Very interesting interview from over 50 years ago, which covers many topics of that period in America. Also interesting to see how Mike Wallace sort of attacks FLW on most the questions, and hints at the fact FLW was a communist of some sort. Some things never change…

Right now (could get pulled) there is a sample from Gary Hustwit’s documentary Objectified where they talked with Jonathan Ive about the design of Apple products. I have yet to see the film but this clip was very interesting and reminds me why we do what we do…

For a short while (one year), I went to art school at Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minnesota. During my time there, I knew this character Aaron Draplin, he was a friend of my roommate. Back then, I would say me and him had very different opinions on graphic design and our approach to it, but it was all in good spirit and laughs. The same could still be said today. Although I still respect his work and its clean and niche approach, its just not how I would do things.

Today I came across this video of him chatting, seems someone is working on a short documentary with him? Watching this one clip, I see he is still a big bearded guy, wearing hats and loving the Pacific North West of America. He is also still very opinionated on graphic design, and on this topic in particular I can agree with him. While I do agree with how bad this typical technique in America is, I am not so sure I get as upset about these things. Just goes to show though, you can’t buy good taste, not even for over $10,000.

At the same time (always taking the chance to bash on Google), who says bad taste won’t take you to new heights or intense stock values?

Laurent Fétis is a busy guy. Fortunately, he had a few moments to answer some simple questions. We will be posting more exclusive, short interviews in this format soon , so please keep following. (Above Image: Dirty French Psychedelics, Artwork by Elisabeth Arkhipoff & Laurent Fétis)

Name: Laurent Fetis

Website: http://www.laurentfetis.com

Color: all colors
Music: “U Can Dance” DJ Hell Feat Brian Ferry
Book: “Maximes” la Rochefoucault
Designer: Lucas Ossendrijver
Animals: Smilodon and platypus
Website: http://www.newscientist.com/
Place: a nice one
Shape: fat un-timid shapes
Artist: Elisabeth Arkhipoff
Typeface: a nice one
Movie: Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Koffer directed by Werner Klingler
Work: Drawing
Word: Super
Season: Spring
Magazine: Fantastic Man
Guilty Pleasure: Drawing
Love: Anastasia Constantinescu
Hate: ?

What are you working on right now? 

Books, Magazines and global identity design

What career would you switch to if you had to stop your current profession? 

I don’t know

Thanks to Laurent for his answers. If you readers enjoy features like this, please comment and if you have anyone you’d like to see featured in this manner, let us know.

What is a typical work day/week like for you? I get up pretty early–around six in the morning–pretty much everyday. I’m definitely a morning-and-night person and not a big sleeper. I’m an art director at Goodby Silverstein (an ad agency in San Francisco) and I usually don’t get home from work until after 8:00. My job keeps me pretty busy, but the day to day stuff varies. Sometimes we spend quite a few days at the concepting stage, and other days are spent working on the minutia involved in bringing a project to life. My weekends I try to keep just for me and they’re usually spent doing personal projects, which is most of the stuff you see on my flickr stream.

Film or Digital? It depends on the job. I enjoy shooting both. I shoot with a Digital SLR (Canon 5D) for all work that involves motion. Throwing things or having someone jumping around requires shooting a lot of frames. The ability to get instant feedback is crucial for tweaking lights, experimenting with framing etc. For most of the portrait work I do, I’ll shoot film. I have an old Hasselblad, medium format camera. The Hasselblad is a little tank and makes a very loud thumping noise when you press the shutter. I love it. Focusing, metering and winding the film is all done manually so it slows you down but it really forces you to think about every frame.

The majority of your work focuses on a figure and their environment. Does the environment reflect upon that person’s personality in any sort of way? No, most of the time photos are inspired by images from art, movies, TV, magazines and advertising. I have a notebook filled with descriptions of possible images, things that i would like to try at some point. A specific lighting set up or scenario. Then when I find someone to shoot, i will refer back to my notes and go from there.

Do you know your subjects fairly well before photographing them? Some of them. I actually prefer to shoot people I don’t know because to me it’s easier to make them look whatever way I want to without having any pre-conceived idea of who they are.

What’s your master plan for 2007? I am trying to bring my personal work and professional work closer together this year. I also have been collaborating with two close friends, Jimmy Soat and Chris Ro- both of them designers. There is a fair amount of work we’ve accumulated over the last months and we are in the process of figuring out how to release it in the months to come.

Have you taken any of your ideas to video yet and if so do you have any examples? I haven’t yet. I am definitely interested but for the moment photography is a medium I am still exploring.

For images like Soat Collab (expsoat01/may18,2006), how many takes are involved to get what you want? Hundreds, in the case of the image you are referring, we knew we wanted some sort particles flying around but didn’t really have the final image too defined in our mind. With some of the collaboration work the process is quite organic, it is about getting out there and playing around with things, lighting, movement etc. Trying things out, succeeding at some, failing at others and having fun during the process.

What are your cat’s names? What do they eat? Cassius and Zoe, only cat food, which they proceed to puke out on the carpet on a regular basis.

What annoys you? I don’t think I can be objective about this so I asked Alex, who is my office mate to list things that I get annoyed by and these are it: His cats. Being idle/bored. That song “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley. People who aren’t organized. People who take him too seriously and don’t get that he’s just being a smart ass. People who nag.

Rock or Country? Neither. Minimal techno, the slow dark ambient stuff. And occasionally the loud noisy stuff. It drives everyone around me nuts…

Have you ever shopped for reptiles? Not to keep as a pet, but I tried snake soup once.

About Jose Luis Martinez

Born in Mexico City 29 (as of 2007) years ago. Lives in San Francisco California. Earns a living as an Art Director in advertising. Shoots medium format and digital. Is married and has two cats. Enjoys Minimal Techno.

You have a variety of work, and have had continuing engagements with several clients… do any projects stand out as favorites? We’ve been doing regular illustrations for The New York Times (mainly the Book Review, but other sections as well). These projects often illustrate an essay or article with a more abstract intellectual theme or relate to the impact of culture on language. Since there usually hasn’t been an immediate visual reference to start with it’s a fun challenge to figure out a visual accompaniment to an abstract idea. Unlike our usual projects, the time lines of these illustrations, which range from 24 hours to a couple days, force us to conceptualize and execute them very rapidly. We’ve also continued to design for the Johns Hopkins Film Festival for the past six years; it always challenges us to think of new ways to approach a poster subject that’s so well-worn. We’d also love to do more book design and publication design in the future; it’s a medium we enjoy working in.

Tell us about the traveling experimental typography show you curated, Alphabet. Alphabet: An Exhibition of Hand-Drawn Lettering and Experimental Typography is a show that we curated in 2005 for Artscape, a large arts festival in Baltimore. We sent out an open call for experimental and inventive interpretations of the letters A-Z and selected the 60 best alphabets from the hundreds of submissions we received. The show features artists and designers from around the world— including work from renowned designers like Ed Fella, the calligrapher Jean Larcher, and House Industries’ Ken Barber to exceptional alphabets from students and artists such as Andrew Jeffrey Wright, C.W. Roelle, and Luke Ramsey. In spite of the fact that the show was based on an open call, the level of work submitted was overall very high quality, and the resulting exhibition reflects that. There’s also a nice range of approaches ranging from elegant conceptual work to the surreal and illustrative. Since the show closed in Baltimore, Alphabet has been traveling to galleries and institutions around the U.S. (currently in Minneapolis). Check out the Alphabet website for more information.

What does your band, Double Dagger, have to do with graphic design? When we began the band a few years ago, we planned Double Dagger as a graphic design punk concept band. Design and art references made their way into a lot of the lyrics, as parallels and metaphors for the usual stuff punk bands yell about. As the band has grown and evolved, the design stuff has faded from the content, but there’s still a good bit of Internet-age, post modern stress throughout which we’re sure most designers and others can identify with. Double Dagger has also provided us a chance to design and screenprint a lot of posters, packaging, and shirts, so it’s also a chance to express ourselves visually and be our own client. We’re also really loud.

What’s next for Post Typography? Bruce: I’m going to the Dominican Republic. Woo! Nolen: I’m gonna get my car fixed and shave more regularly. We’re also making Post Typography more “legit”, working to get some larger jobs. We’ve done a lot of work across many media, but we’re excited whenever we get to do something new that forces us to think in a different way or explore new media. For example we did some film titles last year as well as our first completely Flash-based website, and we hope to continue to explore new media and ideas in the future.

Who are some other individuals or studios that you feel are doing interesting things with design? We’re generally too busy working to pay too much attention to what other people are doing. It seems like with the recent explosion of design blogs and trend-spotting blogs, one could spend all of one’s time just reading about design. We prefer to spend our time working on our own projects. That said, it seems that in general there are a lot of young smaller studios or individuals who are doing really smart and beautiful work that blurs the line a bit between design and art.

About Post Typography

Originally conceived and founded in 2001 as an avant garde anti-design movement by Nolen Strals and Bruce Willen, Post Typography specializes in graphic design, conceptual typography, and custom lettering/illustration with additional forays into art, apparel, music, curatorial work, design theory, and vandalism. Their work has received numerous fancy design awards and has appeared in such publications as Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type and D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, The Art of Modern Rock, STEP Magazine, Metropolis magazine, and Taschen’s upcoming compendium, Graphic Design Now. Post Typography has appeared in multiple design and art exhibitions, and their posters are collected by high school punk rockers and prominent designers, whom they consider equally important. Strals and Willen currently teach classes in design and typography at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and have lectured at the Cooper Union, Society of Publication Designers, and Pennsylvania College of Art and Design among others.

Did you have any reservations about publishing the monograph so early in your careers? What did you learn during the process of putting it together? We didn’t have many reservations about making the book. Who wouldn’t like to make a whole book about your own work? And when the publisher basically gave us no restrictions, it was too good of an offer to refuse. Since none of us had actually started our professional career as designers when the book came out, it felt kind of strange. Releasing a monograph is usually something you do at the end, and not the beginning of a career. One problem of releasing a book so early on, might be that people very soon will try to label you as one type of designer, and that clients come to you because they want you to do one sort of design. If you’re not aware of this you might easily end up doing the same things for the rest of your life. We talked a lot about this while designing it – Trying to push the work in as many diverse directions as we possibly could, and at the same time push it in a direction that we would like to explore.Making the book was also probably the best job we could ever get. The projects we had done earlier on were not at all of this size. Of course we learned a bit about production and got some experience in doing a larger typographical job. More importantly, we learned about editing ourselves, writing about what we do and putting our work into context. We actually designed the book twice. The first time the book didn’t include that much text, but that didn’t feel right. The book didn’t say anything about the context of the work or reflect the environment of Metronomicon Audio – It just felt like a range of random images that didn’t have anything important to say. When the publisher told us they would like to put the release on hold for six months we decided to start all over again. That was a valuable experience.

What have you been up to since the release of Yokoland? It’s now been about 6 months since the release of the book. At the time it was released we had just finished college, we didn’t have a studio and most of the projects we had been doing were projects we had started ourselves. Since then we’ve been fixing our new studio, had a couple of exhibitions, designed a few of record sleeves for Metronomicon Audio, tried to get enough work to pay our rent and for the first time in years had a one month vacation. So far a lot of our time has been spent on work of a more boring character. Like administration, answering phone calls and e-mails, going to meetings and getting a grip of the economical part of the job. None of us knew that it was so much boring work connected with this job. A former teacher of Aslak told us that he had read an interview with the designer Morag Myerscough where she said that she answered phone calls all day, and when her clients went home she started designing. It has felt a bit like that sometimes. And it’s probably not going to be any less phone calls in the future.

What effect has the attention had on your progress? So far it doesn’t feel like we’ve gotten that much attention. We’ve done a few interviews and some students have been e-mailing us about internships, but that’s basically it. But of course it feels a bit scary to experiment in new and unknown areas when we’re not the only one to see the final result anymore.

How has your involvement with Metronomicon Audio and music in general affected your art and design efforts?Our interest in art and design started with an interest in music. As teenagers we couldn’t really relate to the art we were shown in art classes at school – It was either old art that had little or nothing to do with us, or it was contemporary art that didn’t speak to us at all. We were interested in other things like music, records, books, music videos, film and graffiti. And it was the interest in these things that brought us into art and design.We started working with Metronomicon Audio about five years ago now, and the label has definitely played an important role in our development as designers. From running the label and working with the musicians we’ve learned how to organize our studio, deal with clients, and to collaborate – not only with each other, but also with clients. But the most important thing we’ve learned is to be open for new inspiration from every possible place, and not to be afraid of failing. In this way Metronomicon Audio has definitely been important. We’ve also got a form of freedom in the work with Metronomicon Audio, that you rarely find elsewhere. That’s probably something we can bring into other jobs. When that’s said, the work for Metronomicon Audio tends to be quite different from other jobs we do. Even though we try to put a lot of ourselves into every project we do, different jobs always call for different solutions.

What has influenced your practice and how do you see yourselves inspiring others? There are a lot of things that have influenced us through the years, so that list could be a mile long. As we’ve said the work for Metronomicon Audio has been of major importance, since this has been a place for us to find our own graphic voice. In the same way, the exhibitions that we’ve done the last year or two has taken us in a slightly different direction. One the people that has influenced us the most is Norwegian artist, designer, musician and filmmaker Kim Hiorthøy. He has kind of been like a mentor for us and from him we have learned that it’s not impossible to work in different fields simultaneously. We’re also huge admirers of the work of filmmaker Michel Gondry, as well as work of filmmakers like Mike Mills, Spike Jonze and Geoff McFetridge. There are also a lot of other contemporary designers, artists, filmmakers and musicians that have influenced us. And then there are a lot of historic periods that have influenced us. Just think of all the interesting periods in the history of art, how much interesting music that exists, and how many good movies that have been made, not to mention all the good stuff that’s out there that we still haven’t seen. In this way, we hope to be an inspiring little secret for other people to discover.

About Yokoland

Young Norwegian designers Aslak Gurholt Rønsen and Espen Friberg, who have been collaborating on projects since they met in high school at the age of 16, inhabit Yokoland. Together they create design, illustration and art that are idyllic, humorous and poetic without ever being mawkish some of which has been featured in Hidden Track. Being one of the most inventive design studios of today, Yokoland skillfully blends their Scandinavian approach to design into their work melding elegant humor and human touch, exploring new ways of creating graphic design solutions to stunning effect.

In a previous publication you stated: “Amidst the attention given to the sciences as how they can lead to the cure of all diseases and daily problems of mankind, I believe that the biggest breakthrough will be the realization that the arts, which are conventionally considered ‘useless,’ will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer or live more prosperously. The arts are the science of enjoying life.”

How specifically do you think art can be presented to the common person as a part of their life rather than merely a part of museums? Can you give any examples in the visual arts that help illustrate this statement? This is an area that my new group the Physical Language Workshop is currently working on. Our hypothesis is that by re-architecting some common web technologies, we can provide a new kind of distributed creative supply/demand that has not yet existed. Different levels of artistic expression will have varying levels of associated value. Average art can have an average value, and can be a new kind of creative currency.

Today most people see art as a way to visually express ideas and feelings. Are you implying that art can be functionally useful to the general public? Do you think one day society will accept art as a science because technology has become a new form of art? I think creativity is an important untapped resource in our society. Currently, only the “most creative” get to be creative. I think that it is a shame. The general public needs a means of exercising their creativity in order to discover some kind of tangible benefit from it (beyond the mere joy of exercising the freedom to be creative).

Technology hasn’t given birth to a new form of art; people using technology have given birth to a form of art that is perhaps new. The biggest question is no longer, “Is it new?” The biggest question now is, “Is it any good?”

What is the benefit of teaching creativity and art? In every in-flight magazine there is a piece of wisdom. Today I flew to NY and there was an article in the in-flight magazine on proverbs. It said there is a Japanese proverb, “To teach is to learn.” Is there no greater benefit in life (besides family) than learning? I am currently enrolled in an MBA course, which has very low creativity, but I am learning new things everyday. So it isn’t just about creativity and art. It is the experience of enrichment through learning as learning, or learning through teaching. To work the “exploration muscle” in your brain is a worthy way of life.

As a teacher, how do you judge “good technology” when there seem to be so many aspects to consider? What aspects or traits of technology do you consider to have value? Good technology is always best when it is not the major issue of discussing a technology-based experience. When it is invisible, and simply the source of the magic of it all, it is best. I have heard this said similarly many times before by many people, but I feel that it is usually said from the perspective of someone who knows very little about the technology under discussion. It is convenient to discuss the technology as “getting in the way.” In the way of what? Oftentimes it stands in the way of a thin idea. Why is the idea thin? Because technology demands you to treasure it — to do what you can because something new is possible. Technology craves attention, and we feed its insecurities. In the process of serving technology, we often forget why we were doing something in the first place. Such a process inevitably gets you in trouble because the all-consuming attention given to the technology leads you to an arrival point with very little conceptual strength. One must always seek balance by acknowledging the infinite hunger of new technologies (for more technology).

What links are there between design and technology? Design can aid technology, but many producers of technology don’t seem to value design. Why have you chosen to unite the two? I chose to unite design and technology because it was relevant for me to do so at the time. But I do not think it necessary for anyone else starting out. Everyone is different and valuable. My value came from the mix of those two things.

You talk a lot about Paul Rand. What is it about his design work or his approach to design that fascinate you? What objective or insight did he give you “to aspire forever?” The humility and the confidence in Paul Rand, the person I met, continue to inspire me. He had a wonderful balance of strength and weaknesses that was very human, but also superhuman. At 82, maybe that is a natural state of being.

Is your work more a process of discovery or the application of a consistent methodology? Do you work for personal satisfaction or for solving larger problems? I find my work to be a constant process of discovery and failure. In only the rarest of moments do I see any success. And I know from experience that success can be fleeting, so I do try to find pride in my many failures whenever possible.

What do you consider a failure? A failure, technically speaking, is something that turns out in a way you didn’t expect or hope. A real failure is when you don’t have enough talent to take that unexpected twist and ride it into something better than when you first started.

What is your interest in typography? I have no real interest in typography today. I used to be part of the cigarette-smoking, chummy Swiss cult in Tokyo but I broke free.

How are typography and technology currently connected? The connection between typography and technology is the same connection that everything has to technology today. Everything is (unfortunately) connected to technology today.

Do you think this new generation of technology will lead to some groundbreaking shifts in the way we communicate? No.

How do you describe your profession to people? I call myself a person that aspires to think creatively. I’ve managed to turn that into a profession as a professional professor. I lucked out.

What other professions would you like to practice? Currently I’m getting an MBA. After that I plan go to cooking school. So maybe I want to be a chef in the future.

About John Maeda

John Maeda is a world-renowned graphic designer, visual artist, and computer scientist at the MIT Media Lab, and is a founding voice for “simplicity” in the digital age.