Technique | March 2019
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Technique | March 2019
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Editors Note
5 Famous Graphics Designers to Follow By: The Art Institutes Filed under: Visual Design August 23, 2018 Add a little extra inspiration to your social media feeds by following these 5 famous graphic designers for their latest and greatest, as well as occasional flashbacks to their most popular and game changing work. Milton Glaser Instagram: @miltonglaserinc The most well-known and celebrated of the famous graphic designers listed here, Milton Glaser has designed many iconic pieces, including the I ❤ New York logo. Glaser continues producing work even today, including new posters for the NYC subways in 2017. In 2018, he released a collection of 427 of his posters created from 1965 to 2017. You can also see many of his classic and recent designs on his Instagram account and website. Among his many awards is the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Stefan Sagmeister Instagram: @stefansagmeister Stefan Sagmeister is an influential and innovative designer and art director at Sagmeister & Walsh in New York City. His clients have included The Rolling Stones, The Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Time Warner, and The Guggenheim Museum. His awards include three Grammys for his packaging and album cover artwork. He also co-directed and starred in the 2016 documentary The Happy Film. Jessica Walsh Instagram: @jessicavwalsh Jessica Walsh is also an art director and designer at the renowned Sagmeister & Walsh, where she became a partner by 25 after only 2 years of knowing Sagmeister. Her clients have included Jay-Z, Levi’s, MOMA, and the New York Times. In addition to being among one of today’s most famous graphic designers, she’s known for social experiments like 40 Days of Dating, for which Warner Brothers purchased film rights. Kate Moross Instagram: @katemoross Kate Morros is an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator, and art director recognizable for her eye-catching pop designs bursting with color and movement. Over the last decade, she’s joined the ranks of in-demand, famous graphic designers with clients that include Ray-Ban, Converse, Vogue, Adidas, Nokia, and many more. She recently founded Studio Moross, which has provided tour visuals for One Direction and Sam Smith as well as design and animations for MTV awards shows, Lip Sync Battle, and the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. Steven Harrington Instagram: @s_harrington Los Angeles–based artist and designer Steven Harrington is famous for his psychedelic-pop aesthetic, with a bright iconic style that’s inspired by the landscape and cultural diversity of California. His work is playful and often features multimedia art ranging from large-scale installations to animated videos to product and clothing designs. Recent clients have included brands like Nike, the LA Rams, and Beats by Dre.
Technique | March 2019
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05. Cover story
The prolific graphic designer, art director, illustrator, typographer, animator and founder of Studio Moross.
Inside
this issue Technique | March 2019
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Feature Story : Photo Essay A look into the diverse work of Sagmeister & Walsh the creative agency from New York City.
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Sagmeister & Walsh
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Interview
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10 principles of good design -
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Ten Things I’ve learnt -
Steve Harrington
Dieter Rams
Milton Glaser 4.
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The prolific graphic designer, art director, illustrator, typographer, animator and founder of Studio Moross.
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Kate has crammed an enormous amount of work into her twenty eight years on this planet from her early days designing profile pages and posters for bands on Myspace, to creating a nationwide billboard campaign for Cadbury in her second year of college, setting up her own record label Isomorph, collaborations with Adidas, Kiehl's, a clothing collection in Topshop, adverts for Sony, Converse, Nike, American Express, Ford and Dunk, editorial for The Guardian, Wired and Vice and art direcWWWvtion, branding, print and moving image with Studio Moross for the likes of One Direction, Sam Smith, Jessie Ware, Disclosure, Tala, Aqualung, MTV, Raybans, Hearts Revolution and Rizzle Kicks. With her book ‘Make Your Own Luck’ now in its second print run, Kate was fresh off the stage of One Direction’s ‘On The Road Again’ tour when we sat down for a tea in her studio. We chatted about her first memories of drawing, learning to design online, setting up Studio Moross, tackling The Directioner’s and her musical journey from The Spice Girls to Sam Smith via Stevie Wonder. All while our brilliant photographer Backyard Bill snapped his way around her colourful studio. Technique | March 2019
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What is your earliest memory of drawing ? So many ! I used to like drawing circuses a lot and underwater scenes. But my absolute favourite thing to do was redraw my books, things like the BFG. I used to fold paper and staple it and then I would remember the story (usually quite badly) and draw it.
Did you have lots of encouragement creatively as a child ? My mum always drew, not professionally, but she always drew as an adult so it seemed really normal to me, it wasn’t like they just got the crayons out for the children, it was something that we did anyway. And my Mum was really encouraging of any creativity or imagination I had even if it wasn’t about making something look good it was more about the process.
As a teenager you designed profile pages for bands on My Space in the early days of the internet and social media and it had a massive impact on your career starting out. Do you think timing had it’s part to play in how your career launched ? My Dad was the ‘tech’ parent and my Mum was the ‘craft’ one so it was a really good combination and my brothers were both really into computer games so I had a lot of experience with hacking games and computers early on. At that time a lot of people couldn’t code so it was an opportunity, not to code as I was never into that, but an opportunity for me to design. So I used the leverage of the fact that I could code to create designs. For me it was never about doing web stuff. It was always about creating visuals to go on the web.
Do you ever have digital fatigue and feel the need to get away from the screen ?
You went to university at Camberwell and in your second year Fallon commissioned you for a commercial Cadbury campaign – all of a sudden your work was splashed all over the UK on 48$ posters. How did that come about and what impact did it have on you as a second year student ? I think the biggest impact it had on me was the realisation that I could make a living out of it and I discovered that I was good at business. I could handle that side of things. At 19 I could sit with an art buyer at an ad agency and hold my own. It scrapped all fear of work in the future as I knew I could do it. And of course it was great to see my work everywhere too.
There has been a resurgence of handmade techniques in the last few years, processes like Screen Printing, Risograph and Letterpress. Do you think this is a direct result of digital fatigue or is it simply the case that for young people starting out now those processes feel like new media because the internet is something they grew up with ? Yes I 100% agree with that, its like ‘Oh we can take our digital images and print them out and sell them’. That’s an amazing way of looking at it. People would think it is really expensive but it is not that expensive. Risographing is super cheap. Yes it is new media to people who didn’t have it growing up. I mean I had fanzines and photocopying culture, I actually had a photocopier machine in my bedroom that was discontinued from my Dad’s office and I sort of smuggled it out so I had that so I don’t crave it so much. But people five years younger, absolutely yes, it’s new
I do feel the need to get away from work but I very rarely feel like I need to get away from technology, I’m not one of those people who needs that. And there are definitely people my age and younger who do want to get away from it all and have no phone signal, but that’s not my nature.
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You don’t need things to make your career happen, You just need to work hard and be out there and you don’t need luck.
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Disciplines: Branding, Print Download low-res ART & CREATIVE DIRECTION: Jessica Walsh DESIGN: Gabriela Namie
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Gut Disciplines: Branding, Print Art & Creative Direction: Jessica Walsh Design: Gabriela Namie 3D & Animation: Andrei Robu Photography: Sarah Hopp Animation: Yaya Xu Prop Production: Arielle Casale
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By The Sea Campaigns The Aishti Foundation is a 40,000 sq foot exhibition space in Jal el-Dib, a short drive up the Mediterranean coast from downtown Beirut. The foundation building will showcase works from Salamé’s 2,000-strong collection as well as a variety of high end luxury retail shops. To celebrate the opening of The Foundation, Tony Salamé asked us to conceptualize and design a campaign around the intersection of fashion and art, while also highlighting its location by the sea side. We also created an animated series of the campaign for Instagram and their social channels. Technique | March 2019
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S T E V E HARRINGTON Artist
Designer
Entrepreneur
Steven Harrington is an LA-based artist & designer and a cofounder of design firm, National Forest. Cited as the leader of a contemporary Californian psychedelic-pop aesthetic, Steven is best known for his bright, iconic style. Embracing a multimedia approach, his portfolio includes large-scale installations, hand screened prints, limited-edition books, skateboards, and sculptures. He has exhibited artwork in LA, NY, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Barcelona, and Tokyo, among others. Technique | March 2019
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Did you always want to be an artist and designer? Like most kids, I grew up drawing and painting. My parents really embraced that and pushed me further into it. When I hit high school, I realized that I liked drawing and painting so much that I didn’t want to stop.
So you had a plan when you went to college? I knew that there would have to be some kind of financial reward at some point, but, to be honest, I didn’t think about it. I still feel somewhat guilty for that. I’m older now, and this is serious. This is what I do. I’ve realized that a certain amount of living off of this takes not thinking about whether or not it’s going to work. I’ve somehow managed to do it, so I’m going to celebrate that. I can say I never put together a plan or anything.
That makes sense. Not that you don’t take your work seriously, but if you consider everything you have to do to start your business at once, it could feel overwhelming Exactly. And to this day, it can feel overwhelming. You have to invest so much of yourself into your work that if you get caught up in questioning yourself too much, then that imaginative, creative spark can easily vanish. Being vulnerable by making things is uncomfortable enough in the first place. To add the discomfort of being an adult, paying bills, owning a house, and all that other shit makes the stakes even higher.
Where did you attend college? I went to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. In high school, I was lucky enough to have a teacher who was really devoted to art. He taught me about Art Center, and I took college-level Art Center courses while still in high school. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford Art Center right away, so I went to Pasadena City College after graduation. I built up a portfolio and did the whole scholarship thing to see how much money I could get from the government.
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After college, you dove into design work and started National Forest with your friend, Justin. How did that come about?
I met Justin at Art Center and the two of us had a mutual passion for art, design, and drawing. At the end of college we both thought, “Whoa, we’re either going to split up right now and go work for different companies or we can do this together and try to figure something out.” It was a really big decision. We chose to put our portfolios together, create a business, and try to get jobs. And that’s what we did: we literally put our illustration portfolios together and hustled our work around.up a portfolio and did the whole scholarship thing to see how much money I could get from the government.
“All we’re looking for is honesty—that one little ounce of honesty in the world, whether it’s found within art or other things.” What were the first years of National Forest like? Looking back, are there any practical insights or things you did to actually keep the doors open Yeah, we cold-called various art directors and businesses. We also went out to New York. At the time, there was an editorial building where we literally walked from floor to floor with our portfolio to show our work to a bunch of art directors. We hit up pretty much every contact we had.
“…there are plenty of people who find their passions in their 50s, 60s, and 70s….It’s awesome to think that all of us could someday evolve into something completely unexpected.”
Do you think one of the reasons you were able to develop such a strong voice with your personal work was because you had the commercial work as your bread and butter and there was no pressure no make money from the personal stuff at the start? It didn’t cross my mind then, but it does now. I completely agree with you. It’s like I’ve hit this weird moment of, “Fuck it, I can make this into whatever I want it to be,” because like you said, it’s art. I’m not reliant on it. Even if another Nike doesn’t come around, I’ll continue making whatever the hell I want. And you know what? It’s going to look like this weird, cartoon world. Some people are going to look at it and say, “Dude, this fucking guy is all about cartoons and it’s really naïve—is it for a kid?”
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Very cool. In addition to your agency, National Forest, you do personal work under the moniker, You & I, right? Yeah. A lot of people consider it illustration, but it goes back and forth between illustration and art. I like drawing, so my work tends to feel illustrative, even though a lot of the work is not necessarily illustrating in a traditional sense, like what Saul Sternberg did for the New Yorker. It’s more vague and surreal.
What advice can you offer to someone who wants to start a business? I’ve recently talked to several friends about this. When we started National Forest, I thought, “We need to incorporate now, get the tax dude involved now, start financial planning now, and I need to make sure I’m paying estimated quarterly taxes now.” You can get consumed by every facet of business before you jump into what it is that you’re interested in.
“What do you find yourself doing or wanting to physically do? I’m not talking about something you wistfully daydream about. There’s a big difference between what you actually enjoy doing and the daydream of what you want your identity to encapsulate.” It’s hard to decide what to focus on career-wise straight out of high school. You don’t necessarily know what your contribution is yet, or you don’t know what you’re good at because you haven’t tried enough things. How do you determine what to focus on? I figured it out through experience. What do you find yourself doing or wanting to physically do? I’m not talking about something you wistfully daydream about. There’s a big difference between what you actually enjoy doing and the daydream of what you want your identity to encapsulate
Steven partnered with Roshe One designer, Dylan Raasch, to design a Nike Sportswear pack, which includes the Roshe One and a Nike slide, now at select stockists worldwide
For example, if you don’t constantly pick up a pencil to draw and want to do that for large periods of time, then chances are that you don’t like drawing that much. If you don’t pick up a guitar or find yourself attracted to music and surrounding yourself with people who make it, then music probably is not for you. Technique | March 2019
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“What’s most important to me is to remember that this is my passion. Even if I was working somewhere else, I’d be trying to do this, so I might as well try to do it for myself.” Technique | March 2019
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Being real about our struggles makes us feel vulnerable, but it’s important. I love that you embraced your anxiety and used it to create art. In showing the series and talking to the press about the pieces, what kind of response have you had? It was interesting because when I put that show together, I thought, “Man, this is so strange, and it’s definitely opening up this very personal thing.” But I got great feedback from the show. There were so many people who came out and took photos with the work who completely related to it.
What I enjoy about painting and art is that it can lead to conversation It might lead us to talk about death or being afraid or anxiety, and then hopefully it will get us to ask the larger question about what the human experience means to each of us. “After making one or two paintings, I realized they were totally about these weird, anxious moments I was having. Through the paintings [in the Wavy Days series], I was creating practical jokes on these emotions in hopes of not only shedding light on them, but also getting my brain to not take the anxiety so seriously.”
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DIETER RAMS’ 10 PRINCIPLES FOR GOOD DESIGN. Technique | March 2019
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A GOOD DESIGN IS..
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Ten Things I Have Learned Milton Glaser Technique | March 2019
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IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB. YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE. This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realized that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle
SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM. This is a subtext of number one. There was in the sixties a man named Fritz Perls who was a gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy derives from art history, it proposes you must www.miltonglaser.com understand the ‘whole’ before you can understand the details. What you have to look at is the entire culture, the entire family and community and so on. Perls proposed that in all relationships people could be either toxic or nourishing towards one another. It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences. And the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energized or less energized. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life. Technique | March 2019
One night I was sitting in my car outside Columbia University where my wife Shirley was studying Anthropology. While I was waiting I was listening to the radio and heard an interviewer ask ‘Now that you have reached 75 have you any advice for our audience about how to prepare for your old age?’ An irritated voice said ‘Why is everyone asking me about old age these days?’ I recognized the voice as John Cage. I am sure that many of you know who he was – the composer and philosopher who influenced people like Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham as well as the music world in general. I knew him slightly and admired his contribution to our times. ‘You know, I do know how to prepare for old age’ he said. ‘Never have a job, because if you have a job someday someone will take it away from you and then you will be unprepared for your old age. For me, it has always been the same every since the age of 12. I wake up in the morning and I try to figure out how am I going to put bread on the table today? It is the same at 75, I wake up every morning and I think how am I going to put bread on the table today? I am exceedingly well prepared for my old age’ he said.
PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT. Early in my career I wanted to be professional, that was my complete aspiration in my early life because professionals seemed to know everything - not to mention they got paid for it. Later I discovered after working for a while that professionalism itself was a limitation. After all, what professionalism means in most cases is diminishing risks. So if you want to get your car fixed you go to a mechanic who knows how to deal with transmission problems in the same way each time. I suppose if you needed brain surgery you wouldn’t want the doctor to fool around and invent a new way of connecting your nerve endings. Please do it in the way that has worked in the past. Unfortunately in our field, in the so-called creative – I hate that word because it is misused so often. I also hate the fact that it is used as a noun. Can you imagine calling someone a creative? Anyhow, when you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal. 28.
LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.
HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN
Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realized that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realize that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.
The brain is the most responsive organ of the body. Actually it is the organ that is most susceptible to change and regeneration of all the organs in the body. I have a friend named Gerald Edelman who was a great scholar of brain studies and he says that the analogy of the brain to a computer is pathetic. The brain is actually more like an overgrown garden that is constantly growing and throwing off seeds, regenerating and so on. And he believes that the brain is susceptible, in a way that we are not fullyconscious of, to almost every experience of our life and every encounter we have. I was fascinated by a story in a newspaper a few years ago about the search for perfect pitch. Well what could that mean for the rest of us? We tend to believe that the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind, although we do not generally believe that everything we do affects the brain. I am convinced that if someone was to yell at me from across the street my brain could be affected and my life might changed. That is why your mother always said, ‘Don’t hang out with those bad kids.’ Mama was right. Thought changes our life and our behavior. I also believe that drawing works in the same way. I am a great advocate of drawing, not in order to become an illustrator, but because I believe drawing changes the brain in the same way as the search to create the right note changes the brain of a violinist. Drawing also makes you attentive. It makes you pay attention to what you are looking at, which is not so easy.
STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED I think this idea first occurred to me when I was looking at a marvelous etching of a bull by Picasso. It was an illustration for a story by Balzac called The Hidden Masterpiece. I am sure that you all know it. It is a bull that is expressed in 12 different styles going from very naturalistic version of a bull to an absolutely reductive single line abstraction and everything else along the way. What is clear just from looking at this single print is that style is irrelevant. In every one of these cases, from extreme abstraction to acute naturalism they are extraordinary regardless of the style. It’s absurd to be loyal to a style. It does not deserve your loyalty. I must say that for old design professionals it is a problem because the field is driven by economic consideration more than anything else. Style change is usually linked to economic factors, as all of you know who have read Marx. I mean, after all, you have developed a vocabulary, a form that is your own. It is one of the ways that you distinguish yourself from your peers, and establish your identity in the field. How you maintain your own belief system and preferences becomes a real balancing act. The question of whether you pursue change or whether you maintain your own distinct form becomes difficult. We have all seen the work of illustrious practitioners that suddenly look old-fashioned or, more precisely, belonging to another moment in time. And there are sad stories such as the one about Cassandre, arguably the greatest graphic designer of the twentieth century, who couldn’t make a living at the end of his life and committed suicide.But the point is that anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist. What is it that people now expect that they formerly didn’t want? And how to respond to that desire in a way that doesn’t change your sense of integrity and purpose.
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DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY Everyone always talks about confidence in believing what you do. I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a practical sense. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being skeptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Art school often begins with the Ayn Rand model of the single personality resisting the ideas of the surrounding culture. The theory of the avant garde is that as an individual you can transform the world, which is true up to a point. One of the signs of a damaged ego is absolute certainty.Schools encourage the idea of not compromising and defending your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usually all about the nature of compromise Blind pursuit of your own ends which excludes the possibility that others may be right does not allow for the fact that in design we are always dealing with a triad – the client, the audience and you. Self-righteousness and narcissism generally come out of some sort of childhood trauma, which we do not have to go into.
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ON AGING.
TELL THE TRUTH
Last year someone gave me a charming book by Roger Rosenblatt called ‘Ageing Gracefully’ I got it on my birthday. I did not appreciate the title at the time but it contains a series of rules for ageing gracefully. The first rule is the best. Rule number one is that ‘it doesn’t matter.’ ‘It doesn’t matter what you think. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late or early, if you are hereor there, if you said it or didn’t say it, If you don’t get that promotion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t matter.’ Wisdom at last. Then I heard a marvelous joke that seemed related to rule number 10. A butcher was opening his market one morning and as he did a rabbit popped his head through the door. Thebutcher was surprised when the rabbit inquired ‘Got any cabbage?’ The butcher said ‘This is a meat market – we sell meat, not vegetables.’ The rabbit hopped off. The next day the butcher is opening the shop and sure enough the rabbit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cabbage?’ The butcher now irritated says ‘Listen you little rodent I told you yesterday we sell meat, we do not sell vegetables and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those floppy ears to the floor.’ The rabbit disappeared hastily and nothing happened for a week. Then one morning the rabbit popped his head around the corner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butcher said ‘No.’ The rabbit said ‘Ok. Got any cabbage?’
The rabbit joke is relevant because it occurred to me that looking for a cabbage in a butcher’s shop might be like looking for ethics in the design field. It may not be the most obvious place to find either. It’s interesting to observe that in the new AIGA’s code of ethics there is a significant amount of useful information about appropriate behavior towards clients and other designers, but not a word about a designer’s relationship to the public. We expect a butcher to sell us eatable meat and that he doesn’t misrepresent his wares. I remember reading that during the Stalin years in Russia that everything labelled veal was actually chicken. I can’t imagine what everything labelled chicken was. We can accept certain kinds of misrepresentation, such as fudging about the amount of fat in his hamburger but once a butcher knowingly sells us spoiled meat we go elsewhere. As a designer, do we have less responsibility to our public than a butcher? Everyone interested in licensing our field might note that the reason licensing has been invented is to protect the public not designers or clients. ‘Do no harm’ is an admonition to doctors concerning their relationship to their patients, not to their fellow practitioners or the drug companies. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more central to what we do.
A Promo piece for Milton Glaser’s 2013 exhibition inspired by his style. Technique | March 2019
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