graphic design
The nature of process, to one degree or another, involves failure. You have at it. It doesn’t work. You keep pushing. It gets better. But it’s not good. It gets worse. You go at it again. Then you desperately stab at it, believing “this isn’t going to work.” And it does!
Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design by Jennifer Bass & Pat Kirkham (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2011), 386.
My office, which has always been more or less the same, is a big undifferentiated room. I sit in one place in the room, in the same relationship to the rest of the room as everybody else. There is no visual hierarchy. I think it may have to do with the fact that when I was a kid my family lived in a three-roomed apartment. The family would spend its evenings in the living room. My mother would knit at one end, my father would read the paper and listen to the radio, my sister was at her desk, and I was at the other end doing my homework. I became accustomed to the lack of privacy and got used to working in a place where a lot of things were going on.
Studio Culture: The Secret Life of the Graphic Design Studio, edited by Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy (London: Unit Editions, 2009), 131.
Everyone complains that it has all been done before, but we haven’t even begun. There’s an incredible amount of new tricks up good people’s sleeves.
Interview by Moira Cullen, Eye magazine, Spring 2006. Link here.
I have a bunch of calendars I used before I went digital. Every once in a while, I’ll open up one from 1991 and look at all the names and appointments and things that, at the time, seemed so important. Meetings that I was really worried about, things that I was getting calls four times a day about, and I wonder, “Where did it all go? Where are they now?” It’s so strange, everything has disappeared. The only thing that stays behind is the work.
Interview in How to Think Like a Graphic Designer, by Debbie Millman (New York: Allworth Press, 2007), 12.
Take things away until you cry.
“What Advice Would You Give a Graphic Design Student?,” Frank Chimero’s blog, August 20, 2010.
The designer of letters, whether he be a sign painter, a graphic artist or in the service of a type foundry, participates just as creatively in shaping the style of his time as the architect or poet.
Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering (NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 13.
I’ve always been an interior sort. That is, I’m used to looking at the world as a somewhat misinformed observer—curious but unsure, preferring to look through a window rather than walk through a door. That has given me a lot of time to think about how the world gets stitched together, and to examine and poke at the structures beneath the spectacle.
“Sean Adams interviews Martin Venezky,” Step magazine.
Be clear (and enthusiastic) about what you do
Some people call this the elevator pitch. It’s actually the standing-around-at-drinks pitch. (No one wants to make small talk in an elevator. Creepy and invasive.) You need to be able to explain what you do very succinctly and in an interesting manner.
Design Is a Job (New York: A Book Apart, 2012), 44.
Look, money is hard. It took me years to get comfortable with the idea of being a financial grownup. And I doubt that many of you got into this business for the money. I’m guessing you’re here because you love design. But to practice your craft you need to keep the lights on, and you need your financial house in order. The more attention you pay to this stuff at the right time, the less of your overall day you’ll spend worrying and fretting about it. Don’t worry about money, deal with money.
Design Is a Job (New York: A Book Apart, 2012), 44.
If the idea doesn’t gel after a certain amount of struggle you have to give it up. I read once about the concepts of the lateral idea and the vertical idea. If you dig a hole and it’s in the wrong place, digging it deeper isn’t going to help. The lateral idea is when you skip over and dig someplace else.
The Left-Handed Designer, ed. by Steven Heller (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985), 8.
Every typeface wants to know: “Do I look fat in this paragraph?” It’s all a matter of context. A font could look perfectly sleek on screen, yet appear bulky and out of shape in print. Mrs. Eaves has a low waist and a small body.
Thinking with Type (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004), 37.
In my parents I had the perfect combination—a resistant father and an encouraging mother. My mother convinced me I could do anything. And my father said, “Prove it.” He didn’t think I could make a living. Resistance produces muscularity. And it was the perfect combination because I could use my mother’s belief to overcome my father’s resistance. My father was a kind of a metaphor for the world, because if you can’t overcome a father’s resistance you’re never going to be able to overcome the world’s resistance. It’s much better than having completely supportive parents or completely resistant parents.
“Chip Kidd Talks with Milton Glaser,” The Believer, September 2003.