34. Books, Strategy, Plays, and Tortured Poets
Hi friends,
The semester is nearly over, the weather has turned, the garden is prepped and some peppers are already starting to come in (!!). The last few months have been busy and I’m itching for the change of pace that comes with summer. I have some projects in the works, a few of which are ready to share.
My new book, What It Means to Be a Designer Today, is out now wherever you get your books. This is a book I edited with Liz Stinson over the last two years for AIGA Eye on Design and features a wide-ranging collection of essays, both new and previously published, that try to make sense of the state of contemporary graphic design. (I previously announced the book here.) As I wrote before, I thought of this book, in some ways, as a new edition of Looking Closer, the graphic design anthologies from the 90s, and hope this book captures this moment in design writing.
Some nice people said nice things about the book like Ellen Lupton:
“Graphic design is a slippery, squishy blob. Is it dead or alive? Is it everywhere or nowhere? These smart, plucky essays show how graphic design oozes between disciplines, adding shimmer and shine to anything in its path”
and Michael Bierut:
"From the start, Eye on Design has been committed to finding new voices in design, uncovering stories no one else noticed, and detecting the faint heartbeats of soon-to-be major trends. I find myself returning to it again and again."
and Tiffany Jow:
“AIGA's Eye on Design has always been, to me, a refreshing outlier in the design-writing world. Honest, incisive, and important, its reporting rejected the adulation typical of the field, seeking out reality instead. This book speaks to its title statement with the publication's signature creativity and care-for its subject and its readers-capturing enduring ideas that may well impact us all."
I’m really proud of this one and I’m so excited it is out in the world. Fast Company ran an excerpt from the book, a great essay by Cliff Kuang on design’s role in the climate crisis. Buy it from Amazon or Bookshop or your local bookshop!
Speaking of books, the first printing of my last book, Where Must Design Go Next?, co-produced by Oro Editions and the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech, sold out last month. I just got word that a second printing is in the works and more will be available soon! If you didn’t get a copy before, you can order the second edition online now. You can also listen to the podcast episodes they were based on wherever you get your podcasts or at the ID site.
My latest essay for Fast Company is on the rise of strategy in design and branding studios. You can read it here. This piece comes out of some thinking I’ve been doing over the last few years. I’ve been interested in the increase of ‘strategy’ as an offering at branding studios: What is the overlap with strategy and graphic design? How do they help each other? What’s the difference?
Things started to click for me about a year ago when I started reading Lawrence Freedman’s massive book, Strategy: A History, where he defines strategy as the best word for “remains the best word we have for expressing attempts to think about actions in advance” and “being about maintaining a balance between ends, ways, and means; about identifying objectives; and about the resources and methods available for meeting such objectives.” I read these definitions as great descriptors of design too. Could strategy be a way to return design to it’s earliest roots?
For the piece, I spoke with Sarah Hromack, a strategist who I’ve followed for years, and Michael Rock and Susan Sellers of 2x4. 2x4 was one of the first studios I saw who incorporated strategy into how they talked about their work years ago. We talked about their work with Rem Koolhaas and OMA has being a key driver in adding strategy to their studio offerings. It now accounts for 30% of their business:
"We refer to the idea of the creative bridge," Rock told me. "There is a point in the studio where you have to make graphic choices and those are motivated by the strategic direction." 2x4, which was founded in 1994, began incorporating strategy into their client offerings nearly twenty-five years ago when they started working with AMO, the research arm of Rem Koolhaas's Office of Metropolitan Architecture in 1998. With Koolhaas, the studio was incorporating long research phases into their process before the design even began, including brand positioning, diagramming, and cultural critique and they realized this research had value for their clients, beyond the project they were hired for. They started hiring more people to focus on this side of the project — they were first hired as "researchers" — until strategy became a key vertical in the studio, alongside brand, environments, and digital. "Early on, clients would come to us with problems instead of projects," Sellers told me. "So we always approached this work from the point of view that this isn't about making a brochure that's blue but instead that a client wants to reposition an idea in some new way."
I’ve come to think that strategy is a big part of where the graphic design fields are headed next and I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this over the next few years. You can read the entire piece here.
I try to take on at least one graphic design project a year — to keep those muscles working, to try new things, to work with fun people — and I haven’t done any design work yet this year. If you have a project — I like working with brands, books, websites, and words — let me know! I have some availability over the next few months to take on new projects.
My big project of 2023, was working with J-Card Press, a new, independent publishing company based in California focused producing short biographies of the best alternative, indie rock, hip-hop, and riot grrrl groups of the past twenty to thirty years. I worked with J-Card on brand design and art direction. I worked with J-Card to develop their brand identity and design strategy, creating a modular system for book covers and typography allowing for each cover to be distinct while still representing J-Card as a series.
I’m excited that the company has officially launched, with their first title now available for pre-order: the first book-length biography of Brainiac, the groundbreaking band from Dayton, Ohio, written by Justin Vellucci! Head over to their site to pre-order and keep an eye out for more books coming soon!
Ok, that’s enough log-rolling, how about some links?
The best movie I watched recently was Mia Hansen-Love’s 2021 Bergman Island. It’s got all my favorite things: wayward intellectuals, beautiful landscapes, and subversive structuring. The landscapes reminded me of some of my favorite films — Eric Rohmer’s Four Seasons series — and the plot structure reminded me (slightly) of Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy. (It stars one of my favorite actors, Vicki Krieps, who’s captivating in everything!) Highly recommended.
I also really loved Shortcomings, the Randall Park directed adaptation of Adrien Tomine’s graphic novel of the same name. I adore the novel and this adaptation captures that spirit but updates it for 2024 (The screenplay was also by Tomine). Hua Hsu profiled Park last year for The New Yorker and visited the set to talk about the influence of the book on Park’s life and work.
I tore through Emma Cline’s The Guest and The Girls last month and loved them both. I think I liked The Guest more, it had a strange propulsion as I was unable to figure out where it was heading. Images from it are still rattling around in my head.
We blew through the Donald Glover-fronted Mr. & Mrs. Smith on Amazon remake which was delightful and subversive and strange — all the things I love in Glover’s increasingly surprising body of work.
GQ has a surprisingly lovely profile of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the balance between chaos and structure, family and work. I’m very excited to read Nicholson Baker’s new book on learning to draw and am reading every interview I can with Marilynne Robinson (as always) about her new book on Genesis.
This profile of Alan Sparhawk, of one of my favorite bands, Low, was heartbreaking and beautiful and inspiring.
I miss New York the most when I realize I can’t see the plays I want to see. Instead, I hope I can read Enemy of the People, Ibsen’s play that’s been adapted by Amy Herzog which seems to be getting good reviews (I have a collected Ibsen queued up to read this summer!). David Marchese interviewed Jeremy Strong, the play’s lead, for his last Talk column. It’s good. Also read this joint profile of the husband-wife team behind the adaptation.) This Lila Neugebauer profile in The New Yorker got me especially curious for her adaptation of Uncle Vanya too. (Speaking of theater, here’s the first trailer for Annie Baker’s directorial film debut, Janet Planet, which looks amazing.)
Rebecca Solnit’s London Review of Books essay, In the Shadow of Silicon Valley, should be required reading.
Longtime Florida governor and senator (and short-lived 2004 presidential candidate) Bob Graham died last week. My favorite fact about Graham was his meticulous note keeping. He supposedly had filled over 4000 pocket-sized notebooks with daily minutia — what he was eating, who he talked to, what car he was driving. As an obsessive documenter, I’m in awe of this commitment.
I write another newsletter for Scratching the Surface which features much more design-focused links (this one, I’m noticing, is lacking design). That newsletter is behind a paywall and helps support the podcast and my work generally. If you like what I do and want to help support it, you can do it over there!)
I’m writing this to you with the windows opened, listening to Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, which feels like it blends the intimacy of folklore/evermore with the gloss of 1989 and Midnights. “You’re not Dylan Thomas. I’m not Patti Smith.” is in the running for my favorite lyric of hers. Tavi Gevinson wrote a 75 page zine called fan fiction about Taylor, fandom, friendship and culture that she released for free online. I read everything Tavi writes but I’m especially looking forward to this. I’m going to start reading it tonight. You should too.
Thanks, as always, for your continued interest in my work. Feel free to respond to this with your thoughts, questions, or collaborations, or cultural recommendations. Happy (almost) summer,
J