Artist as loner, sound familiar? Every creative professional can relate to spending lots of time in their head, certainly an isolating experience. Stefan G. Bucher has a better idea. He works at the award-winning firm 344 Design (www.344design.com), a Los Angeles-based design firm specializing in work for creatively-ambitious clients.

Bucher believes that for an all-around creative mind, it would be better to have a support group safety net inspiration choir confessional think tank bowling team of the soul. Sounds good to me!

Stefan is the author of All Access: The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers, published by Rockport Publishers. The recently published book takes the reader behind the scenes of a design community—from the successful to the just-starting-out. In the book he highlights the reasons we all need a community, including exploring mentors, education and the eureka moments. Being successful as a creative professional is a journey and it is one you do not want to travel alone.

You would recognize his work with clients such as Ogilvy & Mather New York, Modernista!, Capital Records, Atlantic Records, Warner Bros. Records and Interscope Records, but who is Stefan Bucher and why does he think we need to create a creative community? Born in Hannover, Germany, both his parents were very interested in the arts, and Stefan has been drawing since childhood. When Stefan was only twelve years old, he submitted his work to the German magazine, Der Donaldist. Upon acceptance and publication of this first drawing, he was completely won over by the bright, new world of commercial art and over the next three years slowly took over a lot of the graphics in that same magazine. From there, he moved onto ads for local retailers and sold the first of those ads for 50 Deutsche Mark in 1989. He came to Los Angeles in 1993 and was accepted at the Art Center College of Design. Stefan describes what happens next, “I wanted to go into illustration, but was too intimidated by the work in the school catalog, so I stuck with advertising. It seemed like it would suit my wide-ranging interests. In the final weeks of my final term, I was recruited by Wieden Kennedy’s Portland office and spent the next year in the rain doing Microsoft ads. Not a fun thing to do in a city for which I was ill-suited. Luckily I got fired a year later and got to come back to Pasadena. I’ve been at 344 ever since.”

The seed for his ideas, book and workshops on the creative community was planted early, “I wasn’t the most popular kid growing up, so I retreated into my own world a lot, because the voices in my head were much more fun than the actual local communities available to me. A lot of the time I actually felt less lonely being by myself.”

Of course, this all changed at art school. Surrounded by other loner-types, Stefan found himself turning outward and towards others, “Life changed in art school, where I was finally in the company of other people who shared many of my passions. I found inspiration, entertainment, support and solace in the company of teachers and students and later co-workers. I was happy to submerge myself in the prefab communities offered by school and the ad agency. At first, I was a little bit spooked to give up the ‘moody loner’ role I had created for myself as a teen. It seemed like a bit of a compromise—having to hold myself back a little to be liked, but being liked was awfully nice, so it wasn’t too big of a sacrifice.”

As many of us have found, the workplace is not like school with its infrastructure of community. Stefan’s next move was a step towards community and he had to find the people to create infrastructure. He says, “After spending a lot of time working solo, it just got to be too hard to be alone with myself all the time. I got too depressed and depleted. So I made a conscious choice to build a community for myself. On the advice of a teacher, I joined the AIGA and became active in the Los Angeles chapter leadership. It was more networking than community building, but it was a good career move.” His first real conscious step toward building a creative community was in 1999 on a trip to New York, “I visited designers and studios I admired. I called them up and said ‘Hey, I love what you do and I’d like to come visit you. I don’t want a job from you. All I want to do is meet and talk about life.’ A lot of my design friendships started out that way and have grown over the years. I still make those trips today. Wherever I travel, I try to meet a few new designers. Once people actually believe that I’m not angling for anything, it’s always great.” Stefan adds, “Of course, a lot of creative community already existed before I made the decision to start building. Friends from home, friends from school and jobs... they form the nucleus. But even those relationships develop new facets when you set out to form something bigger. It’s made me a kinder human and a better friend to those I already knew.”

I asked him next about how one could consciously move toward community, what concrete steps could he offer? He says, “Make a decision to be community-minded. Open yourself up to people. Meet others that have a passion that matches yours and start there. Meet them as people, as fellow travelers, not as potential contacts. Be a friend to people. Be kind! Offer help and accept help when it’s offered. In other words, be human! Being human enriches your solution, so that at some point all you have to do is drop in a seed crystal and structures will emerge very rapidly. Again, the key is to do this to lead a kinder life and bring good vibes to the people you meet. If you’re out to gather business contacts, it will give you only that. The deeper rewards of being part of a bigger mind will be lost to you. I know it’s starting to sound very touchy feely, but I don’t know how else to talk about it.” As for the physical aspects of community, Web sites and e-mail have opened up many doors, “In recent years the Internet has brought interesting new friends who responded to the 344 site. After making the first incarnation look very corporate and respectable, it is now reborn as something much more personal. I know that it has confused or even turned off some people, but it really seems to resonate with others. Some of those people write to me and some really interesting relationships have formed as a result. It’s been really wonderful, actually. It’s nice to know that I’m not working in a vacuum, that people see the stuff and like it in the way that I had hoped they would.”

Stefan also does not limit the concept of community to just designers. In his conference workshop he talks about, “Other graphic designers, art directors, fine artists, photographers, painters, sculptors, product designers, musicians, producers, many, many wonderful writers...Oh, I love them all, but it goes beyond that. I’m happy to meet anybody who has a deep love for what they do. Dedication and energy are what counts more than anything. I seem to make the strongest connections with other designers, but I’ve met some great custom car mechanics and painters recently and we’ve bonded. I would certainly include my CPA, who just lights up when he goes over my numbers. Passion is the key!”

Is this creative community a business necessity for today’s freelance professional?

He admits the work would get done anyway and you probably won’t get paid more but it is a very attractive proposition. Stefan says, “You’ll have like minds to ask for help or advice or support or discussion or diversion or just for a laugh. You don’t need to be alone. And that’s a big deal on a rainy night, when you’ve been in your head for days, trying to coax new thoughts into the light. Knowing that there are people out there, who think as you do, that see the world the same way you do—it means one thing: You might be crazy, but you’re not the only one! That thought certainly gives me strength to continue my work when I feel overwhelmed, and it gives me confidence to follow my artistic vision on the days when it would be easier to look for more conventional gigs.” ca

_{© Maria Piscopo}