Hear, Hear

An Interview with R. Walker

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 12:51:00 PDT

I know of R. Walker as a writer for the weekly column, Consumed, of The New York Times Magazine. He’s a keen observer of our consumer culture and seeks out subjects that we may not be aware of (the phenomenon of Buddha Machines) to everyday things that we have overlooked (the noisy graphic design of international phone cards). What he says is always interesting, or at least he unearths the interesting for us – and he stops just short of being a critic (though you can get a dose of his opinion on his blog, murketing) or an economist trying to make sense of trends and behavior.

I have always wanted to chat with Rob, and get a glimpse of what goes on in his head. Turns out, there is quite a lot, and every bit of it interesting and worthy of your time. Before you go on and read the interview, I should tell you that, sorry, but Rob offers no shortcut at being good at what he does (he just writes a lot and pays really close attention to everything around him). And aside from being a first rate writer for a first rate publication, Rob sounds like a normal dude: he watches TV (a fan of Top Chef and Sopranos), listens to music (eclectic is the word that comes to mind), and he even reads blogs (and uses flickr!).

I asked Rob for five theme songs for the five sections of this interview, an idea I took from his murketing newsletter. It’s not required of you to listen to those songs while reading the interview, but you can try (and let us know how it goes).

I. “Journalism is the only thing I’ve ever done for a living.”

Theme Song: “Destroyer,” The Kinks

Hear, Hear: Who are you?

R. Walker: My name is Rob Walker. I’m a journalist. I write a column called Consumed, which appears weekly in The New York Times Magazine, and I write for my own site, Murketing.com. I’ve also written freelance for lots of other publications, and before that I was an editor. A book of essays I wrote, Letters from New Orleans, was published by Garrett County Press in 2005. I’m finishing another book now, something more in line with my main professional topic of consumer culture; that should be out next year. I live in Savannah, GA, with my wife, E, and our dog, El Rey de los Perros. I’m 38.

El Rey de los Perros, looking more like the king of the jungle.

Hear, Hear: How did you become a writer, as you are today, with published book and a column in NY Times Magazine?

R. Walker: I got interested in writing in college. I guess I thought I would be a fiction writer—Stephen King, that was my basic model—but then a few months into my freshman year I wrote a record review for the college paper, and got paid $15. (This was for the University of Texas at Austin’s paper, The Daily Texan, and the review was of Depeche Mode’s “Music For The Masses”.) I started writing about music and books and the arts and whatever for a bunch of newspapers etc. in Texas, and my first job after college was the Dallas Observer, an alt weekly. That completed a transition to more newsy writing, things driven by reporting. I was there for about a year, and got the money together to get to New York, where my first job was at a trade called The American Lawyer (run by Steve Brill at the time) and then sort of switched to editing, working at a bunch of business magazines, then finally at The New York Times Magazine.

After having spent about eight years in New York, I quit the Times Magazine and E and I moved to New Orleans, and I started freelancing. I wrote for lots of publications, and I was doing a column for Slate. That involved a bit of a return to criticism, through the Ad Report Card. That’s also when I started the focus on marketing and consumers and so on, which led to the Times Magazine’s editor, Gerry Marzorati, offering me the Consumed column gig. While there was obviously no master plan, I think it worked out pretty well that I had this mix of business and cultural reporting and criticism behind me when I started doing the column, in January 2004.

Hear, Hear: How did you make a living before you “made it”?

R. Walker: Journalism is the only thing I’ve ever done for a living. Actually even before the Observer, while I was still in college, my first “professional” job was a part-time reporter gig for a paper in Georgetown, Texas, The Williamson County Sun. And I started that full-time Observer job ($14k a year to start) two days after my last final. Basically from that first record review to today, it was just a long, slow grind, with a lot of ups and downs. It’s hard to point a moment and say, “This is when I made it.” Frankly I think I’m still trying to get to that moment. Maybe it never comes.

Hear, Hear: How do you get over the “downs”?

R. Walker: It’s an interesting question. I think when you’re having a down period, you’re not so much thinking about getting over it as getting out of it. I’m paranoid, so I’m always kind of planning for what I’ll do when a given situation falls apart. I came into the job market in 1991 or so, which was a time when the zeitgeist was: “The old paradigm is dead, the whole notion of job security is dead, and you will scramble for work for the rest of your life.” So that’s been my mindset in ups and downs alike. My worst ever down period was after 9/11, when I was freelancing and every story I had going was spiked, every pitch was spiked. What could I do? I started pitching again. And for about a month, I read Anna Karenina. And woke up sweating in the middle of the night. Then an assignment came in, and I got back to work.

II. The cinematic truth about being a writer.

Theme Song: “Home,” Eleni Mandell

Hear, Hear: What do you do aside from writing?

R. Walker: Nothing very original or interesting, I guess. I read, listen to music, see a movie every so often, and otherwise goof off. The sad truth is, while I write for a living, I also write for a hobby. Just different kinds of writing. Examples of hobby writing are the International Review of Wine Packaging and Aesthetics, and the recent-ish zine Where Were You? It’s writing I can’t get paid for, basically.

Hear, Hear: Do you separate work writing and leisurely writing? As a small business owner I sometimes find myself obsessed and can’t break from the work mode, which is unhealthy. Do you have problems like that, how do you relax and take a break from it all?

R. Walker: I’m not good at the separation thing. It’s possible I’m a little bit of a workaholic, although I also believe that I’m a first-rate loafer. I basically have more ideas than time, and often the separation between work writing and non-work writing is hard to distinguish. I try to strategize and make the non-work writing sort of get in sync with things that result in money, but it doesn’t always play out. It’s a bit of a struggle for me, actually.

The way I take a break is really just every once in a while, I don’t know, I just can’t take it, and I goof off, watch a movie or whatever. My problems with work-day structure might be why I’m well suited for the freelance life. The thing that used to drive me crazy about my years working in offices was “looking busy.” You know? Like I really don’t need to do anything, I really am not going to be productive on anything, but it’s between certain hours of the day so I need to sit at a desk and be visible and apparently busy in case the boss walks by. Now, if I’m in that mode, I can just go lie down and read a magazine, whatever time of day it is, and nobody cares, as long as I hit my deadlines. Which I always do.

...most of what I’m doing is sitting alone in a room, occupied by the extremely mundane business of getting people on the phone, organizing my notes, moving sentences around to find the right structure for a given column, trying to make whatever I have to say fit into the allotted word count…

Hear, Hear: Writers are romanticized in movies and novels. Is it really so? Tell us the truth.

R. Walker: Are you kidding? For one thing, I now think of myself more as a journalist than a writer, and nobody romanticizes journalists these days. Either way, most of what I’m doing is sitting alone in a room, occupied by the extremely mundane business of getting people on the phone, organizing my notes, moving sentences around to find the right structure for a given column, trying to make whatever I have to say fit into the allotted word count, worrying about deadlines, and so on. Those are more like practiced craft skills than a magical and romantic process. So, I’m proud to have developed those skills over time, but there’s no particular glamour in it. Sometimes I write something I’m really pleased with, and that’s exciting for me, in a way, but it falls pretty far short of cinematic moments.

I’m sure there are writers who play the lifestyle part a bit more—going to parties and making witty remarks. But I’m not good enough at that sort of thing to figure out how to make it pay the bills.

Having said all that, it’s not like I’m breaking up rocks in the hot sun all day. Writing is a good gig. It beats working for a living. (That’s a joke. Sort of.)

Hear, Hear: Writers, or the press, are powerful in that they can really influence how people think. Great powers come with great responsibilities. Do you feel that weight on the shoulder, do you find that annoying?

R. Walker: Media influence is a really tricky subject. The world is more openly “interactive” now, but media consumption has always been a collaborative process, in my opinion, in the sense that the reader/listener/watcher makes decisions about what they consume, and what they think about it—what it means, basically. Media is often a reflection of its audience—Fox News would be an example of something that I see as existing because the audience for it exists. Similarly, I think it’s fairly complicated to tease out the influence factors in, say, coverage of the Iraq war: To what extent does the changing tone of that coverage reflect a change in how Americans feel about the war, and to what extent is the way Americans feel about the war a result of media influence? That’s a contemporary example, but my basic point is that, long before the Internet, audiences were more complicated than people seem to assume. Just because a person doesn’t start a blog or upload videos to YouTube doesn’t make them “passive” in the sense that that word is often used. (Susan J. Douglas’s book “Listening In” is quite good on the subject of radio listening as a non-passive activity, and John Fiske’s book “Television Culture” made an interesting case for “active” television consumption back in the 1980s.)

These days, Yao and McGrady have trouble taking the Rockets past first round… Oh the good ol’ days.

I’m not interested in saying, “this is great” or “this sucks,” because there’s enough of that out there already.

Consumed has a form of influence, and I take that seriously, but I wouldn’t call it “power” in the sense that there’s some kind of mindless audience out there waiting to be told what to think. Of course I have responsibilities—to be fair, to not make shit up, and so on. The obvious things. And the same things, of course, that I’m responsible for on Murketing.com, where the audience is way smaller, and what I’m writing isn’t backed by a major media brand.

Beyond that, I’m interested in the reader coming to his or her own decisions and ideas about whatever subject I’ve dealt with that week. I’m not interested in saying, “this is great” or “this sucks,” because there’s enough of that out there already. I want the column to have a point of view, but that is not the same thing as just having an opinion. And I think there’s an audience that really responds to that.

Of course I’m also aware that there are people who don’t respond to that at all. Ambiguity of any kind drives some people crazy. To some people, “interactive” means something more blunt. Like when a million people crash HBO’s servers to complain that the ending of the Sopranos was too ambiguous. That what an “active” audience means now, according to some observers. Anyway, I’m off on a tangent with this, so I’ll stop.

III. Blogging, typing, writing.

Theme Song: “All Out King,” Up, Bustle & Out (featuring Romanowskiy)

Hear, Hear: Seems that there are certain people who put “blogging” as a lower form of “writing”. As a writer who does both, what do you think? Does the medium matter? And how does external editing (I mean editing by an editor who is not you) affect your writing?

R. Walker: Of course it’s silly to put any writer above or below another one based on what medium that writer happens to be working in. It’s like having a preference for novelists who do first drafts in longhand vs. those who use a computer. Even when Truman Capote said “that’s not writing, that’s typing,” about Kerouac, he wasn’t literally criticizing the tool, he was criticizing the work that resulted. (And of course plenty of people would say he was dead wrong.) Good and bad writing can happen in blogs, in books, and in weekly magazine columns.

On the other hand, while you’re right that some people look down on blogging, plenty of people right now go the other way, and basically seem to see blogs as intrinsically better than, say, magazines. I think we’re still in this moment when there’s a lot of medium/message confusion, and that will sort out in time. Blogging software is a tool, and there is no tool that can give you something interesting to say, which is what writing (or art, etc. etc.) is ultimately about.

Anyway, when I first started to pay serious attention to blogging in around 2000, I guess, it interested me as a reader, but not as a writer. At the time I was writing for Slate, doing short, topical, opinionated stuff. I didn’t have anything else I wanted to say that I thought would work in the blog format.

However, I was quite interested in playing with other Web-enabled writing experiments, and that’s how Letters from New Orleans came about. That was a series of essays that I started in 2000, distributing them by email and posting on my first Web site. They were more in the 2000-word range, and they had no “hook” or “news peg” or whatever. They were personal, but not confessional. They didn’t fit any genre or market category that I was aware of. I don’t think any magazine would have paid me to write those pieces. And for me, that was the whole point: I could do something and maybe get an audience on this sort of niche scale, without dealing with the middleman of a publisher, etc., etc. For the three or four years that we lived in New Orleans, that was my hobby writing, and it did end up finding an audience. And eventually became a book.

When that was over I started doing a different email newsletter called The Journal of Murketing. But for various reasons I pulled the plug on that. Meanwhile, a couple of other things happened. One was that I left Slate to do the Times Magazine column. The other had to do with an essay in the New Orleans book about the song “St. James Infirmary.” That particular essay was heavily shaped by reader feedback from the online audience. I did a couple of different versions of it, working in this feedback and tips I was getting from these random readers from all over the place. And when the book came out, I was still getting email from people, with more feedback and tips, and I didn’t know what to do with it, since it’s not like we were going to republish the book every time I got an interesting email. So I started a blog—the world’s leading “St. James Infirmary” blog, I would argue. Then I did another Web spinoff from the book, called MLK BLVD, which is a sort of open-source thing that’s moved in fits and starts ever since.

I think that I was missing certain things about the online audience I’d had at Slate. So anyway, I finally decided to revive the Journal of Murketing in the form of a Web site. (And in fact the email newsletter is back too, in a different form, as an adjunct to the site.) So it’s been pretty interesting for me to write about these issues and ideas in the column, the site, and the book-in-progress, and to kind of explore different ways of getting them, different tones, in each medium. I’m not sure how that will all play out in time, since the online writing tends to be more blunt and opinionated, and the book is definitely advancing an argument. So I don’t know how that ends up affecting the column in the long run. I do see it all as an interrelated and consistent project that is going somewhere over time, and that may have some influence if it all works out. But I’m happy to be patient with it, and see where it leads.

IV. “It’s easy to let stuff drift by, the whole trick is to notice.”

Theme Song: “Loaded To The Gills,” Michael Liggins & The Supersouls

Hear, Hear: What is your writing routine, if you have one? How do you go through all the things you read, and come up with new ideas? Do you write under the influence?

R. Walker: Under the influence? I’ve certainly never been asked that before. Do I write like I’m on something?

...you just have to make the search for story ideas a part of your constant, daily routine… keeping in mind, “What’s catching my attention? What’s weird about it? What questions does it leave me with?” It’s easy to let stuff drift by, the whole trick is to notice.

The “where do the ideas come from” question is everybody’s favorite, and I understand why. I’ve written more than 150 Consumed columns, and the range is very wide. It can be soap for Third World consumers one week, and donks the next. So, basically, it’s my life, I’m looking for ideas all the time. It’s a constant process. Something I learned when I was a young reporter at American Lawyer is you just have to make the search for story ideas a part of your constant, daily routine, you’re looking in every conversation you have, everything you overhear on the street, every article you read, just keeping in mind, “What’s catching my attention? What’s weird about it? What questions does it leave me with?” It’s easy to let stuff drift by, the whole trick is to notice. And with Consumed, the extra trick is in timing. What’s the right time to write about something? I want to catch something when it’s hit this certain sweet spot of relevance to the reader. When it’s just the thing that will make them pause and say, “That’s interesting, what’s up with that?” And I have to be able to say something, there has to be some idea there that will last for 700 words. So I can’t just write, “Yo, these are some fuckin dope new kicks,” or “this set of napkins is SO CUTE.”

The routine is that I do try to spend some time early in the day just seeing what’s up, reading the WSJ, and my local newspaper, and checking the Times online, and a whole bunch of online sources, just taking the temperature, and maybe looking for patterns or whatever.

I also read trades, and a lot of magazines and whatever. One thing I do that’s maybe surprising, or not, is that I read a lot of writers and commentators, online and off, who I think are total idiots. People who I disagree with ideologically, or who are just stupid. But I want to know what they’re thinking about, what’s catching they’re attention—and what they’re flat out drop dead wrong about this time. Sometimes that’s a good starting point for a column. (No, I”m not going to give you an example.)

I also try to talk to people a lot. I have my sort of informal experts that I consult on things, just friends or colleagues or acquaintances who I think are good gut-check type sources. So I’ll just ask these people at random, “What do you think of this?” And that both leads to stories, and saves me from things that probably wouldn’t have worked. Sometimes these friends or acquaintances will bring something to my attention—the donk column was almost entirely a result of Kate Bingaman bringing it up. (I originally “met” her, if I’m not mistaken, through Flickr, of all places. Sometime later I wrote about her, and I try to keep track of her, she’s always up to interesting things.) Most of all I talk to my editor, Vera Titunik, and she’s incredibly helpful in guiding me toward what will make a good column, and what won’t.

I carry a notebook sometimes, but usually if I really have a good idea for something, if something clicks, I’m not going to forget it.

I do save a ton of material, I have files and files and files, both on my computer, and physical files. That pays off, but keeping it organized in such a way that I can put my hands on the right thing when I need it, that’s the challenge.

Finally (had enough??), while I try to keep an eye on what “everybody” is reading or talking about, I also like to make sure I’m always reading or looking at something that I figure hardly anybody is reading or talking about. Old books, history books, old magazines, stuff like that. I don’t even qualify as an amateur historian, but I think having some kind of context like that is crucial, because so much commentary now is ahistorical. So it’s nice to be able to drop something in the column that links Martha Stewart to, say, Edward Bok. Bok was a huge tastemaker in his day. Recently on eBay I bought a 1939 issue of Fortune, and it’s pretty interesting to read through things like that, to see not only what’s different, but what’s much the same.

Hear, Hear: What are some daily tools you can’t live without (could be anything from coffee, to a painting you have in your work room, or a certain pen)?

R. Walker: Despite the controlled substances answer above, I do start out with coffee every day. That’s a ritual. Beyond that, the best answer I can come up with here is that I probably depend on being able to chat with E periodically through the day, sometimes about what I’m writing, or maybe just something I’m thinking about that I may write about eventually. It’s not a formal thing, I don’t make her read drafts or whatever, but in some way just talking to her is part of the process.

V. Piggly Wiggly, Schama and the best publication in America.

Theme Song: “The Monkey,” Dave Bartholomew

Hear, Hear: What are the last 5 (memorable) things you’ve consumed?

R. Walker: Lemon fennel doughnuts with black plum sorbet, at Perilla. This is the restaurant opened not long ago by the first Top Chef winner. We’re Top Chef watchers, so there was some weird meta thing about going to this place (which happens to be on the same block that E lived on when we first met), but the food was actually really good. I gather he doesn’t do the desserts, but this thing in particular was fantastic.

“Thérèse Raquin,” by Émile Zola. A pretentious-sounding answer. But E’s been after me to read this for a while, and she was right. It’s a page-turner. Zola is as good as any melodramatic soap opera, and I mean that in a good way.

“Shakey Jake,” Joe McPhee. Probably all five of my answers should be music related, because that’s really where most of my discretionary dough goes. Anyway, I’m not a jazz expert at all, but it’s something I’ve explored very slowly for a long time. One recent round of CD’s included Nation Time, by Joe McPhee, which is all great, but this track in particular I just love.

Piggly Wiggly T-Shirt. Purchased at Piggly Wiggly. An outstanding item.

Simon Schama’s The Power of Art. Schama is the new hot shit. It’s all about Schama.

Hear, Hear: Final question – What do you think of News Corp’s offer to buy the Wall Street Journal?

Too much media consolidation, too many media outlets falling into the hands of too few owners, and those owners increasingly are conglomerates with far-flung interests who are more interested in media as a profit source and a business, with little interest in the public service function.

R. Walker: Well. Two things. First, when I got involved in journalism in college, I was pretty heavily influenced by the culture of what was then called “the alternative press,” which still exists but has been sort of replaced or superceded by the blog phenomenon. What I mean is that things like the Village Voice and The Nation and so on were the alternative to the mainstream; the dynamic now is “the mainstream” on one hand and this “citizen media” (or whichever term you prefer) on the other. I don’t really know how the traditional alternative press (!) fits into that dynamic. Anyway, the point is, a big part of the alternative-press critique at that time was: Too much media consolidation, too many media outlets falling into the hands of too few owners, and those owners increasingly are conglomerates with far-flung interests who are more interested in media as a profit source and a business, with little interest in the public service function. Among other things, news gets dumbed down as a result. That was the critique.

The consolidation trend of course has only accelerated over the past 15 or 20 years. The counterweight now is a million blogs and so on, which is certainly not something I ever could have imagined back then, and which is a whole other topic that I’m not going to get into here. The point is, Murdoch buying the WSJ would be yet another example of this consolidation.

Second, The Wall Street Journal is, in my opinion, far and away, bar none, no competition, the best publication in America. Probably the world, though I’m not qualified to say. As a reader, I’m a huge, huge fan. I love it.

So I’m not very excited about the prospect of it changing owners. If you’ve followed this, then you know that Murdoch has said he won’t louse it up and thinks it’s great (except, you know, some of the stories are too long, and other little side comments that indicate that he doesn’t actually think it’s that great), but he’s said this kind of thing in the past and the promises have not been borne out.

The most optimistic spin is that he’s nearing the end of his career, and he wants this prestige publication and he’ll be smart enough not to water it down and have his obituary begin with “here’s the guy who ruined the Wall Street Journal.” Maybe that’ll prove to be true. Even so, there’s going to be a period where some good people flee the Journal because they don’t want to be around to see what happens, which could weaken the paper to some extent even if the new ownership doesn’t change things much.

I’m not big on predictions, so I’ll stick here with hope: I hope that if it changes owners, the quality of the publication stays high, and it doesn’t get watered down.

Thank you for your time, Rob!

Keep up with Rob on his blogs Murketing and No Notes, look for his Consumed column in The New York Times Magazine (published every Sunday), check out his book Letters from the New Orleans. It’s all good stuff.

For more interviews: go back to the Hear, Hear homepage.

Thanks for your time.

An Interview with Draplin Design Co.

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 15:32:00 PDT

Before I interviewed Aaron Draplin, the man behind Draplin Design Co, this is what I knew of them:

They have their very own branded merchandise. We ordered a bunch and the goods are hot.
They make some unbelievable prints with Gocco.
They’re fans of Wilco and Flaming Lips.
They design for some well-known snowboard / skateboard companies.
They are obsessed with a Dachshund named Gary.

After talking to him, I now know a few more things that you too will learn after reading this most inspiring interview with quite a lot of eye-candy. Let’s get on with it.

I. “I can pay my mortgage for two more years, without any other projects.”

Hear, Hear: What is Draplin Design Co. and who is Aaron Draplin?

Aaron Draplin: The Draplin Design Co. is a small design company based out of Portland, Oregon consisting of three employees: I’m Aaron and I run the deal, Gary is security and Lovejoy handles the clipping pathery. If one man goes down, we work extra hard to cover the open slot. We roll up our sleeves on matters of print, identity, Gocco printing, photo direction, illustration, web design, copywriting and shameless self promotion.

About me. I’m a graphic designer by trade, from the Midwest, raised on art, punk rock, skateboarding and snowboarding. I’m into my guitars, my roadtrips, my dachshund Gary, my family back in Michigan, my studio, my friends, my clients, my house, my wanderlust, Portland, America, Earth and my pledge to make each day here better and better. It’s an uphill battle, folks.

HH: Why did you start your own studio, and what was your first year like?

I had an amazing gig at a design shop called Cinco Design here in Portland. Everything was on the up and up. Clients, challenging projects and good, inspiring folks to work with. But, after a couple years working hard on the Cinco clock and on my own time, I kinda outgrew the joint with my freelance opportunities.

Once my freelance workload started to rival my salary, I knew it was time to go out on my own and give it a shot. Of course, I saved up some scratch before venturing out, and lined up some soft retainers from existing clients. And in no time, things were up and running. I had a couple steady gigs and they were reliable enough to say, “Wow, this gig and this gig and this gig adds up to: ’I can pay my mortgage for two more years, without any other projects.’” Everything else was profit and icing on the cake.

Not one, but two Apple 30-inch Cinema Displays. Full office specs of Draplin Design Co.

I work out of my home, so, the integration of home and office has been a very natural thing. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to separate the two. My life is in my studio, the rest of the house is just sorta where you brush yer teeth or watch a DVD or something.

I do long for the employee-to-fellow employee dynamic. Lots of eyes on a problem is better than just my own. I miss the culture Cinco offered; having good people to hang with for the day, which spilled over into our free time too. We were a big family, in a sense.

My first year was absolutely amazing. I found myself able to focus on a number of projects, all at my own pace. I worked the entire summer and then hit the road in the fall for two months! I took off out of Oregon and headed back to the Midwest for eight weeks of adventure, roadtrips, visiting the parents, working from the road and just enjoying being free from the constraints of office life. Many things changed for me when I went out on my own, for the better.

HH: How do you balance your time between running your business (admin work) and finding time to design and blog?

It’s just all part of the big ball of wax: Client discussions, billing, filing, web searching, taking naps, playing with Gary, running errands around town all mix into the design process somehow. I just keep a big list going and check stuff off as I go.

The one and only Draplin Design Co. blog. “I like being blown away each morning by a link that makes me want to keep going and put off throwing in the towel one more day.”

I look at my blog as a fun communication tool; a way to share with friends and colleagues. I like being blown away each morning by a link that makes me want to keep going and put off throwing in the towel one more day. It’s such a big, wild, beautiful world with so many little pockets of inspiration and greatness. The internet is like a Grand Canyon-sized encyclopedia at my fingertips, constantly. I love grazing this chasm.

I thrive on the weight of a hefty workload on my back. People always say, “How do you do it?” It’s just a big part of me. Be it the big client project or something fun for the DDC, it’s all part of the bigger picture: Making things and being creative, all the time.

One time a jaded creative director guy back in Minneapolis looked over my pile of school/fun work in front of him and said, “Great energy here. You’ll lose this once you start really working.” Fuck that. Another stiff. That was great to hear because it made me swear to myself to always keep this stuff fun and challenging.

There is always time to learn something new, or, a chance to go the extra mile. And that’s all there is to it. No excuses.

II. “If it wasn’t for this work, things would be so much different in my life.”

HH: As designers, a lot of what we do is to make things look ‘cool’ or ‘hip’, and we play a large role in our over-consuming society. How do you feel about this topic?

A cog in the wheels of an over-consuming society? Of course I feel that way, of course. It fucks with me. I consider myself a responsible, thinking citizen of the states and the world, and, what does my little contribution to all it entail? I love to ponder this and challenge the whole relationship in my head. Does my work make a difference? Does anyone notice? Does it even matter? Should I fret about it?

“Just get on with yer life and do yer best with each little step.”

I think the answer might be a resounding, “No man, just get on with yer life and do yer best with each little step.”

As designers we get to make the world a more beautiful place. Through communication, through decoration, however you want to cut it. I think that alone is an amazing contribution to the big world around us. I mean, does a stockbroker think about that kind of stuff? Hard to say. I know I do and take a lot of pride in each little solution I send out.

I have a hard time dividing who’s work is and isn’t valid. I’ve learned my lesson: The guy laying out a newspaper is just as valid as some big shot art director in New York. Just as valid. Be it decoration or hook or functionalism, there’s always something to dig on.

Wurstminster piece by Aaron James Draplin.

HH: The guy laying out a newspaper is definitely doing valid work. Let me resume the role of the self-conscious designer – do you think as designers we should think about our role in society, and care about ethics?

In school I saw a lot of folks getting pretty heady about design’s place in the world. But, that sort of “discourse” never left the school grounds. If you are making a book for some hi-falutin museum or a logo for a small engine repair shop, I think it’s our responsibility as “visual problem solvers” to make the solution work for the demographic it’s intended for, meet the client’s needs, all the while, doing it creatively so you meet yer own creative needs.

I like the idea of “making the world a better place” with each little design. I bought some nails today and the packaging was simple and easy to read and, well, there was some beauty to that.

Plus, I like the idea of “making the world a better place” with each little design. I bought some nails today and the packaging was simple and easy to read and, well, there was some beauty to that.

Sometimes I feel guilty about what I do. I mean, how many positions out there can be so self-conscious about their place in the world? It always seems like everyone else is more worried about surviving, instead of questioning the bigger role. It’s funny when I pose this question to colleagues who will give me this look like, “You think about that shit?” or, “You have time to think about that?” Yet, I’m amazed at how self-conscious designers can be, and all the pressure systems we create for ourselves.

Yes, I think designers need to dig into our role in society. But, I don’t have the answer, and, in running the day-to-day racket of “making stuff for good people” I just try to take gigs that I’ll be proud of in the end, love the people I work for, and, give ‘em my all. I mean, fuck this talk about “easy” or “just get through it” work. Have some pride and do yer best. Big gigs or small gigs. An honest effort comes back to ya in the end.

Where I’m from in the Midwest, there’s this very down-to-earth sense of trust when making a transaction. I like the idea of being able to hand off a file knowing I gave it my all, solved the client’s problem and made the experience enjoyable and comfortable for all involved. That’s a good code to follow for this stuff, I’d wager.

Logos, designed by Draplin Design Co.

HH: Salesmanship (to sell a design to the client) vs design skills. What’s more important?

I think it comes down to letting the work speak for itself. Put some time into it, man, and let the stuff sell itself. Then, be strong enough and pliable enough to roll with the punches of the client back-and-forth game. The give and take of that part of the process is an art form. Gently guide them and have respect for the fact that they are paying the bills. I often get humbled when I might start to pull my hair out over some little client change or request in the simple truth that, “If it wasn’t for this work, things would be so much different in my life.”

Selling junk will come back to haunt you. We owe it to the profession to be responsible and do good work, no matter what the case. People are spending good money on us. I try to take a little time out to be thankful for the jobs I get to do. We are very lucky.

III. “I just like to give out trinkets.”

There was a time when you’d buy a tractor in the Midwest, and leave with a hat, memo book and a couple pencils. See more good stuff by Draplin Design Co.

HH: Besides being a design studio that serves clients, you also have your own line of products – how & why did you get into that?

There was a time when you’d buy a tractor in the Midwest, and leave with a hat, memo book and a couple pencils. This little transaction served a number of purposes. First, and most importantly, the farmer could use these things in his day-to-day life. Second, the proprietor’s name was out in the world that much more. Third, the gesture of a couple freebies to “seal the deal” is a time-honored tradition that is being phased out by stricter and stricter marketing budgets. The simplicity of these often-overlooked items and gesture is something that is very endearing to me.

Plus, I just like to give out trinkets. People like free stuff. And, it’s the least I can do, considering the blessings of this career.

I love the device of simple advertising. A slogan on a pencil or phone number on a key chain can make the difference for a little car lot in rural Iowa. I like to apply that same soft phenomena to my little company. It’s the small stuff that can go the farthest.

“North Lock Torso Cover” Buy them.

I started getting requests for stuff on my site and launched a small, rudimentary PayPal store that hawks some of the promo items I’ve made over the years. Simple stuff like pencils and t-shirts. I buy a lot of little things from designers that inspire me, cuz, I like the idea of supporting those in the same trenches, and, the notion that my couple bucks will go to their bottom line, and they’ll be able to keep making good stuff. I hope that’s how people view my offering. Plus, the products work!

A good designer won’t settle for anything less. They aren’t concerned with margin costs or business plans…t hey just want to make the thing good. Let’s hope so, at least.

I’m launching the FIELD NOTES memo book project soon with Coudal Partners out of Chicago. Simple memo books, American-Made, using the best materials we can find. In a world complicated by so much information and confusing hierarchies inside a handheld Blackberry or something, it’s just kinda refreshing to “make a list” or “write out an idea.” We are forgetting how to write! Our penmanship skills are lacking! Time to fight back, and this time, on grid paper.

Jim Coudal has been very, very inspiring to me the last couple years. I met him while passing through Chicago about three years back. He said something amazing that will stick with me forever: “Why wait for clients to bring us a product? Let’s make our own!” So true.

Which takes me back to the “buying things from designers” thing I spoke about a paragraph ago. You can trust that these things will be beautiful and “right.” A good designer won’t settle for anything less. They aren’t concerned with margin costs or business plans… they just want to make the thing good. Let’s hope so, at least.

This is a double-edged sword, cuz now, I find myself challenging clients to improve the quality of their products, even if it means making less money. That sort of risk-taking pays off in the long run, if you ask me.

IV. The little man, Pad Kee Mao, Wilco, Michigan, etc.

HH: What’s your daily routine, if you have one?

I wake up, roll outta the bed and make my way downstairs to the back door so the little man can go out to pee. This is how I start my day. Gary pees first, and that’s that.

The little man pees first, and that’s that.

Then, sadly enough, it’s time to go to work. But, “work” can mean a lot of things. Checking/replying to email, planning out the day, playing my guitar, working on projects, trying to learn a song on the drums, billing, shooting the shit on the phone, going to lunch, housecleaning, playing with Gary, naptime, a hike over to the Safeway for vittles or guiding my assistant Lovejoy on projects.

In the summer it’s pretty much, “Hammer all day and then try to do something cool at night when the sun goes down.” It’s a “strike when the iron is hot” kinda thing when I am home in Portland. I knock out a lot of work to free me up for my fall roadtrips and adventures.

HH: People say you are what you eat. What are your 3 favorites lunch dishes?

01. Chaba Thai – Pad Kee Mao noodles with Chicken.
02. A Caesar salad, a slice of pizza and a coke from Pizzacato.
03. Sandwiches assembled in the DDC mess hall.

HH: What’s the last item on your current to-do list?

Finishing my “A Decade of the DDC” poster. All the vector goodies from over the years. All the warts and moles. All packed onto a 28” x 40” sheet. Gonna be awesome to see it all packed in there.

HH: People say that musicians want to be athletes, and athletes want to be signers. What do you want to be (give us 3, if you can)?

I want to be a good provider for a family.
I want to be a husband for an amazing dame.
I want to be a dad.
I want to be a woodworker.
I want to be a drummer.
I want to be a travel writer.
I want to be a philanthropist.
I want to be a roadie.
I want to be a walker of the earth.

Old sign archivist, staunch liberal, and a girl-digger. Aaron James Draplin. Photo by Embry Rucker Photography.

Right now I am:

A graphic designer.
A guitar player.
A old sign archivist.
A misser of his parents.
A friend.
A problem solver.
A drawer.
A business owner.
A patriot.
A Democrat.
A staunch Liberal.
A freedom fighter.
A reader.
A girl-digger.
A homeowner.
A brother.

HH: What are the last 5 memorable things you’ve consumed?

01. I went through three sheets of 11-ply plywood and built a sturdy set of factory floor shelves that I am gigantically proud of.

02. The new Richmond Fontaine, Wilco and Bill Callahan records. Bravo.

03. “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy. The harshest, most-poetic look at the wild west that I’ve read up to this point. And, the most challenging read. Had to read and reread lines, savoring those words. The kind of book that makes you say, “I will read EVERY word by this fella.”

04. Lots of gas on my spring tour down to Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, Northern Michigan and then back out west to Oregon.

05. Willy Vlautin’s new book, “The Motel Life.” A poignant look at the sad, desperate West no one hears about, or, overlooks. Bravo, Willie.

HH: Lastly, what are the 3 things you can’t live without?

01. A call from mom and dad back home in Michigan.
02. Good projects.
03. The drive to make my time alive a good, beautiful, proud life.

Thank you for your time, Aaron!

An Interview with Greenjeans

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:43:00 PDT

Greenjeans is many things. It is a retail store in Brooklyn, New York, that carries beautiful handmade objects – from wooden toys to beautiful pottery. It’s an alternative to the big corporate stores or the small, sometimes snobby, boutique shops that are everywhere in the city. It’s an alternative that is warmer, gentler and more fun. It’s a gallery with art that is affordable. It’s a store where kids refuse to leave, and adults can’t stop looking and touching each thing on the shelf.

Hear, Hear had the opportunity to interview the husband and wife team, Jae Kim and Amy Shaw, behind Greenjeans. We talked to them about the challenges and fun of running a retail store, what they do on the slower days, the tools of their everyday operation, and how they maintain such a good relationship running a business together and being married.

I. “Some combination of inspiration and desperation”

Hear, Hear: You guys are really young. How and why did you decide to start Greenjeans and take on the responsibility of running a retail store?

Amy Shaw: It was some combination of inspiration and desperation that led us to start Greenjeans. I’d finished grad school and was searching fruitlessly for a job. Jae had just gotten laid off for the third time in two years from an art handling company that went bust. And then, tragically, my mom passed away. It was really a very low point for us, but it gave us an opportunity to seriously reconsider what we were doing with our lives. Jae comes from a long line of entrepreneurs, and though I grew up with the message that you need a salary to survive, we decided to take the plunge and work for ourselves. We figured if we worked as hard for ourselves as we did for other people we’d do just fine!

As for the inspiration: I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but we found ourselves talking about the League of NH Craftsmen’s shops, and how there’s really nothing like that in the city. We did some market research and crunched some numbers and it started to look like there might be a viable market for this kind of shop. Greenjeans started feeling like something that already existed and it was up to us to bring it into the world. The notion of getting a job started to sound ridiculous. Our passion had been ignited and we worked to get things started as if we were on a mission.

HH: How did you come up with the name Greenjeans?

AS: It came to me one morning as I woke up, and I secretly think my mom somehow offered it to me – she loved Mr. Green Jeans from the old kid’s show Captain Kangaroo.

II. South Slope, the Seasons, and Finger Puppets

HH: Why did you pick Park Slope for your store location?

Jae Kim: This is the first actual store front we looked at. We looked at 5th Ave, Park Slope, where we wanted to be, looked at rent signs in front of empty stores, looked on the internet, but we couldn’t find anything viable. We couldn’t afford to pay that kind of rent right away. Then one time we found this ad on Craigslist – 300 sq. feet, 7th Ave – so I called the real estate agency, and we came to look at it. We took the place that same day, on Christmas Eve.

AS: We like the space, and we had a good feeling about the area. It seemed like a good neighborhood to get into then, because it was becoming something.

HH: The store has been opened for a year and a half. What have you noticed about how the seasons affect your business?

AS: We discovered that after Memorial Day, when kids are out of school, people disappear and traffic drops quite a lot. Especially on weekends, people going to the country, going on trips, so it definitely slows down. Although business has still been good, we just don’t have as much foot traffic. But at the same time, we’ve never been able to predict accurately for a particular day.

HH: Has there been any surprises, in terms of the business you’ve gotten?

Finger puppets by Jane Kaufmann

AS: We knew we would get a lot of kids and people looking for toys. We knew we would find the young families and people buying house warming presents – those two things we knew we were able to sell, everything else has been pretty much conjecture. Some things we’d bring in, we’re not sure if they’d sell, but we like them, and they fly out the door – such as Kaufmann’s finger puppets. And there are other things we think are just phenomenal, and nobody buys them. And it’s the weirdest thing – our instincts are usually pretty good, but sometimes people are looking for completely different things, or they just don’t respond to certain things we did when we saw them.

Another surprise is how amiable all the business owners are in Park Slope. We would never pick up an artist who’s already with another shop, and likewise most shops don’t want to repeat with other Brooklyn shops. There’s a kind of code, and everyone is very respectful of it. It seems that everyone wants everyone to do well, and I think that’s partly to do with that South Slope is not Madison Avenue, it’s not you build it and you can have tons of customers. We’re all trying to work to make this neighborhood appealing to all shoppers.

III. Marketing and polishing silver jewelry, “everything takes twice as long as we think it should.”

HH: So when you’re by yourself during a slow day and there aren’t many people coming into the store, what do you do?

“We’re communicating all the time with artisans, about how they’re doing and if we need something else… Rearranging, cleaning and polishing silver jewelry, which is the bane of my existence.”

AS: I’m constantly busy! So much work with marketing and publicity: research on where we want to advertise, the rates, who to talk to, and we’re always working on a new press release. We do our own photography for all the items, maybe once every two weeks. Then all of the images require manipulations, to be good for the website, good for print. We’re always working on getting information from the artisans and writing a short essay about them. We’re communicating all the time with artisans, about how they’re doing and if we need something else. Rearranging, cleaning and polishing silver jewelry, which is the bane of my existence. And keeping everything looking good takes a lot of time. Keeping things organized takes a lot of time. Everything takes twice as long as we think it should.

If we get a review in a magazine or something, scanning it all in, using Illustrator to make it a nice one-page layout, that takes couple of hours. And then sending that around to all the artisans that were mentioned in it. There’s a lot of getting in touch with people. Keeping inventory, accounting… The postcard – Jae designs and I write. Keeping the blog is usually a few hours a week. I consider that to be… it’s personal, as I’d like to record my experience, but it’s also a marketing tool. It helps people to be aware of the shop and our ideas.

“Rearranging, cleaning and polishing silver jewelry, which is the bane of my existence.”

HH: I think it’s really good of Greenjeans to tell us where the item we are purchasing comes from, how you tell a story about the maker of the object.

AS: That’s something we knew when we started Greenjeans, that we wanted to close the gap between the producer and consumer. I notice that more and more that a lot of catalogs would say things are handmade and it won’t even say if its imported or in the US, much less who made it. So okay – it’s handmade – but everything is touched by hand somewhere in the production, and it’s sort of meaningless if you don’t know who made it.

IV. “We don’t go to bed being unhappy about each other.”

HH: I’ve heard stories about married couple not being able to handle running a business together because they see each other all the time. Did you guys think of that? How do you handle that?

AS: Well, the easy answer to that is I’m really the boss here, and that’s the secret to marriage! (laughs)

Jae and I met working together, so right off the bat we knew we’re good at working together. It’s just something we share, and that’s sort of lucky. When I’m feeling moody or upset, I have to be careful to maintain patience and not take it out on Jae, just because he’s my husband!

JK: During the week, when both of us don’t have to be here, we give each other days off, and one of us will do other things… that’s important. But on an average we probably spend a lot more time than other married couples do, and things do get personal. But we have really good communication and we respect each other’s abilities - that’s another important thing. Whatever tasks there are, they just fall under each others umbrellas and intuitively we know amongst ourselves.

AS: Things aren’t always easy. When there are tensions and situations, it affects everything – our lives and our business, and we don’t let stuff between us negatively affect Greenjeans. so we’re very quick to deal with things, to talk things out.

JK: To put it simply, we don’t go to bed being unhappy about each other.

HH: Cash flow is important, and I imagine it to be tough for a retail store. Did you guys have an exit plan?

“You have to take a leap when you start a business, and then figure out how to do it… until you’re off the ground, you don’t necessarily know what you need to know…”“

AS: No. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, but we don’t have an exit plan. When we were starting I thought that we need a full business plan, and we had a friend who was going to help us with it. Jae was saying that we don’t have the data – that we can make projection charts, but they don’t mean anything, because you don’t know how you’re going to do and how it’s going work out. His point of view is inspired by something Bloomberg wrote in his biography at one point, which is you have to take a leap when you start a business, and then figure out how to do it and what you need to do. Because until you’re off the ground, you don’t necessarily know what you need to know, or what is applicable.

You have to visualize your business, and that’s something, I think, more important than your business plan. It doesn’t mean knowing the color of the wall is, but knowing what the feeling is. We’re constantly working on things that are visual. Visualizing, thinking, and dreaming – we dream about having our shop in Paris, London, Tokyo, Dumbo, and this might all be just half joking but we feel that if we can do this, why not do it to that extent? I didn’t think we can do this at all, so why not?

The most amazing wooden spoons by Dan Dustin.

HH: If you can go back to when you were just starting, is there anything you’d tell yourself?

AS: I was very concerned. I thought we should wait a year before we opened the shop, I thought we should delay the whole thing, because I thought it’d be too much with the wedding…

JK: Don’t start a business and have your wedding at the same time!

AS: Well, but here’s the thing, I can’t say I’d change a thing because it all worked out. The wedding went great, and the shop is going great. Was it hard? It was really hard. But it was awesome, it was a very intense, exciting time of our lives. And it’s still is. Although I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have nothing else to do.

HH: Where do you see yourselves in one year?

JK: We’ll still be here, and more people will know about who we are and what we do.

AS: We’ll be complaining about going to the post office everyday, because we’ll have to make so many shipments to our online customers. We’ll be even more seriously talking about the possibility of a bigger space in Dumbo for furniture and table settings, giving Moss a run for its money. No, I’m just kidding.

VI. Speakeasy, West Wing, Murakami and the heavenly mattress.

HH: Can you tell us about some tools you use to run your business? Where did you find this cool calculator?

JK: I found this at the MoMA design store, and I thought it compliments the Mac very well. When we were setting up the store, I didn’t want to give money to Verizon, and I did a ridiculous amount of research and found this one internet provider in California called Speakeasy (now part of Best Buy), and that took care of internet and phone. The quality has been great. I am very happy with their service. For charging credit cards, I found this company in Georgia called Take Charge, developed by Merchant Consulting Group. it’s hard to find POS system for Macs in general, unless you pay 2, 3 thousand dollars.

For the first few months of Greenjeans, we started off (charging credit cards) on the internet, through authorize.net. I found out that we’re getting all these charges. I asked them and they told me that it’s because we weren’t sliding the cards via the swiper, that we’re manually putting in the numbers. We’re paying 3 or 4% on top of everything. So I thought, forget it, this is not cool. So we went for this company in Georgia.

And we have this printer – it’s wireless. It has its own wireless capability, HP OfficeJet 7410. This was the top of the line all-in-one office jet at the time. And it wasn’t too expensive, about $500 a year and half ago.

AS: We bought our laptops (Mac Powerbooks) at the end of the old models, right after the new models were released. Just trying to find the right time to buy things.

Shaker chairs made by Brian Braskie in Canterbury, New Hampshire.

HH: Ok. Now onto a couple of non-business questions: what are some books, movies, or TV shows you’re watching right now?

A: West Wing. I think it is very influential on our mentality, on how we handle situations. To think about conflict resolution, or to handle situations where someone wants to intimidate you. Really valuable.

JK: I just read Freakonomics. I thought it was helpful. It gives you a different perspective on things, or at least it tries to question your perceptions on every day life in general. I like those kind of books.

AS: I’m reading Haruki Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicles right now. And we also watch Frontline and Nova. Total PBS junkies. I like Sex and the City, and I read a lot of blogs – I love Grist and WorldChanging. For magazines, I read a lot of crafts stuff, Harper’s and the New Yorker.

HH: Last question: what are the three things you can’t live without?

JK: Three things, right? Water. Vodka. And great food.

AS: Sunlight – in my living space. I can’t live without our amazing mattress, made of Talalay Latex, which is heaven. We slept on this really crappy futon for years, and this mattress, which is expensive, was what we got ourselves as a wedding gift. And I would never go back. And… I don’t know… could be so many things. Ok, I’m going to say cartoons in New Yorker.

HH: Thank you for your time, Amy and Jae!

Some beautiful items at Greenjeans

An Interview with The Artist's Guide

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:50:00 PDT

I am a big sucker for independent art journals. They are great sources of inspiration – not only from the art, but from knowing that some people out there are working hard producing these printed material because they believe in it. I came across The Artist’s Guide’s website a couple of months ago. It’s a one-pager that features just one picture – the same photo you see above. The title says, “The Artist’s Guide to Making Money”, which I found amusing. I purchased a copy and what I received is a most unusual art journal. The Artist’s Guide to Making Money is something I can hold in my hands and carry with me to read on the subway. Yes, read – I flip through lots of art journals, but this one I read, and the writing is witty and humorous. The front and back covers are graphical ads of their sponsors, which I thought was brilliant. I wish we knew about it earlier and we would’ve chipped in so Harvest and Hear, Hear can be on it. Maybe next time.

I got in touch with the masterminds behind The Artist’s Guide – Matt Cassity and Sam Spratlin, and asked them a few questions:

Hear, Hear: Who are you guys?

Sam: Matt and I are occasional collaborators who sometimes work under the moniker “Howdy Partners.” We met in college where we both enjoyed America’s Funniest Videos and going to beer parties. Matt sorta looks like John Cusack and I really look like John Cusack.

Sam Spratlin, Matt Cassity, and John Cusack who was not at the same party.

HH: Why did you decide to make this magazine?

Sam: The book itself was an experiment to see if two people living in two different places could make one thing in ten months. And we did, only it took about fourteen months, and we had to get it printed in Canada so that is like a third, totally different place.

The goal was to produce an awesome art book similar to all the other awesome art books out there, but to hopefully craft a stronger thematic experience by positioning each volume as a “guidebook.” This allows us to provide a theme for our contributors, as well as an editorial direction for the content and tone.

This first issue is the The Artist’s Guide Volume One: The Artist’s Guide to Making Money, a topic we found to be exceptionally apropos given the financial concerns that go in to starting a project like this. We hoped the book provides a candid look at a subject matter that is at times hesitantly discussed. All in all, we would expect that more than three people will go on to make +$1,000,000 after having read this book.

Most of all, I think we both just liked having a project we could work on outside of work that would be fun and funny and something we could be proud of.

Spam poster insert, by Dan Funderburgh.

HH: 14-months is a long time. What did you guys do to… make money during that time? How did you last that long?

Sam: Well, we cancelled our cable, and we had to skip a few meals… but we made it through. Actually, I hold down a full time job at an agency in Chicago, and Matt makes money through freelancing for advertising agencies and a major record label (though he could always use more well-paying work). Most of that 14 months was spent waiting for this and that. Sometimes we wanted to just give up and scrap it, but we had already commissioned and received some amazing work and that just wouldn’t be fair to the hard-working artists.

Sam Spratlin, Matt Cassity, and John Cusack who was not at the same party.

HH: Can you tell us more about the making of this magazine – the ‘process’, what tools you used, how you’re marketing it, how did you find/approach the artists, etc?

Matt: I would say we are both level-8 proficiency web surfers, and many of the artists were picked from our bookmarks, others were “net friends,” and more are real life friends. We owe a lot to projects like The Drama Magazine, Faesthetic, and Arkitip. They’ve really set the bar for the genre of collectible art zines, and we used the same Canadian printer they all use. So far we’ve relied on blogs an web-portals to spread the word, and we’ve approached our respective neighborhood bookstores. Waiting in line at the post office is a real bitch.

HH: In the journal, there is a ridiculously high print quote for $50k, is that for real??

Sam: It was very much for real, and very much what one high-minded print rep thought we were looking to spend. It’s the sad/great thing about hanging out in an ad agency all day. The context of money gets wildly distorted.

HH: How did you come up with the sponsored cover?

Matt: We were debating wether or not to try and sell ads and how to do it. There was talk of getting sponsorship for each contributor AIDS walk style or some other clever idea, but we said fuck it, we’ll just plaster the covers with ads. We sold them all fairly cheaply and the revenue covered the cost of buying envelopes. So that helped. Plus we didn’t have to design the cover. We should have explained this somewhere in book, cause I don’t think too many people are getting it.

HH: What’s your connection with FLAT?

Matt: Petter at FLAT is a really nice guy that always answers our e-mails with enthusiasm and agreed to an informal interview with me when I first moved to New York, unfortunately I didn’t bring my portfolio with me.

Some amazing artwork in The Artist’s Guide (all are amazing, these are just five random examples), from left to right: Marcus Oakley, Gunsho, Jessica Lynch, August Heffner, Andy Rementer.

HH: Where do we see some work by the Howdy Partners?

Sam: This is the first Howdy Partners project. It exists as little more than a moniker really — just a good name we might need to hold on to in case we need it in the future. You hear that? We called dibs. The title of the book is definitely more important than the name of the collective. I’ve been trying to get into printing posters under the Howdy Partners name, but so far I’ve only done one.

HH: What are the last 5 (memorable) things you guys consumed (could be anything)?

Together: We ate some stand-up Red Snapper at Barco Marisco in Chicago.

Matt: The Wire DVDs, 3 Charley Harper prints, VietNam’s self-titled record

Sam: I just read the first 5 volumes of “The Walking Dead” – but I am, by no means, a comic book person. And khraigslist.

HH: Thank you for your time, Matt and Sam!

2 really nice guys; 112 pages; 6×9 inch; $16 + shipping; printed in 2 colors; limited edition of 1000; zero actual advice for making money; a ton of inspiration. Get your copy of The Artist’s Guide to Making Money today!

An Interview with Lexie Barnes

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:17:00 PDT

Lexie Barnes darling stroller bag

In my interview with Spire's Cory Barnes lately, I learned of his wife's new line of women's bags, bearing her own name, Lexie Barnes. Drawing from her own experience as the mother of three young sons, she has a line of diaper bags and minis that come in a variety of stylish patterns while all being waterproof, easy to clean, and durable. Lexie also has a line of knitting bags that has created quite a bit of media buzz, because of their pretty patterns, protective padding, reinforced pockets and convenient shoulder straps.

I had a chance to talk to Lexie in person when I visited Cory in East Hampton, MA. In this interview she shares with us her story of starting a new line of women's bag, with an entirely different approach as they did with Spire's laptop bags, and also her experience in working with her husband day in and day out for ten years.

I. "I was pregnant for the third time..."

Awesome drawings by the Barnes children.

Hear, Hear: When, and how did you create the Lexie Barnes line of women's bags?

Lexie Barnes: We launched our line last summer, but it was the year before that we started working on it, when I was pregnant for the third time. It became clear to me then that I wasn't going to go back to my field [laughs]. I have a background in theatre and film, I started acting when I was a kid and later did production work for film and theatre in Chicago, then in LA, NY for a while. And when we moved here (East Hampton, MA), I started a theatre company. We did a few shows, and I got pregnant again and said this is just crazy. I wanted to be able to be with my family, and I've been working with Cory since 1998, on Spire, and it seemed like a natural transition.

There's sort of this funky middle range of women that have not been addressed yet. The women who don't buy Kate Spade bags, and who don't buy Vera Bradley, and who don't want to buy bags from Old Navy.

HH: Did you give a lot of thought to this line before?

LB: Oh definitely, we had talked for years about doing women's bags. I've always said, "oh this backpack would be great, but it doesn't fit women that well". I wanted to improve this for women and change this, but he (Cory) would say "that's not what Spire is about, we'll talk about it later...", you know, husband and wife kind of thing. Eventually I said, I want to have my line. The laptop bags were secondary at first, I just wanted to make women's bags for different types of use. I thought about making diaper bags, and then somebody came up with the idea of knitting bags. I sent out emails to all my women friends and asked them, what are your favorite bags? What do you like and what do you not like about them? I did a lot of research that way.

I wanted to make bags for women that suited different needs. In terms of the look and feel of them, there's sort of this funky middle range of women that have not been addressed yet. The women who don't buy Kate Spade or Vera Bradley, and who don't want to buy bags from Old Navy. So there needs to be something in the middle that's funky and cool, that's affordable and stylish... Such as my latest skull pattern. Every time I take it somewhere, people ask me if I make belts or wallets.

HH: Yeah, I thought this would be perfect for snowboard gear...

LB: It's funny you say that... we just did a children's show, with the diaper bags. And the people in the booth next to us were Hurley, they make surf wear for kids, and she told us that, you guys need to do the ASR show, which is the action sports retailer show. The irony of that is when we last did the knitting show, we were in San Diego, and the show was running the same time as the ASR. There were all these ladies in the knitting world, with needle point and all that, and we were over there, my interns were there, you know, we're young and hip for that kind of thing, and the surf and skate show was right next to us, and there were all these cute boys and girls in bikinis everywhere, and we were thinking, we want to be in that show! [laughs] But that's something we definitely think is interesting, that look and feel. We have some fabric coming up that is surf and skate inspired...

II. Selling in physical stores versus online

HH: With Cory's experience, and now your own line... did you guys do anything different to launch the product?

LB: Oh totally. Cory, until recently, has sold exclusively online, and I sell mine in stores. So we're very different. It's been interesting for both of us to see that very little of my sale is through the website. Part of it is that I do trade shows, so boutiques, stores and department stores can see my bags.

HH: So let's say if I were to start a product, which way would you recommend? To sell entirely online or through stores?

LB: I think the major factor is price, depends on how much it takes to manufacture them, and if you can afford to sell them wholesale price.

Cory Barnes: I would say most people should sell through stores.

LB: Not that they shouldn't sell online as well, but if you get them in stores, people can see them, touch them, they can get to know them, bump into them more often.

HH: Seems that you lose a lot of money by selling to stores...

CB: But then you don't worry about the expenses of customer service, shipping, and everything else. A lot of companies don't want to deal with interacting with each and every customer, or shipping the boxes out one by one. They would rather just go through a volume order.

HH: But if you were to go through stores, you need to do trade shows, which can be very expensive.

LB: Extremely. You can drop ten grand for a simple show. Cory's stuff is different, it's laptop bags. Mine is all over the place, it's broader, so instead of one generic show, such as the gift show, we find that it's better to target the market directly, such as a knitting show or a baby show. I would say that for someone who's starting a business, make sure you can afford it.

When I started the line, I knew I wanted to go through stores. And I got lucky. We were ready to launch them, we had a few bags in stock, and the website was almost ready. I was hoping that there was a knitting show, so I could take the knitting bags somewhere, and sure enough, two weeks later, I got in at the last minute. I got in at the right time, and a year later, we did a double booth and a larger presence.

III. "Knitting is so big that it might not be big anymore."

Lexie Barnes' "flo" knitting bag.

HH: Knitting has its own show?

LB: Knitting is huge. Knitting is so big that it might not be big anymore. Knitting is massive.

CB: you wouldn't believe how big it is. It's crazy.

LB: We do better at the knitting show than at any other show. We did huge.

HH: I would think that baby is a bigger field.

LB: Yeah, but there's a lot more competition. Everybody buys a diaper bag. And everybody makes one. From Walmart to Vuitton. But for knitting, it's a recent phenomenon - not that's it's hip - it's been hip for awhile, but that it's become so hip that everyone wants it, and you can buy bags specifically for it. When we did the first show there were four knitting bag companies, and in the last show there were a lot more.

Even within the first year I was ripped off. So that's something to anyone starting a business, to make sure it's original and can stay original.

We find that very early with my stuff, in the beginning, I had different categories of bags, and each one was going to be made of a different material - vinyl, corduroy, ballistic. And what I found is that the material could be ripped off very easily. Even within the first year I was ripped off. So that's something to anyone starting a business, to make sure it's original and can stay original. What we did was that we think the prints (fabric designs) did very well. We found fabric initially and used it, but things got knocked off so much, like people would make things that match my diaper bags, they would find where I got the fabric and make accessories and sell them. So we started doing exclusive designs. Now we find or commission the designs, do a run of bags, retire the fabric, and get a new one. So it's all limited edition, and when they're sold out, they're sold out.

IV. "We've been together, mostly 24/7, for ten years."

HH: How long have you guys been working together?

LB: We've been together for 10 years now, and how many days have we been apart? (CB: you mean full days?) Full days. (CB: Couple of weeks.) Couple of weeks, and that's all been in the past year. We've been together, mostly 24/7, for ten years.

HH: You don't get sick of each other?

LB: Not yet (both laugh). It's not for everyone... I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.

CB: The main problem is, you bring work home all the time. That can be difficult sometimes.

LB: That's the funny thing now. Because five years ago, he's constantly bringing work home. It'd be Christmas Eve and he's tweaking the website. "Would you put that away, dear?" But now my company is growing, and I'm the one who can't stop thinking about it. That's hard, to separate work from... you know, you go out to dinner and you can't stop talking about that damn handle on the bag.

Lexie Barnes.

HH: So how do you do it? Or how do you not do it, to stop thinking about work?

LB: I take a day off.

CB: I go and spend time with my kids, play with my kids. We've tried to have kids here, in the office, in the past, but it doesn't work out (LB: As you can see now). Because you can't concentrate on you work, and you can't pay attention to them. You can't do both at the same time. And it's not fair to them, to be in an environment where you're near them but they can't receive any attention from you.

LB: And they need the attention. Some kids can busy themselves, but as a mom, it's really difficult to have the kids here at work. Even if you're not playing with them, interacting with them, you feel guilty. If you're with them, you should be with them.

CB: Lexie and I get along pretty well... we're used to each others personality, or personalities.

LB: He knows what I'm thinking before I say it... so I don't have to say much. I mean, I talk non-stop, but I don't have to say it to him.

HH: Thanks so much for your time, Lexie!

An Interview with Cory Barnes, founder of Spire USA

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 08:43:00 PDT

Part of the Iridesco uniform: Spire Zooms, the most comfortable, durable and bad-ass laptop backpacks. The one on the left is mine, over three years old; the one on the right is Danny's, which he purchased in 2000.

One of the first things I bought when we started Iridesco was a Spire laptop backpack. Today, almost four years later, the bag still looks and feels new. That's a rare thing these days, where most things are made cheap and flimsy (IKEA) and meant to expire after a couple of years (iPod). Spire bags are made to last, and it is comfortable and damn good looking (yes, a handsome looking laptop backpack).

My business partner Danny introduced me to Spire. He found them online about six years ago when researching for a suitable backpack for his laptop. Three years after Danny got his backpack online, I purchased mine on Spire's website - and you'll probably have to do the same, at least for now, because Spire bags are conspicuously missing on the shelves of most retail stores. I'm used to associating good, solid products with large corporations, and it seems strange to me that a physical product can exist without some sort of presence in stores. I was curious about how a little company came to create such a durable product, and how they compete with all the "big dogs" out there. So I decided to get in touch with Spire's founder, Cory Barnes.

Cory was gracious enough to let me interview him over the phone. After finding out that Spire has moved from Boulder, Colorado to Western Massachusetts, I went to their new headquarters and visited Spire, where I was also introduced to the new line of women's bags by his wife, Lexie Barnes (read interview here).

I. Boulder, Colorado

Original sketches for Spire's logo.

Hear, Hear: How was Spire started?

Cory Barnes: When I got out of college, with a degree in business, I worked for Nissan Motor Corporation. I didn't feel that I fitted very well in that type of corporate environment, so I quit the job and moved out to Boulder, Colorado. I didn't have a job, didn't have a place to stay, so I stayed on the floor of a friend's apartment when I was looking for somewhere to live. And I just did random jobs to feed myself.

"I kept all my inventory of Spire in the closet... That's how we started, and it grew from there."

Doing the random jobs was fun, but it wasn't a viable way to make a living. I was really into outdoor activities and outdoor gear, and I was also interested in computers and the internet. I had a laptop then and started looking around for a good laptop bag, like most people do, and just couldn't find anything I wanted. At that time, there was really nothing out there that was any good. And I thought that I could do a good job of making cool laptop bags. Since Boulder is a center for outdoor activities, I started asking around, talking to people, finding out who could help me with designs, manufacturing and securing the materials - those are the main things I needed to get the business off the ground. After enough digging around and talking to people, and being persistent about following up, I had the things I needed. I got a prototype together and found someone to manufacture it. I started with a very small production run, I kept all my inventory of Spire in the closet [laughs]. Literally, everything fit in the closet. We started with maybe 3 products - we had the Zoom, the Endo, and we had the Boots. And when an order came in, we'd ship it out. That's how we started, and it grew from there.

HH: When you were building the prototype, how did you find those people to help you?

CB: Now it's different, it seems that you can find everyone online. But back then, internet wasn't as big. And I had to rely on talking to people, friends, and asking them if they knew anybody. I looked in phone books. It sounds pretty mundane [laughs]. Boulder is a small town... My situation is unique, and I can't say it'll work with everyone else. But I just found people in the outdoors industry, which isn't hard in Boulder, since everything there is pretty much outdoor related. So I just kept on talking to people, and when I found somebody I clicked with, I stuck with them.

Top: Spire's original logo with all caps, and the line "Boulder CO USA" underneath (on Danny's Spire bag, purchased in 2000). Bottom: the new spire logo (on my backpack from 2003).

HH: What were you looking to create with Spire?

CB: Well, I wanted something that was going to be durable, functional, and something that didn't look like the other bags out there. I wanted something that looked and perform like a bag I'd use everyday. That I could take with me anywhere. And it's still my philosophy today. Now there are a lot more competitors, but I don't think any of them perform as well as ours do.

HH: How about Spire, the brand? How did you come up with it?

CB: I came up with the name Spire when I was sitting in a coffee shop in Boulder with a sketch pad, jotting different names down on paper, trying to think of what would best represent the brand I was trying to create. And the word Spire, it evokes the outdoors, it's short, and it's memorable. We're not the only one using the word Spire in its name, but I really liked it. Once I decided it was a good name, after running it by my wife, well, she wasn't my wife at the time, she was my girlfriend - I ran it by her, she liked it too, and I did a trademark search. I didn't want to start building the whole brand and find out after spending a lot of money that someone else is using the same name. So I bought a book - you know, I didn't have any money to hire a lawyer - I bought a book on how to trademark a name, and I went down to the Denver library, did a trademark search on the word Spire, and filled out all the paperwork, and got the name trademarked. You don't necessarily have to do that when you're starting a company, but I think it's a good idea. So now the name Spire is a registered trademark. So we're the only company that can use that name for this type of product.

II. Selling online: "crazier than anything they had ever heard of..."

HH: How did you finance your company at the beginning?

"I was probably a little naive at the time, and I figured there was nothing I could do to not make it work."

CB: When I started, I had nothing, I had zero, so I financed the business through my credit cards. I couldn't have gotten a loan for the business. I was planning to sell online, and back then it was a new concept to the banks, and it was crazier than anything they had ever heard of - at least in my experience, going to the local banks in town. I had a business plan, but it wasn't like a 50-page document with projections. I had an idea, a unique idea at that time, and I couldn't get traditional financing. Lots of people go to family for a loan, but I had a lot of confidence in my idea, that it was a good one. I was probably a little naive at the time, and I figured there was nothing I could do to not make it work, and I also like to take risks.

I had a business background. I had a degree in advertising, and a master's degree in business. So it wasn't like I was coming out of nowhere. I looked at the market, and I didn't see anything out there that could compete with it. I've done my research about how to sell them, and how much I could sell them for. It wasn't entirely a leap of faith - it was a calculated risk, and I knew what I was doing.

From the first week we went online, we started getting orders without doing any advertising at all.

HH: So selling online was part of your original plan?

CB: Yes, I was interested in the internet, and at the time I was teaching myself web design. And I thought it'd be really cool to sell bags online. That way I could get the product out there to the people who need it. People had computers and were using the internet, and that to me was the only way to sell the product. Because it would've cost a lot more money to go to trade shows, and got into stores. I was pretty much doing everything myself - designing the website, doing the photography - because I had to.

Early on, we got a listing on Yahoo! We immediately were listed at the top for laptop backpack, and clearly people were looking for that. From the first week we went online, we started getting orders without doing any advertising at all. People just started to find us, because they were looking for the products, just like I was. It wasn't a lot at first. We were also lucky to get some publicity from some magazines early on.

HH: Did you send out press releases, or did they just find you?

Lexie Barnes "flo" (lime green with black handle) was featured in Bust Magazine, June 2006.

CB: They just found us. Now it isn't so easy. Now we have to make the contact with media people and send out press releases. My wife has her own line of bags (Lexie Barnes), so she's building her brand now and selling her products. And her line's doing great - she's selling knitting bags, diaper bags, etc. Lexie was just in Bust magazine, and she'll be in Parenting magazine. We handle all the PR ourselves, it'd be nice to handle an outside PR firm to do this stuff, but they're very expensive. You have to pay them thousands of dollars every month, and you don't know if you'll get results or not, which is kind of a gamble.

HH: How did you guys learn to handle PR?

CB: I took some PR classes, but... The main thing is that it starts with your product. If your product isn't unique, or different in some way, if it doesn't stand out, all the PR money you throw in isn't going to do you any good. So you really have to do something that's going to be of some interest to the magazine's readers. That's how you need to look at it - from the perspective of the editor. They want to sell magazines, they don't really care about your product as much as selling magazines. So they need to find things that will suit their readers, something that's new, eye catching, unusual and unique. If your product does those things, your PR will be a lot easier.

HH: Aside from PR, what else did you do for marketing?

Where Spire's customer service starts - its website.

CB: I'm a huge believer in customer service, and creating an outstanding experience for people with our products. To me everything starts with the website and customer service email. When somebody buys our products, we want them to be satisfied with the entire experience of owning it. So if somebody goes to our website, doesn't understand something, and sends us an email, we'd usually respond within minutes, or hours, but definitely within a day. I can't tell you how frustrating it is as a customer to write an email to a company without ever getting a response. What's the point of having your email address on your website if you don't respond to it?

The whole purchase process begins with our website, so when we respond to customers questions quickly and make it easy for them to find what they're looking for, that's the first step. We ship the product quickly, we have a 30-day return policy with no questions asked, and a lifetime warranty for the product. We also will provide replacement parts to people if they lose them, amongst other things. So I guess the answer to your question is, we rely a lot on word of mouth. That's how we get most of our new customers. And like I said, the reason for us to have word of mouth is our comitment to good products and good customer service. I get emails every week from people saying that they bought a Spire backpack 6 years ago, taken it all over the world, to whatever country it is, and their backpack has held up over the years. And if they don't, they tell me as well, and we take care of the problem quickly. Over the years, we built a reputation of making a high-quality product and standing by them, and that really helps.

But also, beyond word of mouth and PR, search engines have also been very big for us. If you Google "laptop backpack", our ranking fluctuates, but generally we're in the top 10. That's a lot to do with our website optimization. Part of it is that we've been around for a long time, we've been in search engine for a while, so that helps. And our homepage of our site is designed to make it friendly to people who are searching for products like ours.

We do online marketing, text ads. We've done Google ads in the past, and banner ads on sites that are relevant to our products. There are a lot of websites for Mac enthusiasts, such as PowerBook Zone, and they are a natural fit for us for marketing. In the past, we've tried to do a shotgun approach with generic websites, but they haven't been effective for us. We like to do marketing that's highly targeted. So when people see our ads, it's relevant, and they'll click on it.

HH: How do you feel about - say, going to a computer store, such as an Apple store, or Tekserve in New York, where they carry certain brands of backpacks - Timbuk2, Crumpler, booq, etc. A lot of these companies have the budgeting muscle to be featured in stores and trade shows. How do you compete with that?

CB: That's a good question. Spire's never really done trade shows. We'll start that soon. Well - we did MacWorld once, and it worked out well, but generally speaking, we don't really go to trade shows. Because when I started, we were not in the financial position to do it. But now that we've grown and have the capability to keep up with demand, we will be doing trade shows so we get our name out there and the retail stores will pick us up. So those companies are bigger than us, but that doesn't really bother me because we can still make our products better than them anyway. To me that's what it boils down to.

Spire inserts, the 2000 version and 2003 version.

HH: What would be the biggest complaint about your product?

CB:[laughs] I would say, if anyone was to complain about our bags, it would be the price. I understand that our bags are not the least expensive out there. But when you buy a Spire bag, you are getting design, comfort and durability. And those things are worth the money. You don't buy a Spire bag for just a year - you'll keep it for seven, eight years. When you compare our bags with others with similar quality, it is not expensive at all.

One of the things we offer that other people don't is different sleeve sizes for the laptops. I think that's very important because laptops, especially nowadays, come in a variety of different sizes. In my opinion, you cannot make a laptop backpack that holds just one size. If you look around, you see most bags have a generic, poorly fitting sleeve in it, but for our backpacks, you can choose from 8 or 9 different sizes of sleeves, so you're getting a perfect fit for your laptop. That's important to people, and that's why people like Spire over other brands.

IV. Hindsight: "It's going to cost (a lot) more money than you think it's gonna cost."

The first dollar earned by Spire, picture of Lexie and son, and a lot of books on web programming. The R. Crumb Handbook fits in just right.

HH: So what was the hardest thing about running Spire?

CB: Keeping our costs down is a huge challenge. The cost of materials is always rising, especially things like foam, which is petroleum based. When the price of gas goes up, the price of foam goes up as well. For years we were making our stuff in Boulder, that was the way I really wanted to keep it, because I was committed to having a high-quality product made in the US. But it was not feasible for the long term. In January of this year, we started having some of our products made overseas. That was a huge step for us, because we have always promoted that the bags are made in Boulder. And some of them still are, but most of them are made overseas. And the quality is great - I would never have done it if the quality wasn't good. A lot of times the quality is even better. It was a step we had to make, and we're happy with it.

HH: If you can go back to your first year, is there one piece of advice you would give your younger self?

There are just so many expenses you don't account for when you are starting out because you don't know anything.

CB: Definitely. It's going to cost more money than you think it's gonna cost [laughs]. There are just so many expenses you don't account for when you are starting out because you don't know anything. You make your business plan based upon your best guesses, but everyone knows the business plan only goes how you think they're going to go. If you think it's going to cost x amount of money to run your business for the next 5 years, double that and it'll probably be closer to what it's going to cost.

Take Lexie's business for example. We pretty much knew how much it'd take to make the bags, since we've been making bags for years. But you know, going to trade shows is more expensive than we have anticipated. It's not only the booths you have to pay for - for example if you go, you have to pay for a 10x10 booth, costing $50 per sq foot, so okay $5,000, but that's only the beginning. That does not include the chairs, table, electrical circuits, you have to figure out a way to display your products and pay for that. Then you need to ship it, get airline tickets to go to the event and get a hotel when you're there. So now it's costing $10,000. And that's a small, small budget for a trade show. We just budget as we grow. For Lexie's first show, she did a 10x10 booth, and the second time she did it, she doubled the booth size and made it 20x20. And we just grow as we're going, I guess.

HH: You started in 1998, it's been 8 years. You went through expansion, from closet to what you have now. What are some advice you would give for people on growing their business?

CB: First, find the right people to help you. Because if you really want to grow your business, you can't do it all yourself. This is something that probably a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with. I did, and I still do. Because you want to be able to control everything. In the beginning, I was doing every single thing myself. From designing the product, making the website, writing the copy, taking the photos, shipping the bags, doing the customer service, accounting, and everything else. The only way I was able to grow the business was to find the right people who could do those things, better than I can. I had to accept the fact that I am not a professional photographer and needed to hire someone to do that. I needed to find a bookkeeper and an accountant who could help me. That would be my first piece of advice.

"It's so cliche, but it's so true. You have to choose something that you won't get sick of, that you can do day after day after day after day."

Second advice for growing a business: you have to be able to gamble, you have to be able to stomach a certain amount of risk financially. You have to invest in your business. You have to put money into inventory, marketing, staff, and it takes a certain amount of guts, I guess. Especially if you don't have enough resources. You also have to not only invest the money, but the time as well. I guess my advice is better for someone who is starting a business than for one who is in one right now. You really have to do something that you love and are interested in. Because if you're not, you're not going to want to put in the kind of hours it takes to succeed.

It's so cliche, but it's so true. You have to choose something that you won't get sick of, that you can do day after day after day after day. From the time I wake up in the morning to the minute I go to bed, almost, some part of me is connected to the business, whether it's answering emails at home or sketching out designs. It's not a job where you can just shut it off. It has to be something you want to do for a long time.

V. Now, with wife and three kids.

Cory Barnes, with wife Lexie and son Montgomery.

HH: What do you do day to day now that the business is off the ground?

CB: [laughs] Well, now I'm in a very different position, personally, from when I started. When I first started out, I was single and had no responsibilities, I could sleep on someone's couch. But now I'm married with three kids, I have a house, and my life is very different.

"I think that might be a lot of people's dream, that you start a business, get it running, and it'll just take care of itself. And then you can just go to the beach and relax. Believe me, I wish I can just do that. That's not the way it works."

I think that might be a lot of people's dream, that you start a business, get it running, and it'll just take care of itself. And then you can just go to the beach and relax. Believe me, I wish I could just do that. That's not the way it works. I'm just as busy now as I was 8 years ago, I can't just rest and say things are going great. But I probably don't put in as much hours in as I used to. I can't, I have a family. I have to make them a priority, and so I have to delegate things to other people.

As far as my daily routines... When I wake up in the morning, I have my laptop, so I check my emails at home. I do that before I get dressed. Then I go to the office. It varies day-to-day, but I still do most of the customer service myself. Usually I take care of any shipping problems first. From there I will take a look at how our web traffic is doing. I check on Google Analytics, which is one of my homepages in Firefox. We get a lot of our visitors from search engines. If anyone out there has a website, I highly recommend Google Analytics. It's free and it has just so much information.

I spend about half a day on design, and the other half on paperwork and customer service.

HH: You still spend that much time on design?

CB: I do because we're always doing product development. I have to communicate with the factory, and I'm also working with Lexie on her designs. We have a lot of things in the pipeline for her and for me. A lot of my designs, for one reason or another, do not go into production. Either we can't get the idea to work as well as we'd like to, it's too expensive to make, or people's demands have changed. We spend a lot of time thinking of ideas and testing them out to see if they work. A lot of times they don't. So many hours are spent on designs that you might not see. I also look at competitors, I look at their websites. I still do the website myself, and as a web master, I have a lot of web issues to deal with. That takes up a significant amount of time.

VI. What We Talk About When We Talk About Children: Chucky Cheese, Hot Wheels, and Bionicles

Cory's bookshelf: a lot of travel books and some good ol' Raymond Carver on the bottom shelf.

HH: What kind of tools do you use daily, aside from Firefox and Google Analytics?

CB: We use... Live Chat Now, which is the chat we use on our website. And I'm not on it as much as I should be, I'll be first to admit it. But when people go to our site, there is a little link, and if you click on it... I'll get online now. Someone can go there with a question and talk to me real time. I think this is an important tool for customer service. I also use this thing called Web CEO, which is a website optimization software. As for our website, we use Miva, which has been great. I wouldn't think of anything else for our shopping cart. We started with Yahoo! store before they were called Yahoo! Store. We used to use Shop Site. We use Dreamweaver for the website.

HH: What kind of things do you read?

CB: I read a ton of magazines. Business 2.0, Fast Company, Fortune Small Business, Spin, New York Times, Time Out NY.

As for as TV, I love Deadwood. I don't have HBO so I rent it with Netflix. Six Feet Under I love... What movies have I seen recently? I don't get to the movies a lot because I have 3 kids. But I am going to see Miami Vice tonight.

This is a Bionicle. I had to look it up on the internet.

HH: So what do you do outside of work?

CB: I used to snowboard and rock climb and mountain bike, but that was before I had kids. Now, really my kids are what I do in my free time. I go to the park. We go to Chucky Cheese. We have three boys, I hang out with them and play with their Hot Wheels cars. They're really into Bionicles. We take them to play soccer, things like that. It doesn't sound very exciting, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

HH: Last question. What are the 3 things you can't live without?

CB: Well. It'll have to be my wife and kids; my business; and my laptop. Those are pretty much it, I guess.

HH: Thanks for your time, Cory!

Interviews with New Companies

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 08:35:00 PDT

Over at the Harvest Gazette, we conduct brief interviews with new businesses in the service industry as a part of the New Founders Program. If you are looking for an interview fix, take a look at these:

An Interview with Blue Flavor Founder, Brian Fling – Blue Flavor captures the essence of entrepreneurship and small business, electing to impose a work-life balance that’s eluded them at previous jobs. We talk with founder Brian Fling about the Blue Flavor’s adventures as a small business in its first year of operation.

An Interview with Hyperprism – Hyperprism is a small, bi-coastal creative agency founded on solid experience in the interactive business. Their portfolio shows off an awe-inspiring body of interactive work.

We’ll be back shortly with some meaty interviews for Hear, Hear!

A Lesson from the Flaming Lips

Tue, 1 Aug 2006 09:47:00 PDT

The Flaming Lips at Webster Hall, NYC, April 2006.

At one point in a conversation between Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie (published in the June/July issue of Believer), they talk how they deal with fans, and Gibbard says,

...I just find that whatever mood I’m in, whether I got enough sleep the night before or whether or not we had a bad show, or let’s say I had a fight with Joan on the phone, or whatever else I tend to let that affect the way I deal with people…

To which Wayne responds,

In the end I kind of look at it like, what did you want when you met Santa Claus for the first time? You didn’t really want to know that he was just some guy who was lucky to have a job being Santa Claus for two months around Christmas time. You wanted it to be the real Santa Claus. And at some point, you and I, we put on a little bit of the Santa Claus costume and go out there and do the show. So I can look at it like, if I met Santa Claus, would I want him to be tired and grumpy and say, “Hey little kid, leave me alone, goddamnit”? I would want him to handle it and let me walk away with that image and that belief still in my mind. And so, I don’t know, I think in that sense I always feel like I owe the audience. Someone comes up to me, you know, I owe it to them not to have bad breath and be grumpy… I’ve met people like John Waters, where I walked away from meeting him and he’s perfect, just the way I wanted him to be… And then there’s other people that you meet and just, frankly, don’t even like, and I would never want that to happen to this great thing that’s become the Flaming Lips, I would just ruin twenty-five years of all these great accidents and all these wonderful things that have happened to us in two seconds, when someone says, “ah, fuck, he was a dick. I don’t like them.” I value every fan – they’ve given me this life, and if they want to talk to me for a couple of seconds, no big deal, right?

Sometimes it’s not even about putting on that Santa Claus suit, but just a matter of showing some little sign of respect. I don’t think it’s an easy matter, especially after we’ve had a bad day, and it will become increasingly hard to maintain our humility and manners as our business grow and gain a reputation and success. Like Wayne Coyne has said, it is the people who have given us our success, and our reputation takes so long for us to build up, and it would be a shame to throw it all away in two seconds.

An Interview with Paul Buckley - Part Two

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 20:37:00 PDT

Paul Buckley's office. See all pictures from the studio visit

This is the second half of our interview with Paul Buckley (read the first part).
Note: this interview contains language that some might regard as indecent. Blame D.H. Lawrence and Chester Brown.

III. Fighting the good fight.

HH: I see what you mean by the loud book covers. I have seen a few books that have very different covers in the UK than we have here in the States, and most of the time I prefer the UK counterpart (for example, this blog post) [Editor's note: neither covers are designed by UK designers. The book on top, published by Portobello Books Ltd (based in London), is illustrated by an Iranian illustrator]. I don’t think it’s a case of lacking design talent, rather I wonder if it's a case of where business objective comes before artistic considerations. How have you dealt with the business and aesthetics of book cover design? Does/can “what sell” translate to what is a good design?

Philosophy in the Boudoir by Marquis de Sade, cover illustration by Tomer Hanuka.

"This should also give you a good idea of the kind of courage my Penguin Publisher Kathryn Court has, when it comes to embracing something fresh, whether it be racy like this, or understated like Disgrace."

PB: Personally, I believe there are good and bad examples of everything, everywhere, book design or otherwise, and unless you are an expert in the subject, I think it's cheap and easy to pull out a few examples and say “see, this is what i mean”. I am extremely aware, and see everyday, many UK covers. Same with US covers. I think there is a lot of talent on both sides of the pond fighting the good fight… and both sides have their unfortunate share of hacks as well. I don't like either of those covers by the way. A few UK designers I work with fairly often and am in complete awe of are Jamie Keenan and Jon Gray. John Hamilton and David Pearson are very talented as well. I’ve also hired a wildly talented Brit (now living in Brooklyn) to do our Penguin Press covers, Darren Haggar.

Luckily I work on imprints that rarely ask for the type of big book treatment I mentioned earlier. But when they do, they are extremely receptive to taste and balance and beautifully-cut fonts. With design, one takes the bad with the good… I’m stubborn to a point, and if I realize that this author or publisher adamantly want what they want after I’ve tried to sell a more tasteful avenue that I believe will strike the same chords and reach the same amount of people, then I give in. But I still do my best to make sure it's crafted perfectly, and to make myself or whatever designer I’m working with to embrace the challenge of making large gorgeous type. I think in this field it's easy to lose sight of how powerful a cover like that can be when not hacked out. Any one book is a group effort, and many people may feel just as strongly and if you don't pick and choose your fights, you alienate people and come off as combative. You will never achieve your goals this way. There will always be another book that you’ll be proud of to offset the compromises that got away from you.

Two covers art directed / designed by myself and 2 art directed by Darren Haggar – coming out of my dept that show how powerful, tasteful and beautiful big type can be:

From left to right: Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl; This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes; On Beauty by Zadie Smith; Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey.

HH: In the past year, I’ve noticed the “new” Penguin look. I believe many people my age (28) associate Penguin with the pale yellow and black classics they read in school. I noticed that two of my recent favorite book designs (Swann’s Way and Quiet American) are not your usual paperback, but ones with thicker, folded covers. This is the same with the new Steinbeck's. When did Penguin decide to redesign the classics, and why?

Lady Chatterley's Lover, cover by Chester Brown

PB: Yes, we all went to college reading those fairly drab Penguin Classics. And for that reason, simply because they were looking so stale, we revamped them 6 years ago, and have done our best to use more dynamic art and design. For the final redesign, I chose a combination of two of my favorite fonts - Futura and Filosofia, which left the covers still feeling “classic” but much less stuffy and staid than their previous incarnation. I cannot tell you how happy I was to see that old look go and to watch how our Classics line is developing into the kind of imprint where I can pitch Tomer Hanuka to do Philosophy in the Boudoir and everyone gets excited by that idea. One of our recent Classics artists, Chester Brown, wrote his own flap copy on Lady Chatterley’s Lover and his headline was “Who D.H. Lawrence Fucked”, followed by a list of names / portraits… as I put this art out on the table, I thought for sure that this was going to go over like a turd in a punch bowl. But to my surprise, they just thought that the greatest thing, and it stayed, uncontested. When I told Chester that I could not believe he just got away with that, he told me how Lawrence fought for the normalcy of the word “fuck”, claiming it was not a dirty word, served a fair purpose in our language, got a bad rap, etc – it turned out Chester did his research well, and now somewhere, D.H. Lawrence is smiling knowing that his battle for that little word is still being fought.

The Classics you refer to with the French flaps and rough cut and fancy gifty production values are our Penguin Classics Deluxe editions. They are a blast to work on and a real opportunity to do something beautiful or fun, or both. Its interesting to note the difference in the two Classics options.

Two on the left: Penguin Deluxe Classics Graham Greene series illustrated by Brian Cronin and designed by Paul Buckley (The End of the Affair, Brighton Rock). Two on the right: Penguin Classics version of Graham Greene's novels (The Comedian, A Gun for Sale), illustrated by Geoff Grandfield.

The following Penguin Deluxe Classics are art directed by Paul Buckley and Helen Yentus. Starting from left: Candide, cover by Chris Ware; The Portable Dorothy Parker, cover by Seth; The Jungle, cover by Charles Burn!; The New York Trilogy, cover by Art Spiegelman.

Recent artist’s I’ve commissioned for Penguin Classics include Frank Miller, Art Spiegelman, Seth, Chester Brown, Chris Ware, Tomer Hanuka, Charles Burns, Jason, Anders Nilsen, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi.

IV. "It would sell if you put a raw turkey gizzard on the cover."

HH: Here’s the inevitable, obligatory question: what makes a “good” cover? Do covers sell books?

Tooth and Claw by T.C. Boyle, cover design by Paul Buckley

PB: If you noticed it and it allured you long enough to read the front cover copy, then its a good cover – clearly it did its job. This premise is the same for all fine art, commercial art, and design, music, acting, etc – whether it be something that grabs your attention in a museum, on your radio, or that poster on the bus stop. But hopefully it's also done with taste, and leaves you feeling smarter, not pandered down – I think that's the struggle all corporate artists must constantly deal with. There are a lot of people who do not feel safe unless they are doing something that's been done over and over. Growing up in an artistic family, I did not realize this, and when I entered the corporate world, it really floored me. It still does. Whenever I see a young editorial assistant coming up the ranks, I think “ok, we're going to do some cool stuff for this person when he / she starts signing up books”; and then when they say “can't it just look like (insert big nasty trashy book here)?”, my heart sinks every time. You realize taking risks and wanting to try something new has nothing at all to do with age - it's a type of person, and when you find them, stick to them.

The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson, cover design by Paul Buckley See cover in more detail

I think covers do help sell books, or help destroy books. There are so many books flooding these stores unless you walk in knowing exactly what you want, then a good book cover needs to stop you from looking at those other books. That's why distinction is key, and not big type. I know someone who is always pointing out big type covers to me and telling me how well they are selling, and I’ll counter “but that's (insert world-famous, 65-year-old author here) latest book, they are booked on every talk show, and it would sell if you put a raw turkey gizzard on the cover.” Right next to that book will be some first-time author with a gorgeous restrained cover that is also on the bestseller list, but that is always just “dumb luck”. Of course a bold cover is great, but there are many, various ways to achieve that. Covers are very important for first-time and mid-list authors – it helps them stand out from the crowd.

HH: What’s your process? Do you listen to music or drink beer while designing?

PB: I approach fiction and non-fiction differently. With a novel, I read it first and see what imagery comes to mind as I’m reading, and later I’ll figure out how to execute some of those ideas – with the right help, if you can think it, it can be done. With non-fiction, I’ll read it as well, or as much as I need to, and start researching the subject matter, or metaphors for the subject matter. In both instances I also want to know what the editor and publisher are thinking, and if the author has anything they’d like me to explore. The creative process usually starts with me percolating, thinking here and there at odd moments about a multitude of projects and solutions, it all mixing together and then starting to separate to form their own territory. Then I begin cleaning my office, fussing, and stalling until I start to panic. When panic sets in, I wait till most of my staff go home and won’t bother me. I then get a large coffee, stay till midnight or later and get something down on paper, or screen, focus on one job. I can often be happy with these first ideas, but more often than not, I come in the next morning and think it shite. Often during these nights as I’m sleeping or about to fall asleep, things come to me, the most recent being solutions for Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Talk Talk happening during the same dream. But its most important for me to just get something started as it lays out a path and a vehicle, and then I’m usually good to go on that job.

Different comps for T.C. Boyle's Talk Talk. "Rejected by Tom. He loved loved loved the Dutch cover. Please feel my pain... now you understand how subjective it all is? I lost much sleep and a few lunches over this. Eventually we had to use lips, not green ones though... still, not a proud moment." More about the green lips on T.C. Boyle's forum.

During the rare occasions where I’m just not feeling it, I walk away from that project for a day or two and see if another project sparks me. I’ll also look at books – photography, design, art of some sort. It helps me get out of my own head, my own box, and see how others solved things.

Music is a mixed bag – late at night if I’m working on something and the focus is clear, then loud music is great. But if I’m still in an experimental mode it seems to hinder my thoughts and I need quiet. And as unsexy as this sounds, NPR can be perfect if I’m in a production mode.

No, beer is never involved in my design process, though it does seem to help with my photography and my pool game…

V. Wife & Sleep

HH: Now, to conclude our interview – what do you do when you’re not designing? You did talk about snakes…

PB: Aside from my snake fetish, I’m pretty normal and it's so darn boring to see it in writing – I watch too much tv, I sleep too late, I like booze too much, I read a lot, I obsess too much over my lack of hair and weak chin, I travel as much as possible including two uber manly Canadian fishing trips twice a year that annoyingly as of yet still leave my chin undefined, and occasionally I drag my wife into the woods or the jungle with me to look under rocks and logs – for which I must later that day then take her to a nice restaurant to make up for. After removing the ticks from each other, of course.

HH: Ok. Last question, and a quick one, what are the three things you can’t live without?

PB: Please know I’m not the type to say Helvetica, Pantone 195 and my fabulous collection of art books. My 3 things would be sleep, my wife (how can I get away without saying that..?), and those two things together in one bed.

Other sites of interests

Book Covers from the NY Times Book Review
Selected covers for some books in the most current NY Times Book Review.

COVERS / FWIS
Gallery and discussions on selected book covers, handpicked by designers.

Foreword
A weblog community in the service of book design, books, art, photography and design.

Bookslut
A monthly web magazine and daily blog dedicated to those who love to read.

An interview with Paul Buckley - Part One

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 14:33:00 PDT

The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank, cover design by Paul Buckley, photography by Catherine Ledner.
See entire cover

No matter what you're selling - a product, an idea or a skill - the presentation is just as important as the thing itself. Your customers will only do so much research (if at all) when purchasing your product, and when presented with similar choices, they will choose the one they feel most comfortable with. And that decision is most likely based on the packaging. Nothing illustrates this better than the experience of shopping for new books: before we even bother to read the description on the back of a book we have never heard of, we need to first notice the book and have enough desire to pick it up. And that decision is based on the book's cover.

In this interview, Hear, Hear chats with an expert in book cover design - Paul Buckley, a veteran art director of one of the largest book publishers in the world, Penguin Group. The interview will be published in two installments.

(About the cropped cover of The Wonder Spot shown above: "a slew of covers were presented over a span of many weeks.. of all the covers rejected, this was the only one that caught the authors eyes long enough for her to say 'I like this but...' Its still my favorite of the body of work done for this book. I was pretty unhappy with the hardcover, but I do like Helen Yentus's paperback solution.")

I. "So I grew up drawing and obsessed with reptiles"

Hear, Hear: Hi, Paul! Thanks for giving us the time to chat with you. Why don't you start off by telling our readers what you do for a living?

Paul Buckley: My official title is Vice President Executive Art Director, which should give you a clue that I’ve been here [Penguin Group USA] awhile. They treat me pretty good, so I’ve stuck around. Basically, I wear two hats – I manage a large staff of very talented designers and art directors, and look over their shoulders when necessary and stay out of their way when necessary. While running my department, I try to be a Designer as well, working on my own covers and fulfilling my own artistic needs. The imprints within my department are all trade – Penguin / Viking / Penguin Press / Portfolio / Sentinel; so there is a really nice mix and always interesting projects to sink ones teeth into. My staff and I work on roughly 600 book covers and jackets a year and this gives us the opportunity to work with some of the most talented authors, designers, photographers, typographers, painters and illustrators in America and abroad. The Art Directors and Designers that I am proud to call my staff are Roseanne Serra, Darren Haggar, Joseph Perez, Maggie Payette, Jesse Reyes, Herb Thornby, Jaya Miceli, Jasmine Lee, Jason Booher, Greg Mollica and Jennifer Wang.

HH: How did you get into this field?

An editorial comics by Paul's father, Gerald Buckley. See entire comic

PB: I got into design through my father Gerald Buckley. He grew up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia idolizing guys like Milton Caniff and Will Eisner, and eventually got placed in the Korean War drawing comics for The Stars and Stripes newspaper overseas. My family grew up surrounded by his art and the sounds of my mother's piano and guitar playing. For the longest stretch of his life, my father was an art director in advertising, and was involved in the Philadelphia design world. He sported the most insanely manicured goatee and drove an Austin Healey, even though he had 5 kids. An amazing painter, illustrator, art director, teacher, designer and cartoonist, at one point my father made his living in all these fields, and his overabundance of talent spilled out into every inch of our home. As well, my wife Ingsu Liu, and brother Jerry Buckley are also book cover designers.

A painting by Gerald Buckley.

An illustration of snakes on Paul's wall. "Probably not the best thing in a corporate environment", Paul answers when I asked if there's a live one in the studio.

So I grew up drawing and obsessed with reptiles, convinced I wanted to be either an illustrator or herpetologist. In my high school senior year, i took a job with a travelling petting zoo / amusement park, and ran the merry go round for these ex-cons who would feed me black beauties to keep me alert. When my father found out I was going cross-country with this outfit after graduation, he went A-Team and found me a job very quickly in NYC running a stat machine and doing paste-ups for a small studio.

So a week after graduation, I was travelling 4.5 hours a day from the Philadelphia suburbs to NYC for $5 an hour. Commuting with one's father at that age is not an optimal father / son relationship. Also at that time, I enrolled into Bucks County Community College, which as unglamorous as it sounds, had (and may still have…) a very excellent two-year fine arts program – so I’d commute to NYC a few days a week, and I’d stay home and drive to college the rest of the week. Upon graduation, in conjunction with School of Visual Arts (SVA), they awarded me a scholarship to NYC - SVA, where I received my Bachelors degree in Illustration. By the time I graduated, I've had five years of design under my belt from various studios and magazine design shops, and was getting my illustrations published in magazines like Newsweek and Penthouse, so I was doing ok, though not enjoying painting as much as I used to. I then took a road-trip taking a few months off, eventually landing in Belize and Guatemala. When I came back, I needed money to pay my rent. Judy Murello told me of a job at Penguin and I never left. I was not going after publishing, I just needed a job after that long trip, and quickly realized that I really liked designing books, and I still feel that way today, 18 years later. In the beginning I tried to illustrate every book I was working on, but soon realized I enjoyed design more and that it offered me greater flexibility to constantly reinvent myself.

(click on cover to see in larger format)

From left to right: A piece by Gerald Buckley, probably for an ad in the 60's; Paul Buckley's earlier work, a cover for The Patient Who Cured His Therapist, which has been repackaged a few years back; another piece of earlier work, The Book of Guys; nervous dog - a detail from the back cover of The Book of Guys.

II. It's all art, it's all valid, it's all good.

HH: Where does one draw the line between design and illustration? I think illustration is an important skill for all designers. What do you think is the difference between art direction and graphic design?

Herrings Go about the Sea In Shawls, cover illustration by Dr. Seuss, design by Paul Buckley. "My first and only acetate cover, lots of fun. I don't think it sold too well."

PB: I like the fact that I’m very knowledgeable about illustration / painting / technique, but I’d disagree with you and say it's not necessary for many designers. Some of the best designers I know cannot draw a stick figure, and I’d kill to have half of their design talent. That said, on the opposite side of that coin, many folks who both illustrate and design their own work, do some of the most unique work out there – as long as they don't create a style that becomes too rigidly signature and same ole and stale. That happens all too often. I enjoy both avenues – collaborating with great visual artists to create a great hybrid, or doing the entire package myself and seeing what I can come up with. It's ART - it's all valid. It's all good. Nobody is right or wrong. One thing I do know though – the more people I collaborate with, the more people who want to buy me beer.

The difference between art direction and graphic design is simple, though the two have some overlap. Art directors direct the art – we choose the talent that's going to physically make the package happen or come to life, no different from what a movie director does for a film. I read the book and decide which photographer, illustrator, hand-letterer, etc, would be appropriate to do a two-dimensional representation of this author’s work, that will then catch the viewer’s eye. Then these various artists show me their thoughts on paper or screen, and I direct them as to what aspects of their work is going right and what is going wrong. A designer does the actual design labor – it's his or her hand that chooses the fonts, layout, colors, textures, etc, and together with the art director’s comments, whips it all into shape, and will no doubt bear his or her look and mood.

(click on cover to see in larger format)

Some examples of book covers Paul Buckley has designed. From left to right: Dirty Sally by Michael Simon, photo by Elinor Carucci; Shooting the Heart by Paul Cody, art by Manuel Geerinck; A Contract with God by Will Eisner; Ratner's Star by Don DeLillo.

Regarding Dirty Sally and Shooting the Heart, Paul says, "two rejected covers that beg why when you see what we actually put in the book stores."

A Contract with God: "my favorite project of the moment and freshly approved (thank the lord), a 20 book series of Will Eisner's back list. Such a blast to work on and such a brilliant giant of a man, Will Eisner. I wish he was still around to see them."

Ratner's Star: "my 'bonehead' cover...when I was designing Don DeLillo's back list, I got so excited by the project that I just started designing anything DeLillo. When I brought this cover to my packaging meeting my publisher looked quizzically at my editor and my editor looked back at me saying 'uhh Paul, its gorgeous and all, but we don't own this book, never have.'"

HH: If you were to talk to a classroom of aspiring designers, how would you describe to them what book design is? How is it different from other forms of graphic design (say, compared to CD packaging)?

PB: I often talk to classes and prefer they come to my office-studio to get a feel for what it's truly like - the good, the bad, and the ugly. This way they get to see things in various stages of development and different types of books, photography, art, etc. Book design is just that – the designing of various books.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn, cover illustration and design by Paul Buckley. "Approved by the publisher but the editor refused to show the author. Hence not used and a good example of how design options are subjectively edited out." See cover in more detail

Book design and CD design are definite siblings. Aesthetics-wise, the main difference I note is that CDs use more nonsequitors, and books use literal imagery. Often I look at the cover of a CD I’m very familiar with and think the choice of art ridiculous, and I do the same with books thinking they spelled it out so damn much, why do you even need to read it? I wish both camps would mix it up more. I think the most successful designs evoke the mood, but not in a literal way, nor do they leave you feeling duped into buying something that completely misrepresented itself visually. Another key difference is that CD folk don't seem to obsess over “big type” the way book publishers / editors / marketers / sales force do. I think they really get that if you want the new Beck CD, you’re going to buy it regardless of what strength the type carries. Of course there is a big difference in canvas size, and books do have the opportunity to actually catch your eye, much more than a row of 5-inch CDs do. But publishing executives are very insecure about type and do tend to flood the market with books that have huge, foil-embossed type, and instead of these getting your attention, they actually fade into a sea of sameness – or if they do catch your attention, you might feel like you are being yelled at in some cheap, aggressive way. Certainly typography is a beautiful medium and large type can be gorgeous, but there are so few books out there that achieve this.

This is the first segment of a two-part interview with art director Paul Buckley. Read the second part of the interview, where we talk about: the delicious new Penguin Classics; D.H. Lawrence + Chester Brown + the word "fuck"; Tomer Hanuka + Philosophy in the Boudoir; more beautiful covers by Buckley, who also shares with us his "process" in designing covers.

Books discussed in this interview