Thinking for
a Living™

Thoughts on Context Switching

Designers like being productive. Context switching is a productivity killer.

Context switching is not multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is eating a burrito while walking down the street and thinking big all at the same time. This is possible only because walking and eating are relatively mindless tasks. It’s the mindful tasks that we have trouble with.

For designers (and knowledge workers in general) the job is all focus — focusing on one thing, then another. Let’s call this task switching.

Task switching isn’t a bad thing. How could it be? But context switching? Yes.

Context switching is changing focus between unique problem sets, each involving different circumstances and details. For the designer this means switching projects.

Computers can do this sort of switching very quickly; Command+Tab whips between worlds of complexity. Context switching for humans? Very expensive. Significant time is required to focus on a subject, recall all of the assorted details, and hold the sum in your brain.

However, once “in the zone,” work happens, hours fly by. The designer is happy.

It’s getting to this highly productive state that remains an inescapable challenge. Being inescapable, the only solution is to say: Today I’ll do this… and that’s it.

Illustration: Matt Owens

The Story of YWFT

To mark the launch of a new and improved YouWorkForThem, here’s an account of how the site began. The beginning never really starts on the first day, so let me backtrack a little and give my account on how the site was created. I had just left my job to go freelance. At the time, I had been selling typefaces with Test Pilot Collective, an old type foundry that I created with some of my friends. When I quit my job, I also changed a lot of things in my life and decided that I was going to start reselling my typefaces on my own.

At the time (early 2000) I was talking with Michael Young online a lot. He was living in DC and working for the internet company, Vir2l. Mike had just developed a typeface himself and we had also just started working together on personal projects. We quickly began working on client projects together and started WeWorkForThem (our design studio based on our personal work) while we watched huge start-ups crashing all around us. There were next to no jobs available in the field of design and starting up a company like this was suicide. Another crazy factor is that we never have worked from the same location. For the most part, Mike worked out of Baltimore after moving from DC and I was in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Almost immediately, we started saving money to create a website where we could sell fonts on the side. By the end of 2000 we had contracted a friend who began coding the site. We concepted the site and had it ready to go by the middle of 2001. Everything was made from scratch. No pre-existing software was used.

At first, the site was going to be a conceptual shop with different divisions, much like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. We had developed two shirts that coincided with the concept but towards the end, evolved our concept to be a regular shop. When we went live, we had one poster, two cd’s, three shirts, and around 30 typefaces.

I had been importing books from over seas at the time for friends – mainly books like Grid Systems in Graphic Design and Typographie. I still remember the buzz of getting 10 copies of Grid Systems for my friends. At the time, it was impossible to find a used copy for much under $200 dollars, as it was out of print for a number of years. I imported some books for the store to resell but they came a couple of months after we had been open. I remember posting the books online and watching them sell out in a couple of hours. Funny enough, when I ordered them I remember talking to Mike Young about how I hoped they would all sell within 2 months. After that, I knew we should start to sell books.

We also were the first to sell “modern-ish design” as stock art. We had tons of extra icons that we had built for client work laying around and we drew more to create larger sets of icons. It’s funny to think that we are selling work that we had billed out for tons of money being sold for such a small amount on the site. It was a total rush to see work that you had just developed go live on the site and be so well received from your peers.

Originally, we had viewed the site as being a platform for our friends to sell their design work, so we hit up all the artists and designers we knew and asked if they had any work to sell via the store. Everyone said they had something to sell, but they never finished it. A couple of our friends came through, but we had really expected YWFT to be a much larger platform. Over time we have moved towards this goal, but it has taken a lot longer than I had expected.

The site kept slowly growing and growing, so much so that I had to get interns to help me out with the shipping. Keep in mind that we were doing this out of a small three bedroom townhouse. One of the rooms was my office, another room was bookshelves and my bedroom was sleeping and shipping. What can I say? I came out of a generation that had the mentality of doing everything yourself. Eventually I could not do it anymore from that location and had to ship the book portion of our business to Michael Young, which he managed for the next two years before he moved out of the country. We now have a small warehouse where we work and ship from that is located in Minneapolis, MN. I have one employee and the other Mike has some employees as well.

When starting the site, we set our goals to surpass anything that had been done before in the field of design. We treated every designer with a lot of respect and generosity. This is very important for us, as we are designers ourselves and we see what’s happening around us. We understand the design community is small and we want to help it grow in terms of both quality and education.

YouWorkForThem is still a small site and I run into designers all the time that have no idea who we are. I believe the store really has made a positive impact on the field of graphic design and hope that it will continue to do so for years to come with the support of our fellow designers.

WeWorkForThem is the creative duo of Mike Cina and Michael Young, the founders of YouWorkForThem, a store and award-winning group of artists that produce some of the most groundbreaking design work available today.

Typographreaks

A merry band of typeface provocateurs is styling down to the letter. Find out more about House Industries in Issue 129 of Fast Company.

Font or Typeface?

There’s a great post and discussion on FontFeed by Yves Peters that explains the importance of speaking the same language when using typographic terms. Since these terms have evolved over time and seen several transitions in technology they tend to be interpreted in varying ways.

A Brief History of Emil Ruder

To know where we’re going, we’ve got to understand where we’ve been. Lucky for you and me, we find ourselves in the midst of a historical design revival. Both students and veteran creatives alike appear to be making concerted efforts to blow the dust off our collective roots and discover how our craft came to be. Look around and you’ll notice an explosion of historically influenced design, typography and illustration. My own infatuation is with the International Typographic Style that emerged from Switzerland in the 1950’s.

Past examples of structured grid design and typography by Swiss masters such as Josef Müller-Brockmann continue to influence both print and interactive design to this day. However, after realizing there is no shortage of Müller-Brockmann fan clubs, I wanted to explore some of the other, maybe lesser-known founders of the International Typographic Style. My search led me to a typographer and designer by the name of Emil Ruder (1914-1970), who played a key part in the development and dissemination of the Swiss Style.

Born in Zurich, Ruder began his design education at the early age of fifteen when he took a compositor’s apprenticeship. By his late twenties Ruder began attending the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts where the principles of Bauhaus and Tschichold’s New Typography were taught, leaving an indelible impression on Ruder.

Academia would continue to play a major role in Ruder’s life, though it would naturally evolve into the form of teacher rather than student. In 1947 he took a position as the typography instructor at the Schule für Gestaltung, Basel (Basel School of Design). Ruder, along with the great Armin Hofmann, developed a program structured on principles of objectivity in design. He broke away from the subjective, style-driven typography of the past and encouraged his students to be more concerned with precision, proportions and above all, the role of legibility and communication with type.

“Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing.”
-Emil Ruder

Ruder was also fond of asymmetry, a concept he found in Japanese texts on Zen philosophy and tea drinking. He arranged his layouts and typography with careful attention to counter, shape and white space. His projects “developed sensitivity to negative or unprinted spaces, including the spaces between and inside letterforms” (Meggs 325).

Hans Arp, Emil Ruder and Armin Hofmann at the Basel School of Design in 1961. Photo: Marguerite Arp-Hagenbach

To achieve the harmony and balance Ruder desired, he instructed his students on the use of mathematical grid structures and the selection of style-neutral, sans-serif typefaces developed in the early 50’s. For Ruder, the most notable of these typefaces were the twenty-one fonts named Univers created by his friend, Adrian Frutiger in 1954. Ruder and his students engaged in endless typographic and layout explorations with the vast array of weights in the Univers family.

“Emil Ruder saw my first specimens of Univers and was so delighted with them that he designed and published many works with this type in association with his Basle students.”
-Adrian Frutiger

By the mid 1960’s the school, and Ruder, were in high demand. Some determined would-be students waited up to three years to get in based on the very low acceptance rates. Ruder was known to only take on two or three students per year.

After more than 20 years of teaching, he compiled his concepts, expiriments and philosophies into a book titled, “Typographie.” Originally published in 1967, this masterpiece is considered by many to be the quintessential textbook on typography. You can see some great examples of spreads (along with a ton of other fantastic specimens) on insect54’s amazing Flickr photostream.

A page from Typographie. The phrase, “nach Mass” translates to, “made to measure” Photo: insect54

Ruder was also writer and editor for a popular trade publication of the time called, “Typografische Monatsblätter” (Typographic Monthly) published by the Printing and Paper Union of Switzerland. Printed in German, French and English, this journal, which covered topics such as printing techniques, illustration, typefaces and layout, helped to spread the principles of Swiss design on a global level. Once again, look to insect54’s collection of covers and spreads. I’d love to get my hands on copies of these.

In 1962, Ruder and typographer Aaron Burns (one of the three founders of ITC) founded the International Center for the Typographic Arts (ICTA) in New York. Unfortunately, there is little information available on the ICTA which has been listed as inactive since 1970.

It was Isaac Newton who wrote, “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” I believe that long after he is gone, Emil Ruder continues to provide inspiration and guidance to a whole new generation of creatives who will ultimately design the future of communication.

Image Resources

1. International Typographic Style Flickr Group
2. insect54’s Flickr photostream
3. foundstudio.com.au Swiss Posters Flickr set

References

1. Meggs, Philip. A History of Graphic Design. 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998.
2. Thomson, Ellen Mazur. The Origins of Graphic Design in America, 1870-1920. Yale University Press, 1997.
3. Devroye, Luc. ‘Type design in Switzerland.’ School of Computer Science, McGill University. 1 September 2008.
4. Linotype. ‘Linotype Font Feature – Adrian Frutiger Traces.’ 14 April 2008.
5. Desain Grafis Indonesia. ‘International Typographic Style.’
6. Wikipedia. Emil Ruder, Armin Hofmann and Adrian Frutiger

Shane Bzdok is an art director and designer at BBDK, Inc. From our home office in Santa Fe, New Mexico we collaborate with a network of graphic and product designers, programmers and photographers worldwide.

Sans Plans

This article was originally written for Sarah Coffman’s Chucked, a series of personal stories about how life has or hasn’t panned out since design school. A collection of writings about what people thought they’d be doing vs. what they are doing vs. what they want to do. It’s about the non-traditional approach to life and what happens when you don’t follow the prescribed plan.

Damn it. It never works out. No matter how hard I try, no matter how diligent I am, life always sabotages my plans. It’s like life picks up the sheet of paper that I’ve covered with the flow chart describing my projected future, reads it, and mutters “That’s all you’ve got?”

Then, life pulls out that big damn red marker, makes a few marks, strikes a few words, shifts A to B and B to Z, and presto! I’m back where I usually find myself: in some new unchartered territory, not having any clue what the hell I’m doing. It’s a lot of fun.

I’ve never been one for planning my life out too much. And it usually works out. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, it’s that I’m only good at two things: making things and making things up as I go along.

There’s some people out there that can’t fathom a life without plans. I’ll usually rattle off something like “If you plan too much, you’ll plan yourself out of opportunity.” Then they pretend like they understand a little bit, while they check their Blackberry for any appointments they can scurry off to, to end our awkward conversation. What I don’t tell them is that the real reason I don’t plan is because those plans usually don’t happen. Maybe I’m just bad at it.

I didn’t have a solid plan after I graduated. (Surprise!) There were lots of options, but options have a tendency to paralyze me. I saw myself working at a good studio, doing good work for good people. I always thought I’d eventually work on my own, it just happened a lot sooner than I expected. Long story short: I got tired of looking for a job after graduation (that whole paralysis thing), and starting paying the bills through freelance work. The work snowballed into something I could eek by on, and viola! I’m a professional!

I’ve been out of school for about two and a half years now, and that bit of distance has helped me see how wrong I was about certain things. Primarily, I was dead wrong about what sort of role design would have in my life. While I was in school, design defined who I was, and I thought that the edges of that definition would keep moving further out. Now, the older that I get, I find myself trying to keep it’s growth in check. I’ve shocked myself by realizing I’m interested in things other than design. Besides, I’d rather have words like “Friend” and “Enthusiastic” and “Optimistic” be above “Designer” on the “List of Words to Describe Frank.”

I’d like to file design under “Pretty Important” rather than “Paramount.” For me, trying to find deep fulfillment in design has been a fruitless search. And because of that, I’ve had a recent, magical realization that’s made me the happiest I’ve been in a long while: what you do for a living doesn’t define who you are. Who you are should inform what you do for a living.

It was my first big “Aha” moment that lead to several more. After I thought that magical, obvious thought for the first time, I had to say it to myself to believe it. And then I said it again, but louder. “Design doesn’t define who I am.”

I want to be detail-oriented and critical, but I want to curb those traits so that the criticalness doesn’t spoil the joy and wonder of the world around me. I want to be happy, conversational and full of delight, and I want those traits to show up in my work. More than anything, I just want to say things that are worth listening to. At least that’s my plan. I think I’ll be sticking to this one.

A Brief History of Avant Garde

As a fan of typography, the work of Herb Lubalin and Avant Garde magazine I wanted to share what I had learned about the colorful past of the magazine’s namesake font. Many of the people associated in the tale are personal heroes of mine, but if you are a bit of a design geek, I think you’ll find it’s quite an amazing story.

In 1964, Lubalin formed his own design consultation firm named Herb Lubalin, Inc. It was during these years that he collaborated with Ralph Ginzburg on Eros, Fact and Avant Garde where he served as creative director and designer for these publications. Five years later Herb Lubalin, Inc. became LSC, Inc., incorporating the talents of Ernie Smith, Tom Carnase, and Roger Ferriter. A year after that, several subsidiaries were added: Lubalin, Delpire & Cie, Paris, Lubalin, Maxwell Ltd., London, Good Book Inc. (“a highly unsuccessful publishing venture”), and Lubalin, Burns & Co., with its highly successful typographic offspring, International Typeface Corporation.

Lubalin designed the typeface Avant Garde for the last of these magazines. The font was not originally designed as a commercial typeface – it was simply the logo for a magazine. Lubalin’s letterforms with tight-fitting combinations reflected Ginzburg’s desire to capture “the advanced, the innovative, the creative.” The character fit was so perfectly tight that they created a futuristic, instantly recognizable identity for the publication. Later he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin’s design firm, worked together to transform the idea into a full-fledged typeface.

“I asked him to picture a very modern, clean European airport (or the TWA terminal), with signs in stark black and white,” Ginzburg’s wife and collaborator, Shoshana recalled, “Then I told him to imagine a jet taking off the runway into the future. I used my hand to describe an upward diagonal of the plane climbing skyward. He had me do that several times. I explained that the logos he had offered us for this project, so far, could have been on any magazine but that Avant Garde (adventuring into unknown territory) by its very name was something nobody had seen before. We needed something singular and entirely new.”

According to Ralph Ginzberg, “The next morning, driving to work from his home in Woodmere he pulled over to the side of the road and phoned me (the first time he ever did that). ‘Ralph, I’ve got it. You’ll see.’ And the rest is design history.”

Given the high volume of requests for the font, Lubalin formed Lubalin, Burns & Co. (which later became the International Typeface Corporation) and released ITC Avant Garde in 1970. Unfortunately, Lubalin quickly realized that Avant Garde was widely misunderstood and misused in poorly thought-out solutions, eventually becoming a stereotypical 1970s font due to overuse.

Tony DiSpigna, one of Lubalin’s partners and co-creator of ITC Lubalin Graph and ITC Serif Gothic, has been quoted as saying, “The first time Avant Garde was used was one of the few times it was used correctly. It’s become the most abused typeface in the world.” Ed Benguiat, one of type’s legends and a friend of Lubalin’s, commented, “The only place Avant Garde looks good is in the words Avant Garde. Everybody ruins it. They lean the letters the wrong way.” Steven Heller also noted that the “excessive number of ligatures […] were misused by designers who had no understanding of how to employ these typographic forms,” further commenting that “Avant Garde was Lubalin’s signature, and in his hands it had character; in others’ it was a flawed Futura-esque face.”

The strength of the Avant Garde font is certainly in its all-cap ligatures and it should be used as it was originally intended – a display face whose ligatures can be carefully crafted into magnificent letterform combinations. There were two original designs of ITC Avant Garde Gothic: one for setting headlines and one for text copy. The display design contained ligatures and alternate characters and the text design did not. Unfortunately, when Avant Garde Gothic was turned into a digital font, only the text design was chosen, and the ligatures and alternate characters were not included leaving designers with the least interesting aspect of the font.

OpenType technology has allowed ITC to release a complete version of Avant Garde Gothic, offering the full breadth of Lubalin and Carnase’s design. Released in 2005, Avant Garde Gothic Pro includes a suite of additional cap and lowercase alternates, new ligatures that were drawn just for this release, and a collection of biform characters (lowercase letters with cap proportions). It seems that there are still, however, lost ligatures out there and that the current execution is still lacking the finesse it deserves. Read more about The Lost Ligatures of Avant Garde and check out these scans of vintage Letraset dry transfer lettering sheets.

I will undoubtedly always have a soft spot in my heart for Avant Garde magazine as, over the years, I’ve slowly collected each and every issue. I still have a fascination with the font and can’t swear off experimenting with it entirely, but experience has shown that it truly does only work in carefully crafted combinations that balance the tight requirements of the letterspacing with legibility. It is something best left for a master like Herb Lubalin. Possibly a little insight on the history of the typeface will help others to be successful in designing with it. As G.I. Joe always said, “knowing is half the battle.”

References

1. Meggs, Philip. “Two Magazines of the Turbulent ‘60s: a ‘90s Perspective.” Print 48 (Mar-Apr 1994): 68-77.
2. Heller, Steven. “Herb Lubalin: Type Basher.” U&lc 25 (Summer 1998): 8-11.
3. Heller, Steven. ‘Crimes Against Typography.’ AIGA: AIGA Journal of Design. 4 August 2004.
4. Berry, John D. ‘Avant Garde, Then and Now.’ Creative Pro: dot-font. 4 May 2003.
5. White, Alex. ‘Alex White on Herb Lubalin’s Avant Garde.’
6. ‘1977 Hall of Fame.’ The Art Directors Club: 1977 Hall of Fame.

The pursuit of change

Below is a short excerpt from a thought-provoking article entitled Creativity? The pursuit of change that was written by friend and colleague, Carole Guevin. Carole is internationally recognized through her work as editor and founder of Netdiver, an online magazine and international design portal that has been doing its thing since 1998.

“Consumerism is pursuing the potentiality of an endless dream stream of profits for a few and, exploitation of the most. There is a lot of brainware involved in figuring out the best way to construct cheap and sell a lot. Problem ‘solving’ is mostly attached to return on investment (ROI). As the downfall of the industrious rip of earth resources is surfacing, we are now facing a whole new ball game where a paradigm shift is required, shoving once again creativity to the forefront.

Relegating the pursuit of the creative process to the farthest realm of societal awareness is no longer possible! Now exists a planetary emergency and thus a new urgency to revive the value of creativity!

In our fast changing world, the foreshadow of a networked economy that sustained so much hype in the past couple of years, comprises an underlying fundamental truth: all problems are intertwined and interconnected somehow. In a world where distance, time and boundaries have shrunk to the size of your backyard – whatever happens elsewhere is no longer possible to put either out of mind or out of sight.”

Amen sister! Download the article in it’s entirety here.