Earlier this summer, Tan Le invited (badgered, actually) several of the Speak Up authors to join him at AIGA Seattle’s Design Camp. Debbie Millman and Marian Bantjes were able to take him up on the invitation. We packed our flashlights and pocket knives, and for the first time since we were kids, set off for camp.

These are our letters home to Speak Up.

Dear Armin,
Well, we arrived at camp and pretty much the first thing we did is eat. The food is so good!!! Full-course meals, with options for salads and soups and too many really great desserts. Debbie’s not here yet, so Tan and I signed her up for Salsa Dancing and Twister. Ha ha.

Then off to a letterpress workshop. Even though I’ve never printed like this before, I learned almost nothing! But it was fun! They had some great type. Why does Cooper Black look so excellent as wood type?

There’s a scavenger hunt and one of the items to find is a Canadian $1. I have two … I’m gonna see if I can sell them for $5 US!

Wish you were here,
Campingly,
marian

p.s. I met Sheepstealer!

Dear Armin—
Well, I have been traveling for eleven hours and traversed nearly 3,000 miles for one reason, and one reason only: to see Tan and Marian. You probably know that Tan sent out an email many months ago inviting us to Design Camp—a biennial design extravaganza situated in the woods, two and a half hours outside of Seattle in a tiny Bavarian town called Leavenworth (not the prison!). The gig is put on every two years by the Seattle Chapter of the AIGA.

Six months ago it seemed like an adventurous undertaking—the kind of thing I am precisely known for not doing. So as this year’s path seems to be about doing things I have not done before, and Marian signed on nearly immediately, I shrugged my shoulders and cavalierly sent Tan a response: why of course I’ll come! What fun!

Tan sent out the itinerary and it seemed intriguing enough—I was most excited about seeing Ellen Lupton and the Clayton Brothers. Chinese calligraphy, salsa dancing and yoga were just a few of the workshops also being offered, but now that I am here, I realize that I have little or no interest in any of the workshops. Me salsa dancing? Ha! I think not. So now I am nearly there, so I gotta run. Will catch up with you soon. Ta Ta for now.
-d

Friday

Dear Armin,

Wazzup from design camp bro. Just got here. It should’ve taken 2-1/2 hours to get here from Seattle, but Marian drove like a banshee all the way. I forgot how beautiful this place was.

Lunch was awesome. The room is tiny, but the girls gave me the loft cause they didn’t want to climb the ladder of death. As usual, saw lots of friends.

First up, a letterpress workshop with Jeronimo Squires and Kay Reinhardt from the Living Letterpress Museum. Lots of hands-on fun. I resisted printing anything profane. This is going to be a great weekend.

After dinner, Ellen Lupton was the first speaker. You know, she’s more soft-spoken than I’d expected. She pushed her book and her website. She even had a brief slide about Speak-Up. She didn’t know there were three SU authors in the crowd. Overall, nice talk. Marian pointed out a typographic flaw in one of her slides, and felt guilty about it for an entire day. After the talk, some drinking and a lame pajama party. Lots of giggling back at the cabin. I’m hungry again.

Tan

A—
Well, for the first time in decades, I am sharing a room. Not with one person, not two, but three! Not only do I have to sleep with Tan, Marian and my colleague (and friend) Kim, I actually have to SLEEP with Marian. As in the same bed. There are only three beds for the four of us, so Marian and I sheepishly agreed to share. Should be interesting! There is no cell service here, and only a land line for emails, so I will likely be sparce with the words this weekend. But so far, the food has been outstanding, the weather is cooperating and I have four drink tickets. Heh heh.
-d

Dear Armin,
Debbie’s here! She brought one of her designers, Kim Berlin, with her. Sweet! So it’s 3 girls and Tan in the cabin!!!! I smuggled an apple pie across the border with me, so first thing we did was eat it. Pretty much the next thing we did was eat supper.

Finally, the first speaker: Ellen Lupton! I was really excited to see her; I even brought her new book Thinking with Type for autographing. That’s OK, huh? Not too geeky? She gave a good talk; really approachable. I just kinda liked her. I loved the part where she was training her child to recognize and destroy “dumb quotes” through an online game. But get this: she said Design Observer is “like Speak Up for grown-ups”!!! We’ll show her!

I was hoping to take home the award for best PJs with my Emigre Hypnopaedia Pyjamas, but they tried to make us watch “Something About Mary,” first. I’m willing to make a fool of myself, but I’m not up for torture so we grabbed candy bags and left!

Whittlingly,
marian

Caio Arminito—
Well. The first speaker of this little shindig was writer, designer, teacher and Cooper Hewitt curator, Ellen Lupton. Ellen is a bit of a hero of mine—bright, beautiful, accomplished … and doing what I consider really important work. Other than seeing her on the bathroom line at the Cooper Hewitt Design Awards last week, I had never actually met her, or seen her speak. She didn’t disappoint. She showed work from last year’s Cooper Hewitt triennial, Inside Design Now, at the onset of her presentation, which I had seen many times in person at the museum, but it was a nice warm-up for the rest of her talk, which showcased her new book, Thinking with Type, and the accompanying website. What I find most remarkable about Ellen was how authentic she seems to be. There is no pretense, no posing—she just seems to imbue a genuine love of design, of communicating, of ideas. Her home page is wonderful: dotted with paper doll cut-outs and charm. She also referenced the loss of one our great philosophers, Jacques Derrida. Derrida, the father of deconstruction, has profoundly influenced me, and it was thrilling to hear someone talk about the influence he has had on design, in general. I was inspired.

But sadly, I am still on NY time, and Marian and Tan want to party. I placated them with my copy of “Super Size Me,” am going to put on my eye shades and try to stay awake until I hit the pillow.

Til the morrow.
-d

Hey you—
So I made it to day two without having to salsa dance and I am thinking I might make it all the way through without having to reveal my utter lack of physical grace. On deck today are Jakob Trollb�ck, Yves Behar and the Clayton Brothers.
Gotta run, the scintillation awaits.
-me

Dear Armin,

First thing we did this morning was eat!! No, Kim went to yoga, I went out to climb around on rocks and saw a deer, Debbie and Tan slept in. Then we ate!! A huge breakfast.

The first speaker today was Jakob Trollb�ck. You know you’ve got a good speaker when you wish you could be their friend. Does that ever happen to you? You see someone speak and you’re just so, like “Yeah! Yeah!” that you wish you could drag them out for dinner and drinks and talk all night long and become lifelong friends, share music and ideas, call them up at 4am and say “HEY, whaddaya think of this?!” … ? … No? Well … he was like that: Smart, interesting and eclectic.

We are so lame! We skipped all our workshops and went to the weird faux-Bavarian village in Leavenworth. The kitsch capital of the world!

We had a nap. The we got up and ate! Mmmm. Beef tenderloin. Ellen Lupton and Jakob Trollb�ck joined us for a rousing conversation about teaching design and typography (See? See?). Then we went off to see the Clayton Brothers, clutching cookies (us, that is; we had the cookies, not them).

Fingerpaintingly,
marian

Saturday

Dear Armin,

Awoken by the girls still giggling downstairs. Why do girls giggle so much when they’re together?

After breakfast, the first speaker was Jakob Trollb�ck. He starts his talk by just playing music — various tracks, from Bach to a symphony comprised of dot matrix printers printing. I’d kill for his iTunes library. The rest is all eye-candy, but thoroughly enjoyable. After him was Yves Behar of Fuseproject. More cool eye-candy. No complaints.

The afternoon was wasted away in Leavenworth, the nearest town. Marian asked why Americans bought so much crap? I was going to tell her that buying crap was our constitutional right to Freedom, protected by our fearless president and troops abroad. And if she didn’t like our fake-Bavarian crap, then she can just go back where she came from. But I didn’t. She wouldn’t have understood my humor anyway.

The evening’s speaker was the Clayton Brothers. Their illustration work is like folk art meets Ren and Stimpy. Fascinating work, but utterly boring presentation. But they seemed like nice guys.

There was a costume/cocktail party afterwards — and Marian kicked butt. She came in a home-made costume — as Cooper Black lowercase-i — and won for best costume. I was dressed as Jesus, but in hindsight, should’ve been Moses. In either case, it was hard to drink beer through a fake beard.

The rest of the night was a blur. There was dancing, drinking, and general debauchery till God-knows-when. Jesus hit the bed around 330am.

Tan

AV—
You know the thing about inspiration? It gives you hope. It gives you a reason to live. It elevates you and challenges you and changes your mind. That is what Jakob, Yves and Rob and Chris Clayton did for me. There is something really terrifying about realizing you want to be more—way more—than you are, but something liberating as well. These five people: Ellen, Jakob, Yves, Rob and Chris—they do their work everyday, they live like the rest of us and they also have the ability to transform small moments, moments way into the woods of our hearts and minds.

The Clayton Brothers work is extraordinary. Their work is a strange and wonderful mix of classical portraiture and organic landscape-type decoration. It is a blazing narrative of messages, innuendo, provocation and humility. Jakob Trollback was so good that I immediately wanted to hire his firm to create something for Sterling—and his music laden introduction incited me to buy 7 new CD’s on BN.com.

We somehow made it through the day without any dancing. By nightfall I was all twinkly-eyed with dreams and possibilities and was actually glad I made the 3,000 mile trek to see Tan and Marian. Seeing them in the way that I did and sharing what we did together allowed me to participate in the world—if only for a second—in a totally new way. It is a rare and wonderful thing to have that type of unexpected experience and it has really moved me.
-deb

Dear Armin,
Last night we got dressed up in our costumes and went to the dance party. Debbie was a cat! Kim was a slutty girlscout! Tan was Jesus Christ!! I was a Cooper Black “i”! I won the prize for best costume!!! Yay!!!! Then we danced and danced. It’s hard to dance dressed up as a Cooper Black i! We danced off all the food we ate over the past 2 days.

See you soon,

Craftily,
marian

Sunday

Dear Armin,

We’re all leaving early so Deb and Kim can fly back to NYC. We skipped the last speaker — Sarah Nelson from Werner Design in Minneapolis. Bummer. I took a few last photos and off we went.

We talked about the conference all the way back in the car. We reminisced about the food, the people, and the work. The girls kept giggling while I drove.

We got to the airport and said our farewells, and vowed to keep in touch until next year’s camp.

I think I’m going to rent an RV for the next one. Can’t wait.

Tan

Armin—
Oh! One more thing: Tan snores like a bear. Everytime we thought about it all weekend, all we could do was giggle.

Til we meet again…
-debbie