It's Funny 'Cause It's True.

The Don Draper Privilege

he late, great Lou Dorfsman once said, "there's no such thing as boring design projects, just boring designers." Don Draper underscored this sentiment in the last season of Mad Men when he said, "a lot of creatives will tell you clients get in the way of good work...that's never been my experience" — a not-so-subtle jab at creatives who find their best intentions at the mercy of The Client — and a not-so-subtle pat on his own back. It's as if these two men—both of whom were creative directors in the '60s (albeit deceased and fictional, respectively)—believe that if a client undermines the direction, process or concept you've presented, it wasn't a strong enough idea to begin with. Surely no client could ever resist the genius of Don Draper! (No, really.)

But in design today, these cut-and-dry notions become much more complex. What Dorfsman was innocently trying to say, of course, was that every project a designer is given should be approached with a sense of freshness and importance, no matter how mundane it may seem. He worked his way up to become Creative Director and Vice President at CBS, no doubt in some part due to this enthusiasm for his work, and I heartily commend that attitude. But like many things that have changed between then and now, a positive approach or great presentation is often not what creates fantastic outcomes, or even excellent and efficient processes. The design industry has grown since then — for one thing, '60s art departments were not subject to the veto power of marketing teams. More significantly, clients and all those other people we answer to are much more aware of the design process — in that any marketing associate may feel comfortable making the statement, "make this change so I can see what it would look like" because they believe that changes, by way of them being instant and digital, are easy to make. Designers who must adhere to these whims are then forced to go against another great piece of design advice: never show them an outcome you don't want them to choose. Further, marketers often tend to address form over conceptual continuity, so the process gets reduced to their aesthetic preferences. When this happens, the client will almost always win.

Without the proper internal structure to prevent this kind of back-stepping — i.e., a good creative director who funnels creative "feedback" through himself or another designer before offloading it to the project's designer, work suffers. And designers eventually stop fighting for better work.

I remember in the first years of Speak Up, a lot of the site's community grew from frustration with Design Observer; many designers finding D.O. too self-referential, too elitist, too New York, and without regard to the "realities" of the design industry as a whole. And I could see where they were coming from — and in fact for awhile was a pretty active commenter on Speak Up — while also cherishing the ideals Design Observer set forth. It reminded me of something our department chair in art school said once, when asked by a student why we weren't given assignments to design brochures. He said, "you'll have plenty of time to design brochures when you're working; at the very least let's try to aim higher than that." And that seems to be what Design Observer offers us: the aspiration to think more and design less, and politely not being the place to vent about crappy clients or slashed budgets.

We are not all Michael Bierut or Paula Scher. But it doesn't mean we don't aspire to work like them, in an environment like theirs, where energy is spent on good thinking and fruitful collaboration, rather than arguing for the role of design to begin with. That can be exhausting, and it certainly doesn't promote creative growth. And who wants to stick it out long enough to be in charge at a place where one's work is constantly undermined?

Draper, Dorfsman and other creative directors have the privilege of thinking and growing. We look to people in their positions to defend the roles of the designers 'beneath' them too – even those who don't work for them. But what else can we do? My friend Tait started an excellent community for those just starting out, called Junior, which among other things helps unite lost-soul graduates by articulating and demystifying the creative process. This happens often via interviews with, and advice by, creative directors — easing the transition between school and work.

For everyone in the middle, staying creative and articulate means constant self-education and examination. It means not getting mired in office politics, and it means being open to criticism of one's work. It also means putting yourself out there, with the assumption that the more you do this, the more you will get back. It is a bolder position to take when you don't have the authority of a Creative Director, but at least it's the path that will lead you to it.

Street Art Takeover

ou may have seen articles the past couple of weeks about Public Ad Campaign, an organization that brought together artists and activists to reclaim some 20,000 square feet of public space from illegal advertising.

Along with white-washing eight sites, here is what I contributed.

Crimes, they are a-changin'

've begun several posts defending the importance of 90s graphic design, but never finished them because they've grown into wild and rambling tomes, attempting to bridge too many subjects. The latest attempt got close, and then Ellen Lupton went and wrote a piece for Print Magazine that sums it up much better than I could. Go read it.

I've been a designer long enough to recognize that fastly-held beliefs as to what is and what is not aesthetically appropriate tend to wane over time. While there are tons of type crimes I consider Never Okay, I still believe that a really good designer can make most things work as long as they address a concept.

That said, I was just flipping through Jan Tschichold's The New Typography, realizing I've never read it through, when it occurred to me that I probably never finish it because the type in my edition is ugly and incredibly hard to read. My paperback edition was printed by University of California Press in 1995 and the notes on the design in the back read:

"The text was set in 7.75 Imago Light Extended with 11.6 point leading. The typeface was revised by extending its overall set widths by 112 percent; character spacing was expanded to a Quark XPress tracking value of 16. Display fonts were set in Frutiger Ultra Black with a tracking value of 19."

In other words, they horizontally stretched a font that was probably too light to begin with, set it small and with too much leading, then fully justified the paragraphs. That's...like, impossible to read. Also, Goudy was the one who personally insulted anyone who would think of letterspacing lowercase, so it's not just my beef.

So I'd like to clarify that 90s typography was not a particularly great result. It was its transparency of process and its exploration of expression that was a necessary juncture in graphic design. It was messy, but messy in the way a desk covered in art supplies is — gratifying.

Graphic Designer/Customer Service

hate this crap.

Printing company seeks graphic design/production person to work with customers on their printing jobs. Deadline-oriented, great customer service skills & punctual. Must be proficient in Quark, InDesign, Photoshop & Illustrator. Salary: under $35,000

Shouldn't job outlets like Media Bistro (where this listing was found) be a bit more discerning? It is insulting to our profession that they would support a company's assumption that graphic designers double as customer service representatives. It's not only an example of a company that places little value on design; it's also a company trying to get two jobs out of one person, for the price of one low-paying position.

It can only end badly: the people who would apply for this job are either administrative assistants who may have learned some software and therefore feel qualified to be designers — thus contributing to more crappy design in our environment; and then there are the recent design graduates who are desperate for work in an economy that isn't hiring people with no experience. So you've got new designers who may well be really great juniors, second-guessing their own self-worth and thinking, well, at least it's a design job.

Tsk tsk, Media Bistro.

Institutionalized: The Loss of the Library

New York Public Library on 135th Street, Harlem

erhaps because — like the post office — the library was an institution I embraced as a child, I feel compelled to defend it; like defending books in a Kindle-loving world. I love that nearly every town in America — and most of the Western world — has a library. It seems like one of the few commonalities we can have with cultures that are otherwise totally different from our own. Early on libraries obviously filled a community need to educate outside of children's schools. They became natural meeting places and universally-accepted quiet zones. They became public venues for thinking. Imagine that! These days there are very few places you're allowed to go for free. Everything has to be sold. While research largely no longer needs to be done within libraries, it doesn't negate the importance of these kinds of spaces.

New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue

Libraries also make a big difference in how a person discovers information. Nearly every project I start for a client begins at the library. I can wander in, plop down on the floor in front of a section that looks interesting, and browse. Browsing in a library is nothing like browsing on the internet, because your leaps of what to look for are not coming from within. The library has curated this process for you.

For example, I was designing a book cover last year for a textbook on Punishment & Sentencing, which isn't exactly my area of expertise. I cruised through crime, and law and some vaguely ominous prison books before my eye wandered to the next shelf perpendicular, which held the large art monographs. I picked up a book on Louise Nevelson, another childhood favorite, and began reading about her theories of space and confinement, and her explorations in monochromatic texture. I was immediately drawn to these notions as being illustrative of the criminology book. I checked out the monograph, plus several other possible references (for free!) and made my way home to get to work.

Even the freight entrance is lovely

People pay a lot of attention to how we get to the content of things, which is why Kindle has so many supporters. The problem for people like me is that visual people need visual stimulants in order to successfully retain information. I remember what I've read and can access it later in my mind because I am always conscious of how the words looked on a page. I think about books I've read and in my mind I pull up an image of my bookshelf and scan it for help in research. And even while web sites may be designed differently, with different colors and fonts and simulated textures, I don't necessarily recall my Firefox history because it isn't something I walk by in my house every time I go to the kitchen.

A library somewhere on the Upper East Side, New York

Even though the libraries here in Harlem are pathetically under-resourced (I've vowed to donate all of my art books to them in my will, if libraries still exist when I'm dead) I do love that they're still these welcoming, warm spaces. At least people can look for jobs, or use the internet, or sprawl their books over the vast old tables and read with good lighting and high ceilings. I am a bigger believer in needing good space to study in; while libraries have lots of things to look at, they are remarkably devoid of distractions like low light or television screens. Such is the nature of their design.

To bring up Kindle again, one of the biggest flaws I find with it is that it doesn't address any specific brief for readers — its invention was a way for publishers to cut costs, not to offer advantages to consumers. I doubt there was an overwhelming number of people who said they needed to have a selection of 10,000 books with them for their commute to work, or people who said they would read more if only they didn't have to turn pages. All that technology and hype, and each "book" is only a few bucks cheaper than the real deal in paperback.

I realize I tend to sound like an old curmudgeon when I write about these things, but I just think so much of this is short-sighted. Libraries and books have hundreds of years of thinking behind them. The legacy of these beautiful buildings quietly shows that.

Accepting my first design award at age 11,
for a bookmark design contest at my local,
The Baldwin Public Library

Outside My Window

orking from home has its perks — a fridge, pajamas, all of my books — and its downsides — isolation, complacency, sloth, procrastination. I've found that I have the ability to work both tremendously well from my lovely home desk as well as tremendously badly, depending on my mood. But the biggest factor seems to be that days when I don't go outside before 3pm generate the most boring work. So I've now vowed to go for an hour-long (at least) walk once per day. It gets my blood flowing, my thoughts churning, and I get to explore the streets of Manhattan.

Here are some snaps I took during yesterday's walk, from my house in Harlem down to 82nd and Broadway.



This doorway was so wonderfully textured, and I couldn't help but wonder whether these types of individual small businesses even have a chance of surviving anymore. I know I try to support small and local businesses as much as I can, but I also know that big companies consistently undercut mom-and-pop prices, rendering them unable to compete.

I just thought this was funny.


And is this a District 9 thing?


Some buildings along Marcus Garvey Park:


Pretty script.



Central Park North:



The Children's Aid Society Logo:



I've seen a lot of logos emulating this as of late. The sort of 3-D-Lego-Rubiks-Cube look, only I've seen it most recently as a system for lettering. I'm not a huge fan of the recent stuff as it smacks of trendiness and doesn't seem like it will have much longevity. I did a quick look around for the history of this one, to no avail. But I'd guess it's from the 80s, and the building block nature of it, and being two-color, gives it some relevant heartiness.

This amazing Art Deco theatre on Broadway is for sale...



Next post: LIBRARIES.