heart CD jewel case cover; type printed on red paper, removable double-stick-taped to album jewel case / 2004

Because it’s always on, and only on, February 14th, no matter what, Valentines Day can be particularly stressful for young relationships. Bleary-eyed cherubs come out of their 364-day slumber, all jacked up on chocolate truffles and sweethearts, and just shotgun cloud-loads of heart darts into the crowd, their mercenary instincts leaving accuracy second to volume when considering targets. If you are as neurotic about these sorts of things as am I, it’s crucial to position yourself properly so you don’t fall prey to misfires.

The problem is, there are only a few kinds of arrows in the cherub’s standard arsenal, and they’re pretty blunt: “I think you’re hot,” “I love you,” or, “(Believe it or not) I still love you.” If you don’t happen to be feeling—and comfortable expressing—one of those three sentiments, you better be ready to scramble come 2/14. Valentines Day can be rugged terrain for “We’ve only been out twice and I don’t know your last name,” “You’re kind of crazy but maybe I’ll get used to it,” or “We’re doing OK, right?”

Come 2/14/2004, I was actually about three months into a relationship that was going much more than just OK. Indeed, it was going better than I had imagined it could and better than any relationship before had gone by that point. But I tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to communicating feelings and the fact that I did feel deeply for her made me even more nervous about getting too vocal about it…

We were past “I think you’re hot” and not quite to “I love you.” Beyond my irrational insecurities around personal feelings, it just seems so trite to make those sorts of declarations because of wold’s most contrived holiday. But I couldn’t deny that it was that day and I knew I had to do something. I wanted to do something. I just didn’t want one of those stupid arrows to to smack her in the face. I was hoping to just sort of graze her.

When it came to how I would express my feelings, I wanted it to be stirring, sensual, eloquent and cool. So, I did the mature thing and had someone else do it for me. Someone who knew just what to say and exactly how to say it: John Coltrane. One of my favorite albums of any genre, A Love Supreme makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end every time I listen to it, and I figured I couldn’t go wrong if I could wrap my sentiments in that.

A Love Supreme CD: remastered from original John Coltrane recordings; cover designed by George Gray/Viceroy / 1964

My card was just a piece of warm red paper mounted it to the cover with removable tape, typeset with the word heart, so she would know where it came from.

2003 law school graduation party invitation (side A); 4.5 x 6in. / 2003

In studying the prevailing American mindset on the subject of career success, perhaps the most insightful text on the matter is the collected works of TV Guide. Skim past the prologue of red-eyed shills, the hazy caffeine of morning droll and other timefill of pandering feel-good talk, geriatric game shows and irrelevant local news, and and start taking notes at prime time. Discounting the relatively recent, unfathomable minefield of “reality” as desperate scatter-shot, you are left with memes so powerful and enduring as to have riddled prime slots snowy and black and white all the way through 3DHD: Doctors and lawyers. Television’s ethereal blue glow has taught us to revere these two professions more than any other, and, in the interest of the court, I was guilty as any.

This TV-fed fascination with doctors and lawyers comes not from their contribution to society, but on their sheer entertainment value. Prime time has served up their appeal on silver platters. We see doctors tussle with human life, which is kind of like what God is all about; the appeal is obvious. Lawyers are the cunning oral marksmen, toggling between cool recitation of obscure precedent and impassioned appeals for basic decency. Each have their own brand of exotic diction that elevates them from the rest of the bread and butter world, leaving us to assume their impenetrable turns of phrase are ingenious shows of mental strength. Moreover, both are assumed to make boatloads of money…

I should mention a third meme that has proved similarly time-tested and Nielsen-approved, but it has a different cast: Cops. We are led to cite these street talkers as “everyday heroes” and they may even earn some awe for their moxie, but we’re shown little reason to give their job any aspirational value. Their foul-mouthed dishabille is picked-up and only spirals. It takes everything in their power to just beat back death every day. Moreover, it doesn’t take long to figure out that they are just doing the dirty work for the lawyers, who’ll “take it from here, thanks.” There is never any talk about cops’ salaries, unless it is painfully insufficient. Any fleeting, youthful intrigue in guns and American cars was never enough to drive me toward working a beat.

Taking both doctors and lawyers on equal ranking in terms of American reverence, doctors really get the short end of the stick in reality (the real reality). They have to go to school for eons and, with all that blood and gore? No, thank you. Lawyers, on the other hand… that’s three years of post-grad and you’re out cleverly badgering witnesses into submission. The mavens of the small-screen courtroom, from Matlock to McCoy—hell, even McBeal—all made lawyering look pretty choice.

Nevertheless, despite never having seen a single television show about it (was there ever one?), graphic design eventually snuffed out any latent interest in the legal arts. As sexy as all of that fancy arguing may look on TV, the process is interpretive and repetitive—creativity in law is only for the corrupt; I’m just not wired for it. Plus, with all that required reading? No, thank you.

But if you can’t be ‘em, join ‘em, I say. At a certain point, I happened to fall into a crowd of law students, one of whom happened to be my girlfriend for quite some time (told you it was sexy). I went through the process vicariously, from being “scared to death,” to “worked to death” to “bored to death” (and a lot of drinking to death in-between). Completing this morbid rite meant all the closer to the cool glow of the courthouse—a “win” as they say; certainly cause for celebration. I put my creative genes to work to help make that happen.

Tying a string around one’s finger is a timeless symbol of remembering something important. To help you remember that the important thing has something to do with graduation, the string is actually a tassel. And to help you remember such detailed information regarding time, place, numbers and whatnot, it was best to just keep it on hand. After such a deadly course of study, nobody had any of their own memory left.

2003 law school graduation party invitation (side B); some information purposely obscured; 6 x 4.5in. / 2003

Takenobu Igarashi magazine spread retrospective; 24 x 18in. (spread) / 2002

A staple project of many university design programs is to create a poster or magazine spread or flyer or whatever that somehow highlights the work of a “famous” designer, and, for extra measure, to design it as they might have designed it. That is, to design the piece in said famous designer’s “style.” That we had this sort of a project in the VCD program at the University of Washington always struck me as very strange, as “style” was nearly as derided a word as “Hobo” in the UW VCD lexicon. After all, a good designer (let alone a “famous” one) shouldn’t have a style.

A good designer analyzes, digests and synthesizes various aspects of a particular project and distills from this process the most compelling way to communicate the intended message for that project. There is a not-so-subtle line to be drawn here, as using a particular vernacular can be very useful in communicating particular subject matter. For example, if designing a poster about how inner-city youth express their identity, using some element of graffiti might be a felicitous way to help illustrate this. However, if a designer used graffiti in every project, whether it be about inner-city youth or organic produce, then his approach no longer can be seen as appropriating a relevant style to communicate a message; he has now created his own “style” that is irrespective of the individual needs of particular projects. He is one-dimensional.

Though I only know what I know about Takenobu Igarashi, a “famous” designer in the 1980s and my assigned muse for this project, from books and magazines and perhaps an article or two posted on the Internet, it did seem fairly easy to pick up on his “style.” But the issue wasn’t that his projects were one-dimensional. The issue was that his projects were all three-dimensional. Igarashi, in fact, transitioned his focus toward product design and then architectural sculpture as his career progressed, and, one could imagine, this was really where he wanted to be the whole time…

Indeed, Igarashi’s sculpture is quite fetching, and, more interestingly, quite varied. Aside from an early, sharp bent toward the geometric, his three dimensional portfolio has moved the air and light around it in immeasurably varied currents. Monolithic, provincial, heavy, grounded, sharp, useful, clever, whimsical, delicate, charming, airy, diaphanous, breathtaking; it’s all there, in as many materials as you can imagine.

Redwood Forest: a relief of various kinds of layered woods carved and partly colored with acrylic paint / 2005; and Komorebi: a sculpture with 1800 images cut out on a hollow, steel column / 2007; both designed by Takenobu Igarashi

Between Igarashi’s graphic design and his more abstract sculpture lies what may be his most sagacious work: that of product design. Included in this portfolio is everything from traditional designer favorites such as clocks and lamps to more pedestrian subjects like notebooks and gardening kits. Every one of these pieces is designed with a specific purpose and inventive spirit, and all represent the striking clarity and modern austerity that Igarashi has espoused throughout his career.

cutlery set; designed by Takenobu Igarashi / early 1990s

In his graphic design material, however, he was famous for an interesting but quickly dimming shtick of hyper-complex, axonometrically drawn type constructions, grounded in International-Style content structure.

Design, Igarashi Space Graphics book; designed by Takenobu Igarashi / late 1980s

For our project, there were a number of things we had to design off the list: the designer’s name, a timeline of their career, a written biography, images of the designer’s work with captions, and, of course, a picture of the man (or Paula Scher, if you got her). To seal the deal, we had to find a quote from the designer that epitomized their approach, their personality, their work. I could hardly believe I found this one; I just had to use it:

Takenobu Igarashi magazine spread retrospective; 24 x 18in. spread (detail) / 2002

That is a charming statement, but is he really serious? He couldn’t even keep his own portrait simple (the digital slash is all him, not me). More to the point, can anyone even read those words he made? They are stunning feats of geometry—really quite impressive, even beautiful at times—but completely incomprehensible. And, how is this shtick appropriate for an international Expo, a calendar, a shoe store and jazz and dance performances?

UCLA Asian Performing Arts Institute 1981; designed by Takenobu Igarashi; 40.5 x 28.7in. (103 x 73 cm) / 1981. I find this poster quite interesting, but I only know what it says because of the title set in Helvetica in the upper left corner, and I still have no idea what it means.

Despite his sometimes confoundingly intricate axonometric typography and abstract sculpture, Takenobu Igarashi was and is today a professed Modernist, perhaps even minimalist. Igarashi has made a concerted effort to lead a simple life even after attaining great status and success. He has often spoken out against rampant consumerism and information pollution of cities like Tokyo. He even had a small house in the country (designed for him by an architect friend of his) just to get away from it all. He selects every item for his personal consumption just as he selects clients: very carefully and sparingly.

Igarashi’s current web site actually seems to harmonize with his professed philosophy. I find the synthesis impressive and satisfying. He shows a gorgeous variety of sculpture, set in a calm, austere gallery. And, there’s not a hint of his graphic design work anywhere.

Takenobu Igarashi’s current web site; note his self-proclaimed title (in red italics)

Robbie got his millions for probably singing us lessons of smooth, classic Garamond-y things like falling in love or getting his heart broken or falling in love again or just hooking up with lots of chicks.

Robbie Williams Gets Millions in Record Deal typographic composition; 8 x 8in. / 2002

The teacher got his or her millions due to a Microgramma-tic computer glitch. Not for teaching square things like Mathematics or Wood Shop.

Anonymous Teacher Gets Millions due to Computer Glitch typographic composition; 8 x 8in. / 2002

One clue as to who should have made what can be found in the glaring disparity of said millions between their respective ledgers. Robbie, who was wildly popular in his home country but all-but-nothing in the U.S., got $125 million from his contract in 2002. The teacher, who may or may not have been popular in class—but completely anonymous to the world, received over $117 million less (before taxes). But the error is clear: The teacher should have received approximately $125 million less…

Money for Something typographic juxtaposition; 16 x 8in. / 2002

This typographic editorial juxtaposition project, given by guest lecturer Jean Benoit Lévy as one of several Advanced Typography projects in the design program at the University of Washington, was instrumental in teaching me the value of a good, honest typeface.

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

Excited typographic expression study / 5.75 x 4in. / 2002

I’m confident that you’ll find them to be creative and engaging representations of the feelings I’m trying to express…

Confident typographic expression study / 5.75 x 4in. / 2002

Of course, if you don’t like them, you might say something coarse or even question my design skill. I’m pretty thick-skinned about that sort of thing, but if you were particularly mean about it, that could drag my mood down and could even make me depressed.

Depressed typographic expression study / 5.75 x 4in. / 2002

Phew… I guess that’s all I have to say about that. I think it went well. I must admit, I’m relieved.

Relieved typographic expression study / 5.75 x 4in. / 2002

Stark original typeface design / 2002

Ignore the Din and find a new Trade. Here comes another lean, monosyllabic hero of noir typography. He takes his briefcase locked, his drinks neat and his checks made out to “cash.” He takes wise guys to the cleaners and the birds take him just the way he is. He’s got a hardboiled manner and doesn’t care for idle banter, thank you, so you can keep the jibber-jabber to yourself. He’ll tell you what you need to know and nothing more. But he’s not just another working stiff. He’s got working class.

He’s got a cleft chin and a sordid past with which you need not concern yourself. All that matters is on the dotted lines. He stands tall but keeps a low profile. He’s sharp as nails and almost as kind. He doesn’t want to be your best friend but he’s probably the man you want on the case. He’s Stark…

Stark is a long drink of water with a shadow to match. He stands up straight and keeps his cards sewn to his chest. He’ll light a cigarette in your office and wear it low on his lip as he tells your rags right from wrong. You can put this on the record because it’s official business of capital import:

Stark caps / 2002

Well, if you’re going to stick around, you may as well take a seat, but don’t get too comfortable. After a long headline and a night-cap, Stark still wears his gaze under a slanted brim and he isn’t afraid to give a wink in casual setting. But if you give him the jumble, he’ll give you the hook. Pay attention, kid, because he’s never without a clipped counter in any exchange and he’s already seen plenty other pretty faces:

Stark lower case / 2002

Stark just deals in the facts, ma’am, and he’ll break the numbers to you—good or bad—with the same stamps of authority:

Stark numerals / 2002

When it comes to the end of the line, you can rest assured knowing Stark gave you a piece of his mind. Chances are, he’ll leave your punctuation hanging (but don’t quote me on that):

Stark selected punctuation / 2002

Well, it looks like that’s another one for the books. Best to just keep on moving before you get yourself into trouble. Forget everything you just saw. But if you’ve got a tough file that you need straightened out, you know where to look. You’d better watch closely, though, sport; Stark may just have designs on your desk.


The End

Behind the Scenes

Some early sketches for Stark were published in Designing Type by Karen Cheng (the Professor under whom I studied type design at the University of Washington). You might want to do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. He’s on page 155. And the rest of the book is pretty good, too:

Designing Type by Karen Cheng; cover and inside spread showing early sketches for Stark (on the right page); Yale University Press / 2006

Moon typeface / 2002 (setting of lyrics excerpted from “Space Oddity” by David Bowie)

Spacey, technical, open and angular, functional close or far, and emotionally open, Moon is a typeface for the future. Or at least for writing about it. Although its geometry makes it modern and compelling in display setting, the strategically placed serif bits (technically, Moon would fall into the “semi-sans” category) flow together even dense columns of communiqué. Special touches and extras give this face an alluring Hal-like techno-emotional identity complex…

When it comes to delivering critical messages, capital letters have long stood at the top of the world. Letter for letter, no other case brings more urgent credibility to your message than the cap. The more caps, the more determined. But, in so many faces, cap settings become such a bore in all their rectilinear monotony, like so much parental lecturing. Moon’s caps know what’s right and are not afraid to tell you what’s wrong, but the organic distribution of rounded and open forms, interacting with angular legs and serifs, allow enough engagement to discuss the matter:

Moon font: capital letters and lining numerals / 2002

Lining numerals allow for proof to be delivered confidently as top-level information, but are open enough to persuade the cautiously skeptical.

The lower case continues where the caps leave off, delivering the bulk of most standard communication with a rarified combination of technical precision and airy—dare I say, “friendly”?—humanity:

Moon font: lower case letters and text numerals / 2002, 2008

The lines between computation and digression are further blurred by the choice of classically-inspired text numerals as an option for setting in prose.

Speaking of digression… As typeface communication continues its rise to supremacy over human face communication, the fonts of today reveal themselves to be increasingly threadbare in their attempt to keep up. While great writers can pull the most powerful emotional strings with an Apollo-era typewriter and a cerebral hand, this is not the mindset of the majority of today’s typists. The new communicator places a premium on expediency and response, and relies heavily on hopelessly inadequate typographic patches like emoticons to express their slashed words for them (and, by the way, how many people were really aching for a quicker way to express “Vampire bat”?).

What if the typeface, itself, was more expressive? Though, presently, there is only one weight of Moon (Roman Moon), other weights were always part of the plan for the future (Half Moon, Full Moon, etc.), and would be essential tools to express emphasis or restraint. But what if temporal strain, too, could be captured in the extension of a letter-sound? As an additional spacey touch, super extended vowel forms allow for such techno-humanist expression:

Moon font: special extended vowels and standard punctuation / 2002

This is, of course, one small step for typeface exploration. The possibilities to realize key-borne expression for the mankind of tomorrow are galactic. The centuries-old groundwork of typography is absolutely still relevant, but the needs of type are evolving. Current standards are being necessarily co-opted by a new world order of communicators, a practice quietly being ignored by typographers (guilty, but aware). Moon may just be another typeface, but I’d suggest its future is wide open.

Sylloge typeface (promotional collage) / 2002

All type says something more than that which has been written. Some writing is logical. Therefore, some typefaces can make prose seem more logical than it actually is. This is an example of syllogistic reasoning. This is Sylloge, an original typeface design…

Sylloge typeface (elements) / 2002
(+) Click to enlarge and see complete character set.

Its character is wise; believable; stable in its bracketed, serifed footing; distinguished by graceful nuance; considered in its humanistic stroke weight variation; resolute in its straight stance. This is the perfect face to put forth for one’s most ardent case.

Sylloge typeface (text numerals) / 2002
(+) Click to enlarge and see complete character set.

Numbers like this don’t lie. Just think how comfortably they would sit even in the thick of the discussion. Not like those ruffian lining numerals that shout so inappropriately at cap height all the time.

But the designer must always be conscientious. One should never use a pretty face to say something disingenuous. What is written is still far more important than the typeface in which it is spelled. Syllogistic fallacies are not uncommon, and they still pass for logic.

So here is Sylloge. Type carefully.

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.

My first full-time desk job. Can you sense my enthusiasm? / 2001 (photograph by Lisa Torrence)

In order to engage context in a quotidian discussion about the various caste systems of ancient cultures, a feisty grad student T.A. in one of the many requisite Art History courses I have taken challenged our class section to define the contemporary stamp: “middle class.” Immediately, salaries rang out, one range louder and more determined than the last, until crescendoing in discordant numerical jangle; income could not objectively define it. Quietus gave way to a chorus of key possessions: Cars, houses. Okay, but what if the car is a Maserati? What if the house is a shack? Scenarios of familial constructs similarly swelled and crashed. These lines of criteria could not strike a clear chord of class definition.

The T.A. sat back and let the class caterwaul and self-dismiss various notions before bringing the struggling group back to cue. Coyly, he then rested the discussion by quoting a friend of his, who had jokingly defined a member of the middle class as anyone who “has a job.” The point of this was that such class distinctions are laughably vague and infinitely subjective (a job is not a job is not a job), but the passion with which people attempt to define them proved how deeply invested we are in socio-economic ranking.

While I had technically had three jobs prior, my quest for a “real,” middle-class-making job began sometime late in the Spring of 1999. I thought I had it in a full-time, long-term temp position “working with computers” that I had taken up after finally quitting my four-year run as a bike mechanic. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I realized that I wasn’t all that great at “computers” (at least, not in that context), and I let my hours decline steadily, until they were almost zero, and then they were zero. At that point, I had no income.

“Yo’ face is my case!” My head was barely scratched, but it did bleed a fair amount. Those scars on my arm are tire tracks, by the way. / 1999 (photograph by Ira Wamble)

As fortune would have it (if luck did not), I had been hit by a car that spring while riding my bike (two cars in the same accident, actually), which was an incredibly traumatic event that in turn paid me an agreeable insurance settlement. I ended up living on this modest reward, a tiny savings, and not much else for quite some time as my job search became more and more frenzied. By November, I paid rent by scrambling together the entirety of my bank account, the cash in my pockets, and loose change I had collected in a jar (seriously). The promise of middle class never tasted so sweet or came with such timely appreciation as when I was offered a job as an in-house “Junior Designer” at Sierra On-Line, Inc., just before Thanksgiving, 1999…

I was so anxious to get “a job” that I had neglected to figure out what Sierra On-Line, Inc. actually did. It wasn’t until about the end of my first week that I realized that they were in the video game business. Moreover, they were quite hot at the time. Their “first-person-shooter” game, Half-Life, was a blockbuster on the cutting edge of social networking, the mercury of a feverish rash of global online tournaments. This star was orbited by a constellation of other shining titles (so, obviously, I was not a “gamer”). Somewhat strangely, they also made similarly successful home-improvement and family-oriented software under the Sierra Home banner (so, obviously, I was not a dad, either).

It was another week or so before I figured out what I was doing there. I had started designing within my first hour, but I was in a bit of disbelief that I was actually getting paid for my tasks. My very first project was to create a two-inch round sticker for a software package that said something like “15% Off When You Buy Two!” with a long line of legal copy run around the perimeter. Talk about sticker-shock! Had I really gone from taking weeks to conceptualize, design, and produce posters for famous architects and such to churning out impulse-buy marketing decals (technically referred to as “violators”)?! Well, yes, but there was more to it than just that. For one thing, someone had to make those stickers, I guess, so why not me? (I needed the money, after all). And I would get my chances with more diverse, complex, and important pieces down the line. And for all of my cockiness, I still used a stupid typeface and didn’t kern the 1 and the 5 properly until my creative director told me so.

After getting a good handle on rebate stickers, online banner ads were added to my repertoire. The primary challenge for these was to get as many frames, colors, images, flashing lights, and whatever else into some really awkward standardized proportion in a final file that was under 12 kilobytes. From what I remember, most of the ones I did had great “click-through” rates. I think that there was a 98% correlation between these statistics and how obnoxious they were:

SWAT 3, Elite Edition online banner ad; 468px. x 60px. / 2000
This was obviously before 9/11.

Print Artist online banner ad; 468px. x 60px. / 2000
Print Artist was Sierra’s graphic design program. Somehow, Adobe survived.

Modern Bride wedding planning software banner ad; 130px. x 90px. / 2000
Discouraged? Frustrated? Then you probably shouldn’t be getting married.

As time went by, I got more involved in the actual packaging of games and Home software. Sierra, like most software companies, made huge, cereal-box-sized packages for their wares. These made great canvases for what were often incredibly elaborate illustrations, featuring all kinds of special production touches like extra fluorescent or metallic inks, spot varnishes, sculpted embossing, foil stamping, cover flaps, dollar bills, candy bars, live puppies, winning lottery tickets, dancing girls, and so on. The software box was an incredibly important point of sale, invested in heavily and appropriately impressive. But the only thing of any real value inside the box was a CD-ROM or two (or maybe three), which took up approximately 1/20th of the package volume. A frequent task of mine was to create the artwork for these CD-ROMs. This was usually some very banal, two-color translation of the box artwork, but occasionally I had opportunities to make a more conceptual interpretation of the content:

Sierra Home Complete Home 3D software suite; standard CD-ROM format / 2001
The diagonal stripes are in reference to all the construction that users of this software would be doing to their homes.

Homeworld soundtrack; standard CD format / 2000
This was actually a soundtrack that went along with the game Homeworld, so I tried making it look like a record and/or a speaker driver. The game had something to do with outer space, so the rings could also be read as orbits.

Sierra Home Looping Demo, Fall 2000 DVD; standard DVD format / 2000
This was a demo DVD of Home software that retailers would play in-store. Since no customers would ever see it, nobody at Sierra really cared what it looked like, so I had pretty free reign over the design. The linear element was an abstract house with a chimney constructed out of legal copy, or an even more abstract arrow, for “play.”

As far as I remember, I only worked on the design of one actual game box while I was at Sierra, the Family Fun Collection, a rag-tag bundling of aging titles in need of a last-ditch effort to flee the warehouse for good. The cover design simply showed the box covers of said old titles (very meta, ya’ dig?) and a big, swoopy masthead:

Family Fun Game Collection software package (front); 8in. x 10in. x 2in. / 2000
Designed by a guy named Mark Vongunten (whose design prowess far outshines what this particular package might suggest)

But, actually, I didn’t even design the cover (Those of you who read the caption may have figured that out already). I designed the back (and the sides, I think):

Family Fun Game Collection software package (back); 8in. x 10in. x 2in. / 2000

Pretty exciting stuff. Hopefully, some family had fun.

At some point, our in-house design crew made a push to gain more respect from our own company, as many of the more prominent titles’ packaging were being farmed out to independent design firms. Part of our initiative was to create an identity system for our group, so we would look more like a design firm, too, I guess. We had something of a charrette to design the logo. My submissions generally centered around the idea that the most important thing we created were boxes:

The Creative Group (at Sierra) logo proposal / 2001

The Creative Group (at Sierra) logo proposal (type is custom drawn) / 2001

I did not design the logo that was actually adopted, a much more broad interpretation of our strengths, created by one of the Senior Designers:

The Creative Group (at Sierra) logo; designed by Tom Saffle / 2001
Flash animation of The Creative Group (at Sierra) logo; designed by me / 2001

I did design a Flash animation for the logo, however, which you can see by clicking on it or here. For one reason or another, doing this animation was one of the few things I felt compelled to do on my own, without anyone asking me. And, as such, nobody ever used it.

One thing that I actually designed from start to finish was the 2001 Sierra Studios Catalog, a showcase of Sierra’s prime new offerings in a 16-page glossy, to be shipped with every Sierra game. I created the S-form device (based on the exact curve of the Sierra master logo’s S) as a unique framing device for the action-packed illustrations and a container for titling and information.

2001 Sierra Studios Catalog (cover); 9in. x 12in.; 16ppg. + cover, saddle-stitched.
I still didn’t quite get the whole “kerning” thing by this point.

I had a lot invested in this project. Just in terms of time, this thing took forever to build. I had developed a number of concepts and nailed down the final format within a week, but, like many projects at Sierra, I created the working files for the entire layout of each page / spread in Photoshop. For those of you who have been on Pluto for the last ten to fifteen years and haven’t heard the buzz about Photoshop, it’s the whiz-bang fake-it-all-and-then-some miracle-worker, hailed as the essential design program by hacks and soccer-moms worldwide. Don’t get me wrong; Photoshop is a perfectly useful program for certain things (like, say, working on photos), but it should probably never be used to create any kind of comprehensive print mechanical. One reason for this is that the way it works with images creates immensely huge files that require almost as much processor power to work on as a Microsoft Word document (that’s a joke for all my friends over there in Redmond). Creating these massive, print-resolution files so taxed my then-state-of-the-art Mac G3 that I could—and did—put my feet up on my desk and read through bike magazine articles while the program whirred away at things like moving a block of type over three points.

2001 Sierra Studios Catalog (inside spread for Arcanum); 9in. x 12in.; 16ppg. + cover, saddle-stitched / 2000
On inside spreads, drawers of screen shots slid out from the “S” device.

Despite questionable file preparation and iffy work ethic, I had created what was potentially one of the most valuable communication pieces for the company, on time and on budget. I was pretty happy with how the brochure shaped up, and so were the rest of the involved parties. Anyone familiar with my general approach and sensibility about design may be a little surprised that I ever did anything like this, but I still think that it was a very appropriate solution and the target audience would have eaten it up with a spoon.

2001 Sierra Studios Catalog (inside spread for Homeworld Cataclysm); 9in. x 12in., 16ppg. + cover, saddle-stitched / 2000

I say “would have” because the target audience never saw the brochure. Just after I had handed over final files to be printed, it came to light that there were two groups within the company that were involved in commissioning the piece and each thought it was coming out of the other group’s budget. Neither group actually had the money, so the project was killed.

2001 Sierra Studios Catalog (inside spread for Half-Life Platinum); 9in. x 12in.; 16ppg. + cover, saddle-stitched / 2000
Half-Life, indeed.

Many of my colleagues were passionate about their positions, and it showed in their work. After all, it was a bona-fide “dream job” (you were required to play video games at the office for crying out loud). And of course I gained much from the experience. At the base level, my income range was, while nothing to sing about, decent; I was able to buy a car and live in a house (not my own, but I paid my fair share every month). Technically, I learned a ton about efficient organization and production—and a little bit about design. I got to work and hang out with a lot of really talented people (who also knew how to have a good time outside the office) that I never would have met otherwise. And, despite the “fun” industry, I still got a taste of how the middle class squeezes into offices every day, with all of its bizarre socio-hierarchical walling, necessary rung-jockeying and inevitable line-crossing—a strange but valuable experience for any young pro.

But it was never my dream. Without the paper or the real proof of education and with my slim portfolio, I was lucky to have a position in such a prominent organization, and I did my work fairly well. But the subject matter barely interested me at all, and any personal investment I made never seemed to pay much dividend. I didn’t have the sense that I could fulfill my potential, and I didn’t have a real zest for what I was doing. But I did have a job.

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/2007/10/31/205/ http://www.danielpjohnston.com/graphic-language/2007/10/31/205/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:12:00 +0000 Daniel P. Johnston http://www.danielpjohnston.com/?p=15 Going to college straight out of high school is something that you’re either supposed to do or not supposed to do, depending on who you ask. Most high school counselors want their charges to apply to every extant school they can think of and get one—any one—locked-down well before graduation, lest the youngsters dizzy themselves at their flying mortarboards, wander off, and never find their way back on track. Everyone else with an opinion says that high school grads should travel the world. (It’s always “travel,” and always “the world.” Never mind traveling to just one place, or just somewhere one isn’t from, even if it’s in the same country. And don’t even think of getting a job or building a boat – it’s travel, son.)

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.

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.

Language Arts Portfolio cover; pencil on paper; 8.5 x 11 in. / 1994

The importance of the portfolio, for any designer cannot be stressed enough. It is, quite seriously, proof of one’s worthiness in the craft. Design is one of the few professions where samples of work you have done in the past are supposed to speak for you.

Unless you have an “in,” many top design firms demand that you “drop off” your portfolio so they can take a look through it to see if they want to actually talk to you. I have never “dropped off” a portfolio anywhere (I understand the utility of the practice, but I find it superficial and demeaning). However, I have been in situations where an interviewer wanted nothing more than to just flip through “my book” without any interference from myself. Portfolios are like candy, and it’s hard for anyone not to just devour them. But if the candy isn’t balanced by the meat of the designer’s intelligence, personality, and presence, it can turn into a rather sickening experience. I’ve tried, with varying degrees of success, to break the predilection of portfolio interviews, but the bottom line is that the portfolio really must, as much as possible, speak for itself, and for the designer, too.

I have made several portfolios in my life in various formats, but I think this was the first thing I ever made that actually was called a portfolio. As you can probably tell by the title, this isn’t a collection of graphic design samples but, rather, a collection of writing and so on for a “Language Arts” class in high school. I drew everything on this sheet of paper by hand (with the help of a compass and a ruler), and flourished the mechanically rational, hyper-dimensional letterforms with a dash of chrome. It probably took me about three days or so to do it, and this was my only copy…

As I was putting the finishing touches on the contents of the book in the computer lab, a voracious fight between two completely out of control schoolmates came into the room. One was chasing after the other and both were using every tool at their disposal to kill or at least seriously injure the other. And there was plenty of disposal. By the time the fight was broken up, several chairs, desks, and computers were smashed and strewn across the room, and the two boys were much closer to death than they were when the fight started. More importantly (to me), the frenetic action had created enough gust in the air to wistfully float my precious portfolio cover off the desk where I was sitting onto the floor, where it was promptly stepped on by one of the fighters. Luckily, the page was not torn or creased, and the footprints brushed right off, so everything was fine.