I built a 24 foot long polka dotted tie. He built a giant iron anvil that weighed almost nothing. Damn. Who is this guy? Why is his stuff so much better than mine? I hate him. I won't miss him when he's gone.
That summer I was trying to figure out what design was.
I had changed majors from Physics to Design due to a casual tour of some place called "The School of Art and Architecture" given by a ravishingly beautiful artist who would later spend her life paying for that one hour, paying for that spring day when I barely paid attention to the school, only just enough to change my life, but barely.
I was playing catch up with the students who actually knew what they wanted to do in life (wonder how many of them are actually designers today?) Taking summer classes so that I could get out of college before I was dead.
The classes were called foundational and were based on the teachings of the Bauhaus, a school that was legendary for teaching the merging of art, craft and technology and later disbanded under the threat of Nazi destruction (modernism was un-German).
Later I learned that most of my mentors were actually trained in design by a fellow named Laszlo Moholy Nagy, one of the famous teachers from said Weimar school. But when I was taking those first classes, trying to figure out if they would really award a degree for tinkering in the shop and critiquing other artists like they were lambs to the slaughter, I had no idea I had stumbled into history.
We worked with our hands, we built things every day, the challenges were odd but trivial compared to solving fermat's theorem and figuring out quantum mechanics (things I clearly couldn't really hack but that had been giving me nightmares for 2 years).
I'm not competitive by nature.
I was so destroying everyone else in the class.
Art is not supposed to be about competition it would be like saying we should always compare apples and oranges.
Art is about internal expression. No?
Well there is still technique, still creativity, still provocation, still taboo. Not everyone seemed to understand that art is only interesting to others if its universal (rather than self-absorbed).
Why am I talking about art now instead of design?
This is but one example of my lack of comprehension. I later learned the difference and the ways that each complement the other but at the time I was all raw, spewing, holy crap I can't believe I'm paying for this, can't believe there are jobs to be had in this, is anybody watching, can anyone tell I'm having way too much fun, energy.
I slayed them (or at least myself and convinced myself I was slaying them). Except for that one over there. My nemesis.
He appeared out of nowhere waltzing into my consciousness the day he came wandering into the shop carrying a massive anvil as if it weighed nothing.
We were learning about one of the methods that you can use to spark creativity (change the scale).
For context I was a full paying member of the new wave at this point in my life. Flock of Seagull meets Wham! hair, preppy/trashed layering of yellow cardigan and torn parachute pants complete with requisite tie. Rector riot gloves, five o'clock shadow. Duran duran (who I didn't really like) would have been proud. Music? Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, The Cure, Howard Jones, The Police, Yaz.
So I decided to build a monster new-wave tie. Bright yellow, 24' long made of chicken wire, fabric and plaster. it would look like it had stepped off of someone's neck and was walking down the catwalk (right said, fred?)
He, on the other hand, knew what he was doing. Seemed to be born to design. Stunning stuff. Humbling. In fact I think it was at that moment that I began to understand that having a massive crushing ego is fine to help you convince yourself that you should continue with some hair-brained scheme, fine so that you could fail without falling apart, as long as you could also have no ego when you saw something wonderful. As long as you could appreciate the creative thinking, factor in the viewpoint, celebrate the cleverness, and learn most importantly learn from everyone, from everything. Get out of yourself.
I'm not sure how it happened exactly but I think he hated me as much as I hated him. I stewed all summer long. If that was the game I was going to have to start practicing for real.
When we finally actually talked (we were forced together during a road trip to a design conference in southern Illinois), we became fast, life-long friends.
I had to learn to get over myself. It turned out he was a mirror image of my insecurities and my creativity (I'm not ashamed to say that yes I am creative, its often so not the thing that matters though and usually gets you into more trouble than its worth).
Together we nearly destroyed, and ultimately (I hope) saved, our mentors' faith in the next generation.
We built a La Z Boy chair constructed entirely of one dollar appliances from the local salvation army store. Painted the white of graffiti killing white, all the cords woven into a decorative tail, waffle iron headrest, vacuum cleaner lumbar support, iron armrests. It was assembled using the famous paper-spike style of construction (drill a hole straight through the entire appliance with a very nasty drill bit and spike all the resulting components on a long shaft). We installed it in the central hall of the Architecture building halfway up the stairway on a landing. It lasted for over 5 years before some enterprising architectural professor assigned his class a model making exercise that involved found objects.
We invented and edited a student design magazine to wake up the sheep. We built an outpost/cafe that cantilevered out over the poor two-dimensional graphic design students haplessly struggling to make sense of Rubilith and Bodoni below.
We grew to a small horde of smart-ass design tyros. Punched human-shaped holes in the walls of the art school (or at least lets just say that someone who looked very much like us perhaps), designed inflatable televisions, body-blasting bass instruments, roamed the Italian countryside scavenging design artifacts from bombed out hospitals and poking fun at pompous design gods (was that Philippe with the food stains all over his t-shirt?).
We authored a collection of dangerous appliances and furnishings and left a swath of dazed and confused art professors in our wake.
I think I turned out to be the one who went to the dark side.
He walked toward the light, one part Banksy before Banksy was out of diapers (leaving his mark on the streets and buildings of Europe as I slept off the wine and cheese), and one part Mother Teresa.
Whenever I needed inspiration, needed a break from the adult life I had carved out of solidified corporate effluvia, I'd talk to him.
He was off to Sierra Leone to help teach the local villagers how to make furniture for their hospital, living in 100 degree, 100% humid weather with no running water and monkey brains on the menu. Later, when one of the many coups rippled through the land he was evacuated only to sneak back over the border to make sure that the locals had been paid for their goods.
I was designing marketing materials to help sell flavoring (packed with hormone and antibiotic goodness) for cardboard (how do you think chicken's stay so healthy that they can donate all those McNuggets to the common good?). Yes it was one more reason that I stopped eating meat.
He was building his own apartment building in one of the least safe places in our hometown, helping a community bootstrap back from the edge.
I was breathing in rooms full of benzene as I glued and cut my fingers to fit the models I was proposing as saviors for this or that commercial product, corporate showroom, or "important" event.
He was teaching underemployed and unemployed citizens how to work with their hands, placing every one of them in a job. Fighting the odd bureaucracies that crop up even among the best of intentions.
I was nearly killing people as they were blown off of perches I designed (four stories above crowds of 500 or more), foolishly thinking I could create memorable experiences from photoshopped fever dreams.
He was planting edible gardens, working within his community to make things better. Reminding me why I became a designer (or what I should do with my newfound skills).
I was exorcising my demons yes. I was learning yes. I was working towards redemption. But only slowly. How close creativity can come to fiasco. Be careful what you dream for.
I'm slowly learning how to hack the culture of a corporation, how to bend the collective mediocrity of large organizations towards a better path. Its my secret ode to my mirror image and the mentors that taught us that we could change the world if we committed our lives to be designers of good.
I don't see him that much anymore due to distance and time. At times I get the impression that just as before we are both watching the other. Silently wishing we had done this or that. Silently enjoying the simple acts of creativity that the other one makes.
Lesson 1: Design is not about the lone creative genius.
I look back and realize that I stumbled on more than just a career when I changed majors that day. I like to think that when we aren't just making ends we are both working slowly but surely towards the goal of a better world. A lifetime of silly experiments and big ideas, of public service and corporate hacking, of setbacks and failures, of designing the method as well as the madness.
