University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio door window sign concept; approx. 3.25 x 6n.; plotted output on foamcore / 2003

In my younger scholastic career, I often charged headfirst through the parametric walls of an assignment to ensure that my work would be noticed. In a drawing class I took early on at university, the professor told me that the way I worked was like writing an English paper in Russian. I chalked up experiences like this to standard-fare artist plight and soldiered on. Ironically, my head full of steam soon chugged me right on out of the School of Art. Upon my return some years later, I had a clearer head, but I also had a much keener sense of the power of boundaries. I understood that it was actually keeping the rules recognizable that revealed the cleverness of their kneading, pushing or rearranging.

As I was making my comeback into the University of Washington, the School of Art was pushing its own boundaries, acquiring gallery and studio space for select students and faculty in a building of the former Sand Point Naval Base in Seattle. Then edging myself toward the sharp end of the student body, I was commissioned to design a way-finding sign system for the building.

Sign systems are often droll affairs, so bound by their function that they are stiff and invisible. There are good reasons for not getting too editorial in this discipline, of course: you don’t want anyone to get lost in the cleverness of the sign before they find where they’re going, especially in emergency situations where one might need to know exactly how to get to the bathroom, or worse, get the hell out of the building.

Overseen by School of Art Director and Visual Communication Design Professor Chris Ozubko, I came up with a few concepts that I was pretty confident would get people into the restrooms and out of the building as necessary, but also expressed a bit of the unique personality of what was going on in the space while they could appreciate it…

The first idea was perhaps the most basic tangible expression of art and its process: a tacit blob waiting for interpretation: a splat of paint, a daub of putty, a raw edge—the remnants of creation or the subject of an observation.

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio door window sign concept placement; approx. 3.25 x 6in.; plotted output on foamcore / 2003

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio map sign concept; approx. 7 x 15in.; plotted output on foamcore / 2003

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio room signs; approx. 5 x 4in. (each); plotted output on foamcore / 2003

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio room sign (placement); approx. 5 x 4in.; plotted output on foamcore / 2003

The next concept took inspiration from the heritage of the building and the honor of its boarders. This space was not for just anyone. Artists and faculty were granted temporary stays based on the hard-won merit judged by their superiors, much like the honors symbolized by the ribbons of the naval officers before them.

reference: U.S. Naval ribbons and badges (detail of left breast, partially obscured by lapel); source

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio door window sign concept placement; approx. 3.25 x 3.25in.; plotted output on foamcore / 2003

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio map sign concept; approx. 6 x 15in.; plotted output on foamcore / 2003

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio room sign concepts; approx. 8 x 2.5in. (each); plotted output on foamcore / 2003

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio room sign concepts; approx. 8 x 2.5in. (each); plotted output on foamcore / 2003

The final, chosen and implemented direction did no such metaphoric nudging. Rather, it punctuated the functional humdrum so brutally so as to disquiet. Discreet bits of information were forced apart and stamped into individually assigned planes of a particular shape, size, rotation and color. The stark economy of visual language gave it a deliberate chord that echoed the very tenor of spacial volume, itself.

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio door window sign; approx. 3.25 x 6.5in.; plotted output on foamcore / 2003

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio map sign; 10.5 x 18in.; plotted output on foamcore / 2003

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio room signs; 5 x 5in. (each); plotted output on foamcore / 2003

University of Washington School of Art, Sand Point studio room sign (placement); 5 x 5in.; plotted output on foamcore / 2003

I sometimes wonder what that drawing professor would have thought of this system had we ever had the occasion to rap about it (or anything else after I left his class some years before). Would he have been proud of my efforts? Had I learned to visualize in a language he felt appropriate? I can’t say. At least I spelled his name correctly.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center building (back/garden) / photo taken 2003

Sometime in the 1940s or ’50s (I’m not sure of the exact year), the term “corporate identity” was coined by Lippincott & Margulies—one of the first major design firms in the world—to describe both the idea that even large businesses have inherent, relatable characteristics, not unlike human beings, and the practice that could express their character through a fitting, comprehensive and consistent design program. An organization’s identity is expressed in every way they communicate, from their name and logo to their brochures and web site, to the way they answer the phone—whether those “touchpoints” are designed by professionals or not—so this was an important “call-to-action” (to use another industry term) for organizations to pay attention to everything they were communicating, and, ideally, to pay top-notch professionals like L&M to help them make sure they were doing so effectively.

Sometime in the 1990s, the term “brand” began to take over as more formal business strategy was becoming more prominently integrated into large-scale identity design programs, and it quickly went from buzz word to industry category, on which uncounted firms jumped. I have always found this nomenclature shift ironic. “Branding,” literally translated, is the superficial process of stamping a logo on your property (livestock, originally); this superficial logo stamping is exactly the perception that the “new” practice of “branding” was supposed to be rising above. Meanwhile, the word “identity” could already encompass every aspect what an entity is, from what they do to how they express it. But like many P/C nomenclature shifts of late, whether rational or not, “branding” has taken hold, and “identity” (preceded by “corporate” or not), has been deprecated.

Whatever it’s called, my formal introduction to the process of figuring out what an organization stands for and expressing it in a fitting design program was in a class called Identity Systems in the Visual Communication Design program at the University of Washington, sometime in 2003. Like a few other courses in the program, this one was broken into collaborative group and individual phases. Three-person groups were assigned one of four or five major local entities and tasked with research and analysis of the entity, en-route to the creation of a strategic brand platform. Based on this platform, we were then set about designing a fitting logo and building a supporting visual identity system, individually…

Working as a team, Jesse Graupmann, Tim Turner and I made many important discoveries in the course of our research of our assigned entity: The Washington State Convention and Trade Center (WSCTC). Through web exploration, personal interviews with convention center officials, several reconnaissance missions and the study of official documentation, we assessed strengths and weaknesses of its services, location, architecture, transportation integration, primary and secondary local and regional competition, primary and tertiary channels of communication, and its integration with the community, and we determined the primary, secondary and tertiary audiences to whom these mattered. We found that the Washington State Convention and Trade Center offers profound and unique benefits to its constituents that other entities could not match. We also came to the conclusion that their actual visual identity, emanating from the wheat stalk mark in their logo, did little to convey anything about the Center.

The actual Washington State Convention and Trade Center logo is a mash-up of heavy, stylized wheat stalks and stringy typography that does little if anything to express either what the WSCTC is, what it does, or how it does it; rumor had it that, as a state-funded but Seattle-located entity, this was an attempt to appeal to / appease agriculturally-focused Eastern Washingtonians / photo taken 2003

Primary among the WSCTC’s unique and defining aspects is the actual facility. By scale alone, the Center is unmissable, and has some beautiful features, even if it suffers from a somewhat disparate kit of parts. Half of the main façade is laid with flat, earth-tone blocks of stone while the other half has angular full-height windows jutting out into the street. This front meets with blocky glass walls which stair-step their way out the back of the building.

detail of theWashington State Convention and Trade Center’s contrasting stone and glass structure / photo taken 2003

As part of its 2000 expansion, A huge glass and steel arched bridge with a built-in meeting room overhangs Pike Street—a major downtown thoroughfare—bridging the two buildings of the WSCTC complex. This feature won little favor with locals who often express disdain for the sheer imposition, but serves as a nice metaphor for the connections made at the Center (and, it has a pretty great view).

view of theWashington State Convention and Trade Center’s enormous bridge and glass arcade, which actually encloses a block of Pike Street; photographer unknown

The structure is within walking proximity of myriad hotels, shops, restaurants, businesses, and residential complexes, and is connected to Freeway Park, a rich maze of concrete pathways and lush foliage that and ambles upward from Downtown up to culturally-rich Capitol Hill and First Hill neighborhoods.

detail of Freeway Park, an extension of the Washington State Convention and Trade Center; photo taken 2003

Access to the Center could hardly be easier. It has its own freeway exit, it’s own parking garage, it’s own shuttle and taxi dropoff, and its own station integrated into the Metro Bus Tunnel. There is also a car rental agency just across the street.

The Washington State Convention and Trade Center caters to three separate but related audiences. Those having primary business interaction with WSCTC representatives are professional event planners in charge of scheduling and coordinating events large and small for businesses, political entities and other organizations. Secondary audience members are the actual exhibitors and attendees of these events. There is also a tertiary audience served by the facility in the general community, who come to attend public exhibitions, meet friends or business contacts, enjoy the many pieces of artwork on display throughout the building, and/or patronize one or more of the many small businesses and shops within the Center.

view looking up from the interior of theWashington State Convention and Trade Center’s main hall / photo taken 2003

Like all major convention centers, the WSCTC provides accommodations for various sizes and types of events. Unlike most other such venues, however, the Washington State Convention and Trade Center has an extremely broad range of capability and the highest levels of service. Different room capacities and modular exhibition space can accommodate anywhere between two and twenty thousand attendees comfortably. In addition, the Center offers state-of-the-art technological services. Great pride is also taken in their award-winning catering service that’s second to none in the industry.

Being a tax supported state entity, the WSCTC is deeply involved in the interests of the general public. This was expressed most prominently in its expansion, which not only provided a convenient walking path between downtown and Capitol Hill and First Hill, but also afforded a significant increase in the abundance of publicly-funded low-income housing in the area. The building itself also showcases the work of numerous local, national and international artists and provides informal seating and gathering space, all free to the public every day of the week. In addition, the revenue earned by the Center contributes significantly to the state’s budget, leading to greater support of public programs.

Considering these factors and a wealth of information we had accumulated to support them, Jesse, Tim and I went to work synthesizing our findings and teasing out a simple strategic foundation.

We created a basic brand positioning framework, based on what the WSCTC offers its audiences, in terms of three “B”s…
The Business
Providing dependable facilities and services for event planners
The Benefit
Peace of mind that important experiences will be hosted adeptly
What’s Better
Premier location
Internationally-renowned service
Flexibility of space
Ability to host large-scale or complex events
Community integration and accessibility

And we decided upon five characteristics that best captured the personality of the organization…
Personality Attributes
Professional dependable; focused; orderly
Accommodating intimate; pleasurable; flexible; inviting
Metropolitan urban mystique; downtown; major city
Connected access to resources, people and technology/connectivity
Progressive fresh; up to date; constantly evolving

As we wove these facets together, we began to recognize a powerful thread that ran seamlessly through: Indeed, this idea in and of itself, was basically it! Something special happens when things come together. This is what the Washington State Convention and Trade Center is all about. When event planners work with hosts, or attendees and visitors experience an event, or each other, or the city, valuable experiences are created. The WSCTC is the venue, the forum, the intersection and the enabler of these powerful moments.

And so was born our interpretation of the heart of the WSCTC, meant to elegantly encapsulate the motivating factor behind everything the Washington State Convention and Trade Center did, and, in two words, captured both the importance of the physical venue and the service…
Brand Essence
Facilitating connections

From here, we developed a positioning/style matrix as a tool to visually aid us as designers, as well as the client (theoretically in this case) to ensure our intentions for the direction of the ensuing identity design was aligned, as well as solidifying previously synthesized brand elements. We chose the two most powerful, yet disparate personality traits of the brand, namely “professional” and “accommodating” as the top and bottom points on the vertical axis, while stylistic differences were opposed laterally between “representational” on the left, which would likely lead to a system based on physical features and “abstract” on the right, which would likely be more focused on qualitative interpretations of benefits. Scattered on the plot were logos of other organizations, both in and out of category, for reference.



Washington State Convention and Trade Center logo positioning/style matrix; vertical axis: “professional” (top) and “accommodating” (bottom), horizontal axis: “representational” (left) and “abstract” (right); initial area of focus for the WSCTC logo exploration circled; 17 x 11in. / 2003

It was soon after this point that each group member would take the research as they saw it and begin creating identity design individually. It is this matrix, then, that would provide the jumping-off point for each member’s design direction and process. Based on such, I made the rough determination that my direction would fall somewhere toward the “professional” end of the personality spectrum, and would likely be executed in a relatively abstract manner (as designated by the circle in the matrix above). As it happened, the logo and ensuing visual identity system was rather abstract, but referenced the actual building enough that it would probably be plotted a bit to the left of this initial focus.

Armed with the results of all of the preceding research (and then some), the sketch book was cracked open and ideas were turned into marks on paper. The scope of exploration was kept as broad as possible without straying from the brand platform. Of paramount importance was in expressing the brand promise, as a product of the personality traits of the organization. Several concepts were explored in a variety of ways, but the idea of “facilitating connections” drove the creative process from beginning to end.


Conception

Initial sketches utilized the arch as a reference to the building’s prominent architecture as well as a strong metaphor for bridging gaps and making connections. The letter W was integrated into some of these sketches as a connection to “Washington,” which could aid name recognition, but the center’s “Washington-ness” wasn’t a primary communication objective, so pursuing this was not of high importance (the WSCTC doesn’t compete much nationally, and Seattle is really the draw, anyway). Purely typographic solutions were also explored, utilizing custom ligatures within the logotype to convey the idea of connections. Also referencing the building’s architecture were sketches based on stair-stepped block devices:



Washington State Convention and Trade Center logo exploration; pencil on paper; 11 x 8.5in. / 2003


Continuation

At this point, several more abstract marks were considered in addition to refinement of previous ideas. Ideally, the mark would encompass all of the traits of the brand. Differing sizes of squares were used as primary elements as they offered reference to building architecture, event space, metropolitan grid system and so on. Various combinations and compositions were explored in an effort to convey not only connections being made but also a sense of flexibility of space and service:





Washington State Convention and Trade Center logo exploration; pencil on paper; full sheet and detail of mark studies; 11 x 8.5in. / 2003


Confirmation

Once the potential of these elements was recognized, the process of digital translation and refinement of various aspects of both the typography and the mark began to ensure they could translate properly to the final state:



Washington State Convention and Trade Center logo exploration; digital sketches / 2003


Coloration

Moving along further in the design process, color was introduced as an element while the final mark and typography were still being honed. Initially, just blues and yellows were considered as a professional yet lively palette.

The typography, too, was making progress. While myriad ligature-based options were explored to various degrees, they competed with the mark and cut down on legibility, so I eventually just cleaned up the type in favor of conceptual simplicity and compositional elegance.



Washington State Convention and Trade Center logo exploration / 2003


Convergence

While refining the overall composition of the mark and logotype, the possibility of the color blocks creating a third color at their intersection presented a very intriguing option. That the third color just so happened to be green, the perfect descriptor for Washington (it is “The Evergreen State,” after all) was too enticing to resist, and the mark decision had been made. Soon thereafter, the logotype was finalized and all that was left was to choose the exact color values, which only a comprehensive study could decide:



Washington State Convention and Trade Center logo color study / 2003


Completion

Everything has come together in the final logo. The simple, lowercase typography is inviting, but also has serious presence. The mark references the facility architecture and services, being created of connections between different elements; that it also dots the “i” in “convention” is a nod to the attention to detail of their acclaimed service. The composition is dynamic but balanced, crisp and clean.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center logo / 2003

Color Concessions

The mark and logotype have been designed to work well within the confines of any color space. Ideally, the three or four-color version is to be used whenever possible, but grayscale, spot-color and black-only versions have also been created so that the new identity may be used in any application.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center logo color variations: (from left to right) 3 or 4-color version, grayscale version, one color version, black only version / 2003

Contextualization

As the logo was being finalized, the visual system, or “kit-of-parts” of standard design elements and usage began. This ended up being incredibly close-in to the logo, which I now find unnecessarily constricted, as well as a bit stifling of the logo, itself. However, as a starting point for a completely new identity, it certainly would have reinforced recognition much more quickly and could have been built upon later.

The color palette is just swatch for swatch with the logo, with the cool, marine blue and vibrant yellow, which combine to create a crisp Washington apple green. The sizes of the swatches represent the relative intended usage, with the blue and the green most pervasive, for their strength of value, with the yellow being used for occasional highlights. Throwing in an even gray for a neutral was a bit default, but its recessive elegance does work. If I were to update this system, one of the first things I would look at would be to add a secondary palette of color triads, potentially related to some organizational structure (i.e., color-coding).

Washington State Convention and Trade Center color palette / 2003

Typefacial Expression

Any written communication must not only convey what needs to be said, but also express the tone in which it should be understood. For an organization with such a broad range of potential recipients of written communication, a font family with extensive versatility and clarity is crucial, but the brand must also be considered in this decision. With these factors in mind, three weights of Helvetica Neue were chosen for their tonal neutrality, maximum legibility and professional demeanor. Normal weights of standard format body copy is efficient and easily read, while bold, often colored lowercase titles and headings serve to keep the message friendly and contemporary.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center type system specimen; 17 x 11in. / 2003

As rational as all that may sound, this type spec is probably my least favorite aspect of this program, looking back on it. My primary dislike is not that it’s based on Helvetica, which I feel absolutely no shame in using under the right circumstances. The unfortunate thing is that it’s based on the exact same typeface as the logotype, which dilutes the logo’s impact and (especially since it’s Helvetica), makes the design system seem overly minimalist. I think a more traditional serif family actually could have easily given the applications a more sophisticated voice and added richness to the overall visual texture.


Multiplying the Message

Nothing makes an identity campaign more powerful than broad and cohesive usage thereof throughout an organization’s vast array of communications. Whether it’s the color of the dinner napkins or the tone of the copy writing on the web site, staying true to the brand is essential. A strong identity system makes it clear just who the organization are to everyone who encounters it.

Stationery has been the cornerstone of identity systems since I-don’t-know-when, though this era seems to be coming to an end. However, as archaic as it may seem these days, press-printed stationery is still used by organizations, especially by executives for formal correspondence, so it remains an important touchpoint to execute adroitly.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center stationery; standard U.S. dimensions / 2003

More specifically relevant for the Convention and Trade Center were name badges for visitors and staff.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center name badges for attendees (left) and staff (right); 4 x 3.25in. and 4 x 1.125in., respectively / 2003

In the above applications, you can start to see the how intersecting blocks are used as a tertiary design system element. Here, again, the idea seems solid, but way too close to the logo; this is where some of those secondary color triads could come into play to separate and add visual texture to the visual identity. I’m also not sure that every shape would have to be a rectangle. Perhaps arcs could come in, referencing the arches of the architecture and the idea of bridging, in general.

Like press-printed stationery, press-printed annual reports (and the design firms that focused on them so heavily) are becoming more and more rare, but this, too, is an incredibly important communication vehicle, and one of the few pieces of graphic design to which executives tend to pay any mind (since the primary audience is shareholders). In my exhibit below, I again reference the logo heavily, though I actually don’t mind it here, because of how it is used and the context: assuming this was the year the new brand identity was introduced, this could reinforce recognition and meaning by using the mark to highlight the actual facility and connections alluded to by the bridge. The only thing I really dislike about this exhibit is that it seems to imply that the annual report covers two years, which just doesn’t make sense.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center 2003 | 2004 Annual Report cover; 8.5 x 11in. / 2003

Sometime in the early- to mid-2000s, the web site took over as the most important touchpoint of almost every brand in the world. Toward the beginning of that range, many of these began with some sort of Flash animated “intro,” which were almost invariably the most frivolous wastes of the medium. Being 2003, I created a basic web site “look and feel,” duly preceded it by a frivolous (though mercifully short) Flash intro. I don’t actually mind the basic idea of the animation—of the three logo blocks coming together to create the logo (though, again, it could use modulation of different colors or other means of activating it). I just think it should have been thought of as an sequence for digital event screen backdrops for conference rooms or something equally meaningful for the WSCTC instead of a throwaway on the web site.

Aside from some system monotony and the difficult small type, I think the web site page design is pretty good; it certainly has a lot more potential than the actual WSCTC site design.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center web site; logo animation, home page; 800 x 600px.+ / 2003

There are few more satisfying feelings than seeing your logo built into a sign. When your design is measured in feet, is made out of metal, weighs hundreds of pounds and requires a small crane to put it in place, you know the client is proud. You can also be pretty sure they aren’t going to change the logo anytime soon, since the time, logistic and monetary costs of sign implementation are formidable, and not something any organization wants to do very often. For the WSCTC, seeing my logo actually put up on the main façade would have been pretty satiating, indeed—especially since the facility more or less is the brand. Of course, this didn’t happen since this was just a school project, but I did do a sketch of how it might have looked if it had.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center façade sign; approx. 35 x 20ft. / 2003

While seeing my logo as shown would have been cool, I must admit that I’m not completely satisfied with this exhibit, either. I like the simplicity of it, but I think some subtle plane shifts in the mark and more consideration of materials, dimensionality and possibly even lighting could have really brought the sign to the next level, so to speak.

On a more functional level, I also designed some examples of interior signage. Even though these are based straight off the logo mark—certainly another example of the very close-in approach to the visual identity system—the addition of different levels of informational iconography set on the different levels of the marks helps support the meaning of the identity, rather than clash therewith.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center interior signs; approx. 12 x 12in. (each); vinyl on acrylic / 2003
top row: room signs (two sections of the same room) | men’s room | ladies room
middle row: bus transportation | taxi transportation | food/restaurant | coffee shop
bottom row: elevators | public telephones | information desk

Below, you can see how some of this and other signage could be implemented on the interior. If given another chance at this, I would strongly consider another color for the walls, or at least an accent here and there. The digital sign could use some TLC, as well. And, in a perfect world, I would commission custom carpeting that could incorporate a unique, WSCTC identity system pattern.

Washington State Convention and Trade Centerinterior signage / 2003

Back outside, then, are a couple tertiary sign locations, where just the mark would be sufficient, as well as temporary event banners (the signs outside the WSCTC were already this angled shape). Here, like the interior signs, the overlapping color system helps differentiate levels of information hierarchy. Though in this case, when used as visual texture, I again would likely assign these an appropriate secondary color triad that would allow the logo to stand out more prominently.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center tertiary signs and event banner signs; approx. 12 x 12ft., 6 x 6ft. and 3 x 9ft., ccw from upper left / 2003

Perhaps the most interesting extension of the identity system I designed was a sculpture intended for the back garden/park. In this piece, translucent blue and yellow lucite blocks would stack into each other, with the apple green naturally being created at the intersections between them. As a three-dimensional expression of the mark and its references to different spaces, places, and unique connections, it could also become known as landmark meeting point, in and of itself.

Washington State Convention and Trade Center park sculpture; approx. 6 x 6 x 6ft.; translucent lucite / 2003

I’m not sure whether this class project opened me up to it, but, I have since gone on to spend the majority of my (still rather young) career helping shape the identities of corporations and other organizations (rather than, say, designing annual reports). I’ve even gotten used to referring to clients’ identities as “brands,” though I still bristle at the superficial connotations of the term “branding” to describe the work, as the strategic depth and spectrum of expression of the design work brings real value to clients.

Sometime in 2007, I actually started working at Lippincott (the name has been shortened from the original Lippincott & Margulies, but it’s still the same company). Though the nomenclature may be different, the core idea the firm brought to light 50 or 60-some years ago still holds true. Organizations, corporate or otherwise, are like people, and in each is an opportunity to awaken their senses from the inside out, to help them discover who they are, what makes them unlike any other, and to help them express their unique character in every way they are met. I don’t think that will ever change.

Materials symbol set promotional poster; 20 x 30in. / 2002

There is something very primal and essential about building things. Behind our most basic needs is the need to build something to facilitate it. Before we can put food on the table, someone has to put the table together. Before we can sleep under anyone’s roof, someone has to put that roof over our heads. And, in order to afford such things these days, most of us need to go to work, which, more than likely, is in a building.

But modern technology and evolving divisions of labor have rendered the notion of building even the most trifling gaff foreign and anxiety-filling to most. Hardware stores (big-box and corner-shop alike) are stocked floor to ceiling with too many confusing answers to even the most basic questions. For our Marks and Symbols class in the Visual Communication Design (VCD) program at the University of Washington, we were set out to develop a universal language of icons that would help de-mystify this environment and enable people to fulfill their basic need to put stuff together.

The class was divided into two phases: research and development. In the research phase, we worked in groups to look into issues facing the hardware customer, decide upon the problem we felt had the most potential for amelioration by a concise set of symbols (ten or so), and present our process and findings to the rest of the class. In the second phase, we each developed symbol sets on our own to respond to this problem.

Our research group, comprising mates Devon DeLapp, Jesse Graupmann, Narith Hoc, Sarah LaMont, Shaun Tungseth and myself, began by thinking of and assessing the potential (and drawbacks) of six possible options: A set of symbols for connectors, which could help people figure out what fit with what else (but seemed too broad to spawn a useful set of just ten symbols), electricity symbols, which could help people figure out the ins and outs of amps and volts (but we couldn’t figure out how to boil this subject down to ten symbols, either), how-to symbols, which could help people with standard tasks like building a deck or installing a light fixture (but, we quickly realized, would be nearly impossible to describe in mere icons), function/action symbols, which could help explain what a particular tool might do, such as “twist” or “strike” and might have made for a cool set of symbols (but seemed too basic a concept to actually be of any use to any adult not born on Mars—”a hammer is for hitting; fancy that!”), or warning symbols, which could help deter someone from doing stupid things with those tools—like strike themselves with a hammer (but had already been done to death, so to speak).

After much debate, we decided that materials had the most potential for new exploration of symbols that could enjoy real utility, potentially touching a range of applications within the context of hardware, such as way-finding (“Where is the wood?”), contents listing (“Is this made with wood?”), and proper use of tools (“Can I use this on wood?”)…

Once we had decided on our topic to develop, we halfheartedly debated the merits of different ways to present our preliminary investigation and the resultant “problem statement” to the class. We could have done a simple verbal presentation supported by material objects, poster boards, handouts and/or a slide show. In reality, though, having Devon in our group set the foregone expectation among us and the rest of the class that we would do some sort of film (Devon somehow found time to be a Film Studies major in addition to being a Visual Communication Design major, while most of us were killing ourselves just to hold down VCD). And so we made a film.

The film begins with us visiting a hardware store and shopping around as a metaphor for our exploration of ideas. Each of the members discuss one of the original six directions briefly, culminating with materials. We then find examples of the materials for which we had decided to symbolize in the store and load them onto our cart. The film then moves on to vignettes of our photographic research of our chosen materials with as the supporting soundtrack intensifies. Finally, we review previous such symbol programs and speak to intentions of improvement thereof as we check out of the store, idea in hand (or, rather, on big cart thing).

Materials presentation video (stills); written, directed, acted and narrated by Devon DeLapp, Jesse Graupmann, Narith Hoc, Sarah LaMont, Shaun Tungseth and myself; DV / 2003

Recently re-viewing this film was a bit painful. It’s amateurish, we’re all terrible on screen and it was embellished with plenty of juvenile flourishes (highlights include Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine” playing while showing our semiotic exploration of plaster—which is generally made from a white powder—and the film closing with the obligatory toilet flush out-take—from our discussion of ceramic materials). But it sharpened some great memories of having fun with a project, and reinforced in me the idea that irreverence can be a great vehicle to engage an audience, even if you’re trying to convey that a lot of work went into something, which it had. I don’t remember any other groups’ presentations, though I’m sure they were all solidly delivered. I’m guessing people remember ours.

As the credits rolled on our presentation, phase one faded to black and we were off on our own to start creating appropriate symbol sets. With photographic research and general knowledge to draw from, I began my symbol design process by making cursory lists of the semiotic relationships to each material, looking for overlaps between them that would give me a solid base from which to draft a set of ten equivalent marks.

Materials semiotic relationships study / 2003

These lists were in no way exhaustive, but they were effective in helping me figure out routes that had the most or least potential. Only a few of the materials were referenced by commonly known symbolism or metaphor. The greatest potential, therefore, seemed to lay in literal representation stemming from either attributes or examples of the respective materials.

Then, at last… I began sketching to test different visual language. To begin, I worked with the three most vastly different materials (glass, metal and rubber) so I could try a range of execution while hopefully ensuring the approach would translate to the other seven. My initial exercises were highly literal representations of canonical objects that were tied visually by a strong common shape, though I soon abandoned this, as the symbols would have been too specific and not thus not necessarily be effective in representing the range of a particular material.

From this, my next tactic involved slightly more abstract detail views of pattern. I tested different scale to determine optimal overall color, or visual density of the marks.

Materials symbol set study; pencil and marker on paper / 2003
top row: glass
middle row: metal
bottom row: rubber

Though simple pattern looked as if it could be successfully carried over to the entire range of materials and make for a relatively effective symbol set, the depth of impact of these marks was relatively shallow. In search of a more sophisticated result, I drew more abstract marks based on interaction. In this system, the materials relate with a common element (a black square) in a unique way, based on the material’s characteristics. For example, the box shows through the glass, it is welded or riveted to the metal, and the rubber stretches over it.

Materials symbol set study; pencil and marker on paper / 2003
top row: glass
middle row: metal
bottom row: rubber

Intellectually stimulating as it was, the idea of ten different materials interacting with one formal element in ten different and relevant ways was more or less doomed to failure. In an effort to create an interesting and sophisticated set that would also be truly usable, I realized a balance needed to be struck between literal and abstract. My first attempt at this approach combined solid shapes and lines. Initial experimentation with a three-by-three grid also began at this stage and, while the solid shapes were not working well with the linear elements, I felt like the solution was close at hand.

Materials symbol set study; pencil and marker on paper / 2003
top row: glass
middle row: metal
bottom row: rubber

From this point, the challenge was in formulating an elegant and cohesive set that would perform at many levels of display. This process led to the foundation of the final solution: a set of square marks comprising geometric line drawing based on a three-by-three grid.

Materials symbol set study; structural grid / 2003

More for facility of quick rendering than any conceptual theme, I had been working within the confines of a square containing shape without much deviation from the very beginning of my process, so this was the last nail in the coffin of any other shape exploration. Looking back, the symbols do seem somewhat artless and rigid for the box, but I’m not ashamed or regretful. These marks are for the most basic inanimate objects in the context of hardware; it seems quite appropriate. The structural grid made them feel even more solidly built and made for a very legible system with nearly limitless potential for application and extension to additional materials.

Once the formal method had been established, it was applied to other elements of the set. Care had to be taken to maintain the balance between the literal and abstract; utility and interest.

Materials symbol set study; pencil and marker on paper / 2003
top row: stone
middle row: cloth
bottom row: soil

Some materials took to the system quite readily while others required many iterations and changes of focus. Plastic, for example, can be made into almost any form imaginable, so establishing one mark to represent it in its entirety required extensive exploration.

Materials symbol set study; pencil and marker on paper / 2003
top row: wood
middle row: plastic
bottom row: drywall

One great thing about geometrically drawn symbols based on a grid is that they are extremely easy to render digitally. This allowed for even more extensive exploration and variation once the marks were translated to the computer.

Materials symbol set study; digital sketches / 2003
top row: glass
middle row: metal
bottom row: rubber

Since different iterations could be generated quickly and accurately, creating and evaluating variations went quite smoothly for most of the set. The ceramic symbol serendipitously benefited from a perfect relationship with the grid and required only one take.

Materials symbol set study; digital sketches / 2003
top row: drywall
second row: wood
third row: soil
bottom row: ceramic

Unlike the ceramic mark, some of the materials required significant trial and error to perform at a similar level functionally and formally. Plastic called for many different sources of inspiration (and, I must say, I’m least pleased with its final mark), while other materials, such as cloth, necessitated numerous formal interpretations. However, a complete final set was well within view at this point.

Materials symbol set; color, positive and reverse flexibility / 2003
top row: stone
middle row: plastic
bottom row: cloth

Soon enough, the complete set came together, and was put through its paces to see if the symbols could answer their duty. Could they reverse out?

Materials symbol set; positive and reverse / 2003
top row: ceramic | cloth | glass
second row: drywall | metal | rubber
third row: soil | wood | plastic
bottom row: stone

Could they be color coded? And what about that linear execution; what if that were reversed?

Materials symbol set; color, positive and reverse flexibility / 2003
top row: ceramic | cloth | glass
second row: drywall | metal | rubber
third row: soil | wood | plastic
bottom row: stone

But the most important question for any design, especially in a hardware store, is: Does it work? The following is but a brief study of applications, but shows how they could be useful for proper use of hardware or tools.

wood symbol application; proper use of hardware / 2003

drywall, wood, metal and plastic symbol application; proper use of tools / 2003

As mentioned above, the standardization of material symbols could not only help people determine whether something should or should not be used on a particular material, it could also help people quickly identify whether a pipe was plastic or rubber, or where to find glass or wood, and so on. With smart implementation, the potential utility of the system is quite vast. Someone just has to build it.

Prosophobia promotional poster; 24 x 36in. / 2002

The most celebrated role of the designer has always been that of creator of positive change through innovation, but battling the public’s inclination to treasure the old and suspect the new has historically been tough going. The current of ominous world events (especially at the time of this project’s conception, painfully close to 9/11) only serves to shore up such public reservation. For many people, the comfort of the familiar is too valuable to risk on new ideas. This promotes a homogeneous, retro-centric design market in which the new is often merely another iteration of the old.

Prosophobia (“fear of progress”) was a concept for an international design conference that would explore why many of these constructs exist and how we as designers can continue to champion progress in this environment. Featured presentations were to be given by historians, behaviorists and economists, as well as a diverse range of design leaders successfully implementing progressive work, despite this prosophobic culture.

Being a design event (and a design school project, no less), a promotional / informational poster was a critical application, and set the visual theme for the balance of the comprehensive identification and communication suite. After several dramatic, antagonistic early concepts, including a God-like hand pushing down the sunrise, a Volkswagen “New Beetle” reversing into the viewer and even a revolver loaded with antiquities and ready to fire, an approach more considerate of both sides of the matter prevailed. The front presents the issue in a re-contextualized image reminiscent of the silent film era, showing a figure literally hanging onto the past for dear life, while the flip-side speaks to the present (signified by digital visual language) offering information on the voices on offer in the conference, and an invitation to participate in the future…

Prosophobia promotional poster (back); 24 x 36in. / 2002

When discussing professional issues of the times, designers love trading between roles of preacher and choir, probably more than any other group of people in the world. Such is the nature of a profession that practitioners find unequivocally noble but cannot hope to defend quantitatively, and thus can only be explained to those who “get it,” thus, ensuring that those who don’t get it never will. While there is no denying that Prosophobia would primarily be an event by and for designers, the issue at hand is societal, so a widespread awareness campaign was designed to stimulate dialogue in the greater human community about the conference, its premise and what it means to them.

Prosophobia subway poster; 22 x 22in. / 2002

Prosophobia magazine sidebar ad; 3.25 x 9.5in. / 2002

Of course, the best way to reach someone is to talk to them directly, which this contact card was designed to help facilitate.

Prosophobia contact card (front and back); 2 x 3.5in. (each) / 2002

In order to reach specific audiences, it’s crucial to influence the influencers in prominent media of such respects. That’s where the letterhead and media release come in, as vehicles for formal correspondence and PR. With proper information and prodding, people would have been compelled to bring their influence and the rest of their bodies to the actual event, which is made simple with a sharp registration form.

Prosophobia letterhead, media release and registration form; 8.5 x 11in., 8.5 x 14in. and 8.5 x 11in., respectively / 2002

Envelopes make such correspondence much easier to mail.

Prosophobia No.10 commercial envelope (back / flap and front) and No.10 catalog envelope (back / flap and front with die-cut, crack-and-peel address label) / 2002

Once the audiences’ attention has been captured for a minute, they are directed to a promotional / informational web site, where the minute quickly disappears (and then so does more and more time). This flash of loss animates into the the primary content, where visitors could gain knowledge of the event, such as speaker bios, accommodations, and features, as well as register for the conference.

Prosophobia web site; 1024 x 768px.+; interactive Flash interface (shown here in an animated storyboard) / 2002

As a symbolic celebration of Modernity’s rare but powerful triumphs, the conference was to be held in conjunction with the grand re-opening of the MoMA in New York after Yoshio Taniguchi’s architectural expansion / remodel in 2005. (Taniguchi was also to give the keynote address.) Seen here is a detail of way-finding signage in-situ.

Prosophobia directional signage; vinyl on Plexiglas; 10 x 10 x .25in. (each) / 2002

Once at the conference, attendees would be provided a number of things to help them kick the Prosophobia: A time table of all of the events they could plug into…

Prosophobia program schedule tri-fold brochure (outside spread / inside spread); 3 x 6in. (finished), 9 x 6in. (flat) / 2002

A DVD documenting the feature presentations, breakout sessions and round-table discussions…

Prosophobia documentary DVD; standard dimensions / 2002

And, of course, a commemorative watch, so attendees could always have the public interest at hand (it runs backwards).

Prosophobia commemorative wrist watch; reverse movement / 2002

Don’t be late!

phone card set; series of four fronts (top); one back (bottom); 3.4in. x 2.125in. each / 2002

It seems that there are (or were) two major markets for long distance phone cards.

One is (or was, I’m guessing) Europe, where long distance on a phone plan, in comparison to U.S. phone plans, would span relatively little actual distance, and wanderlust runs rampant. In the days before near-ubiquitous mobile phone proliferation, I imagine there was much use for a card that would get you in touch with another country, or back in touch with home when you got there, without costly service charges from one’s domestic carrier. Even with a mobile, a roamer could easily outbound their domestic plan with a quick clip on the TGV.

The other market I’ve seen for such cards is quite different, and still as vibrant as ever. Having lived in New York for several years now, I’ve been confronted by gangs of international phone cards, shouting at me from behind so many raised bodega counters, each garish explosion of bling and atrocious typography shouting louder than the next, like a traffic jam in the South Bronx. This city, it seems, has the requisite population of aliens without the means for a long distance plan (or even a phone, in many cases), needing to reach out and touch their homelands, such that the cacophony of prepaid, foil-stamped minutes is warranted.

But, having lived in Seattle almost my entire life as of 2002, with its relatively scant collection of migrant workers (or Europeans), I’m not sure I’d ever even seen a phone card until I designed my own. This project, another in the Advanced Typography class of the Visual Communication Design (VCD) program at the University of Washington, was the novel creation of our professor (fresh from an extended European vacation). Here, we were to design a series (or multiple series) of ten-Euro calling cards…

Of course, being in a proper design program, my cards didn’t have any of that garish metallic noise, but I did try to convey, in abstract terms, traveling voices.

I thought of listening in on what a phone call from a traveler might be like. Would it be colorful and loud, as from a pétit jaune fille talking about the cute jungen in Bonn? Every day, a new color, but the same airy bubble babble? Vieleicht. But even one short trip can have many flavors. For every bubble and squeak, there’s can be a piercingly sharp Swiss, or even a boring square of milk toast. They all leave a taste in the wanderer’s mouth to share.

phone card set; series of four fronts (top); one back (bottom); 3.4in. x 2.125in. each / 2002

Sharing. Now that’s the essential je ne sais quoi of the phone card, non?. The traveler escapes the dia-a-dia from whence they came and their call recipients stay. The phone card allows them to connect provare even as their bodies derivare.

phone card set; series of four fronts (top); one back (bottom); 3.4in. x 2.125in. each / 2002

Travel is fantastisk because you can always go back home, and home might sound more and more magnifico with every soothing word from the ones left there. But the traveler must keep an eye on the watch, because the trains don’t run often this time of night, and, ten Euros can susurrus into the airwaves in no time at all.

phone card set; series of four fronts (top); one back (bottom); 3.4in. x 2.125in. each / 2002

University of Washington School of Art, main entrance / photo taken 2008

Like most epiphanies, one of my most life-changing ideas came to me suddenly when I was in the bathroom. It was September 2nd, 2001. I had been working full-time as a designer since 1999. In July of that year, I had indulged in a very expensive but amazing vacation, following the Tour de France. Three days after my trip, I returned to work to rumors of massive layoffs. Within a week, tours of the company’s one-year-new building revealed empty desks that quickly multiplied into empty floors. By August 20th, it was clear that the in-house design department, too, was going dark. September 14th was going to be my last day. I had no idea what I was going to do, and then I did.

Two years and change earlier, I had made a rather precarious exit from the Visual Communication Design (VCD) program at the University of Washington. I was disheartened for a while, then embittered, then dismissive, then all-but-forgetful of the whole experience. And then, on that day in September, it came to me: I would go back and finish school. Or, rather, I would try to finish school. After all, I was going straight back to the horse that threw me, and, if anything, it was more fierce than ever (bad economies feed schools with lots of accomplished and motivated applicants). Any prior thoughts of repeating this wicked roulette were momentary lapses in sanity. But, upon my decision that day, my resolve was unshakable.

About a week and a half after my decision, I took one of my final vacation days. An hour or so after I woke up, I checked my personal email program, which showed news stories in one of the frames. The Twin Towers and half of the Pentagon had been obliterated within the span of a few hours. Luckily, I did not know anyone personally who was involved in these catastrophes but it seems strange to tell a story about that time without mentioning it. To be honest, it was all quite disaffecting considering the ever more improbable absurdity the country had been subjected to in the year or so leading up to the events. It was all just more impervious steel turned to dust. My decision was unmoved…

Back to school, then. I had paid approximately zero attention to the VCD program in my absence, but, ostensibly, the program turned out to be the same two years on. One still had to make it through two screening classes, still called 205 and 206 (even if one had made it through 205 before, as I had, to try again required repeating the entire process). The classes still had three projects each, which were essentially the same as before. But the truth of the initial screening had become exposed, to the bone. The first time I went through, the competitive aspect was localized, as the class was broken into small studios and that never intertwined, and it was usually only spoken about vaguely (“a lot of applicants”). This time, they corralled the 200 candidates (up from about 150 my first time through) into a 200-seat lecture hall two days a week. About three weeks into the class, the professor asked how many people were aiming to make it into the 20 spots in the program (as opposed to just taking the class as an elective). I saw everyone raise their hand and look around, eyes wide. The professor knew that would be the result of the poll, and told us so. I sat in the very back row and spoke to no one. I didn’t even raise my hand. I still cannot believe my ensuing experience at the UW when I think of that day.

Now, back to dust. I was living very temporarily on severance, then on meager unemployment benefits while enrolled in a formidable three-month-long test to see if I could get into another, more formidable three-month-long test, to see if I could go back to school full-time. If I didn’t look for a job, I would lose my benefits. If I got a job, I wouldn’t be able to focus on school. If I didn’t focus on school, I wouldn’t get into the next class, let alone the program. The only logical plan was to focus on school and casually apply only for fantasy jobs, like Global Creative Director for Cannondale or something, preferably in some exotic city, like Zürich (nicht wahrscheinlich). If I got one of those, then screw school. If I got into the program, I would go for student loans and/or scholarships because, when I finished the screening process, I would be completely broke. If I didn’t get into the program, then, well…

Now, back to school. The first project of 2001′s 205 class was almost identical to the first project of 205 from 1999: Create a letter mark that represented some sort of action. The only difference is that they chose the word for you this time, which was probably a good thing, since I, like most of the students, spent way too much time coming up with crappy words before. My word this time was “Repel.”

I sketched lots of options that showed the letter R repelling itself somehow:

Repel mark sketches / 2001

My breakthrough, so to speak, came in chopping the top of the capitol R letter form. This allowed the static, upright stem to be acted upon more overtly by the much more dynamic curve of the bowl and angular leg while still reading as a single character that pretty clearly represented the physical act of repelling (as in mountaineering). The arrow is a bit of a crutch, but it’s not too egregious. Sketches of the idea seemed to get a decent nod from the professor in critiques (no mean feat), so I figured I was in good shape:

Repel letter mark / 2001

About a week after turning our work in, we got a generic email telling us to pick up our projects. The class collected randomly in a cold room with only a series of alphanumerically-coded bins. Each project was graded with a simple check (fine), check-minus (bad), or check-plus (good). My R got a check-minus. I was devastated. I instantly and deeply regretted my attempt to redress VCD. My attention span ran in 3-second intervals. My steel resolve was ripped to ribbons in the stroke of a pencil and it was all I could do to stay standing.

The next day, I went to office hours to ask the professor how or if there was any way I could “save” this broken project for re-submission before our final deadline at the end of the quarter. Ironically, my enervation was assuaged by his mild amusement at this state, and his (equally mild) surprise at my grade. Apparently, the work had been reviewed by some mystery panel, whose makeup I never learned. At any rate, he suggested that the mark would be better if it were more geometric, so I made it more geometric:

Repel letter mark (revision) / 2001

I still think the original is better.

The next project was unconventional and provocative, as it charged the students with conceptualizing an editorial perspective based on the interpretation of a given word, which would also serve as the title for the piece. My given word was “space.” My editorial perspective sparked by the word was that cyberspace was an unnatural, blocky layer inserted into the space of human interaction. I think I was onto something with this:

Space mini-poster sketch / 6in. x 9in.

The angular computation of personal communication is kind of amusing, and it is pretty easy to get as a concept. Somehow I lost confidence in the idea, though, and I ended up with this:

Space mini-poster, 6in. x 9in. / 2001

I really don’t like this solution at all (despite featuring my good friend Joel and his wife). It just doesn’t explain itself very well, even if you think about it for a while. I almost like it formally, but not really.

I think the last project was billed as a poster for a conference, but it was really much more like a book cover, since the only type on it was only to be the name of a particular academic subject (have you ever seen a poster that just said “Math” on it?… that wasn’t for a band called “Math”?). After my dubious “Genetics” book cover experiment from three years prior, I was now on to “Biology.” There was an oddly un-intellectual requirement added to the set of parameters around the project: It had to have at least one circle, one line, and one rectangle in the composition (The students assigned “Geometry” were either really lucky or really stifled, depending on their perspective).

I hit the books, myself, ransacking the University’s incredibly diverse and widespread array of science libraries for what I figured would be a goldmine of visual source material for reference and inspiration: specialized photography, process diagrams, illustrations, etc. The big surprise was that, either I didn’t look hard enough, or there wasn’t much to be had. This was perhaps the most interesting lesson of the project: Graphic design is a powerful means to express an idea, be it commercial, political, scientific, or otherwise, but it is terribly under-appreciated and/or under-utilized by all but those that are savvy enough to realize this and also have the means to engage the process (read: big business). It is a shame that designers are not well enough represented in the academic world to make the subject matter more engaging and easier to understand for more people, thus advancing research that much faster. Alas, if the interest is there (from either side of the fence), the money is not, so most scientific research is confined within black walls of dense paragraphs, built with sesquipedalian jargon. On a tangential note, the understanding of national politics, too, could be greatly enhanced by a few well-considered charts and graphs, but, although the money is there, the desire to clarify situations, positions, and plans has never seemed to be the most striking idea to those in or seeking political office.

Now back to my book. I decided that, if this book were to be used to take a closer look at biology, it should get really close. I did find some decent microscopy images of varying magnification and scientific colorization that I set in a molecular composition with abstracted slides that together juxtaposed the organic subject matter and the scientific study thereof:

Biology book cover, 10in. x 16in. / 2001

Compared my Genetics book cover, it’s still a bit frightening, but more intriguing and straightforward, as opposed to sinister and political.

Another element of the new screening process was that, in addition to the final projects and any revisions one may have made thereto, every student was to also compile a process book that showed the different iterations they had gone through to arrive at their final solutions. Some things never change, though, and I was at one of the two industrial print shops in the city that Wire-O bound books within the hour all materials were due. Luckily, I didn’t get a flat on my time trial back to school.

The icing on the cold cake of the new process was that they had replaced the “interviews,” in which two professors would call students in one at a time to explain how they had or had not passed into 206, and offer at least a modicum of praise, encouragement, or consolation, as appropriate. In 2001, one of two form letters were mailed to the student’s officially recorded home address. About a week after my final submissions were left on the table in room ART 230, I received my letter. I stared at the envelope for a few minutes before I opened it, and then I did.

I had made it into 206—for the second time. I exhaled for about seven seconds.

UBC monogram mark for Union Bay Cycling / 2001

A competitive cycling team, like all other kinds of teams, is a of a group of people with a similar interest; in this case, the team’s chief objective is to win bike races. The primary vehicle of a cycling team’s identity is the uniform that team members wear out racing and training. This identity is complicated, however, by the fact that competitive cycling is one of the very few sports in the world based on a sponsorship model, whereby commercial interests pay for some aspect of team operations in return for visible recognition on these uniforms. Almost invariably, this leads to a team’s identity being inextricably intertwined with the identity of their lead sponsors, which can change relatively frequently.

For example, most people would say that Lance Armstrong raced the last season of his career with the Discovery Channel team, and that, before that, he was on the U.S. Postal Service team for six years or so, even though these were, for all intents and purposes, the exact same team, managed by Tailwind Sports.

Union Bay Cycling (UBC) is a large Northwest cycling organization built around an elite-level team that races in local, regional, and national events at the pro/am level. UBC has been around, with the same leadership and core group of riders, for over a decade, but major sponsorship changes had made it seem like three or four disparate and relatively short-lived teams. For UBC, I worked with the team director to develop a long-term solution: a core identity system that accommodates prominent and unique recognition for lead sponsors, but embodies the unique heritage and dynamism of the team riders and stays consistent even with major sponsor changes.

I began with the UBC monogram mark (above) that would immediately identify all communication touchpoints of the team: stationery for proposals, press releases and other correspondence, the web site, T-shirts, gear bags, and so on, and, of course, the all-important team kit, including jerseys, shorts, socks, water bottles, gloves, helmet graphics, and several other tertiary clothing articles.

Union Bay Cycling jerseys (long-sleeve front | short-sleeve back) / 2003; I also happened to have designed the Holcam logo on the jersey shoulders (but not their web site) / 2001

The blue grid, an established device of the team, was reworked and became the foundation of this flexible system. The title sponsor was rewarded not only with the most prominent logo presence, but also with an expressive element emerging from the grid (in this case, the hands of Ashmead College, School of Massage), and other sponsors fit into pre-established hierarchical slots based on their respective levels of contribution…

Just behind the team uniforms, the next most critical touchpoint of the organization’s identity was the team web site, which I also designed and coded. As it was my first major foray into Flash, the concept of the site probably outshone the rather clunky execution. I know enough about Flash to elucidate an idea, but not enough to “optimize” the experience as specialist programmers can. The layout is a bit dodgy in some regards as well. Nevertheless, the site brought the dynamism and personality of the team to the Internet within the context of the sponsored team identity concept.

Union Bay Cycling web site / 2002

Here, too, the hands of Ashmead College emerged from the grid. The dynamic visual hook here was that the hands would actually move across the screen to “massage” the site from one page to the next.

the Ashmead hands in action, transitioning from the home page to the “Meet the Riders” landing page

In addition to the layout and interactive execution, I also developed and wrote most of the content, including pithy, spirited interviews of team members that brought the individual personalities out of the uniforms.

Over the years, the team identity concept was indeed tested, as other lead sponsors were considered—everything from wineries to gyms to car dealerships—and we illustrated these possibilities in various mockup sketches as part of the proposals. I won’t show these online, as I wouldn’t want to jeopardize these professional relationships. Imagine, though, for instance, in the case of the winery, vines of grapes or a hand toasting a goblet emerging from the grid; web pages being poured into the site. The possibilities, as they say, are endless.

But, as long as I was involved with the team, the Ashmead massage school (and their hands) remained committed to the team, which was great, as they were more than just a name on the jersey; they were highly engaged in realizing the mutual promotional and educational potential of the partnership. As a case in point, one element of the relationship provided for the racers to be worked on weekly by the massage trainees, which, in itself, proved to be valuable experience for both groups. Moreover, the Ashmead jersey is probably the only racing uniform that allows racers to raise more than just two hands after a well-deserved victory.

team rider Ingy taking one of many team victories (photographer unknown) / 2001

FatPort logo / 2001, 2008

Though the Internet has been around, in one form or another, for many decades, it had little public awareness until about twenty years ago. By the mid 1990s, the World Wide Web had been plotted by a smattering of amateur “home pages,” which generally consisted of some “lite” personal information about the site’s owner (or “webmaster”) and their hobbies (one of those invariably being “the Internet”). By the late 1990s, these folksy homes were being overwhelmed by the sprawl of “dot-coms” from corporate startups and stalwarts flocking to the new marketplace, and Internet tools like email were beginning to make their way into everyday practice. But, until the early 2000s, the only place in the whole wide world that one would likely experience these sites and services was from the office, or through their droolingly slow modem at home, which made anything but the most formal or mundane tasks a bit difficult for most folks.

Soon enough, though, many public establishments started offering wireless Internet service, enabling the populace to get out into the world and peruse the Web at office-like speeds from their own laptops at places that they already liked going, like coffee shops or bookstores. This service is often referred to casually as “Wi-Fi,” which is a contraction of ‘Wireless’… um…’Fidelity’??, a name created by those wacky kids over at Interbrand for an actual alliance supporting the “IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence” specifications (I’m not making this stuff up).

Whatever the protocol may be named (or numbered, or whatever), one of the first Wi-Fi service providers primarily for consumer usage in public establishments was FatPort, a Vancouver, B.C. startup established by a few programmers, including my good friend Ingy, who hired me to help develop the venture’s visual identity (but left a relatively short time thereafter).

Before I was brought in, the name of this service had been established by the founders. A “fat port” is sort of programmer-slang for a good, wide-open connection. Ingy actually had the idea for a ‘fat’ radio tower mark, which I thought was good, so I basically just did it. I then set the type in “fat” and “open” weights to reinforce the idea in a distinctive word-mark. The strong, simple palette of red, white and black hints at the Canadian roots of the program and is highly versatile for any number of applications…

This is one of only a few projects that I feel compelled to show a revision of, as I can’t figure out why I did what I did initially. Above, I show how the logo would look if the radio tower mark (unchanged from my initial design) was paired with type set in the quintessential Modern, geometric, sans-serif Futura, which echoes the weight and geometric nature of the radio tower quite nicely, if I do say so, myself. However, the original logo was set with modified weights of Hoefler Text, which is a perfectly fine serif face (particularly suited to lengths of copy, as the name suggests), but has very little correlation with the mark, and whose “fat” modification here borders on the comical. This didn’t come totally out of the blue, as the founders were not of the MBA set; they were an enterprising mix of fringe programmers (they called their mass consumer-facing business FatPort, after all). Their quirky quality is reflected in this setting, but the lockup is somewhat disjointed for the cause.

This is the original FatPort logo. The type on its own is actually pretty strong, overall, and works well with identity extensions like the ‘Network’ logo below. It’s just that it clashes with and overwhelms the tower mark, which is the hero of the lockup. / 2001

FatPort Network lockup (reversed out of black). Here is an example of the flexible modularity of color usage between black, red and white.

Nevertheless, the logo, even with the original type, was a powerful signal to the strength of the offering and the resolve of the entrepreneurs’ belief in its market potential. It was also instantly meaningful and unique. (This came well before T-Mobile’s comparably weak wordmark for it’s “HotSpot” service and countless other emanating wave marks for other such services since).

Applications of the identity in signage, equipment badges and representative identification provided a clear beacon for business and retail consumers alike:

clockwise from top-left: FatPort inside clear window decal for service providers like coffee shops, bookstores, libraries, etc., 6in. x 8in.; small FatPort equipment label, 2in. x .5in.; alternate FatPort inside window decal, 4in. x 5.5in.; Fatport inside representative button, 2in.ø

And, it also happened to look tough as crap on a T-shirt:

FatPort T-Shirt; [cropped] front and full back

And it worked! The business was a huge success from the very start and has grown dramatically since, now serving as the leading wireless Internet service provider in Canada and spreading. I hear the sunset calling (or is it emailing?)…

But, alas, as any bookworm knows (remember books?), happy endings are for kids, and we’re all adults here. FatPort changed their logo a few years ago—and not just the typography; we’re talking full-on throw-out-the-baby redesign. I must say, I admire them for wanting to be different from the growing ranks of look-a-like logos for Wi-Fi service, but the new logo just doesn’t make sense: Why are they working so hard to keep the doors closed on the fat port? And if the original typography was not perfect, at least it had character (so to speak), as opposed to their anemic usage of Helvetica. On top of all that, the new mark looks like it belongs in a kid’s book, which just doesn’t go with the plot of this story.

My good friend Ingy was a great resource for me because he was always coming up with ideas for all kinds of new groups or products or businesses that needed some sort of design work. In the coffee-and-internet-crazed Seattle of the late ’90s, eBarista (.com), a coffee delivery service based on web-ordering sure seemed like a winner. This is the mark I created for the identity:

eBarista monogram mark / 1999

I really wanted to tweak this thing before posting it, as it has some serious formal issues that wouldn’t be hard to fix, but I resisted. This is the mark as I drew it originally: an “eB” monogram abstracted into a two-finger-handled paper coffee cup with a froth swirl and a bit of steam. I also set an accompanying logotype and even a cute animated version where the steam rose, dissolved, and started over again ad infinitum, but I can’t find them.

Unfortunately, eBarista never actually made it out of the starting gate. It may have had something to do with the fact that, if it had run, there’s no way that the supplier (a guy who sold Americanos out of the van he lived in) could have kept up with demand. Or maybe it was something else; I couldn’t say for sure.

Another identity I worked on for Ingy was for one of his self-initiated computer programming projects, InLine, which (as I understand it) allows programmers to write modules of Perl, a relatively simple but limited programming language inline with other languages, like C++ that are more cumbersome to deal with but better for more complex operations, resulting in a best-of-both-worlds comprehensive program that can be both powerful and efficient.

InLine logo / 1999

I believe the InLine project has actually been pretty successful (in fact, I think Ingy has spoken about it all over the world and its international following of hardcore programmers continues to grow). Moreover, I like the logo. I had it in my portfolio for a while and it was always met with positive remarks. Ironically, I’m not sure the logo has ever actually been used to identify the program.

Like most of the projects I’ve done for/with Ingy (there have been many over the years), I took payment for the eBarista and InLine identity work in the form of rides to bike races, a good barbecue dinner out on his patio, some New Wave cassette tapes, or whatever else I might have needed at the time.

I went to a cool little salon pretty regularly at this time, and I had developed some rapport with my hair stylist (the owner’s daughter). At a certain point, she asked me what I did, and I told her that I was a graphic designer. She then inquired (quite seriously): “Are you any good?” This is a surprisingly common reaction, so I had a pretty standard retort on hand: “Depends on who you ask.” I don’t think she ever actually asked anyone else, but she had me do their visual identity and business cards anyway – in exchange for a couple free haircuts:

Raleigh’s Salon logo / 1999

I drew the custom Raleigh’s logotype in reference to high-style Art Deco letterforms, with the lowercase “g” doubling as an abstracted pair of scissors.

Raleigh’s Salon business card (front | back); 2 x 3.5 in. (each) / 1999

In applications, the g-scissors extend to clip a supergraphic R-waved hair. My hairdresser was insistent on the promo message on the back of the business card.

As I noted in an earlier post, I had also begun developing an identity for a prominent new bike company, but it was never used after the client (not the person for whom the company is named) decided to go with something his girlfriend came up with while I was out of town. I believe this was a huge missed opportunity for both myself and the new company. I won’t say what company this was, which means that I can’t show you the full logo or explain any of the strategy behind any of the work, but I will show you this:

?? monogram mark / headtube badge / 1999

Can you guess who this could be for? I spent about a month working and meeting with the client about this project before having it pulled out from under me (there’s a lot more work that I’m not showing). Needless to say, I never got paid anything for any of it.

One of my best patrons in my freewheeling freelance days was Larry Naylor, the proprietor of Perfect Wheels, a local bike shop he had started in place of another shop that had called it quits. Shortly after establishing his shop, I somehow persuaded him to let me design, code, maintain, troubleshoot IT problems, and do whatever else might have needed to be done with the shop’s web site. Considering that I was relatively uneducated (or just totally winging it) in every one of these disciplines, the site worked pretty well for quite a while.

PerfectWheels.net home page / 1999

PerfectWheels.net home page (rollover state of “New Bikes”) / 1999

PerfectWheels.net interior page: Wheels / 1999

The primary hook of the site was a background of a spoked bicycle wheel whose hub also served as a framing device for icons I created to illustrate the various topics/pages covered within the site. I also shot much of the photography and wrote a lot of the content. While I think this site was unique and useful as it was, it did end up looking dated after some time (as most web sites from the late ’90s did), so actually don’t mind that he has since updated it (even if the new version isn’t exactly how I would have designed it). I’m also glad that he has replaced his very 90′s Saturn-like logo (I designed neither the old nor the new logo).

I ended up being the sort-of de-facto design consultant for the shop for a couple years after the initial web site project. Over the course of our collaboration, Larry and I discussed and worked on a number of other projects, both large and small, as he continued to refine the Perfect experience.

For a while, Larry was selling his own version of high-end, pre-built road wheels, similar to those popularized by Mavic and other major players in the wheels game (except that all of Larry’s wheels were guaranteed to be be built by hand – by Larry, himself). He came up with two (well-named) models: the Grüner, a lightweight set for fast recreational use or possibly racing, and the Grizzly, a beefier set for pounding out the everyday miles. I designed the logos for both, as well as hub and rim decals and in-shop displays.

Grüner wheel logo (hub decal); 3 x 1.5 in. / 2001

Grüner was the name of one of Larry’s friends, a slim, cute hipster girl of some sort (from what I remember from brief accounts and a picture; I never actually met her). The lightweight type and tweak of the “u” with the umlaut was a nod to this chic, cheeky sensibility. By the way, I have used a set of these wheels for five or six straight years of hard winter riding – that’s when the long, cold, wet, rocky miles come in – and they’re still just about as good as they were new; I can’t imagine what one could do with the Grizzlys:

Grizzly wheel logo (hub decal); 3 x 1.25in. / 2001

Grizzly was the name of Larry’s (rather aggressive) black cat. The extra-bold weight and cropping reference these characteristics. The two wheel identities, while expressing different qualities, were meant to be of a family. In addition to being based on the same font (different weights of Futura), both logos played off the theme of faces (since they were named after representative beings). The Grizzly logo, then, is dotted by the cat’s eyes.

I also designed decals for the rims of each wheel:

Here is how the rim decals looked applied (side view of Grizzly and Grüner rims) / 2001

Here is a shot of a Grizzly wheel on display at Perfect Wheels (photo by Larry Naylor) / 2001

I also made some wall display signs that looked something like this (the signs were made and displayed in the shop, but I never got a real picture, so this mock-up will have to suffice):

Grüner and Grizzly in-store signage; digital output on foam-core; 8 x 8 x .25 in. (each) / 2001

Larry and I worked on a few other projects together as the years added up, including various photo shoots, bike repair and upgrade case studies, a shop brochure (conceived but never quite born), a couple newspaper ads, some other little stickers and things, and innumerable philosophical discussions on topics that only involved the shop about half of the time. The best part of the whole process was that Larry was ever-committed to making Perfect Wheels the best shop he could imagine, and, indeed, the Perfect bike shop experience gets better and better every time I go back. I haven’t worked with Larry for a number of years now, but I feel proud to have been involved as that process began.

Like most of the projects I have discussed in this post, the Perfect Wheels “account” allowed me to collaborate directly with the visionary of his own business. Of course, working with the top gun doesn’t necessarily guarantee success in any project, just as working with less than the boss does not ensure failure. But passion is contagious, and with no committees, no project managers, no “brand ambassadors,” or any other layers of filtration between ideas and realization, the most powerful work often has the greatest potential to fly. And for two determined individuals anxious to get their new careers off the ground, what could be more perfect than that?

]]> http://www.danielpjohnston.com/graphic-language/2007/12/18/the-perfect-job/feed/ 4 http://www.danielpjohnston.com/graphic-language/2007/11/23/just-what-im-going-through-they-cant-understand/ http://www.danielpjohnston.com/graphic-language/2007/11/23/just-what-im-going-through-they-cant-understand/#comments Fri, 23 Nov 2007 16:45:13 +0000 Daniel P. Johnston http://www.danielpjohnston.com/2007/11/23/just-what-im-going-through-they-cant-understand/

Here I am racing in “The Whites” at the Volunteer Park Criterium; Seattle / 1999 (photographer unknown)

In a lot of ways, 1999 was an awful year for our young Mr. Daniel P. Johnston. I had a steady job that I hated, basically because I had no idea what I was doing (this job will remain unnamed – it’s not on my résumé). My long-term girlfriend had left for another city. I had parted ways with the cycling team with which I had last raced, primarily because I felt that both my racing and managerial contributions had been under-appreciated. After quite a bit of initial work, I had lost a job to create the identity for a very prominent new bike company (to the client’s girlfriend – while I was on vacation). And, most unfathomably, I had dropped out of college after not being accepted to the Visual Communication Design major. I also got hit by a car (again).

About the only aspect of my life that hadn’t come crashing down on me (or into me) was my passion for bike racing. At this point, I was a precocious wheelman, racing in the top echelons of the northwest’s pro/am ranks, and I was getting faster by the minute – without hardly trying. The idea of going professional at some point even seemed possible to me. But I didn’t think any of the local teams could help me in this pursuit. Indeed, after taking such a hail of blows from so many different directions in such a short span of time, I felt like there was only one entity on which I could truly rely, and that was myself. So I set about creating my own team for the ’99 season, comprising just one member: me…

I not only wanted to race for myself, I wanted everyone to know that I was racing for myself. I wanted to make a statement. In addition to feeling hung out to dry by the world in general, I had the specific belief that almost everyone on local bike racing teams were deluding themselves in thinking that their team membership actually meant something. Moreover, I had surmised that these teams only made their members act and ride just like each other (ironically, a useless if not counterproductive goal for a team), and that they goaded a blindly inimical derision of other teams’ members. (The idea that I shouldn’t like someone because they were on a different bike team always seemed idiotic to me.)

And what do teams offer in return? A good deal on a bike or other gear? I worked at a bike shop (part-time, in addition to the other job), so I had that covered already. Team rides? I had enough friends on different teams that I could pick and choose any ride I wanted to join. Race-winning tactical synergy? That was the biggest delusion of them all, because hardly anyone actually wanted to race in a way that would benefit their team (even if they knew how, and most didn’t), because everyone always thought that they were the ones who could win (in fact, there was only a tiny percentage of racers who could win any race). Race entry fees? Sure, if you’re high enough on the ladder, teams will often cover your races, but I felt that fronting these costs myself was a song to pay for freedom.

I designed my statement with wit and restraint. Many people think that good design entails the application of some sort of pictographic style to make something look better. I could not disagree with this definition more. Design is about communicating a message. There is absolutely no requirement that it be fancy, pretty, difficult to produce, or anything else, as long as it delivers its message in a compelling way. As proof, I think my racing kit for 1999 was one of the most powerful works of design I have ever created, and it required nothing more of me than a phone call to a custom clothier.

Here’s another shot of me at the Volunteer Park Criterium. Just behind me and to my right are two of my former teammates. (photograph by Bob Stroschein)

The way I made my anti-team statement was a simple exaggeration of an old regulation of the USCF (now USA Cycling), the governing body of U.S. competitive cycling, which stated that anyone not on an officially sanctioned team was to wear a white jersey. I just decided to take this to the nth degree and get ALL of my clothing in white: I had white jerseys (short and long sleeve), white arm-warmers, white shorts, white knee-warmers, white knickers, white socks, white glasses, and a white helmet. Now anyone can buy white cycling shorts off the shelf, but in 1999, this was virtually unheard of (the guy who made my clothes certainly hadn’t heard of it). I would have bought white shoes, too, but they weren’t available then. The whole kit was the antithesis of standard bike team wear, which is often a cacophony of meaningless “graphics,” littered with hoards of nickel-and-dime sponsor logos.

My bike was a slightly different story. Shortly into the season, I had purchased one of the last four Bontrager Road-Lite frames left in the factory, just before the pioneering builder sold out to Trek. This frame, the only road model designed by Keith Bontrager – who is credited as one of the inventors of the mountain bike – was an eccentric piece, years ahead of its time (although that time had come and gone by the year that I got mine). Since I got such a deal on the closeout, I decided I would treat myself to a custom paint job by one of the best painters in the country (read: not such a deal).

Much like the TT bike I designed, I made several scale drawings of my new frameset before deciding on a final paint-scheme. / 1999

If I truly wanted to make my statement complete, I would have had the frame painted white (top left), which I did consider. But I was young, and I just couldn’t resist going all-out: four colors, including fades, candy-apple swooshes, and custom, exponentially-kerned type, as well as my monogram on the head tube and seat tube (much to my chagrin, one of the two monograms was put on upside-down by the painter). I did cover the thing in my own name, which helped with my statement (too bad I set everything in a typeface that I now hate). But the coup de grâce of my one-off bike was certainly the top tube badging: “Team Issue.”

Here is my “Team Issue” bike all built up, with Shimano Dura Ace components, paint-scheme-matching tires on a custom wheelset that I built, a Cinelli Ti Grammo stem, extra-pro white bar tape, and a rare white Selle San Marco Regal saddle, given to me by a friend of mine at the bike shop where I worked. This bike was nice to look at and it rode well, but it was also at least two pounds heavier than almost everyone else’s bikes.

My team did relatively well that year. I was very competitive, and I had a few solid results here and there – more than I had had on any real, sanctioned team. Thanks to my good friend Ingy, I was able to go to Chicago / Wisconsin to race Super Week, a mythic series of incredibly fast races with rich prize lists and deep, pro-dominated fields – and I even did okay there. More importantly, I didn’t have to endure any in-fighting team bullshit, I didn’t have to pretend that I was on some sophisticated training program, I didn’t have to participate in any inane post-race debriefings, I didn’t have to go to team meetings, and I could be friends with whomever I chose, no matter which team they were or were not on.

Here I am racing at Super Week, just behind Harm Jannsen, a Euro-pro transplant to the USPRO scene; somewhere in Wisconsin / 1999 (photo by Jen Paur)

Here’s another shot from the same race. The guy just behind me to my left in the yellow helmet is Roberto Gaggioli, one of the most successful riders in USPRO history. The guy immediately to my left is Marcel Wüst, a multiple Tour de France stage winner. / 1999 (photo by Jen Paur)

Here’s another shot of me at Super Week. The guy behind me to my left is Robbie Ventura, one of the best sprinters in the U.S. at the time. / 1999 (photo by Jen Paur)

I would go on to join other teams later in my racing days, but I’m not really sure why. Maybe I’m just a sucker for acceptance or prestige-by-association; a couple of those teams were quite well-respected. But, to this day, I think I had it right in ’99 (if only in terms of bike racing). I may never race in “The Whites” again – whether I am on a team or not – but I look back with satisfaction on the season when, in every possible fashion, I did it my way.**

* From “Knights in White Satin” written and performed by The Moody Blues / 1967
** From “My Way,” lyrics written by Paul Anka and Frank Sinatra, performed by Frank Sinatra / 1968 (and later by Sid Vicious, among many others)

cycling teams I have been on, by jersey: Liquid Sun (Perpetual Motion) / 1994-1995 and again in 1996 | Seattle Express / half of 1996 | Recycled Cycles (this is the original jersey) / 1997-1999 | University of Washington (my collegiate team) / 1998 | Ashmead College (not a collegiate team – confusing, I know) / 2000-2003 | Broadmark / 2004 – all in Seattle | Re/Max / 2006-2007 – New York

In the span of about a dozen years racing bikes, I have been on a total of seven different teams (seems like a lot, now that I think of it). Each team had its benefits and drawbacks, but perhaps the coolest team I ever raced with was Recycled Cycles in the late ’90s.

The team represented the eponymous local used bike shop, whose two owners truly loved the sport, sponsoring the team almost entirely themselves, and quite generously so. While I was on the team, it was comprised of just five to ten members who were all working class heroes of the bike world in the Clark Kent hours; most of us were either messengers or mechanics, and some were both. But, for the most part, and to varying degrees, we were also talented racers, who cared deeply for our competitive image.

Perhaps the highest compliment one can pay an American bike racer is to refer to them as “Euro.” Although this is in reference to the still-dominant homeland of professional cycling, it is is much more a point of style than results. And that Recycled team was most certainly Euro (although the results weren’t bad, either). We were built for it – wiry but tough, with narrow, chiseled features and sunken chests. We acted it, too. We wore expensive couture eyeglasses out on the bike. We spent our bottom dollars on the latest gear for our pristinely-maintained machines, but uttered nary a word on the subject. Our pedal strokes flowed like an orchestra of harpists, and our smart, contemplative gazes never wavered, even in the deepest bouts of oxygen debt. I was one of the only riders that would ever wear a helmet out training; the rest didn’t want to risk their perfect cycling cap placement (I did wear my caps out on dates, though). We had philosophical discussions about the latest Euro-pro dispatches from Cycle Sport magazine (back when it was eight bucks an issue, specially-imported from the UK, and you could only find it at one boutique bookstore in the greater metro-area). Around this time, Cannondale, an all-American bike builder, was really embracing its recent entrance into the European peloton with brilliant advertising that showed its star riders from the Italian dream-team Saeco visiting the bike factory dressed in tailored three-piece suits in a gritty, black-and-white, documentary-style print campaign (way, way pre-Sopranos). We were so inspired that several members showered, groomed and dressed in formal-wear to travel to races…

Needless to say, image was important to the team. I took on the role of kit-designer to make sure our elegant-outsider identity came through on our backs out on the road, and hopefully, on our chests at the finish lines. In many cases, the simpler the bike jersey, the better it looks. What really helps with this is when you don’t have to pile on too many logos from bit-part sponsors. Luckily, Recycled really only had one sponsor, which left the canvas relatively open (although there was one small contributor who had to be recognized on the back pocket). I floated a few ideas for jersey design to the other team members and the owners, but this was a clear favorite:

Recycled Cycles Racing jersey (front) / 1998

Recycled Cycles Racing jersey (back) (on my matching Cannondale) / 1998

Pretty simple: the logo, big, with racing stripes (both front and back). This isn’t my favorite logo of all time, but there is something quite empowering about wearing wings on your back, so I enjoyed this quite a bit. The stripes were a classic touch that duly accentuated our Euro builds, especially since we got them custom tailored to be slim-fit, with longer sleeves to cover our rangy arms. I also got the team then-brand-new red Giro Boreas helmets through the shop where I worked, and adorned them with matching yellow racing stripes for everyone (you have to wear a helmet when you race). I even put stripes on the frames of my Italian racing glasses. Indeed, my initial vision was that the stripes continue down the legs of the shorts and then pick up again around the feet on custom booties (“spoiler-to-spoiler” as one team-member noted), but vision and realization cannot always meet.

Here’s me racing in the Enumclaw Stage Race criterium. Photographer unknown / 1998

I left the Recycled boys at some point, for various reasons, and the team, itself, has grown and changed dramatically since my departure. But I definitely miss the spirit of that particular Recycled Cycles team. On no other squad have I been around the same living, breathing passion for bike racing and all of its transcendent potential. I referred to it earlier as cool, but perhaps a better description comes straight from the Euro-pros: class.

Special Note

I hope this isn’t too trivial a forum to express this, but I would like to dedicate this post to one of my old Recycled Cycles teammates, Brad Lewis. Brad, like most of the early Recycled crew, devoted his life to bikes. He had been a messenger and held a few different positions in Northwest bike-industry companies. He was also a family man, with a wife that raced professionally. He was a talented racer, himself, consistently competitive in regional pro-am races. More importantly, he was one of the most genuine guys I have ever met, his sly introversion and sharp wit balanced with an incredibly open friendliness. Brad was truly a class act.

Brad Lewis / 2006 (photo from BikeCafe.net)

In a poetic but shocking and utterly tragic turn of events, Brad had a heart attack while racing in the Recycled Cycles Boat Street Criterium race almost two years ago and died very shortly thereafter. He was 38.

Here’s to you, Brad.

But I’ve only gained these insights secondhand or after the fact, because I never asked anyone in my time. I just went – 25 minutes away from my house – to the University of Washington.

I think I was too close to my new school cartographically to be so far away cognitively; it was a neurological short-circuit: How could I ride my bike straight through an intersection I only three months before had used to turn left and, eight minutes later, land on another planet? I began to dislike my UW experience very shortly after it started. It felt big, cold, and impersonal, and, while I could at least appreciate the esteem of the faculty (from afar), I was surprised at how unimpressive my classmates seemed to be. Most of my friends from high school had indeed either gone to some obscure university, or some obscure country, or they had completely lost their way. My only extracurricular activity was a disappointment. My brain and my mind were at odds with each other. These were the first two years of my college experience.

It wasn’t until I finally began the screening classes for the Visual Communication Design major (VCD) that I really began to see the potential of the school. These classes, used to fish out the top-20-or-so design candidates from a pool of 150 – 200 applicants every year, were brutally competitive but highly intriguing. They were a window into how the program would be (if one made it in), and the view looked pretty interesting. The major, established decades before “design” fell simplistically into the lexicon of quotidian banter, was a pioneering force that had created a self-perpetuating standard of excellence. The faculty were not only esteemed, they were uncompromising, and the best students were no less than inspiring…

The first of the two screening courses – cataloged as “ART 205″ but referred to reverently by students and faculty alike as just “205″ – tasked three successive projects: a letter-mark, a book cover, and a poster. These exact same projects had been assigned every single year for at least a decade before I entered the fray. Each project had it’s own deadline, but all had to be submitted at the end of the quarter in order for the student to be considered for entry into the next screening class: “206.”

The alphabetical letter for the mark was assigned, but what it was to represent was up to the student. Very simply, though, it had to represent a verb of some sort that started with the assigned letter. I was assigned the letter “M,” and, with that, I dipped my toe into a number of words until finally landing on “merge” – no, “move” – no, “merge” (I was terribly indecisive, so it was sort of supposed to be either, or both).

Move (or Merge) letter mark; hand-cut Color-Aid paper on illustration board / 1998

This mark is strange. Conceptually, it doesn’t really convey the idea of “merging.” In fact, anyone willing to merge in traffic based on the graphic language of this mark is suicidal. The mark does convey “movement”, but “moving” is such a vague idea that it doesn’t take much to make it work, especially when crutched so heavily on arrows and italics. Formally, the arrows burrow themselves forcefully into the brutish outer block of the letterform, and the mark’s most interesting quality is its awkwardness.

Next up was a book cover, specifically for a textbook on Genetics. I immediately got the idea to base the cover on a mirror: My first concept was just a big thumbprint on an 8 x 10-inch bathroom mirror tile. I think the mirror was a reaction to cloning, although I honestly don’t remember for sure. What I do remember is arguing extensively with my professor and the rest of the class about whether a mirror was appropriate media for a book cover. If anyone thought my concept was bad, they never convinced me of it, so I continued basing subsequent iterations on mirrors (I’m still not sure why this was such a point of contention). As it happened, my high school textbook cover turned into more than a reflection of the weird science of the day; it became more and more reflective of my mood, as well. The final submission is so sinister looking that it wouldn’t make it past one PTA meeting in a real high school before being burned in a pile of its peers.

Genetics text book cover; 8 x 10in.; magazine clipping, mirror-finish adhesive-type, and hand-cut Color-Aid paper on mirror / 1998

The last project of 205 was to be a poster promoting the work of a prominent architect in a gallery. I was lucky enough to be assigned Steven Holl, who, among other prominent works, designed the St. Ignatious Chapel on Seattle University’s campus. This is one of the most entrancing buildings I have ever witnessed. If I couldn’t make something interesting out of this, I really didn’t deserve to graduate to the next class. I visited the chapel on several occasions, during brilliant sunshine, pale cloudiness, and rich darkness – each experience more inspiring than the last. I shot rolls and rolls of film, outside and in, and nearly based my poster on one of those shots, alone. After many “close-but-not-quite”s in class critiques, I let it all ride on my final concept, which I finished in my garage not more than an hour before having to leave it to its fate on the final submission table at high-noon on the last day of class. An abstraction of Holl’s shaping and colorization of light through masterful glazing and sculptural baffles, the simplicity of the poster belies its executional exigency, as I could afford neither to second-guess nor first-mistake any maneuver during my 11th-hour operation:

Holl, Henry Art Gallery show poster; 20 x 30in.; hand-cut Color-Aid Paper, press-type, and spray-paint on foam-core / 1998

The dramatic climax (and potentially crushing letdown) of 205 came in the form of an “interview,” scheduled during finals week. These were really less interviews than simple “Yes.” or “No.” declarations to the question almost 200 kids dared to ask the faculty every year: Am I good enough to do this all over again in 206? The answer for me (paraphrased): “Yes. Your final poster put you on the list. But you are an unknown-quantity at best. You had better read up, buck up, and get ready, because things are about to get serious.”

Translation? Yes.

Nathan Hale Class of ’96 Raiders proposal for commemorative T-shirt design; pencil and pen on notebook paper; 8.5 x 11in. / 1996

In his song Life, Jeffrey Lewis, one of my favorite musical artists, relates each major defining factor of life (friends, love, global cultural differences, God, etc.) with a pithy verse each. The whole song is probably about two-and-a-half minutes long, and, even though it is sung of his own experience, it captures the entirety of modern life more eloquently than anything else I’ve ever heard or read at any word count. In his verse about school, he shares:

School is the place where I did my growing
They fill your brain to overflowing
They tell you this is all stuff you need to be knowing
School is the place where I did my growing
Just when I got to like it, it was time to be going

I could certainly see my entire scholastic experience in this light, but my high school days in particular are what this conjures most. Coming from middle school, which I only got to like when it was time never to have to come back, high school barely outperformed my then deflated expectations at the beginning. I was processed by generic classes and distracted teachers. The halls sucked me from one hour of it to the next until it was over for the day. The mile and a half commute passed under me each day until the week was over.

But as those weeks turned into months and and quarters, glimmers of hope began to energize my steps, and vice-versa. I was exposed to the potential of my experience, and I began to gain confidence and venture into it…

Nathan Hale wasn’t really known for anything. Indeed, it was barely known at all. Though there are only about a half-dozen public high schools in Seattle, even most Seattleites are only vaguely familiar with it. Of those, only a handful can actually locate it (a small, flat order at the bottom of four steep hills, across from an alternative school for the gifted, Larsonically-named “Summit”). But that wasn’t to say that its programs were not good. In fact, some of their initiatives were flat-out ground-breaking for a public high school.

The venture began to pay off. I went from doughboy to some semblance of an athlete. I got myself into many of those innovative programs and surrounded myself with a diverse cadre of thinkers. I had the chance to explore different ways to express myself, my interests and political/cultural issues in an English/History/Art section that was orchestrated more like a think-tank than a class. I learned about photography in a darkroom. I learned about broadcast radio from our school station, which happens to be more powerful and popular than most commercial stations in the region. I helped design and build a full-scale solar car that competed with colleges from all over the Northwest in an applied physics class. I learned what graphic design was in a studio that would put most professional firms to shame. I learned what the Internet was and how to code HTML pages to put on it while it was still a vacant playground.

It turned out that my little, anonymous high school was a hidden gem, and exactly where I wanted—if not needed—to be. I got to like it. So, as it was time to get going, I decided to express my school spirit by entering a(n unfinished) sketch into a contest for graduating class memorabilia: a typographic play that juxtaposed the geometric, numerical precision of the cutting-edge with the thoughtful, humanistic touch in the written word.

I didn’t win the contest, but, you know… that’s life.

The ultimate inspiration: Greg LeMond (here on his way to winning the 1989 Tour de France). photo by Cor Vos

I’ve always been interested in cycling to some extent. I always rode bikes, and even before my teens, I watched big races like the Tour de France when they were on TV, and I spent my fair share of time staring at the top shelves of local bike shops and fogging up their display cases. This—unlike most—was an interest that grew steadily stronger with age. But it was an ironic turn of events that launched me into a full-blown obsession with cycling: I got hit by a car while riding my bike.

I was commuting to high school sophomore year on my Specialized CrossRoads Cruz hybrid bike (about $250 new, then) and, as I rode across a busy intersection, I was struck by a Volkswagen Scirocco (one of my favorite cars at the time), whose driver had run a red light in the rush of the hour. The impact instantly broke both of the bones in my lower left leg (although I didn’t realize this until I tried—and failed—to walk away from the scene). It’s said that people can’t recall the actual sensation of pain, but I can say with absolute certainty that having to move my broken leg into several different positions on the X-Ray table later that day was the most excruciatingly painful experience of my life. The breaks also ran perilously close to the bones’ growth plates and, if they had been damaged, this situation would have been even worse, as I still had a good six or seven inches to grow. This was not the last time that I would get hit by a car, and it’s not an experience that I would recommend to anyone, but there is usually one considerable upside: the insurance settlement. On top of paying for all of my medical bills, the sum allowed for the purchase of my first bona-fide road-racing bike: a Cannondale R900 (about $1,800 new, then).

Since they are so expensive and complex (especially compared to, say, a basketball), just getting a good bike can be a hurdle high enough to trip up a considerable percentage of potential racers and enthusiasts. Clearing this hurdle allowed me to start racing, and it was also a huge factor in the procurement of my job at a prominent local bike shop. By the time I hit senior year, I was in cycling up to my eyeballs. I rode everywhere, all the time; I was on a team; I raced as often as possible (about 50 – 60 races per year); I worked on bikes with other racers and cycling aficionados at the shop; I read every magazine and brochure cover-to-cover; I watched video tapes of every European road race fit to be filmed; I went to bike shows and bike parties… Cycling had basically permeated every aspect of my life. It didn’t take me long, then, to figure out what I was going to do for my high school Senior Project.

The parameters of this assignment were relatively broad and simple: write something, do some community service, or create some kind of artwork. The project was to take at least 40 hours (all outside of school), and it would count for approximately half of that year’s grade for my two most important classes. The goal was equally simple and daunting, as laid out by my professor—a quite scholarly Scott who had been a quadruple-major university graduate, among many other improbable accomplishments: “Impress me.” I figured that there was no way I was going to impress anyone without at least impressing myself, and the most impressive thing I could think of was to build a bike…

I had some ideas about what I wanted to create, based on a mix of my own pragmatic and fantastical parameters. I wanted the frame to build into a time-trial (TT) bike—for two reasons: For one, these bikes seem cool, or at least somewhat intriguing, to just about anyone, whether they are generally into bikes or not (TT bikes were commonly known at the time as “funny bikes” because they looked so out-of-this-world). I also didn’t have a TT bike already, and I figured that I may as well try to impress my racer friends, too, by actually competing on the finished product. I wanted to build the frame out of steel tubing, the most time-honored frame material, and also the easiest material to work with. And, as ever, I wanted it to be over the top.

I came up with many potential designs for the frame and how it would be built up, considering various themes and available components. In order to go over the top with any project, it’s often best to set a baseline, so I started with this relatively restrained option, with more common, practical Shimano components and Specialized tri-spoke wheels (now known as HED3 wheels) and a very traditional paint scheme:

TT bike design sketch / 1995

Then, I went to the other end of the spectrum, and designed a few completely unfeasible concepts, including these:

TT bike design sketch / 1995: fillet-brazed steel frame, Campagnolo Record components, FIR wheels. (To my surprise, Evgeni Berzin would ride a Bianchi built just like this in the following Tour de France)

TT bike design sketch / 1995: This is really more of a pursuit bike for the track, inspired by Chris Boardman’s Lotus Superbike; carbon fiber monocoque construction; custom components and wheels

Somewhere in the middle of this spectrum was the all-Italian version, dressed in red, white, and green, and fitted with 100% Campagnolo madness, including the absurd Scirocco front-only disc wheel that had four giant, limb-threatening holes:

TT bike design sketch / 1995

In the end, I decided on this American and French affair:

TT bike design sketch / 1995

The frame was to be built with U.S.-sourced True Temper Aero Velo tubing, which featured several airfoil-section pieces, including the down tube, seat stays and seat tube, which also hugged the curve around the rear wheel—all for cool looks (Oh, and it may have made the bike about 2% more aerodynamic, too). The tubes would be fillet-brazed together, partially chromed, and otherwise painted red, white, and blue, with my own custom graphics, marks, and logos. The finished frame would be built up with SSC components from the esoteric French manufacturer, Mavic. The wheels, too, would come from Mavic: the 3G trispoke front and the physicist-baffling Comete +/- rear disc, in which you could actually add or subtract custom weights depending on the course, supposedly maximizing potential gyroscopic momentum. And yes, the two wheels actually are different sizes (on purpose). Coincidentally, most of of these elements were in common with the bike that the American LeMond piloted in his incredible comeback-victory ride into Paris in the 1989 Tour de France (referenced at the top of this post).

Being in the bike scene, I already knew several local frame-builders, so I began my research with regard to actually fabricating my design by talking to them. One suggested I read a book called “Designing and Building Your Own Frameset” by Richard P. Talbot, so I did.

an incredible story

This book is quite inspirational, as the author, an engineer with no prior frame-building experience, researches, designs, builds, hand-letters, and paints his own frameset, and assembles it into a very handsome final product. And, he does it all in his garage or his back yard with little more than common hand tools and home-made wooden jigs. (Even the most modest professional frame-builder has a formidable workshop with at least $10,000 worth of specialized jigs and tools.) He then documents the entire process with remarkably-detailed and well-written explanations and excellent photographs (that he took, himself). I have never heard of anyone actually following Talbot’s book to duplicate his feat, but, theoretically, one could. I decided that I probably couldn’t. My next option was to go back to the frame-builders and have one of them teach me, directly, in their shop. Luckily, Dave Levy (a fellow racer and proprietor of TiCycles) offered such a class.

A professional frame-builder is supposed to be able to construct a standard, steel frame in 20 hours, and a good mechanic (which I was at the time) can assemble a complete bike from frame and parts in less than an hour. That would leave about 19 hours left on the project clock, which I was genuinely worried about. This particular point of worry was, of course, completely unwarranted. Ironically, I hadn’t even considered the research and design phases, which had probably covered the other 19 and then some before I laid a hand on any metal. More to the point, I was not a professional frame-builder, and this was not a standard frame. The combination of irregular geometry at every junction, oddly-shaped tubes, fussy details like internal cable routing, and the choice to fillet-braze everything together – the most elegant and sculptural but painstaking method of frame-construction – all added up to so many hours that my real worry became whether I was going to be able to finish it on time. (I had started the project at least eight months before it was to be presented.)

Here is a shot of the seat cluster area as the frame is being built. Notice the fillets around the joints, which have to be filed and sanded by hand into perfectly smooth radii between the different tube shapes. You can also see the outlet for the internal rear brake cable routing.

Dave’s class ended up being a great experience, even if he did advise me to make a couple minor design changes that I would later regret allowing. Overall, he spent a lot of time showing and teaching me every aspect of the process, and the frame turned out well.

Once it was constructed and the fork and the rear stays were chromed, it was passed to a local painter. I had designed custom decals of my monogram mark to be used as head tube and seat-tube badges, as well as horrendous custom type for my down tube logos in which two glaring eyes took the place of the “O”s in “Johnston,” all of which I had rendered in a less-than-optimal outline execution (as if the eyes weren’t crazy-looking enough). These decals were to rest on “splash”-style white backgrounds that I had hand-cut from adhesive vinyl (this treatment, in combination with they eyes, gave either the impression of crying or immense perspiration; either way, it was expressive). I gave all of this, with detailed sketches for reference, to the painter and two weeks later—Voila! It was almost, but not quite right. He actually called me in to apply the big down tube decal because he was skeptical of his own chances with it, so that came out okay, and the paint didn’t start chipping for at least a month, but, for some reason, he put both of my monogram decals on at a 45º angle. That didn’t please me, but at least it was consistent, and I got over it.

the frame with red and blue paint and splash graphics applied, ready for monogram badges and logos and clearcoat

the head tube splash graphic

the matching seat tube graphic

Back from the painter, it was now time to take it to the shop where I worked so I could build it up with all of my specially-imported Mavic components (almost all of them had been discontinued, so getting new old stock was neither easy nor inexpensive).

the finished frame, ready to build up into a bike / 1996

a sight for sore eyes

Needless to say, it took me well over an hour to build this thing; I think it was more like a week or two. Aside from the usual prep-work – like chasing the bottom bracket threads, facing the head tube, brushing the seat tube barrel, and and sealing the frame against internal water damage – there was a lot of custom machining that I had to take care of, like drilling out the handlebars for aerodynamic brake cable routing, filing down the rear shifter mount to curve around the aero-section down tube, and sawing down the seatpost so it could sink low enough into the frame before hitting the curve in the seat tube. The most difficult, time-intensive, and, frankly, terrifying stage of the whole building process, though, was having to wrestle and glue claw-tight sew-up tires onto the world’s most ridiculously expensive, delicate, and practically-irreplaceable wheelset.

Somehow, I did finish the bike on time, and the end result was pretty gratifying. I even had time to ride it and do a few races on it before the deadline. I even won a race on it. But I knew that I would have to clinch the unveiling to really impress my colleagues and professors. And, yes, I do mean unveiling. In all the years of the class and the project, there had never been anyone else who had held their cards so close. I had filled the room with such baffling vagueness at every obligatory status check-in throughout the school-year that nobody had much of a clue as to what my project actually was. I even pulled a white sheet from the bike at my presentation. I also had a time trial video playing, and I was wearing a skinsuit for the entire show (If you don’t know what a skinsuit is, the name is a dead giveaway). Now that’s showmanship! The presentation worked, people were impressed, babies were kissed, and so on…

the final Johnston Time Trial bike / 1996

a closer look

This is how I was hoping my competition would remember it.

Now, if you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably dying to know the real results: how I fared in relation to my classmates, and what grade I got. Well, to be honest, the only other project I even remember was Noah’s, who had committed himself to saving women, children, and furry animals from burning buildings as a volunteer fire-fighter for the better part of a year, but I’m pretty sure that dude was actually Jesus Christ reincarnated (nobody could humanly be as pure and good at everything as Noah). Taking Him out of the running, I’ll just go ahead and say mine was the best.

And, for all the number-crunchers out there, I ended up getting a 3.9. Why not a perfect 4.0? My project didn’t actually fit into any of the three designated categories for the assignment.

Nathan Hale (NH) High School Swim Team logo; spray paint stenciled on paper / 1994

When I got to high school, it wasn’t a very good scene: I was short, fat, slow, uncoordinated and keenly aware of all of these things. I was also overwhelmed by boredom with my classes and mates and hid myself as well as possible so as not to be dragged into the morass of class discussion. So, how does a chunky, nonathletic, awkward guy with an invisible personality play his cards in high school? That’s right, he straps on a Speedo and joins the swim team. I still remember those first steps out of the locker room onto the pool deck as some of the more terrifying of my life.

Somehow, though, over the next few years, I would get in deep with the team. Aside from the year my leg was broken, I swam in every single practice and every meet. I got into incredibly good physical condition (I grew about eight inches from freshman to senior year, but my body weight remained almost the exactly same throughout). I was even voted captain two years in a row, which probably said more about my personality than my swimming prowess, which was okay, but no match for the purebreds.

All this engendered in me a strange new feeling: school pride. Nathan Hale was home to the Raiders and, somewhere along the way, I actually considered myself as such. But if I was a Raider, I wasn’t one of those red-white-and-blue caricatures in skinny pants, piano coats and a funny hats, reduced to hokey cartoons in the halls. That scene was so far removed from the times that a teenager could barely imagine how or why it happened, not to mention understand what it meant. In a way, it seemed that it must have just been a tale meant to fulfill the requisite mascot needs of high schools around the country 200-some years later…

To me, the L.A. (now Oakland) Raiders had the right idea. They embodied the spirit of the Raiders without hearkening. Similarly, the identity I designed for our team showed a stone-cold killer in battle gear (an NH cap). More menacingly than even L.A. could do, our Raider stared you down through anonymous goggles. The black and white stencil allowed for DIY tagging in any territory.

If I was a Raider, I fought for a revolution, alright, but my cause was only in proving toughness. My guns were attached to my shoulders and my battlefield was the pool, and the blood, sweat and tears were all chlorinated.

DPJ monogram studies, pencil on newsprint / 1995

Perhaps the most difficult task for any designer is to create their own “identity,” which, in common design terminology, is usually defined by a logo and some consistent “visual system” that unifies any and all communications and media within some sort of graphic motif. (An actual identity for any entity involves far more than a logo and visual system, but that’s another topic.)

While most designers have created scads of logos for clients, or at least for school projects, there are several factors which make designing one’s own logo a challenging prospect: You don’t want to look too specialized or hung up on one particular aspect of design or a particular type of business (lest you be seen as ignorant of everything else), you don’t want to base your identity on a rising trend (as they almost always fall faster and more explosively than they grew), you don’t want to seem gimmicky, AND, you don’t want to look stupid in front of all of your design colleagues…

Some design firms don’t even have a formal visual identity. Open and 2×4 both do great identity work for clients, but don’t seem to have any kind of logo for themselves. Many of the most prominent design firms just spell out their name in a nice typeface with a strong color (often red or black): Pentagram, Landor, and Interbrand are prime examples of this. Sometimes, firms will do some kind of monogram mark in addition to their logotype. These are usually superfluous, but some are nice, like Hornall Anderson‘s. Occasionally, you will see firms with an iconic mark that is supposed to represent their practice, but these are usually so vague and abstract that they are meaningless.

As a project for a high school art class, I created my own monogram, which ended up being my de-facto logo for several years thereafter. In my case, the monogram turned out to be useful, as I actually applied it to products that I designed. The formal idea is pretty simple: A “D,” a “P,” and a “J” interwoven with each other, but I experimented with various rendering possibilities over the years. The original was airbrushed watercolor with gradients emphasizing the lattice-like construction (it was also red and black). I had one version filled with dashed lines (like a DPJ roadway system, in reference to the bikes on which it would be emblazoned). I made several other minor modifications over the years and different applications. Eventually, the mark evolved into a solid/line-art version that I duly italicized for impact and dynamism.

final DPJ monogram / 2000

This monogram mark served its various purposes, but I haven’t used any variation of it for anything in quite a while. It’s not that I don’t like it, because I actually do. It’s simple and geometric without being simplistic, it’s bold, dynamic, and dimensional without using any kind of filters or software tricks, and it’s also perfectly legible. But, I haven’t designed anything that needed a badge of this sort in years (most client design work goes completely uncredited). Maybe that is a problem – and I should do more self-initiated, badge-craving work. But I’m not sure that that is the problem. Despite all of the nice qualities of the mark, there is some reason why I just don’t feel like it is quite me anymore.

My best friend growing up was a kid my age named Charley. We happened to go to the same (very good) inner-city elementary school, where we were not much more than acquaintances. But we also happened to go to the same (very mediocre) rich-yuppie middle school on the hill, which turned out to be a friendship-making fluke. Of course, we also happened to have a few similar interests and philosophies on the most important issues of our time (you can imagine what those might have been in seventh grade).

More than anything else, Charley was cool. He looked cool: tall and stately from the day he was born. He had cool clothes. He had cool things. He listened to cool music. He lived in a cool house in a cool neighborhood. He even had cool parents: His dad was a real, long-haired, tattooed biker who built and rode his own choppers, and his mom seemed straight out of a hip family TV show. He was funny and sharp, and he had cool stories that he knew exactly how to tell. Charley also seemed to do the coolest things. And, though I hardly noticed it at the time, these were an enormous influence on my life…

Charley and I both had radio-control cars when we were young, but I would go on to pour many months of my life and huge percentages of my income (allowance, mostly) on enough R/C paraphernalia to choke a horse. Charley was on a swim team one summer and – of course – he was very good, even though he was just having fun. I then swam for five years straight, year-round, eventually becoming captain of my high school team, but I’m pretty sure I never enjoyed it as much as he did. We also used to ride bikes together and have unofficial trick competitions or races that he would always win. I later went on to devote a massive chunk of my life to bike racing, and, after a few years, I got fast enough to compete in some relatively big regional and national events, but even that didn’t seem as cool as when we would cruise around the lake on BMX bikes. When we got to be in our early 20s, Charley bought, worked on, and drove a 1970s Swedish sports car, and so did I.

There was one cool thing that Charley did that I (probably wisely) never touched: skating. Sure, I had coasted around on skateboards when the craze hit (sometime after the break dancing- but before the Hammer dancing-crazes made their marks). But Charley’s skating tenure transcended fad, and he was actually good enough to define himself as a “skater” if he wanted to. He also became quite a fine craftsman, and, sometime in his mid- to late-teens, he decided that he would make his own decks to ride and possibly even sell. That’s where I came back into the picture. This was around the time when I was just figuring out what graphic design was and realizing that it was probably something I should look into. And, as far as I remember, my first actual design commission was to create a logo for Charley’s skateboard company.

Charley had an imposing presence, with an athletic build that would rise well over six feet tall, but this silhouette housed an impressively cool temper. He hardly ever fought or even got into arguments with anyone, even in youth, when those situations are the norm. There was only one thing that seemed to faze him on a regular basis, and that was when people got his name wrong. It was Charley. It wasn’t Charlie. It definitely wasn’t Charles. And, it absolutely, most certainly, was not Chuck. But, as the saying goes, rules are made made to be broken. So, the name he came up with for his new venture was actually a play on the latter: “Chuck Wagon.”

I remember that my idea for this logo came to me almost instantaneously and without much exploration. It just seemed perfect: a little red wagon with skateboard trucks and the name retro-scripted on the side. I took to my desk and, in short order, came up with this:

Chuck Wagon logo, pencil and pen on notebook paper / 1995

Conceptually, I sometimes wonder if a little more exploration might have been a good thing. After all, why a little red wagon as opposed to a stagecoach (surely the more direct reference)? And if it was a little red wagon, what about the iconic handle; why did I never resolve if that might have or might not have worked? And if the script was such an important personality cue, why was the name drawn so mechanically (or at all) on the wheels?

Formally, this was – of course – well before my education in Swiss-style mark making, where economy of form, dramatic figure-ground contrast, geometric reduction, and instant legibility at large or small sizes are defining characteristics of the success or failure of a logo. This thing has all kinds of gradients, complex, organic, and intricate shape relationships, and it also happens to be rendered in pencil and pen on college-ruled notebook paper, which surely isn’t ideal for reproduction.

Nevertheless, while it may not be finished, I still think it works. For one thing, little red wagons are way cooler than stagecoaches, and more abstract or ironic references can be more interesting than direct ones, anyway. As far as the type is concerned, skaters often mismatch their decks and trucks and so on, so it isn’t that strange that the name would be rendered differently on different components of the same illustration. And formally, street vernacular, DIY artwork flourishes in the skate industry, even in logos. Hell, I could even see this thing screen printed on a T-shirt, college-rules and all. The whole presentation speaks to a youthful, independent take on entrepreneurship.

But all of that is relatively meaningless in the end. There is really only one reason why the design was successful: Charley thought it was cool.