7 Questions

Among our first priorities on any Saturday is opening the door to UnBeige HQ and locating our freshly delivered copy of The New York Times, bloated with all manner of colorful weekend inserts. We shuffle furiously through the Best Buy circulars and Macy’s coupons to find The New York Times Magazine (and, if we’ve been especially good that week, T: The New York Times Style Magazine as well), and it’s distinctive cover has a way of setting the tone for the weekend, whether with exploding produce, a gilded manhole cover, a killer sugar cube, or most recently, conjoined twins that may share a mind. Meanwhile, the creative mind behind all of the New York Times magazines is award-winning design director Arem Duplessis, a veteran of Spin, GQ, and Blaze. He made time to answer our seven questions, and we detected a pleasing ocean/aquatic theme to his answers, which include mentions of drowning and sharks!

1. You’ll be presenting at next week’s ABSTRACT Conference in Portland, Maine. Can you give us a sneak preview of your talk?
I’ll be discussing our new content and our most recent redesign. How we approach design problems, and more importantly how we solve them.

2. What is your greatest graphic design or publication design pet peeve?
Magazines that are so clearly design derivatives of other magazines. A successful magazine/brand has an immediate identity that belongs to them. We all “borrow” from time to time but when it’s so bad that you cannot even tell which magazine you are in, there’s a real problem.

3. What is your best or most memorable design-related encounter?
A decade ago, I was on a shoot and was accused by an overbearing publicist of trying to “drown” her client. Literally. It wasn’t the best moment, but certainly the most memorable.

4. What is your proudest design moment?
I once designed a poster for my wife for an anniversary present. It had some personal writing in it, and it made her cry and laugh all at the same time. Sappy I know, but I’m keeping it real here. Read more

The June issue of Fast Company, celebrating the “100 Most Creative People in Business,” is covered in Conan O’Brien—nine of him, in guises ranging from Madonna to Moses—and ends with Margaret Rhodes‘ delicious backpage infographic about pastries (in honor of National Donut Day, which is this Friday, June 3). At the creative helm of all this creativity is Florian Bachleda, who since his appointment last fall, has dedicated his considerable talents to ensuring that the design of Fast Company is just as visionary as its subject matter. Bachleda, whose previous positions include creative director of Latina and design director of Vibe, was kind enough to pause his Memorial Day festivities to answer our questions about his lead-off presentation at next week’s ABSTRACT conference, career highlights (other than those involving O’Brien and exotic costumes), his summer reading list, and more.

1. You’ll be presenting at the upcoming ABSTRACT Conference in Portland, Maine. Can you give us a sneak preview of your presentation?
I’ll be talking about the four or five guiding principles of the ongoing Fast Company redesign. For previous titles, I’ve always employed specific design frameworks based on an editorial idea, so I’ll be sharing how that approach works, and doesn’t work, for Fast Company.

2. What is your greatest graphic design or publication design pet peeve?
People who don’t create content passing judgement on those who do.

3. What is your best or most memorable design-related encounter?
Three things: 1) Working for many years under Bob Newman, and trying to practice daily the lessons he taught me; 2) My first SPD Board meeting in 2002, and sitting at the same table with people like Diana LaGuardia, Janet Froelich, and especially Fred Woodward, who is the reason I’m a designer; 3) Having the opportunity to get to know George Lois, which is an experience and a privilege all it’s own.

4. What do you consider your proudest design moment?
Seriously, it’s every single day that I get to make a living doing a job I love. My father worked as a steel smelter for one company all of his life, from the age of 16 (he told the company he was 18) to 62. He never understood what I did, but he saw that I loved it. It’s a luxury he never had.
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If your art and design library contains a sizable number of cello-wrapped, sticker-laden volumes whose pages are stamped with the names of their previous institutional owners (“Property of Wyoming Public Library” indeed!), then you have probably discovered the wonders of Better World Books. The online bookseller’s vast selection, low prices, commitment to social responsibility (from carbon-neutral free shipping to donating millions to literacy programs), and kooky brand image make it a must-click whether you’re stocking up on books by Steven Heller (collect them all!) or tracking down an out-of-print exhibition catalogue. The Mishawaka, Indiana-based company is about to kick off “Shop from Work Week” to encourage cubicle-dwellers to shop online when they should be working. “It’s not every day you have the green light to shop from work,” says Better World Books co-founder Xavier Helgesen (pictured), who scours the web for old bikes, bike parts, and interesting cookbooks when not busy with his duties as vice president of textbooks. “Although being in the e-commerce business, I get to call it ‘comparative market research.’” With the procrastination-themed sale afoot, we took some time away from our fashion week preparations to ask Helgesen seven questions about books, branding, and building a better world.

1. First—we can’t help it!—what’s your favorite book?
I love too many books to name for a whole bunch of reasons, but a classic that is really tough to beat is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I remember first reading it in eighth grade and literally falling out of my chair laughing when the Vogon is reading poetry.

2. And what are you reading these days?
On the fiction end, I devoured The Road by Cormac McCarthy in a few days. It was stark and harrowing, but completely addictive. On the non-fiction end, Jamie’s Italy by Jamie Oliver is making me a much better cook and making me love Italy all the more.

3. Now that we’ve got that settled. How did better Better World Books come about?
Better World Books started with a single college book drive on Notre Dame’s campus in 2002. Our idea was to collect books that the college bookstore didn’t want and sell them online as a fundraising for the local community center. That is still the basic model we use today, though on a much bigger scale.
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Ever been tempted to ink your mother’s maiden name on your forearm in Helvetica Neue Bold? Imagined commissioning an indelible epidermal etching of lorem ipsum placeholder text to tell the world you’re a type A type nut? Fancy the lyrics of a Smiths song looping around your neck in perpetuity? Such distinctive inkings are the specialty of Ina Saltz (at right). The vivacious art director, designer, and writer continues her exploration of typographic tattoos in Body Type 2 (Stewart, Tabori, & Chang), the sequel to her best-selling Body Type: Intimate Messages Etched in Flesh.

The new book presents lush photographs of more than 200 tattoos—from a discreetly positioned Bell Gothic comma to an armful of Maori creation myths—alongside the ideas and emotions of their wearers. Saltz credits the boomlet in typographic tattoos to “the higher levels of education and cultural sophistication among those now choosing to get a tattoo. And, because we are living in a ‘golden age of typography,’ there is more awareness of the power of the letterform to express the meaning of the text.” In answering our seven questions, she explains the origins of Body Type, her own dream tattoo, and one of the book’s most memorable contributors.

1. How did you come to write Body Type?
I saw an amazing tattoo in 120-point Helvetica (lowercase) on a guy’s arm as I was taking the crosstown bus; I asked him if I could photograph it, and one thing led to another…shortly thereafter, I attended my first tattoo convention, and I noticed that, while there were many books on tattoos, there were none on typographic tattoos (which were the most interesting to me as a type geek). I loved the odd intersection of typography/literature/ poetry/lyrics/homage to the letterform with the edginess and commitment and passion of the tattooed and felt it needed to be documented. Also, I found the stories behind the tattoos to be equally fascinating (as did my readers); I may have been the first to include those stories along with the photographs of the tattoos.

2. What led you to write a sequel?
The first volume became a cult hit, and was sold everywhere from museum shops to stores like Urban Outfitters. Body Type inspired people from all over the world, many of whom sent me fan mail and photos of their tattoos. I had no idea it would resonate with so many different constituencies and cultures. Naturally the popularity of the first volume led to Body Type 2. I am already collecting even more wonderful typographic tattoos for volume three of Body Type!

3. Do you have any tattoos? If you were forced to get a typographic tattoo, what would you choose?
I do not have any tattoos, for a whole host of reasons. Chief among them: a phobia about needles, and the designer’s need to re-design at will; tattoos are very permanent! But if I were to get a typographic tattoo, it would be one which would signal to fellow type-lovers that I am a member of the tribe: an obscure dingbat from a favorite typeface, for example.

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Simple. Good. Designed to last a lifetime. That’s three ways to describe the products of Sausalito-based Heath Ceramics, the pottery founded in 1948 by Edith Heath, but “beautiful” is usually the first word that comes to mind. One of the few remaining mid-century American potteries (and the last one left in California), Heath Ceramics handcrafts tile and tableware in its original factory and recently opened a Los Angeles outpost with a storefront that looks plucked from an Ed Ruscha painting. The company is still going strong thanks to a dedicated team of artisans and Robin Petravic and Catherine Bailey (pictured above), the husband and wife team who purchased Heath in 2003 after careers designing products for the likes of Motorola and Nike. In answering our seven questions, Bailey, Heath’s creative director, tells us how she discovered Heath, why eBay isn’t the best place to buy ceramics, and the oddest custom order the company has received so far.

1. How and when did you first encounter Heath Ceramics?
I’ve always been interested in pottery from the early to mid century. When I was in college (in the late 80′s), I found a few pieces of Russel Wright‘s—this represented great American industrial design to me. Later, I was collecting Eva Zeisel and came across some Heath at vintage stores and also on eBay in the mid-to-late 90′s. The interesting thing is that I don’t think I really understood Heath until I entered the factory store in 2002. Unlike Zeisel’s distinctive and expressive forms that are evident even in a poor photograph on eBay, Heath’s beauty and uniqueness is understood once you pick up a piece, or at least when photographed in a way that the materials and textures can be understood.

2. How has your previous career as an industrial design consultant affected your approach/work at Heath?
It made me appreciate the holistic nature of Heath. As a consultant, I was focused on a specific design need of my clients. At Heath, I get to design the whole company and not just the brand and products, but I can steer the direction of the company based on my values and beliefs.

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What do you get when you mix hand-tufted New Zealand wool, a former cartoonist, and morphine? Dan Golden‘s top selling rug design (“Morphine,” pictured below). Golden has made a name for himself with whimsical, art-infused rugs that replace symmetrical designs and staid color combinations with cartoony characters like the froggy green alien who bids our planet “So long, Suckahs!” from a lush ground of magenta wool. As Golden expands with a range of new projects—including a collaboration with Odegard, a lighting collection with Swarovski, and a range of pillows—he took time to answer our seven questions. Read on to learn how he made the leap from the wall to the floor, what inspires him, and why people love morphine—the rug, not the drug.

1. How did you transition from making art on canvas/paper to rugs?
It was actually my business partner, Ford Lininger‘s idea. I had been looking for ways to expand the size and scope of my work for a while, and Ford had the vision to see how my drawings could translate into super high-end rugs. It was kind of one of those, “It’s so crazy, it just might work!” ideas that did work! I had been waiting for someone like Ford to see the potential in what I was doing, and help channel it in the right directions. For me, it was like YES! someone else shares/believes in my work/me, and let’s go for it—that’s a wonderful feeling.

2. What do you think makes one of your artworks particularly suitable for use on a rug?
I think with the first series, the cartoons, they are all banners or statements of attitude—morphine is the best medicine, so long, suckahs!, same old shit/crazy new shit, god wants me to be financially abundant—they are all very identifiable positions someone might take, relate to. They are—not to try to be all philosophical—basically, ruminations on bigger, deeper things, put in a way that most everyone can get into—simple, clean cartoons drawn in an earnest, slightly sloppy, real hand kind of way.

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Yesterday we told you about designer Edward Leida‘s new website and provided a peek into his to-do list for 2009. Today we present the W design director’s wonderfully detailed answers to our seven questions. Read on to learn what beverage Leida (at right, in a photo by Art Streiber) begins his work days with, how he snagged a meeting with and subsequent job offer from Wilburn Bonnell, and what he’s giving this holiday season (someone special is getting a vintage model poodle kit). As if the Paul Rand anecdote he shares below wasn’t gift enough.

1. You’re trained as both an industrial graphic and graphic designer. How does this unique background affect your perspective/design work?
For as long as I can remember, I was interested in knowing how
things worked. I took apart almost every small appliance in our home and then proceeded to try to put them back together—I drove my parents crazy. This natural curiosity spilled over into graphic design, so over the course of my education and career, I guess you could say that I’ve been trying to get inside of a letter.

My first jobs out of school were for design firms that worked on
projects in collaboration with architects, and this allowed me the ability to work in two dimensions as well as three. I was afforded an opportunity to see how things were made beyond the realm of print. Over the years, I met great craftsmen and artisans, and their passion for their work was a tremendous source of inspiration and envy. These guys deeply influenced my life and career—functionality, innovation, and craft are the building blocks to each and every design endeavor I embrace now because of my exposure to both worlds. I’m very blessed.

2. Describe a typical day at work as design director of W.
There really is no such thing as a typical day at W, but I can tell you that my day begins with a large green tea that I get from our cafeteria and a morning visit to our “wall,” where all the layouts that are in the current issue are posted. I’ll probably look at the wall at least five to six times during the course of the day and try to think of ways of shaking up the look of the pages. I never want things to get stale.

There will be chats with my editor-in-chief, visits with my art
director, and plenty of music listened to during the course of my day. Levity is also a big part of our office routine, and imitations of the staff—including myself and interns—are encouraged. No one is off limits! Our creative director has been my collaborator for 23 years, and we meet often during the day to discuss the current and future issues of the magazine as well as story ideas. Fortunately for the both of us, we share similar interests and tastes, so our vision for W is a singular one.

3. How do you divide and conquer the task of designing W?
The fashion layouts are the pages that I design myself, but I oversee the design of the entire magazine. My able-bodied staff designs the front of the book as well as the features and special sections. The mantra I instill is “Go crazy. Have fun. Or else, why bother?”

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Award-winning landscape architect David Font (at right) is the head of seven-year-old Font Designs, and so when presented with the opportunity to interview him on the eve of Design Miami, we had to begin with the obvious question: Does Font Designs ever get mistaken for a type foundry? “Yes, on occasion. Not very often though,” he told us. “When we first opened the firm we also had several inquiries from people thinking we were graphic designers.” That settled, we move on to the big news: Font’s extraordinary exhibition design for “Beyond Organic: Design in the State of Nature,” a themed satellite exhibition that is Design Miami’s first foray into mixing contemporary and historical design.

Showcased in a 6,000-square-foot space inside The Collins Building, “Beyond Organic” is meant to be an “an exuberant, witty, and inspiring celebration of the natural world reflected through objects” contributed by the likes of Moss, Richard Wright + Arik Levy, and Demisch Danant. Font’s exhibition design integrates the objects—here a Swarovski chandelier resembling cherry blossoms, there a pair of Max Lamb chairs sculpted from stone—into an organic environment that includes 50 pick-up trucks full of topsoil, more than 700 pieces of native and exotic plant material, and a large wall covered with patches of grass and slices of tree trunks. Below, Font tells us about how he approached the project, some of his favorite objects in the exhibition, and how he brings a little bit of the Italian Renaissance into the spaces of today.

1. How did you approach the assignment to create the interior environment for Design Miami’s “Beyond Organic: Design in the State of Nature” exhibition? What were your inspirations?
I researched natural indoor environments as they related to the art world and tried to do something that hasn’t been done. I didn’t want the landscape design or the art pieces to overpower, outweigh, or compete with each other. I wanted to create a cohesive and integral environment that flowed while avoiding certain pitfalls of making it too manicured. I wanted to achieve an unstructured, natural environment.

In terms of inspirations, one was one of the design objects that I was creating the exhibit to showcase: the Michele Oka Doner “Tara” chandelier (pictured at left), which is a candelabra made out of bronze that is in the form of a cut down tree stump. That piece, in particular, was inspiring because it really depicted what the aesthetics and overall theme should reflect. One of the challenges in organizing the space within the Collins Building was taking a rectilinear box and giving it a free-flowing design to mimic what the landscape is doing. We accomplished this by creating a curvilinear stage and carrying it throughout, having that pattern radiate out from that center stage.

2. “Beyond Organic” includes 50 design objects. Any favorites?
I have so many favorites, but there are two that stood out in particular; the candelabra that I explained was also a source for inspiration of the exhibit and the eight-foot Zaha Hadid “Iceberg” bench (pictured at left), which I appreciate because I understand the work behind the intricate design that it requires to create something that appears to be unstructured and free-flowing. It was one of the challenges I faced in designing the space.

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It’s been an exciting year for Print. The magazine took home a National Magazine Award for general excellence and a Magazine of the Year silver medal from the Society of Publication Designers. Now it has a new editor-in-chief. Former managing editor and Emdashes founder Emily Gordon (pictured at right) has replaced Joyce Rutter Kaye in Print‘s top editorial post, and amidst the whirl of new responsibilities, she made time to tell us about her plans for the magazine, which is “just a few years younger than John McCain and a heck of a lot hipper,” and how her path to Print was paved by an eccentric Victorian-era literary superstar.

1. What led you to Print?
A keenly eccentric Victorian named Mrs. Favell Lee Mortimer led me to Print. The magazine’s then-managing editor, Todd Pruzan, published a piece in 2005 in The New Yorker about Mortimer’s bestselling 1850s-era travel books, and the paradoxically provincial life that went along with them. (One of my favorite details is that she washed her pet parrot with soap and water, and tried to teach her donkey to swim in the ocean.)

I was so dazzled by Todd’s writing and his story of being so irresistibly drawn to a vintage book that he ended up scouring a British graveyard for the author’s headstone, and eventually republishing bits of her books into an anthology, that I wrote a post on Emdashes—a blog about The New Yorker I’ve done for nearly four years—raving about it. Todd and I began corresponding, and he sent me some issues of Print. I was struck by the gorgeous layout and the excellent writing and criticism—and by the fact that I, a hopeless magazine addict, had never read it before. Eventually, I contributed a review of the Complete New Yorker DVDs. The following year, my editor Jeremy Lehrer left the magazine to freelance, and I was hired to replace him as senior editor. Shortly thereafter, Todd went off to other things, and I became managing editor.

Read on for Emily’s plans for the magazine and why Print (and print) is alive and well, both on paper and online.

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A few years ago, Kate and Laura Mulleavy got some good advice. “We had designed ten pieces of clothing and we didn’t really know what to do with them,” says Kate, 29. “And someone told us, ‘Maybe you guys should go to New York.’” And so they did. After a blizzard-abridged plane ride from Los Angeles and a train ride from Boston, they were in Manhattan for the first time in their lives. Within two days, Women’s Wear Daily had called them in for a chat that would lead to their Rodarte collection being featured on the coveted cover of WWD. Today, having won critical acclaim, industry support, and the 2008 Swarovski Award for Womenswear for their otherworldly designs, the Mulleavys are among fashion’s brightest young stars. After a whirlwind fashion week, Kate (at left in the above photo, with sister Laura, 28, and model Liya Kebede) took time to answer our seven questions.

1. What was the inspiration for your spring 2009 collection?
Our spring collection was really inspired by Robert Smithson and earth or site-specific art. In a strange way, Laura and I were really interested in the idea of looking at works by Smithson and exploring the idea of remnants, so we kind of played with the idea of fossils, of skeletal shapes and silhouettes. And that’s really what we based the collection off of. In a lot ways, it was a mixture between science fiction and site-specific art. I think that the link in our mind was what’s left—this idea of remnants—and we kind of explored that in the show, which moved toward lightness and playing with color, borrowing from different science fiction palettes and this idea of outer space toward the end of the show.

2. You and Laura are both self-taught. How did you gain your design skills?
In all honesty, it’s just a lot of trial and error. We look at what we were doing at the beginning and see how it’s evolved slowly. We work a lot with tulle and draping, and that’s just kind of evolved from collection to collection. We are not afraid of trying new things. We always worked from the very beginning with a small team of people, and we learned a lot from them. I think that we jumped right into the idea of designing, but at the same time, there’s so much to learn every season that the learning process will span our career. We’re always learning. So I think that we weren’t intimidated by that, but we were also really open to knowing that there’s so much that you do have to learn and absorb, so just to take it one step at a time.

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