Soul Man (long form)

Alt Group’s
 Clem Dev­ine recently inter­viewed graphic designer and author Adrian Shaugh­nessy — a speaker at Semi-Permanent 2010. The inter­view prin­ted in ProDesign 107 was abridged, so here’s the full deal, with some more examples Shaughnessy’s work.

So I sup­pose we start at the begin­ning — I note you’re a self taught designer, why graphic design, where did this interest come from? Your form­at­ive ‘lens’ must be dif­fer­ent to tra­di­tional design gradu­ates, what effect has a self-taught edu­ca­tion had on your prac­tice and how you think about graphic design?
The first thing to say is that we are talk­ing about a dif­fer­ent era. It was a pre-Mac era when design­ers did everything by hand. I was work­ing as a copy checker in a big tra­di­tional design stu­dio. I wasn’t much good at copy check­ing but I saw, for the first time, art­work — old fash­ioned pas­ted up boards. I fell in love instantly. I just knew this was what I wanted to do.
I had a vague idea early on that I would like to be an illus­trator. I could draw, but when I dis­covered typo­graphy and lay­out, I knew this was really what I wanted to do. I per­suaded the studio’s art dir­ector to take me on. I showed him a few draw­ings I’d done and he said, OK, go and sit over there.
I cant really say that I received a train­ing: in real­ity I mainly had to learn by watch­ing — some­thing I con­tinue to do even now. I was able to ask some very exper­i­enced design­ers how cer­tain things were done. They would usu­ally give me a few minutes to explain stuff like lead­ing and how to spe­cify typefaces. But I never felt I could ask any­one to explain any­thing a second time. It wasn’t their job to help me. The out­come of this way of learn­ing was that I became a very ‘pro­fes­sion­ally’ minded designer. I had no concept of exper­i­ment­a­tion, or the notion that a designer could have a voice — ideas that design stu­dents today take for gran­ted. All I wanted to do was make my work as pro­fes­sional and ‘on-brief’ as pos­sible.
This made me a very con­ven­tional and unad­ven­tur­ous designer. I got my sat­is­fac­tion from mak­ing my cli­ents happy. It was a few years before I real­ised that I could have an opin­ion about design and that it was some­times OK to dis­agree with clients.

Who were your bench­marks at the form­at­ive stage in your career, whose prac­tice did you match your­self against, and why?
As I say, my stand­ards were purely pro­fes­sional. Per­son­ally, I liked a lot of rad­ical design — record cov­ers etc — but I didn’t allow myself to think that I was in any way con­nec­ted to that world of adven­tur­ous visual expres­sion. I was con­tent doing pro­fes­sional problem-solving work, and never thought to have any other bench­marks. That all changed when I star­ted my stu­dio in 1989. By that time, I had been rad­ic­al­ised and I was no longer inter­ested purely in graphic design as a prob­lem solv­ing busi­ness tool. I was into the idea of the designer as author — but still with a pro­fes­sional focus.

What’s the attrac­tion in found­ing a design stu­dio?
In my case it was because I had worked for some people who were in danger of turn­ing me off design, so I finally plucked up the cour­age to start my own stu­dio. It was also to do with the idea of col­lab­or­a­tion. Up until start­ing Intro, I had been forced to work with people I didn’t respect. Sud­denly I could choose the people I worked with — I could even choose people who were bet­ter than me — which was a real break­through moment when I real­ised that. There was one other major factor. I found the per­fect busi­ness part­ner. She wasn’t a designer! She loved design but she also loved pro­ject man­age­ment and fin­ance: I hated both. So she took care of those aspects of our stu­dio, while I looked after the cre­at­ive work and the cli­ents, both of which I loved doing. I don’t think Intro would have worked if I’d gone into part­ner­ship with another designer. But it worked really well. At one point we were 40 people and won a lot of awards. Intro is still going, but after 15 years of 12 hour days, I needed a change.

Design­ing or writ­ing, which is bet­ter and why?
One of the reas­ons I gave up stu­dio life was to con­cen­trate on writ­ing. I am a slow writer and need lots of think­ing time (no train­ing yet again!). I said earlier that I star­ted off as being a very pro­fes­sion­ally focused designer: in a way that never changed, and even when I became com­mit­ted to rad­ical design, I was never inter­ested in defy­ing cli­ents. I always wanted to take them with me. My philo­sophy was that they could achieve the out­comes they wanted, but they could do it more suc­cess­fully by not resort­ing to for­mu­laic design. But one of the things that I like most about writ­ing is that I really am ‘the author.’ I am very rarely asked to change any­thing I write. Of course, the down side of this is that you can’t earn a liv­ing being a design writer. Which brings us to one of the immut­able laws of design: the more money involved the more con­trol the cli­ent wants — when there is no money, free­dom is greatest.

Design is inex­tric­ably linked to busi­ness, and often the busi­ness of design is over­looked in favour of the cre­at­ive out­put, how do you man­age that rela­tion­ship, or encour­age other design­ers to engage in it?
I sup­pose it depends on what sort of designer you are talk­ing about. If you think about the big brand­ing agen­cies, then its all about the ‘busi­ness of design’ and very little about cre­ativ­ity. They sell them­selves as highly pro­cess driven man­age­ment con­sult­ants, not design­ers. If you then look at the other end of the spec­trum — the small cre­at­ive groups who do all the work you see in the magazines, it becomes clear that they usu­ally think only about the cre­ativ­ity and neg­lect the busi­ness side of things. Of course, there are excep­tions to these rules, but gen­er­ally they hold true. For me its about get­ting these two sides in bal­ance. My way of deal­ing with this was to go into part­ner­ship with a busi­ness per­son. I strongly advise other design­ers to con­sider this route, too. The best advice I’ve shared on this sub­ject was from the bril­liant Amer­ican illus­trator Brad Hol­land (read a Varoom inter­view here), who said that most cre­at­ive people think its good to be bad at busi­ness — it’s not. You don’t have to be bad at busi­ness to be a good cre­at­ive per­son: but if it’s not in you (busi­ness sense), then you must get someone who can do it.

Did you lose your soul while writ­ing the book (How to be a Graphic Designer Without Los­ing Your Soul)? Or did you find sal­va­tion? Or am I being melo­dra­matic?
Well, you seem to think I had a soul to start with. I cer­tainly didn’t find sal­va­tion — that doesn’t seem any nearer than it ever did. The reason I added “Without Los­ing Your Soul” to the title was as a light­hearted way of say­ing that I met lots of bit­ter design­ers who blamed cli­ents, their edu­ca­tion, the briefs they got or the people who employed them for their lack of suc­cess as a designer. Here’s an example of what I mean. I’ve often inter­viewed design­ers and listened while they told me that they never got any good briefs. When I asked them to tell me about these briefs, they seemed great to me. The prob­lem wasn’t the briefs — it was the designer. So I wanted to see if I could write a book about the ‘grubby’ bits of being a designer. When you read inter­views with star design­ers they only ever talk about the good bits — but what about when a cli­ent refuses to pay your bill or rejects your idea without dis­cuss­ing it with you. I wanted to see if I could rethink the whole pro­cess and see if there were a few simple pro­cesses that design­ers could use to avoid disappointment.

After Stu­dio Cul­ture, what do you think are ingredi­ents that make a great design stu­dio? How do you con­tinue to keep a studio’s pot on the boil? (As an aside, why is the type so small in Stu­dio Cul­ture? I do like Her­mes, but at that size it drives me mad.)
Ok, let me answer the first part of the ques­tion first. I don’t think there is any one answer to these ques­tion. I like the fact that if you read the inter­views in Stu­dio Cul­ture you will find that every­one has their own solu­tion to these prob­lems. Some stu­dio bosses are auto­crats; oth­ers are benign part­ners who work in har­mony with their employ­ees. I tend towards the lat­ter view. I believe in non-hierarchical stu­dios where every­one shares the joys and pains equally. One of the ways you keep a stu­dio on the boil is through reg­u­lar infu­sions of new blood. Intro­duce the right new people (at any level — junior or senior) and you will gal­van­ise your stu­dio in a pos­it­ive way.
As regards the small type in Stu­dio Cul­ture — I get this a lot. What can I say? Doesn’t seem too small to me. But hey, the cus­tomer is always right. We hope to have a PDF ver­sion soon, which will allow read­ers to set the type at any size they like.

Do you think there is a magic num­ber for stu­dio size? Erik Spieker­mann was quoted in your book as say­ing you can have 150 staff, but the work never gets done by more than 5 people, do you agree?
I thought Erik’s com­ment was spot on. Abso­lutely true. Of course, the big stu­dios will argue that it’s not just the five people who work on a spe­cific pro­ject that count, it’s also the sup­port and ancil­lary staff — fin­ance, IT, etc. But I’m not a fan of big design groups. As I said earlier, at Intro we were 40 people at one point, and although it was excit­ing and I learned a lot, it was also self-defeating since we had to bring in people who didn’t under­stand our cul­ture (it was dur­ing the dot com boom).

What’s the best stu­dio you’ve worked in (apart from Intro) what factors made that cul­ture bet­ter than any other?
I hated all the stu­dios I worked in prior to Intro. I often think that I would have benefited from work­ing at some­where like Pen­ta­gram or Wolf Olins, but work­ing for badly run stu­dios meant that I learned a lot of valu­able les­sons — like the cor­rect way to value people, and how to reward suc­cess both fin­an­cially and in terms of recog­ni­tion of effort. In the badly run stu­dios these were things that were always poorly handled. It made me determ­ined to act dif­fer­ently when I star­ted my own studio.

Can you have ‘good cul­ture’ and bad work and vice-versa?
Inter­est­ing ques­tion. If people are unhappy, they are almost cer­tainly not going to do good work or pull together as a cre­at­ive unit. I don’t know many design­ers who are happy pro­du­cing ‘bad work’ even when they are paid a lot of money and work in sleek well-oiled stu­dios. Even the most reac­tion­ary design­ers want to do good work. So, I’d have to say that bad cul­ture will res­ult in bad work.

What was the motiv­a­tion for Varoom magazine? What sparked your interest?
As I men­tioned before, my first cre­at­ive ambi­tion was to be an illus­trator. This changed when I dis­covered graphic design and typo­graphy. But the interest always lingered, even through the 90s when illus­tra­tion was at a low point, usurped by the Mac and new soft­ware which allowed design­ers to do many of the tasks that they pre­vi­ously asked illus­trat­ors to do. So, when I was offered the chance to launch a magazine devoted to illus­tra­tion I jumped at the chance. But I had another reason. I wanted to edit a magazine that reflec­ted my own interests in how a cre­at­ive magazine should be designed, edited and writ­ten. I insisted on com­plete cre­at­ive free­dom. I appoin­ted the design­ers Non Format to design the magazine. And I wrote and com­mis­sioned art­icles about the way illus­tra­tion is now a plur­al­istic, multi-faceted activ­ity that is prac­ticed by a new breed of illus­trat­ors who no longer sit by the phone wait­ing for the next com­mis­sion, These people work in install­a­tions, use 3D soft­ware, incor­por­ate pho­to­graphy, and even band together in col­lect­ives.
The other really import­ant aspect for me was that I learned to be an editor. I found the role was sim­ilar to my old role as cre­at­ive dir­ector of a stu­dio, except at Varoom I didn’t have lots of dif­fer­ent cli­ents, and I had total con­trol over the con­tent. Also about the time I star­ted edit­ing Varoom, I began think­ing about form­ing my own pub­lish­ing com­pany. Edit­ing Varoom was great exper­i­ence for this. I edited nine issues of Varoom and then left to start Unit Edi­tions — which is the main focus of my activ­it­ies now.

What makes work­ing for the music industry so attract­ive, is it cre­at­ive free­dom, or quite the oppos­ite?
Ah, how long have you got. I’ve pro­duced four books on design for the record industry (three Sampler books, and Cover Art By: — all pub­lished by Laurence King Pub­lish­ing). I’ve always loved music and when I star­ted Intro we were pretty much a music design stu­dio. We found that in the early 90s it was still pos­sible to do really inter­est­ing work. The album cover was still cent­ral to a band’s iden­tity. We also made music videos and some of the first music web­sites. But as time passed we noticed that a new spirit had entered the music biz. Where once you worked with industry people who had been in bands now you dealt with people who who had been mar­ket­ing train­ees at Uni­lever or Coca Cola. Gradu­ally the budgets star­ted to evap­or­ate and also the cre­at­ive free­dom, too. 

Even today it is still pos­sible to do inter­est­ing work in the music industry. But it is almost impossible to make money doing it (you will cer­tainly struggle to run a stu­dio on music budgets), and the work is becom­ing less interesting.

What are the trends you’re see­ing in design edu­ca­tion, what types of design­ers do we need, versus what we’re get­ting?
I’m see­ing a big rise in interest in design with a social focus. Where once all the stu­dents I met wanted to design CD cov­ers, I now meet stu­dents who want to make the world a bet­ter place. I also see a redress­ing of the bal­ance between design as visual com­mu­nic­a­tion and design as self-expression. Twenty years ago design­ers were taught only how to design sham­poo labels. After the the­ory revolu­tion in the 90s, this swung in favour of the designer as author. Now I see a wel­come rebal­ance. I still meet design stu­dents who talk like artists, but I’m meet­ing far more who have a bal­anced view about the role of the designer as com­mu­nic­ator and author.

Out of the teeth of the reces­sion a new eco­nomy is emer­ging. What’s design role in this new mar­ket­place? How is the face of design chan­ging?
We have yet to see how the new eco­nomy will change life for design­ers. There are a lot of people — design­ers and non-designers — who want to see things go back to the way they were. But I really hope we are enter­ing a new phase, and I believe that design­ers have a big role to play in a world where com­mer­cial yard­sticks are no longer the only way of gauging suc­cess. I think the rise of interest in ‘design think­ing’ and using some of the men­tal agil­ity that design­ers intu­it­ively pos­sess to solve some of the world’s knot­tier prob­lems is real­istic. I cant tell you how many times I’ve sat in meet­ings with cli­ents who have dis­missed good ideas put for­ward by design­ers simply because they didn’t under­stand them or because they were not backed up by the evidence-based jus­ti­fic­a­tion that busi­ness people usu­ally need. I call it ‘what if’ think­ing and it’s some­thing that design­ers are good at.

What are the skill sets estab­lished design­ers need to adapt to and young design­ers need to learn?
Well, estab­lished design­ers need to adopt a policy of con­stant learn­ing. And come to think of it, that’s exactly what young design­ers need to do, too. The minute you think you know everything you are dead — cre­at­ively speak­ing, of course.

What excites you about the future of design?
The role of design think­ing in solv­ing busi­ness and social design prob­lems. I think Bruce Mau is doing some really inter­est­ing work in this area. Lots of people are talk­ing about it, but he’s actu­ally doing it.
I’m still excited by the aes­thet­ics of design — I love the lan­guage and sym­bol­ism of graphic design and I’m con­stantly excited by the abil­ity of design­ers to cre­ate type an image based work that moves me.

Links:

uniteditions.com
twitter.com/ajwshaughnessy
shaughnessyworks.com