What drew you to book design at the beginning of your career? As a young designer, I liked the simple constraints and challenges of book design. You’re given a limited amount of space to communicate one idea in a split second as someone’s scanning through a bookshelf. The design needs to capture the essence of the story in a creative way, but also quickly convey the story.
Book design captured my two fundamental loves: communication through strong concepts and typography. The only way to capture the essence of a book’s story is through strong but simple concepts that come through in the whole design, including the type.
How has your focus shifted, and why? I feel like my career hasn’t experienced a shift, but an expansion. At Base, I’m still working to clearly tell a story and engage with people in a way that stops them in their tracks, but the work we do for brands happens at the intersection of strategy and creative concept. It’s more holistic, and the reach is much wider.
I also currently have a dual role at Base. I am a designer by training, and I find that running a studio and a business requires a lot of the same thinking and skills. I need to understand our business’s context and to build a strategic foundation while still giving myself and our team the freedom to think and create in a free and open environment. As a design studio, we need to have the confidence to take risks and go for it. Whether you’re designing a project or running a project, it’s really the same thing.
Who have been your most influential mentors, and why? Currently, my clients are my mentors. I’m fortunate to work with and learn from some visionary entrepreneurial leaders every day. They have taught me how to listen, how to be fearless, how to be a leader, how to galvanize people and make good decisions.
In the earlier years of my career, Paul Sahre, an independent designer working in New York, taught me the value of finding and promoting your personal voice, being your own client and finding work that furthers your interests. He also helped me to pursue graduate school at Yale.
Then, while I was at Yale, I was very much influenced by the designers Armand Mevis and Linda Van Deursen, a dutch duo who lecture at Yale. Their way of thinking influenced how I understand and define design as the very outcome of the thinking process. It’s not about just making things, decorating or self expression.
How did you use MoMA’s brand values to create its Design Store? MoMA asked us to develop the strategy for its communication ecosystem. We needed to determine how the brand should talk and what it should talk about, across digital, print, and physical channels. Our overarching concept was “shopping the unshoppable.” Meaning, anything you buy at MoMA Design Store is much more than a product. You’re buying the ideas, history, technology and stories that live within and around the design objects. Internally our mantra is, “If you’re selling something, say something.” There are few stores in the world that live up to this as much as MoMA—everything its store offers is rich with stories.
Defining a tone of voice was a critical. It needed to align with the dichotomy of its identity; the store positions itself where art meets commerce. While the museum is the authority on art, the design store makes art and ideas available on a mass level. We wanted to play with this idea and communicate it in a way that would surprise and delight people. We ended up creating a voice that’s playful and witty, that makes people smile, but still communicates the value of the objects the store sells.
What excites you about design right now? I think there are three exciting and evolving contexts that are influencing and affecting designers’ work right now. The first is that laypeople are increasingly knowledgeable about design and branding. They are more discerning than ever before. This means designers need to work harder and push themselves to impress a savvy audience. The second thing designers need to consider is the amount of design apps and software that are available to the public, making it easy for anyone to learn design, at least on a basic level. The last thing, and this is what keeps me up at night, is the way today’s visual landscape has become completely saturated. This is true everywhere, but particularly online, where the scenery is completely chaotic. It’s an increasing challenge for designers: How can you cut through the noise and clutter and make an impact? How do you grab the attention of a savvy public in a meaningful way, day in and day out? It’s something we’ve always had to grapple with as designers, but the volume has been turned up lately.
Do you have any advice for people just entering the profession? People seem to think creativity is something you’re born with, that some people just walk around and strokes of genius come to them out of nowhere. That’s not true. Creative people have good ideas and produce good work because they work hard at it. Creativity is like a fitness regimen that you need to constantly keep up with to stay fit. If you slack, you’ll lose it very quickly, but if you keep at it, you’ll keep getting stronger and stronger. It’s a muscle, not just a natural gift some people are given.
