Success=boredom.
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].
The entertainment industry’s stereotype is that the right to take it easy is the fruit of success, but in this fast moving world if you hesitate you risk losing.
My first design job was in retail advertising [Carson Pierre Scott]. When the Art Director hired me he told me he didn’t expect me to be “confident in my own work” for at least five years. What a relief is was to know that it was OK to feel that unsure of my work for next five years. I later learned not to confuse confident with comfortable. We all know the minute we don’t push to grow as designers we do ourselves, and our clients [or employers] a disservice.
I’ve told all the designers who’ve ever worked for me that when designing hurts you’re growing; if it doesn’t hurt you’re resting on past design success. I admit we’re all probably guilty of laying back at times, perhaps one can even make a case that in certain circumstances it’s the wise choice, but as long as we have designers like Tibor Kalman challenging us with ideas like “success=boredom”, we’ll have no excuses for getting bored.
Your very lucky to have an art director to inspire you like that. I've seen the extreme other end in my career of being told "just get it done" to now being truly challenged daily in my own observations of design. Thanks for the renewed inspiration that if it hurts then I am doing the right thing!
Well my second AD made up for it. He would come by my desk in the morning and say stuff like: "I cannot believe that someone who thinks they are a designer, would ever conceive of doing anything that even resembles this. What were you thinking?"
Then he'd have a Beefeater lunch and come back laughing and smiling and stamp everything you were working on with a red "BULLSHIT" stamp.
Frustrating.