I can still remember the Saturday afternoon I discovered Speak Up. I spent hours reading the archives. I felt as if I had come late to a party — casual, good natured, sometimes a little rowdy — but it was filled with people who weren't afraid to be passionate about graphic design and weren't afraid to, yes, speak up about that passion. I felt right at home. There was so much I didn't know then. I really didn't know what a blog was, exactly. I didn't know that I would meet Armin and Bryony and end up working with Armin for two wonderful years. Nor did I know that some of the other names I read on Speak Up for the first time would become colleagues and, eventually, friends. And of course I didn't know that one day I'd help start another blog, one that for a long time would be unfavorably compared to its predecessor.
There was so much I didn't know that afternoon six years ago. Thanks to Speak Up, there is so much I've learned since.
And so it goes.
Whatever one can say about Speak Up it is undeniable that the effort put in by Armin and Bryony to create this forum is commendable and exemplary. The work involved in keeping up a public forum such as this must be overwhelming, and they did it with a combination of professionalism, spunk, wit, and pure passion for graphic design, yet without any significant monetary compensation.
We all love the internet, not only because there you can find great information and entertainment, but because you can get it often for free. But free is not a simple function of the internet. It's people like Bryony and Armin who do all the hard work and who make it the great place that it is. And by putting Speak Up to rest it will be just a little less great.
Wishing you all the best in your future ventures.
Truth be told, I said my own good-byes to Speak Up a few years ago. Things change, people change, places change ... but in its time and place, Speak Up was both a groundbreaking forum for design, and a formative part of my current career. It's hard to imagine now that Speak Up was once the only blog devoted to graphic design, and that it was influencial enough to shake some timbers in the American design establishment, and forge some careers. Blogs are everywhere now; there are so many all chattering away that it's hard to concentrate from the din. And while we made a lot of noise on Speak Up from 2003–2006, we were, for a while, the only noise.
"Noise" is what many would have said of the discussions, arguments and brawls that took place during that time, and while much has been made over what was or was not publishable or valid, there is no doubt in my mind that Speak Up opened doors previously nailed shut, broke down walls, and looked into cupboards and under floorboards. The discussions which happened there opened things up between the major players in design and the single practitioners, and created a previously unheard of environment to openly question the how and why of the way we practice design.
I have said it many times before, I will say it again: Speak Up was not an online journal with commentary: it was a place for gathering. The articles written were never meant to be definitive or pedantic: they were like bones tossed to the crowd, and it was the ensuing discussion which contained the meat. That discussion was sometimes informed and erudite, often funny, frequently embattled, sometimes ascerbic, and yes, silly or just plain stupid. But we were there for the experience, not for the result. In 2005, Speak Up was my local speak-easy where I went to meet my best friends, laugh and brawl late into the night. And all done on local time, with people scattered all across North America and sometimes the world. In this, I miss it.
I was an author for Speak Up because it gave me an opportunity to write about things that would help others see the world a little differently. I started as a brat, with caustic critique, and moved into more playful modes of writing. As time went on, I spent more and more hours on my posts, and I frequently wondered why I was "wasting" so much time on this endeavor. It's only in retrospect that I realized that my presence on Speak Up is probably responsible for half of my current success in the design world. I wrote and people noticed my name; many of my friends now first heard of me or read me on Speak Up. This was most certainly a case of doing the right thing, in the right place at the right time. Speak Up was those three things in a way that is just not possible today, a mere 3 or 4 years later. I owe it a lot.
Thankfully, this eulogy is not for Armin & Bryony, those bravesters who started and maintained the site for so many years. Another testimony to the site is that real friendships were formed, and I hold them close, A&B, along with Debbie Millman, Tan Le, Mark Kingsley and others who I never would have met otherwise.
So this is the death of Speak Up. While a digital archive lives on (and I encourage you all to peruse it and read the articles and ensuing discussions), the speak-easy become a diorama of a speak-easy. There we all are, frozen in time with glasses and fists raised to each other and to you, our audience behind the glass.
p.s. Will the REAL DesignMaven please stand up?
Listen to song before reading Commentary.
Beginning Title Song, Where Every Knows Your Name, by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo.
Alternative websites, one and two.
When Arm initially asked me to write a Eulogy for Speak Up, April 2, 2009, I thought it was an April Fools joke.
I murmured to myself. I wish it were Brand New getting the axe not Speak Up. (Private Joke)
Thinking to myself what to expound on. I decided not to write a Eulogy on Speak Up, per se. Instead immortalize Speak Up in discourse, with Saul Bass Design and song. Both Design and song by different Artist. Indeed appropriate for Speak Up Condolences.
It's difficult to fathom and accept the notion Speak Up is Dead, rather in a coma on Life Support.
In brief, Speak Up was as much a part of my family and life in the five (5) yrs or more I participated on a daily basis.
Speak up nearly destroyed the fabric of my family.
My wife and kids accused me of devoting more time to Speak up than my Identity Practice and family.
Waking up every morning to read the Editorials. Spending the remainder of day(s), week(s) 24/7 posting comments, debating comments, and editorial content between author, patrons, and Design luminaries.
At the same time, providing research, to include visuals and discourse to support commentary was equivalent to Olympic Triathlons, Iron Man Competitions, Mosh Pits and Heavyweight Championship Bouts, such as, The Fight of the Century, The Thriller in Manila, and The Rumble in the Jungle.
Not all confrontational disagreements were civil, clean or governed by good sportsmanship. Someone was bound to hit below the belt, through a sucker punch or an audience member playing signifying monkey.
There always wasn't a recognized winner.
What was certain, should you survive a grudge match; you and your combatant gained a mutual respect for each other.
In some instances disdain for each other if no common ground was reached.
If no common ground was obtained, you became bloodthirsty bitter enemies until your issues were resolved, either by talking offline or mutual interest of like-mindedness in a future Editorial.
My fondest memories of Speak Up are the beginning circa 2002. I was writing on another Identity website which pre-date Speak Up, by a year and several months, Brand Channel.com.
In the beginning, Speak Up was unknown to the masses sort of a cottage Design Blog between friends and acquaintances.
The beauty of Speak Up then, there was always interesting discourse and good conversation related to Editorial content.
2002 you could find Design personalities such as, Nick Shinn, Norbert Florendo, and Hrant H. Papazian amongst others contributing to Speak Up.
An aside, credit where it's due:
Those unaware, Hrant H. Papazian is the most Famous and Renowned Design blogger in History.
Whatever reason, I'm generally mistakenly credited as number 1. It's Hrant H. Papazian.
Always has been, always will, as long as Hrant continue to write.
Historically, I rank amongst the top 5.
I write very long commentary of factual information.
Hrant write short commentary of factual information writing on several Design Blogs in a day, as many as five (5) often more.
Hrant always signed his commentary at the end, hhp in lower caps.
I knew that was unique. I borrowed his signature style ending my commentary with Bold Caps DM and added an italicized slogan making my moniker more unique and memorable.
Nick, Norbert and Hrant found their niche providing research and writing on Typophile, typophile.com.
Typophile is an Eminent Design Blog devoted to Typography; never receiving the Kudos and Accolades it deserved.
Typophile is Superior to Speak Up on many levels in reference to Civility and Respect to fellow Designer(s). Albeit, being a better moderated Design Blog in tolerant to Blaspheme and Desecration.
Do I have any criticism of Speak Up?!
More an observation than critique, Speak Up became too BIG too FAST. Receiving an enormous amount of Publicity, Notoriety and Fame publicly critiquing 1st Tier Corporate Identity in an online public forum.
The 1st Design Blog to undertake such a monumental task. Which put Speak Up on everybody's radar and entry into Design History books.
We didn't always get it right in Editorial Content or commentary. Plenty of things were written wrong/commented wrong.
That's the learning curve, process of success governed by failure.
Without failure learning from past mistakes and acknowledging mistakes there's no progress.
Ultimately, we were correct more often than wrong with a ratio of 75% – 25 %
In the midst of Speak Up's Success and Epicurean Lifestyle. No single moment of disaster brought Speak Up to it's knees as the departure of Tan Le.
Speak Up was never the same without Tan Le.
Once Tan Le moved on. Armin operating without Tan was like Sam without Dave, Batman without Robin, Acroyd without Belushi, Cagney without Lacey, and Led Zeppelin without Drummer, Jon Bonham, World Greatest Drummer, Bar None. Jon Bonham put the Ledin Zeppelin.
It’s a known fact Armin and Tan, THE DYNAMIC DUO were the best Good Cop / Bad Cop routine in Design Blog History.
If this is truly the end of Speak Up, I'd like to make a suggestion to The Powers That Be.
Take the BEST of Speak Up, B A Design Group, and Typophile and discuss MERGER!!!!!!!!!!
Larger audience, more topic discussion, more Global Presence and interest in Design.
More Diverse Sponsorship.
I don't BLOG anymore. Haven't blogged in over a year.
Except the rare occasion I posted a comment on another Design blog searching for material I'd written. Couldn't resist writing commentary on the passing of Lou Dorfsman.
Furthermore, commenting on wrong information provided by a noted historian on Art, Illustration and Design, Correspondence Schools.
Other than those two (2) instances, My life is Blog FREE!!!!!!!!!!!
Merging, Speak Up with B A Design Group and Typophile seems like the RIGHT THING TO DO on MANY LEVELS.
Speak Up / Typophile / B A Design Group has a nice ring to it. It's Functional.
To The Powers That Be, Heed the Message!!!!!!!!
Greener pastures lay beyond Speak Up for the truly gifted and unique.
Armin and Bryony left Chicago for New York. Arm was employed by Pentagram. Bryony employed by Addison formerly known as Soyster & Ohrenschall one of the largest Corporate Identity Consultancies in World.
Tan Le, became Design Director at Seattle Landor. Continue to give me nightmares until this day, according to my wife and kids. :-D
Michael Surtees, moved from Canada to find his fame and fortune in New York.
Marian Bantjes, of Canada has become media darling of the Design Industry.
DesignMaven, was not an author of Speak Up. Nevertheless a cast member of Speak Up ensemble. Similar to Richard Pryor's appearances on The Original, Saturday Night Live with Gilda Radner, Jane Curtain, Lorraine Newman, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Dan Acroyd, and Chevy Chase.
Not one to neither talk about my Design Career nor divulge information concerning my success.
I'm more interested in singing the praises of others.
The fruits of my labor writing on Speak Up have garnered enormous opportunity in Corporate Identity, which wouldn't have happened without exposure on Speak Up.
Speak Up was indeed the place Where Everybody Knows Your Name.
Admittedly, It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday.
BONJOUR SPEAK UP.
WE CONQEURED THE WORLD.
Most important!!!!!!!!
Armin Vit made me Famous.
DM
The Hostile Takeover of Corporate Identity
End Title Song, It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday, by G.C. Cameron
The two (2) songs I selected, Beginning Title and End Title songs surmise my feelings for Speak Up. The lyrics alone aren't enough. You MUST listen to the in lyric accompanied by music.
Most Baby Boomers already know the songs via Cheers sitcom or radio and/or Cooley High in reference to G.C. Cameron.
Listening to the songs you'll get the Genuine meaning relating the songs to the untimely Demise of Speak Up and my commentary on the Demise of Speak Up.
Cheers Theme Song. Where Everybody Knows Your Name, lyrics by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo. |
End Title Song by G.C. Cameron |
Goodbye to Speak Up. In spanish and english.
Goodbye to the good diner in our neighborhood. With the long counter and the regulars who like talk.
That was the truth of the place, framed on the wall: don't just sit here, say here.
The comment status beckons you: Laugh, cry, discuss, listen, share. And now finished. As of this writing, I still deny the fact that Speak Up will come to an end. Armin has repeatedly told me, This is not an April Fool's joke. Who knows when the skeptic in me will accept this. Moreover, how will I fill the empty void that Speak Up will leave behind?
I am indebted to Armin & Bryony for the great opportunity they provided me as an author, but I acquired so much more as a reader. Speak Up introduced me to amazing work by talented people; challenged my perspectives on visual culture; and changed the way I thought about design. At the turn of the century, few websites connected you with designers from around the world, allowing dialog to happen instantaneously.
But now you can generate sites and easily publish on-the-fly posts from your computer or your smart phone. Today's website morass has topics ranging from design to typography to socks, even typography designers' favorite socks. With so many of us morphing from readers to writers to bloggers to twits, perhaps this is the perfect time for Speak Up to call it quits. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to finish tapping a 160-word review about my new Gene Meyer socks into my iPhone, and then I'm off to connect with a design group on Facebook, who invited me via SMS.
Things just won't be the same. I will miss Speak Up.
I'm a fan of Speak Up and will be sad to see it put to rest.
I've been using Speak Up as my home page when I log onto the internet since… well I can't remember when. Over 5 years at least. And even though I don't post often, it's the first thing I see when I go to my web browser and so I'm reading and enjoying it every day. I don't know that I'll be able to find another site that will truly replace Speak Up. Other sites didn't quite have the same energy, humor, diversity or je ne sais quoi. Part of the attraction for me was the diverse authors that contribute to Speak Up from all over the United States and abroad. It was the place where I cyber-met some great designers who could also write: Mark Kingsley, Debbie Millman and Marian Bantjes are high on my list of people I respect (I would mention Bryony but don't want to appear like a suck up). Speak Up also reacquainted me with my old friend Tan Le. Even though we live in the same city, Speak Up brought us closer together, giving us lunch fodder on more than one occasion. And through his writing, Speak Up was the place where I got to know Armin Vit. So after all these years, I say "Thank you and I'll really miss you".
A unique transformation happens by adding the suffix "able" to the word "remark".
Suddenly, the straightforward meaning (able to remark or comment on) is trumped by a new translation (something that is extraordinary).
Speak Up embodies this kind of transformation.
As a place where people discuss Graphic Design, the site is built on remarks:
Katie's comment is:
The inspiring design speaks of talent and enrichment.
ON MAR.17.2009 AT 03:17 PM
Katie's comment is:
The elevated (and tireless) discourse speaks of dedication and insight.
ON MAR.18.2009 AT 03:18 PM
Katie's comment is:
The collaboration (of voices and visuals) speaks of democracy and advocacy.
ON MAR.19.2009 AT 03:19 PM
But it's the ability of its creator and co-creators that makes Speak Up remarkable.
Armin Vit can write, edit and design... well!
Such erudition permeates the blog, evidenced by this AV comment: "This is just a joyful, no bullshit, design-is-fucking-great write-up."
Come next week, sadly, we'll refer to Speak Up in the past tense.
From pixel fleurons to pea soup green ‹9E9F0F›, we'll remark no more.
So to Armin and the Speak Up team, I extend these two words:
"Well Spoke".
It has been a few years since my last post and I remember the days when we had conversations. We shared how we did business, how we created the visual landscape and how we spoke with clients. We spoke not simply about design but about being designers. I'm still not sure another site has done that.
Speak Up got me thinking. Speak Up got me reading, arguing, laughing, fuming, joking, researching, defending and learning. SpeakUp got me writing. I will miss it.
My eulogy delivery experience is, I'm happy to say, fairly limited. Unfortunately, I have a fair amount of experience with conversation about the dead and dying. There's no way to get it right, however. One grieving relative's comforting is another's unctuous cliché or cruel dismissal of their loss.
I know that "What a relief" is not always the best thing to say when Uncle Louie's demise is announced but it's the truth more often than not. When my father died, nobody close to him took umbrage at the statement that one is lucky to die aware and without much pain at 86. Plenty of people would think that the sign of real love is the hope that someone might stay with us a bit longer no matter what. I'm happy to report that none of my family shared that view.
So at the risk of seeming callous, Speak Up is probably dying just in time. The dearly departed hasn't become a painfully distant echo of himself. (We can't all go in plane crashes and mountaineering accidents at age 23 so some deterioration is inevitable but "aware and without much pain" applies in this case.) The grieving widow isn't destitute from medical bills from the last horrible years, our memories can be fond ones of vibrancy rather than of wasting away, and (at least if measured in internet years) Speak Up made my octogenarian father seem like a teen.
I've been trying to avoid eulogy platitudes but this is one: Speak Up will live on with many of us. I can thank it for introducing me to friends I have among its authors and readers. It provided me a tool for coming to grips with a variety of design issues. I'm grateful that it answered many questions about the potential of broad conversations (some in the positive, many not) and that it raised even more questions. I suspect that I will not be alone in spending a lot of time and thought trying to answer some of those.
Somehow ending a project always seems a bit like an admission that it wasn't worthy, a demonstration of failure in some Darwinian test given by the divine and holy force of The Market. But the term "vital" comes from the Latin for "life" and life without death is an oxymoron. Death is not failure, it's just the end.
I don't pretend to know how Speak Up will be remembered. Feed magazine and Plastic were central to the development of internet communication and are unknown to the vast majority of eZine and blog readers. Speak Up was a model for much of the internet conversation on graphic design but I'm going to have to leave predicting future history to public relations flacks and George W. Bush's fantasies.
Maybe Speak Up will be largely forgotten, maybe not, but it moved many of us forward in many ways and it was a force of life in the recent world of graphic design. What Armin and Bryony will do now that they're down to five or six full time jobs and a daughter to raise, I don't know but I suspect "force of life" will be a recurring theme.
When we started Design Observer in October 2003, the only inspiration we had beyond Kottke.org and Andrew Sullivan was a design blog called Speak Up. It was engaging and lively. The posts were topically varied and the mix of writers eclectic, albeit with a general focus on graphic design. The comments stream was intense: often instructive and enlightening, sometimes strongly-worded, frequently harsh, occasionally outright rude and nasty. In fact, we were occasionally the subject of not-so-friendly criticism on Speak Up — our first encounter with live, open criticism.
Speak Up represented a community finding its way online. And, as such, it was an early innovator and a precursor to other online design communities. There is a good reason why it achieved the readership and loyalty it did, and it was more than appropriate that it was acclaimed in the 2006 Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Speak Up expanded the conversation about design, and broadened it to whole new audiences. Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit deserve our thanks and recognition.
The House That Speak Up Built
I discovered Speak Up in one of its early incarnations, around the same time that I came across Typophile and Typographica. It was late 2002 or early 2003. Here was a forum whose authors wrote and cared passionately about graphic design, typography, illustration, the brands we'd grown up with, movie titles, logos and wordmarks, design conferences, education, portfolios and leave-behinds, heraldry, linguistic theory, and much, much more. The writing was worthwhile and engaging, brash and irreverent — and the authors had a knack for generating spirited discussions, to which readers responded in kind.
But Speak Up's plucky instigators didn't limit their creation to writing and commenting about design. They were always coming up with more ways for readers to participate: Word It, the T-shirt Design Contest, and the Book Club all came from this willingness to engage the growing community Speak Up was attracting. The High Priority Contest, The Design Encyclopedia, and the spinning off of Quipsologies into its own website, with twin columns for links from authors and readers, are later examples of the same spirit.
Speak Up was proof that the World Wide Web could help you get your message out there ("if you build it, they will come"), but it was also proof that hard work and dedication were just as necessary as ever, along with generous doses of thinking and planning. Armin and Bryony went above and beyond, devoting many hours of labor to their pet project while holding down full-time jobs. And what they built is very much with us, because it keeps growing, branching out in new directions. Maybe, like the subject of last month's Word It, people and things are always in transition. Speak Up is no more, but Bryony and Armin are still launching new projects, contributing to graphic design discourse. And that is very inspiring. Thank you, Speak Up authors: Marian Bantjes, Bryony Gomez-Palacio, Randy J. Hunt, M. Kingsley, Jimm Lasser, Tan Le, Debbie Millman, Jason A. Tselentis, and Armin Vit. Thanks for caring about design, and thanks for your passion and your generosity and your hard work.
Without You I'm Nothing
Speak Up changed my life. I write this without drama, sarcasm or irony, for it is simply a matter of truth.
To wit: Back on May 2, 2003, award-winning illustrator Felix Sockwell posted a discussion on the new weblog that, verbatim, read as follows:
Dear AIGA:
For some odd reason i get a free copy of Graphic Design USA (GDUSA). If youre familiar with it, you know what it is: the equivilent of a high school yearbook packed with photos of designers and bulky paper ads.
LOTS of ads. Its shameful. i weep openly.
Another reason to cry is that Debbie Millman (Sterling Group, NY), your AIGA juror this year, says shes "been in the business 20 yrs and GDUSA has always been the magazine (she) turns to for cultural relevance and design intelligence". (letters to the editor page, march 2003)
Perhaps she is lying simply to see her name in print, or maybe shes actually telling the truth- either way we're doomed!
Year by year, the AIGA gets suckered into deals with these corporate clowns
and it really betrays the trust I have in my profession (and you).
— Felix Sockwell
A heated conversation ensued and a long list of design luminaries, fired up by the questions Felix posed, piled on. In an attempt to make sense of the conundrum, John Bielenberg offered the possibility that I wasn't really invited to judge the competition, but instead was a last minute substitution for someone else who had cancelled. Tan Le proceeded to get into a fight with Felix for what he considered to be illogical assumptions, but referred to me as a she-devil in the process. Not content with level of discourse, Speak Up founder Armin Vit called two of the logos designed by my firm "a pair of turds." Even Emily Oberman, a designer I had admired from afar for over a decade, and someone I considered a hero, weighed in on the discussion (though mercifully not about me). I discovered this online conversation on May 17, 2003. I was mortified, embarrassed, humiliated and I patently considered leaving the design business for good. I remember I cried. And I questioned where this forum came from, who the bullies were that created it, and I wondered whether I would ever be able to hold my head up in the design community again.
What no one contributing to the conversation had any way of knowing was this: Contrary to Felix's opinion, I was not in cahoots with the AIGA. In fact, I had recently been asked to relinquish my seat on the board of the AIGA Brand Design special interest group by the incoming group president. I had worked to help create the group and I was crushed. AIGA Executive Director Richard Grefe subsequently invited me to judge one category of the Annual competition as a way of asking me not to get too discouraged by the turn of events. But on the day of the judging, I nearly got into a fistfight with one of the other package design judges. She was quite well known, and she was so dismissive of my opinions and I was so reluctant to give in to hers, that after an entire day of battling we would only agree on seven winners to include in the Annual, and I considered myself banished by the organization.
With the apparent rejection of both the design cognoscente and this newly formed fringe, I realized I had nothing left to lose. I decided to respond to Felix's charges with what I hoped would be perceived as a logical and non-defensive point of view. It wasn't; I was vehemently challenged and summarily taunted. A rigorous volley ensued. Then something surprising happened: another reader wrote in to support my perspective. And then another! Before long the debate dwindled down. And then something remarkable happened: I received an email from Emily Oberman. She thanked me for contributing to the conversation! I immediately printed out her note and taped it to my office wall, where it still resides today.
A few weeks later, Armin emailed me. He wouldn't apologize for comparing my work to turds, but acknowledged that perhaps his use of language was not as professional as it could have been. After our correspondence, I continued to visit the site and I became increasingly more intrigued by what I was reading. I soon realized that Speak Up was the only place on the Internet conducting real time design discourse. The site not only offered a bold (if not scrappy) new genre of design criticism, it also allowed anyone and everyone to comment. For the first time ever, Speak Up simultaneously held both contributors and designers accountable for what was being discussed or debated, AND for what had been designed. I was hooked.
Armin emailed me again, this time with an invitation to be an author on the site. I jumped at the opportunity. At the AIGA National Conference in Vancouver, Armin and his wife, Bryony, asked Marian Bantjes, also a frequent commenter, to join us. Together, we surreptitiously handed out a small booklet that Armin and Bryony had designed featuring the best writing on the blog that year. We were the only blog in town, and we reveled in this provocative new medium. Looking back on it now, I think we all had a bit of a swagger about us—me most of all. And why not? My cool, new friends accepted me, and I was convinced we were doing something big. And brave. And important!
After that, things got surreal. Emily Oberman invited me to join the New York Chapter of the AIGA and a fellow NY board member, John Fulbrook III, recommended me to Richard Wilde, the Dean of the Graphic Design department at the School of Visual Arts. John thought I might make a good teacher, and Richard gave me a chance. Then Sean Adams, the President of the National AIGA asked me to run for a seat on the National Board. Which I did. Joyce Kaye, then the editor in chief of Print Magazine (who I had met en route to Vancouver), invited me to participate in a conference panel moderated by Steven Heller. Then Steve recommended me to Allworth Press after he passed on their offer to write a book titled How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer. And in 2002, a producer at the Voice America Internet Radio Network read one of my posts on Speak Up and invited me to create a radio show about design.
None of this—not one blessed thing—would have been possible without the exposure and support I received from Armin and Bryony and the community brought together by Speak Up. According to cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken, "Every little blog is buffeted by the high winds of a dynamic culture even as it has its favorite 'go to' ideas with which it is most comfortable making sense of the world." Speak Up not only helped me make sense of the world, Speak Up helped make my world.
I will be grateful for the rest of my life.
A Sense of Place
For most people, there are just a few people and places that are truly familiar and memorable in their lives. Places that nurture, places where they leave a little piece of themselves, places where they find solace and joy, places where they grow.
For me, Speak Up was one of those places.
Speak Up was one of the first places where a designer like me could go. It was more than a place for design conversation. It was more than a professional resource. It was more than a place where I could find peers, friends, and my design family. It was more than all of that.
But like the house where you grew up, and many other places that endear themselves to you — it is ultimately a finite, temporal place. And like so many of those places, change is inevitable. And so is an end.
To say that SU significantly contributed to my design life and career is an understatement. My involvement and participation on SU enriched both, in ways big and small.
So for that, thank you SU. And thank you to all those who made it what it was for so long. Thanks to the many authors through the years, from the irascible Felix Sockwell, to the poetic but often punch-drunk-while-posting Graham Wood, to my great loves Marian, Debbie, and Bryony. Thanks to the many posters and characters that added color to an otherwise design-grey starkness — Maven, Jonsel, Eric, Pesky, among many others. And most of all — thank you, Armin. Thank you, bro, for everything.
Farewell Speak Up. I'm glad I knew ya.
There's a part of me that thinks it's all my fault. I'll get to that in a bit.
Before Speak Up, my design work was run in partnership with my wife, from our loft in Manhattan. We focussed mainly in music packaging. Both of these facts contributed to my self-identified status as an outsider in relation to the New York design clique orbiting the local AIGA chapter.
I had always wanted to be more involved in the New York design world, and ipso facto, the AIGA — mailing letters (remember those?) offering myself as a volunteer, dutifully attending lectures and openings, etc. — but I always sensed that the fact I hadn't worked my way up in one of the cool studios or a corporate in-house department made me too much of an unknown. All the best record labels — as well as a couple museums, some of the best galleries in the city, cable networks and cosmetic companies — were my clients, and I made many wonderful friends in the process. Some of them would end up on the board of the local chapter and inevitably nominate me for an opening slot. Thus began a 10-year period where I would receive rejection letters along the lines of "thank you for your interest. It was a hard decision, but we've decided on someone else."
This is how I learned that I was even considered.
Fuckers... Yeah, fuck 'em!
Then 9/11 occurred. Markets fell, and in conjunction with the advent of the mp3, the music industry began its long, slow decline. What used to pay $4000-8000 now paid $1500-2500. And with all the excess "graphic designers" (those are ironic quotes) being churned out by colleges across the States, there was always someone willing to do it for $600.
There is a quote by Mike Mills that designing record covers is "the quickest way to the poor house," and man did I know what he was talking about. We did a lot of pro-bono work that year.
Through the intercession of our friend Allen Hori, a truly great designer and great mind, I was able to branch out into advertising and spent a hard couple years designing and illustrating advertisements for HP. This brought our credit rating back up, and opened up opportunities outside the music industry.
But I was still "outside" the New York design world and still feisty.
Being self-employed, I spent way too much time on the internet — much more than the poor slobs working in studios and in-house departments — eventually stumbling upon Speak Up.
At first, I was underwhelmed. Actually, I was annoyed. What music do you listen to while designing? That logo rocks. That logo sucks. What's the best design monograph? Which famous designer do you want to be like? Ugh. But I put it on my blogroll and continued to circle around every once in a while.
Then in October 2003, Armin put up a post touting Charles S. Anderson Design's Halloween work for Target. As the comments rolled on with praise for CSA and for Target's beneficence towards Design, my pissed-off gene kicked in and I began my sisyphean journey as a Speak Up participant.
It quickly became so bad, I could have been depicted in this cartoon of a man at the computer.
A voice off-frame asks "Are you coming to bed?"
"I can't. This is important."
"What?"
"Someone is wrong on the internet."
And so it went. I was strictly a commentator for the first five months, until Armim and Bryony visited New York. They invited me to a meet-and-greet dinner at Florent (one of M&Co's better-known clients).
Soon after, Armin extended an invitation to become an author, explaining how I was invited to dinner in order to suss me out, to determine if I was an up-tight freak or a passionate participant. My first post went up the following month.
The three-plus following years of my tenure gave me great joy. Here was a true meritocracy where you were judged by the quality of your ideas, not by where you went to school or worked. At times it was a parody of Churchill — never have so few fought so hard, for so little — but at least there was passion, piss and vinegar.
"Professionalism is environmental. Amateurism is anti environmental. Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the ground rules of society. The amateur can afford to loose."
— Marshall McLuhan
I took great pleasure in seeing the establishment react. Discussions on the death of Emigre, Rick Poynor's nit-picky incriminations in Print, and me-too blogs like Design Observer and Voice: all indices of Speak Up's effect. These things were, and continue to be the establishment.
And now, so is Speak Up. Armin, Bryony, Marian and Debbie are the new authority. So, let's not be sentimental! Fuck 'em! Fuck the AIGA! Fuck design monographs, fuck all design blogs, fuck show-and-tells disguised as serious design lectures! Burn it down!
Wittgenstein pointed out how the limits of language limit our world. We must destroy in order to create. Creating Medals of Honor, Halls of Fame and lists of Young Guns ossify and diminish. How can we enroll so many people each year, when in reality there are only a scant few who were truly great? Why, oh why, was there so much design-hero worship in the comments on Speak Up?
Thank goodness Armin and Bryony have the courage to kill this beast. It was time. When there's such a gap between the sanctum santorum and the lumpen proles, an exterminating angel is a good thing.
I look back with gratitude and wonder at a special time. At the generosity of Armin and Bryony for creating such a welcome environment. At the generosity of special members of the establishment, like Michael Bierut, for playing along with such humor and grace. At the life-long friends I've been able to make.
I look back with pride at my better rants: on James Joyce's "Ulysses," on the Tiffany ads which, up until last year, appeared on page A3 of the NY Times, on the New York City Olympic branding system and the West Side Stadium, on Christo's "The Gates," on the Gourmet Cookbook, on P. Diddy and the black power salute, on road painting found in the Tour de France, and finally this piece on Sister Corita. (I'll take a wee bit of credit for the minor bit of interest in her work after the post went up).
Now to the part where it's my fault...
I once overheard Bryony comment that my posts helped give Speak Up a degree of credibility. Bryony, I never told you how much that touched me. It motivated me to work harder and push further, and filled me with such pride. Such pride. But sadly, in 2006 my marriage and my business blew up. Turned, shattered and fell away.
I fondly remember the next year and a half as the time I spent with my head firmly up my ass (as if that wasn't already the case). I lost clients, friends, my beloved apartment in Chelsea and unfortunately, my motivation and ability to focus on such triffles as Speak Up. Eventually I put myself back together and ended up with an amazing position at Landor in San Francisco as the global creative lead on the Citi account (which was a byproduct of knowing Armin). In the past year, I've done a good bit of travel across three continents. And now, given the client and what's happening in the world, I find myself with a unique viewpoint at a singular moment in history. I barely have time to do anything, let alone write a post about graphic design.
So my most sincere apologies go to the Speak Up community. I'm so sorry. So very very sorry I wasn't able to maintain the energy required. That the blood on the floor dried up and was scattered to the furthest corner. If Armin and Bryony create a new, better, more feisty community, I hope they'll welcome me back as a contributor. God, how I love to throw brickbats.
But until then, I'll just remain a loyal friend and admirer of everyone who came to play — including my adversaries. It was fun, wasn't it?
Like with any loved one, saying good-bye is not easy. Speak Up has been a part of my life for the last seven years in a way only our daughter Maya has been able to surpass. Constantly talking about it, planning for what could happen next, what was said the day before, what the upcoming year could mean, where this and that could take a new life… over coffee, over lunch, at dinner, in the subway, walking in the park, in the dark, and during early dawn. It has mattered not when or where, but what. What can we do to make it better? What can we provide that is different? What…?
In the last few months the answers to these questions have become less encouraging as we realize how much ground Speak Up was able to cover during its tenure, and how much we have changed in this time. Going from frozen disgruntled Chicagoans that knew little about so many topics covered in the site, to the self-employed parents we are today. Much has happened in the process including relocations, blogs, websites, jobs, more jobs, incorporation, clients, three books, a child… I treasure the freedom that the sum of events has enabled me and my family, and I recognize that the process has been hard and full of small and large lessons, most if not all shaped by the life of Speak Up. For good or bad, one of the lessons acquired is the ability to recognize when one should let go.
And that day is here, a day where we will pull the code on Speak Up. A day in which we can begin to repeat ourselves as we remember its life as it happened, as we celebrate the challenges, the misses and the greatest hits (UPS!). A day where we can remember Speak Up for what it was, and not for what could have happened in Florida.
Good night my beloved. I shall miss you in life, and relive you in conversation.
]]>When we started we were outsiders. I was a young designer from Mexico that no one had ever heard of. In my mind and heart I had it in me to become well known. Not sure why, but I just wanted that. And, in some sort of microcosmic way, I did. And my outsider status was gone. The same thing happened to some of our most popular authors, like Debbie Millman and Marian Bantjes who, all of a sudden, you couldn't turn a corner without someone mentioning their name. Also, for a long period it seemed like we could all write posts all day long and keep Speak Up active forever and ever, but for the majority of our most ardent authors like Mark Kingsley, Tan Le and Jason A. Tselentis, life and work happened and their time for Speak Up became limited. Ditto for me. I also had less time to write and comment. Other authors left as they lost interest or time, or when we differed in the kind of content we expected on Speak Up.
Then there was the fact that now everyone had a blog. Blogdom wasn't just the provenance of a devoted few anymore and with the ease of setting up a blog, people would post their own thoughts on their blog rather than commenting on Speak Up. This is no complaint, it's just an observation that became clearer as more and more designers would e-mail me to let me know about their blog.
I always believed that the amount of time and energy that we — authors and commenters alike — were all investing in Speak Up would be impossible to maintain in the long run, it was bound to crash at some point. And it did. Since 2007ish, we have had less authors, less posts, less comments, less traffic, less energy. It's natural I guess. We also split that energy into sites like Brand New, Quipsologies and now Word It — all topics that were born on Speak Up but that were prime for their own blogs. I also strongly believe that the kind of general-topic and long-form writing of Speak Up is just not as appealing as it used to be. With so many web sites devoted to quick bursts of visuals and the proliferation of short-message communication enhanced by Twitter and Facebook, it becomes increasingly hard to hold the attention of anyone. But this could all be debated. Maybe we just became lame or boring. It's hard to define all the attributes that contributed to the decreased activity on Speak Up. And since the end of 2008 we have had this nagging feeling that its time had come.
Earlier this year, Bryony and I made the decision to close Speak Up. Seeing weeks and weeks go by where we have only two or three posts (and one of them being the Quipsologies round-up) has become too painful for us. It's also like watching Ozzy Ozbourne today, still holding on to that rock glory but he can't really rock no more, not like he used to. Posts that three or four years ago would have gotten 80, 90 or 100 comments in one day, now receive like 30 over various days — comment count has never been a big infatuation for me, but for a site devoted to interaction and dialogue they are indicative of how good or bad its meeting that goal. It's just too demoralizing to see Speak Up not perform like it used to. And it never will again, because of the expectations I have put on it and the ones that you have all put on it. It's just not the same. I really feel relieved that we are closing it. Its time has come. It served its purpose and it made its mark. Not many blogs can claim that and we are happy with what it's done. Time to move on to other things.
We will maintain Speak Up live as an archive with closed comments, for future generations. Interestingly enough, a good portion of our traffic is to old posts anyway. Will there be a replacement for Speak Up? Maybe. Maybe not. We are thinking about something that would help fill the void of general-design content but we haven't fully developed the idea; and when it comes, if it comes, we hope it can live on without the weight of what came before it. In the meantime we will be placing our energy on Brand New, Quipsologies, Word It and even The Design Encyclopedia (which has suffered of tremendous inactivity). We have one current blog in development and you will see that soon. We will also continue doing books and we are even working on one that will be self-published and mostly available by PDF to be able to provide it at a low cost. And there is an endless list of things we want to do, but we'll see which ones we can get to.
Speak Up has made possible what we have done so far and what we will do — and Speak Up, itself, was made possible by all of your continued support. I get terribly nostalgic writing this and reading all the great goodbyes our friends have sent in. It all makes me question the decision but, ultimately, nostalgia never carried anything forward.
And we must move forward. Always.
Thank you.
]]>Our new New York was not even New York anymore, it was Brooklyn. Central Park became Prospect Park. Delis became bodegas. Starbucks became Connecticut Muffins. Gristedes became Key Food. (Sorry for all the local parlance). And our regular forays into evening events for AIGA or other design socials were replaced by bath time and story time. Weekends at museums and galleries or even working weekends, turned into excursions to the park, its playgrounds and its small yet awesome zoo. Things lovingly changed. Work-wise, going across the river in the subway became a time management challenge: A one-hour meeting would eat up three hours of your day. Sure, we established our own destiny by not having a Manhattan office but when you can save thousands of dollars on an office lease and hundreds of dollars in tax write-offs every month, well, it becomes a no brainer. And we also noticed that our face-to-face meetings with clients could be counted with the fingers of a single hand and, instead, the amount of PDFs we have prepared range in the dozens and hundreds. One of the reasons we wanted to be on our own was to devote more time to the online world of UnderConsideration which lowers the need for live interaction with people. On top of that we had the surprise of a massive book that turned us into hermits that barely saw the light of day. And we enjoyed it.
Paying to live in New York without living in New York did not make sense anymore. Plus, all three of us were tired of Winters, even after surviving three in Chicago, so we were ready for a change. We decided to look at it very clinically: We can move anywhere, so what city would be the best fit for of our lifestyle? Denver and Boulder, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; and Austin, Texas all came up as the most viable options. We narrowed it down to Portland and Austin, since Colorado is cold and snowy, and talked to designers in both cities to get a sense for lifestyle and design environment. Both cities were comparable: Exciting, young design scene, with medium potential for finding clients within the city but very accessible to find clients in the region. We discounted Portland because it was just too far, specially for our family who lives in Mexico and since we want them to have as much access as possible to their grandkids going to Portland would have been a huge screw-you-see-you-never.
We were attracted to Austin for various reasons. Amazing housing market, with lovely big homes for very decent prices; it is not the cheapest market, but in contrast to New York, it's a steal. A great public school system for our daughter and her potential sibling in the future. Great weather year-round. Yes, I hear August is infernal, but that's why God invented central A/C. It hosts one of the biggest colleges in the U.S., which helps keep the flow of smart people as well as thousands of people employed, making Austin one of the most recession proof cities in the U.S. — somewhere I read that their first quarter unemployment rate for 2009 was a whopping 2% under the national average. There is a thriving music scene of course, and even though we are not much into it, it engenders a certain creative atmosphere that permeates everything and everyone. Dell is headquartered there, which keeps smaller tech companies thriving in the vicinity. Austin is also a two- or three-hour drive away from major business hubs like Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, handsomely multiplying the amount of potential clients. And there are dozens of other reasons that I won't bore you with anymore.
As we found in our first year and a half of being in business, we have been able to build a self-sustaining model where we don't require a dozen clients at a time and instead two or three suffice, leaving us ample time to do blogging and work with publishers on books. Luckily, this is what we set out to do, and it's rewarding to see it happen after all the hard work and sometimes insane work hours we have put in. Even more lucky is that we can do this from anywhere we want. So, less than fifteen days from now we will be broadcasting and designing live from the state of Texas. Who would have thought it.
]]>A / No. 85 / Armin / Best Apple laptop customization ever: Snow white.
A / No. 1 / Armin / A new dollar sign has been approved by U.S. congress. * [Via Design Observer]
A / No. 9 / Armin / A t-shirt of Super Mario as if drawn by da Vinci.
A / No. 87 / Armin / Using Internet Explorer 6? Here are some hypothetical (and hilarious) splash pages when your browser can’t display the content. Language NSFW. [Via Design You Trust]
A / No. 83 / Armin / Business card in the form a store receipt.
A / No. 86 / Armin / Walking on Eggshells or How to Design the Book Cover for Columbine. [Via Subtraction]
A / No. 12 / Armin / The Smoking Type Generator: Type something and watch it form as the cigarettes burn.
A / No. 11 / Debbie Millman / With these new body scanners, you might as well go naked to the airport.
A / No. 91 / Armin / Visualizing the wireless signals around us. [Via Brandflakesforbreakfast
A / No. 10 / Armin / Tired of looking at your computer-filled workspace? Check out this Flickr set, Workspaces - No computers! [Via Drawn]
C / No. 6 / Josh B / Scientists make the blackest black ever.
C / No. 69 / Koz / 120 crayon names with hex & RGB codes.
C / No. 67 / Catalin / A monster list of 40 fresh websites & 20 Twitter accounts you must follow for a daily inspiration boost!
C / No. 7 / Niki V / 50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory. [via PSDTuts+]
A / No. 3 / Armin / “In hopes of drawing attention to my work and this site, I am offering free Pen & Ink illustrations.” You heard the man, go ask Mark Mahorney for a free drawing.
Berhtold was born in 1916 in Leipzig, Germany but grew up in Berlin where her father, Hans Berthold, worked as the bookkeeper for the famed H. Berthold type foundry, which had been founded by his uncle, Hermann Berthold. Her childhood was filled with the scent of molten metal and sounds of typecasting. Her time in Berlin was cut short, and in 1936 she and her family fled to Zurich, Switzerland escaping the rising Nazi regime. Through his knowledge of the graphic arts industry, her father was able to secure her a job with Joseph Muller-Brockmann, who had just started his own design studio. From Muller-Brockmann, Berthold learned the tenets of the International Typographic Style and while she wasn't allowed to design, she observed his process and at night she would trace Muller-Brockmann's work to understand the hierarchies of his design.
An original tracing by Berthold of Muller-Brockmann's Musica Viva poster. Image courtesy of Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Poster Collection.
In 1944, Berthold and her family emigrated to the United States where they settled in New York like many of their expatriates. There she joined Harper's Bazaar where she was a typesetter for Alexey Brodovitch, the commanding art director of the magazine. Three years later Berthold was hired by Cipe Pineles who had been recently hired by editor Helen Valentine to be the art director of Seventeen. In her biography, Cipe Pineles: A Life of Design, Pineles describes Berthold as "A very quiet person that demonstrated a keen sense of typography unlike any of the other typesetters." While Pineles is one of the first women to break the design glass ceiling, Berthold remained in anonymity.
Through William Burtin, Pineles' second husband and Fortune magazine art director, Berthold met Lester Beall in the late 1950s, who was enjoying much success in the field of corporate identity and she soon joined him in his office at the Dumbarton Farm in Connecticut. At the RIT Design Archives we found the original proposal of Lester Beall vying for the International Paper identity project and in outlining his team's profile, most of Berthold's story is corroborated. Unfortunately, due to RIT's strict reproduction policies, we can not reproduce the document without the consent of Beall's estate. While working for Beall her own design explorations shaped most of the final solutions for clients like Caterpillar, Connecticut General Insurance and even International Paper, where she was the first to sketch an abstract representation of an I and a P forming a tree.
After Beall passed away in 1969, Berthold, now 53 years old, moved to the West Coast where she settled in Portland, Oregon deciding to devote her time to teaching. She taught corporate identity at the fledgling design program at Portland State University. If that college sounds familiar it would be because Carolyn Davidson, who famously charged a mere $35 in 1971 for the Nike logo, was a student there at the time. Berthold was her teacher. Miss Davidson was kind enough to send us a scrap of paper she's kept all these years, with Berthold's original sketch idea for the now famous swoosh. Davidson assures us it was a collaborative effort and it was the result of a brainstorming session that led to the design. Berthold, not remotely interested in running shoes rendered any credit to Davidson.
Original sketch of the Nike logo by Berthold. Courtesy of Carolyn Davidson.
Berthold spent her last years in Portland and passed away at the age of 68 in 1984. There aren't many undiscovered designers that have played a significant role in the development of graphic design. We are grateful that we were able to recognize Ingrid Berthold in our book.
]]>C / No. 53 / Mattus / Thinking of designing a sphere logo? Don't.
A / No. 73 / Armin / I don’t typically fawn for in-depth, personal projects by students, but Gretchen Nash’s Dear Gretchen is amazing. I had the chance of seeing it at the Adobe Design Achievement Awards. The handmade paper graphs are just too much.
A / No. 82 / Armin / A deceptively simple graphic: Length of basketball shorts, then and now. [Via DesignNotes]
A / No. 63 / Armin / Very clever math formulas for everyday things like “Raisin = Grape + Time.” [Via Build]
A / No. 78 / Armin / Introducing Google Classic. (Not really). [Via BuzzFeed]
A / No. 71 / Armin / On the cover of Creative Review’s April issue: Their very own hand-lettered taxi by Indian master letterers.
C / No. 58 / Diane Faye Zerr / Moleskine launched it's new site in Beta. Pretty nice. Check out the new MSK feature to layout pages, import contacts, import your calendar and print to fit into your Moleskine notebook. Thanks to NotCot
C / No. 59 / Able Parris / Font Series: Arial is Everywhere (via designworkplan).
A / No. 65 / Armin / Nick Sherman reports on the typographic usage in art at the famed Armory Show in New York.
A / No. 76 / Armin / Beer logo sweaters. Yup, you read that right. [Via Draplin]
A / No. 61 / Armin / With a title like this, who needs an explanation? Retro Apple Logo fruit salad. [Via Design You Trust]
C / No. 61 / Joshua Levi / An ongoing collection of history proven wrong predictions and self-help books that should not be on sale in wake of the global financial debacle. All books shown are still available to buy from Amazon.
C / No. 54 / Diane Faye Zerr / This article by a mom of a third grader wants schools to stop teaching handwriting. I'm a mom too, but I would not encourage my son to quit when times get tough. The comments are plenty, good and bad.
A / No. 66 / Armin / “Portraits of musicians made out of recycled cassette tape.” Easier Quip’d than done.
C / No. 57 / Kelly Smith / Inkd: The World's First Market for Original Print Design has launched!
Jessica Hische
jhische.com
Helen Yentus
helenyentus.com
Soulellis Studio
soulellis.com
Tnop
tnop.com
Rumors
rumors-online.com
Arlo
arlo-tm.com
End Communications
endcommunications.com
A / No. 55 / Armin / URL and web site of the year? YourLogoMakesMeBarf.com.
A / No. 50 / Armin / From The Department of the Insane: A room covered in thousands of white Post-its. [Via Design You Trust]
A / No. 60 / Armin / Lovely illustration, typography-heavy work by Andy Smith. [Via Drawn]
C / No. 36 / Jill / Free Fonts to Download. So many fonts, so little time.
C / No. 50 / Plamen / A better logo for Google?
A / No. 58 / Armin / Meet Brandy Agerbeck, graphic facilitator. Amazing stuff. [Via Design you Trust]
A / No. 45 / Armin / An extensive compilation of the in-movie variations of some of Hollywood’s most popular logos.
A / No. 49 / Armin / Griping about the Adobe applications user interface. [Via ISO50]
C / No. 37 / Plamen / "Advertising is dead. Long live packaging."
A / No. 47 / Armin / Slightly useless (but funny) chart: Kitchen position in relationship to living room from a bunch of sitcoms. Left or right? [Via Dark Roasted Blend]
A / No. 54 / Armin / The “Face of Disaster” alphabet. [Via SwissMiss]
A / No. 51 / Armin / One of my favorite Pentagram projects is the 9-year-old Library Initiative and five new ones that have opened recently are good reason to learn about this project.
A / No. 56 / Armin / An animation showing the evolution of the Batman icon.
A / No. 40 / Armin / Logo cliché alert: Avoid the power-up symbol.
A / No. 44 / Armin / New web site and fresh work from the always amazing Louise Fili.
During college at the University of Arizona in 1992, I learned with other design freshman that revisions were part of the discipline; if you cried at critique you were a wimp, and the computer was just a finishing tool. Later, as a transfer student at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in 1994, faculty tried to scare us out of the program: Either the person sitting next to you or you yourself will graduate from this program; only 1 in 3 of you will leave the program and find work as designers. But something has happened since I was a college student in 1992: students just don't believe these things. They feel design is easy and success is easily earned; they get themselves in trouble when they define success too specifically, revolving it around fame, fortune, or a combination thereof.
Always Right, Always Best, All the Time
At its root, failure is the opposite of success, but few young designers encounter failure. Worse, they are over-confident because of how adept they are (or think they are) with computer media: parents or former art teachers have patted them on the back for years, praising their performance with Adobe, iWork, or iMovie. These adults lavish the youngster with wowie-zowie amazement creating what I call the Blue Ribbon Craving: an overabundance of shallow praise too often and too early creating a desire for more praise more often.
Illustration by Mark Andresen markandresenillustration.com
Unfortunately and incorrectly, this praise somehow translates into I am good at art or I am good at design, manufacturing the false notion that they are always correct, and so long as they click it up on the computer, it's good. And they expect the same in school, where the youngster takes the congratulations they have amassed over the years and heads to the classroom with pie-in-the-sky dreams, and a sense of entitlement: I have earned my parents and high school art teachers' praises; I know the computer; I am ready for college and I will conquer it with a succession of A+ grades. The truth: it's not like that. When these students do less than grade-A work, tears will flow; when they do grade-C work, they hit a depression so deep that some cannot recover. (Let's not even talk about grade-F work, which stirs a panic attack beyond anything George Costanza ever experienced.) Rather than learn from the critiques and repeated suggestions to change one thing or another, they leave for another major: All of these changes? My work is bad? Forget it, I'll go elsewhere. Some will argue that these drop outs play into the natural state of attrition, sorting out the can-do students from the cannot. Does it have to be this way? Why can't all design students learn to cope with stressful critiques and do-it-over suggestions? Because some of them have been fawned over during years of grammar and high school, and it's not easy to teach them new tricks.
But that's what college is for, and students can learn to manage these failures—if the instructor prepares them for the long journey. Unfortunately, few instructors teach students about coping with failure, it's only the thick-skinned ones that can survive on their own. For the rest, there's no recovery, no chance for making it. From grammar school through college, I always expected a challenge and knew that rewards were hard-earned. Having endured the disciplined grade school classrooms hosted by Sisters Eileen, Ignatius, Joseph, and Maureen I was prepared for the worst any teacher could throw at me (literally) when entering high school and then college. Not every student endures similar Catholic school rigors, but it helped me appreciate that success required problem solving, overcoming obstacles, and working at something until it's right (and then working on it some more until you were disgusted or somewhat satisfied, or just plain old out of time).
Time Compression
When it comes to time, students feel that hard work and somewhat long hours are enough to get grade-A work; nationally, educators are battling this no matter the course of study. But here are the facts: working very diligently for 8, 10, or 20 hours may still result in barely average work; and in some cases, putting in twice that amount of labor for 30 or 40 hours may only get a D or F. Dedicating long hours will not always yield success, but because of a desire for immediacy, expecting results ASAP is the norm. Information travels at the speed of light. Makeovers don't require long hours at the gym and a disciplined diet—just go under the knife. Houses get built in under an hour (thanks to time compression). Watch abc's Extreme Makeover Home Edition (hosted by Ty Pennington and his crack squad design team) to witness the home design, construction, wiring, plumbing, decoration, and habitation in under 1 hour (don't forget the demolition and the flights to Disney World; minus the commercials, it's about 30-40 minutes to do it all).
Illustration by Mark Andresen markandresenillustration.com
Designing and building a home is not like graphic design in scope, and therein lies the problem. If audiences see large scale designs happening between 8 and 9 p.m. Central Standard Time on Sundays, they expect (demand!) smaller scale design problems to happen much much faster. I call it the Time Compression Paradox: if a large scale project should happen in one hour; a project 1/10 its size should happen in 1/10 the time. The most prevalent place this happens with design students is software.
The student exclaims, I just cannot make Photoshop do what I want to!
The instructor replies, This is only the fifth week of class,
to which the student retorts, I know, I should've mastered it by now!
The truth: it takes years to master Photoshop; in fact, you will never master Photoshop. You may merely understand how to use Photoshop Creative Suite 2 for the work you need to accomplish: touch ups, color correction, etc. Creative Suite 3, 4, and 5 will require more experimentation and learning. With software, and most design tool use, it's about the marathon, not the sprint—and it's the same for getting a job.
Get Me Work, and Then Fame
Because the university has become a vocational training ground, students believe it's the instructor's duty to get the student a job. At one senior's graduating exhibition, a parent approached me and asked, So, now you just have to get my daughter a job. This was not a poke in the tummy joke, nor light-hearted teasing. No, this parent really expected me to connect the student with work instantaneously. Make a call on my cell phone and presto! Having been approached about this before, I had a prepared answer, All of the teachers your daughter had, including me, gave her the tools, knowledge, and motivation to leave school and get work on her own. The parent's face went from an optimistic-help-her smile to a downward are-you-kidding-me frown. Give a student a job, she works for a day; teach a student to work, she works for life. Oddly, the student realized this, but the parent could not seem to grasp the concept.
Illustration by Mark Andresen markandresenillustration.com
Even more unfortunate, and now more than ever, design has become synonymous with fame. Go to school; learn design; get a degree; get a job; and get famous. This is the American Idol Paradox: as more and more people take pride in looking at themselves or getting looked at by others, less and less of us will actually become famous—fame may even disappear. Paradox aside, design isn't about fame—it's about unfame. Client servicing is one of the most unfamous things you can do because it's their name and their dollar. The entire creative process requires you to be unsuccessful: failed concepts, long hours, repeated attempts, constant revisions, massaging the details, and patience carving your career.
To those students entering school and primed for the workforce, just appreciate the fact that design is all about failure. Every designer I've ever met has failed, and failed miserably, and they continue to make a successful career out of failing.
This essay is based on Jason Tselentis' lecture How Designers Fail, initially given to the AIGA Birmingham chapter.
Mark Andresen is an illustrator formerly from New Orleans, Louisiana, now living in Atlanta, Georgia. Over 1.5 weeks, he submitted fifteen illustration concepts for this article, of which three are featured above.
]]>A / No. 25 / Armin / Finally, some Barack Obama imagery that is not slick at badpaintingsofbarackobama.com. [Via VIBE]
A / No. 26 / Armin / The Cut Copy footwork poster. [Via SwissMiss]
C / No. 23 / Plamen / Absolutely No Smoking!
A / No. 24 / Armin / Lined paper everywhere to jot down your ideas, courtesy of the School of Visual Arts’ “Think” campaign. [Via Design You Trust]
A / No. 28 / Armin / The Periodic Table of Typefaces. [Via SwissMiss]
C / No. 21 / Able Parris / Why Twitter might die. Discussion encouraged.
A / No. 40 / Armin / Logo cliché alert: Avoid the power-up symbol.
A / No. 37 / Armin / Looks like your chances of being eaten by a shark are as good as of getting to do any design work for the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
C / No. 18 / Paige / Hyperbolic Mandala. Or, pretty math visualization.
C / No. 26 / Diane Faye Zerr / A typeface inspired by Paul and Linda. Introducing McCartney by Daniel Cassaro.
A / No. 29 / Armin / The Readability “bookmarklet” may the be web designers’ worst enemy, as it strips away all the design off any page, leaving behind nothing but butt-ugly typography. [Thanks at Difaye for the link]
A / No. 33 / Armin / Pictures of shattered things that don’t actually shatter (i.e., rubber duck). [Via It’s Nice That]
A / No. 27 / Armin / Marian Bantjes pimps Strathmore’s thistle. Wow that sounds dirtier than it is. [Thanks @Gelatobaby]
A / No. 36 / Bryony / Illustrator Jorge Colombo goes to town with these New York sketches done in the Brushes iPhone app. [Via Gothamist]
C / No. 24 / Plamen / And the Periodic Table Of Video Game Characters .
We have painstakingly tagged all Word Its to provide a new way of experiencing the oldies (and not so oldies) but goodies. Like the image above, which shows most of the Word Its tagged with "Isotype." The options are endless, well, for now, they end at around 2,500 tags like "Cooper Black" and "Comic Sans", "George W. Bush" and "Dick Cheney", "Red" and "Blue" or "Exclamation Point" and "Question Mark". And as new Word Its come in will be dutifully tagging away.
At this point it's worth giving a much deserved shout to Steven, who more than two years ago, when we launched Quipsologies, called it. He even got the URL right! So, anyway, we hope that all you Word It creators follow us on over to the new abode and keep the little squares coming.
]]>In the past six months I have done a lot of talks around the U.S. and they have as much glamour as the bucket of KFC chicken that Ice Cube demands. There is no first class flying, no trailer, no dressing room, no after-meal requests, no temperature control. Disclaimer: I love doing these things, don't get me wrong, but maybe it's time that graphic designers put on their diva hats and start making some demands for their presentations. So, dear event organizers, here is my ludicrous design-related rider for my upcoming speaking engagement:
A. At the Venue
1. No dressing room is required, but a Green Room, where speaker can rest after flying coach is.
2. Green room must have the following items:
2.1. A Helvetica, special edition Moleskine; absolutely no regular Moleskines.
2.2. A MacBook Air loaded with the Adobe CS4 Master Collection and the entire type libraries of Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Emigre and Chank Fonts; remove all italic font files from each type family.
2.3. A Pantone Solid Chips Two-book Set; remove all pages that have 4-figure PMS colors, only 3-figure PMS colors are acceptable; why use PMS 1795 when PMS 179 will do?
2.4. A Blu-Ray edition of Helvetica.
2.5. A Blu-ray player.
2.6. A copy of Stefan Sagmeister's out of print Made You Look; do not attempt to replace with Things I have Learned in my Life so far.
2.7. A first edition copy of Philip B. Meggs' A History of Graphic Design.
2.8. Design samples from local designers that are using varnish in innovative ways.
B. Refreshments
1. Coca-Cola in Turner Duckworth-designed aluminum bottles; no "classic" glass bottles or cans.
1.1. Absolutely no Pepsi within 100-feet of the speaker.
2. A selection of Jones Soda beverages; labels can only contain pictures of dogs, color or black and white are both acceptable.
3. Retro-edition versions of General Mills cereals.
4. A pre-2003 Hershey's chocolate bar with tin foil and matte paper wrapper; no plastic and do not attempt to fake it with store-bought aluminum foil and printing a wrapper in Epson.
5. Personalized M&M's that say "I'm the best"; all colors acceptable.
C. Additional
1. Please refer to any other requests made in the comments section in the Speak Up post "The Graphic Design Speaking Engagement Rider," dated March 11, 2009.