ISSUE 01
NOVEMBER 2010
HELLO.
ENJOY.
SHIFT STAFF
CONTENTS 5
JOSHUA PRINCE-RAMUS
12
ARCHITECTURE
28
BRUCE MAU
DESIGN THINKING
3
BALL& NOGUES
INSTALLATION
34
MICHAEL BIERUT
GRAPHIC DESIGN
18
JONATHAN IVE
24
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
38
CHRISTIAN HELMS
GRAPHIC DESIGN
TIM BROWN
DESIGN THINKING
42
SI SCOTT
ILLUSTRATION
4
6
ARCHITECTURE
ARCHITECTURE’S GOLDEN BOY Joshua Prince - Ramus, Principal of REX Architecture and Design Firm, is a different kind of architect. Prince - Ramus and his team work against the ideas of ‘starchitecture’ and ‘blobitechture’ to formulate rational, pragmatic, yet unique design solutions to a variety of architectural problems. Prince - Ramus is shaking up the world of design and we couldn’t be happier.
when you were a child, did you want to become an architect? yes. since a very very very young age. since 5. my grandfather was a very successful engineer and had worked with a lot of very good architects and exposed me to the field. where did you study architecture? your first job? I studied at harvard. I graduated in ‘96 and rem koolhaas was at the school and on my final review. I approached him right afterwards and he offered me a job. I went almost immediately to OMA and was in rotterdam until 2000. my first job was a 70 thousand sqm office building for universal studios in the hollywood hills with a budget of 350 million USD. I was directly out of school and the project director was only two years out of school. we didn’t have any idea what we were doing. we just did it. lots of confidence and ‘brute force.’ just energy and conviction and figuring out as you go. and REX architecture? later I became a partner of OMA and came to New York to open the US office in 2000. in 2006, I bought Koolhaus out of his half of the company and changed the name. is a big restraint a good thing to start with? the first thing we say to a client is ‘tell us about your problems. tell us your constraints. we’ll make something out of them.’ of course every architect would like to have more money to play with, but if there are big constraints, you’re obliged to come to very creative solutions. we’ve never seen a constraint that we didn’t like. the office’s ethos is about not designing objects, but designing processes and to have the confidence that with enough people, enough intelligence and enough energy, the process will lead to a conclusion that far exceeds anything you could have sketched initially or individually. we call this the ‘lost art of productively losing control.’ where do you work on your projects usually? here in the studio, but in the beginning of a project we work with the client at their place, their site, their office, their institution to understand how they operate. 7
describe your style like a good friend of yours would describe it. performance. please describe an evolution in your work from your first projects to today. actually, the seattle library for this office was a watershed moment. frankly, it was one of the reasons why this office eventually split from OMA. the analytical design process on seattle was something that OMA had been thinking about and advancing, but OMA does many things. OMA tries many different avenues. on seattle, we pushed this highly rational methodology very far. it was exciting and everything we have done since has been an evolution to that project’s design process. I don’t think rem (koolhaas) was as comfortable to be so focused on one way of working. the research process we did with the seattle client, we have repeated with every client since. this was also the project that has given you the most satisfaction until now? yes, the seattle library. it was in 1999, at the height of the internet technology boom. seattle was filled with incredibly smart, wealthy people who were doing everything they could to kill the book. they all believed religiously in the internet, web TV, e-books... and therefore there was a lot of skepticism about why the public library was spending 112 million USD to build a repository for books. architects should guide collaborations rather than impose solutions. so we agreed with the board and the city librarian to research the situation and take collective positions before starting to design. the library board included the vice-president of boeing, the CFO of microsoft, the first investor in bill gates’ company... they were all used to taking educated risks. we asked ‘did the book still have an important position within the information media explosion?’ and our collective position was ‘yes!’ our analysis confirmed that no really potent form of technology ever disappears. who would you like to design something for? an opera. it’s the mother of the arts. it deals with everything from dance to scenic design to acting to
ARCHITECTURE
DO WORK LOCALLY AND DEFINE WHAT ARCHITECTURE WILL BE FOR THE NEXT 50 YEARS JOSHUA PRINCE-RAMUS LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY MUSEUM PLAZA
KORTRIJK CENTRAL LIBRARY
music to...it’s also an institution that is clearly in crisis. since we’re very interested in advancing and challenging typologies, I think it’d be interesting to design a contemporary opera. The opera’s problem is not its content. The problem is its form, decorum and the expectations it puts on people. If you could design an opera environment which appeals to 22 year olds, they would go. and if they could be themselves...if they could sit and drink and talk and watch (laughs). Is there any architect from the past you appreciate a lot, who has influenced you? certainly mies van der rohe. trying to think if there could be anybody else... And those still working? contemporary ones? rem koolhaas. rem was my mentor. I don’t know how else to put it. certainly an enormous amount of our intellectual production continues things that I learned or started while with OMA. also, attempting to negate things that I learned or saw at OMA...I’m either reinforcing or negating this experience.it is still a dialogue, whether it’s directly with him or not. 9
Do you discuss about your projects with other architects? yes, I have a group of friends that were friends long before any became successful. we talk. people like julien de smedt, bjarke ingels, gary bates, arne quinze. I think one of the nice things about this younger generation of architects and designers, (laughs) anyone under 45, is that they are more open. I’m not even sure it depends on age - it has maybe more to do with our position within the profession, that we’re not so guarded and we don’t take the position ‘these are my toys and I don’t want to talk.’ we talk about approaches to a project and whether or not it’s intellectually credible. we talk about papers that we’re writing and the ideas behind them. for example, I happen to be very good at at contracts. I have lawyers in my family and it is always something I’ve understood. I send REX’s contracts to my colleagues and say, ‘this is how we fought for and established intellectual property rights, and you should use this language.’ we also exchange information about standard fees and what’s expected. we have a feeling of ‘it’s us against the world.’
ARCHITECTURE
What advice would you give to the young? I have one specific piece of advice: don’t follow conventional paths. this is the best moment you could ever be a young architect, because the playing field in this economy is becoming even. for a long time, the older generations ate the young. they’re going down right now and there’s no definition of what architecture will be. don’t try to get a junior job at the best firm you can and spend the next 30 years working your way through. this is the moment to move back home, use all your contacts and start operating locally. do great work locally and define what architecture will be for the next 50 years. the more general advice is that no one can teach you how to design. no one can teach you how to be creative. but they can teach you to be self-critical. in school you should focus on learning to be self-critical and on contracts (laughs). spend most of your time - if you’re in architecture school - over at the law school or the business school because that’s where you’re going to learn tools. the real things you can learn in architecture school are tools. focus on tools, not on your studio course.
What are you afraid of regarding the future? the issue of sustainability. it ties into both being an architect and a parent. I have a rule with my daughter. she’s just turning four, but from the day she was born, I’ve always tried to make her understand there’s no concept of ‘away.’ you can’t throw it ‘away.’ you can’t flush it ‘away.’ it may not be here any longer, but it’s there, somewhere, impacting the world. what troubles me most - as an architect - is that I’m a participant in the problem. in architecture we don’t exercise the option of ‘no.’ we just ask, ‘how?’ we might create buildings which can be incredibly sustainable, but they are never as sustainable as the option of not doing them. the fact that we can do less bad, doesn’t mean we’re doing good.
Prince - Ramus was able to hang around the SHIFT studio for a while and talk shop with the rest of the staff. Videos and pictures were taken. Be sure to visit www.shiftdesignmag.com for any extras of this interview. For more information on Prince - Ramus and REX Architecture and Design firm, visit www.rex-ny.com 10
INSTALLATION Ball + Nogues is a collaborative design and fabrication studio led by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues that produces architecture, art and industrial objects. The Studio has exhibited at major institutions throughout the world. SHIFT’s Sam Williams sat down with the duo to get the their take on design and how they started, where they are now, and where they are going in the world of design.
When you were a child, did you want to become a designer? N: I wanted to be more like my dad. he was an engineer and I really liked what he did. he used to take me to where he worked and I would get to hang out in an hanger with a bunch of guys who worked on airplanes. I really liked that but I was terrible at math. but I think, eventually, the things that I liked to be surrounded with when I was a kid, I managed to maintain. the shop where we work is very similar to some of the places that my dad used to take me to. B: I wanted to be an architect at a very young age. and then I wanted to be a theatre set designer. I always thought I would do something artistic. my mother had me around theatres a lot. I also wanted to be a musician and play guitar. at another point, I wanted to be a political scientist. I wanted to study politics. I’ve tried just about everything. I wanted to be a veterinarian.
liquid sky - ps1 contemporary arts center - queens, ny
INSTALLATION Where do you work on your designs and projects? N: at the studio. it’s very comfortable there. we like the space. it’s a good place to think. there’s something going on all the time. it gets ideas rolling. we talk to each other a lot. we evolve our ideas in the studio when we’re working on it together. Do you discuss your work with other architects and designers? N: I think that kind of scenario exists more in critiques and school environments then perhaps getting together with other designers in, say, a cafe. I think academic grounds is more common for that. we share our different views and ideas when we talk about student work. teaching is a good way to have discourse with other designers. Describe your style, like a good friend of yours would describe it. N: crafty. I try to avoid talking about our work with friends, though. we have some disparate friends. B: someone would say, ben and gaston invented a contraption to make a new project. they would say our work is about inventing. ‘they’re always inventing a new kind of craft; a new way of making things.’ we do a lot of tinkering, lots of playing around with objects and taking them apart and putting them back together. once we decide on what the project is going to be, we choose a direction. then it’s very focused but we try a number of different things to get to that point. N: yeah, I think all of that comes out of a desire to make things. in that sense, we try to control all aspects of it and things look great. they come out the way we want them to. Please describe an evolution in your work, from your first projects to the present day. N: we’ve been pretty honest to how we began. B: I think our projects have become larger in scope and more complex. people are starting to associate us with impermanence which was never something that we set out to do. it was just the opportunities and the budgets that were provided to us that determined the
life of our projects. but now, almost all our commissions are for permanent projects. they are larger in scale, more complex, and require more consultants... The limitations and opportunities are arising from technology? B: we’re trying to move away from a discourse that’s just about technology which I find to be a very outdated way of working. the work has to be more than just discussing a new software or a new process. we’re really trying to think about the social dimension of our work, its lifecycle, and its sustainability. we want to create an experience that has more depth and more meaning. What project has given you the most satisfaction? B: the MOCA installation. there was a moment when we weren’t sure if it was going to work. but we always take risks. we’re always trying to push just to the point of failing. N: with the MOCA project, we hit a bug with the machine - literally. well, a magnetic bug. we couldn’t fix it so we were coming up with ways to do it by hand which would have been impossible to do - we didn’t have the time. so eventually got the magnet but out...the machine is just pumping these strings out and they don’t mean anything until you put it all together. at first it’s just one string, then two, three thousands. when it finally started to take form and we could see that it worked, it was pretty gratifying. Who would you like to design something for? N: we always considered ourselves very fortunate to have gotten to do what we have. every commission we’ve gotten, we’ve been very happy with. so in that sense, it’s hard to name an ideal client. when you try to squeeze the most out of a good project, there’s never a need for that kind of longing. B: I think it’s most important to have a good relationship with the people. it’s not so much a particular type of project - it’s the people. you could work in the best museum in the world but that 14
doesn’t make it a good project if you have a bad relationship with the curator. Who is your ideal audience? B: we want to communicate to a popular audience, so a child should be able to respond to it. but we also want to communicate to an academic audience, to the ‘cognizanti’. N: and everybody in between. and if the economy goes bust, we would still be doing this. we are our best clients and we try not to rely on budget. Is there any designer and/or architect you appreciate a lot? N: perhaps frank gehry. just the way he set up his studio and the way they work there. I spent a long time working in that office. they have a multi-level approach to everything. B: otto frei. we’re always interested in what he did and his methods of working. the way he went about problem solving. the details. investigating a certain material to understand its properties, the parameters within which you can work as a designer. And from the younger generation?
N: yeah, and face.
What are you afraid of regarding the future? N: lot’s of things. why don’t you start? I’m going to think about it for a little bit. B: it always comes down to your own paranoia, I think. I’m afraid of being isolated and being completely alone, but I also think about environmental degradation to the point where we cannot survive as a species. yeah, you start to think about that, especially when you have kids and the idea of that becomes more real. that’s always a concern. I think most people’s fears would be being 80 years old and having no one around. N: oh god. B: that’s a terrible feeling. N: with alzheimer’s. hate it. who would want that? B: being old and lonely. I think that’s a legitimate fear. N: I’m afraid of falling off my bike everyday when I get on it. everyone drives so badly. that’s always very scary. but, you know... I can always survive that.
B: yeah, it’s farcical.
Visit www.ball-nogues.com for more information
B: I like mark fornes, theverymany. we’re not so much interested in the style of a particular artist or designer. it’s more the approach; the way they run their studios. N: or what they conceive of as work. B: and mark allen. he has a sort of gallery, a collective in los angeles called ‘machine project’. they work in a kind of nexus, a community that is bound by mutual interests. this could be an interest in cooking, or gardening, mathematics, ad so on. they do workshops on everything, like computational crochet to baking with a light bulb. they sponsored a competition for artists, designers and engineers to create an oven that used a single light bulb. they get judged on design, efficiency, aesthetics, and then they had a food critic for taste. it’s an approach to art and life.
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What advice would you give to the young? B: work hard, kids. people often ask me that question and I’m still trying to figure it out. N: I’m giving advice to my kids right now. two of them. one of them doesn’t reply at all and the other one needs to basically work hard. it’s all a lot of work. B: I think it’s very important to not be constrained by categorization. I think categories that define people in a particular way can kill a lot of good, creative inspiration by trying to fit into a specific group. ‘I’m not going to do this because this is what an architect does’ or ‘this is what an industrial designer does’, ‘this is what an artist does’. that type of thinking can be very limiting for people. I would always encourage everyone to be critical of categorical thinking. N: yeah. another thing that’s going on is people are starting to disassociate their hands from their brain. B: yes! very important. N: you’re seeing a lot of people who believe it’s good enough to be able to just press a button. there is no sense of meaning, materiality, or gravity in what they make. I think it’s always important to balance those things out - but not entirely. you should be able to dream as well.
INSTALLATION
table cloth for the courtyard at schoenberg hall - los angeles, ca
rip curl canyon - rice university - houston, tx
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
MEET THE MAN WHO EMBODIES ALL APPLE STANDS FOR: DESIGN INTERVIEW BY JAMES WESTLAND
How did you you first become interested in design? I remember always being intrested in made objects. The fact they had been designed was not obvious or even interesting to me initially. As a kid, I remember taking apart whatever I could get my hands on. Later, this developed into more of an interest in how they were made, how they worked, their form and material. When did you decide to pursue design as a career and how did you go about it? By the age of thirteen or fourteen I was pretty certain that I wanted to draw and make stuff. I knew that I wanted to design but I had no idea what I’d design as I was interested in everything: cars, products, furniture, jewellery, boats. After visiting a few design consultancies I eventually decided that product design would be a pretty good foundation as it seemed the
most general. I studied art and design at school and went on to Newcastle Polytechnic. I figured out some basic stuff - that form and colour defines your perception of the nature of an object, whether or not it is intended to. I learned the fundamentals of how you make things and I started to understand the historical and cultural context of an object’s design. I wish my drawing skills had improved, but while that bothered me then, it doesn’t now. After graduating, you joined the design consultancy Tangerine. In retrospect, how useful was your experience there? I was pretty naïve. I hadn’t been out of college for long but I learnt lots by designing a range of different objects: from hair combs and ceramics, to power tools and televisions. Importantly, I worked out what I was 18
Aluminum Uni-body MacBook Pro
good at and what I was bad at. It became pretty clear what I wanted to do. I was really only interested in design. I was neither interested, nor good at building a business. Why did you decide to join Apple? I went through college having a real problem with computers. I was convinced that I was technically inept, which was frustrating as I wanted to use computers to help me with various aspects of my design. Right at the end of my time at college I discovered the Mac. I remember being astounded at just how much better it was than anything else I had tried to use. I was struck by the care taken with the whole user experience. I had a sense of connection via the object with the designers. I started to learn more about the company, how it had been founded, its values and its structure. The more I learnt about this cheeky almost rebellious company the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had a reason for being that wasn’t just about making money. In 19
the early 1990s, I was living in London again and working with a number of clients in Japan, the US and Europe at Tangerine. Apple did a search to find a new design consultant and decided to work with me. I still remember Apple describing this fantastic opportunity and being so nervous that I would mess it all up. While I had never thought that I could work successfully as part of a corporation - always assuming that I would work independently - at the end of a big programme of work for Apple, I decided to accept a full- time position there and to move to California. You have described the experience of your first few years at Apple as frustrating. Why was this? And what changed? One of my reasons for joining Apple had been a frustration associated with consulting. Working externally made it difficult to have a profound impact on product plans and to truly innovate. By the time you had acccepted a commission so many of the critical decisions had already been made. Increasingly I had also come to believe that to do something fundamentally new requires dramatic change from
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
many parts of an organisation. When I joined Apple the company was in decline. It seemed to have lost what had once been a very clear sense of identity and purpose. Apple had started trying to compete to an agenda set by an industry that had never shared its goals. While as a designer I was certainly closer to where the desicions were being made, but I was only marginally more effective or influential than I had been as a consultant. This only changed when Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple) returned to the company. By re-establishing the core values he had established at the beginning, Apple again pursued a direction which was clear and different from any other companies. Design and innovation formed an important part of this new direction.
critical that the leadership of a company clearly understands its products and the role of design, but that the development, marketing and sales teams are also equally committed to the same goals. More than ever I am aware that what we have achieved with design is massively reliant on the commitment of lots of different teams to solve the same problems and on their sharing the same goals. I like being part of something that is bigger than design. There is a loyalty that I have for Apple and a belief that this company has an impact beyond design which feels important. I also have a sense of being accountable as we really live, sometimes pretty painfully with the consequences of what we do.
What are the advantages of designing for one company? And the disadvantages? What are the particular characteristics of the set-up at Apple that has made the experience of working there rewarding for you?
Similarly, what are the advantages - and disadvantages - of concentrating on the design of a particular product, in your case, the computer? And is the computer a richer and more rewarding area of design for you to concentrate on now than other products?
It is pretty humbling when so much of your
I had been concerned that moving away from working
effectiveness is defined by context. Not only is it
independently for a number of clients on a broad 20
iPhone 4 with Protective Case
range of products would be difficult. Surprisingly this has not been an issue, as we are really designing systems that include so many different components - headphones, remote controls, a mouse, speakers as well as computers. The issue has really been the focus on designing technologically based products. I love working within such a relatively new product category. The opportunities are remarkable as you can be working on just one product that can instantly shatter an entire history of product types and implicated systems. The iPod is a good example as it is not only a very new product but it clearly turns our users’ previous experience and understanding of storing and listening to music upside down. What are the defining qualities of the design of an Apple product? To what degree are they related to the design heritage of Apple before your arrival there?
How would you describe the organisation of the Apple design team? We have assembled a heavenly design team. By keeping the core team small and investing significantly in tools and process we can work with a level of collaboration that seems particularly rare. Our physical environment reflects and enables that collaborative approach. The large open studio and massive sound system support a number of communal design areas. We have little exclusively personal space. In fact, the memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work.
intersection of technology and the arts. I think that
What is it that distinguishes the products that your team develops? Perhaps the decisive factor is fanatical care beyond the
the product qualities are really consequent to the
obvious stuff: the obsessive attention to details that
bigger goals that were established when the company
are often overlooked, like cables and power adaptors.
In the 1970s, Apple talked about being at the
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was founded. The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function.
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Take the iMac, our attempts to make it less exclusive and more accessible occurred at a number of different levels. A detail example is the handle. While its primary function is obviously associated with making the product easy to move, a compelling part of its function is the immediate connection it makes with the user by unambiguously referencing the hand. That reference represents, at some level, an understanding beyond the iMac’s core function. Seeing an object with a handle, you instantly understand aspects of its physical nature - I can touch it, move it, it’s not too precious. You have said that, historically, advances in design have been driven by the development of new materials. Which new materials excite you most now?
impossible. Twin shooting materials - moulding different plastics together or co-moulding plastic to metal gives us a range of functional and formal opportunites that really didn’t exist before. Metal forming and, in particular, new methods of joining metals with advanced adhesives and laser welding is another exciting area at right now. What are the other catalysts for design’s development today? New products that replace multiple products with substantial histories is obviously exciting for us. I think another catalyst is the tenacity and high expectations of consumers.
meet very specific functional goals and requirements.
Conversely, why are so many new products so bland and derivative? So many companies are competing against each other with similar agendas. Being superficially different is the goal of so many of the products we see. A preoccupation with differentiation is the concern of many corporations rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the
From a processing point of view we can now do things
time, investing the resources and caring enough to try
with plastic that we were previously told were
and make something better.
Materials, processes, product architecture and construction are huge drivers in design. Polymer advances mean that we can now create composites to
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CEO of ‘innovation and design’ firm IDEO, Tim Brown is teaching designers to go beyond the surface and encourage a deeper thinking based on design research. First off, design thinking. Give us the elevator pitch. Design thinking is really about using the sensibilities and methodologies that designers have developed to create new choices, new alternatives, new ideas that haven’t existed in the world before. But it’s being applied today much further upstream and to a much broader set of problems than it has been traditionally. It’s the same skills that designers developed literally for decades, but [those skills are now] applied on a much broader canvas than they used to be. What’s a good example of a service that’s come about using this approach? Bank of America is a great example. We worked with them to use this human-centered, observational approach to understand how people save or don’t save
their money. We noticed that people have these mechanisms for automatically saving. They would take the change from a transaction, stick it in a jar and then every so often take it to the bank. We’ve all seen that behavior. Other people would round up their utility bills so that they’re always ahead of the utility company.We took that idea and developed a new service called Keep the Change. So now, with this account, whenever you make a payment with your debit card, Bank of America rounds it up to the nearest dollar and puts the change in your savings account. So people are automatically saving as they spend money.This is a service product based a human behavior, and that’s really what for me is the core of design thinking — understanding how people operate in the world, understanding how they behave, and using that as the inspiration for new ideas. In your book, you talk about how it requires a culture of optimism. Is it hard to promote design thinking in a bad economy? You certainly get companies changing their objectives in a downturn; they tend to be a little less long-term. But design thinking can be applied in short-term ways and in long-term ways. In fact, the imperative
DESIGN THINKING for doing this is even greater in a downturn. The opportunity to capture more market share is greater because many of your competitors have taken their eye off the ball. Who does a good job innovating quickly? Toyota is famous for using essentially a design-based approach to constantly improving the way they do things. If you look at what they do, it’s all design thinking. It’s observing what’s happening, quickly prototyping solutions and then implementing them. And they do this constantly and consistently all the time and create hundreds of improvements in a month or so. And it’s in the hands of the guys on the factory floor to do this. This isn’t a bunch of senior people coming in, seeing something’s wrong and changing it. These tools are in the hands of the shop-floor workers.
focused on how nurses change shift and realized that too much time is being spent with nurses hidden away in the nurses’ station at the end of every shift while they exchange information about the various needs and states of patients. And by using observation — seeing what really was happening — rapid prototyping, and brainstorming, they came up with a new approach, whereby now they change shift on the ward in front of patients. They’ve developed a simple software tool to help them do it, and they’ve brought the time in between shifts that they’re away from the patients from 40 minutes on average down to 12 minutes. And that’s increased the confidence of the patients because the patients can see the information’s getting translated and transferred.
The smartest innovators find ways to make ideas bubble up from the floor. Right. Look at Kaiser Permanente, the healthcare organization. They’ve got this whole approach to design thinking to improve the quality of the patient experience. They have teams of nurses and other
And everyone can actually have an effect on how a place is run. Exactly. That’s the tremendous opportunity of design thinking, particularly in the world of services. It’s the opportunity for the people who are actually delivering the service to spot needs, develop new ideas and implement them, and kind of have
professionals, other healthcare workers, working on
some level of control and influence on the way that
projects consistently. One example: A team of workers
they interact with customers.
One of your rules is that ideas should not be favored based on who creates them. This happens everywhere, and it’s a morale killer. How do you rectify that if that’s ingrained in an organization? Well, I think to some degree that has to be based on the culture. I mean you have to have a culture where respect is given to the idea. And you can have that by making the ideas as tangible as quickly as you can. How do you do that? The important thing is to make ideas tangible, to make them real — say, using storyboards if it’s a narrative idea, using a model if it’s a physical idea, however you want to do it. You can act it out. The quicker you do that, the quicker the ideas start to speak for themselves rather than the person who’s promoting them. As you point out, sometimes great ideas happen on cocktail napkins and solitary environments. So how does a company create an environment where ideas can flourish in all sorts of ways? It has to be an experimental culture. There has to be an enthusiasm for new ideas. You have to have a culture that’s willing to explore new ideas, test them and then get rid of them if they’re not good ideas. If ideas get shut down, if they’re only allowed to happen in some little corner, or if only certain people are allowed to have ideas, then you’re failing to tap into the innovation potential of an organization. So this notion of experimentation is thoroughly important. You’re describing an ideal culture. Proctor & Gamble is a good example of this culture. A.G. Lafley recently retired as CEO, but whenever I met him, wherever in the world we were, he would be going into a supermarket and hanging out with customers. And by doing that he had so much a deeper understanding of the people he was trying to serve. And I think it doesn’t matter whether you’re the CEO or the youngest brand manager in an organization. If you’re not spending time hanging out with your customers, preferably in the places not only where they shop but where they live, then I don’t see how you’re going to have the sorts of insights that allow you to have the best kinds of ideas. 25
I don’t know how we can do this interview without asking about Apple. Is Apple’s design success really all Steve Jobs? You have to give a huge amount of credit to Steve Jobs for having built a culture where certain things are allowed to trump everything else. Simplicity, elegance, the sort of delight in bringing technology to people in a way that not only they can understand but they kind of embrace. And they’ve become steadily more sophisticated about the way they do that. You know, these are principles that that culture has had at its heart right from the beginning. And Jobs is somebody who just does not let all of the stuff that businesses tend to let get in the way, get in the way. The lesson in leadership is not to try and be Steve Jobs. The lesson in leadership is to understand what allows your organization to really make a difference. My message for business leaders is always, if you want to be more innovative, if you want to be more competitive, if you want to grow, you can’t just think about what your next product’s going to be or what your technology’s going to be. You have to think about the culture that you’re going to build that allows you to do this over and over and over again. How does one create that when it doesn’t already exist? Cultures are basically built around value; they’re built around what people think are important. And if you evolve what you think is important, you can evolve the culture. I mean IBM is a great example of a company that went from being a highly technocratic technological culture to being essentially a management consulting culture today by changing what they thought was important. You can’t expect to change it overnight; it takes a lot of effort by a lot of people over a lot of time. But I absolutely believe it’s possible to do. I think it’s essential. I mean, let’s face it, the world is changing so dramatically today that hardly any organization is set up for the future. And so if we can’t change our cultures, then essentially we’re accepting that the organizations we have today will disappear and other ones will emerge to replace it. It’s not a very optimistic view and it’s also not one that shareholders will probably get very excited about.
DESIGN THINKING
DESIGN THINKING
I see you as a kind of shaman, somebody who is providing the tools and the context for reenvisioning the world as we know it. How do you see yourself? This is an extraordinary moment in history that we’re part of, with enormous opportunities. We need to understand them in the most positive way or we will fail to embrace them. We need to understand what we should be doing. Do you feel that the market is meeting you, that you’re able to explain this to the people you work with? Or that the people approaching you are doing this precisely in order to position themselves within this changed context, which maybe they couldn’t do on their own? Well, the answer to that is pretty complex. There are a lot of different layers of understanding and realization in the people we work with. In some cases, people have a very particular ambition and they come to us because they think we can help them realize that ambition. In other cases they see that what we’re doing has a lot of potential and they want to be a part of it. 28
Let’s talk about Massive Change. It’s a courageous and optimistic project, given the world we’re living in. Do you feel a certain responsibility, in the larger sense of the word? Absolutely. Massive Change is shockingly sincere. It’s not ironic. It’s not critical in the accepted notion of critical. It’s disturbing to me that in a certain intellectual circle the work considered most serious is negative. Do you feel that your work is a response to that? Absolutely. We realized that the most critical action one can take is to do something better. That’s not recognized in our intellectual environment, but the luxury of cynicism is not accessible to me; I have the responsibility to actually produce something. That’s one of the things we saw in the project overall, that there is a huge group of people who are all part of this movement for massive change who are also incredibly sincere. Not cynical, not waiting for somebody else to solve it. They’re actually taking action and solving problems. Do you think this new impulse has anything to do with age? I think it’s cross-generational. The difference is that there is now a kind of accessibility to action for a young population that wasn’t there when the previous generation was young. Imagine, 20 years ago it was very hard to find out about international organizations doing work on literacy. And today, with the Internet, you can find out all about them in the next four minutes—and join them, become part of their project. Let me ask you about the postgraduate design program that you set up with George Brown College at the Bruce Mao Design studio, the Institute without Boundaries. It seems like it came up at the most opportune time. It was a coincidence. We were invited by the Vancouver Art Gallery to consider making a project about the future of design on a big scale, 20,000 square feet, and within the space of about two weeks we were also asked by George Brown College in Toronto to make an educational project that was off the university grid. 29
It was sort of out of the blue, these two offers, and at the same time we were invited by Phaidon Press to make another book, and by a television company to do a series on the future of design. All within the space of a few weeks. My colleagues were very anxious about all these things. They said, “Bruce, you can do any one of these things, but you have to turn down the other three because we can’t take on all four.” But what I realized is that actually, and maybe counterintuitively, doing all of them would be easier than doing any one of them alone. If you have the Institute without Boundaries, you can realize the project for Massive Change. If you’re doing Massive Change, you’ve got something to drive the Institute without Boundaries. If you’re doing those two projects, then you have the material for a book. And if you’re doing all of that, you’ve got a television project. The resources from each of the projects contribute to the central database of knowledge that you need to successfully execute them all. So would this be an example of sustainability as you discuss it? Yes. Instead of discrete entities, they’re conceived of as part of a system of inputs and outputs, which is exactly the idea of sustainability. Your idea of sustainability seems to reflect the interdependence that Buddhism speaks about. Yeah, absolutely. What we’re seeing in our research is that we are moving to a higher order of resolution. Several years ago Zone did a book called Incorporations with Sanford Kwinter and Jonathan Crary as the editors. The concept related very clearly to a Buddhist sensibility: the idea of a discrete entity is an artificiality that helps us deal with the world. In other words, I’d like to think that my body ends here and the world begins, but in fact there is no sustainable boundary. You know that the atoms that make up your body are replaced every seven years; your body is entirely different from what it was seven years ago. Okay, but there seems to be a memory link? Yes, the living organism is sustained. But the idea of the boundary of living things needs to be opened up.
DESIGN THINKING
For instance, we still think of the individual as the principal human form. But we might be wrong about that. It might be that the family is actually the body, or the group, or the community—that might be the more important living organism. When you look at an anthill you think of the individual ant as the living being, but now we know that the anthill itself is a living being, that the community of ants behaves as a living thing. The same applies to designed objects of systems and ideas: we still think of individual objects as the output of a design process, but more and more, you see designers and people moving to understand how that object fits into systems of flow that are inputs and outputs. This leads me to ask you about the quote that’s on the back of Massive Change: “Massive Change is not about the world of design, it’s about the design of the world.” Well, we wanted to move away from the sort of narcissistic approach to design from the perspective of designers and look at design from the perspective of the citizen. How does design shape the world that 31
we experience? One of the thought experiments you can do is to close your eyes and imagine opening them in a place where you see nothing that is designed. I can’t imagine that at all. Exactly. We live in a realm that is entirely produced. Charlie Rose asked me, “What do you want people to take away from this?” I really want people to take away the idea that since the world around them is produced and designed, they can play a role in how that world is produced. Is there some sort of organic quality, though, that we become enmeshed in once we join that exploration? Well, one of the most extraordinary capacities of human intelligence is our capacity to naturalize. If you think of getting on an airplane and flying from one place to another, it doesn’t seem like a very strange thing to do, but in fact it’s absolutely extraordinary. We’ve designed the experience in such a way that we can do it. We need to make our experience strange again so that we can see it. And we need to see that to
DESIGN THINKING
be able to take part in deciding and articulating what we want the world to be. Right. So how do you define or redefine what design is? I think that because design is principally expressed visually, it’s become stuck in the visual. People who think about design talk about the visual. For us, one of the most important things we did in conceptualizing the project was to say, “Let’s take the visual off the table as the principal criterion.” Obviously, we’re obsessed with the aesthetic dimension of our work, but by taking it off the table as the principal factor, something else comes onto the table, which is human capacity. And that can sometimes be invisible. The ability to affect the shape of the world, and therefore the shape of our experience, is what design is all about. If we think only about the visible aspect of that, you end up with an argument about whether or not things should be blobby, and that’s a very uninteresting place to go. Instead you could say, “What is this human capacity making possible and what should we be doing with.
it?” Look at what has transpired in the last century; we have so expanded our capacity to affect the world that the questions around what we should be doing with it have become extremely urgent. A lot of people say that in the 20th century we used 19th century thinking in order to move ahead. Do you feel that we can catch up with ourselves and use 20th and even 21st century thinking? BM I’m quite optimistic about that. I think that 21st century thinking is emerging in a very powerful way. One of the things you saw in the project overall was the emergence of a kind of network sensibility and an idea of distributing potential, and that is not 20th century. That is really 21st, and that is happening all over the world. And that’s why, for instance, we see a commitment to social change happening outside government in such a powerful way. There is so much more to Bruce Mau than this interview. To learn more about Mau and his various socially impacting projects, visit www.brucemaudesign.com 32
A partner at Pentagram Multidisciplinary Design firm in New York, Michael Bierut is a leading force in the world of graphic design showing a fierce dedication and passion admired by all.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Graphic design isn’t a zero - sum game Michael, let me start with the obvious. In my view, there are two kinds of designers in the world: the ones who maintain their positions by holding other designers back, and the ones who confidently promote other designers. This interview might be more caustic if you were the former kind, but you’re the first one out of the gate to find young designers and encourage them. Why? Wouldn’t it be easier to be grumpy and complain about “those damned kids”? I really like graphic design. I like doing it, but I especially like it when other people do it. I don’t have any particular point of view that design has to be done a certain way, and nothing makes me happier than to see someone else do something great, particularly if it’s something I would never have thought of. I suppose this is one of the reasons I like being a partner at Pentagram: It’s great to have 16 really talented partners on your side. Graphic design isn’t a zero-sum game. Every time someone does something good, all of us benefit. Did you have the same experience of support and encouragement when you were starting out? Yes. I had great professors at the University of Cincinnati like Gordon Salchow and Joe Bottoni, and worked as an intern under Dan Bittman of Design Team One and Chris Pullman at WGBH in Boston. Then my first real job out of school was with Massimo and Lella Vignelli. I learned so much from all of them, just as I learn from all the people I work with today.
How did you go from being the only person repeatedly checking out a Milton Glaser book from the local library in Cleveland to your first job in New York at Vignelli Associates? I got my first job in New York the same way that every one seems to get their first job in New York: by accident. At one of my internships, I had worked with someone who had been a college roommate with someone who worked at Vignelli. I was between my junior and senior years and visiting a friend who happened to have an apartment on the same street as the Vignelli Associates offices. I tried to visit my excolleague’s former roommate—connections!—but he was busy, and I had to drop my portfolio off instead. Massimo happened to be around, happened to see it and happened to like it. And nine months later, a week after graduation, I was working there. After you left Vignelli Associates, you joined Pentagram. You’ve been a partner there for 18 years. You must like it, or they have dirt on you. Why does it work for you? The way Pentagram is set up it combines everything I like about working as a designer and edits out everything I don’t like. Every partner runs a small team. I work directly with my clients and directly with my designers. No account people, no hierarchies. On one hand, it’s as if it’s a small eight-person office. On the other hand, my team is one of seven in New York, and one of 17 in our offices around the world, so I get constant stimulation from my partners and the work they’re doing, plus the work and recognition that comes from the international profile of pentagram. Try as we might, we can never change how the place we’re from defines us. How did Ohio define you, and how has that benefited you in your life? I think I am very polite, which I’m told is a positive Midwestern trait, but sometimes I wish I could be ruder. It’s really hard for me to tell a client to take a hike, for instance, no matter how incorrigible they are. I admire people who can get angry in a direct and honest way. Sometimes I worry that what I call politeness is actually cowardice. But I really didn’t 34
have any role models growing up to teach me how to yell at people, so I’m stuck, I guess.
of brief. Most designers seem to love that kind of job. I hate it.
Do you ever have moments of doubt? Rest assured, not only do I have moments of doubt, but I actually make mistakes—some quite visible— and have regrets of some kind or another about nearly everything I’ve ever done. My guess is some of what you’ve observed comes from the fact I’ve never been the kind of designer who can spend a long time working toward a solution for a problem. Paula Scher once said that if it’s taking a long time to make an idea work, maybe it’s a bad idea. All my best work involved solutions that were fast and almost easy to conceive—although the follow-through may not be.
Since coming to Pentagram in 1990, what was your favorite project personally? If I had to pick one that has a special place in my heart, it would be the “What is Good Design?” callfor-entries poster I did for the American Center for Design in 1992. My daughter Liz hand-lettered it when she was 5 years old. This June she graduated with honors as a poli sci major from Swarthmore College. Time flies.
So much of your work is large-scale, long-term corporate projects. These involve large-scale politics. How do you handle this and maintain the ability to do good work? Any time you’re working with people, you’re working with politics, power struggles, turf battles, personality clashes. I realized early on it wasn’t enough to have a good idea or do a good design. You have to be able to persuade other people that your idea is right or your design is good, or else it’s never going to exist. This kind of persuasion depends on a number of things. Does the client trust you? Have you been listening to the client? Can you make your work understandable on their terms? Can you help them negotiate what may be an unfamiliar decision-
A few years ago you founded DesignObserver. com, the most successful design publication online. This seems to be a clear outgrowth of the democratization of design in the idea of multiple voices and opinions creating a richer culture. Why did you take on this challenge, and how has the experience differed from your expectations? MB: I love working on Design Observer because I can write on my own schedule, publish it as soon as I’m done, and get immediate feedback. I enjoy reading most of the comments. I don’t take it seriously when they get out of hand, except on those occasions when people start being mean to each other. Then I’ll try to step in to calm things down a little. I really never imagined in a million years we’d be getting 275,000 site visits a week. It’s intimidating. Bill Drenttel and Jessica Helfand are great collaborators and actually do most of the real work involved with the site.
making process? Unless you take all this stuff very seriously—and, more importantly, learn to take pleasure from doing it right—you are going to have a hard time getting anything done. I simply love this part of my job. It’s easy as a designer to feel a dearth of ideas, to have those moments when it feels as if you’ve used up every last idea in the tool kit. Can you talk about your conceptual process? Where are these ideas spawned? This sounds like a cliché, but I get my ideas from the client, or the subject matter, or from the problem itself. I know for a fact this is true because I am helpless when I have an open “just be creative” kind 35
What are you doing now that most excites you? After teaching for almost 15 years in the graphic design program at the Yale School of Art, earlier this year I added another responsibility: co-teaching a class with Bill Drenttel in the Yale School of Management. This is an attempt to teach the value of design to MBA students, with case histories and very informed class discussions. It’s hard, intimidating and—like doing anything new at age 50—very satisfying. If I could figure out something new to do every year from here on out, I’d be a very happy person. For more information on Michael Bierut and Pentagram, visit www.pentagram.com
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Yale School of Architecture Poster Series
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Christian Helms is president of The Decoder Ring Design Concern, a young and ambitious design studio with big ideas located in Austin, Texas. He is inspired by the aesthetics of our past and intrigued by the future of design. SHIFT’s Eve Found sat down for a drink with Helms to pick his brain.
If you have a degree in what field is it? I graduated from The University of North Carolina with a degree in journalism before heading to Portfolio Center in Atlanta. I found design late in school, and at the time I felt like I was way behind. It turns out that the broad education I received as an undergrad has made me a better designer. Well, that and learning how to craft a story. Which designer (or design studio), other than yours, do you most admire? That’s a long list. My buddy James (Victore) has been a hero of mine since I was in college. I admire folks like Paul Sahre, Sharon and Sarah at Werner Design Werks and Bob Gill for their unique points-of-view and independent spirits. Then there are studios like Saul Bass Associates, Sandstrom Design and Planet Propaganda that do consistently stellar work and
have built their businesses in really impressive ways. Geez, if I was supposed to name a single studio I really screwed-up that answer. What’s the strangest request you’ve received from a client? I’ve had a number of folks ask permission to tattoo a logo or illustration, which was pretty staggering. That’s a hell of a compliment. Luckily they’ve been marks or illos that I’m proud of and not ones that I keep swept under the rug. I couldn’t bear to know someone was walking around pimpin’ the one that got away... If you weren’t working as a designer what would you be doing? In a Utopian scenario I’d be writing and performing smart, beautifully unique songs like Will Johnson or
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Frank Sausage Identity and Environmental Graphic Design - Austin, Texas
Tom Waits—but I have the musical ability of a tonedeaf howler-monkey, so that’s probably not in the cards. Realistically, I have no idea. I would probably be miserable at anything else. Maybe writing? What well-known identity is most desperately in need of a redesign? There are plenty that need a redesign, but more frustrating to me are the entities that should revert back to a design that honored their heritage as a company. You don’t have to redesign every other year to remain relevant. Of course I’m blanking on specifics. Oh, and every time I walk through the room while my girlfriend’s watching VH1, that logo drives me nuts. It’s absolutely horrible. From where do your best ideas originate? Out of thin air, usually. I’ll be riding my bike or showering or cooking dinner and the idea I’ve been struggling for will just show up. I walk to the studio every day from my apartment downtown and get a lot of ideas then. When I start a new project, I do a lot of writing and a lot of walking. 39
How do you overcome a creative block? I take a walk or bike ride, see a show or grab a beer with friends. I think I’m a lot more creative when I’m laughing and relaxed than when I’m trying to come up with a big idea. I wonder if it’s that way for other folks or I’m some sort of freakish anomaly? What’s your dream project? It changes pretty often, but this week it’s beer. I really want to work with a brewery on crafting its identity, aesthetic and personality from the ground up. Past that, my stock answer is anything involving Tom Waits. He’s just about the coolest guy on the planet. Do you have creative outlets other than graphic design? I spend my weekends knitting hipster caps and fingerless gloves for my seventeen cats. The gloves are particularly difficult, on account of their claws. I do enjoy writing. It’s how I organize my thoughts. Both my girlfriend and my best friend from college are brilliant writers, so there are always pieces of stories bouncing around between us.
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What’s your approach to balancing work and life? That’s a blurry line for me, if it’s there at all. So many of my friends are creatives of some type—writers, musicians and the like—so I’m constantly surrounded by creativity in some form. You can’t really stop ideas. They pop up whenever they want, and there’s no way to turn that off at five o’clock. So in that regard, I’m always working—it’s just more of a conversation than a clock-punching gig. What product/gadget can you not live without? Maybe the Uniball Vision fine-point rollerball pen. I feel naked if I don’t have one on me. And nobody wants me out roaming the streets of Austin naked. I wish I could live without my cell phone. They really are the bane of our society when it comes to manners and the consideration of others. Damn handy though. Love them iPhones. What’s your favorite quote? If it’s not one from among a zillion Tom Waits lines, then it’s probably Joseph Campbell’s “If you’re on a path that’s beaten, then it’s not your path.”
Do you have any advice for people just entering the profession? Find a mentor and a place where you can learn. And if you reach a point in your job where you’re no longer building muscle, get the hell out of there and find a place where you can be challenged. What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started your career? That no one’s going to make you happy but yourself, and that there’s no such thing as a “dream job.” You have to build it for yourself.
Christian Helms began his career as an intern at Pentagram for Michael Bierut. After successfully conquering Manhattan, Helms then became a founding member of Project M, a socially conscious design collective started by John Bielenberg. To learn more about Christian Helms and The Decoder Ring Design Concern, visit www.thedecoderring.com or hop in a car, train, or plane and travel to Austin and take look. He would be more than happy to show you around. 40
The rising illustrator gives insights into his world of design Most people think that, in an artist’s life, childhood is the most important part. Can you tell us about your childhood? Where did you grow up? What kind of things affected your personality? I grew up in the North of England in the outskirts of the city of Leeds. I had a pretty normal working class childhood I think - playing football in the park, causing mischief all the usual stuff that kids get up to I guess. We never had loads of money but we were never really poor either - I had a great up bringing and learnt a really good work ethic from my dad who has been the most influential person in my life. My Dad always said why work for somebody else when you can work for yourself - that really stuck in my mind and I think that little bit of advice has stuck with me throughout my life so far. Both my Mum & Step mum say I am just like my dad - once I start something I hate to leave it until it’s finished and am a perfectionist who works all the time. I think my upbringing affected my personality in the sense that I am from the north and know how to have a laugh and hate bullshit and big headed people full of there own self importance.
ILLUSTRATION
Would you please tell us about your workspace and working habits? Which tools do you use for visualizing your ideas? Get up about 7am - breakfast, shower, dress and sit at my desk in my flat for a few minutes trying to remember what I’ve going on that day. Decide what jobs take priority. Generally work until about 8ish on a normal day. Sometimes later depending on what I?m working on. I’m quite lucky with what I do that I can work from home. I know I work too much and sometimes stress myself out beyond belief but that’s just the way I am and whatever I work on I just want to do the best job possible. You attended Leeds College of Art and Design and then, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University. After those years of education, do you think art can be taught? I don’t think you can really be taught art you can listen and read as much as you like about the subject but I think there has to be something there to begin with. I’ve always drawn as long as I can remember and when I got to college with the guidance of tutors and
We know that you are very interested in music and creating visuals for music is one of your dream jobs. If you had only one chance for directing a music video, which song of which artist or band would you choose, and why? I would definitely want to direct a video for the band ‘Interpol’ probably for the song “Obstacle 1”. I have a bit of an obsession with the band and I just love that song. If push came to shove and you could only ever hear one more song that would be the one for me!? Are you interested in cinema? If so, what kind of movies and which movie directors do you find closer to yourself in terms of visual comprehension? I love watching films! Along with music I spend too much on dvd’s - I’m a hopeless horder of things. I recently went to see ‘Eastern Promises’ and loved it - thought it was better than ‘A History of Violence’. I like gritty films that make you feel a bit uncomfortable with the subject matter and make you think a bit. I love the work of Anton Corbijn. ‘Control’ was absolutely fantastic. It blew me away with the way it looked and the way it was put together.
peers you just learn ways of applying your ideas in different and the most applicable ways. You exhibited your works and shared your creativity in several shows up to now. If you had a limitless budget, in what ways would you show your pieces to the people? With unlimited budget I would get them engraved
If you had a chance to share your dinner table with some artists from the art history, who would you invite and what would you like to talk with them? Probably Andy Warhol - I don’t know why really? Just think he would be really funny to have a chat with and listen to.
into some sort of frosted glass and a separate layer of the artwork printed slightly offset over the top (only offset by mm’s). Then have them back lit in a dimly lit
How do you evaluate the future of the world when you imagine year 2050?
gallery space so they really stood out.
The future scares me and I’m glad I probably won’t be around to see 2050! With the world the way is going
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Can you define yourself as an artist who reached his goals?
at the minute (war, terrorism, global warming etc..).
I generally am never content or 100% happy with
it’s gone too far to get any better - it’s only going to
anything I produce. I am always striving to do better
get worse. I can’t remember where I heard it but the
work and this can cause quite a lot of stress! I think
following statement really stuck in my mind - ‘If there
if any designer sits back and thinks ‘That’s it. I’ve
is a God will he ever forgive us for what we have done
cracked it.’ - then there would be no point in doing it
to each other? Then I realize! God left this place long
anymore. If you feel you’ve achieved everything you
ago.’ That about sums up the state we’re in as the
want to then where do you go from there?
human race.
I know it sounds a bit morbid but I honestly think
ILLUSTRATION