about graphic novels.

Debbie Millman (00:00:19):

More recently, he’s been on to talk about his book, Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design. That book is now out in paperback, and there’s so much more to talk about like his Batman exhibits, and his cameo in the last Star Wars movie, just to mention, two of his latest projects. Chip Kidd, welcome back to Design Matters.

Chip Kidd (00:00:44):

Thank you so much. I can’t believe you wanted me back again, but I-

Debbie Millman (00:00:48):

Of course.

Chip Kidd (00:00:50):

I’m so grateful, and I just want to say thank you for creating Design Matters. What an incredible, incredible achievement. It’s just-

Debbie Millman (00:01:01):

Thank you.

Chip Kidd (00:01:01):

Yeah. Thank you. And I’m proud to call you my friend.

Debbie Millman (00:01:03):

Oh, Chip, you know that I call you my brother.

Chip Kidd (00:01:07):

Well, all right. Then, that-

Debbie Millman (00:01:10):

You’re my family.

Chip Kidd (00:01:10):

I’m proud to call you my sister then.

Debbie Millman (00:01:12):

Absolutely. Absolutely. And hi there, Mrs. Kidd.

Chip Kidd (00:01:15):

Hi, mom.

Debbie Millman (00:01:16):

Chip, I want to start by asking you about something that I seem to have missed in our four previous interviews, which I’ve subsequently regretted, and wanted to ask you about now. You designed the original Jurassic Park book cover in 1990, which subsequently was used in the 1993 movie directed by Steven Spielberg.

Debbie Millman (00:01:40):

And since then, that same logo has been part of the five additional movies. The most recent being the blockbuster summer hit Jurassic World Dominion. It’s also on thousands, if not millions of merchandising and promotional items. Is it true that the original Jurassic Park book logo was really dark green?

Chip Kidd (00:02:07):

Oh, yeah. First of all, just to clarify, the original book jacket is just the typography and then the drawing of the dinosaur. And the drawing of the dinosaur, which I did both, but the drawing of the dinosaur is what they used for the logo. So, the lettering is by somebody else and all of that.

Debbie Millman (00:02:25):

Okay. Yes. We must be accurate about every bit of the credit.

Chip Kidd (00:02:28):

Yeah, I think so.

Debbie Millman (00:02:29):

Absolutely.

Chip Kidd (00:02:31):

But yes, I don’t know what I was thinking with a couple things with that cover. The drop shadow on his name, why is it there?

Debbie Millman (00:02:42):

Design regrets.

Chip Kidd (00:02:43):

Maybe somebody had said his name needs to pop more or something. But yeah, from a distance, the dinosaur looks like it’s black. But then when you get up real close to a first edition in the unforgiving light of day, you can see that it’s a dark green. And I think what I was thinking was something about primordial ooze. Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:03:09):

What is the strangest thing you’ve seen the logo on?

Chip Kidd (00:03:13):

A human body.

Debbie Millman (00:03:15):

Really?

Chip Kidd (00:03:15):

Oh sure. Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:03:16):

So, people have tattooed.

Chip Kidd (00:03:17):

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:03:18):

I thought you were going to say something about the toaster. I know there’s a Jurassic Park toaster.

Chip Kidd (00:03:23):

Well, which you were so sweet to give me. They made a toaster that upon putting the piece of bread in and pushing the button, when it pops up, the logo is on it. And I will admit, I have it in the box, but I haven’t opened the box.

Debbie Millman (00:03:39):

It’s probably worth more not opening it.

Chip Kidd (00:03:46):

The kind of guy I am, but yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:03:46):

All of the history of the logo and the identity is now shared in another new book that’s come out about Jurassic Park that actually has been published by Topps, the card company.

Chip Kidd (00:04:01):

It’s actually been published by Abrams.

Debbie Millman (00:04:04):

Okay.

Chip Kidd (00:04:04):

But Abrams publishes these… and they’re beautifully done, these collections of Topps collector cards. So, they’ve done Star Wars, and Wacky Packages and Mars Invades. So, then, they were going to do Jurassic Park, and the editor of this series is my dear friend, Charlie Kochman at Abrams. And he suggested, I guess, to Topps and including Universal, that I write an afterward.

Chip Kidd (00:04:32):

And so, I did, and they had to vet everything. And I basically just explain again how this happened with photographic evidence, and they published it. So, for me, it’s a very meaningful hallmark for me because it’s the first time that Universal Pictures is acknowledging that I did this because I’m never in the movie credits and-

Debbie Millman (00:05:02):

Haven’t received a penny of the proceeds.

Chip Kidd (00:05:02):

That is certainly true. So, there it is. It’s in print with the stamp of approval by Universal Pictures. I’m glad that it’s at least acknowledged that way. I did two Ted talks and the first Ted talk was basically like, this is who I am and this is what I do. And I very much wanted to make creating Jurassic Park a big part of that because I want this… I was going to say I want to own it. I want to own the fact that I did it.

Debbie Millman (00:05:38):

Absolutely, as you should. It’s one of the most recognizable logos of the 20th century. And now, it’s continuing into the 21st. It’s so interesting that they rebooted the movie. They rebooted it with all new actors, only in this third movie are Laura Dern and some of the rest of the cast back. But the logo has been there-

Chip Kidd (00:05:59):

But the logo is the same.

Debbie Millman (00:06:00):

… for all six movies. That’s incredible.

Chip Kidd (00:06:02):

It is. It’s amazing.

Debbie Millman (00:06:03):

Even the Star Wars logo has changed a bit over the years. But the Jurassic Park logo hasn’t.

Chip Kidd (00:06:08):

No.

Debbie Millman (00:06:09):

And the new book is really beautiful. One thing I found in my research that I didn’t see in any of the previous times that I’ve interviewed you is a fax that Michael Creighton actually sent to Sonny Mehta, which it has the normal heading of a fax, the to, from, the date, et cetera. And then, in giant typewritten letters, it says, “Wow, fantastic jacket.” And I thought that was pretty cool too.

Chip Kidd (00:06:38):

Yeah. Boy, those were the days, faxes.

Debbie Millman (00:06:40):

Faxes. Chip, you were born in Shillington, Berks County in Pennsylvania. And I know as a child, you were enthralled by pop culture. And I love to remind you that in the prologue to your first monograph, you stated, “I did not grow up yearning to become a book designer. What I wanted to be was Chris Partridge on The Partridge Family.”

Chip Kidd (00:07:05):

Absolutely.

Debbie Millman (00:07:06):

I still don’t understand why you were so fascinated with Chris, especially since two actors played the same character.

Chip Kidd (00:07:13):

I know. And that was fascinating too.

Debbie Millman (00:07:14):

What was it about Chris that enthralled you so?

Chip Kidd (00:07:17):

I wanted to be a drummer, and that I did sort of become. But the idea that he’s eight years old or whatever it is, and he’s the drummer of this band. I was just obsessed with that show.

Debbie Millman (00:07:32):

I was, too.

Chip Kidd (00:07:33):

And the music was so good. In that sense, it was sort of like The Monkees. It would be so easy to write it off, but the music was terrific.

Debbie Millman (00:07:42):

Yeah. I think the music actually holds up. I think Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque is one of their great unsung hits that deserves a lot more recognition. I loved that show. There was something about the dynamic of this family without a dad, with-

Chip Kidd (00:08:02):

Which they never talk about.

Debbie Millman (00:08:04):

Never, never. With these little kids being part of a big band. I had a massive crush on Susan Dey, but I also had a bit of a crush on Danny Bonaduce as well. I love them all. Bobby Sherman, still to this day. I love Bobby Sherman.

Chip Kidd (00:08:21):

Right. Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:08:23):

Your mom was very supportive of your interests. And I think in many ways was the catalyst to a lot of what you ended up loving. I know she made you Batman costumes every year for Halloween. And talk about how she influenced your thinking about cartoons, and comics, and characters.

Chip Kidd (00:08:48):

Well, it was my mom and my dad. Actually, when it came to the cartoon characters, it was much more dad than mom. Because he wasn’t trying to taunt my brother and I, but he would tell us that he had Superman #1. He had the Superman #1 comic and the Batman #1 comic.

Chip Kidd (00:09:07):

And he had all this stuff when he was a kid, but then it all got tossed into the paper drive for World War II. But he was a terrific cartoonist who pursued chemical engineering instead. But I remember going up into the attic in the house that I grew up in, and just poking around, and I would find his old chemistry textbooks, and he would have cartoons in the margins.

Chip Kidd (00:09:34):

And I was just fascinated by that. I think the difference between my parents and me is that I felt I could pursue an actual career doing something creative. Whereas, I think for them, they were much more pragmatic. Like I said, my dad was a chemical engineer. My mom was what used to be called a personnel manager, which we now called human resources.

Chip Kidd (00:10:02):

And they both did creative things on the side for fun. And I wanted to do a creative thing as my main job, hopefully, for fun that hopefully, to get a salary. My mom, her brilliant creative thing was she was a seamstress. When we were really little, she would make our clothes, my brother and I, brother Walt. And she would make our clothes, and there would be these little junior league fashion shows.

Chip Kidd (00:10:29):

And we’re like three and five years old, tramping down the runway in these little onesies that she made, and it’s so funny. But yeah, then when we went to elementary school for Halloween every year, my brother and I would think up what we wanted to be. And for about, I’d say five to eight years, they would figure out what we wanted to be.

Chip Kidd (00:10:54):

It was Batman and Robin right away. Then, for me, Captain America, Zorro, Captain Marvel, the DC Captain Marvel, my brother wanted to be Hawkman one year. There were these dolls, the silver knight and the gold knight. They were like GI Joes, but they were knights, and had all this armor, and he wanted to be, I think, the gold knight. So, they were very nurturing, and loving, and sweet in this regard. Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:11:26):

You recently gave one of the costumes to Anderson Cooper, talk about why, and the worldwide sensation that that costume has become.

Chip Kidd (00:11:41):

Well, I thank you. You’re exaggerating a little bit.

Debbie Millman (00:11:46):

Not really.

Chip Kidd (00:11:47):

I had designed book jackets for Anderson’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt for what seemed like forever, since 1991. And that came about because she was published by Knopf. And somehow, her jackets started getting assigned to me, and that’s how I got to meet her. And she was just amazing, and fascinating, and sweet, but this window into this whole other world.

Chip Kidd (00:12:19):

One of the book covers that I designed for her was called A Mother’s Story, which was her memoir of her older son with Wyatt Cooper taking his own life. I was just tremendously affected by that. And so, through the years, she would make a book, and I would do the cover. And then, Anderson was publishing his first memoir, which was just after Katrina.

Chip Kidd (00:12:45):

And he wasn’t out yet. And it was published by HarperCollins. So, for me, that was a freelance job, and that’s how I met him. And he was just amazing. I went to his office at CNN, and I’ll never forget he had a mouse pad that was the Wonder Twins from Super Friends, Zan and Jayna, shape of this and form of that. And I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s the Wonder Twins.”

Chip Kidd (00:13:13):

He’s like, “You know what the wonder twins are?” I said, “Yes, I love the Wonder Twins.” So, I did the cover of that book. And then, in the middle of the pandemic, I got an email from him. I think it was like June 2020, that he was going to be working on a history of his family, The Vanderbilts. And it was going to be the Schwartz and all thing.

Chip Kidd (00:13:45):

And he was inspired to do it because he had conceived a child through a surrogate, Wyatt. So, long story short, I did the cover. He really liked it. He sent me this text video of him with the book. I hadn’t seen it. And he wanted me to do the end papers too. And I made it coordinate with the jacket and all this stuff.

Chip Kidd (00:14:08):

And he was all excited, and I wrote to him and I said, “Could I come by your house, and meet Wyatt, and get you to sign a book for me?” And he said, “Sure.” And then, I started thinking, I have a couple of bits of these costumes that survived over the years, amazingly, that my mom made.

Chip Kidd (00:14:31):

I have the Batman cape, and I have the Robin tunic, but I had this other blue cape that was… I’m pretty sure it was used for my brother’s gold knight costume. But it looks like a Batman cape. And I thought I’m going to take this and give it to him then. And then, I had this vintage Batman, Japanese, 1966, like a Halloween mask, but it’s for a little kid. It’s small. And I thought I’m going to bring that too.

Chip Kidd (00:15:00):

And so, I did, and it was just the most lovely experience, but hilariously, I thought… and he starts filming, and there’s the nanny there. It’s like, that’s it. It’s like us three or four. I’m wanting to take pictures, but I’m thinking this is a private thing. But he starts taking pictures, and he starts taking little movies and stuff. And I said-

Debbie Millman (00:15:27):

And so, the baby is in the actual costume and he’s-

Chip Kidd (00:15:32):

Yes, he’s in the mask and the cape. There’s something about capes. And by, I guess last fall, he would’ve been 18 months. So, you’d put the cape on him, and then he’s just running around. There’s just something magical about that that I think literally empowers a child. For whatever reason, I don’t know. But he starts filming that. And then, I’d like, “Can I?” He’s like, “Sure.”

Chip Kidd (00:15:55):

So, I start filming and taking pictures. And then, he signed a book for me, and he signed a book for my mom, and we just had a lovely, I don’t know, it was like an hour, hour and a half. And I just thought that was just a lovely private thing. And I’m going to have to figure out a way to tell my mom, but I’m just going to wait because I knew, and Debbie, you know my mom.

Chip Kidd (00:16:23):

As soon as I tell her, she’s going to want to get on a bus, and come up to New York, and see little white… and I should say in the past, I was supposed to have lunch with Gloria. I believe it was the fall of 2016. And Gloria had suffered a fall, and she couldn’t do it. And so, she wrote to me, “I’m so sorry.”

Chip Kidd (00:16:46):

And Anderson wrote to me and said, “Look, I’m really sorry that she can’t do it, but is there anything that I could do?” And my mom and my aunt Syl were coming to New York. So, we were his guest at CNN for two hours. He’s just the best. He is exactly what you see on TV. He’s just a great, great guy.

Chip Kidd (00:17:10):

But anyway, so I just thought, I’m going to tell my mom, but I was just putting it off because I’m sure she was going to call the local paper and have them put it on page one. And so, the following week, my mom goes to this meeting of… she’s on one of these committees for the local symphony, for the Redding symphony, it’s the lady’s committee or whatever they call it.

Chip Kidd (00:17:34):

And one of these women said, “Well, that’s really something about Anderson giving the cape that you made for Chip to his little boy.” And my mom is like, “What are you talking about?” The previous day, he had gone on CBS Sunday Morning. I think it was Gayle King said, “What are you going to do? Are you going to take him out for Halloween?”

Chip Kidd (00:17:59):

And he said, “I’m not sure, but if we do, I have the perfect costume.” And he told the whole story. And so, that cat was out of the bag. And then, he told it again on Drew Barry Moore. And he told it again on Stephen Colbert. And I just-

Debbie Millman (00:18:15):

Your mom is now getting orders for little Batman costumes.

Chip Kidd (00:18:18):

No, I got the biggest kick out of it. But I should add, that evening after I had given him that stuff, he texted me and he’s like, “Are you sure you want to give this away? Because if you want it back, I will totally understand.” And I said, “This means so much to me that you have this and that he has it.” And I said, “Oh, and by the way,” and I sent him a couple other pictures of the stuff that I still do have.

Debbie Millman (00:18:45):

Well, it’s giving whole new life to these wonderful things that were handmade with lots and lots of love.

Chip Kidd (00:18:51):

Yeah, exactly.

Debbie Millman (00:18:53):

Talk about your love of Batman. You’ve been called a bat maniac, which I’d never heard. I’d never heard that term until I did the research for this show. What fuels it? What fuels that passion?

Chip Kidd (00:19:06):

I feel at this point, it’s such a universal thing. But I think the gateway drug was the Adam West 1966 TV show. And the fact that I have a brother who was two years older, I think I was two when the show came out. So, he would’ve been four. We were the perfect audience for it at the perfect time.

Chip Kidd (00:19:29):

And it was just so mesmerizing as a kid, and exciting, and like this crazy other world where they… I think it’s the escapist aspect of it. And part of that is that he’s a billionaire. You start to fantasize, like it would cost money to be Batman to do it properly with the car and all of that. And then, as I was growing up, there were all these other… the show came and went. That was pretty quick.

Chip Kidd (00:20:03):

But then, the comic books really picked up on the much darker origins of the strip. And DC Comics was very good about constantly reprinting the original stories. So, that was a revelation to me, that it was dark, and scary, and the Joker was really scary, and killing people in mysterious ways, and announcing it on the radio, and just fascinating. And I don’t know, I just never got over it.

Debbie Millman (00:20:36):

Which is your favorite Batman portrayal? Aside from Adam West.

Chip Kidd (00:20:40):

Right. The cop out answer is the voice actor, Kevin Conroy, on the animated series. I think he’s near perfect. I think in terms of the movie portrayals, it’s just so hard to say, because at this point, there’re so many. I was very impressed with Robert Pattinson, I would say, yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:21:03):

Yeah. My nephew too. He’s-

Chip Kidd (00:21:04):

I was impressed with him, and I thought the costume was great. Yeah. And this is a whole other geeky discussion. I think Christian Bale was the best Bruce Wayne. Again, I love the millionaire playboy carefree aspect of that. So, that’s his disguise that you would never guess that he was this other thing. And they did away with that in the most recent movie. And I wasn’t so crazy about that.

Debbie Millman (00:21:31):

You recently curated an art show at Artspace in Louisiana titled Batman: Black and White. And it features an extraordinary selection of over 150 original Batman drawings that you commissioned from artists, including Alex Ross, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Ross Chest, even Gloria Vanderbilt.

Debbie Millman (00:21:53):

And the project really began back in 2012. When DC comics invited you to write a story for their Batman: Black and White anthology comics title, which was based on their hugely popular 1996 publication, how did it grow into an exhibit of this significance?

Chip Kidd (00:22:14):

It was a total accident, and I don’t know how easy this… or effectively I can explain this on a podcast. But basically, when issue number one that had my story in it came out, by then, I think it was October 13. It was New York Comic-Con, and they issued it with different covers. And one of the covers is what’s called a blank variant.

Chip Kidd (00:22:40):

So, it’s this uncoded card stock cover that is just blank white, except it has the logo of the comic on it. And the idea was, is they do it to this day, you get that version, and you go to a convention, or you go to a show, or you go to whatever where there’s artists, and wait in line, and get Neal Adams to draw on it, or get your favorite artist to draw on it.

Chip Kidd (00:23:09):

And so, as is my temperament, I became completely obsessed. I started buying these things up on eBay, just thinking of like, “Who?” And it was a really interesting exercise. And first of all, there had been people who I wanted to draw a Batman for me for a long, long time who don’t normally draw a Batman.

Debbie Millman (00:23:31):

Like who?

Chip Kidd (00:23:32):

Well, Art Spiegelman, this Dutch cartoonist, Joost Swarte. So, a lot of the raw artists, Charles Burns, Kim Deitch, Gary Panter. It was this strange opportunity to at least tug on their sleeve and say, “Would you do this?” And 165 people said yes.

Debbie Millman (00:23:54):

Isn’t that incredible?

Chip Kidd (00:23:55):

It is.

Debbie Millman (00:23:56):

What surprised you most as you were collecting these pieces of art from these extraordinary artists?

Chip Kidd (00:24:05):

What surprised me the most? Well, what surprised me is what they’ve come up with. Some people would say, “What do you want?” And then, others would have some crazy idea that they just wanted to do. One of the most recent ones that I got over the pandemic is by this amazing artist who goes by R. Kikuo Johnson. He’s just a brilliant illustrator.

Chip Kidd (00:24:29):

And he does covers for The New Yorker, and he just released a new graphic novel. He uses a very clear line, and I had been wanting to get in touch with him for years to try and publish a graphic novel by him at Pantheon. Finally, he did a cover for The New Yorker called Waiting. And it’s this sole Asian woman alone. I don’t know if you remember it, on the subway track, looking at her watch.

Chip Kidd (00:24:54):

With this furtive look on her face like, “Train, please get here now.” And it was just so timely and moving. And that’s what finally nudged me to like, “Come on, get ahold of this guy.” But he’s like, “Yeah. All right. I actually have an idea for that.” So, I’ve sent him the book with a return slip, and it’s brilliant.

Chip Kidd (00:25:20):

So, Batman is laying on his back, and he’s trapped by this giant chicken that has the Joker’s head on it that’s menacing him. And it’s brilliantly done, but it’s like, “Where the hell did that come from?” What does this mean? And he’s just like, “I’ve just always been fascinated by this idea.”

Debbie Millman (00:25:46):

Interesting. Well, that’s what makes him the brilliant genius he is.

Chip Kidd (00:25:51):

He is. He is, indeed.

Debbie Millman (00:25:52):

There was also a rather risqué cover of Batman and Robin kissing.

Chip Kidd (00:25:58):

Yes. That’s Art Spiegelman.

Debbie Millman (00:26:00):

Talk about that, if you can.

Chip Kidd (00:26:01):

That’s a reference to his, I guess, infamous New Yorker cover where he has the Hasidic man kissing the African-American woman. Plus, he did it in color. That was the interesting thing. If people wanted to do things in color, that was fine with me.

Debbie Millman (00:26:17):

You’ve written extensively about Batman, your books about the Cape Crusader include Batman Collected, Batman Animated, which garnered two of the comic book industry’s highest awards, the Eisner Awards and Batman: The Complete History. Do you anticipate a Batman: Black and White will also become a book?

Chip Kidd (00:26:37):

I would love that, but the problem is it would be a permissions nightmare. I’ve actually pursued it. It got as far as somebody at DC had drawn up a release form, I got a bunch of the artists to sign it, but there was a bunch of them that would not sign it. They’re like, “If you want to use this in a book, fine, but there’s no way…” because I can’t remember what the release language was.

Chip Kidd (00:27:01):

But it was basically, the artist can’t republish it without DC’s permission, and DC can’t republish their art without their permission. One day, I will try and self-publish it just so that it exists, but that would be a lot of work. But I’d really like to do that.

Debbie Millman (00:27:18):

Yeah. I think it should be. It should be made, or maybe a catalog from the shows.

Chip Kidd (00:27:23):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:27:24):

Batman is not the only comic character you have worked with. You have also designed the trilogy, Superman: The Complete History and Wonder Woman: The Complete History for Chronicle Books, several books about the art of Alex Ross, which are magnificent, Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, and so many more. One of your upcoming projects is a book titled Spider-Man: Panel by Panel. Tell us about that.

Chip Kidd (00:27:55):

Well, that is going to be again, that’s Abrams and my friend, Charlie Kochman, who made the connection, because it all has to be sanctioned by Marvel. Spider-Man first appeared in a comic book called Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962. And that was an immediate hit. And then, Spider-Man #1 quickly followed. And so, what we’re doing is a photographic reexamination of both of them.

Chip Kidd (00:28:29):

So, going super close up with the camera because by now, my God, a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 just sold for like $3 million. It’s just insane to try and find original. But Charlie hunted down or found a collector, who had this that had not sealed it in Plexiglas, who allowed us to photograph it. So, it will allow the fans to see what it was like to have this comic book in 1962 up close.

Chip Kidd (00:29:01):

It’s almost like you’re under the covers in your bedroom with a flashlight looking at it. That’s the kind of effect. And plus, some mysterious donor had the original art by Steve Ditko to the Spider-Man origin story from Amazing Fantasy #15, and donated it to the Library of Congress. They were going to allow us to photograph it, but COVID restrictions prevented that, but they’re photographing it to our specification. So, you’ll get to see the original art, which is always so fascinating.

Debbie Millman (00:29:36):

Speaking of original art, in 2019, you collaborated with JJ Abrams, different from Abrams book publisher, JJ Abrams, the man on the comic Spiderman #1, which featured a unique die cut. How did that project come about? And how did you go about making that cover?

Chip Kidd (00:29:58):

JJ is a friend. Well, he hired me through Paramount Pictures to do a print campaign for a movie that he was producing called Morning Glory. And this was quite some time ago. The movie didn’t do much business, but the experience was great, and the print campaign turned out really well. And we became friends from that.

Chip Kidd (00:30:22):

And he and his son, one of his sons, Henry, I guess pitched to Marvel, we want to do our own take on Spider-Man, and it’ll be six issues long. The first one had three or four variants, and they asked me to do one of the variants. And so, I researched what had been done before in terms of really zooming in on the Spider-Man mask, and the classic eye.

Chip Kidd (00:30:48):

And so, I decided to do that, but I wanted to see if they would allow a die cut whole so that when you open it up, there’s something else revealed underneath. I did what you’re really not supposed to do as a freelancer. I sent it to JJ first, before sending it to Marvel. And so, he fell in love with it, and Marvel didn’t want to spend the money because it’s extra money.

Chip Kidd (00:31:13):

And JJ insisted. And so, he prevailed, and it totally sold out. And so, then the Marvel art director approached me and said, “Well, actually, we’re doing a new Wolverine #1, and we’re doing a new Spider-Woman #1, can you do die cut covers for those?”

Debbie Millman (00:31:31):

One of the most unique things about you is how you’re able to make things happen through the sheer will and creativity of your spirit. And one of my favorite stories that I really want you to share with our audience, because it really is about manifesting a reality that you want to make happen is your experience with JJ Abrams, and your cameo in the last Star Wars movie. If there was ever a story about persistence, and grit, and manifesting something that you want more than anything, this is the story.

Chip Kidd (00:32:18):

Well, I have to say, it’s hard for me to talk about this. It’s really a story about a friend helping another friend grieve. So, my wonderful, beautiful husband, Sandy McClatchy had be… we’ve been together for 20 years, and he became ill, and I was a caregiver. And through that time, JJ would write periodically because he had met him, and we had spent time, and how are you doing, and how is he doing?

Chip Kidd (00:32:53):

And so, by the summer of 2018, I was alone. And I got this notion actually from Chris Ware who had visited the set of The Force Awakens. Because when he was over in England getting some sort of award, and they were filming that back then, and Chris had told me about this experience. And I just wrote to JJ out of the blue and said, “You know, actually, I’m going to be in London for a while this fall, could I come by the set, and maybe be a Storm Trooper or something?”

Debbie Millman (00:33:30):

Or something.

Chip Kidd (00:33:32):

And he wrote, he wrote back and he said, “We’ll figure something out for you. And I’m going to hand you over to my, my AD, Josh, and you can work it out with him.” And so, for two weeks, November into December of 2018, I was on the set in Pinewood, and they’ve thrown together this costume for me. But they also-

Debbie Millman (00:33:58):

So, you weren’t a Storm Trooper, you actually-

Chip Kidd (00:33:59):

No, I wasn’t. Yeah, I wasn’t a Storm Trooper.

Debbie Millman (00:34:01):

You show up on screen as not you, but you know-

Chip Kidd (00:34:03):

Right. I mean-

Debbie Millman (00:34:04):

… your face is Chip Kidds’ face.

Chip Kidd (00:34:07):

I have a beret and a leather trench coat. The thing is if you don’t know to look for me, I’m actually in it three times. But if you don’t know to look for me, blink and you’ll miss it. But I’m in what passes for the Cantina scene, where three of the leads are sneaking through trying to evade Kylo Ren, but it’s Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac, and Anthony Daniels is C-3PO are sneaking through this bar. And as the band is playing, and I’m sitting at the bar chatting with this giant creature thing. And that was just wild.

Debbie Millman (00:34:46):

So, not only did you have this wonderful costume made for you, I know that they also gave you a book to hold.

Chip Kidd (00:34:53):

They gave me a prop book. They took my book, Go, and they made a Star Wars version of it. It was just so touching, the effort that they went to. And that was all JJ.

Debbie Millman (00:35:06):

I know you’ve been a Star Wars fan since you were quite young. And when you were a little boy, you made a Star Wars scrapbook. Talk about that. Why are you laughing?

Chip Kidd (00:35:19):

Yes. I made this scrapbook and it had, for some reason, David Prowse, who was the physical embodiment of Darth Vader, I guess was doing this tour. This was way before Comic-Cons existed. This would’ve been the late 1970s. And he came to our local department store, Boscov’s, and I waited in line, and got him to sign it. And this scrapbook that I had that… it was not a scrapbook, it was a notebook.

Chip Kidd (00:35:46):

It was a spiral notebook that had Darth Vader on the front. And then, I started putting stuff in it. Many years later when I was helping my parents to move, I found it in their storage unit. So, when I went over on the set, I gave it to JJ as a present.

Debbie Millman (00:36:04):

Could you imagine what little Chip Kidd would’ve thought when he was making that scrapbook that one day, you’d end up on not only on the set, but in three scenes in the movie, the final chapter of this-

Chip Kidd (00:36:21):

What can one say?

Debbie Millman (00:36:23):

… nine-film saga?

Chip Kidd (00:36:25):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:36:26):

I know that it’s a hard story in that you were grieving quite terribly during that time. But I also think it’s a really beautiful story about manifesting something that you really want to help your spirit.

Chip Kidd (00:36:42):

Yeah. And something that he was willing to giving.

Debbie Millman (00:36:44):

Yeah. Shows JJs generosity, for sure. I want to talk about Go, but I also want to talk about so many of your other books. You attended Pennsylvania State University where you graduated in 1986 with a degree in graphic design, which you’ve written about in The Cheese Monkeys and in The Learners, your novels. Afterwards, you were hired as a junior assistant designer at Knopf where you still work today all these years later.

Chip Kidd (00:37:12):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:37:13):

In addition to working as the associate art director now, you are also editor at large for their graphic novels division. I think it’s safe to say that you’ve designed over 2,000 book covers, book jackets.

Chip Kidd (00:37:28):

I would think at this point, yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:37:31):

Yeah. Because in our last interview, which was several years ago, it was at the 1,500-, 1,600-mark. So, I was trying to do the math. So, the covers include work for Cormac McCarthy, David Sedaris, Donna Tartt, Whoopi Goldberg, Oliver Sacks, John Updike, James Ellroy, who stated that you are the world’s greatest book jacket designer, and he’s not lying, time out.

Debbie Millman (00:37:53):

New York stated that the history of book design can be split into two eras before graphic designer, Chip Kidd, and after. So, I’d like to talk about some of your recent covers because you really are in a whole new zone now with some of the work that you’re doing, which is magnificent. First, you designed Billy Jean King’s memoir, All In, which immediately became a New York Times bestseller. What was that process like? What is it like to work with these legends, living legends?

Chip Kidd (00:38:22):

Well, I’ll tell you. The process was so different because it was by then, we were in the pandemic. And I was down in a little studio in my apartment. So, it was all virtual. I think had the world not changed, I would’ve been taking meetings with her at the office. And as it was, there was a lot of Zoom. It’s interesting when you work with somebody at that level, they have a team.

Chip Kidd (00:38:55):

And she very much wanted the team involved. And it turned out fine, but it was just a lot of time, talking to this person, and that person, and then explaining why I was doing what I was doing, but she was great. And she knew Charles Schulz, and they were friends. And so, I don’t know, somebody did their homework, and knew that I had that history.

Chip Kidd (00:39:23):

So, I think that helped. The big question was what image of her would we put on the front? And we, as a publisher, really, really wanted a vintage action shot of her on the court. And she was saying, “But that’s not who I am anymore. I’m an activist now. That was 30 years ago, 40 years ago.” And so, you have to listen, no matter who the author is.

Chip Kidd (00:39:57):

You have to listen to them if they have strong ideas about what they want. And so, we tried, I tried a couple of options where, “All right, here you are now on the front, but look at this amazing shot of you nailing this.” And so, she, I guess acquiesced is the word. And so, we put a big photo of her now on the back, and this great action shot on the front. And I think it really did what it was supposed to do.

Debbie Millman (00:40:30):

Rodrigo Corral, another great book designer puts up a lot of rejected covers on his Instagram, which is so interesting to see. Many, many, many times, I think some of the rejected covers are far better than what ended up going to market.

Debbie Millman (00:40:47):

How do you present different options to a client, whether it be Knopf, whether it be one of your freelance clients, that shows a range of work that both provides the type of work that the client might be expecting to see, but then also, takes them to a whole other place that surprises them?

Debbie Millman (00:41:13):

Because that’s really what you’re known for. You’re known for breaking paradigms, doing work that’s never been done before. How do you get clients to feel safe enough to take those risks?

Chip Kidd (00:41:25):

Because in most cases, we’ve been working together for so long. So, like Haruki Murakami just trusts me. This latest new one for Cormac McCarthy, he just trusts me. Now, sadly, after doing this for almost 36 years and counting, a lot of the authors are gone. Michael Crichton John Updike-

Debbie Millman (00:41:49):

They had it in their contracts that you were their designer for their book.

Chip Kidd (00:41:53):

Some of them did, Oliver Sacks. I think if you have a reputation that you’ve built up over a long time, people will at least look at what you’ve done, thoughtfully consider it. And then, it goes from there. The editor has a say, the publisher has a say, sales has a say, marketing. But I think with me, I have a certain reputation. So, they’ll at least take it seriously. But again, no matter what kind of reputation I have, if the author doesn’t like it, that’s just it. And you have to start over.

Debbie Millman (00:42:34):

How often does somebody like Murakami or Cormac McCarthy say, “Mm-mmm, sorry, Chip. This isn’t a winner?”

Chip Kidd (00:42:42):

It happened with Cormac McCarthy on the road. And that’s hard to explain. What it came down to was that book was so personal to him. And it was an allegory about something else in his life that he started micromanaging it in a way that he didn’t, on the other four books that I designed for him. He didn’t want his name on the front, which made our editor in chief’s head explode. And it can become very tricky.

Debbie Millman (00:43:12):

You recently worked on three book jackets for Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular, Murakami T, and Writing as a Vocation.

Chip Kidd (00:43:22):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:43:23):

Were they all different types of experiences?

Chip Kidd (00:43:27):

Completely, completely.

Debbie Millman (00:43:27):

In what way?

Chip Kidd (00:43:28):

Well, and what I love about designing for him is that you start from scratch every time. Those are three completely different books. So, First Person Singular is short stories. Murakami T is this little gift book that’s about his t-shirt collection. And he’s got all these stories about them. It’s really interesting. And then, the new one that’s coming out this fall is Writing as a Vocation. It’s precisely what it’s about. It’s about his writing process.

Chip Kidd (00:43:58):

So, those are three completely different things. And you just have to consider what’s the book about, and how are you going to convey to the reader what’s Murakami doing now. The new one, Writing as a Vocation, I made the letter M into a huge labyrinth. So, writing as is going into the labyrinth, and then coming out at the bottom is a little arrow, a vocation. And so, the visual metaphor is going through all these starts, and stops, and false endings to get finally where you need to go.

Debbie Millman (00:44:36):

Do you start by sketching? Do you start on the computer? How do you work?

Chip Kidd (00:44:40):

You know what? I’ve never been a sketcher. Back in what, a sophomore in college, one of our graphic design classes, we had to keep a sketchbook. And that was work. Doing the actual assignments, that was much easier than actually having to document them in a sketchbook because it’s just not my temperament. I do all the sketching up in my head.

Chip Kidd (00:45:07):

And if there’s something that I need executed by somebody else, like a photographer, what have you, then maybe I’ll make a sketch and say, “Hey, we want a monkey raising his hand or something like that.” But-

Debbie Millman (00:45:18):

It’s so interesting when people work in their heads like that. My wife, Roxanne writes an entire essay in her head before she starts typing.

Chip Kidd (00:45:27):

Now, that is amazing because writing is a whole other thing for me. Yeah, no, no. I need to be at the keyboard, and writing, and writing in InDesign.

Debbie Millman (00:45:39):

Well, what’s interesting is that you’re not only just a designer, you’re also a writer and an editor. You’ve written several novels, and you’ve edited two important books over the last year, Original Sisters by Anita Kunz and Our Colors by Gengoroh Tagame. How do you pivot back and forth between these different vocations?

Chip Kidd (00:46:01):

I’m hugely grateful for it. Especially, in the last two years, I’ve been so grateful to have work to do, because I was just in isolation for so long down in my place in south Florida. And how do you pivot? I’m a fan of all of it. I really love it. And so, that really helps. I can’t imagine how people work on things that’s assigned to them that they don’t want to do. And that’s most people.

Chip Kidd (00:46:36):

Occasionally, I’ll have to do a book cover for something that I’m not all that interested in, but I can get interested in it. Computer coding in 1940 or whatever, that’s not something normally I would-

Debbie Millman (00:46:51):

You and Michael Bierut have that ability to find something interesting about anything.

Chip Kidd (00:46:54):

Well, anything that’s thrown at me.

Debbie Millman (00:46:58):

How do you go about finding and inquiring books? Because you do that, you look for graphic novels to publish.

Chip Kidd (00:47:05):

It’s a totally organic process. In the case of Original Sisters by Anita Kunz, I had known her for a long time. I had known her work for a long time. I think she’s absolutely brilliant. It had never occurred to me to publish any of her work because she’s not what we call a sequential artist. She’s not a graphic novelist, which is mainly what I’m looking for.

Chip Kidd (00:47:27):

And so, a couple months into the pandemic, I got this proposal from her on email. And she had originally called it The Originals. I was stunned. It’s a book of portraits of women in history, some of whom you know, but a lot of whom you don’t, and then her researching of them. And so, you have people to bounce things off of.

Chip Kidd (00:47:51):

And so, I sent it to some of my colleagues and said, “I think this is kind of great. What do you think?” And they’re like, “Yeah, we think this is really kind of great.” And so, that’s a submission. The Gengoroh Tagame, Our Colors, I pursued that, and we had published him previously and very successfully. So, that makes it much easier to do the next project.

Debbie Millman (00:48:14):

How involved are you in the editing process when you acquire a book?

Chip Kidd (00:48:18):

That’s a really good question. Sometimes not at all. Sometimes intensely, like I’m publishing this graphic novel by this guy, Wonderful Toronto, a cartoonist and illustrator named Maurice Vellekoop. And he was just in town, and we were working on that, and it’s really one of the first graphic novel, because usually, we get them fully formed. And I’ll have a couple of ideas.

Chip Kidd (00:48:45):

And we have a copy-editing department that’s going to take care of that stuff. But with this, the book by Maurice Vellekoop is called I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together, and it’s a memoir, and he had a difficult family, and they were very conservative, and he was gay, and he wanted to be an artist, and they were all upset about that. We’ve been working on this thing for 10 years.

Chip Kidd (00:49:10):

I think it’s finally going to come out in the spring of what, ’24, but that this is one I’ve really been putting input into, really, actually editing. Usually, editing a graphic novel, for me, means being an ambassador for it, into the publishing house. And you have all these duties that you have to do. You have to do an audio presentation for the salesforce so they can listen to it in their car or now, at home. That’s part of the editorial process at Pantheon and Knopf.

Debbie Millman (00:49:44):

You have a book that has been recently published. It is the paperback version of Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design. Congratulations.

Chip Kidd (00:49:55):

Thank you.

Debbie Millman (00:49:55):

What made you decide to create a book about graphic design for kids in the first place?

Chip Kidd (00:50:00):

Well, as I’ve said in every interview about this, it was not my idea. I cannot claim ownership of the idea. It was this amazing woman named Raquel Jaramillo, who by now is much better known by her pen name, R.J. Palacio. And she had been a book cover designer of great renowned. She did everything for Thomas Pynchon. And then, she became an editor at Workman.

Chip Kidd (00:50:27):

And she called me, I don’t even remember what year it was, 2010, 2011 and said, “Do you want to have lunch? There’s a project I want to talk to you about.” And I said, “Sure.” And I just thought it would be a book cover that she wanted me to do. And so, we met and she said, “Okay. Unless I’m mistaken, no one’s ever created a book to teach graphic design to kids.”

Chip Kidd (00:50:51):

And as soon as she said it, this flash went off in my head, I’m like, “Oh my God, you’re right. I can’t think of one.” And she said, “Yes. And I think you should do it.” I probably said this in the last interview we did about this, but I thought, “Okay, I don’t know any kids. I don’t relate to kids. I don’t like kids. Sign me up.” Because I just thought nothing is going to put me outside of my comfort zone like this.

Chip Kidd (00:51:26):

But what was great about it, and at time is frustrating was okay, rethink all of this. I learned these things in college, but now, what do I say to a 10-year-old? It forced me to rethink about what graphic design is, about what the components are, how to teach somebody about it, who doesn’t have a lot of life experience.

Debbie Millman (00:51:53):

How do you go about doing that? How do you go about teaching somebody something where they don’t really have the construct in which to potentially envision it on their own?

Chip Kidd (00:52:06):

One of the things that Raquel said from the beginning was don’t talk down to them. Don’t talk down to your audience. And I had figured that out with kids, despite all of what I just said. It’s like talk to them like they’re a peer and not like they’re 10. And they’re going to take you a lot more seriously, and listen more effectively to what you have to say.

Chip Kidd (00:52:29):

And then, it’s imagination. I have to think about, “Okay, if I was 10, what would I be able to comprehend about this?” And I’m sure I’ve also said in the other podcast about it, the challenge became not so much what to put in the book, but as to what to leave out. Because when I learned about graphic design in college, we studied the history.

Chip Kidd (00:52:55):

There are all these important historical moments and contributions in the history of graphic design, which is mainly the 20th century, that I did not want to get into with a 10-year-old, war propaganda, pornography, sex sells. And in fact, I didn’t want to make any of it about selling something, really.

Debbie Millman (00:53:18):

That’s hard.

Chip Kidd (00:53:18):

Yeah. It is hard.

Debbie Millman (00:53:19):

It’s really hard.

Chip Kidd (00:53:21):

We touched on it a little bit, but not really. It’s more about form, and content, and concept, and typography. Think about the alphabet. Do you realize what a miracle the alphabet is, and how it’s used? But message sending and-

Debbie Millman (00:53:40):

It’s really, for me, a blueprint for creating visual language in a lot of ways. I learned a lot reading it. I learned about numbers and the history of numbers.

Chip Kidd (00:53:50):

I learned a lot too, because I had to look all this stuff up. Because I thought, “All right, who created the written word?” That’s pretty important. And I didn’t know. You do a lot of research, and then you figure out, all right, now I’ve got to explain this to a 10- to 12-year-old kid.

Debbie Millman (00:54:09):

Had Raquel written Wonder at that point?

Chip Kidd (00:54:12):

She was writing it at the time, which I didn’t even realize until towards the end because she… I forget the context, but we put the cover of Wonder in Go, which I think was a way of showing something metaphorically without showing it literally.

Debbie Millman (00:54:33):

Well, that’s one of the things I love about the book that there are visual examples for everything that you talk about. So, people can, not just read it, but actually see it, and learn it from examples.

Chip Kidd (00:54:45):

Yeah. And they’re all examples of real actual printed work.

Debbie Millman (00:54:48):

So, did Raquel also edit it?

Chip Kidd (00:54:51):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:54:51):

Because she has that way of talking through the eyes of a child that so-

Chip Kidd (00:54:58):

And she actually had children. So, every now and then, I can’t think of it… oh, there’s a spread where I’m trying to teach the difference between sincerity and irony to a kid, and using two different words, and then depicting the words in different ways. It was something like fastidious and filthy. I think it was a different one, but she was like, “Let’s not use fastidious. That’s too complicated.” And so, we changed it.

Debbie Millman (00:55:30):

A word with many syllables.

Chip Kidd (00:55:31):

Right. And then, there are the projects for the reader to do at the end. And she was really great about coming up with some of those.

Debbie Millman (00:55:39):

Yeah. They’re really fun. You added new material to the paperback version. Talk about what is different.

Chip Kidd (00:55:44):

Well, what’s different is the timeline in the front. And I have to say, Workman approached me about doing this. And again, it was the middle of the pandemic, and I get this email from them out of the blue, and they said, “We never did a paperback version. Do you want to?” And I said, “Sure.” And they said, “We’ll treat it as a new publication, and you can fiddle with it a little bit.”

Chip Kidd (00:56:10):

We have four extra pages that we can put in it because now, we don’t have the end papers, and you can use. And so, I expanded, there’s a timeline, just a couple little highlights of the history of graphic design. Then, I was able to put two more spreads of them in.

Debbie Millman (00:56:27):

What things did you add?

Chip Kidd (00:56:29):

I added the on-off button, which I didn’t even realize is a combination of a one and a zero. And I ended with the street painting both in Washington and in New York city of Black Lives Matter in the street because that was just such a brilliant use of graphic design. At that point, there was a different editor I was working with because Raquel had left to pursue her career. And I said, “Is this too political?” They said, “Well, let me check, and we’ll get back to you.” And they said, “Let’s do it.”

Debbie Millman (00:57:05):

That’s great. It’s an opportunity to teach kids, while they’re learning about graphic design, about the power of imagery, and what this means to our society and our culture.

Chip Kidd (00:57:16):

Yeah.

Debbie Millman (00:57:17):

I have one last question for you.

Chip Kidd (00:57:20):

Okay.

Debbie Millman (00:57:21):

Thor: Love and Thunder will have just come out when this interview is published. Are you excited about seeing the film, and any predictions for the storyline?

Chip Kidd (00:57:33):

Well, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, but I’m excited about seeing it because I’m going to see it with you. I’m trying to think what I’ve heard. I haven’t tracked this one that much. I know that Jane becomes the new Thor or at least at some point.

Debbie Millman (00:57:51):

Yes.

Chip Kidd (00:57:51):

Which is a theme in the comics, and that Christian Bale plays some crazy freaky villain.

Debbie Millman (00:57:58):

Creepy looking villain.

Chip Kidd (00:57:59):

Yeah. Very creepy looking.

Debbie Millman (00:58:00):

Speaking of creepy, I actually wanted to ask you about your new cover that you’re designing for Bret Easton Ellis next spring. It’s coming out. It’s called The Shards, sounds rather sinister as well.

Chip Kidd (00:58:10):

Yeah. It’s a very personal book for him. It’s a prequel to Less Than Zero. I’m thrilled with the cover. I think he is too because he just post… I think he just posted it on Twitter. It’s really interesting. I would say it’s one of the first cinematic covers that I’ve done that involves sequential imagery. I’m really excited about it.

Debbie Millman (00:58:35):

I’m running to Instagram after this interview.

Chip Kidd (00:58:39):

And again, my God, I’ve worked with him and for him since, I think The Informers in 1995, ’96.

Debbie Millman (00:58:48):

I lied. I do have one last question for you before we sign off. You also have designed the upcoming Cormac McCarthy books because there’s two. And I have seen those, listeners, and they are magnificent. Talk just a little bit if you can. Give us a little tease about what you’ve done with these novels.

Chip Kidd (00:59:11):

Well, first of all, as a publishing house at Knopf, we were just so thrilled that he delivered this manuscript. He’s been working on it for a long time. He’s 88 years old. We didn’t know if we were ever actually going to get it. It’s complicated. It’s a two-book story. And one of the books is called The Passenger. And the other book is called Stella Maris.

Chip Kidd (00:59:33):

And they’re the story of a brother and a sister. It’s complicated, but there’s mathematics. There’s deep sea diving. There’s the atomic bomb. There are all these themes in it. And the brief to me was we’re going to publish them individually. Then, we’re going to publish them together in a box. It all has to look like it goes together, but both the individual jackets and the box set, when they’re together, the books have to look like they belong together.

Debbie Millman (01:00:04):

And when they’re apart, they have to look like they can stand on their own.

Chip Kidd (01:00:08):

Right. To me, they also have to look like they need each other, which is a big theme in the book.

Debbie Millman (01:00:14):

Will they be coming out at the same time or are they coming out separately?

Chip Kidd (01:00:17):

Staggered over three months. So, The Passenger comes out in October of ’22. The second, Stella Maris comes out in November of ’22. And then, the box hit comes out in December.

Debbie Millman (01:00:31):

Chip Kidd, thank you so much for making so much work that matters in the world. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Chip Kidd (01:00:38):

Well, thank you my friend, and my sister, Debbie Millman.

Debbie Millman (01:00:42):

Chip’s upcoming exhibit, Batman: Black and White, will be opening at MICA in Baltimore this fall. And his latest book, Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design, can be found wherever books are sold. You can keep up with all things Chip Kidd and all his latest projects at chipkidd.com. I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Chip Kidd appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

If you smush the word sartorialist together with cartoonist and add a dash of artist, what do you get? Well, you get Carly Kuhn, that’s what. Carly Kuhn is The Cartorialist. Her fashion drawings on Instagram got attention, but she was culled out of the entertainment business, where she’d been working, into the life and labor of a full-time artist. She joins me now to talk about the turns in her wonderful career. Carly Kuhn, welcome to Design Matters.

Carly Kuhn:

Thank you for having me.

Debbie Millman:

Carly, is it true you can do a spot-on impression of Janice from “Friends”?

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. I don’t know how spot-on it is. And I don’t know at what point I declared this, but it’s pretty loud and piercing. So I don’t know if you want to hear it or not in your ear.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, yes. Can you share—

Carly Kuhn:

Oh God.

Debbie Millman:

… the impression please?

Carly Kuhn:

Chandler Bing.

Debbie Millman:

That’s wonderful.

Carly Kuhn:

I hope people stay on after that piercing noise.

Debbie Millman:

Actually, I have to tell you, I can do an impression of Lois from “Family Guy.” And I know that you used to draw “Family Guy”-esque type characters. Peter.

Carly Kuhn:

Oh God, I love it. I feel like there’s a world where they kind of almost blend into one another.

Debbie Millman:

Right. Actually, I think Lois and Janice would be good friends.

Carly Kuhn:

Yes, they would.

Debbie Millman:

… in an alternate universe. Carly, you’re a native New Yorker, but until very recently you lived in Los Angeles, and I understand that your dad played for a long time in a classic rock cover band. Your brother is a filmmaker and a cinematographer. So would it be fair to say you grew up in an artistic family?

Carly Kuhn:

Yes. And I also have a younger brother who is also very artistic, and my mom is very creative, and my dad is actually still rocking out in that cover band. I feel like the combination of my parents and growing up in New York City, where it’s the hub of culture, and fortunate to grow up around theater and fashion, and just people-watching lent itself to being exposed to creativity so early on.

Debbie Millman:

I read that you grew up singing and acting, and even did theater at a sleepaway camp.

Carly Kuhn:

I went to this camp, Point O’Pines, in Upstate New York, and it wasn’t a theater camp, but I think you had to participate in the plays. And I was a little shyer when I was younger. And I think I even, when I went to day camp, I was either told this memory or I have this memory of getting up on stage and crying at an end of this summer performance. And it’s funny because then I would later go on to slowly grow within camp, getting bigger and bigger roles. I think my last three years I was a Doo-Wop Girl in Little Shop of Horrors. And then I was Adelaide in Guys and Dolls. And then I was Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, which was performed on parents’ weekend; an uplifting performance not so much, but we grew up going to Broadway musicals, and we’re definitely a very musical family. Both my brothers and my dad are all incredible piano players. I quit when I was in fourth grade, which I still am very sad about that, that I didn’t—

Debbie Millman:

I know, right?

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Anybody that has kids that’s listening to this that want to quit piano, don’t let them.

Carly Kuhn:

I know. But we did … even recently, we were all together and there’s a lot of singing by the piano, which is one of my favorite things.

Debbie Millman:

At the same time while you were doing this, you were also doodling dresses, and thought you might grow up and become a fashion designer. But I actually read that that was just one of the many careers you were imagining happening. What were some of the others?

Carly Kuhn:

I think comedy was always a throughline, watching “SNL” growing up.

Debbie Millman:

So you wanted to be on “SNL.”

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. And I would later go on to take improv classes at The Groundlings.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Carly Kuhn:

But I don’t know if it was how some people have that set goal. My older brother always knew he wanted to be a writer, director, a filmmaker. And I think for me and my younger brother, we had different interests, but maybe we weave to different things and hobbies and career paths along the way, and then landed in none of those fields.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

Carly Kuhn:

Well, you know, creativity.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

Carly Kuhn:

But an unexpected one.

Debbie Millman:

You have a really interesting and unusual path. You went to Syracuse University and got your degree in science, television, radio and film. And while you were still in school, you got an internship working on the television show “The View.” So tell us all about that. I need all the juice, all of it.

Carly Kuhn:

I believe it was the summer before I graduated college. And our main job as an intern on “The View” was wrangling the audience members as they were waiting on line, which I believe they overbook usually with these shows for the audience because people don’t show up. But I guess it was a very popular summer, and we would be outside waiting on line and have to turn people away. And people were not happy about that. I got called some names, even though I’m like, “I’m just a lowly intern. I have no power.” But it was that first foray into the world of entertainment, and getting a little bit of a thick skin, and also being exposed to being on a live set, which was exciting. And being an intern, you got to shadow and pop in in all the different departments. And so—

Debbie Millman:

Who were the hosts at the time you were working there?

Carly Kuhn:

I know Whoopi, Elizabeth, Barbara.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, what was that—

Carly Kuhn:

And—

Debbie Millman:

… like? See, that’s where I was wanting to take this. I wasn’t sure if she was still on the show at that point.

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. Well, I wouldn’t say I personally worked with her, because we didn’t really interact much, but I think it was just that magic of Hollywood or the entertainment industry and seeing these people up close. I think it was really cool to just see all these women. It was very fast-paced. And it was a little bit of an intro into that world, which I ended up working in.

Debbie Millman:

Did you witness any of the on-stage or off-stage debates/fights?

Carly Kuhn:

I feel like I did. My memory is a little murky. I feel like sometimes I wish I remembered things more vividly. So I can’t fully remember, but I have a vague memory of being in the control room and witnessing whether it was fights or even just the chaos of a live show and what’s going on in the control room and being like, “Go to camera one, go grab, no, go to camera two. Oh my God, what are we doing?” Like that chaotic newsroom. So I think that it was something that was cool to see and experience.

Debbie Millman:

After you graduated, you figured you’d continue in television, but you were persuaded to consider joining an agency. And the example was like Ari from “Entourage.” And you got your first official job as an assistant at Creative Artists Agency. So I have three questions about this particular part of your life. How does one get a job at a place like Creative Artists Agency? What kind of work were you doing? And just generally, what was it like?

Carly Kuhn:

When I graduated I never thought I was going to leave New York City at first and go to Los Angeles. But I think I knew I wanted to be in television, and thought maybe scripted, and just knew that there was more opportunity. And I think I had a friend that had moved to LA and was working at an agency and said, “If you don’t know exactly what you want to do in the industry, working at an agency is a really great stepping stone because you get an overview of the whole industry when you work at like a CAA, and they represent writers, directors and actors, and all the different areas. So you’re learning all the different facets of the industry.” And so the way I got there, I think it was a family friend of a friend.

I do think sometimes it becomes who do you know? I think if you go to a certain school and alumni, it may … I think a Syracuse connection got me into the door. And when I interviewed, sometimes people have to start out in the mail room, which is like that famous grunt work. And I interviewed with this younger agent. And she said to me, “You’re the least qualified on paper, but you remind me of a young version of me. So I want to give you a shot.” And I was able to just start on her desk right away. And what you’re doing is essentially “rolling calls,” is the industry term. So you get on the phone, make the calls like, “I have so-and-so for Steven Spielberg.” And they patch you through.

And you’re expected to take notes and you’re adding names to call sheets. And then you’re also managing inbox emails up the wazoo, where you’re setting up meetings. For agents, it’s all about setting up meetings, and lunches, and dinners, and drinks. And it’s really fast-paced. It’s also really great to do, I think, especially in Los Angeles, because LA is a very spread-out city. It can feel very lonely. And the agency world is almost like a grad school for the entertainment industry. Everyone is around the same age, right out of college, or just one of their first jobs and just looking to make friends. And there’s an event or something for anything you can imagine, a birthday, or this, or that, and everyone’s going out together. And that’s how I made my group of friends.

I didn’t really know anyone when I moved to Los Angeles. And going back to your point about “Entourage,” Lloyd was the assistant to Ari. And so I joke, I was that character. Just went from that boss, and then worked on her desk for six months, and then had to go to a more senior desk that was a little more chaotic. And I definitely developed a lot of thick skin from working there, but I think it—weirdly, even though it doesn’t directly on paper—seems like it would lend itself to being an artist today, but I think a lot of those skills of just having to think on your feet, work in a fast-paced environment, maybe helped me later on navigate later things.

Debbie Millman:

At the same time you were doing this, you were also performing at Groundlings, which you mentioned. Groundlings is the legendary improvisation and sketch comedy theater. At that point, were you still hoping to get a gig on “Saturday Night Live,” or Second City, or something that was more standup related?

Carly Kuhn:

I don’t think it was an actual goal. I’m sure deep down there was like, “That wouldn’t be the craziest thing I would turn away if someone’s like, ‘You should be on ‘SNL.’’” But I—

Debbie Millman:

Discovered at last!

Carly Kuhn:

I know. If someone wanted to just put me on, I probably wouldn’t have turned it down, but no, I think it was again why I went to CAA first—I was searching. I think I was always searching for what I wanted to do. And I remember I auditioned in college for an improv group freshman year. I didn’t make it, and that was that. And I definitely enjoyed it. And when this came about, I think I was dating an actor at the time, and he had friends that were doing it. And that was another great way to also meet people.

It’s really fun when, when I got to start Groundlings and I was taking classes, A, to be in a class environment again, when you’ve been out of college even for just two years or a year-and-a-half and you’re feeling lost and you just want a little bit of praise. Once you’re being yelled at at work, it’s good to be like, “Good job, Carly.” But it’s so silly. And I was meeting people that were so different and eclectic. And I feel like I had like a really weird period when I was at Groundlings because everyone’s just doing voices and you’re just picking up everything around you and just soaking it in, soaking in all the weird characters around you.

Debbie Millman:

At that point, though, from what I understand, you had stopped drawing, but you began again—correct me if I’m wrong here—after an unusual experience getting high.

Carly Kuhn:

It’s so funny, because I’m not someone who smokes. I’m so anxious on my own. And just, it was like one of those LA nights in Malibu, a friend had it. I haven’t thought about this in a very long time. I’m blushing because I’m such a like, “Oh my God, I’ve smoked pot.” But my friend who is a little bit more of the earth, and hippy-dippy, and always had a notebook on her … and we were in Malibu, had that experience, and it wasn’t anything that crazy. It was probably not even anything, but yeah, it reopened up that creativity inside me.

Like you said, I hadn’t really drawn in a while and I just started doing these little doodles in her notebook, and it then started up again while I was still at CAA. I just would draw friends on their birthdays, then slowly their bosses would see it and they’d be like, “Oh, that looks like a weird Tim Burton character. Can you do me?” But I just think I was excited. It was something that I rediscovered, but didn’t really know what it was going to become. It was just, as I said, that continuous path of searching to wanting to be more creative.

Debbie Millman:

At this point, you began working for Chelsea Handler on her television show “Chelsea Lately.” You started as an associate producer and then as management of development and production at Chelsea’s production company. But you were continuing to draw and began sketching daily. When did you begin to start thinking that this could be something more than just a daily artistic practice, but the possibilities of a career?

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. When Instagram came along, I remember sitting at a dinner table with a friend, and I think I had maybe done a drawing of her or something. And she was like, “You should start an Instagram account.” I was like, “OK. I’ll go for it.” Again, I didn’t really know what was going to happen, but I was doing these drawings. Initially I started just drawing my little weird Tim Burton–esque characters. And then I guess just what was on Instagram at the time, in the beginning, it was a lot of fashion photography, fashion bloggers, street style. And it just—organically, I shifted from just drawing the little characters in my mind to, I would see an image and just feel inclined to interpret it in my style, but I would just credit who I would draw, and say, “Inspired by so-and-so.” And at the time I think I even thought Instagram was just like a photo-editing app. I didn’t know it was this public form of expression.

Debbie Millman:

Interestingly, I decided to go back to your first post. So I scrolled all the way back.

Carly Kuhn:

Oh my.

Debbie Millman:

You posted your first image on Jan. 29, 2014. When I did that, I started to look at mine, too. And I was so bad at Instagram at the beginning that my first image is in the wrong direction. I didn’t know how to rotate.

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. I—

Debbie Millman:

And so it’s in the wrong direction. But your first post was a black-and-white illustration of a pixie girl inspired by a Jan. 14, 2014, post on the website Sartorialist. So talk a little bit, if you remember, about that first post.

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. I don’t know if I can place myself in that—

Debbie Millman:

She almost—

Carly Kuhn:

… moment.

Debbie Millman:

… looks like Edie from Andy Warhol’s days, Edie Sedgwick.

Carly Kuhn:

I don’t fully remember. I think what I remember is that someone, one of my friends, was like, “I can’t believe you’re putting your art out there for people to judge you.” And I, at the time, was in an improv group that would perform in this random hole in the wall on Melrose. I think it was called Neon Venus. And maybe we would have four or five people there. Usually there were significant others, maybe a little bit more. But that was so vulnerable and scary of your face in front of other people’s face, being like, “You’re at a grocery store you’re bumping into someone you haven’t seen in 10 years. Go.” That was so scary.

So in a way I do feel like it was exciting to just be able to do something creative and put it out there, and I didn’t have my name on my account for, I don’t know how long. I don’t know if it was because I was … eventually, while I was still at “Chelsea Lately,” I still didn’t have my name on The Cartorialist, because again, it’s such a weird thing, and when you’re drawing and you’re working in comedy, you don’t want to be like, “Hey guys, I draw on the side, check it out.” You know?

Debbie Millman:

Right.

Carly Kuhn:

And—

Debbie Millman:

Side hustle, yeah.

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. So I think in that way it was just, I do have a memory of it just being fun and exciting that I stumbled upon this new, or old-new, creativity again. And I do think that’s why I say, like, I think the improv in Groundlings allowed me—even though you don’t think improv Groundlings to artists is a normal path—but I think it gave me that confidence to put myself out there.

Debbie Millman:

How did you come up with the name Cartorialist?

Carly Kuhn:

I think it was that the world was fashion, and sartorial, and Sartorialist. And then I had this kind of cartoon quality to my work. And then my name being Carly, that like ‘C’ sound. I think that I just blended the words together of just sartorial, cartoon and Carly. And they had a baby, and it became The Cartorialist. And in hindsight it’s great, but also I’m like, “Ugh, it’s hard for people to say and spell.” But I do, I think that there’s something that people get a sense of the two worlds combined.

Debbie Millman:

Carly, while you were in college, you took only one fashion illustration class. Looking at your early work, it’s really well developed, and you have a voice and a style that’s completely unique. How did that happen without any training or consistent practice through your life at that point?

Carly Kuhn:

Well, thank you, first of all. I think that it really was the product of repetition in a weird way. I would see an image, and draw something, and do that almost every day as just having something as a creative outlet, and just trying to stick to something every day. And I even remember when I started out, I would sometimes use pencil because I didn’t want to mess up. Once I start doing it a little bit more on Instagram, and maybe people were starting to recognize it, then you get scared, and I would draw an image and use pencil, and then go over it in pen. And I felt like I had these mistakes within my art early on and wasn’t sure if people liked that. And there were these flaws within my art that I realized that that’s what actually people gravitated towards, these perfectly imperfect lines.

And I nixed using a pencil. I like drawing with pen because if there’s a line out of place on a hand, or a leg’s a little wonky, or an eye is not in the right place, I eventually leaned into that. And I think it was only because I just started. I was doing it every single day, a little bit every day. And when people were like, “Oh, how did you find your style? Or how did you get good?” And I say, “It’s not about getting good. It’s about becoming confident in what you’re doing.” Maybe this person over there, this fashion illustrator, was drawing the perfect model on a runway. And I liked drawing the people backstage, seeing the weird angles, and doing it, and finding myself gravitating to the things that were a little weird, a little bit off.

Debbie Millman:

You have such a unique eye. I feel like there’s an ease to your lines that is so unique. It doesn’t feel like there’s tension in the drawing, or struggle. It just feels very natural and almost instantly birthed.

Carly Kuhn:

Thank you. I think there’s that improv side of things, too. “They say yes, and …” is this like motto, and improv where you’re just supposed to … if someone throws you a line, no pun intended, they say something to you, and you’re supposed to, “Yes. And we then went to the park.” Instead of saying, “No, it happened this way.” And I feel like, weirdly, that’s how I approach my art, very improvisational. I don’t usually plan out what I’m doing. I do maybe have a stack of notebooks of failed drawings, because as I said, I like to draw with pen, and because I don’t feel like I get the same quality of line when I’m drawing with pencil, unless I’m doing something different and that’s the style. But I still, even with pencil, don’t usually erase. And I think that there’s magic that can come when you’re just going and you’re not planning it out. Even with murals that I later did, that can be a little scary on a wall and not planning it out.

Debbie Millman:

On Oct. 8, 2014, you did an illustration featuring Sarah Jessica Parker sitting on the stoop of the brownstone that she lives in in the TV show “Sex and the City.” She’s sitting on a stoop. You can’t really see her face, but she’s trying on shoes. What happened after you posted this image?

Carly Kuhn:

I saw the image. And at the time, Instagram was that it was instant and it was chronological. And I remember I drew the drawing and I think I posted it under an hour from when she posted the photo. And I was sitting at lunch later that afternoon and I looked down at my phone, and I get a text from my older brother, Joey. And it says, “OMG, SJP.” And I was like, “What? Oh my God.” And she had reposted my drawing and was just like, “Wow, that was quick. Love it. X, SJP.” And the New Yorker girl inside of me just was like, “Oh my God.” You know.

Debbie Millman:

Any girl anywhere.

Carly Kuhn:

Anywhere, yeah. It was just a shocking moment. I didn’t really know what was going to come of it. But it really did kick off like a next round of things that started to happen, all organically through Instagram, and just showed me the power of that platform.

Debbie Millman:

After the Sarah Jessica Parker repost, you started to get your first requests and commissions. One opportunity that came in was from Prada. Talk about what you did for them.

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. That was all through Instagram. I remember I just got a blind email. You set these emails and wait for something to come in. You email yourself a couple of times, like, “Just want to make sure it—”

Debbie Millman:

Test.

Carly Kuhn:

“… works.” Yeah. Testing. And I remember I got this email, and it was for a digital sunglasses campaign called Prada Raw. And they were tapping six fashion illustrators, or just art illustrators, to interpret the line of sunglasses. And they were going to pair us with an animation house, and they were going to turn it into an animation. And they had it all up on this website, and it was going to be this big thing. And a friend’s significant other came in to help negotiate for me, because I was just like, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

And let me tell you, it wasn’t all roses, like, “I did this Prada Raw campaign. It was great.” It was dealing, A, with people in Italy, so there was a delay. I didn’t really know what I was doing. And I did these drawings, and I remember I turned it in, and the guy was like, “These actually aren’t what we thought you were going to be able to produce for us. You’ll get paid, but we’re not going to use it.” And I was like, “Let me try again. I want to make this work.” I didn’t want to just give up. And you had to draw 50 different images, slightly different from each image, because it’s animation. And a lot of the other illustrators worked on computer. I did everything by hand.

So I had to redo everything by hand, but again, I just knew the opportunity was such a big opportunity and they stuck with me, and it ended up happening. So it was an early lesson, in hindsight, of just saying yes to stuff and then figuring it out along the way or just learning along the way, even though I was terrified by the ask at the time.

Debbie Millman:

As commissions continued to come in, you ultimately felt comfortable enough to leave your day job with Chelsea Handler and pursue a career as an artist and an illustrator, which is quite astonishing, given the notion that you were not ever planning to do this.

Carly Kuhn:

Right, yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Was it a hard decision for you to make? Were you nervous? Were you worried about surviving, continuing to get jobs, continuing to be the it-girl?

Carly Kuhn:

The thing that was interesting was a lot of that happened while I was still at “Chelsea.” At the time, my boss, he said, “We’re going to be going on a hiatus.” Which, in television, some shows go on a two-month hiatus and then come back. And it was February. And he said, “We’re going to go on a hiatus, but we want you to come work for us back again in May, as a producer on this show.” So that was a point that I told them, I was like, “I have this Instagram. And it’s been doing this thing.” And then that’s when they pulled it up in the room, they’re like, “Who are you? What is this double life you’ve been living?” But it was a great way that I didn’t have to make the decision to quit.

I was actually getting paid through that and was able to have it be like a test, like, “Should I do this? And if not, after a few months I could always go back to this job.” But I think because I was open to saying “yes” to a lot of different things and just not being so one-path oriented, if that makes sense, saying like, “I only want to try and be in galleries.” Or, “I only want to try to be a New Yorker cartoonist.” I think because it was open, that allowed me, in a way, to be more open to a lot of different kinds of jobs.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve written about how, when this new career path all started to come together, people felt free to offer you all sorts of advice about how to run your business. Some people felt you should only make originals and not sell prints. Others thought you should partner with a gallery right away. Others thought you should make greeting cards. How do you make sense of all the advice and ultimately forge a path of your own?

Carly Kuhn:

I think it’s still a constant struggle. I think because I didn’t go to art school and this wasn’t an intended path, I had definitely an insecurity of “where do I fit in?” I didn’t know if I fully felt like I wanted to go that commercial route and just start doing greeting cards. But I also didn’t really feel like I was someone who could be in a gallery or an art gallery. And I think it just became a lot of trial and error. And what presented itself, I think I got connected to someone at the time who was doing Absolut Art, which is another online art platform. So that was, I think, the first art prints that I ended up doing. And eventually I would create my own art prints. But it’s hard to say how to navigate it because I still feel like I’m still navigating it.

And I do think that I sometimes still get worried or I’ve been paralyzed by, “If I do this, am I not going to be able to do this?” Or, “If I do this, am I going to get stuck in this world?” And I think I felt that way within the fashion illustration world that I got categorized into in the beginning. I didn’t view myself as a fashion illustrator, but it also tied to Instagram illustrator. That was another kind of insecurity that crept up, because why can’t you just be called an artist? But even, and now today, I’m like, “But why is that a bad thing, to be called this or that?” Again, I think it was because I didn’t necessarily ever view myself as an artist or that to claim that word, and it wasn’t my intended path. That’s I think what has made that struggle of “where do I want to go or what world am I allowed to go into?”

Debbie Millman:

You said that at the time you were also bothered by the term “fashion illustrator.” Why did that bother you?

Carly Kuhn:

Being an artist and a creative is also so tied to your identity and where you are in your life. And I feel like I was in my late 20s, going through some life changes, relationships and everything. And I just think my identity, I didn’t really know who I was. And I also, in the beginning only drew fashion illustration drawings or fashion-inspired drawings and nothing else on the page. I didn’t share photos of myself. I didn’t share inspiration photos. And I didn’t really feel like I was coming through. I remember when I met a friend in person after she had followed me, and she said, “I just assumed you were this fashion girl that did her hair, and always had a full thing of makeup on, and would wear these amazing dresses.” And that’s not who I am.

I wanted to explore more of who I was. And even though I am not my art, it does feel like they’re connected. And then, on the other hand, I think because I discovered this artistic side of myself later, I was just at the beginning of it. And so I didn’t want to be put in a box if I wanted to do something completely different. And I think that’s what happens with Instagram. And my career did happen in front of people, live. Real time, they’re seeing me try new things. And so I felt kind of constricted by what, “oh, well people started following me or liking my work because I drew the red dress. So I have to continue to draw the red dress.” And I think that’s a struggle that a lot of creatives probably have even today that build something on a social media platform. Like, “If I shift the direction of what I’m sharing, are they going to stick around?” But you also want to not just do things for other people. You want to do it for yourself, but it is this line to have to balance.

Debbie Millman:

How do you manage that?

Carly Kuhn:

I think it really just has to do with growth and time. I think it really, where I am today, is very different from that. I think it’s also because I feel confident in who I am as a person, too, and where I am in my life. So, weirdly, I think it’s getting older, having more experiences, working on yourself, and getting to a good place where you feel confident in yourself, so you’ll lean into what you want to create versus what you think other people want to create.

And usually that’s what people respond to. And people will come along that journey with you. I think when I started doing these faces, it was kind of a response to me feeling stuck in this one world, in fashion, this feeling, like, “OK, there’s another fashion week coming up. People are expecting me to draw this. But I don’t feel creatively inspired to draw that.” And that’s where the one-line technique came into play. It was almost meditative for me and a way to break out of this anxiety of feeling like I had to do something, I had to draw off of an image. Now I could just put pen to paper, not feel like it has to look a certain way, try something different. And it was a self-soothing exercise that morphed into then a different kind of style. And people came along the ride with it, and some people didn’t, and that’s fine.

Debbie Millman:

Do you get a lot of feedback from your followers and fans?

Carly Kuhn:

I’m lucky. I feel like I don’t have too many haters, but once in a blue moon, I remember, I think at the height of when things were going on, I remember someone said, “I like art, but this isn’t art.”

Debbie Millman:

Oh, please.

Carly Kuhn:

Things like that. And I think now I obviously am able to laugh at it and be like, “They probably … maybe they’re having a bad day.” But I think it is really exciting, too, when people say, “Oh my God.” I’ve had certain drawings where I’ve incorporated the text into … that’s just maybe as simple as like, “Can I have a hug?” And I’ve had friends reach out to me and say, like, “This really turned my day around.” Which is the most incredible thing. Or a stranger DM that to me, or comment. So I feel like there’s more positive feedback that has come through the social media platform that is really special, that something as simple as a little drawing with just, like, “I love you.” Or, “I’m thinking of you.” Or whatever it is, or even just the image itself, how it can impact someone’s life, is pretty cool.

Debbie Millman:

In addition to Prada and Absolut, you’ve since been commissioned by Elle magazine, Bombay Sapphire, the jewelry brand Alexis Bittar, Capital Records, and more. How do you get most of your clients now?

Carly Kuhn:

It really has been through Instagram. I don’t know a percentage, but I would say the majority of all of those you named, and what has continued to happen, has been through Instagram. It’s just a simple either DM or they email me, which is crazy.

Debbie Millman:

You’re also working, making fine art. And you do sell prints now. Do you have different methodologies in how you approach working for a client or working for yourself?

Carly Kuhn:

For commissions on the more traditional art side of things, they tend to be more the faces that are a little bit more abstract. So when it’s that, it’s a little bit more of the trust within me as the artist that the person that’s commissioning me knows this style is a little bit more free-form. I’ve definitely limited the kind of commission work that I’ve taken on now. And that’s just from experience, and learning, and saying “yes” to a lot in the beginning, to be able to say “no” now to commission work that I don’t necessarily think is what I think is my best work or what I enjoy doing. I don’t know if that answers the question.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. You’ve also moved into home furnishings and installations. How different is it for you moving from two dimensions to three?

Carly Kuhn:

When I switched from the digital page, to then the page to installations, to then textiles, that was an exciting transition because I think there’s a lot more room to play when you work in design and textiles. And I remember when I started creating wallpaper, what maybe was my original drawing was maybe a simple figure on a page, on a white blank page. When you put that into a pattern, or a repeat pattern, or you add color … typically my work was a lot of black and white. And I feel like I unleashed this, or discovered a different side of my style, when I was designing more for textile or wall coverings, because it is a different medium. It’s being viewed in a different way. You can take risks a little bit more because maybe a piece of art on a wall is a very specific thing.

And I really have found this love for design, and home, and textile. And so I’m working on launching a design studio hopefully by the end of the year, which is really going to be wall coverings and textiles, and focus on that, and still pick and choose the things that I do. And I’ll still always share, because it’s still … the core of what I’m doing are these drawings. And I just really have a love for being able to play a little bit more and have things be within the home. So that’s something that’s exciting.

Debbie Millman:

When do you officially launch? Are you doing this on your own? Are you partnering with a home furnishings manufacturer? Tell us everything about this. I think I’m getting a scoop.

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. I am working with a company that will be actually producing the wall coverings and textiles. And they’re based out of Brooklyn. So they’ll be actually creating it, but it will be something I’m doing on my own. I want to test it out, and explore, and see where it goes. And I think I can have the control over it. And I feel like because I have an audience of people that have already expressed interest in it, and I had wallpaper for a hot second, and it was very well received. So I think it will be good to be able to put it out there on my own. And I’m hoping by fall, winter, to put it out there.

Debbie Millman:

That’s really exciting, Carly. Will it be under the name The Cartorialist, or your name?

Carly Kuhn:

I think it will be Cartorialist Studio.

Debbie Millman:

Congratulations on this super exciting news. It’s really quite—

Carly Kuhn:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

… wondrous to watch the path of your career. Carly, the last thing I want to talk with you about is your recent wedding, and your move back to the East Coast. So first the nuptials. I understand you got your marriage license at the Honda Civic Center in Anaheim. How glamorous.

Carly Kuhn:

Super sexy.

Debbie Millman:

And you were both wearing sweatpants, from what I understand.

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. We got engaged, actually, the weekend of lockdown in New York City, Central Park. It was Friday the 13th, March 13.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, wow. A day before the lockdown, yeah.

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. Real time, poor Danny, already having the anxiety of having to propose or not having to, the anxiety of proposing. And meanwhile, the world is going crazy. We were supposed to have an engagement party, and last minute canceled. But the two families got to be together, and we sang by the piano in very Kuhn-Matz fashion. The most important thing for Danny was that his grandma would be able to be there. So we brought the wedding to grandma. We did the marriage license at the Honda Civic Center, but we were lucky to just do just our two families in Boca at grandma’s house, at Boo-boo’s house. And—

Debbie Millman:

In Boca? Yeah.

Carly Kuhn:

In Boca, in December. And my younger brother, Jake, is a tech wizard and he works in events. And so we didn’t do the Zoom wedding. We actually did a YouTube link. And it was cool because friends and family were watching from all over with their kids, with their parents, and it was in Florida. And then we came back to LA. And we didn’t think we would ever be moving. But as we were thinking about starting a family, Danny’s from Michigan, I’m from New York. And both of our families spend time a lot in Florida. And we decided as we start that next chapter, we want to be closer to family. And that was really the main reason for moving. So moving to Miami, staying in a warm weather climate. We’ll have to adjust to the humidity, but we’ll get through it.

Debbie Millman:

I saw on Instagram that you designed your own wedding invitations. How was that for you? Cobbler and shoes kind of thing?

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah. I think there’s an expectation with certain things that I do, like, “Oh, are you going to do the drawing for this?” But for this case, I did want to do it. It felt special. And especially because it wasn’t with everyone getting to send out a little … I still sent out a paperless post with the drawing on it. And it had that New Yorker style, which felt like us. So it was sweet. And no one was telling me, like, “Oh, can you make these edits?” I got to just do what I wanted.

Debbie Millman:

That’s the nice thing about working for oneself, right?

Carly Kuhn:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Do you anticipate this move to Florida influencing the direction of your practice at all? Is this where you’re going to open up an in-person studio? How do you see the work being any different, if at all?

Carly Kuhn:

I think that the reason I decided to want to launch this studio was because moving, I don’t really know where we’re going to live. We’ll probably be in an apartment or condo for a little bit. Whereas in LA I thought we were maybe going to be in a house and starting a family. I wanted to have something that not felt like a little bit more traditional, but be able to focus on something. And that one of the things that I realized that I love about what I do, of all the different kinds of things, is being able to draw anywhere. I think with design, like wall coverings and textiles, and moving to this new city, I’m able to do that in whatever type of space that I’m in. So if it’s not a bigger space, that’s OK. And I’m open to seeing how I’m influenced by Miami. It will feel very different. I’m excited about that because I definitely feel like my art and home design meld together. So I’m excited to be able to explore a new city and welcome the new inspiration that will probably come about.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I can’t wait to see what you do next. Carly Kuhn, thank you so much for sharing so much about your life and the way you work. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Carly Kuhn:

Thank you so much for having me.

Debbie Millman:

You can see more of Carly Kuhn’s work @thecartorialist on Instagram and read more about everything she does, and I’m sure her upcoming studio, at cartorialist.com. This is the 17th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Carly Kuhn appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

“Creative director” is a catchall job description. In the case of Fabien Baron, it doesn’t catch all that he has done in his illustrious career. He’s designed some of the world’s biggest and most prestigious publications. He’s designed books and perfume bottles and furniture. He’s shot and directed films. He’s created some of the most memorable ad campaigns of the last 40 years for clients including Calvin Klein and Dior and Balenciaga. And he’s created singular groundbreaking looks for Harper’s Bizarre, Vogue Italia and Interview. Vanity Fair once called him the most sought-after creative director in the world, and indeed he is. Today, he joins me on Zoom from Paris, France. Fabien Baron, welcome to Design Matters. Bonjour.

Fabien Baron:

Bonjour. You have such a lovely voice.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, thank you. Fabien, the photographer Glen Luchford has insisted that you are the Elvis Presley of graphic design.

Fabien Baron:

Oh my God.

Debbie Millman:

And I’m wondering if you know why he stated that?

Fabien Baron:

No, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t.

Debbie Millman:

Do you know that he even said it?

Fabien Baron:

Well, I know Glen quite well. From those days, the back days when I was at the Harper’s Bazaar and I hired him to work on the magazine and to do some stories. And there was one story actually that he did that I really liked. What he did was Kate Moss going around the city and 42nd Street and just taking very [inaudible] type of pictures that were really amazing. That’s how I met with Glen.

Debbie Millman:

Maybe it’s the breakthrough groundbreaking part that he was referring to. Fabien, your father, Marc Baron, was a legendary art director in Paris. He worked mainly with two publications. He was the founding art director of the left-wing daily Libération, and the sports daily L’Équipe. Is it true that you were a newspaper delivery boy for the—

Fabien Baron:

Well, not a delivery boy, but I’ve worked under my father, so I was really the go-to guy to do anything at the magazine. It would be doing at the time, photo stats, which were taking the pictures and blowing them up different sizes.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I was a stat girl at my student newspaper in college.

Fabien Baron:

Oh, really? OK. Good. So I used to do that and I used to do mechanicals and putting all the mechanical part of the magazine on pages. And I was doing a lot of Letrasets. I don’t know if you remember that.

Debbie Millman:

Oh yeah. I still do them, just for fun.

Fabien Baron:

I used to be really good at it. I used to be really good because you had to pick the size. It had to be 100%. So I used to be really good at it. I could type something exactly to the length I want, in the size, by just guessing. So it was a fun game.

Debbie Millman:

Knowing that about you now, I could see how that training helped in the creation of some of your typographic constructions. There is a sort of puzzling to them and placing them all together in a way that if I don’t think he knew how to do that by hand, you wouldn’t be able to do it on the computer.

Fabien Baron:

Yes. Actually, the first time I did this kind of graphics, I did it with a Xerox machine. And I was at Italian Vogue at the time. We didn’t have computers or anything, so we had to work everything manually. So I used to take the font and use the Xerox machine and blow them up on the Xerox machine and collage the pieces by cutting them out, basically.

Debbie Millman:

You said that your father was super bright, super smart and very educated. But I also understand that he was quite hard on you in your early days as a designer. In what way?

Fabien Baron:

I guess he wanted me to learn, and learn the proper way but also learn the hard way, because he wanted to make sure this is something I was going to do and something I was going to love. And when it’s hard and you’re still in love, that means it sticks. So I guess he was really tough in the way that we used to work. I was responsible for everything. Every time there was a mistake, it was me, even though it was not me. So he just wanted me to be responsible for everything. So it was not very gentle, let’s say. And I guess at the time, it was not like it is now. Now, you have to be extremely gentle with people and you have to be extremely polite, extremely proper. He was not like that with me, at least.

Debbie Millman:

I read that your father felt that the objective of graphic design was to get the reader involved with the editorial content of the publication, and you talk about this quite a lot. But at the time, you were also reading Francine Crescent’s French Vogue, and you were enthralled by the photography of Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin. Did you feel that that was in conflict with what your dad was teaching you?

Fabien Baron:

No, actually. I didn’t feel it was in conflict. I think it was good, proper balance. His teaching was quite journalistic. It was quite like classic journalism. And at the same time, felt like … I think access to magazine, like French Vogue and all these photographers and looking at those visuals, I was really intrigued how you would create such visuals. So it was something that I was really very looking after. I would devour those magazines when they would show up in the house, because the visuals were exceptional and I really had no idea how you would put this type of visuals together, how you would create them. The photography part and after, how you would come up with those ideas, those concepts and everything. I was looking at that, extremely intrigued. At the same time, what was important at the time, especially in newspaper, is to pass the information the proper way. To make sure the reader would understand what you’re trying to say.

Debbie Millman:

After a gigantic fight, I understand you left home and his supervision and you moved into your own apartment. And at that point, you stated that he was still your hero and you still looked up to him, but it took years before you were both fully reconciled. What did you fight about?

Fabien Baron:

I don’t remember. I don’t remember what the fight was about, but I know that I left that day. I don’t recall at all. Isn’t it the case most of the time? You don’t remember what the fight is about, what you remember is, did I leave or didn’t I leave?

Debbie Millman:

The feelings.

Fabien Baron:

Yes. I definitely left, and it was a while before … not that long either, because I liked him and he liked me. I was quite upset. I was not so happy about it, to be honest. It’s not a good memory, that part, but it was time for me to go. Some kids, they leave their parents nicely and some don’t leave their parents nicely.

Debbie Millman:

Ultimately, you’ve said that the relationship with your father gave you a sense of how to treat people.

Fabien Baron:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

What do you feel that he most taught you in that regard?

Fabien Baron:

I think what he really gave me is a good sense of what this job was about. A good sense of, deep down, you have to remain a journalist, to a certain degree. In anything you do, it’s going to make sense, it’s got to be understood, and it’s got to be clear. But also, I think he gave me a discipline and a work ethic that I don’t think I would have gotten if it was not through him. The level of discipline in which I work is quite surprising for some people, I’ve heard. I’m very keen. And it’s a search to perfection, into trying to really find that place, which is difficult to find, that really … I think perfection is quite a good word, even though you understood that you cannot obtain perfection, but you can come close to it. And it is because you can’t obtain it that you continue to search for it.

Fabien Baron:

But that puts you into a certain category of people that you understand that this becomes your life and that you’re going to be professional about it. A little bit like an athlete. I’d do anything to make it right, basically. Just like an athlete would wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning if they need to train. So I’m very similar. I’m ready to do anything to make this right. So part of why I get results is because of that discipline. I think if I wouldn’t have that discipline, I wouldn’t have done that many things. I would have been very hesitant into trying new mediums. And I think it’s that rigor, but also that need and that search to perfection that allowed me to experiment and to try new mediums quite easily, without hesitation.

Debbie Millman:

You attended arts appliqués in Paris for a year before dropping out. What made you decide to leave school at that point?

Fabien Baron:

I felt I was wasting my time. I knew pretty much what I wanted to do. And I don’t know if I wanted to be an art director because my dad was an art director and I wanted to show him that I’d be a better art director than him, or if it was because I really knew the calling. So that one, I still cannot answer, really, but I knew what I wanted to do. That’s for sure. So knowing so clearly what I wanted to do, I didn’t want to waste my time. It’s part of being the athlete in me, that, “OK, let’s go run. Let’s not waste time.”

Fabien Baron:

So even though I had a good time that year and I had very good friends, and it was lovely to be at school and to experiment different experiences and do different work because this art appliqués, they teach you graphics, photography, textile, drawing, painting, modeling. They do so many different things, and that was quite interesting. I didn’t feel I needed to do it. I needed to work right away. I was already, even with my father, helping him doing certain things. So I felt like, I’m going to do this a couple of years, I’m going to waste my time. Might as well go to work and go at it right away and really learn the real job that I want to do.

Debbie Millman:

You also got your first camera when you were 17 years old, and you stated that while art direction is how you make your living, photography remains your personal love.

Fabien Baron:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

What motivated you to become a professional creative director versus becoming a professional photographer at that time in your life?

Fabien Baron:

I guess that’s my father. I think if my father would have been an architect, I probably would have said, “I want to be an architect.” I think that’s what it is, because right now you would tell me, “Would you like to be an architect?” I would say yes. There’s so many things I would like to be. And I think the mediums of anything that touches with art in general, they all kind of overlap. I learned throughout the years and experimenting with different mediums that actually, the most important thing is not the medium itself. It’s more the point of view that you have and how you want to express it. And certain mediums are easier to express your point of view than others. So the photography was something that I felt really close to myself, probably because of those French Vogue photographers, Guy Bourdin …

Fabien Baron:

And actually, the first time I got my camera, the things I was doing is I was going with my sister around trying to do a Guy Bourdin picture. I would make her pose in some things very similar and I would do pictures like that, with saturated colors. I didn’t have a flash, so it didn’t work perfectly, but I was experimenting and I was really intrigued by the imagery side of magazines rather than the journalistic side of magazines. So my training was being very journalistic. There was this other side that actually was not taught by my dad. That was the old process of image-making. And that started by taking pictures for myself. And then as I went along, it got more and more, I got involved on the art directing side of making an image.

Fabien Baron:

Then I became the art director that was good with type and good with images. So there was a definite conflict because of the photographers and the level of photographers I ended up working later on, for me to also be a photographer. There was a conflict of interest, to some degree. “Why this guy’s being on set with us? He’s seeing everything we do. And then he’s going to go take pictures and maybe he’s going to take pictures like us.” So there was this conflict going on and I wanted to be really respectful of that. So I never really involved myself as a photographer in my early years as an art director. It’s much, much, much later on that I decided, “Oh, OK. But maybe I should do a story.” And that step was a really hard step for me to take.

Debbie Millman:

Why?

Fabien Baron:

Because of what I just told you, that conflict of interest. I was afraid that photographers would start seeing me as a competition rather than seeing me as someone helping them.

Debbie Millman:

Did you find that that was the case?

Fabien Baron:

No. No, it was not. That was all in my head, I guess. In the meantime, I did a lot of personal work. That’s why I put m
yself doing landscape photography, and started doing work that was not fashion related. At the same time, it just happened to be that way. I think it was good because it allowed me to experiment with something else, something that was not fashion, something that was not related to a model and related to a style.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. Well, you’ve said that when you are confronted with restrictions, you sometimes do your best work. And so maybe this restriction of not doing photography in fashion gave you this opportunity to explore something that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Fabien Baron:

Yes. I also forced myself into doing the step and repeat, meaning taking a picture and going over and taking the same picture, same picture, same picture, and trying to look for that perfection of it and to see the difference between each one of them.

Debbie Millman:

So I would say that your ocean pictures certainly do that.

Fabien Baron:

They certainly do that. And they’ve been going on since 1983 and I still catch myself doing some sometimes.

Debbie Millman:

In 1982, a girl you knew from New York came to visit you in Paris and you ended up falling in love. You then decided to move with her back to New York. So you sold your motorcycle, you sublet your apartment. And with only $300 in your pocket, you moved to New York City. Was living in New York something you had always hoped to do, or was this a spontaneous decision after falling in love?

Fabien Baron:

The way I grew up in France, actually, the way most kids my age grew up in France, they were quite Americanized in many ways. The music was coming from the States and from London. The movies were all coming from America. The culture was very much an American culture, and anything that was new was coming from there. So I felt I was not … you know when you’re in the courtyard with the other kids playing? I felt I was in the other courtyard basically getting the scraps from the good courtyard.

Debbie Millman:

Oh yes, I know that feeling well.

Fabien Baron:

I thought it was much better to just check it out in the U.S., especially New York. There was this aura around it, around New York at that time in the ’80s. That was really amazing and I just wanted to go there.

Debbie Millman:

I’m a native New Yorker, but I didn’t move to Manhattan until 1983. So I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’m about a year or so behind you. And New York at that point seemed to be this mystical, magical place. Aside from your girlfriend, you knew only one person in New York, the great Véronique Vienne. She’s also been on the show. The art director at the time from Women’s Wear Daily. Did she help you? Did she help you get settled in the magazine community?

Fabien Baron:

What happened is, actually, I was freelancing in this magazine in France, this fashion magazine in France, and Véronique Vienne was asked to come and redesign the magazine. And when she came, she had a graphic formula and right away I kind of attacked her and worked with her really rapidly and tried to show my skill. She was really impressed that I would understand so quickly what she wanted to do. We got on on the right foot, but rapidly, I told her, “I really want to come to New York. I really want to come to New York. Can I come to New York?” So I bugged her to come to New York, and she basically invited me. She had very little choice. I was relentless.

Debbie Millman:

What a surprise.

Fabien Baron:

Thinking back of it, I was kind of like, my God. Seriously. I was really insistent. And she invited me, even though she was about to move to California. And she invited me and I stayed with her, and I worked at Women’s Wear Daily, and I was an intern there. And I stayed two months, and then I went back to France. In the meantime, during my time in New York, I met this girl that you’re mentioning. And a year later, she showed up in Paris, and that’s when I decided, “Oh, let’s go back to New York and check it out.” And I went back and then I just knew her and her partner at the time. I had $300. I called him up, and Véronique Vienne was already in San Francisco, so she was not part of this.

Fabien Baron:

But he basically organized a meeting for me with a couple of people in New York. But one of the meetings was actually with Alex Lieberman., which was a great meeting. And I knew who he was, I was very impressed about who he was, and had the meeting. And when I came to see him, at the time, he was on the Vogue floor; he had an office there. We met and he spoke French right away. He said, [inaudible]. And he was right because my English at the time, let me tell you, was not that good. So we spoke in French and he was very fond of French people and very fond of my work because I showed him my portfolio at the time. And he said, “What do you want to do?”

Fabien Baron:

I said, “I would like to become an art director. I would like to work in magazines. I’d love to work at Condé Nast. And he said, “Well, have you heard of this magazine? We’re starting this new magazine. It’s called Vanity Fair. It would be very nice if you want to meet with the art director and see if you guys get along.” So he sent me to, at the time, the art director was Lloyd Ziff. And I met with him and we talked, and he liked me very much and logically had the job. But then I got a phone call from Alex Lieberman, who said, “Well, Lloyd Ziff is not going to stay with us any longer, so the Vanity Fair gig is not going to happen. Don’t disappear. You’ve got to stick around here. I’m going to find you something else in the meantime.”

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. So I graduated college in 1983, and in 1982, Vanity Fair had been relaunched. And I thought it was the most glorious magazine in recent history. Just the idea that this was a beautiful arts and literary magazine that David Hockney’s socks and feet were put on the cover. Phillip Roth was on the cover. I desperately wanted to work at Vanity Fair as well. And being a very young designer coming from a state school in New York, I knew the chances were very slim, but I sent my portfolio into Condé Nast as well. This is 1983, so this is a year later after you. And I got a call back from Charles Churchward, who was then the art director.

Fabien Baron:

That’s correct.

Debbie Millman:

I didn’t meet with Charles though. I met with human resources, and the resources women did not like me, so I didn’t get the job. But the idea that the art director at the time thought there was something in my portfolio really, really buoyed me for quite a long time. So it’s so funny how life has its circuitous turns. One thing I didn’t know about you at all and had no idea, Fabien, I read that your first job in New York was actually at Johnson & Johnson.

Fabie
n Baron:

That’s correct.

Debbie Millman:

Working on a new design for their internal magazine. I was shocked when I learned this.

Fabien Baron:

That is correct.

Debbie Millman:

How did that happen?

Fabien Baron:

That’s through my friend. He said, “Hello, I heard Johnson & Johnson, they’re trying to do an internal magazine and they need a design.” I did the design for them, and it was great. I was paid in cash.

Debbie Millman:

Nice.

Fabien Baron:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

Speaking of being paid in cash, after looking at your portfolio, didn’t Alexander Liberman love your photography so much that he ended up buying—

Fabien Baron:

Yes, because—

Debbie Millman:

$3,000 worth of photography of the Brooklyn Bridge? Tell us about that.

Fabien Baron:

Yes, oh my God! During that meeting, there was all the work I’ve done in France in magazines, but there was also the pictures I’ve taken myself and some of them in New York. He saw these Brooklyn Bridge pictures, and they were doing an article in House & Garden on the Brooklyn Bridge. I think it was for the centennial or something at that time. I don’t know exactly. It got to be for that. I remember they said, “Oh, you got to go see Rochelle Udell, she works at House & Garden. Let me give her a ring, and you got to go to see her and show her those pictures.”

Fabien Baron:

I went to see Rochelle Udell. She was at House & Garden. She looked at the pictures and she said, “Oh, these are lovely. Can we keep them for a little bit?” Then they took four or five pictures. Then I got a phone call from Condé Nast saying, like, “Oh, actually, the pictures, they’re going to be running.” “Oh really?” “Yeah, and they pay $3,000.” I was like, “You must be kidding.” I couldn’t believe … basically, that was my first experience as a photographer working for a publication in America.

Debbie Millman:

Then when you went to Self, you also worked with Rochelle Udell, is that correct?

Fabien Baron:

She also worked for the magazine. She became a little bit like a miniature Alex Liberman. She was working in, I think, at GQ, she had Self magazine. I think she was also up at Mademoiselle. She was like Alex Liberman’s right hand. She would come in and look over all the pages, and then Liberman would come in and look at the pages. We have to make sure everything was well-organized. Each picture was supposed to be from this side, which was very small, to a double-page side, and then he would play with things.

Debbie Millman:

Incredible.

Fabien Baron:

It was really like, my time at Self magazine and GQ working with Mary Shanahan as the art director at GQ, and my time at Self magazine, really couldn’t wait for this moment where Liberman would show up and Rochelle would show up, like shuffling everything around. Some part of it probably just to shuffle and part of it to make more sense of the stories. I learned so much about what you can do with a story. How you can, with editing, with sizing, with putting things one way and another, why would that be better, and that, to me, tied it up so nicely with all the things that I learned from my dad about the journalistic side of how you put something together. So it’s complete, so it makes sense, so there’s a logic to it, but there’s also an artistry about it.

Fabien Baron:

When I was there at Self, it’s not that Self was a fantastic magazine, that’s when I really said, “Wow, I’m really liking this. This, I can.” I was eating it up like there was no tomorrow and I loved it. I loved it. When Alex would come, like some of the designers would put pages together and I was the smaller guy in the corner, and I would think, “I wonder how Liberman’s going to change that. Maybe he’s going to do this, maybe he’s going to do that, maybe he’s going to …” It was really intriguing to see him come and change everything around.

Debbie Millman:

What an education.

Fabien Baron:

The most intriguing part was that every time he was right, he was right. People were so upset, you have no idea. The designers were crying over, not they’re crying literally, but so upset that the layouts were changed and everything. I was thinking, But he’s right. We had arguments. I had arguments with some of the staff. I remember, “But it’s much better. It makes sense. Now, it makes sense. The story is better.” People, they get really attached to their own work, I guess.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. What a magnificent thing to be able to witness and to learn and be part of. Alex moved you to GQ, and you mentioned that you worked with art director Mary Shanahan. I read that she, you’ve said that she helped you clearly understand how an image can function.

Fabien Baron:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

I’m wondering you could talk a little bit about what that means, and what she taught you.

Fabien Baron:

I think she was the one who just put the period on top of the ‘i’ by saying a few things, like pushing this idea of the point of view that everything comes down to a point of view, everything comes down to a vision and to a way to express that vision in a very simple manner. I think that I learned that from her. She was very, very definite about that.

Debbie Millman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Fabien Baron:

That, I think really, I felt like, “Oh, I’ve completed a circle here.” I have the understanding of how to pass information in a proper way, in a practical way from my father and being a journalist. I understood the artistry and the shuffling and what you can do with an image and how you can say something in this way, if you make the image this size or in this way, if you make the image this size, a little bit like the complete approach to the buildup of a magazine. But then I learned from Mary that this is great, but what is it that is inside the image and what is that point of view? Now, to pass on that information as an art director onto the photographer so that point of view is palatable, relevant and on point. After that, I felt like, “Ooh! I could be an art director.”

Debbie Millman:

You’ve earned your stripes.

Fabien Baron:

Then I left Condé Nast.

Debbie Millman:

I know, I know.

Fabien Baron:

Then Liberman was really pissed.

Debbie Millman:

After a year-and-a-half at GQ, Betsy Carter, the former editor of Esquire and the newly minted editor of a brand new magazine called New York Woman invited you to become the founding art director. I remember when the magazine first came out. I actually had a friend who worked there as a copy editor, and there was so much excitement about the launch. I read that you had many epic battles over the tone of the magazine. You wanted it to be cool and clean, and they wanted it to be warm and cozy, which seemed very odd for a New York Woman–type magazine. How did you manage, looking back on it? How would you describe that time?

Fabien Baron:

Wow! Yes, I remember now that you’re mentioning that. Yes, that’s true, I had a couple of battles with some of the staff. But not with Betsy really, because I think Betsy understood. It was late ’80s New York City. Come on! At that time, the city was the coolest.

Debbie Millman:

Ah, yeah!

Fabien Baron:

It was the place, it was the center of the world. Anything, anything that was happening was happening in New York. Of course, I wanted the best photographers. Of course, I wanted the thing to be the coolest thing possible. Yes, there was, it was American Express who was doing the magazine.

Debbie Millman:

They were the publishers, yeah.

Fabien Baron:

The publisher was a bit corporate, let’s say, but we went against that. I think, yes, I definitely wanted the magazine to be cool, to be quite fashion-y at the time. I remember that’s the first time I worked with Peter Lindbergh, who was at New York Woman, and that’s the first time actually Peter Lindbergh worked in America. Then other photographers—like Patrick Demarchelier worked there, Denis Piel, Max Vadukul, Jean Francois Lepage, Jean [inaudible], photographers at that time, they were working for Franca Sozzani. They were working in Europe, more actually European photographers, strangely enough, because also Mr. Liberman was not happy, he had left Condé Nast. He said he had plans for me, and I didn’t wanted to wait for those plans, and he was really upset. He was really upset, and I couldn’t use any of the photographers that were working for Condé Nast, so I had to go in Europe and get the photographers from Europe, the cool ones.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

Fabien Baron:

That was a battle, and I was winning that battle, and it was really cool. I was bringing like all these newer, interesting photographers, and the magazine got noticed. We got noticed.

Debbie Millman:

Oh yeah! The magazine was stunning. I have been waiting to ask you this question for 30-something years—the logo, New York Woman, very long, elegant, serif face. The ‘W’ in Woman was larger than the rest of the letters and often in color. On the third stroke of the ‘W,’ the ascender was cut off.

Fabien Baron:

Huh?

Debbie Millman:

Tell me what the decision was about that, to remind you of something I have been obsessing about for—

Fabien Baron:

Oh my God. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Debbie Millman:

I know you’re not, I know you’re not. OK. Here you go. See?

Fabien Baron:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

See?

Fabien Baron:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Debbie Millman:

How do I do this? This is backwards. There.

Fabien Baron:

The last one.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, there was no tail.

Fabien Baron:

I think there was—

Debbie Millman:

The ascender, it was on every issue, so it’s intentional.

Fabien Baron:

Yeah, yeah. It wasn’t part of the logo. That was only letter.

Debbie Millman:

I’ve been obsessing about this, you haven’t [been] thinking about it.

Fabien Baron:

I don’t think that was the only letter that was doing that. The ‘M’ must have gone—

Debbie Millman:

In the logo, it was.

Fabien Baron:

The ‘M’ must have gone that way too, no?

Debbie Millman:

Let’s see.

Fabien Baron:

The ‘N’ as well, no?

Debbie Millman:

I’m looking online to see.

Fabien Baron:

No?

Debbie Millman:

Nope. Just that pesky little leg on that ‘W.’

Fabien Baron:

I don’t know why. Listen, I have no idea why.

Debbie Millman:

The ‘W’ and the ‘W’ in New also didn’t have it, but it was slightly connected to the ‘Y’ and the center in the ‘Y’ in York. Look at it and tell me, because I need to understand your thinking.

Fabien Baron:

I remember clearly that I didn’t like the fact like New York was written that big and that the name was New York Woman. That was too long, and I wanted to make New York small inside the Woman. I wanted that to be the logo.

Debbie Millman:

That makes sense, yeah. Well, I just needed to ask you that question. OK. You’ve mentioned crossing Alexandra Liberman, and you said that he was very upset that you left. He told you that he had big plans for you, he was cross that you left, but he was really cross later, really cross when you turned down the job to work at American Vogue. He revealed his big plan.

Fabien Baron:

Yes, because when I left, he was cross indeed. But he always said to me that the best way to move up in Condé Nast is to leave Condé Nast. They took him back to Condé Nast. That’s what I told him when I left for New York Woman. “Bu
t remember, Mr. Liberman, you told me that the best way to go up in Condé Nast was to leave Condé Nast and come back, so maybe I’ll come back,” and that was that. That was my conversation with him. But in the meantime, he really had blocked me from using any of the photographers, which was good sport, fair.

Fabien Baron:

Anyway, after New York Woman and while I was doing New York Women, because I think that was a year-and-a-half, he called me in his office and he proposed to me to become the design director, art director of American Vogue, and I refused. I turned it down.

Debbie Millman:

Why?

Fabien Baron:

I turned it down because I felt the magazine was not in the right place. It was not the right moment. I didn’t feel the editor was doing the right job at the time. I always felt you have to work with the right editor. If it’s not the right editor, it’s not going to be right. Even though in the right position, you get the right title, you’re in the right place, but if the editor is not good, it’s not going to be good. End of story. At that time, it was Grace Mirabella, and I think she felt like she was on the last leg. I think he wanted me there to help out, to redesign the magazine, to give it a boost, to do something with it.

Debbie Millman:

For Grace.

Fabien Baron:

I felt like, Wait a minute. If I go there and this is not happening, it’s not going to go well, and that’s it. I turned him down. It was quite ballsy for me to do that because usually you don’t turn down Alex Liberman. He was a little bit upset. Then a week or so after that, I got a phone call, and I don’t know if it was related through Mr. Liberman or not, but I got a phone call from friends from French Vogue. They were asking me to be the art director at French Vogue. I turned it down as well. I felt like I didn’t want to go back to Paris, giving up on America now, because going back to France would have been like, you have to go back, you have to be there.

Fabien Baron:

It’s not like it is now—you can work from anywhere on the planet with a computer. You had to be physically present to make something happen, and I was really not in the mood for that, to be back in Paris and work again in Paris. It was too early. It was, I think, four years or three-and-a-half years after I was in New York, and I didn’t feel like I had made it in New York yet, so I turned it down. Again, I was not liking what French Vogue looked like. I was not liking what was going on with that magazine at the time for whichever reason.

Debbie Millman:

Did Alexander Liberman think that you were crazy turning down both French Vogue and American Vogue?

Fabien Baron:

I didn’t discuss it with him, but I remember—

Debbie Millman:

Did your friends and family think you were crazy?

Fabien Baron:

Yes. My friends that worked in the business and everything, say, “My god, are you crazy? You just turned down two Vogues? That’s insane. You’re crazy. You should have taken that first one, you should have taken American Vogue.” Nevertheless, two weeks later or three weeks later, I got a phone call from Franca Sozzani, who was just hired to redo Italian Vogue, and that I took on the spot.

Debbie Millman:

Because of Franca or because of the opportunity with Italia?

Fabien Baron:

Because of the editor, because, exactly, because the editor, because Franca was someone that was really admiring for what she had done at Lei and Per Lui and she was doing such a good job. We’re using the same photographers. She was using Steven Meisel. I was using Steven Meisel. She was using Peter, I was using Peter. I felt we had the same vision about things, and she was like a real, true renegade in the way she would approach a magazine. To me, that makes sense. That part is like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe she’s calling me.” She was the one I was really admiring. It was not difficult for me to say yes. I didn’t even think about it, I said, “Yes!” She said, “So would you come to Milan and work?” “Yes!” I took the job on the spot.

Fabien Baron:

I didn’t even think if it was complicated, if it would be a pain in the ass to be in Italy, I just took the job because it made sense. What was interesting in all this, in the whole process, is to turn down two Vogues to get a third one and to get the right one at the moment, because Italian Vogue was the right one at that moment. Because what happened is afterwards, Grace Mirabella got fired from American Vogue, so that would have been my loss. French Vogue, the same thing happened at French Vogue. Someone replaced whomever was the editor at that time. The whole thing collapsed, and Italian Vogue, on the contrary, was a huge success and new thing. Sometimes you really have to follow your guts and your feelings about something and not get impressed by names and by surroundings. So I’m glad I made that decision.

Debbie Millman:

Did you think that you’d be able to have more impact working with Franca at Italian Vogue?

Fabien Baron:

Oh, totally, totally, because I think she gave me carte blanche in the way the magazine could look. She gave me carte blanche, but everything she was saying was bringing my ears some amazing music. Everything she was saying was right on the money. She really was the one that opened my vision and allowed my vision to be expressed in a very, very direct way on the page of a magazine. She really was the first one who said, “OK, do it.” She was beyond me and she pushed me. She didn’t settle for halfway. All the people around her in her team, like Grazia D’Annunzio, that was the editor-in-chief at that time for the editorial part of the magazine, everybody at the magazine were thinking the same. You felt part of a team, and that boat was led by Franca Sozzani in a way that it was impeccable. We were a perfect team going forward, going with the same goal and all in the same direction, and it paid off. Franca became definitely the most sought-after editor in the world for fashion and style. She had a way of putting things together that was unlike anyone else.

Debbie Millman:

Those magazines now are really considered collector’s items.

Fabien Baron:

Totally.

Debbie Millman:

The magazine became a laboratory for edgy, experimental photography and design. You stated that when you were working with Franca is really when you learned about fashion, and I was wondering if you could share what was the biggest thing she taught you?

Fabien Baron:

I remember it was Franca, she would take me around to see all the designers. I would go to the shows with her and she would take me around
and have the discussion. I remember when we first did, we did the first issue, she said, “OK, come with me, and we’re going with the magazine to see Mr. Armani.” We went to Mr. Armani and we presented the magazine to him and she was talking all in Italian; I was understanding enough, a little bit of it. I learned Italian afterwards, but it was really interesting to be put directly into the people that were making the fashion, like the designers, to be really working directly with them and to be part of the fashion system so directly. I think the way she was working, she was working in unison with all the designers.

Fabien Baron:

She would like do all these stories on them. She was really … how can I say that? She was like the head of a table and she would deal the cards. For designers, being in Italian Vogue was very important. It meant a lot. To certain photographers, shooting their story and their clothes, I think was very important at that time. It was really meaningful. She was holding the deck of cards and she would play hard. She was really a good leader. She was the voice of Italian fashion in many ways. To be in contact with her directly there was all what it meant, was all the people that is market editors, the fashion editors or it is all the people working for the designers, you would understand the structure and how fashion was built.

Fabien Baron:

I remember going to Miuccia Prada. I think this discussion with Franca there and Miuccia talking to Franca in Italian saying, “I’m thinking I’m going to do a woman’s collection,” to Franca. She was in bags only at that time and she had taken the business from her parents.

Fabien Baron:

I remember very clearly the discussion she had with Franca, and I was there. I remember I asked her, “If you ask me, I would say, of course you should do it. Of course, you should do it.” Because me, I am a French guy that lived in America and came to work in Italy. You can do anything. Everything’s possible. I also told her, “Yeah, I think it’s great that you do clothing. Why not?” She was like, and that’s how Franca was involved in this type of discussion with the designers. I think she was really, when you see someone like Miuccia Prada who had such an influence in the world of fashion, she had that importance. I remember meeting with Dolce & Gabbana. I remember meeting with everyone.

Debbie Millman:

Heady time.

Fabien Baron:

It was fantastic. It was fantastic. It was two years, but after two years of that, of being at Italian Vogue, I think it was really difficult for me to go back and forth and to still deal with my clients. I had some freelance clients in New York. I was like two weeks here, two week there. At that time, it’s not like I was flying business; it was not easy. It was much more complicated. You had to be hands-on, and I would be in Italy two weeks and I had to get my life there but I was also like in New York. It was complicated, it was complicated. After two years of it, I left Italian Vogue to pursue other things.

Debbie Millman:

Baron & Baron was born in 1990. You came back to the United States.

Fabien Baron:

Yeah, that was after Interview magazine. I went back basically and my friend Glenn O’Brien said, “Oh, you know, they’re looking for someone at Interview magazine.” I thought, she’s a new editor, Ingrid Sischy. She was at Artforum. Would you be interested?” I took the job.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve had a real on-again, off-again relationship with the magazine. She first hired you in 1990, Ingrid, but she fired you a year or so later because, this is what I’ve read, “the graphics were dominating the magazine.”

Fabien Baron:

Yes, I guess.

Debbie Millman:

Then in 2008, you returned with Glenn O’Brien and took on the editorial director role, which you had until 2018. What was that first year-and-a-half like working to reinvigorate Andy Warhol’s magazine?

Fabien Baron:

That was a very interesting time in the life of the magazine because Andy Warhol just died, and Ingrid Sischy was taking over the magazine, and we wanted it to be different. I don’t think me and Ingrid got along really well, like in the direction in which the magazine was supposed to go. We didn’t see eye to eye, and that’s where I was like a missing … like Franca Sozzani, I was missing Franca, for how distinctive and how precise and how on-point she was. Now, I felt like everything she was saying like, “Oh yeah, that’s golden. That’s OK. That’s working, that’s working.” When, on the other hand, Ingrid’s ideas, I didn’t feel were applicable for magazines in the same way. She had an approach that was not something I was understanding. It was not my cup of tea, but in a way, but still, it was interesting because graphically and the way the magazine looked was interesting.

Fabien Baron:

I was fine with that, but I guess she didn’t think it was fine. I guess we didn’t get along. We didn’t fight. She didn’t understand what I was about and I don’t think I really appreciated what she was about either at that time. We got to know each other better after. She was still at Interview; I was, I think, at Bazaar by then. I grew to respect her and she grew to respect me as well. We had different point of views, and that’s fine. That’s why it’s important to go back to the point of view. For a good magazine, one point of view, you cannot have different points of view. That’s when the magazine becomes schizophrenic and un-understandable for people. I guess that, when that first Interview I did, even though I really liked what it looked like, it didn’t make sense for what it was, for what she wanted to do, so I think it was better we didn’t continue together.

Debbie Millman:

Was that the first time you’d ever been fired?

Fabien Baron:

Yeah, it was. It was a strange feeling. I was upset at first, but then [inaudible] or whatever, like we had to move on. That’s why right away I started my company. The day I left Interview, I started my company. Because I was doing a lot of freelance anyway; I had clients, I was doing Barney’s, Valentino advertising, some Giorgio Armani advertising. I had met all these designers in Italy and I was doing a lot of freelance for them. It was all the other things, I felt like, “Let me start my company. Maybe I don’t want to work for magazines. Magazines are complicated.” They really take everything under your feet. They really grab all your energy. They require a tremendous amount of work. They’re not that good. I was really disappointed with magazines in a certain way, and so I said, “I’m not going to work for a magazine again. I’m going to start my company.”

Fabien Baron:

I started my company, got successful right away, which was good, and I’d moved on. I’ve moved on quite rapidly. I remember going to the shows and seeing Ingrid and I was fine. “Hello, Ingrid, how are you?” Blah, blah, blah. Didn’t hol
d a grudge; I was fine, I’d moved on. That’s when I got the phone call for Harper’s Bazaar. After, I think, a year after I left Interview, something like that.

Debbie Millman:

Right. Before we get to Bazaar, I want to talk to you about just a few projects that you did back at the beginning of Baron & Baron. One of your first jobs was with Isimiaki. You designed his first fragrance. You’ve said that fragrances are the strangest accounts to work on, that they’re the most abstract form of advertising that there is. I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about why you feel that way.

Fabien Baron:

At that time, when Isi called, I know that Isi loved what I was doing at Italian Vogue. He said he was really impressed in the way I was putting the magazine together, and he said, “We got to find a way to work together.” I said, “Sure, lovely, that’d be great.” Then I started my company, then I get a phone call from him. He said, “Fabien, we should work together. Have you ever done a fragrance bottle?” I said, “No, I’ve never done that, but that must be so interesting. I’d love to do it.” Yeah, I love fragrance. I love the object by itself. It’s the item that most people or a lot of people get access to; I find it very Democratic. It’s one of the first things you can buy from a designer brand, is the fragrance or lipstick or makeup or beauty item. I felt that it was really interesting to participate into the vision of a designer and into creating this object that, if successful, can becomes quite cult. Right?

Debbie Millman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Fabien Baron:

And generational. I was thinking at that time, like Chanel No. 5. Oh my god! What did he do for Chanel? It’s unbelievable. I was really, really, really intrigued by the question of Isimiaki in a bottle. He said, “Can you come to Paris?” I said, “Sure, I can come to Paris.” He put me on the plane and I was in Paris, and basically, we talked and went on to design the bottle.

Debbie Millman:

Which is one of the most successful and long-running designs in fragrances of our time. You’ve since designed over 40 different bottles for 40 different fragrances and have stated that one of the problems with developing a new fragrance is the name, and have jokingly stated that all that’s left are names like “fief,” “memory,” “jealousy” and “pirate.” Have we actually ran out of names?

Fabien Baron:

It’s incredible. To name a fragrance is so complicated.

Debbie Millman:

Actually, I think the name “jealousy” could be interesting.

Fabien Baron:

No, “jealousy” is not bad, actually. But you know what? I’m sure that name is taken.

Debbie Millman:

I’m sure it is.

Fabien Baron:

Someone owns it. Every single word in the dictionary is taken.

Debbie Millman:

It’s crazy.

Fabien Baron:

Either you go to whomever owns it and buy it back or you can put words together.

Debbie Millman:

Shades of Jealousy.

Fabien Baron:

Yeah, Shades of Jealousy, yeah. Naming a fragrance is a nightmare. I’ve named a few and it’s a nightmare. It’s really—

Debbie Millman:

Naming anything is a nightmare. I’ve named some pharmaceuticals and it’s a nightmare.

Fabien Baron:

Oh yeah, and all the words, the words are taken.

Debbie Millman:

Yep.

Fabien Baron:

Words are taken. It’s like, something visual, you can do something new. It’s not like you can invent a word, even though the car industry, that’s what they do.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Fabien Baron:

That’s why some industries, they have to invent words that don’t exist.

Debbie Millman:

Right. That’s the easiest way now. To create a name is to just make something up that has never been uttered. Oftentimes though, that’s hard because it ends up sounding so foreign that nobody really has any attachment to it.

Fabien Baron:

Yes. The problem with the fragrance is it needs to strike on an emotional level immediately. That’s the tricky part. Any emotion in the dictionary is taken for sure.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

Fabien Baron:

15 times around by 15 brands.

Debbie Millman:

Yep. You also helped Calvin Klein relaunch, because I also didn’t know at that time that his fragrance had launched to very little fanfare. You helped him relaunch CK One and then went on to help shape everything for Calvin for several decades. Fabien, is it true you introduced Calvin to Kate Moss?

Fabien Baron:

Yes, I did. What happened with Calvin, he called me when I was at Harper’s Bazaar and he asked me to do his logo. He said, “I need a logo to put on the back of the jeans, and I want it to say “CK.” Can you come up with something?” I designed that CK logo, and he liked it very much. That’s how my relationship started with him. Then he started to, “Well, can you look at different colors, that logo, because if we do [inaudible].” I came up with a whole range of colors and a whole thing. Then he called me for something else, and then another thing, and then, “Oh, can you look? Na, na, na. We are doing a jeans campaign,” and I started working on a campaign. It went gradually, but surely, in a space of six months. I came from not knowing Calvin Klein into almost living with Calvin Klein.

Fabien Baron:

It was an amazing experience because this guy, I just think like him. I just loved it. Everything he was saying, he’s like, “I know what you’re talking about. I know exactly what you’re saying.” He was so unafraid to try things that were not the proper thing to do and to do things in a way that were very visible, but with an extreme sense of aestheticism and a very precise way to execute it. He understood media. He understood how to communicate visually a dream that people wanted.

Debbie Millman:

How did Kate Moss fit into that dream? Because she was quite an unusual model for that time. She was not the face you would have associated with high fashion. She was short, or not short as in, in the grand scheme of things, but shorter than most models.

Fabien Baron:

What happe
ned is we had put Kate Moss in the first issue of Harper’s Bazaar, in our first issue, with Linda on the cover but Kate Moss opened the first story of Bazaar. She was already our, like Bazaar’s mascot. Then Calvin called me again and said, “Oh, Fabien, I would love to use Vanessa Paradis for my jeans ad, but she turned me down.”

Debbie Millman:

Wow!

Fabien Baron:

I look at Vanessa Paradis and I look at the picture that he had showed me, to see it was a picture of Vanessa Paradis sitting down on a gray background and crouching down with a pair of jeans and a white shirt. I think she wore a T-shirt or something. She was just slouchy, and I said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” I said, “OK.” I brought in Kate Moss. What I did is I told Kate Moss to come in the room and said, “Can you sit on the floor just like that picture?” She sat on the floor just like that picture in front of Calvin Klein and Calvin Klein turned to me and goes like this. I said, “Yeah, yeah. See?” He hired her.

Debbie Millman:

History was made.

Fabien Baron:

He loved her. But also, the thing is, Kate at that time was, there was something very innocent about her, but there was something very mischievous about her. There was everything. She was like a flower about to explode. I don’t know how to explain it. She was oozing cool by just being there. Whatever she was doing, she could sit, she could stand, the way she would move, she was oozing cool. Calvin went crazy on her in a second, put her under contract immediately, and that was it. That was the Kate Moss and Calvin Klein moment.

Debbie Millman:

She’s written about how everyone thought she should fix her teeth but you. What did people think were wrong with her teeth?

Fabien Baron:

I don’t know. I don’t know. I said, “Kate, you’re crazy. I love your teeth. That’s part of you, don’t change it.” Her beauty is her imperfection.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

Fabien Baron:

Her beauty is that she’s petite. Her beauty is, she has a little bit shorter legs. Her beauty is that she’s a little bit [inaudible], she’s a bit crooked. She’s a bit like … it’s her imperfection are making her this most amazing person. Her soul is worn on the outside, and that you read that and that’s what you see. You’re charmed. You’re definitely charmed by her. She’s definitely charming.

Debbie Millman:

She wrote a wonderful, wonderful foreword to your monograph.

Fabien Baron:

Yes, she did. That was so nice.

Debbie Millman:

About you’re comrades and being mischievous together, which is really lovely.

Fabien Baron:

Yes, yes.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve mentioned Harper’s Bazaar a few times. I remember the day I got my Harper’s Bazaar, your first Harper’s Bazaar, “welcome to the age of elegance,” with the ‘A’ in Linda Evangelista’s hand. It is one of the most glorious magazine relaunches of our time. You worked with the legendary editor, the great, the late, great Elizabeth Tilberis. You and Liz completely revived Harper’s Bazaar, and in doing so created what many believe to be the most beautiful magazine in history. You’ve said that Liz Tilberis’ real talent was that she was not scared of talent.

Fabien Baron:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

Do you find that people in leadership positions are fearful or intimidated by greatness?

Fabien Baron:

Yes, definitely.

Debbie Millman:

Especially in the fashion industry, I would imagine, where it’s so, holding onto a job is so hard.

Fabien Baron:

I think a lot of people in the business see talent as a competition to their point of view. I think Liz was smart enough to surround herself with very, very talented people, and she would take everybody’s point of view and make it her point of view. That’s where she was amazing. The only thing you wanted to do. In all her abilities to do anything, she would do that with a smile and with lots of love. The only thing you wanted to do is to please Liz the best.

Debbie Millman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.

Fabien Baron:

And to give her what she wanted. She would let you use your own talent to achieve that, and that’s amazing. She didn’t ask you to be someone else.

Debbie Millman:

How competitive was Harper’s Bazaar at that time with the redesign and relaunch of Vogue that was happening with Anna Wintour?

Fabien Baron:

It was war.

Debbie Millman:

OK then.

Fabien Baron:

It was war. I think the number of contracts between Hearst publications and Condé Nast publications for the photographers, the fights we had to get to the photographers because we needed the photographers, it was really, really the most competitive time in magazine making probably that ever existed. I did enjoy it, and I think we gave Anna Wintour a run for her money, for sure.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, without a doubt. How did she react to Linda Evangelista being on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar?

Fabien Baron:

She didn’t like it because the minute Harper’s Bazaar was happening, the veto was, the Condé Nast veto, was imposed. It was like, “This is it. This is war.” The models wouldn’t give up. We had to do what to do, everything we had to do. We had to put photographers under contract, we had to talk to models, we had to talk to everyone. You got to do it, it’s very important, we’re going to put you on the cover, and will you do it? Everybody was petrified to go against Condé Nast, but we did it.

Debbie Millman:

Right, and you did it well. The interesting thing about Harper’s Bazaar under your tenure with Liz was that it juxtaposed two words that you generally didn’t see together. It was elegantly provocative. You were able to be controversial and edgy, but also at the same time, very elegant and almost formal in that.

Fabien Baron:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Debbie Millman:

I read that one of your mottos, and I don’t know if it still is, but one of your mottos at that time was to minimize maximally, and I was wondering if you can talk abo
ut how you know when something is minimized maximally.

Fabien Baron:

Wow! I said that?

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

Fabien Baron:

I think deep down I’m a minimalist and yet, like fashion, Bazaar came about in the grand years, where fashion became more poor and more normal and more real. But then after that, glamor came about again. Fashion is not automatic, it’s a maximal thing. It’s not plain and simple, if you see what I mean.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Fabien Baron:

Even though you have some Jil Sanders and people like that that embrace that profession, but in general, it’s a world that is not subtle. Bazaar, we tried to stay somewhere classic, therefore understandable, yet we pushed it quite far in some of the ideas that were extreme. It was extreme yet it was classic. There was always that balance, and elegance was always a part of the game, that it needed to be absolutely beautiful. I felt like you could package any idea—even if it was an odd concept of something difficult to understand, if it was packaged in a beautiful way, people would understand it better. It would be closer to them. They would be more acceptable. Maybe that’s what I call minimal maximalism.

Debbie Millman:

Minimized maximally. Liz Tilberis very tragically died of cancer. You left shortly thereafter because you were so heartbroken. Glenda Bailey took over and it was recently announced that she would be leaving after many decades. A new editor has just been announced. I read that you were in the consideration for the editor-in-chief position. Is that true?

Fabien Baron:

Yeah, that’s what I heard too, but I never got a phone call, so I think it’s—

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, all these different rumors that go around.

Fabien Baron:

Yes. To be honest, I would have not taken it.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I figured, reading some of your more recent thoughts, which we’ll get to about the magazine business, that didn’t seem likely that you’d want to do it.

Fabien Baron:

No.

Debbie Millman:

Back to the ’90s, one of my other favorite projects that you worked on around that time, and one that I also own, the French version, is Madonna’s Sex book. Steven Meisel was photographing the book and both he and Madonna wanted you to art direct it. In your 2019 monograph, you talked about how one of the objectives was to give it the right kind of “crazy tabloid elegance.” You couldn’t make it too wild-looking without making it look cheap, and if you made it look too crazy, the right crazy, you had to ensure that the crazy was not going to be ridiculous. How crazy was it to work on that job? What did you think of the ensuing hysteria?

Fabien Baron:

I had a great time. I had a fabulous, great time working with her. She was unbelievable. She was so—

Debbie Millman:

Was she naked most of the time?

Fabien Baron:

She was naked, yeah, not most of the time.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah?

Fabien Baron:

Some of the time she was definitely naked, yeah. It didn’t bother me. It didn’t bother me at all.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I would think the opposite.

Fabien Baron:

I’m French. Right? I’m French.

Debbie Millman:

Think how fabulous, but there was a lot of nudity; it was nudity everywhere. Did it ever get lurid?

Fabien Baron:

No, no, I don’t think. We took it as a job. It was like with working on a film or something. I think like when you’re on set and you have all these people, nudity is not something that is intriguing really, to be honest. It’s a job. You look at it as a job, you don’t look at, “Oh my God, she’s naked.” We didn’t care. We were here to do something, and being on set doesn’t allow other thoughts. No, it didn’t bother me one bit.

Debbie Millman:

There was a lot of Robert Mapplethorpe influenced S&M, BDSM.

Fabien Baron:

Yeah. She wanted to cover a little bit of everything. She wanted to have that bit, the S&M bit. She wanted the weirdness, she wanted the underground, she wanted the overtly pop culture, she wanted all the different aspects of sex, she wanted to cover everything. To be honest, I found like it was treated like a journal in a way, like her thoughts, thought process. The visuals were like, some of them very sophisticated, some of them very trashy, some of them very pop, some of them very cartoonish, some of them very hard; there was everything in it. It was like a collage of all these different visions done and packaged again by the same people, like a photographer, an art director and a writer. Glenn O’Brien, myself and Steven Meisel.

Fabien Baron:

These different expressions of the subject matter that ended up being like, the package was together in a good way. It held together nicely, the voice, the whole thing. The voice and the point of view, and visually, it was really controlled and really fun in many ways.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I think it’s still—

Fabien Baron:

And the scandal.

Debbie Millman:

Oh my God, the scandal.

Fabien Baron:

Then the scandal when it came out.

Debbie Millman:

You couldn’t find it. I was finally able to get the French copy. They could not get an English copy. I got a French copy, which I still have. I was so enthralled with that book, Fabien, that at that time the internet and email and all of that was first taking off, usernames. I used the name Dita as my username. Madonna’s name in the book was Dita; I used that name. I just remembered that as we’re talking, I was so enthralled of it. But really, as racy as it was and as controversial as it was, and looking back on it now, it doesn’t seem that way, but then it was, every single photograph is beautiful. Every single photograph is beautiful in that book.

Fabien Baron:

Well, it’s Steven Meisel.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. In your monograph published by Phaidon, it’s a 400+ page stunning exploration of 30 years of your own work. One thing that surprised me in reading it is your statement that w
hen you were younger, you really loved being controversial and you were never afraid, and today you find yourself to be more careful. I’m wondering what is behind that change.

Fabien Baron:

If you see what’s going on politically, don’t you think you have to be careful?

Debbie Millman:

OK. OK. I see. I wasn’t sure if you meant taking creative risks or being less maybe politically correct.

Fabien Baron:

I don’t think it’s a good moment for that. I don’t think it’s, the climate doesn’t allow controversy. I think controversy is not read as controversy. Controversy is read as something extremely offensive and actually can put your career down today. You have to think really twice before you say something, before you do something a certain way, before you use certain visuals. You have to think about everything. Everything can become a weapon against you, so you have to be very careful, I think. Somewhere it’s good; in many ways it’s good and it’s necessary, in other ways it’s less good because I think it takes out a lot of the creative factor. It’s never innocent when you do something, but there’s a certain innocence in creation that doesn’t put automatically things that you say or do in context of a political or geo-sociological environment of a certain time.

Fabien Baron:

I find certain artists don’t live in their time, yet they get judged per the environment and the context in which they work. That could really endanger the vision, these kind of restrictions or self-restrictions one has to put on themselves to a certain degree. Being controversial today, no. It’s very risky, there’s that reason. The other reason is, I guess, you learn. I think when you’re younger, you want to shake the tree, you want to bother the people that are older, you want to create your own little revolution. Then you become wiser and you don’t want to shake the tree, you actually want to protect the tree. You want to make sure it’s trimmed properly. You want to make sure it gets water. You want to make sure, all the other things you want, you want to care, and you want maybe pass along the knowledge that you’ve amassed through the years, and you want to pass that along to someone else. Your behavior, your mental behavior is shifting and changing. That’s the second part of this.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. You’ve stated that the era of the fashion magazine has come to an end. Why do you feel that way?

Fabien Baron:

It feels that way, because it seems magazines … do people look at magazines still? Do people buy magazines? Do we feel in the age of technology, in the age of portable phone, tablets, anything digital, do you feel that turning the page of a magazine is something relevant for today? Or is it better to swipe?

Debbie Millman:

What do you think?

Fabien Baron:

I think it’s about swiping. It’s not about turning pages of a magazine, to be honest.

Debbie Millman:

Do you think that—

Fabien Baron:

You may turn the page of a book.

Debbie Millman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). But do you think that—

Fabien Baron:

But of a magazine, I find magazines not relevant in my mind, I don’t find them … even though I miss them. I do miss putting a magazine together. I miss working with photographers on editorial stories, but I don’t feel it’s relevant. I don’t feel it’s the proper tool to communicate fashion today.

Debbie Millman:

Do you still subscribe to a lot of magazines?

Fabien Baron:

No.

Debbie Millman:

Which ones do you still subscribe to? Could you share?

Fabien Baron:

No.

Debbie Millman:

No?

Fabien Baron:

No, I don’t.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, none.

Fabien Baron:

I don’t subscribe. No, I don’t.

Debbie Millman:

I used to subscribe. I had a subscription to Vogue for 18 years. I paid for it and there was a glitch with the payment and then I repaid, and then all of a sudden Bon Appetit took over from House & Garden, so I got the balance put on Vogue. I had it for 18 years and then it stopped, and I don’t miss it. I still think about it and I’ll look at it online from time to time, but I don’t miss it. I don’t know if it’s because Grace Coddington left. I don’t know, but it’s just not the same.

Fabien Baron:

I think it’s different time. I think what we were doing at that time in the ’90s, that was relevant. It felt like it was something.

Debbie Millman:

It felt like there was a connection. When Dominique Browning was editor of House & Garden, the first thing I would read was her editorial. The last magazine for me to go was Harper’s Bazaar.

Fabien Baron:

It’s the talent of all this. I think people are just hanging on the branches desperately trying to still hang on the … I don’t know, I’m not into it. It’s funny. I think to do something that makes sense, it needs to be relevant, it needs to be a medium that is relevant. We’re more intrigued into … with all my clients, we don’t talk about the page that’s going to go in Vogue, we talk about the Instagram posts. I hate to say this. Even though I’m not … it’s a shame that it is the Instagram post, but it’s what it’s about. My question that I put to myself now is like, “How am I going to make that Instagram post much better than all the other Instagram posts? I want to make this relevant, I want to make this work, and now I’m going to make this important,” and that’s what I’m trying to do.

Debbie Millman:

Do you enjoy it as much?

Fabien Baron:

It’s different. It’s a different process, it’s a different exercise. Do I enjoy as much? I don’t know. I don’t even ask myself the question, because I think you learn through working. I’ve been working so much you realize that most of what you do is problem-solving. Problem-solving that it is on the page, on a screen, or on a billboard, or in a book or as a moving image, you’re problem-solving. I became a problem-solver.

Debbie Millman:

Fabien, I don’t think so. I think that you became a problem-maker for other people because your work was so much better. That’s what I think great designers do. Even if you’re trying to do—

Fabien Baron:

Really, that’s nice.

Debbie Millman:

When you’re trying to make an Instagram post that’s better than anybody else’s that has never been done before, you’re a problem-maker for everybody else that can’t.

Fabien Baron:

Well, I don’t know about that, but I know that’s what I do all day long. I’m being put in front of a problem by a client and I’m trying to resolve the issues that … and try to make the best solution out of it. Listen, there’s nothing wrong with that and I enjoy that. It’s like a great math problem; it’s also interesting, but it’s true the things have shifted. It’s not about magazines. Is it about a book? It could still be about the magazines that are treated a little bit more like an object, something that is less throwaway.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

Fabien Baron:

I’m talking about like maybe the bi-annual magazines.

Debbie Millman:

Visionaire.

Fabien Baron:

Purple, like in the oldies.

Debbie Millman:

Are you aware of Stack magazines? It’s a subscription service out of the UK, and they curate sending indie magazines once a month. Really, really, really well-done, and I love getting them. They’re never large-circulation magazines, but it’s really interesting to see what some people are doing. I’ll send you a link, it’s Stack magazines. They pick the magazine, you get what they pick once a month. You get a magazine, it’s really great.

Fabien Baron:

That’s interesting.

Debbie Millman:

Then you stay on top of—

Fabien Baron:

You get an object? You get the object?

Debbie Millman:

An object, the actual object, yeah, the actual magazine.

Fabien Baron:

OK.

Debbie Millman:

There are some extraordinary efforts being made these days. They’re small, but they’re really, really good.

Fabien Baron:

Yes. I’m sure. I’m sure. I’m talking about magazines as a large, with a large audience, like the Vogue, the Bazaar, that level of magazine. Ultimately, we love small independent magazines because they have a voice and they have a point of view and they have something they want to say. At the same time, they do it with no money and they let the photographers run with the ball and they undermine themselves before just to get certain people inside their magazine. It’s a little bit a free-for-all, and then on the other hand, a very commercial magazine is the opposite. You have to do exactly what they want as if you were doing advertising, and your voice as a collaborator is not appreciated or you’re here to fill in the gap. It’s one or the other. I don’t think there’s any place where you feel like the collaboration and the point of view from the team inside the magazine is forward in a way that is meaningful. I don’t know a magazine like that today.

Debbie Millman:

The one magazine I still really enjoy reading both online and in-hand is The New Yorker. I still think that they’re doing—

Fabien Baron:

They were very smart the way they did it through subscriptions. They decided it’s not about the advertising, it’s about the quality of the product, and for that quality you’re going to pay a certain amount of money to get the magazine, and it paid off for them. It’s the one magazine at Condé Nast that is successful.

Debbie Millman:

Good. In your monograph, you state that while you’ve devoted most of your life to becoming a good art director, you now want to dedicate the rest of what time you have left to film and photography. Tell me why.

Fabien Baron:

I think, like I said, it goes all the way back to my dad. I’ve learned art direction because I think he was an art director. He would have been a filmmaker, I would be in film. I realized that all the mediums are very much their own thing, and it’s your point of view mixing with that medium that creates something exceptional. That it is magazines, building houses, painting, sculptures, filmmaking, photography, I think it’s all the same. I think what you have to say is the important part. How are you going to say it is also the important part. The medium in which you communicate these thoughts is just that medium. It has its own vocabulary, it has its own language. It’s a little bit like, let’s say a magazine is French, a film is English, it’s another line. It’s like learning another language.

Fabien Baron:

But basically, what you have to say is the same. Like most big artists, they just repeat themselves. I had the luck to be able to play with different mediums and to pass from one medium to the other, from magazines into books, into fragrance, into furniture and into film. I’ve done film for about 25 years now, a lot of commercials, started doing those commercials … one of my first commercials was for Giorgio Armani, and then one for Calvin Klein; I did many, many, many for Calvin Klein. And on and on and on. I just love him.

Debbie Millman:

What you did for Moncler, by the way, was extraordinary.

Fabien Baron:

Oh, thank you.

Debbie Millman:

I tried to write a little explanation in anticipation of asking you some questions about it, but I decided that it might be easier for you to just share with my listeners what you actually did for Moncler, and that magnificent film in The Icebergs.

Fabien Baron:

Actually, the Iceberg thing was a project that I had made for a long time. I went to, it was part of my sea pictures and I was always, always intrigued by ice and by icebergs, and these amazing landscapes that felt like they were another planet. I went to Greenland once, and I took my camera and I have a special technique when I do pictures. I do very long exposures. Very, very long exposures, sometimes three, four minutes, and I took my big camera at that time. Like it was an 8 by 10 camera. I went, schlepped it all the way to Greenland, and realized when I stand on land and the iceberg is actually moving. I get my pictures back from my trip in Greenland and you barely see it. You see the little ice moving back, but the big things you felt that that thing’s not moving.

Fabien Baron:

But then you get the picture back and you see a little blur and it’s got, “Ugh! Everything is a bit blurry. Oh my God.” I think, I said, “I love this. How can I take a picture of an iceberg that is not something that looks like amazing pictures from National Geographic, tha
t feels like my picture, and has that amazingness, something special?” The only thing I could think about is that you need to light the whole thing. You need to light it like a theater stage, like you would light a street or something, because it’s big.

Debbie Millman:

Right, but there are no electrical outlets out in the Arctic.

Fabien Baron:

Yes, so I said, “Oh my god, that’s complicated. That requires a big production,” dah, dah, dah, dah. Then, years passed by, and Remo calls me, he said, “I love your pictures. I love your pictures of the sea. Is there something you … what would you do? If I would ask you to do something for me, what would you do?” I go, “Oh, you know what? I know exactly what I would do.”

Debbie Millman:

Especially given the brand.

Fabien Baron:

I would do—

Debbie Millman:

Warm coats.

Fabien Baron:

I would do icebergs. I would go to Greenland and shoot icebergs, but I would light everything at night. He said, “OK, let’s do it.” Basically, he allowed that dream to happen.

Debbie Millman:

That’s amazing.

Fabien Baron:

That was the most amazing journey and the most amazing job I was ever, ever assigned. I loved that job. Me, the fashion guy being lost in Greenland, minus 20 degrees with my camera and my huge strobes, like massive strobes that were on boats, on other boats and trying to take these pictures of icebergs. It was heaven. Thank you, Remo, for this. It was a really extraordinary experience. It was really great.

Debbie Millman:

Is there anyone in the fashion or publishing business that you haven’t worked for that could cajole you to work for them?

Fabien Baron:

I doubt it. To be entirely honest, I think … we were talking about film, we were talking about what I’ve learned through the years, working in magazines, you learn how to build a story. You learn how to make stories. You learn how to become a narrator. Then, as I worked in film and doing commercials, you learned that same spirit of narrative, but you deal with visuals, you deal with the art direction, you deal with hair and makeup, you deal with sound, you deal with special effects, you deal with color, you deal with movement, you deal with action, you deal with so many other layers. I find the film the most complete method of expression that, to me, is relevant for what I want to say today. I’ve put, to be honest, most of my efforts towards that lately, and I do a lot of films. I do about 20 different films per year that I direct.

Fabien Baron:

I’m about to launch into a feature film, and I’m in the works for that. This is something that’s going to happen. That’s what is next for me, to be honest. That is what’s going to replace, definitely, it’s going to replace the magazines. It’s the same thing, but it’s just bigger. It’s just bigger. It’s bolder and more, and the narratives bigger, and the expression is bigger. I’m someone with ultimate control in everything I do, and what I love about film is that you spend months and months trying to put something together that is in total control, but the minute you say “action” and the film is rolling, you totally lost all the control, and all the magic starts to happen.

Fabien Baron:

All these things that you put together, we’re really calculating everything. This can happen, this can happen, you’re going to say this. That’s going to be said, you’re going to say that word, you’re going to be like, the color is going to be like that, dah, dah, dah. You say “action” and it’s like, you’re like the child in front of an image and something is happening in front of you that, “Wow! It’s magic.” That, I think, to me, is the maximum. I think that’s where I’m going to focus the rest of my life, into doing that, and my photography work, and hopefully exhibits and things of my work that I’ve been collecting for the past 35 years without doing any exhibits, without doing any prints. I have an archive that is huge that I’m putting together and starting printing.

Debbie Millman:

That sounds exciting.

Fabien Baron:

Two things, and really, that’s where I want to go.

Debbie Millman:

Congratulations. That sounds magnificent.

Fabien Baron:

It’s great. I’m really happy about that. It took me a long time.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, it seems to, yeah.

Fabien Baron:

To get to that point.

Debbie Millman:

That seems to be the way it goes, I’m finding. My last question: How does your father feel about your career?

Fabien Baron:

My father passed away a couple of years ago, about seven years, eight years ago, and he was very pleased, he was very pleased. Of course, we were like this.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I can tell by your face how happy that makes you.

Fabien Baron:

We were very, very, very, very close. I think for dad, for someone like him that really fought all his life to get where he was, and he was in a great place when he died, I think it was very, at first, threatening. I was threatening. Then I think he embraced me, and then he really supported me and very much like he totally embraced what I was doing and was very proud. Yeah, so he passed away and I miss him. I do.

Debbie Millman:

Now you can infuse his work and yours into your four wonderful children.

Fabien Baron:

Yes, I do.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. Fabien Baron, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for making the world a more provocative and elegant place. Thank you for joining me today on Design Matters. It’s been an honor.

Fabien Baron:

It was a pleasure. It was a pleasure, and thank you for having me. I had a really good time.

Debbie Millman:

You can see more of Fabien Baron’s work at baron-baron.com and in his magnificent monograph, Fabien Baron: Works 1983–2019. This is the 17th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. Remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Fabien Baron appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

Robert, we’re here in South Africa. We are at Design Indaba. We are in the Artscape Arena. We have been fed very properly and very generously by our hosts, who took us out to a reception dinner on Tuesday, during which we had a nice little chat as we walked around the Sculpture Garden. You said something that I’ve been thinking about ever since you told me that you had quite a lot of self-confidence, and it was something that you didn’t know that you deserve to really have—that you had more self-confidence than perhaps you should. And I’m wondering why you feel that way.

Robert Wong:

I think it’s true. I think there’s two things—maybe one is realizing that you’re completely insignificant, like nothing really matters. I hold that truth. I mean, it really is the truth, like you’re really insignificant—

Debbie Millman:

We’re actually going to come back to that. Hold that thought.

Robert Wong:

Then, on the other side, also hold the truth that you are a miracle. Every single one of us that are here, you are an incredible miracle. So, kind of when you hold those two things in your head and your heart, that’s where some of the confidence comes from. Oh, I’ve started to … I think maybe where it came from as a child. I moved around a lot as a child. Soon as I was born, I was shipped off to Holland, and I was 1—

Debbie Millman:

You were born in China, Hong Kong.

Robert Wong:

Hong Kong, born in Hong Kong, moved to Holland, and I was 1, and when I was about 4, my parents, they were working in a Chinese restaurant and they weren’t getting paid because my grandfather owned the restaurant. Housed us, housed my parents, had fed us, and so they weren’t getting paid. They said, “well, I don’t know. We will never be able to open our own restaurant if we don’t get paid.” So they shipped me and my sister back to Hong Kong to live with my grandmother while they went and worked and saved money to open a restaurant.

Robert Wong:

So for three, three-and-a-half years, I went back to Hong Kong without my parents and I was pretty independent by myself a long time.

Debbie Millman:

How old were you at this point?

Robert Wong:

I was 4 to 7.

Debbie Millman:

So you have vivid memories of this?

Robert Wong:

I have. That’s why I felt like I was my first bit of consciousness living in the little village. The village is so little. When you think Hong Kong, you think of big city. We lived in new territory on the border of China. I could see China, and this village is so old that it didn’t have running water, dirt floor kind of thing, and the school was the church. Interesting story: I grew up Christian because that’s all I knew, and the class was, every kid in the village was in the class. It doesn’t matter if you’re 6 or you’re 14.

Debbie Millman:

So it was literally a one-room schoolhouse?

Robert Wong:

Yes, yes. Then when I was 7, they opened a restaurant. They saved money and we were able to reunite with our parents in Holland. So at Holland was a small fishing village. Another interesting story there is that Chinese people chose to open up a Chinese restaurant in Holland. Anyway, back then was you get on the train, you get off. If there is a Chinese restaurant, you get back on the train until you get off the train and there’s no Chinese restaurant. You hop off and you—

Debbie Millman:

End up in Canada.

Robert Wong:

Yeah. My parents are crazy people, they’re awesome. They went to Canada for a two-week vacation in 1976, and at that time, I think the Canadian dollar was higher than the American dollar, and had one international study of the world. CN Towers being built, and they were convinced that Oh, wow, for our kids to have the best opportunity, they should learn English, we should leave Holland. When I was 10, [they] decided to emigrate to Toronto. So they just emigrated. They didn’t speak any English.

Robert Wong:

So I moved around a lot, and everywhere I moved I’d had to sort of not be devastated. I had to constantly tell myself stories that I’m in school, like OK. I try to do the best math, I get good grades because I’m telling myself, OK, I’m smart. I’m pretty good at running, just for my ego, probably to protect my ego.

Debbie Millman:

Well, to help buoy up that sort of insecure spirit.

Robert Wong:

Yes, insecure spirit. So it probably all comes from insecurity, and also like when I was 10, I would go to the bank for my parents because they didn’t speak English. So, at a young age, I was doing sort of grown-up things, and at the same time, I was telling myself all these stories about myself to prop myself up. So maybe that’s a real reason, just delusional self-talk.

Debbie Millman:

You said that the constant change as you were growing up helped you develop the ability to communicate without relying mainly on verbal exchanges. What did you do instead of the verbal exchanges?

Robert Wong:

Yeah, I think you look, you read physical cues. And it’s hard to imagine for most Americans, I mean, landing somewhere you don’t really understand someone but you have to be with someone and you know, survive two, three, eight hours at school in a foreign language. So you just constantly have to be looking for cues, and you hear intonations. So a lot of communication, I think, happens at a subtext sub-language level. This is actually an interesting thing.

Robert Wong:

When I was in Holland, I had a diary that I wrote in, and two pictures, and when I look at it now, I have no idea what I wrote. I can’t read my own writing but I see the pictures, and then I remember the memory. I have memories of conversations I’ve had, really detailed. They’re all in English but I know for a fact that I didn’t speak English at the time. So all that communication is happening at this other level and I remember realizing that even people’s expression … of when you get hurt in America, you say “ouch.” In Holland, you say “ou” and in Chinese you go, “aya.” They’re all sort of similar but all very different. So I think maybe that also made me realize how connected we are.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve stated that because you couldn’t understand anyone, and no one could understand you, you came to realize that most of the time, whoever can listen the hardest is the best communicator. I’ve had to learn that the hard way, especially doing interviews now essentially for a living, that in order to really communicate
and have a conversation, you really have to listen—and most people don’t listen. They just talk, talk, talk, talk, wait for the other person to stop talking, and then start talking again without having ever really listened. How did you train yourself to do that?

Robert Wong:

I didn’t learn that till later when someone told me that, I think in my 20s, that most people don’t listen. Most people have a little voice in their head that’s talking all the time, and while someone’s talking, that voice is trying to think about what you should say next.

Debbie Millman:

Assessing and judging and filling in and assuming.

Robert Wong:

To really listen, you basically have to say “shut up” to that voice and really listen, and it’s so, so important in a relationship. Your kids, parents, co-workers, enemies. Yeah, if more people really, really listened, it’d be a much better place.

Debbie Millman:

That’s part of the reason why I’m looking directly at you, but you’re allowed to look a little bit at the audience because unless I’m directly interacting with the audience, it becomes really distracting because I have to also not only monitor what I’m doing with you, but also hoping that the audience is enjoying it. It’s very hard to be able to hold both at the same time, and I also learned that my best interviews are when I am looking directly at the person. If I do remote interviews, which I rarely do anymore, I usually will listen back and think, why didn’t I ask that other question? How obvious, what a thing to have missed. It’s because I’m looking around and paying attention to other things, which you can’t help but do.

Robert Wong:

I have this thing, and I say I listen a lot. I’m horrible at actually remembering anyone’s names, and I think it’s because when I meet someone—I think most people do this in the first couple of seconds—and when they say their name, you’re probably spending a lot of time just looking, assessing, and your brain is actually doing all this other stuff. If I really care about what your name is, I generally always ask after we’ve had like a two-hour conversation.

Debbie Millman:

Tell me your name again.

Robert Wong:

Then you have the space and time to actually absorb it.

Debbie Millman:

As you were growing up, I understand you learned a lot about Western culture by watching television. What kind of shows were you watching?

Robert Wong:

The most blind best shows like “Gilligan’s Island,” “Happy Days,” “Brady Bunch”—it was just what was on TV. I’ll tell you one thing, when I grew up in Holland, we had two TV stations and [the] programs didn’t start until 10 o’clock or 9 o’clock or something in the morning, and it was only on Saturdays. So when I arrived to Canada, I was like, “when are the cartoons on the weekend?” “Cartoons on every day.” “Really? What are you talking about? Yeah, what time does it start?” “Oh, I don’t know, 6 in the morning.”

Robert Wong:

I remember the first Saturday, we didn’t have school. I was so excited to watch cartoons. 10 years old. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning, set my alarm. I went downstairs, and [was] like waiting, turn on the TV and they had Bugs Bunny and all that great stuff.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that even though your parents didn’t exactly discourage you from a creative career, in your family, that option didn’t actually exist. Why not?

Robert Wong:

So, my father was from that village. My mom was an immigrant from China. She never went to school. She started working when she was 10 years old, was a manager at a garment factory when she was like 13. She got paid $1 a week, I think, and she lived in a room with the grandmother and the room had like three bunk beds (so six beds, twin size) and they lived on the top bunk bed of one of the bunk beds, and everything—the rice cooker, everything—was there. So they came from extreme poverty, and my dad was in the village.

Robert Wong:

So for them, making money was the only thing that was a career. There was no other goal; there was no self-actualization, doing what you love—any of that stuff. It wasn’t until they actually sort of became middle class that I could even start thinking about that. Most people here are lucky enough that you grew up and you think that, yeah, you can pursue all these things, but my mom would tell me stories—like, instead of telling me stories about someone doing something really moral or with conviction, she tells us, “oh, and this billionaire did this.”

Robert Wong:

It was all about heroes who are capitalists. So the professions they know, because they were pretty ignorant, were like doctors, engineers, lawyers, accountants—and those are the professions I knew. So that’s why I actually studied accounting first.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. So we’ll get to that in a moment. You as an accountant. You believed when you were growing up that you couldn’t seriously pursue drawing because that was for people who didn’t get good grades?

Robert Wong:

Yes. I did think that.

Debbie Millman:

Tell us more about that.

Robert Wong:

Well, I did get good grades.

Debbie Millman:

So that’s why you couldn’t draw.

Robert Wong:

Yeah, that’s why I wouldn’t pursue art. Yeah, that’s right, but I just didn’t know that they were professions for people who drew.

Debbie Millman:

You were the first person in your family of any generation to go to college, and you began your studies at the University of Waterloo in Canada, where you enrolled in the master’s of accounting program. Why? Why accounting, as opposed to engineering or being a doctor or a lawyer?

Robert Wong:

I read that most of the CEOs in most companies—back then, anyway—came from a finance background, and I just wanted to be the boss, the top dog. Actually, the reason why I ended up in Waterloo, in high school you visited like three universities, or maybe just one college day. It’s crazy now, where your kids go to 20 schools. I had three schools in mind in Canada, and one was Western University, and it was known as the party school. For anyone who’s spending time with me, I like to party. Especially back then, I was like, I want to go to the party school, but I missed the bus to the party school party.

Debbie Millman:

Because you were partying?

Robert Wong:

No, I was too young to go partying, but for whatever reason—I
’m usually not late—I missed the bus to party school. I literally watched it take off, and in front of the high school, there’s another bus. I go, “I guess I’ll take this bus,” and I got on the bus, and like, where’s this bus going to? Waterloo. That was an engineering school, actually, very famous engineering school that a lot of Google engineers actually come from. We have an office there because there’s so many great engineers there.

Robert Wong:

Not only is it not a party school, but it’s like 1% women. That’s what I was thinking, to be honest, as a kid. That’s all I wanted to do. I want to go to this school, I can have fun, meet cute girls, and I got on this bus and I go, wow. OK, there’s no choice. There’s no other bus. I visited Waterloo and they had this program. It was a bachelor of accounting, but they have this very progressive program where you go to school for 12 months straight. There’s no summer, and you work for 12 months straight, and then school 12 months, and in five years—so three years of 12 months school and two years of full work—you get full paid.

Robert Wong:

You get a master’s degree, very progressive. … Maybe I was one of those nerdy kids that didn’t need summer or whatever. I thought that was so cool. And they had a very strong accounting program, and I was good at math. I said, “OK, well, let’s do that.” That’s how I ended up at Waterloo.

Debbie Millman:

At the job you worked at while you were in school, it was a top accounting firm. You worked on the 25th floor of one of the black towers in downtown Toronto, and I understand that you arrived every day with, as you put it, your little briefcase, wearing a suit. So, Robert Wong in a suit. What I would give for a picture of Robert Wong in a suit. He went to work in a suit every day.

Robert Wong:

Yeah, but you know what? It was like playing pretend a little bit, like, oh, now I’m a worker with my briefcase, but I was so excited about it. I had a stack of business cards—my first business card, I remember like, oh my God, I’m like an adult, but you were kind of a kid playing adult. No, it was kind of cool, and I do remember, I used to wear an earring. The day before I had to go off to an audit where I had to visit a client, my partner pulled me into her office and said, “Hey, Robert, but just one thing. Maybe take off the earring when you go tomorrow.”

Robert Wong:

I remember saying, “No, I’m not going to do that. They’re hiring us for our brains. What’s an earring?” So I refused to do it. She sent me off anyway, which is a testament to her, but even though I was playing an adult, deep down inside I was probably still a little bit rebellious kid.

Debbie Millman:

You said that very shortly after you started, you realized that you were falling asleep in classes and you’d been studying accounting for all the wrong reasons. What were the wrong reasons?

Robert Wong:

Someone once said, “people have three relationships [with] work.” One is a job, one is a career and one is a calling. A job is you literally—and there’s nothing wrong, no judgment against any of these three—you literally just have to get the paycheck to feed your family. And then the career is usually more ego-driven, where your self-esteem comes from. How am I doing? Am I progressing, did I get promoted? Am I doing better than the next person? A calling is where your work, what you do during the work, actually provides this deep satisfaction, or it’s just translucent to your being and you feel contempt doing that work.

Robert Wong:

I knew that accounting, auditing, even though I liked math, the day-to-day was not satisfying. And then I realized, well, I should try to make sure I’m not just chasing this profession so my parents could be proud of me. So I could afford to raise a family and not have to be like my parents, who never saw us because they had restaurants, and they basically … if anyone knows the restaurant business, we’re out of school, and they’re sleeping. They go to the restaurant at like 10 o’clock and they don’t come home till midnight.

Robert Wong:

By that time, I’m asleep. I saw them once a week. So I didn’t want that. I wanted to spend time with my children and the models—I knew from watching all the shows like “Happy Days” and “Brady Bunch”—was like, you have to get a job. You bring a suitcase and wear a suit. So that’s what I did. Then you start reading articles, and I tell you what, I think there was a Vogue magazine article about Marc Jacobs, who went to Parsons, and fashion design. I’m like, oh, you can do stuff that’s creative and make money and be famous.So now you know how shallow I really am. Be the boss, cute girls, fame and money.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve got it all now, right?

Robert Wong:

Yeah, but you know what’s interesting? I told my mom when I asked them, I said, “hey, is it OK if I quit accounting?” I’m probably proudest of that moment in my life of all the decisions I’ve made, because I actually wrote some GMAC tests and I was getting scholarships in the states for getting my MBA. I had to tell my mom that like, “hey, I think I want to quit accounting and pursue a more artistic career.” I think the only reason why I was able to do this … I don’t think I would have been able to do this at all if my parents at the time weren’t financially kind of doing well. So they were doing pretty well, and only with that could I have had the confidence to even have it in my mind to do that. Otherwise, I never would have done that.

Debbie Millman:

So you did, you went to Parsons. You sort of were following—

Robert Wong:

And my parents were very supportive too. I think that helped a lot. They … maybe because I was confident, they were confident. You know what, maybe my confidence also came from my mom. Actually, another story I totally forgot. When I was in Holland, 7 years old, my mom one day, I don’t know why—she probably had some horrible news that was happening in China that got her upset—she kind of kneeled down, eye to eye to me, and she said, “Robert, China is fucked up. When you grow up—”

Debbie Millman:

She used that word?

Robert Wong:

It was in English too. No. “When you grow up, you have to go there and run that country.” I’m like, OK. What a disappointment I am. So I think she fed me a lot of that confidence. She believed her little prince—I was the first-born, could do anything. Now that I think about it, I probably give all the credit to my mom.

Debbie Millman:

Good. I like that. You ended up going to Parsons. You started as a fashion major. Is it true that you realized you had no desire whatsoever to make dresses while you were in a draping class making dresses?

Robert Wong:

That’s absolutely true. Zero, zero. You have the id
ea of what something is. And then the reality sets in, and the first draping class—anyone [who has] done this, you get muslin and you have a mannequin and you start draping stuff and you start cutting. I’m like, I don’t want to do this. Then I realized, wait, I don’t even like clothes. I don’t even shop. I have like two pairs of shoes. So I’m not a fashion person whatsoever, but I was in—it’s a foundation year, which you do everything. Photography, illustration, fine art, color theory, and it was amazing.

Robert Wong:

I just loved every minute of every day at school, and I would spend hours and hours in the library, just eating up every photographer, every artist, every sculptor, reading. My whole life, even though I studied hard, I always wanted to be top of class. I’m very competitive. I just never dug that deep into education and self-education. Yeah, that’s why I kind of knew I had to do something in the arts, and the story how I got to be a graphic designer was, after freshman year you have to pick your major, and I remember sitting in the guidance counselor’s office, where you have to like tick your major and submit it.

Robert Wong:

This is now the last day I could pick my major. It’s like 4:55, I have five minutes. I’m staring at this card with eight boxes. Fine art, jewelry design, interior design, communication design, photography, illustration, blah, blah, blah, and I have no idea. I knew I didn’t want to do fashion design, but other than that, I had no idea. Everything sounded amazing. Then I just literally did crossing off. I love photography, but do I want to do it every day?

Robert Wong:

Then until communications, I didn’t know what that was. It seemed like, OK, that’s vague enough. It seems open enough. It seems noncommittal. That’s the one I ticked. So I became a communication design major at Parsons and then I show up, and the first year, first semester, you realize I’m dealing with type and kerning. I’m like, wait, I didn’t know that’s what this was. It’s amazing, at the end of the day, you’re in New York City. That’s the other bold thing.

Robert Wong:

It was like, I want to go to Parsons because that’s where Marc Jacobs went to school. I have to say, if I think back about how I got to where I got to, everything was not really well thought through or thought deeply through at all. It was just random, and you just try to do less of things you don’t like and try to do more of things you do like, spend more time with people you like, and spend less time with people you don’t like. And it was just feeling it through. It turned out pretty good.

Debbie Millman:

I understand that you had one of your first creative epiphanies while trying to buy an Oral B toothbrush.

Robert Wong:

OK, so this is the first semester, and I’m going to all these crazy classes, and I took—because I had all these undergraduate credits, I could take random classes—and I started taking an acting class. And it was the first time I hugged another man in my life.

Debbie Millman:

Not even your dad?

Robert Wong:

Not even my dad. So like, a lot of barriers are breaking. I was being liberated left right and center, and I was living at the YMCA at the time in a 6 x 10 little room, and I had this old toothbrush. I was like oh, I need a new toothbrush, and days go by and I keep on coming home, I forget to buy a new toothbrush. So I even did the thing of like, I’m going to throw the toothbrush away. So now be forced to have to buy a toothbrush, but a couple of days go by and I forget and I’m brushing my teeth with my finger.

Robert Wong:

Then one day as I’m walking home, I walked by Duane Reade and I remember, yes, I have to get a toothbrush, and I was so happy that I remembered. I walked in, walked to the aisle, and Oral B was my favorite, a 40 soft, and found the rack, and I’m looking for my color, black. Maybe clear, but they only had pink and purple ones. So I’m like, they didn’t have green, which was neutral, I thought. I’m like, ah, so I started walking out of the store, and not two steps out of the store, I realized, wait, why can’t I buy a pink toothbrush? That’s absolutely stupid.

Robert Wong:

It was an epiphany because I realized there’s so many things your mind traps you in. Boxes that it puts you in that are all made up. They’re not real, and when I realized that, I ran back in, I think I specifically went for the pink one, and I popped it on the counter. I was like beaming with self-satisfaction. I’m so enlightened, and I was staring at the cashier, waiting for her to acknowledge me with eye contact, and she kind of like New Yorked it.

Robert Wong:

She’s just waiting for next. I can remember, she was like, what’s wrong with you? I’m like, I’m buying a pink toothbrush. It’s a little celebration. I know that’s a tiny little story, but I think having those moments where you realize that whatever you think is real is not real—

Debbie Millman:

It’s a construct; we’re socialized to believe certain things, and different colors even in different cultures mean the opposite of what they might mean in the culture that you are brought up in.

Robert Wong:

Someone once told me this—I thought it was really cool and I might do it wrong, but it was a little story about the difference between Eastern and Western society. That while in Western society when you go to a funeral, you wear black, and Eastern society you wear white. Western society, you read from right to left, horizontal, Eastern society you right from right to left, vertically down, and you go, wow, yeah, those two cultures, they’re so different. Then story ends with like, it’s interesting though that also how similar they are, that both cultures chose the absence of color, and both cultures actually wrote. So it’s actually pretty interesting how different things are but how similar they are.

Debbie Millman:

They use symbols to scan for something else that you then had to process. I believe you graduated college in 1990. Here’s a mystery that I couldn’t find about you. You started at Frankfurt Balkind in 1992. What were you doing in [those] two years?

Robert Wong:

The first year I started at PolyGram Records because I thought I wanted [to design] album covers, but I didn’t really love it, and then I got a job a Double Space.

Debbie Millman:

I didn’t even know that. See. You have not [said] that anywhere. It’s nowhere on the internet.

Robert Wong:

Yes, [a] boutique little office in New York. Famous for Talking Heads album covers and stuff.

Debbie Millman:

Their famous self-promotions. They were both very glamorous and drape over each other and have these fabulous promotional pieces.

Robert Wong:

It was definitely my first real design studio. Everyone’s crazy. When you have to work late, they’d give you pot as a way to keep you there. But it was awesome. As a Canadian, you get one year of practical training in the U.S., and then after that you have to be offered a job to stay. They offered me a job, at one of my best friends at Parsons. Her name’s Christine Wong. She was a graphic designer and she was in Hong Kong, and she said, “Hey, Robert, come open up a design firm in Hong Kong with me.”

Robert Wong:

I’m like, OK, I actually want to get back to my—I felt, they call it “banana,” yellow on the outside, white on the inside—I wanted to feel what it’s like to really go back to Hong Kong and live that Chinese culture. So I went back and did that for a year, but I didn’t love that and I really missed, more than anything, I missed New York. So I came back to New York and was lucky enough to get into Frankfurt Balkind.

Debbie Millman:

That was a really hot job to get at the time. Robert and I met in 1992 at Frankfurt Balkind, where we both worked. Now you came in as a superstar. I came in as a reject. I was interviewed by Steve Frankfort, one of the partners, who thought I was adorable and hired me. Aubrey Balkind, the senior partner, didn’t think I had any talent. So he wouldn’t let me be a designer. He insisted that I work as an account director. I don’t know if you remember any of that.

Robert Wong:

I don’t think I knew that.

Debbie Millman:

So Aubrey hated me but he loved you.

Robert Wong:

Because he was an accountant.

Debbie Millman:

Exactly. Exactly. He was a math man. How did you first get that job? It was one of the hardest jobs to get in New York.

Robert Wong:

Portfolio. It was, I think—

Debbie Millman:

That’s what didn’t get me the job. He looked at my portfolio. No one’s ever been quieter, ever, having looked at my portfolio than he was at that time in my life. I actually thought I was going to die. He looked through my entire portfolio without saying a word, and then slammed it shut as if it were an annoyance, like a bug. Then was like, “Steve wants to hire you. But I can’t hire you as a designer.” Like, why not? “Because you’re not good enough.” So he hired Robert. You got my job.

Robert Wong:

You’re going there.

Debbie Millman:

So you were there for four years, and you left and then spent the next several years at what was the beginnings of the tech business. Did you have a sense at that time that this was going to be the future of design? You spent quite a few years in the tech business.

Robert Wong:

Yeah. It was a company called CKS. It was actually on the cover of Wired magazine as like the agency killer. It was started by ex-Apple head of marketing, ex-Apple creative director and ex-Apple engineer. So they were the first company that really bet on business design and engineering. So a lot of the solutions they had for their clients were tech based. So they saw me when they won the pitch for the worldwide packaging system for McDonald’s because they created a software program, that the design would automatically reshape itself to all the different regions, and all the legal requirements of how large the warning signs are or X, Y, Z.

Debbie Millman:

Wow, so they did it with an algorithm?

Robert Wong:

No, a lot of—back then everything was manually programmed. So that locally, in every country, the managers of those franchises could print stuff out. I like to say, I’m left-hearted, right-handed and center-brained, so that appealed to me. I love creativity, but like, “oh, that’s smart.” I thought, Oh, yeah, they’re going to have an edge. I remember saying, though, that I didn’t think their work was any good. My overconfidence, talking to the founder, Tom Suiter. The job was also [to] run a new office. So a chance to open an office and run a new office as the person, where the buck stops there.

Robert Wong:

So I thought that was compelling, but I remember saying—just how cocky and stupid I was, looking back I was such an idiot—I was like, “yeah, I would love to come to this company, but I don’t think the work’s very good here. I think I can help.” And he was like, “OK.” He’s still one of my dearest friends, one of the best people.

Debbie Millman:

You left there and joined Starbucks as their vice president of global creative. Now, given your long tenure at many of your other jobs, you only stayed at Starbucks for two years. What did you do there? And did you enjoy it?

Robert Wong:

So I was a consultant most of my life, and if anyone’s a consultant, there’s a part of it where you really don’t own the decision. You do a design or several designs, and someone picks, and if they pick the one you liked, it’s awesome. If they pick the one that you didn’t think was great, oh well, but you never owned a decision. You weren’t fully accountable.

Debbie Millman:

Unless you’re Massimo Vignelli and you only do one design.

Robert Wong:

I actually practice that now. That’s what I like now. I think going to the other side, you realize, oh, you have to really own that decision, and I think years and years of always having some … you’re not really accountable as a consultant. So I had to really learn that hard. And [the] second thing, too, is I’ve never been in the corporation, a company and department, and politics and all this stuff. I just was too young to understand how it worked, and a big mistake I made was I didn’t ask for help. I didn’t want to seem weak and ask for help. I think I should have asked for more help. My success in that job was kind of mediocre at best, and I missed New York.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I was going to say, quite a different environment. You went back to the agency side, where you worked in advertising for five years, and then went to Google. So you went back into that corporate environment, and I can only imagine that it’s far more political and bureaucratic at a giant place like Google than a coffee shop.

Robert Wong:

Yes and no. The lucky thing is that when they hired us, it wasn’t like, oh, we now need a branding group, or, now we need a. … They didn’t know what they needed. So we had a lot of freedom to do what we wanted, and so we were really stealth. We stayed small and my boss partner, Andy, he understood the whole thing too. So to us, we’re like, “OK, let’s just stay independent, be like a free radical in the company and just make sure we do stuff that has impact. Do great stuff that we’re proud of, and t
hat has impact.” So we still do that today. So actually, we’ve been, and because we have somehow lucky enough got a close relationship with the founders, we operated, sort of, not within any kind of structure.

Debbie Millman:

You said this morning in your presentation that when you first arrived at Google, you were the most insecure you’d ever been in your whole life, which, given the conversation we had at our reception dinner, I took really seriously. Like, wow, this is the first time he ever felt insecure. Really? Why?

Robert Wong:

Well, the people are really smart.

Debbie Millman:

Is it true that one in nine people has a doctorate?

Robert Wong:

Yes. One in nine people have a PhD.

Debbie Millman:

And your Honorary Doctorate doesn’t count?

Robert Wong:

Honorary doctorate, no, does not count. I didn’t get that till later. No, people are just really smart, really quick, and they’re all super type A, and they all went to Stanford and MIT and, literally, the brightest people. So it was very intimidating.

Debbie Millman:

You said that you felt that you needed to join Google because you didn’t want to trust the future of humanity to MBAs and engineers. Why were you worried?

Robert Wong:

Well, I don’t know. I don’t think I operate from worry as much as the opportunity that people from the creative arts could have on those companies. It’s a lot like I was talking about earlier about technology, but really it’s about human connections and how the humanity of things is really things that drive things, and how you feel about things will win. Whoever can design the stuff that makes people feel better and will win. Kind of the cocky side was like, you know what, Google is winning now but if they don’t increase their EQ, and increase their sense of humanity within the company, within the products, they won’t win in the future.

Robert Wong:

Someone who has all the parts—I’m not saying one part—like someone who has all the parts, the best tech, the best art, the best business, they will win, and that’s why I thought that we could actually have a real impact.

Debbie Millman:

Why didn’t Google feel like they needed a creative lab?

Robert Wong:

They didn’t.

Debbie Millman:

So how did it all happen?

Robert Wong:

Eric Schmidt, who was our CEO at the time, was on the board of Apple. So he saw what branding and marketing, impact and design, had on a company. Google’s kind of famous for just hiring the best people in any given field. There’s a funny story of our head of HR, [who] one time was having a conversation with Larry Page, being really frustrated because, “Larry, give me some guidance on who to hire, because you just tell me to bring the brightest people from any field, but like, that’s infinite. If I find the best forester in the whole world you’re not going to want them at Google.”

Robert Wong:

At which point, Larry [said], “the best forester, that’s interesting. That can be very interesting. So, that’s how they operate—just find the talent, and they trust that if they get talent, that the talent will figure out what to do. Because what they had was the infrastructure, the infinite computing power, the scale that could leverage any particular skill and turn it into business, turn it into something that’s useful to people’s lives. So they were like, oh, Eric was like to Larry, “we need us some designers and some branding people.” So they actually found me and Andy through Apple, because Apple, we did a lot of work for Apple at CKS, and that’s how they found us.

Debbie Millman:

I understand, though, that you tend to undersell your group’s expertise and branding at Google.

Robert Wong:

Well, expertise is not a good thing.

Debbie Millman:

So why do you try to undersell it? If they’re looking for the best and only want the best, why would expertise be a bad thing? And then why would you undersell branding?

Robert Wong:

OK, I’ll tell you why expertise is a bad thing. It’s Richard Walton, who wrote in the preface of information architecture book, “when you sell expertise, by definition, no matter how much you know, by definition, there’s a limit to what you know. Whereas if you sell understanding, it’s an infinite resource.” And I find that to be so true, because when you know stuff, that knowledge will always limit. When you know boys aren’t supposed to have pink toothbrushes, it limits your thinking.

Robert Wong:

So because we’ve had all these years of professional training, we understand the basic stuff. Then we can improve a little bit more. So I think that expertise can be a hindrance after a certain stage. First you have to build it up, but then I think it’s a hindrance and then you have to just listen, be attuned to stuff to find the opportunities. So I undersell branding because maybe my definition of branding is a lot of the professional, like Step A, Step B, Step 3 branding versus really branding, which is just what people think and feel about something.

Robert Wong:

So, obviously, I understand the power of branding, but no one wants to hear about that as a thing. I just make stuff and you show it to the CEO and go, like, “do you like this?” And he goes, “yeah, I like it,” and then it happens. Or you show them something, and they feel something and they go, “yeah, let’s put that on the Super Bowl.” So I think we operate and, actually, if you spend a lot of time with very senior people, the more senior they are, the less patience they have with any of that stuff.

Robert Wong:

You have a couple of seconds to go, like, “I like that,” “oh, that touches me.” So we skip all that crap, and constantly just focus all that time on making the artifacts that they could get excited about.

Debbie Millman:

Do you come up with the ideas for new projects, or are you challenged by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to answer specific briefs?

Robert Wong:

I think it’s a little bit of everything, but usually not specific briefs. Usually, when they come to us—“and hey, we’re playing around with this technology, can you come check it out?”

Debbie Millman:

Playing?

Robert Wong:

Yeah, and then you just check it out. They’re not asking you for a name or logo or anything. Then you just figure out what you should do for that technology. That’s one
side, and the other side is like, everyone at the lab is constantly getting excited about things. And then they come up with their own personal ideas. Usually, it’s a marriage of some new thing they discovered, something that they’re deeply passionate about already, and they kind of make a project out of it. As long as they also know, constantly keep in mind, OK, what’s the strategic value or business value or branding value of the thing, the project I initiate?

Debbie Millman:

How many ideas do you generally come up with in, let’s say, a year, that actually make it to market?

Robert Wong:

I’ve never really done the math.

Debbie Millman:

Well, then let me ask it a different way. How much of your work is rejected?

Robert Wong:

Oh, rejected by ourselves, because I think I would say that 90% of the work we make, 95% of the work, we reject ourselves. That’s a great, lucky place to be. A lot of places are like, “oh, the media is already bought,” or “we need to have the package out in a certain name.” Then no matter where you get to, even if it was mediocre or even crap, it has to be made, whereas we have the luxury of like, unless it’s great, unless you’re proud of it, we don’t show anyone that we did it. So most of it’s rejected that way. Then of the stuff that we’re proud of—

Debbie Millman:

So that 5%—

Robert Wong:

Of the 5% that we take out—either shopping around for, “hey, can you guys build this,” or “are you interested in building this or interested in collaborating with us to work on this?”—I would say a quarter of those become things. And some things we put on the shelf or in the drawer. Actually, in the drawer like this is a great idea. We love it. Let’s wrap it up, put it in a drawer, and a business issue comes up years later and we go, “oh, pull out the drawer,” and it goes through. So some stuff sits for years and then it gets made.

Debbie Millman:

What is the best example that you can think of, of something that sat in a drawer for years?

Robert Wong:

Well, even like Arcade Fire, that music video, HTML5 music video, we had the idea that we should have a Chrome music video, a browser-based music video, three years before we actually did it. And it was a mix of finding the right artist, a mix of the technology wasn’t quite good enough to do something really cool. That was one.

Debbie Millman:

What happened with Google Glass?

Robert Wong:

Sore spot.

Debbie Millman:

Sorry.

Robert Wong:

We worked on that. That’s one of those instances where the engineers were like, “hey, we have this thing.” Sergey was like, “hey, come check this thing out.” And he didn’t ask us what to do with it. He just was like, “come check it out,” and we named it on the spot then, because, “oh, it’s cool. It’s only one glass.” So instead of “glasses,” let’s call it glass and it feels like a platform. Because we already had Chrome, and then we went away and we made a pretend ad of the product as it was launched, a year-and-a-half later, through first person.

Robert Wong:

So it had UI in it and use cases and it was this maybe 90-second video. I think they released it online. And Sergey and the team, the Glass team, presented Google Glass, the board—the Google board with the working prototype, the business case and our video—and it got a standing ovation.

Debbie Millman:

You get a lot of those.

Robert Wong:

No, that was my first one, but the board clap is, “this is the future,” and after the meeting, Sergey brought his engineering team together and says, “you know what, let’s scrap everything we built. Let’s build that video.” They printed out the stills of our video, with the UX in it and everything, as a roadmap to what features they’re going to build, and how the UI is going to look. I didn’t know it. I heard the story a couple of months later, when one of the UX designers was like, “hey, Robert, I have to show you something. Come check this out.” He put the glass on me, like, it was literally our UI.

Robert Wong:

“Yeah, Sergey made us build your video.” And it was just all pretend. There was a motion designer, fresh out of school, who just made that up. So it was incredible. Of course it didn’t really work. So we actually then spent like a couple of weeks working with them to actually make a work in UX.

Debbie Millman:

When there is a failure like that in an organization, do you find, especially with something that’s fairly rare at Google, at least publicly—do you feel that it changes the feelings about how much risk you’re willing to take?

Robert Wong:

Even though it was a public failure, I think we just jumped the shark. It was not a mass-market product. We’re still working on it right now as more of an enterprise B2B thing. So factory workers can use it on the assembly line, et cetera. So I think it will come just like the Chrome browser music video; it might be years until the technology gets good enough or small enough that you can have good ID that you wouldn’t be embarrassed to wear. So in a way, I don’t see it as a failure. Maybe it was a public failure or a commercial failure, but I think we were more excited about the innovation part and what we made. And to this day, it’s the first augmented reality overhead device that actually worked. So we’re proud of that.

Debbie Millman:

You said that anyone that thinks technology is a key driver of innovation is kidding themselves. You said that this morning. If not technology, what is the key driver of innovation?

Robert Wong:

Well, as I said today, it’s human imagination. You may create—

Debbie Millman:

The heart.

Robert Wong:

Yeah, the human heart.

Debbie Millman:

Why do you think that that’s more important than technology?

Robert Wong:

Because we made up technology. Technology didn’t make itself. It’s humans that made it. I actually—Sundar, I love this quote he recently said in an interview. He said, “I’m a tech optimist,” because he talks about AI in everything. “I’m a tech optimist, not because I believe in technology, because I believe in people.” And I have the exact same feeling. It’s the people that drive everything.

Debbie Millman:

I don’t have enough time to ask you about more than one specific project. So I’m only going to ask you about one
that you presented this morning, which is your caption project. You really surprised me when you said that the telephone, the keyboard and email were all initially created for people with disabilities. I didn’t know that, and you showed how Google is now trying to take captions that we see on televisions into screens. So talk about how you’re doing that and when you think that’ll be fully deployed.

Robert Wong:

The science is way too complicated for me to understand. A lot of the best people in voice recognition engineering and machine learning model hardware building that can stick that on the vise. So it happens real time without having to go to the cloud and back. All that stuff is all very new technology, and I don’t think we would have even done this even two years ago. So the tech side is making it possible, and after that, it’s just once the tech is there, then it’s just a UX thing.

Robert Wong:

That’s when we, the team, worked and research and worked with the deaf and hearing community and realized it was really about, like, it’s another volume control—it’s like a mute button, but instead a caption button, and it’s pretty accurate. I don’t know, I should do a demo later, too, but it’s only going to get smarter and smarter. Right now, it’s only in English but I don’t know how long it’s going to take. To me, it’s like it should be in every language, but of course, there’s a lot of science that has to go into that. So [I’m] looking forward to that being in all the languages that Google translates in.

Debbie Millman:

I mean, this is really one of those moments in time where we see how innovation isn’t just making our lives better, but making our lives more possible in every way, and that’s, I think, the most exciting thing that innovation and technology can provide us now. I have one last question for you. This morning, at the conclusion of your talk, you shared a story about a little girl drawing a picture of God. And I was wondering if you can share that story again, with our audience, but also, for my listeners that didn’t hear it this morning. Because I think it’s really quite astonishing.

Robert Wong:

Yeah, it’s a great story. It’s a great joke, not mine, stole it, but before I even tell the joke, it’s about our ability to be able to make up anything, which is kind of the theme of my talk. And it’s a story about a little girl who was drawing in class, and the art teacher asked, “what are you drawing?” To which the little girl said, “it’s a picture of God.” The teacher says, “well, no one knows what God looks like.” To which the girl looks at her and beams and smiles and says, “they will when I’m done.”

Debbie Millman:

They will when I’m done.

Robert Wong:

They will when I’m done.

Debbie Millman:

Robert Wong, thank you for using design to make the world a much better place, and thank you for joining me today at this very special live recording of Design Matters at Design Indaba in South Africa.

The post Design Matters From the Archive: Robert Wong appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

When we think back to the Biden/Harris campaign and its visual identity, what did we see? On websites, campaign literature, television backgrounds and buses, we saw deep-blue backdrops, red accents, crisp, clear fonts and carefully crafted slogans. The imagery projected patriotism, competence and gravitas. Robyn Kanner gets a lot of the credit for this. She was senior creative advisor for the Biden/Harris campaign, and the creative director for the recent inauguration. Since the campaign, Robyn and three other members of the Biden/Harris creative team have formed their very own branding and design agency, Studio Gradients, and we’re going to talk all about that today. Robyn Kanner, welcome to Design Matters.

Robyn Kanner:

Hi, Debbie, how are you?

Debbie Millman:

Oh, I’m great. Thank you for asking. Robyn, I understand that you saw Janeane Garofalo at a party a few years ago, and the fact that you didn’t tell her how much you loved her in Reality Bites is one of your life’s biggest regrets.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

What was it that you liked so much about her performance? And why didn’t you go up to her?

Robyn Kanner:

I just think she’s such an incredible actress with a solid point of view. And that’s something that I have a lot of admiration and respect towards. I’m such a sucker from the ’90s in every way. Every piece of art that I’ve liked basically comes out of the ’90s, and she just played such an integral role, and so much art that I respected, including Reality Bites. I was at a party for Wildfang in Lower Manhattan, and she was there. And I just thought about going up and just saying like, “Hi, I like your work,” but sometimes I just feel like a nerd. Those events aren’t places to have deep existential conversations, they’re for quick moments, and I just didn’t want to have a quick moment.

Robyn Kanner:

I just was like, “I really respect and admire your work, but we’re in this different setting, so we’re not going to have that kind of conversation.” So I just didn’t say anything. And then, every time I rewatch Reality Bites, I go, “Damn, I really should’ve just said hi to her,” because, I mean, she’s just so fantastic in that film.

Debbie Millman:

Perhaps when this show comes out, we can get somebody to get a copy to her, and who knows? Maybe—

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah, just tell her I said “thanks.”

Debbie Millman:

… that’ll be in your future.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Robyn, you grew up in rural Maine in a pocket-sized town called Fairfield, population 6,563. In the summer, all the teenagers in your neighborhood would meet down at the Kennebec River to go fishing. And I understand your first job was bailing hay on a farm. Tell us all about that. Was it difficult work?

Robyn Kanner:

It was, physically and mentally, difficult work. Yeah. We had a family friend in Clinton who had a farm, and my mom was really set on me getting a job at a young age and really figuring out what life was all about. And so I bailed hay, I think when I was like 14 or 15, for like $5 an hour. I think what made it physically demanding was just the intensity of bailing hay. You have these rectangle hay bales; it’s the middle of the summer in Maine. The water that we drank was like the sulfur-y water, so, it wasn’t even like a crisp, like Poland Spring water.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, comfy water.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah, you just had these really hot days. And there were things that made it rewarding, which was, at the end of work, we would eat sandwiches on a porch. And that always just felt really nice to me, but it was mentally demanding because I was surrounded primarily around men, at a time in which I really had a hard time identifying as one, meaning that I wasn’t one. So it created these hard moments mentally where I had to compromise, which would be the coping mechanism of my youth.

Debbie Millman:

Your father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when you were 6 years old. And I read that when you were a kid, you worried every single night that that would be the night your dad died. How did you understand and handle his being ill?

Robyn Kanner:

Not well. Oh, man—

Debbie Millman:

If it’s still hard to talk about it, I completely understand.

Robyn Kanner:

No, it’s OK. I guess there are a couple of pieces to it. One is that there is a power dynamic between a child and a parent. And from a very early age, that shifted in my family in the sense that, mentally, my dad was more intelligent than me, he knew more about the world than me, he was more well-read than me, he had raised me. He had been my north star forever. And physically, from a very early age, there was a separation between us. He would walk with a cane, I wouldn’t. He would walk with a walker or he was in a wheelchair, and I wouldn’t. And it created a lot of tension in our relationship at a very early age. It was strange to experience loss so closely and intimately at an age in which I was too naive to understand completely what was happening.

Robyn Kanner:

So, I didn’t have the tools to take a step back and look at it at the big picture, I was just always trying to make it through the day. And I think my mom would probably say the same. When you’re in it, it’s a little hard to process and look at the full picture. But as I’ve gotten older, and taking a look back, the thing that really stays with me is how difficult it was for us to manage the power dynamic and our physicality.

Debbie Millman:

You were 6 years old when he was diagnosed, and you helped him and he was able to live at home until you were 17. You’ve written that your mom told you that your dad took a lot of his frustrations out on you, but you stated that you don’t remember much of it and that your memory is blank. Is that still the case?

Robyn Kanner:

It is, for the most part. When I was deep in addiction, a large part of why I did drugs, and a large part of why I drank, was to forget about the past. It just wasn’t something I wanted to have in my life. And I found drinking helped me forget it. The problem is, is when I got sober, I really wanted those memories back, and I couldn’t get them. And over the years, I’ve done things like deep meditation, really writing, focusing, honing in on the past, to try to bring it closer to me. But what I’ve come to realize is even when it comes back, it’s still through sort of a ros
y glass, so it’s hard to understand those memories as real, and it’s hard to be reliable about them.

Robyn Kanner:

And I think that is sort of a blessing and a curse in some ways, because I would really love to see that picture full and clear and crisp and understand it. But I’m not sure how helpful it would really be for me. My dad is such a north star in everything I do. I mean, he’s why I got into politics. I wouldn’t have done anything political without him. And I think that’s a better memory to hold onto than any negative things I can’t remember.

Debbie Millman:

I totally understand. And sometimes I feel like my life’s mission is to understand and try to recall my memories from the time I was 9 until the time I was 13. I feel like everything would make sense if I just could remember every single day and not have those sort of pockets of blankness that I try to fill up with ideas about those moments.

Robyn Kanner:

Sure. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Six years old was a very important year in your life—you not only found out about your dad’s illness, you’ve also written that this is the time that you began to realize that you were trans. And this is what you stated: “You know how kids describe what they want to be when they grow up, like a firefighter? When I was 6 years old, I said I wanted to be a woman when I grew up.” Robyn, did you share that with anyone? Was that what you told people when they asked you? And how did you feel about this realization?

Robyn Kanner:

No, I definitely did not tell anybody. I didn’t know much at 6, 7 years old, but I knew that wasn’t going to fly. What that really did was it gave me a secret, and I think in some ways, secrets are a good thing, but in some ways, they’re a really bad thing. And when I think about that, I think about how I lacked agency primarily, and how that lack of agency really pushed me into becoming a pretty intense introvert when I was young. And I really believe that the past has to be the past. There’s no changing the past, it just is. And when I think about gender and my relations to it, I guess I just think about how, I think, [inaudible] that my gender is mine, and in a time where I think that identities can sometimes become culture, and they can become really big, and they can be shared and owned by other people in some ways.

Robyn Kanner:

And I definitely fell into that trap in my 20s, but the work that I’ve done over the last few years was really just taking ownership over my own identity in a way that hasn’t been mine since it was a secret when I was 6. And as much as that can be isolating, it’s also nice to be able to control who I am a little bit more.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, it’s interesting how our culture somehow allows the sharing of opinions, thoughts, ideas about one’s body, about one’s relationship to their body. I was just reading the introduction to Julia Turshen’s new cookbook, and it struck me how much she felt that comments about her body were just accepted as she was growing up, and how much that impacted her and how she felt about her body, which was able-bodied and healthy, and yet, she felt that she was always less than because of how much she weighed. And just the idea that it’s acceptable for somebody to have an opinion on how much somebody weighs, let alone their gender, I mean, it’s just, to me, unimaginable to think what the world would be like if we didn’t do that.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah. I think in some ways, once you start to share stories about your identity, and this can be gender, it can be anything, it almost gives them agency to own a little piece of you.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

Robyn Kanner:

And I think when I was really young, I was completely unaware of how much of a misstep that is to let people have that, for a few reasons. One, I mean, you just get put into this box, like, everything about me for a few years was really tied into a neat and tidy box of being a specific type of trans woman. And I almost felt like it was for other people, because the conversations were so wrapped around their feelings on it. And it was hard for me to be crass and just say, “I don’t care. What you think of me doesn’t shift who I am.” And if that is the truth, then why do I even need to share this piece of me with strangers? And that sort of thinking caused a lot of rifts in my life, but it also freed me from this really tight glass box that I didn’t feel like I wanted to be in. It’s a little vague, but it’s—

Debbie Millman:

No, I completely understand. When I first came out, because I came out so much later in life, suddenly I had to be talking about my sexuality, which was something that I never talked about before then; it was always super private to me. And so, suddenly, with this announcement or this sharing of my sexual orientation somehow, it then became OK to ask about things that I never talked about when I was presenting as straight. So, I was really baffled and somewhat irritated and really intolerant of that in a lot of ways. It was nobody’s business, but suddenly, somehow, it felt like it was to other people.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah, “irritated” is the right word to use. And what I learned really over the last few years is it doesn’t matter what I do. Like, I look around now and I go, like, “OK, I helped win an election, I’m in the middle of writing a book, I just started an agency.” I have done all these things, and sure enough, the first question a stranger is going to ask me is, “So, you’re trans, do you have a dick?”

Debbie Millman:

Oh, fuck.

Robyn Kanner:

So, you just have to be like, “I helped win an election, how could you care?” But that’s still the first thing that’s on their mind. And if I let them have that conversation, then my identity is not mine anymore. It’s just a performance for you. And that’s just something I’m entirely unwilling to sacrifice.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. Let’s talk about your design career.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

After high school, you attended a community college and studied history; you then attended a film school in Bangor, Maine, for a semester; you then went to a liberal arts state college in Farmington, Maine, where you were accepted into the art program. When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer?

Robyn Kanner:

Somewhere in the middle of there, somewhere in the middle of there. I think that I was such a bad student. I mean, I barely graduated high school. I mean, I have no idea what my high school GPA was. I’m guessing it was somewhere around a C or a D or something. And getting into a community college, I did OK. In Farmington school, I did OK in there. Yeah, at school, I did OK. I think that at Farmington, I was getting wheeled into the direction of being an artist and thinking like one. Design is a pra
ctice that was looked down on in art school, and I really thought that success in design was going to cure a lot of the problems I had around gender or around my dad’s death.

Robyn Kanner:

It was going to fill this God-sized hole that was in me. And I made a lot of design work because of that. Design was more of a survival than a craft at that point. I don’t think I ever consciously thought to myself, “I’m going to be a great designer.” At that time, it was always, “I’m going to make design so I can get out of this area.” And when I dropped out of college, I could still get a job in design. Nobody really cared. So, I think for a while, I saw myself as a designer only to make something that helped me get to a different place, get to a different state, get to a different city. Just trying to get out of Maine.

Robyn Kanner:

It’s funny because now I don’t even know if I am a designer. I don’t think I am, because I don’t think of my work. Sometimes people will say, like, “Oh, you’re a writer or a designer.” I’m like, “Well, I’m just a person who can design.” I can take the trash out, and I can cook dinner, and I can call my mom. I’m all these things. I don’t need to be defined by the fact that like I’m good on a computer or good with composition.

Debbie Millman:

Well, you’re multifaceted. You’re definitely more of a polymath, with bylines in The New York Times and Wired. I mean, you’ve got so many outlets that I would hesitate to say that you’re just a designer. You’re a creative person who designs and writes and makes things and win elections.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah, it’s something I can do. I think about Donald Glover a lot. He gave an interview once with, I think it was somebody who was asking him about being a rapper, and told him, Glover was like, “I’m not a rapper. That’s so lame.”

Debbie Millman:

It’s so limited.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah. And I really adopted that theology for design. I’m just like, “I’m not a designer.” That’s just one outlet, that’s one medium. I want the whole world. I want to be able to make in everything.

Debbie Millman:

You’re also a photographer.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

And back when you were first designing, it was really in tandem with photography and creating images and branding really for musicians. Talk about that period of your life and what kind of work you were doing. You did like 50 or 60 albums covers, right?

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah. Those were the golden years.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Robyn Kanner:

I loved that time for a few reasons, one of which is how untethered I was to the world. I mean, I had been in Maine, really terrified about my own gender, really terrified about my dad’s death, really just afraid of the world. And when I got into music, I found all these weirdos that just like to make art, and didn’t really care about anything else.

Debbie Millman:

Art people.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah. And I loved them for that. Even in their sort of neurosis, they were still some of my best friends. I just loved being weird with people who were OK with being weird. I never had to hide myself from them. And I really appreciated their ability to tell story, because I wasn’t a kid who read a lot of books, I wasn’t a kid who watched a lot of film critically. I didn’t think of the world through that lens. But when I was friends with musicians and I’d listen to my friends like Stan and Chris, and Sean, and Dan, and Miguel, talk about writing songs, I just understood the craft of storytelling from a different lens.

Robyn Kanner:

I found its power in it and I wanted to just live in that power because it was so fascinating, the things that they could write, and the things that they could say, and the feelings that they could evoke from people. I wanted that ability to tell people what was going on in my body. Even if at that time I didn’t have the skillset to do it, I was really admiring them for being able to do it, and I was really learning from them too.

Debbie Millman:

You were working as a freelance photographer at First Avenue in Minneapolis, and on the night you shot Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, you wrapped up at about 3 a.m. and ended up having to walk home because you couldn’t afford a bus ticket. What happened on that walk home?

Robyn Kanner:

A lot of things. That whole night was absurd. Yeah, shooting at First Ave. was one of the most remarkable experiences because of the stories in that building. I mean, Prince’s Purple Rain was shot there, you have 7th Street Entry right next door. That sort of hub of Minneapolis is beautiful. And that was also the first time that I was outside of Maine and in a different city, and wasn’t really accustomed with the world. On that walk home, it was right around the time that I was starting to transition. There was a few dudes who were coming at me and they were clearly frustrated about my gender, and there was a scuffle that I was able to run out of.

Robyn Kanner:

And it really terrified me because I had just experienced this beautiful high—photographing bands, especially when you’re in your early 20s, in a photo pit, it’s like your heart is racing. It’s a remarkable moment. And you have a moment to really spend it in photograph and make art. And I was still in that headspace when I heard these guys behind me, and I had to so quickly leave that headspace and run and avoid a potentially really bad situation. And I just remember feeling very powerless in a way that I never wanted to feel again. And that night, I stayed up the whole time after I got back to the place I was crashing. I did a lot of drugs and I didn’t sleep. And I was really afraid of the world that I was very evasive to the people around me.

Robyn Kanner:

And I remember like a few days after that, I just got on a bus to Chicago and slept on a different couch for a week, and I had to really reevaluate how I was going to live in the world because I just didn’t have tools. When you’re growing up, it’s like you’re trying to build a home, but certain people have different sets of tools. I didn’t have a saw, I didn’t have a screwdriver. So, the ability to how to build a home without those tools was shifty at best. And I think about that night and I wish I wasn’t so embarrassed to be myself in that moment.

Debbie Millman:

It’s so hard to not feel embarrassment when you’ve been through the kind of trauma that you have.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

I think the natural instinct so
mehow is to blame oneself for whatever trauma is inflicted upon our bodies. And that situation in your life was really pivotal in terms of the decisions that you made about who you are. For a time, you detransitioned, and then made the decision to really make sure you were able to have access to the hormones that you needed. And at 25, you transitioned again.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah. It’s why I’m so obsessed with control. I mean, if there’s anything I’m obsessed with more than anything, it’s control. I like to be able to control everything about a moment, and I like to be able to control everything about a narrative. And I really believe in control, probably to an unhealthy circumstance. I mean, my therapist has called me out on this before, but I really don’t like to be in a position of vulnerability.

Debbie Millman:

Why would you? And it’s a least-favorite feeling in the world for me. I can’t stand it. I love certainty and predictability and being able to know exactly when things are going to happen, and when they’re not. And it’s really led to some unpleasant moments in my life because you can’t live that way, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah, no. I mean, it’s something that I’ve had to compromise and get over and work through. But when I think back on those times, I wish I had more agency, but I don’t scold myself for not. There’s not a part of me that is hard on me for not having agency at that time. It just sort of was the cards I had to play at the moment, and it all worked out in the end.

Debbie Millman:

… You went back to Maine after Chicago and basically talked yourself into one of your first jobs as a graphic designer—sort of proper jobs, I guess I would say, in that it was a full-time gig. And you got that job at Staples. So, talk about how you talked your way into that job. It’s such a great story.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah. So, I went back to Maine after Chicago, made a bunch of records, did that. And at the point in which I retransitioned, I realized that Maine was not going to be a place that I was going to able to do that. It was just impossible for me to land a job. In a really sort of crass way, nobody knew what to do with me, but the difference between that moment and the moment before was I was just so unapologetic about what was going to happen, that you were either on board or out. I was out of the room. And at Staples, it was so funny because I was working with this recruiter who had probably talked to like 30 of me a day. And with this job at Staples, I really wanted it, but it was going to require so much legwork.

Robyn Kanner:

It was in Framingham; I was living in Maine. I’d have to move to Boston, but I’d have to get a car, but I was broke. So, I drove this really shitty car. And there was all these sort of circumstances that made it hard to do, but I was just relentless in the pursuit. There was nothing that was going to stop me from being a designer for paper packaging.

Debbie Millman:

They asked you if you lived in Boston and you told them you did, right?

Robyn Kanner:

Oh, yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Classic Glengarry Glen Ross tactic.

Robyn Kanner:

I had driven down for this interview, and the recruiter had prepped me really hard on what to say, how to talk about it. And he was like, “You have to be living in Boston to work at this job. Grail, who’s the design manager, he’s going to ask you about it. You’ve got to know your stuff.” And so, what I did is I Google Mapped just a neighborhood in Boston and the Staples HQ, and I memorized that route. So, when I did the interview, it was smooth, it was good, it felt right, and then in the elevator on the way down, Grail was like, “So, where do you live?” And I had it memorized. I had the Google Maps memorized in my head. I was like, “I live in Brighton and I took Route 9, traffic wasn’t that bad. I stopped at the Whole Foods.”

Robyn Kanner:

I gave him such specific detail, because I’d memorized the Google Maps route. And when I left, I got the call back that I got the job and I found an apartment immediately and left Maine immediately and started working at Staples. I mean, I can’t tell you how intensely I was all in on Staples. And I’m so grateful I did. I mean, I met the most incredible people. Grail taught me so many things about being a person and being a designer. It was just a remarkable period of time. But when I think back on it, I’ll never forget the anxiety of being in that elevator, just running through the Google Maps route in my head. Really?

Debbie Millman:

And I love it. I love that you said new stuff there. One of your next big jobs was as an art director at Amazon. And so you moved to Seattle and you stayed at Amazon for nearly two years. And you said that the work there took a toll on your brain in a different way. And I was wondering if you can talk about how and why that happened.

Robyn Kanner:

Yeah. There were a few reasons. The biggest one was, in Boston, I was working through active trauma, and in Maine, I had active trauma. And I wanted to get so far away from that trauma that I moved as necessarily as far as I could away from the East Coast, which was Seattle, WA. So, when I was at Amazon, that’s when I first got a therapist, so I was starting to process the past. I was also taking on a different world. I hadn’t grown up. I lived off the state growing up. We were on Medicare and Medicaid, and the majority of jobs I ever took was sort of low-income things. I’d never had money in my life.

Robyn Kanner:

And I got to Amazon, and I was in Seattle, and at that time, working at Amazon was almost this golden ticket—like the things that I never imagined doing, like buying a couch. That was such an archaic concept to me, because I just assumed I’d never be a person who owned a couch. It just didn’t feel like it was in the cards for me. So, there were all these sort of personal things that were happening. I was grappling with the past, I was grappling with finance, and also still grappling with the work. Amazon is such a data-oriented place. You don’t make decisions off of intuition for the most part, you’re making decisions based off data that exists from books and design system that have existed for years.

Robyn Kanner:

And it really shifted the way I had to think about design entirely. And it also shifted how—I have worked in a corporate environment, and either had to tone down parts of my eccentricities or figure out a way to manage them with being inside.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said you’ve been on two interviews in your life, one was with a theater company, and the other was with Facebook, which, at the time, you felt would have solved all your problems and would have allowed you to feel successful. So, how did you bond in the interview? What happened?

Robyn Kanner:

The Facebook interview was, it was such a remarkable
experience. And it was remarkable because I’d never done an interview that was eight hours long.

Debbie Millman:

Whoa.

Robyn Kanner:

Facebook interview was like a full day. They fly you out to Palo Alto, they put you up in this really fancy hotel, and you’re in their house for the most part. And I was broke while I was interviewing at Facebook. I mean, I remember landing in Palo Alto and being in one of the richest cities in the world, and going to a 7-Eleven and buying peanut butter and bread to make sandwiches in this hotel before this interview. And so, I was already in this headspace of like, I’m feeling out of my league and feeling overwhelmed, and feeling like I wasn’t going to fit in. And throughout that interview, predominantly talked to a lot of white dudes and a lot of cis dudes.