March 2006 Archives
DID I JUST SAY THAT OUT LOUD?
I don’t think there is a designer alive that hasn’t felt the sting of criticism. The fact that the critic isn’t as enthusiastic as you are about what you just designed makes your blood boil.
“The Cretin. The Neanderthal. The pig. No, pigs are useful—for bacon and sniffing out truffles. I can’t believe that slug has the manual dexterity to sign my check…did I just say that out loud?”
That's a quote from Tibor Kalman the thorny partner of M&Co. The May/June issue of STEP inside design has a story on M&Co and what it was like to work for the late Kalman. The feature has perspectives on M&Co’s style of “wrong thinking” from former employees such as Stephen Doyle [Doyle Partners], Alexander Isley [Alexander Isley, Inc.] and Emily Oberman [Number 17]. After reading the story I needed a refresher on Kalman so I went back and picked up my copy of Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist.
Kalman’s approach was legendary; caustic, confrontational and often contradictory, but his affect on the design world in the Eighties was undeniable. His take on doing the same job more than twice? "The first one, you f*** it up in an interesting way; the second one, you get it right; and then you're out of there" [Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist].
My first makeover for the Dynamic Graphics Makeover issue [June/July 2006] is a newsletter—or more accurately a calendar—for a Church's youth program. It's currently two quarter-folded 11 x 17 sheets of paper printed both sides and mailed. The problem is the newsletter is confusing and hard to follow, largely because information is being repeated two and three times. Often this copy duplication happens because design "creep" sets in—someone picks up an existing piece and adds to it rather than rethinking and redesigning it.
Solving this specific problem was pretty straight forward though. First I read the entire newsletter—multiple times.
