April 2, 2013

Interview by Tina Essmaker

 

Describe your path to becoming a graphic designer.

I was always fascinated with typography. I remember being four or five years old and carving letterforms into the wall above my bed, even though I didn’t yet have the ability to form them into words.

When I was in high school, graphic design was called commercial art, which was a pretty unsexy term. During those years, I sent away for an Osmiroid pen, which was advertised every week in the back of the New Yorker magazine. With that, I taught myself calligraphy, still not understanding that this would have any relation to what I’d be doing later in life.

That same summer, when I was 16, I took my first trip to Italy with my parents, who were both born there; it was their first trip back. I remember taking a flight into Milan, and as we were leaving the airport, the first thing I saw was an ad for Baci Perugina—that was the only type on it. I was immediately fascinated by the billboard, which showed a couple in a passionate embrace. I knew that Baci meant “kisses”, but I didn’t know that it was advertising at all. It didn’t matter; I was smitten. It was a three-way epiphany for me because that’s when I fell in love with type, food, and Italy all at once. I still didn’t know what graphic design was, but I would find that out later.

Were you born and raised here in New York?

No, I was born and raised in New Jersey, which I never forgave my parents for. I’ve lived here my whole adult life, though, so I consider myself to be a New Yorker.

Where did you go to college?

I went to Skidmore College where, if you couldn’t paint, they told you that you were graphically oriented. That’s when I found out what graphic design was. I was very lucky because my painting professor also happened to be the graphic design teacher and he took me under his wing. That’s when I discovered that all the things I was interested in—letterforms, calligraphy, and books—were of interest because I loved graphic design.

Did you then study graphic design?

Yes, I did, but I realized that I needed to get out of there quickly and come to New York because, in those days, that was the only option if you were seriously interested in graphic design. In the middle of my senior year, I came to New York and wrangled my way into working as an intern at the Museum of Modern Art as well as taking a semester of classes at the School of Visual Arts. I never finished the semester because I found a job and, at that time, SVA had a policy that if you found a job before finishing school, they would give you credit and let you graduate. It was kind of bizarre because SVA had to give me credit for the semester, which in turn Skidmore gave me credit for and then, to my great amazement, I finally ended up getting a degree, which has never really done much for me.

I soon found myself employed by Herb Lubalin, who was a wonderful mentor. That was the place to be if you were interested in type because you were living and breathing type every day. Being there was a remarkable experience.

What year did you come to New York?

I came here in 1973. Actually, before I worked for Herb, I worked on special project books for Knopf. I was brought in to work with a high-profile British documentary filmmaker, Midge MacKenzie. She had just put together a Masterpiece Theatre series about the women’s suffrage movement in England, and this would be the book to tie in with the series on PBS. She had stipulated in her contract that she needed to work directly with a designer. I had never designed a book before and the art director who hired me was more concerned about my ability to get along with an author than he was about my design skills. So, we were put together in an office and nine months later, to everyone’s surprise, we emerged with a finished book. That was a great experience because Midge had the eye of a filmmaker, and I was able to gain an entirely new perspective from working with her.

After that, I went to work for Herb. I was there for two years and realized that even though I went there to get away from doing books, I actually loved designing book covers. I left there and was hired as art director at Pantheon Books, where I stayed for 11 years. That’s really where I found my design voice. The great thing about working in book publishing is that you can experiment with different periods of design history on a daily basis. I wasn’t interested in using existing typefaces; I wanted to design my own. And because Pantheon had a very Euro-centric list of authors, I was able to develop my interest in type and design history.

My interest in type and design history started when I was working for Herb because one of my clients there, Harris Lewine, was an extraordinary art director in book publishing. He had the distinction of having been fired from every job position he had ever held. With his encyclopedic grasp of design history, he taught me the importance of using historical reference as inspiration. Ultimately, I created my own archive by going to Europe on a regular basis—at least twice a year—and collecting reference from flea markets, which became the basis for everything I’ve done since then.

When you worked at Pantheon and started designing your own type, was anyone else doing that?

No, this was when phototype was just starting to happen and before that, everything was set in hot metal. Everybody wanted to use standard fonts, but I just wasn’t satisfied doing that. I didn’t realize this until years later, but what I was really doing was developing type treatments for the title of the book and approaching it more like a logo. I wanted each book to have its own personality and that couldn’t be achieved with standard fonts. Again, I was lucky because it was appropriate to do that for the types of books I was working on. The other thing to note is that I was collaborating with a lot of really talented illustrators and made a concerted effort to combine the type and image together. I also tried to encourage illustrators to create their own type. I would sketch it out for them and then ask them to actually draw it so it would become part of the illustration, which makes for a stronger design, whether it’s a book cover or logo.