"Design by Nature" review in Pasatiempo by Maggie Macnab

Rob DeWalt I The New Mexican

Designer Maggie Macnab

28 January 13 -19, 2012

If you ask Santa Fe-based designer and educator Maggie Macnab to explain what she does for a living, expect her to get right to the point. “You know what they say the oldest professions is, don’t you? Well that’s a fallacy,” Macnab said. “Design is the oldest profession. That’s what human beings do. We figure out something we want to achieve and then set about making it a real thing in the world.” At 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13, Macnab discusses and signs copies of her new book, Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design (New Riders Publishing), at Collected Works Bookstore. Macnab sees her new book as more than just a study guide with lessons by her and from other designers and artists such as Buckminster Fuller, Banksy, and fellow Santa Fean Joel Nakamura. The tenets of her design philosophy are applicable to all people who find themselves walking a creative path, she said. To Macnab’s recollection, she was the first female freelance designer in Albuquerque, and her journey to get there was decidedly nontraditional. Macnab had drawn all her life and had always been oriented toward the visual aspects of communication. She was always the artist in the classroom, but she was also very shy. “We moved 11 times by the time I was 14, and without fail it was during the middle of the school year. It didn’t do much for me socially or educationally.” Macnab fit in better in Santa Fe, she said, because there were a lot of artists and poets in her family and the town fostered the creative spirit. In 1972, Macnab’s mother decided to leave Santa Fe again, and Macnab chose not to pursue her high-school diploma when her family moved to Albuquerque. She dropped out of Santa Fe Preparatory School that year. “It’s funny because … well, I’m not trying to bash education, but in Design by Nature, I state very clearly that I left the educational system as early as I could. I was mature enough to start working in design when I was 16, I believed. I left school in my junior year when I only needed one more credit to graduate.” Macnab thought about pursuing a career in medical illustration, but she fell into commercial art when she realized that medical illustration required a more formal education. “Commercial art was run by the mad dogs at the time, you know, that ad-agency mentality. I lied about my age when I was 16 and got a job as a runner for a typesetting house.” In 1983, a logo Macnab created for a veterinarian in Albuquerque took top national honors from the American Advertising Federation. Macnab continued to win awards and have her work published in design magazines despite not being attached to a large ad agency with plenty of staff and deep pockets. She began computerizing her approach to design in the mid- to late-’90s in New Mexico. Macnab worked her way from typesetting to ad agencies because she knew that what she truly enjoyed was the creative problem solving inherent in hands-on design. She started her own design company in 1981, at age 25. “Having an accounting executive between me and the client didn’t work for me. The ad exec is just translating what he or she thinks the client continued on Page 30

Maggie Macnab; left, top to bottom, Macnab’s designs for Maddoux-Wey Arabians (1985) and Animal Medical Clinic (1983); opposite page, an unfurling fern frond, cited by Macnab as an example of self-similarity and scale

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José R. Almodovar Rivera

Maggie Macnab, continued from Page 29

Above, the spider web, which provides an example of a helix Right, logo developed by Gurujot Khalsa © Gurujot Singh Khalsa Top, left, to right, both pages, Macnab’s designs for The Chicken Is the Egg, 2003; MuSE Technologies (Multi-User Sensory Environment), 1988; Valle Encantado, 2010; Man/ Dog, 2000; and the Heart Hospital of New Mexico

30 January 13 -19, 2012

wants. And let’s face it: most of them are numbers people, not rightbrain aesthetes. I wanted direct feedback from the client. I left the last agency deciding I would branch out on my own and either sink or swim. Luckily, I float well.” When Macnab was a child, she and her family often went camping, hiking at Puye Cliff Dwellings, and horseback riding. “Nature was a big part of my life. It amazes me that humans beings in modern culture feel so separated from nature. and yet we can’t possibly be apart from it. We are nature. If we disconnect ourselves from that truth, then there’s nothing left — that’s just it for us. I kind of feel like it’s my job to do the best I can to teach those who come into my classroom about appreciating nature and understanding how things work and then teaching them how to apply it to their own lives, not just to design.” Macnab likens her design philosophy to the work of cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien, who has studied artwork from different cultures throughout her decades-long career. “She wrote an amazing book called Signs of Life, and it explores the same shapes I write about in Decoding Design and Design by Nature. The first shape is the circle, which you have to utilize before you can flesh out other geometric shapes with a compass and a straight edge. Arrien discovered that all cultures use five basic shapes in their artwork — the equidistant cross, the spiral, the triangle, the square, and the circle. I do an exercise with my students that I hope to workshop someday: put the five basic shapes in order from your most favorite to least favorite. Then we discuss what the order of the shapes can mean and how to integrate them all into a singular design.” Gurujot Khalsa, a Sikh student of Macnab’s from Española, integrated the five shapes into a singing lion’s face wearing a turban. “It was an expression of who he was, not just a logo, and that’s what this design approach is all about.” Macnab encourages her students to accept work that they have a passion and affinity for. “It’s great to do work for good money, but it can’t always be the benchmark. The point is, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to do design. I’m not bashing teachers. There are marvelous ones out there. But I think the current educational system is not working, especially for designers. It does not teach people creative problem solving, and we’re in a place right now as a species that we have to be able to solve the problems we’re dealing with in a very creative way. We need people who can think well beyond what they’ve experienced. And you know what? Standardized testing doesn’t get us there.” “I don’t care if you’re making buildings or figuring out a religion or spiritual path. You have to look at how nature works and work within both the bounty and the parameters that nature gives us. Human ideology comes and goes. It’s in flux all the time with what we know in the moment. But nature is always truthful, always sound. Nature does what works, and that’s it. There’s no good/bad, and there’s no either/or. I think modern culture really needs to turn the corner on the being right/being wrong mentality.” In this technological age of quick access to information (and misinformation), how does Macnab get her students to use their

intuition, to think more critically, and to do so with an ethical approach to design? “Anyone attracted to a creative profession is already on his or her way to that state of active critical learning. An open attitude and mind are really the only requirements. I think now the internet — and technology — has gotten to a point where there’s just so much more transparency. It’s really, really simple. What you want to strive for is the truth, always, regardless of the impact it’s going to have on you, because it is the only thing that will be left standing when everything else is gone.” Macnab uses the BP company logo — and the many reworkings of it by designers in the wake of the oil-spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico — to emphasize the difference between design integrity and design ethics. “Ethics are human ideas — human-made systems. And we apply ideologies to them, and that’s when things get murky. Nature’s ethics are to just do in the moment what can be done with the materials at hand. Designers, being the passionate lot that they are, reworked the BP logo because it was a way they could participate in an important global conversation using the tools of their professions. It was a way to bring more resolution to the situation or to at least create better understanding of what really happened. “Humans have always been under some version of sleight of hand. There’s always somebody doing stuff in the background that people aren’t privy to, and the BP disaster is a good example of that. Human beings are a very clever species. If given the right tools and guidance at an early age so we don’t get completely shut down by a broken educational system by the time we’re 6 years old — and if we’re told it’s OK to explore, ask hard questions, and be creative — then things like BP disaster might not be allowed to happen anymore. In that respect, there’s still hope for the future.” ◀

details ▼ Maggie Macnab discusses and signs copies of Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design ▼ 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13 ▼ Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo St., 988-4226

Variations on the BP (British Petroleum) logo by Ken Cool (left) and Lyn Irvine (right)

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