Getting It

Step Inside Design, Mar/Apr 2008 by Simmons, Christopher

EVERYONE REMEMBERS THEIR FIRST TIME.

We enter this profession armed only with what we have been taught, tempered by some measure of personal experience. The rest we learn as we go along. As we plot the course of our careers, inevitably there are points around which we pivot-moments of personal clarity that redirect our passion, focus or interest. I'm speaking of those Eureka! moments, when what was once obscure or unknown becomes suddenly visible. Whether they occur by chance, design or forcible intervention, all of these moments require a willingness to learn and an openness to accept wisdom from an unexpected source. As you will see, epiphanies can occur at any stage of even the most accomplished career. Each deserves a column to itself, but instead is presented here in enviable company.

BILL GARDNER GETS IT FROM A BOOK

In seventh grade, Bill Gardner was helping his parents clean out a duplex they managed. The tenant had skipped town, leaving an apartment full of belongings behind. The bedroom was wallpapered with black-light posters that could be illuminated byway of switches the deadbeat renter had built in next to the waterbed (also left behind). Among the abandoned clothes, records and assorted sexual contraband, Gardner remembers a book: Seven Designers Look at Trademark Design. The seven designers were Bernard Rudofsky, Herbert Bayer, Alvin Lustig, Paul Rand, Will Burtin, Creston Doner and Egbert Jacobson. "It was the first book I had ever seen that showed not only logos, but showed them in applications beyond just a letterhead. It talked about logos as complete identities and not just simple forms. That book helped define my relationship to identity design from that moment, through college and even today." His copy is now 41 years overdue at the library.

Bill Gardner is president of Gardner Design in Wichita, Kan., and the force bebindLogolounge.com. The fourth installment of his popular LogoLounge books is due out this spring.

RIC GREFÉ GETS IT FROM THE RADIO

When Rie Grefé was 13, he wanted a portable radio. Specifically, he wanted a Grundig. His father, on the other hand, favored a different radio with a better technical review. "I fought for the Grundig. It was beautifully designed, and I refused to accept the unappealing one." At about the same time, Grefé also remembers seeing a Zapf typeface in a small German book. Like the radio, it looked different and inviting. "In both instances I had this intuitive sense that someone was purposefully making my experience more enjoyable." Decades later these moments still resonate with Grefé. "They were first to inform me that great design could not be accidental; it must be purposeful. And they awakened the awe I still feel for great design that can delight as well as enlighten."

Rie Grefé is executive director of AIGA, the professional association for design.

HANK RICHARDSON GETS IT INSTEAD OF GETTING A BEER

As an undergrad, Hank Richardson was known for getting bygetting things done because they came easily, but never going beyond expectations. One day, while attempting to ditch his art history class, a professor intercepted him. "He reminded me that Ellen Johnson, an art historian from Oberlin College, was guest-lecturing about Claes Oldenburg. I'd never heard of Oldenburg, so the professor essentially shamed me into heading back to class." To make a long story short, the lecture blew Richardson away. Through Oldenburg's work, he realized that design could be important, that art and design had the power to change life for the better, and that the best designers were also cultural contributors. "I just needed to be shown that what I did mattered. Mattering gave me direction, and suddenly I became a better student." Today Richardson writes, practices and teaches, mindful of the fact that what he does matters and that everything has consequences. "Those consequences grow with every student I encounter. After all, as the saying goes, you can count the seeds in an apple, but can you count the apples in the seed?"

Hank Richardson is president of Portfolio Center in Atlanta, where he also teaches his legendary History of Design course, in which getting by is simply notan option.

CINTHIA WEN GETS IT FROM MELANIE DOHERTY

It wasn't until her junior year at California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts, CCA) that Cinthia Wen understood what she was doing. Up to that point she simply made things, without ever really understanding why she was making them. Then, in Melanie Doherty's level-three design class she finally got what she had been missing. "To that point I had never had a fulfilling critique-one where I walked away feeling good about myself. Usually I was just more confused. Melanie was the one instructor who was incredibly harsh with her critiques, but who was also very clear. That was the first time I really understood why my work wasn't succeeding and what I needed to do to improve it. It was also the first time I got something better than a C on an assignment." Now a teacher, she remembers that moment. "It reminds me that a teacher has the power to make that tiny difference-to offer that little bit of hope that might help someone keep going. Sometimes that's all a student needs."