This Is NOT A Sagmeister

So a little over two years ago I turned 40—Trevor is a nickname my wife and close friends have
for me—and had a big party. It was all going well—probably the most meaningful and fun I’ve
ever had. I rented a house at the beach. Had a great dinner with close friends the first night, a
big blow out party the next day and night, and then on Sunday my dad calls to wish me a happy
birthday and makes this comment:

YOU
ARE
HERE*

“Wow, I can’t believe I have a son that’s 40. You’re halfway around the baseball diamond—

YOU
ARE
HERE*

*IFF
YOU’RE
LUCKY

—if you’re lucky.”

Now, I come from a long line of neurotic Jews on my dad’s side of the family, and this threw
me for a serious existential whirl. I started to think about how, IF I’M LUCKY, I might see good
friends I only see once a year 40 more times, and so on.

Meanwhile, I had been working hard for the last ten years to make Volume, my design
partnership, successful. And the most recent two years, in the wake of the financial crisis, had
been bumpy ones. (This is some of the gang at a recent party we threw.)

I had also been teaching regularly at the California College of the Arts—great place, by the way
—since 1999. (This is my current crop of students.)

And doing other various design-oriented activities, like writing for SFMOMA and Eye
magazine, putting together design events. So I was very busy and pretty consistently so over
the last decade.

Lastly, the shifts in media and the way we interact, with social media and the iPhone, were
starting to leak into my life in ways that didn’t seem healthy. This constant voice telling me
that as a designer I needed to be up on everything going on in design, not to mention the
creepy voyuerism that something like Facebook allows you to engage, was wearing me down
and seemed to be getting in the way of my work and what was important.

(I need a break.)

Essentially, I was burning myself out, and decided I needed a break. Now luckily I had a
business partner, who was game to cover for me. Plus my wife and I pride ourselves on living
on very little overhead, so I had some money saved for something like this.

So in May of last year, after my spring semester finished at CCA, I took almost 8 months off
from work, school, everything.

Now, of course, the second I started telling people in my peer group I was doing this, they all
responded, “Oh, you’re doing your Sagmeister.” (Everyone know who this is?)

And I would respond, angrily, defensively, “No, no, no. This is not my Sagemeister.”

Stefan:
Bestselling book
Museum exhibitions
TED talk
Documentary ﬁlm in production
Made giant wooden type and
ﬂoated it down a river
Sported a lot of groovy suits

Case in point, this is what Stefan accomplished on his break:

Eric:
Read 50 books
Shot 3000 photos
Visited 22 cities
Spent $30,000
Quit social media
Contracted upper GI infection
(that still hasn’t healed)

And this is what I accomplished on my break.

And this was intentional. Eventually anyway. At first I did feel the pressure to make a project
out of the time. Life is short, right? I may never do this again! I must get a book deal! I must
write every day! I’m going to interview famous designers about taking breaks! I’m going to
make conceptual art!

This is my friend, sometimes Volume freelancer, and super talented designer (but not the
bassist of Radiohead) Ed O’Brien. Who also attended Western Washington U for a year before
relocating to SF. (You guys wouldn’t let him into the art department here.) When I mentioned I
was taking this break and told him of all these ideas, he simply replied: “Dude, it’s not a break
if you make a project out of it.” So I may not have published a book, but you’re at least getting
this talk, which I’m lovingly calling:

This is NOT
a Sagmeister

This is not a Sagmeister, or

(or:
“If you’re looking for some
enlightenment in the form of
type made out of rotting
bananas, I can’t help you.”

(or:
“If you’re looking for enlightenment in the form of type made out of rotting bananas, I can’t
help you.

At CCA, I sit on the undergraduate thesis committee and have become notorious for asking
students this question of their work:

Why should I care?

At the end of the day, why does what you do matter? We ask this same question of our clients,
and of ourselves at Volume when we decide what jobs to work on. When I started on this
break, though, I was at a pretty low point. And the question I was asking myself now was:

Why should I care
about design?

I had basically reached a place where I was doubting the next half of my life could be dedicated
to this practice that I thought I loved. Questions of doubt swirled in my head.

Form
Depth
Space

I’m going to focus on three lines of inquiry that occupied my mind in my time off.

Form
Depth
Space

One of the first things about taking time off is that suddenly I had more time to simply look,
appreciate and contemplate what was around me. Be 100% sponge.

Beautifully crafted typography everywhere.

Wonderful architectural details.

To the beauty of words visualized—

Now, this probably comes as no surprise to anyone. This is why we’re designers, right? To
create cool stuff!

Not to mention collect it. Whether virtually on Pinterest, or through the seemingly thousands
of design books that are on the market now.

Any when things don’t reach our high standards, watch out! As was the case with the Gap logo
redesign fiasco a few years ago, where the supposed guardians of good design and taste rose up
to stop this supposed travesty.

Yet when we’re front-facing our audience or our clients, expertise in this vein is suddenly
diminished. This is a section on the fairly newly designed AIGA National website called “Why
Design?” Pretty much every current design buzz word is here—Strategy, Sustainability, Design
for Good, Social Engagement, Transparency—but nothing about craft, beauty, form, as if it
goes without saying; or we’re simply embarrassed of these skills once we start talking to clients
and collaborators.

Form:
Why are we so ashamed of it?

So my question is why is the fact that we make beautifully crafted work so downplayed? Is it
very possible that if the designers of that Gap logo had followed their intuitive formmaking
voices and not their overly strategic ones, the result would have been more honest and
authentic to the Gap?

Form:
Why are we so ashamed of it?

(or:
“That’s pretty. Does that make
me a shallow designer?”)

The problem is how do we sell intuition? No one wants to hear the reason a design works
is,“Man, this just feels right? Don’t you feel it, too?”

We think that any talk of form and beauty will cast us as shallow decorators, rather than
strategic business partners.

Case in point, a little before I left for my break, AIGA had this “One Day For Design”
conversation on Twitter, and for kicks I posted a little message to them about this oversight on
their website.

And amidst all the social networking din, someone actually called me to the mat on it. At first I
was amazed, but then realized this is the crux of why we don’t talk about form and beauty.
Because we often don’t have a framework other than our subjective tastes.

(Ads like this don’t engender much confidence either.)

Beauty
=
the sensual realization of an
internal truth

My colleague Hamish Chandra from Hattery defines beauty—

Beauty
=
internal truth

as “the sensual realization of an internal truth.” If anything, this is our job as designers.

Beauty
=
internal truth
=
more than just visual form

I love this definition because in the context of design it opens up our realizations to go beyond
surface articulation. Because a part of my and Adam’s experience is in architecture and
exhibition design, we are always looking to push past just the visual and into the physical, the
tactile, the experiential, and facilitation of action.

For example, with the ReadyMade book we designed—a book about making things from
reusable materials—the exposed chipboard, inset sticker, and tape binding are tactile “truths”;
the spine doubling as a ruler is a functional one.

At the Academy of Sciences, the physical module’s open-air, see-through design reinforces the
“truth” of the open-air building and bucolic site in Golden Gate Park.

For a poster about film remakes, the poster physically embodies the “truth” of the remaking
idea.

Even our business cards, by there being a series of six (and counting) instead of one, the design
reinforce our studio’s other mantra, “that there are different Volume levels for everyone,” by
allowing us to customize the business card transaction experience.

There’s also beauty in the experiential and functional. While I was traveling during my time
off, the AirBnB app was indispensable. It’s certainly not ugly, but it’s beauty is in how it
functions, its utility. The visual is also wonderfully realized, but is almost beside the point.

For this annual report for a non-profit that assists the people of the Tibetan plateau, we hired
Tibetan craftsmen to make the cover paper, the block stamp, and the yak bone letter openers,
so the annual benefits these people directly before it even gets into potential funders’ hands.

For 826 Valencia, we designed a website that not just visually embodies the character of the
826 Valencia Pirate Store location, but functionally allows its employees themselves to
customize type, video, and product frames of content through a CMS we created.

In this last project (a collaboration with MendeDesign) for a exhibition featuring artists that
don’t make artifacts but instead facilitate the art-making process for others, our design
solution does exactly that. The actual graphic design of the elements is considered, but also
somewhat incidental.

Back to the original Twitter question. I did have an answer, and it’s my other point about the
importance of our skills as formmakers.

It’s not far-fetched to think that if we left the engineers, the software developers, the money
people to their own devices, everything would end up like the Google search results page—

—extremely useful, obviously well-meaning, but ultimately soul-sucking as hell.

Rock

POP ROCK The Mojo Men. 1964-69. Rock/pop. Brit-rock ripoffs produced by
Sly Stone. Minor hit in 1965. On Autumn Records.
POP ROCK The Vejtables. 1964-66.Pop/rock. From Millbrae. Mid-60s. Lead
singer Jan Errico was also drummer (female drummer an oddity at time).
POP ROCK Boz Scaggs. 1967-present. Came to SF in 1967, Multi-decade
musician, part owner of Slims. Grew up with Steve Miller. Had big solo hit in
1976. From blues to disco
POP ROCK Electric Flag. 1965-68. Led by Mike Bloomfield who later
appeared in Mitchell Bros. porn. Had a horn section.
POP ROCK Cold Blood. Formed in 1969-1978. Soul/rock/jazz. Fillmore hit,
led by Lydia Pense. F, R
POP ROCK Elvin Bishop. Blues/rock/country. 1965-present. Moved to SF
after Chicago. Played with Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. Biggest hit with 1976
single “Fooled Around and Fell in Love.” T
POP ROCK Durocs. Pop/rock. 1975-80. Songwriters Ron Nagle and Scott
Mathews wrote for Streisand, The Tubes, Michelle Phillips.
POP ROCK Malo. 1972-present. Teenage rock group. First album 1972. Carlos
Santana’s brother Jorge led.
POP ROCK Steve Miller Band. 1967-present. Rock/pop. Started as Steve
Miller Blues Band, played with Dallas-buddy Boz Scaggs. Formed in 1967, but
scored “The Joker” hit in 1973. Marin rock.
POP ROCK Doobie Bros. Rock. 1970-present. From San Jose. Formed in
1970. Had a Hell’s Angel following.
POP ROCK. Rubinoos. Power pop in Berkeley. Recorded with Beserkley.
1970-85. “I Want to Be Your Boyfriend.”
POP ROCK. Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. Band formed in
MA, but moved to CA in 1975. Folk/pop. Recorded with Berserkley Records.
POP ROCK. Rubicon. Ex-Sly Stone. Pop. Mid-late 70s. Two members went on
to form Night Ranger.
POP ROCK Journey. Formed in 1973-present. Originally called “Golden Gate
Rhythm Section.” Steve Perry joined in 1977. Biggest hits came with 1981 album.
POP ROCK Santana. Born in Mexico, graduated from Mission High. Formed
first band in 1966. Played Woodstock. Signed with Clive Owens in 1970.
POP ROCK Huey Lewis and the News. 1980-present. Corte Madera. Marin
Rock. Formed in 1980, first big album in 1982. “Power of Love” in 1985. Original
band name: Huey Lewis and the American Express.
Pop/slowcore. Mark Eitzel. R
POP ROCK. Eddie Money. Rock/pop/city rock. AKA, Ed Mahoney. Ex NYPD,
moved to Berkeley. First album in 1977.
POP ROCK. 4 Non Blondes. 1989-96. Linda Perry. F
POP ROCK. Mr. Big. 1988-2002. “To be with you.”
POP ROCK. Earth Quake. 1966-1979.Power pop from Berkeley. Formed in
1966, released albums in 70s. Formed Berserkley Records.

Imagine if information was all like this. Hook me up to the Matrix, I’m done.

Wouldn’t you rather see it like this? (This is a poster we did for McSweeney’s on the history of
Bay Area Music.)

I think this is all summed up by the artist Paul Madonna with the wise words he inserts at the
bottom of this piece:
“In hard times beauty can seem frivolous—but take away the beauty, and all you’re left with...is
hard times.”

Beauty
Depth
Space

The idea of depth in our work is not a new aspiration, but certainly one that is often hard to
realize.

I was asked to contribute a cover to National Novel Writing week. They gave me a synopsis and
I had a day or so to design a cover. This story was about the near future where only a select
group of people in the world can remember their dreams, and are enlisted to help the
government in illicit goings-on. It focuses on one of these dreamers.

Now this isn’t a masterpiece, but I thought it captured the sinister, paranoid tone and dream-
based content of the novel well enough, and wasn’t too much work for the audience since it
would stand out like a sore thumb in a bookstore. But people went apeshit, because basically
they couldn’t read the typography right away. (And wait, what’s a bookstore?)

I was reminded of when, on my break last year, I was a guest critic at a summer design class
held in Paris by a colleague of mine. I met Pascal Béjean of Pascal Béjean-Olivier Körner-
Nicolas Ledoux. Among other work, they do these really interesting Theater posters that
require repeat, or at least concentrated viewing to fully grasp. I couldn’t imagine work this
dense and beautiful in America’s subway stations.

Depth:
Can design be complex,
challenging and realistic?

So my next question is can design have this kind of capacity anymore?

Depth:
Can design be complex,
challenging and realistic?

(As opposed to simple, clever
and idealistic?)

Especially outside of the academy or very rarefied environments?

I was in design school when this stuff was blowing up. Does anyone know this publication?
Yeah, Emigré! While stylistically it’s dated (as are some of the ideas these designers had about
communication), I was very drawn to the challenging nature of the work. That design could be
more than just “clever solutions.”

Ah, those heady days of experimental type, where you’d be given a random adjective and noun
and had to create a poster around the phrase to these two words made. (This was done before
all the info crawls you see on TV news now. And in Photoshop 2.0, before Layers, and History,
and even Undo. Every move I made took about an hour to render.)

The tough part about this question is that we as designers have always been looked to for our
idealism, to be the Pied Pipers that play the music to lead people into doing, making, or buying
something. It’s not outright deception, but I personally struggle with this part of our job. That
we can’t acknowledge doubt. But the “Pied Piper” model is changing.

These are diagrams by Clay Shirky, who talks a lot about how social media has changed our
media landscape. His theory is that what used to be a centralized, linear form of information
dissemination is now much more non-linear and decentralized. It’s hard for companies or
anyone to control the message now. The message is really in the hands of the masses. The bad
news is that maybe we designers don’t have as much control as we thought. The good news is
that this should keep us honest, and gives us an opening to do better, more complex and true
work.

How to evaluate design Not sure if a piece of design is any good?
Just remember this easy-to-use chart.

Huh? WOW! = Success!

WOW! Huh? = Not so much

At Volume we have this deceivingly simple equation on how to identify “successful” design. It’s
a simple idea, but one that I hope leads to complexity in the work. The Huh/Wow equation
says that after we get your attention you might have to do a little work to be rewarded. The
Wow/Huh could either be “Wow, that’s interesting, but Huh, I don’t get it.” OR “Wow, that’s
clever, but Huh, upon further immersion I find it to be shallow and lame.”

San Francisco
Jewish Film Festival
2007-2009 Branding/Promotion

Case in point, for three years we created the branding and promotion for the annual San
Francisco Jewish Film Festival. As a half-Jew and film buff, this was a dream gig. And I figured
that the combination of film and Jewish culture would have a rich legacy of promotion in this
sphere.

I was wrong. Isn’t this clever? And very lame. And it gets worse, just a simple Google image
search of “Jewish Film Festival”—

—brings up enough Stars of David and film clichés to gag me on a matzoh ball.

No Stars of David
No ﬁlm strips
No dreidels
No Holocaust imagery
No cute Bubies (grandmothers)
No Hebrew
No yarmulkes
No Jewish deli food

I felt my culture deserved better and no amount of Jon Stewart self-loathing was going to let
me fall back on these tropes.

We also decided to avoid the common device of using film stills as imagery and instead create
our own, as a way to distinguish the festival from the others in the Bay Area. For this year we
“painted” with light—a uniting symbol in both Judaism and film. The logotype hints at the
strength of both film and Jewish culture when the previously dispersed come together at this
festival.

The next year was about the multifaceted aspects of Jewish culture and the festival offerings. It
hints at a Jewish star but transforms it into something wholly new.

The final year we imagined the Bay Area as this mélange of culture that the film festival
emerges from every year. There are four lines that break the horizontal axis that could hint at a
Star of David, but no more than faintly.

Attendance increased every year we did the branding for the festival. I’m not saying we were
solely responsible, but it certainly gave the organization a certain presence and sophistication
not present before.

That said, there are some traditions you can only do so much to upend. The first year we did
this job we also designed the promotional trailer. In the past these spots were often humorous,
but usually playing on bad Jewish stereotypes. So we decided to eschew tradition (and
traditional narrative) and create more of a motion-based version of the branding. Every year
on opening night they show a selection of previous trailers and then the new one.

People cheered for the ones that used the bad stereotypes, and then ours ran. And
then....silence. This happened every year afterwards, too. The lesson? Your audience will only
go so far with you. Sometimes you need the familiar to engage people. (And ridding Jewish
people of self-deprecation was much harder than we thought...)

Complexity in our projects also comes from open collaboration both within the office and
outside it. We do weekly group creative meetings where everyone puts everything they are
working on up on the studio critique wall. We also use that time to brainstorm as a group on
projects that are in their infancy, so get all the big ideas out on the table.

Mohawk Fine Papers
Solutions Promotion

We were honored to be asked to design a paper promotion for Mohawk, who we consider the
gold standard of all things paper. They usually use Pentagram or VSA or Adams Morioka so it
was both exciting and scary since we had a lot to live up to.

The brief is usually minimal at best: “Just say a few things about the Solutions line and make it
cool!” I can probably count the paper promos I’ve kept over the last 15 years on one hand. So
our goal was to see if we could create one that people would keep—and not design the common
“here’s a collection of cool stuff we like” kind. We went through a lot of bad ideas, and in our
first session we came up empty.

Our second session was better. Of course, we still entertained the “collection of cool stuff” idea
just in case we had to punt. And then we came back around to the paper line’s name—
Solutions. How could we possibly avoid addressing this? Why not just turn it on ourselves in
some way? We began to think about how difficult coming up with a solution can be. And then
how we often come up with multiple solutions, yet unfortunately only get to choose one. We
often wonder what might have happened if we chose direction B instead of C.

We realized that we wanted to create the Run Lola Run / Groundhog Day of paper promos,
where we could pose the question, “What if we made a different choice?” What if we gave the
same image sequence—that we more or less quickly and randomly assembled from 10 different
photographers’ work—and gave it to three different writers to interpret?

BOOK 2
7.25 x 9.5

FC IFC 1 2 3 4 5

Flannel Feltweave Flannel Feltweave Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White,
100c 100c Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t

Letterpress 1 color Offset 1 PMS Silver PMS Silver PMS Silver PMS Silver PMS Black PMS Black
Offset 1 PMS PMS Black PMS Black PMS Black Monotone PMS Black 2 PMS Black 2
Blind emboss (Duotone) (Duotone)

6 7 8 9 10 11

Short Story Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White,
Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t

PMS Black PMS Silver PMS Black PMS Silver PMS Silver PMS Black
PMS Black 2 PMS Black PMS Black 2 PMS Black PMS Black (Monotone)
PMS Black 3 PMS Black 2 (Duotone) PMS Black 2
(Tritone) PMS Black 3 (Duotone)
(Tritone)

12 13 14 15 16 17

Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White,
Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t

PMS Black PMS Silver PMS Black PMS Black PMS Silver PMS Black
PMS Black 2 PMS Black PMS Black 2 PMS Black 2 PMS Black PMS Black 2
(Duotone) PMS Black 2 PMS Black 3 PMS Black 3 PMS Black 3
(Duotone) PMS Black 4 PMS Black 4 (Tritone)
(Quadtone) (Quadtone)
18 19 20 IBC BC

Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Flannel Feltweave Flannel Feltweave
Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t Feltweave, 80t 100c 100c

PMS Black PMS Silver PMS Silver Offset 1 PMS Silver Letterpress 1 color
PMS Black 2 PMS Black PMS Black Offset 1 PMS
(Duotone) PMS Black 2 (Monotone) Blind emboss
(Duotone)

One writes a short story.

BOOK 3
7.25 x 9.5

FC IFC 1 2 3 4 5

Eggplant Feltweave Eggplant Feltweave Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White,
100c 100c Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t

Letterpress 1 color Offset 1 PMS Silver PMS PMS CMYK CMYK CMYK
Offset 1 PMS PMS PMS Red Touch Plate? PMS PMS
Blind emboss PMS PMS

6 7 8 9 10 11

Short Play Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White,
Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t

CMYK CMYK CMYK CMYK PMS CMYK
PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS Red Touch plate?
PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS
PMS

12 13 14 15 16 17

Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t

PMS PMS Touch plate? Touch plate? PMS Red Touch plate?
PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS
PMS PMS PMS

18 19 20 IBC BC

Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Eggplant Feltweave Eggplant Feltweave
Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t Super Smooth, 80t 100c 100c

CMYK CMYK CMYK Offset 1 PMS Silver Letterpress 1 color
PMS PMS Touch plate? Offset 1 PMS
PMS PMS PMS Blind emboss
PMS

One writes a short play.

BOOK 4
7.25 x 9.5

FC IFC 1 2 3 4 5

New Spirit Red New Spirit Red Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White,
Feltweave,100c Feltweave,100c Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t

Letterpress 1 color Offset 1 PMS Silver PMS PMS CMYK CMYK CMYK
Offset 1 PMS Red Touch Plate? PMS PMS
Blind emboss

6 7 8 9 10 11

6-Word Memoir Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White,
Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t

PMS PMS PMS PMS Red Touch plate?
PMS

12 13 14 15 16 17

Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t

PMS PMS Touch plate? Touch plate? PMS Red Touch plate?
PMS PMS PMS

18 19 20 IBC BC

Carrera White, Carrera White, Carrera White, Flannel Feltweave Flannel Feltweave
Linen, 80t Linen, 80t Linen, 80t 100c 100c

CMYK CMYK CMYK Offset 1 PMS Silver Letterpress 1 color
PMS PMS Touch plate? Offset 1 PMS
PMS Blind emboss

And one writes a six word memoir. What might happen?

You get a promo that captures the complex nature of creation, and hopefully is something
someone wants to keep.

What’s fun about these projects (though I can’t imagine how much more they will be around) is
that the client wants you to go crazy on the different kinds of paper stock and processes, so
there is foil stamping, metallics, crazy ink coverage.

(Hey, at least the paper is primarily made of recycled material.)

Each section keeps the same image layout and sequence, but varies the typographic layer.

By nature, I’m more of a punk rock guy. I live in the Bay Area, and I’m pretty progressive in my
views, but, at least stylistically, I hate the hippie shit—the clothes, the jam bands, the new age
stuff. I think anger can be directed in ways that are beneficial at times. And this sometimes
comes through in our work.

The first version had small type so it read, “shut (the fuck) up,” but we knew AIGA would balk,
so we added a “please” instead.

For a local AIGA fundraiser we were asked to stylize one of those Kid Robot Munni dolls that
they would auction off for charity. It was at the time of the Guantonamo Bay abuses and the
Patriot Act, when calling someone an “enemy combatant” allowed the U.S. to lock him up, no
questions asked.

The hoodless doll is the hypothetical endgame of such a policy.

This is my bike, made by the company Public Bikes. It’s a more European style city bike that
works for old guys like me with fairly discerning style, a bad back, and think the fixed gear bike
is way too much trouble to go through in order to get around.

Public Bikes
Public Works Poster

So we were pretty flattered and excited to be asked to design a poster for the company’s new
Public Works initiative, which they would later sell through their website.

The only parameter was that it needed to address the issues of public space and/or biking in
some way. It didn’t even need to say Public. There were some pretty heavy hitters in the mix—
Sagmeister, Paula Scher, Jason Munn, Jennifer Sterling, Milton Glaser—so I was feeling the
pressure. The good thing about being in such company, is that you could generally predict
what many of these designers would do.

Sagmeister makes the word Public completely out a bike chain. Paula Scher, out of type.
Michael Schwab, a bike in his silhouette style. And there were others equally as predictable.
This isn’t a bad thing—after all, people like to purchase a familiar name and look—but it
presented an opening for us to carve out our own space.

CAR BIKE
ROAD GRASS
SIRENS BIRDS
PRIVATE PUBLIC
PROTEST PROGRESS
EXPLOIT INVEST
DESTROY DESIGN
TYPE SPEAK
you us
I’m a huge biking advocate, but have no illusion that making it as popular as it is in Europe and
other places is a serious uphill climb (pun intended). I mostly bike, but do drive on occasion
and experience the frustrations of both roles—cars cutting me off, bikers running lights, etc. I
saw this conflict a microcosm for city life in general. There are multiple antagonistic parties at
play all the time. What if the poster could acknowledge this and have the viewer actually
experience that conflict?

And what if it could actually hurt your eyes?

SIRENS
BIRDS
PRIVATE
PUBLIC
PROGRESS
PROTEST
EXPLOIT
INVEST
DESTROY
DESIGN
It’s even worse in reality. No camera can actually capture how much those colors vibrate.

My good friend Jeremy Mende, with whom we did the SOEX project from earlier, did as
equally a challenging poster, but stealthier. He created which at first seems like innocuous
wallpaper.

But when you look closer, the art is actually provocative scenes of a biker getting doored, a
biker passing by EMT’s trying to revive a victim of a car accident, someone spraying Occupy
movement graffiti, and a bike completely stripped of its valuable components and still locked
to a post.

What’s reassuring is that some people out there like to be challenged. I didn’t take these
pictures.

They are random snapshots from one of the poster exhibit openings the client actually took.

Beauty
Depth
Space

That last slide is a good segue into my last subject, Space.

As I mentioned before, social media and technology has revolutionized our existences—our
space—in ways we could never have imagined.

Isn’t it amazing that I can send my name to John Baldessari via a website—

and my name is displayed in lights in Sydney a few days later?

Or that I can go to a music festival, text my memories about my favorite concert to anonymous
phone number, and everyone will see it on the walls of the concert hall moments later?

(Work by Troika.)

That the artist Ben Rubin in the lobby of the New York Times building creates an installation
that can stream continuous content from the paper’s vast archive—even the crossword
puzzles? And these are works that wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago.

Space:
Can design be introspective,
not just distraction?

(or:
“Is it my fault your kids
have ADD?”)
But are we just creating more distractions?

Space:
Can design be introspective,
not just distraction?

(or:
“Is it my fault your kids
have ADD?”)
Are we negating the space for meaningful reflection?

So backtracking a decade or so, one of my first jobs as Volume, was this little brochure for
CCA(then CCAC)’s Public Programs.

It was a tri-fold brochure and I had 2 empty panels. The idea on the left was to create a little
call list calendar that indicated what days the events fell on, so you could call your friends to
go. (Ah, the innocent days before social media and smart phones...) For the right panel I
thought, “You know, we don’t get a lot of so-called white space for reflection—in print or life
— so let’s make some.”

If you were lucky enough to see Arcade Fire in their early years, they usually started the show
by playing a song in the crowd. The lead singer, Win Butler, in an interview remarked that they
stopped doing this because they felt too many people were snapping photos, taking videos, or
calling their friends rather than relishing this amazing moment right in front of them. Now the
Arcade Fire’s hard line isn’t going to change anything, necessarily—hell, I take photos at
concerts with my phone all the time.

But I worry that design coupled with technology is starting to be the equivalent of the audio
tour in museums. Maybe some of you like the audio tour and I can understand the desire to
learn some background about the art on display. Personally, I don’t like it because I get
information at the cost of contemplation and reflection. This is the dilemma of our times, and
we designers are right at the heart of it.

DESIGN

TECHNOLOGY

I worry that these new technologies are too often the tail wagging the design dog. That they are
already the default and making us lazy as designers. Let’s make an app! Let’s use social media!

Does anyone know what this is the score to? 4’33’’. It’s a piece by John Cage, which is basically
a pianist sitting still at the piano and does nothing for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

“I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry. We need not fear these silences—
We may love them”—John Cage

Instead of the iPad, why can’t the new paradigm for a magazine be a live presentation and NOT
documented for a change?

Instead of the Kindle, why can’t the new paradigm for the book instead be a performance by
actors live on stage? This is the play, “Gatz!” which is a cast performing The Great Gatsby—the
entire text—as a play.

Instead of an online social network, why not create a restaurant to connect and engage
members of a rural community? Like the Pie Lab restaurant in Greensboro, Alabama that has
single-handedly help revitalize this small town?

Peter Saville is famous for designing the record sleeves for bands like New Order in the 1980s,
shown here. With these sleeves, he talked about wanting to create a pause or space within the
context of the busy, commerce-obsessed world; to make a sly commentary on commercialism
while still embracing it. I like this idea, even more so in our technology / information-
saturated culture. And it was this kind of strategy we applied to this next project.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
“YBCA: You” Campaign

Just this year we were asked by the Bay Area museum, YBCA, to create a new identity and
campaign around a new program YBCA: You, that for $10 / month, gives you access to VIP
events, free tickets to YBCA events, and even a personal art coach who will walk you through
exhibits, give you homework, etc.

YBCA: You
-“This is the future of YBCA”
-Populist
-Social
-Inclusive, friendly, even fun
-NOT prescriptive, educational

YBCA is seeking to attract new audiences and cast the organization in a more populist light. It’s
goal is to make new and challenging art more social, less “educational”.

We’ve worked with YBCA before, and they are very open to offbeat ideas. This was a campaign
we did three years ago which involved graffiti-like disruption of banal photographs. They’re the
rare arts organization that feels they don’t just have to lead their promotion with the exhibition
content. And, luckily, their idea of inclusive is not the dumbed-down kind.

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materials. Many early ideas struggled with not being undone by the amount of info that needed
Initially, they hamstrung us by demanding that we put all the benefits of the program on all the

YOU

YOU

YOU

YOU

YOU
YOU

YOU

YOU

YOU

YOU
Sometimes the most obvious solution is the best one, if you can bring some complexity and
originality to it. If this is “YBCA: You,” it should be about the people coming to the museum.
And everyday people, not just the arty hipsters (though there are some of those here, too). It’s
not about what YBCA is offering, but the reactions and emotions the offerings trigger in
people, which vary widely depending on who one is.

So we collected a wide breadth of heads and filler and got to work. This was the best client
meeting we’ve ever had. The director quietly solicited everyone’s opinions, and then said, “I’ve
waited 20 years for a campaign like this. It’s fucking brilliant!” Then he got up and gave both
Adam and I a hug. (It’s all downhill from here, folks!)

And as more of these heads are combined, the more “social” and inclusive the implications.

We haven’t got all the numbers in yet, but we do know that the is has generated a lot of buzz
with audiences, and partially because we refused to over explain the idea and let the audience
“use” it in the way they saw fit.

We’re hopefully going to roll out a phase 2, which will involve blank face imagery that we will
have artists create limited “portrait editions” for sale, as well as wild post them to allow the
people on the street to get involved. What’s funny is that YBCA has been besieged with
requests to buy posters of some of the heads without any artist (other than us) involved. Who
says stock photography can’t be turned into art?

When I went to check out the wavy wall in front of YBCA a week after it had been installed, I
saw no less than three separate instances of this kind of activity in the course of 30 minutes.
People wanted to engage with the wall in ways one rarely sees with what is essentially outdoor
advertising. And if you and your clients have the courage to resist the urge to say everything,
and instead create room for contemplation and participation, it’s probably more memorable
and meaningful.

One last thing.

One last thought before I go. Well, maybe a few. But around the same topic.

Happiness
=
?

In a sense, taking a break like I did was, inadvertently, a search for happiness. Maybe it’s these
apocalyptic times—Sandy, these rainstorms—but it seems like everyone is really focused on
what will make them happy. Within the first month on my break I realized very quickly that I
am very lucky to do what I do, whatever the successes and failures. Design has so many
potential outlets and paths, that I will never long for creative stimulation.

Happiness
=
?

That’s enough to make me happy.

Which brings me back to our friend, Mr. Sagmeister.

Stefan is actually making a MOVIE about how to be happy. Now Stefan has his little list of
what he thinks will make all of us happy, and he’s entitled to that opinion—I respect his
opinion enough to at least listen to what he has to say.

But I actually think he’s overselling it. Here’s my take:

Now, I may be a seemingly happy dude, but along with the neurotic Jews on my father’s side of
the family, I also come from a long line of tortured inventors and artists on my mother’s side.

My great grandfather and namesake, Foster Reznor, invented the Reznor gas heater but was
also know for being a moody guy. And (a little name dropping here)—

my cousin is Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame. (No, I can’t get anyone tickets to shows.
We’ve met a few times and that’s it.)

It is simply
unreal to think
I have made it this far,
To think that I tossed almost everything away
to get to this point.
A new deal, noway are you going!”
they said,
their faces flustered in anger.
“There is no way youcan just
pick up and leave. You have
obligations to nobody I know.
Every face is new.
There is a slight knot in my stomach,
like that first day of Kindergarten,
when you leave the care
of your parents for the first time.
Only thank God
they aren’t here toforget her face.
It will not exit at the sound
my memories, not
even of
some sort ofmentalanywhere Ion
plant mybody
evacuation. can

damnplanet
ring
this , but my mind

sp
drifts backhome, where I was
being limited in too many ways.
Now, surrounded by peers
who fuel my fire
rather than struggle to put it out,
I am coming out of my shell.
A shell thatI’m crawling right
back into. I
won’t initiate
something newhere, because I still attach
myselfto those I thought I had left
behind. HereI thinkI’ve started this
new
only damn people Ilife.
But
the am
intimate with are the
ones I writeto who are
3,000miles away. I complainabout
being
own fault,
alonefeel
my God, I
and it’s my
here,
like a new man whocan’t
fucking the
leave

behind
past
him.

But, hey, see the resemblance? This is a poster I did in design school around the same time as
this photo. Trent is amazingly successful, capping his career with an Oscar a few years ago, as
well as getting married and having two kids. But the few times I’ve ever really spoken to him,
I’ve never gotten the sense he’s worried about being happy. He’s worried about being as
creative as possible, and if that means getting a little tortured and angry to get to that point,
that’s OK.

And that’s true for me, too. The biggest realization I had on my break was that I will ALWAYS
be tortured and conflicted when it comes to my work. And that’s OK. It’s not a self-destructive
thing. It’s what makes me a better designer. (Though I love the idea of getting beat up, putting
my hand on some glass, throwing up blood on it, and then using whatever print it leaves
behind as the logo.)

It’s not about trying to find the generic how-to list to be happy, it’s about being engaged with
the world, which leads to your own kind of happiness. But what does it mean to “be engaged”?
It’s probably no accident that these last nuggets on how to do this come from two authors not
known for being cheerful. David Foster Wallace in his Kenyon College commencement speech
tells this story of two fish who encounter an older fish that asks “How’s the water?” The two
young fish look at each other and one says, “What the heck is water?” The moral? Having an
intentional awareness of the world around you.

He also talks, though, about the deliberateness in how and what you choose to engage with.
Whether it’s as general as your outlook on the world, to the objects you choose to surround
yourself with. My desk is usually a mess, but by surrounding myself with these things—some
beautiful, some sentimental—I stay engaged, challenged, and that makes me happy.

But it’s not enough to just choose things. If anything that’s the curse of our age—too much
choice. Too many options. Jonathan Franzen, in his Kenyon College address—

says that to experience the rewards of life, to be happy, you can’t just “like” something and
move on.

You have to “get down in the pit” and LOVE it, whether it’s design, another person, a book, an
animal, a work of art, your skateboard, a song, whatever. It needs to be something specific, and
you have to be willing to engage it directly, where you might get embarrassed, you might fail,
you might feel pain. Not cheer from the sidelines. Not fill in for a few minutes. Play the whole
damn game as if your life depended on it.

Then, you might be happy. And hopefully a better designer, too.

Thanks.

eric@volumesf.com
volumesf.com
@ericfheiman
@VolumeSF

Thanks.

This Is NOT A Sagmeister

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