A year and a half ago, I started teaching studio illustration. I decided to include a book component in which my students read assigned texts and each week, we have Tuesday Thinkeries, where we discuss what we’ve read. The conversations are broad and generally veer from the book, but always revolve around creative practice. This week was my class’ first discussion of the semester and I’ve decided to post highlights here.
Our book: Fundamentals of Illustration
by Lawrence Zeegan
Section: Chapter One
The book is an overview of the field of illustration though much of the text applies to design and freelancers in general. It’s not without flaws, but it certainly gets the students thinking. As we began talking, I asked the students to tell me what they wanted to know, as young creatives entering the field. Here’s what they said:
1. What are the different industries illustration exists within?
2. How do we price our work?
3. Technical advice on the craft.
4. How do we market our portfolios?
5. What happens when we graduate?
6. What do we keep in our portfolios? What do we get rid of?
7. Portfolio tips.
8. What is the best location for illustrators?
9. How can illustration apply to other fields?
10. Should we build a website? How?
For the most part, these questions are career-focused. While totally understandable, this made me a little sad. I’ve been thinking lately of the time before we know something. Like, the period when we’re still figuring something out: how to bill a client, how to write a contract, how to post a blog. It’s kind of beautiful, the figuring it out part. Of course, there’s always more to learn (and I learn something new with every project); but the focus in undergrad, I believe, should be the development of one’s craft; of one’s ability to create awesome concepts; the full understanding of the why, as in: why are we doing this?
I almost can’t answer these questions because every creative field should evolve differently for every person. My suggestion to all emerging creatives is to find designers and illustrators (and writers, artists, visionaries) whose work connects with you. Figure out where and how they publish work (design firms, through agents, which journals/magazines/newspapers, websites). Then work to get your portfolio up to par.
Be smart. Stop caring about what anyone thinks. Do the thing you want to do exactly, exactly how you want to do it. Read. Think. Make. Make your work work.
Anyway, there is a Resources page conveniently on my site, located a click away (see also Navigation Menu). I’ll add more information to it in the next few days that may or may not help. Hopefully it will.
Top of the morning, fellow internetters. This morning marks our one year anniversary together…and, come to think of it, it’s been a pretty incredible year, not without hiccups but overall excellent. First, thank you for visiting my site. Seeing thousands of hits pop up on Google Analytics is, well, heartwarming…and incentive to further obsess. Anwho, I thought I’d share some pictures highlighting the year.
From top to bottom: Grabhorn Fellowship in San Francisco; beer drinking in the Catskills; Orvieto, Italy; Daniel Spoerri Garden in Orvieto; Polaroid camera purchase…possibly a waste of money; oyster beds at Estero Morua, Mexico; art directing Sonora Review was fun; my first publication.
A list from Dieter Rams, in the documentary, Objectified, by Gary Hustwit.:
1. Good design should be innovative.
2. Good design should make a product useful.
3. Good design is aesthetic design.
4. Good design will make a product understandable.
5. Good design is honest.
6. Good design is unobtrusive.
7. Good design is long-lived.
8. Good design is consistent in every detail.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
10. Good design is as little design as possible.
One interesting paradox in the documentary is the way many of the designers note longevity as critical to their creative approach, then quickly say design is about mass production and the building of the new. Put another way, design is about creating desire within a consumer. It’s sad in a way, because I wonder what we’ll have to pass on between the generations (like the really old, porcelain salt and pepper shakers I have from my great grandmother). I liked the tweet from TreeHugger the other day which said: If you don’t need it, don’t buy it.
I think we should transform the way we think about how we design and why.
Well, I’ve been in Tucson again for almost a week, which you’d be able to tell from my strange tan lines, which change throughout the day. I’m in a new apartment…which I’m still, ahem, decorating, getting fired up for my thesis work and enjoying my Polaroid camera, which I accidentally left here for the summer. I just checked: this camera is out of stock at the Impossible Project and really I think it was too expensive anyway. And the film is at least $2.00/sheet. I’m kind of over it.
Many of our creative celebrities are teachers. Michael Beirut, for instance, is a senior critic at Yale. Jessica Helfand is too. Steve Heller is Co-Chair of the design program at the School of Visual Arts. Ellen Lupton is at MICA; Frank Chimero at Portland State University; swissmiss at Parsons. And many of our other celebs give design/illustration/art workshops periodically. It’s understandable if you didn’t know this. A lot of designers and bloggers don’t exactly advertise their … day job? (It’s often noted in their about sections, except for Lupton and Helfand who frequently write and publish about their experiences as teachers.)
There is a serious disconnect between the external world of the designer and the academic world. Over the past two years, I’ve noticed that many or most of my students don’t read blogs, don’t know contemporary or emerging creatives, don’t understand how to engage with their crafts in practical terms. This is because we don’t teach them how. It’s not a secret that the transition from academia to the world at large is a difficult one to make, particularly in a creative field, but we can do more to prepare our students.
Perhaps this should be two blog posts. Anyway, I’ll start with the online community. Course syllabi are not necessarily easy to come by. Of course, if you Google “graphic design syllabus” or “illustration syllabus” you’ll see a flurry of choices; but how do we know which ones are effective? Which methods are the best? What projects produce the most important results? Without the thinking behind the syllabus, we don’t know how to choose. Several years ago, Steve Heller compiled a book
to help us organize design education; but this is limited to design and now seven years old. My point is that putting our syllabi online through a class website or even, I daresay, on our own sites (which is preferable), would add to the dialogue surrounding the education of our students and foster our own development as teachers. Thus, I’m introducing a new section in my sidebar specifically to provide access to the goings-on of our class, including a link to our site.
Let’s return to the observation that my students essentially don’t understand how a blog might relate to them. I want my students and my classroom to be on the forefront of the creative community. Well, I mean that I want them to engage with said forefront, whatever that means to them. And they need the tools to understand what’s happening in the community in order to engage with it.
I’m experimenting with a few new requirements this semester, which will most likely pop up here and definitely on our class website. First, in addition to our regular presentation on historical illustrators, there is now a supplemental blog post component. Next, we are reading three books throughout the semester and a portion of our discussion will take place online. Lastly, I’m offering them extra credit for creating interesting and intelligent blog articles that I can post either here or on our site. All of these activities are designed to help them better understand how to use the internet as a tool. I want them not only reading blogs, but commenting. The world is more accessible than we often think; the internet has shown us that. Lastly, I believe that this dialogue is important for our community of illustrators and designers.
It’s important for us not just to talk about what’s happening in our classes, but how we interpret and perceive current media and trends. It’s happening already (or starting), with projects like Study Partner and The MIT Lab and to some extent Thinking for a Living; doubtless other places too. This trend – of accessibility of information, of engaging dialogue and learning – continues here.
Some possibly useful links relating to our topic:
AIGA’s Design Education
RISD (keeps much information online)
Design Education
Study Partner
Studio H
Design Is History (a little off topic)
Summer, like the air in the autumn, always makes me nostalgic. For what, though, I’m not entirely sure. A few years back, I spent the summer in the Catskills at the Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts as an artist assistant and instructor. It was a beautiful time and every year, I miss those days.
Seventy-five years prior to my tenure there, Sugar Maples opened as a small hotel which soon turned into a comprehensive resort accommodating up to 700 guests. For about 50 years, the resort grew as families spent summer vacations enjoying the activities offered (horseback riding, pool fun, various contests, the like). In the 1980s, however, popularity began to decline and in the 90s, the entire plot of land was sold to a developer who never touched the place. The buildings, stocked with the hotel’s ephemera and objects, decayed. Twenty-five years later, I totally raided those buildings.
It’s unclear why popularity of the resort, and the industry, faded. Perhaps it was the change in guests’ expectations or the prohibition of alcohol at Sugar Maples. Whatever the case, buildings were hastily abandoned and years later, donated to the Catskill Mountain Foundation.
When I arrived – in a rainstorm, parking in a puddle of mud – the buildings were off limits to the public. Along with my friend Roberta , we explored every abandoned space we could find, collecting the probably asbestos-laden things. As I’m going through my old things, I thought some of this stuff is worth sharing from both a design and nostalgia-loving point of view.
I spent this past weekend near Sugar Maples, at the Washington Irving Inn in Hunter. One thing I love about the area, Tannersville specifically, is the handmade quality of many of the signs and buildings. Here are a few pictures from the weekend, including a shot of the new Sugar Maples. And, yes, I went to the Zoom Flume.
[In order from top to bottom, the photographs: Sugar Maples; Washington Irving Inn (sign); the Library at the Inn; Zoom Flume; Last Chance Cheese Shop (sign); Colgate Lake.] Sigh.
This week, I’ve been working to finish an essay. (Finish is not an accurate term. Is anything ever finished?) This particular piece has been bobbling around my mind for about a year and it will certainly go through some more revisions but I thought I’d share the process of its making.
I’ve been thinking about process on my morning walks. Rather, I’ve been talking to myself (literally, I shamefully admit) about what the essence of the piece is, about why I’m making it, what the message is meant to deliver, what it offers to the cultural dialogue, why I have authority to address these topics, and, finally, is it worth it? Worth your time, worth the disclosure of secrets, worth our energy. These are questions we should ask every time we make something. After these questions is the how. How can I achieve this multifaceted end?
A recurring thought has been that to document anything is inauthentic to reality. Particularly in this case, when the genre is memory-based. The mind is a fluid thing and thus memories change with each instance of remembering. When something is written, though, it is recorded. In ink. Giving a sense of permanency, of truth, of immobility. Socrates, I’ve read, did not believe in the recording of language because it created a sensation of being fixed; language is alive. So isn’t this entire pursuit an untruth?
One of my goals in making these essays is to record thought authentically, with minimal manipulation for the sake of the story. As such, when I finally decide to make something, I trust it implicitly; trust the concept, the unknown outcome, the process. In other words, I sit down, draw, revise slightly, draw more and ink. Then there is scanning, some digital editing and compilation into a book layout. Finally, I print. I work outside when possible, because everything is better outside.
I’m off to upstate for the weekend, to the Catskills, one of my favorite spaces on the planet. Pictures upon return.
This week, the 58th issue of Sonora Review, the oldest student-run literary journal in the country, is going to print. Sweet. As art director, it’s like I get to know the future. And so here, world, is a snapshot of the near future.
Some cool things about this issue. First, the journal is being printed locally by Drew Burk of Spork Press, which allowed us to use – gasp! – color. Often with literary journals, the genres are not distinguished except for in the table of contents. For this issue, however, I had a few spreads in mind that I wanted to use as dividers not to make any sort of conceptual statement about the division of genres (everything is everything, after all) but because I thought they were beautiful. Perhaps the most cool thing about our forthcoming issue is that it’s being handbound, which everyone knows I heart.
This week, I’m diving (slowly, hesitantly) into the world of mark-making. This summer, my older brother started a painting/carpentry company and asked me to design a logo for him. He wanted it to be clean, simple and a little pretty. Ok, I added the pretty but he agreed.
Wanting the simplicity of Helvetica without Helvetica, I used Linotype’s Avant Garde, designed by the unputdownable Herb Lubalin. The ampersand, however, is made of Linotype’s Helvetica Neue, used for its relative proportions and modified slightly to reflect the curve of the U. Over the next few weeks, I’ll fill out the identity with business cards, collateral, shirts and other papery goods. Nonetheless, here we are, into my first* logo.
*Actually, I designed a mark for myself a few months ago but then I stopped using it…for the time being. And I’ve designed and discarded other logos too. So this is the first one that’s actually being commercially printed on things.
It’s the middle of the summer and a requisite panic has begun to settle as I consider moving back to Tucson, the impossible-seeming completion of two MFAs and getting organized for my upcoming illustration class. Yesterday, a quote was brought to my attention:
A student who stops learning was never a student at all.
Which made me think of Bruce Mau’s Manifesto, which every human on the planet should read, and then my students…and then the idea that we are all students of something. A regular topic of discussion in my classes is what on earth the students will do with what seems like a useless degree: art. My response is that it doesn’t matter what field you go into, the characteristics of success are the same across industries and our collective role as teachers is to offer insights into these qualities. So, students, a term we’ll use generously, here is how I recommend we enter into the forthcoming year.
1. Abandon what you know.
One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read was the Sound and the Fury (Faulkner)
; it’s also one of the most complex. Knowing the reputation of the book, before I began reading I said to myself, “I don’t know what a book is.” This perspective allowed me to abandon assumptions about narrative and plot, and enter into the space Faulkner carved. I like this. If we can go into every project as though nothing has come before, our results would be so much more interesting, wild and unique. Just think: the opportunity for redefinition is always nearby.
2. Ask questions.
Questions are a way of articulating curiosity. Last semester, I had a few students email me lists of questions about their portfolios, career paths, art in general, blogs, etc. Literally lists. One email contained about ten questions. This is excellent. Presumably, teachers (mentors, bosses) have more experience than you in your industry. Thus, they are wellsprings of information; use them this way. (Young teachers, ahem, as I previously noted, have a particular advantage because we’ve so recently experienced the path that our students are on; our explorations, good and bad, are totally relevant.)
3. Usurp a mentor.
As increasingly expressed in various publications
, every successful human needs the support of a community. The best way to gain access to a community is through a respected insider. This person will be able to:
- + Point out opportunities for you
- + Introduce you to like-minded thinkers (through books or in person)
- + Ask the right questions
- + Validate (or help you abandon) your ideas
Different mentors help your growth for different things. I have about four. Lynn Bloom
, a nonfiction writer, was my undergraduate writing professor who I still consult with life/work questions (and for home-made lunches). Writer/teacher/Doritos-lover Ander Monson is my thesis advisor and I go to him to improve my writing and thinking and for questions about beer. Philip Zimmermann knows everything a human can know about books, though he’ll deny it. And Ellen McMahon improves my thinking by asking often uncomfortable questions and suggesting books that force reconsiderations of my belief system. Find teachers who will support you and choose to work with them.
4. Make it work.*
There are a few students each semester who respond to assignments with, That’s just not my style or I’ve already done this or This is boring. My first response is: I don’t care. The larger concern, though, is that they make the assignment work for them. There are always going to be “boring” projects and anything can be made to seem boring. The problem isn’t about the project; it’s about perspective. In my classes, the best students use the assignment sheet as a point of departure for their ideas. Rules can be broken as long as decisions are logically arrived at and the final result functions appropriately.
*My brother just informed me that the term, Make it work, is now associated with Bravo’s Project Runway and Tim Gunn. Whatever.
5. Talk.
I repeat myself. But, by actually talking about what it is we’re doing/making/thinking, we are able to better articulate our ideas. This is one of the reasons I love teaching so much; in order for me to be a good teacher (which is up for debate via my evaluations), I need to clearly state concepts and assignments in order to facilitate productive discussions. For students, these discussions (critiques, conversations, workshops) are opportunities to air out or wax eloquent about ideas.
The second step in speaking well is interaction. When I worked on the business development team at Next Jump, I spent hours (days, weeks) figuring out not only how to pitch new products, but also how to answer clients’ questions. The key to closing deals is in the Q&A; a sales person needs to know the product (idea, position, context) in order to field unforeseen questions and comments. This is why I’ll have two defenses at the closing of my theses. Basically, clients (like my teachers) want to be reassured that we know what we’re talking about. They want security, comfort and satisfaction. It might sound strange to mingle sales with art-speak, but the larger point is that the ideas are intertwined.
6. Read.
No ifs, ands, or buts. Just do it.
7. Build something.
The process of translating an idea from electricites in the mind to physical, hold-able form is perpetually transformative. An idea changes as it is made (which is why process is so critical) and our minds require different functions to actually make something. Aside from this, we are able to iron out kinks by developing prototypes. For instance, when I began illustrating and designing a recent book project, without a physical mock-up, the alignment, structure of the pages and binding would have failed. Same with the way extracting an essay out of an idea changes everything. Whenever you have an idea, just make it and see what happens; ideas need to be created in order to be released from the mind.
8. Be resourceful.
This is perhaps the most critical characteristic a student can hope to achieve. Every project in every industry involves obstacles and interactions between Points A and B. Our jobs as students is to figure out the path. A regular issue among creatives is finding a decent printer (hint: NOT Kinkos). Many of my students complain that they can’t print their projects because they don’t know a printer, or better yet, how to create a proper file. While part of this probably isn’t their fault, it’s also a signal that the project wasn’t enough of a priority to figure it out. In this example, plan ahead and ask for help; ask a friend to show you how to create a file, which printer they used, what paper type, etc. When something is important to us, we make it happen.
9. Redefine failure.
The word fail is derived from 13th century French, fallir, which can be defined as “to miss” or “not succeed.” What, then, are our indicators of success? Often, we think in financial terms or in terms of how others perceive us and our work. While these are valid markers, they shouldn’t be the only way we define our successes and failures. Before I had an essay published, I spent six months creating other work that I (and my workshop) ultimately rejected. So what? I had to make hundreds of pages of stuff in order to get arrive at a marriage between message and form. To consider these discarded works as failures is inaccurate; rather, they are a means to the goal. With each experiment, I ask myself:
- + What did I learn?
- + Is the feedback valid? (And, do I care?)
- + Has the message changed? If so, has the work evolved accordingly?
When you make something, you necessarily learn; this is the function of the student. The only way to fail at something is to not try it.
*Update: Incidentally, the Harvard Business Review published an article today on the Power of Positive Failure.
10. Rework the word No.
I get rejected a lot. Everyone does; we just don’t talk about it. Like when I didn’t make the high school volleyball team. Twice. (Their loss, I say.) When someone tells you No, it means that the pitch isn’t quite right. When I first asked the UA English Department if I could take a class, they said no. The first professor I asked said no. Then I sat in Ander’s office until he said yes (very uncomfortably). Then, when I applied to the writing program, the School of Art told me it was impossible to do both MFAs. Even after I’d been accepted. Come to think of it, the last word from the art administration was still no. But I’m not asking their permission anymore; I have the support of the faculty on both sides and I’ll do the work. Consider No a kind of game in which the challenge is to figure out how you can do what you want in spite of it.
11. Find the essence of things.
Most of the truths we arrive at are simple, are logical, are somehow inherent to our humanity. As such, I really believe that any concept should be explainable to a child. (Children are truth-tellers, after all.) when I get stuck on an idea, I ask myself, “What am I trying to say?” Then I imagine a conversation between my ten-year-old brother and me. Would he understand what I mean? Would it matter to him? Generally, when an idea feels complicated, it’s innacurate to [your individual, subjective] truth. When an idea is ready, though, it exits the mind easily.
12. Don’t be annoying.
Frequently, we seek the attention, advice or conversation of others as a means of avoiding our own work. I see it with both students and professionals. One common example is when students show up without sketches in the middle of a project saying they needed my approval first. No, you don’t. Show me something. Or, they’ll ask to be re-shown a technique before trying it themselves. These are unproductive interruptions rather than a venue for helpful conversation. Before interrupting someone (via email, in person or by phone) consider his or her perspective. She’s busy; does your question/comment warrant the engagement?
13. Be annoying.
By annoying, I mean persistent. This relates to Number 10. When you reach an idea that is absolutely right, and you’re certain of it, you need to be persistent in order to achieve it. Back to the example of pursuing concurrent degrees. When I mentioned the thought to my art professors, they encouraged me and I knew intuitively it was the right thing to do. Still, the process of entering into both programs has taken over a year and I’ve had to engage in dozens of conversations with faculty and administrators to cover my bases in terms of tuitions, appropriate coursework and scheduling. Whenever possible, I try to offset annoying-ness with drinks and the charm factor (see above links to mentors), but I’m nonetheless asking them for time, guidance and support. I’m fully invested and in order to be successful, the community needs to engage too. The process might be annoying, but return on investment is worth it for both sides.
14. Politely, respectfully, intelligently disagree.
To diverge from some sort of established norm, like a class assignment, is a completely valid approach. But the departure needs to be placed in some sort of context. And it needs to be smart. Let’s use the game-changing example of the recent Old Spice ad campaign. Wieden + Kennedy, the agency that developed the idea, could have simply revamped the image of Old Spice using a new visual identity or maybe creating an iPhone app (for smelling better?). Instead, they looked around at cultural trends and not only responded to them, but engaged with them. The campaign was interactive, existed in real time, utilized social media and was freaking hilarious. It was also incredibly intelligent. Has any campaign ever kept such a volume of users engaged, responsive and laughing for so long? How does this relate to class assignments? Well, an assignment is always the same: convince the audience. Break the boundaries of an assignment using available information; bonus points for making it funny.
15. Embrace the ugly.
The summer I worked in the Catskills, I had a few conversations with the painter, Thomas Locker. In discussing his work with me, he said, “The dream is always more beautiful than the reality.” Or, he was unable to translate his vision to the canvas. This disparity is a common issue among creatives and will hopefully lessen as a body of work is developed and techniques are honed. I would also suggest, though, that this space between the known concept and the known outcome (in other words, the unknown) is a beautiful place to work within. The beauty of a craft is the possibility of something unexpected. Explore the possibilities in the space of the unknown.
