Category Archives: Design

So you want to be an artist

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Unsolicited advice on how to make it in the creative world, from someone who has been in the trenches for a while.

Many years ago I had a job as a delivery driver for a rental company. This was back when I was around 19 or 20. By then I had completed exactly one year of college before dropping out to play in a Christian rock band. The Christian part was new, but the musician part was not. (spoiler alert: I’d eventually fail at both). 

Music was the first art form I’d tried that I could unselfconsciously immerse myself in. Oh, I’d been doodling since elementary school, but I could never draw uncritically. I was always finding fault with my work. It was never good enough. Besides, I never saw myself as an artist. My mom was an artist and taught art, so I had a pretty clear idea about that path, and I was sure it wasn’t for me (spoiler alert: I’ve been a professional artist for over 30 years now). The important part here being I could see myself as a rock musician. The music wasn’t that hard, and the rewards (money, fame, girls, and drugs) all were enticing. It was a future I could embrace. It was my shortcut to success and adulthood.

Besides, music was fun to play.

All I had to do was try hard, and eventually I would succeed. Someone would notice my drive, my earnestness, and pick me from the crowd. Then my life would be nothing but limousines and pretty girls, and no more cares about money.

And why not? This pattern had always worked for me before. I was quirky, which meant I had that perfect blend of creative and smart. Teachers for the most part liked me. I was exciting to have in a classroom. I was surprising (in a good way). I had potential. The way I figured, if I was always going to be somebody, I might as well be the somebody I wanted, and right then I wanted to be a rock star.

And I REALLY WANTED IT. I was an unknown kid from a shit little town, struggling (and failing) to remain middle class. I had all the desire you could want. I NEEDED it with a white hot WANT, and I wasn’t going to settle. I was going to have it all.

Somewhere along the way I also became a Christian, but this was not an impediment to my musical success. Quite the opposite. I’d been listening to Christian music, and realized there was a dearth of good rock songs about God. Most of it was pretty tame in comparison to the secular rock I’d loved so much.

So I went for it.

It was somewhere during that time that I worked for this rental place. The job, as I told everyone in ear shot, was only a stepping stone. Success, real success (meaning rock star fame and fortune) was just around the corner. Sure it was the Christian version of rock star, so less drugs and more earnestness, but I was good at being earnest. So it was no surprise that on a slow day I pulled out my guitar to practice in the back. 

The boss had recently hired a new guy named Steve. (I’m sad to say I forget his name, so I’ll call him Steve) Steve was a little older, and probably a lot wiser, but we got along okay. He worked up front with the customers (something I didn’t do well), and I drove delivery. Still, we were close enough that when he heard me practicing, he came walking to the room, past all the half assembled lawn mowers and dirty dishes, wearing an expression in his face like he was close to tears. Then as he approached he got down on his knees in front of me, clasped his hand together as if in prayer, proceeded to blubber. 

For those of you who grew up in the church, he was mimicking an altar call. For those who didn’t earn their merit badge in exuberant protestantism, he was faking the spiritual ecstasy of someone about to have a conversion experience. Mind you, I knew he was being funny, I even knew he was being funny at my expense, I just didn’t understand why. I laughed, because it was funny, but I didn’t get what he was doing. Why was he making fun of me in that way?

I know now it was because I was exuding desperation and earnestness like a bad cologne. Exuding it so hard it made everyone around me uncomfortable. I was practically screaming my want to the world.

And it wasn’t enough.

Many years later, I was living in another town (Los Angeles) and working in another industry (entertainment advertising). By then I was a professional, earning a professional wage. I even had my own office. I worked for a small division of a slightly larger company. I had also met Teri by then and was either engaged or about to be engaged. Basically I was in my mid 30s, and settling down. I was also having a kind of crisis. 

See, at the time I was a finisher, which is the last person to touch a piece of art (like a movie poster) before it is printed. My job was to take designs that had been put together with more speed than skill, and make them into a cohesive piece of art. Finishing is a job that is more technical than creative. The big design ideas have already been worked out. Your job is to make sure all the fiddly bits, all the small details, work together. 

My problem was, I didn’t find the work creative enough. 

Most of the people I worked with were finishers like me. We’d come into the business from the technical side. None of us had gone to art school. None of us were deeply creative (or creative as I saw it then). So when we got a new boss for our division, one who was both an outstanding Illustrator and a photographer, I took him aside one day and asked him how one got to be a designer. 

His name was Michael Elins, and while his advice was a little mixed (he’s a much better visual artist than a writer), and full of exacerbation with me, (he must have thought my question was like asking a fish why they liked water) still, his words have stuck with me to this day. What he told me was that a designer didn’t just do designs. They got design magazines, they went to art shows, they made friends with other designers, they worked at design agencies. It wasn’t just a job, it was a whole experience.

The feeling I got from him was design was a kind of lifestyle. As if design was something one did, like being gay, or being a banker. It was a whole package.

This was a lot closer to the truth than Steve’s display at the rental place. But it took me a few more years to have both of them make sense.

Basically, what I think Michael was hinting at was that an artist first and foremost does art. That is, they do the work of being an artist. This is not unlike something that authors often say: A writer writes, or a painter paints. The main point being, it is not enough to want to be something like a designer or a rock star. You have to do the work. 

The key is not desire. You can have all the desire in the world and still not succeed. The key is in the work. It’s not enough to grow out your hair, or pierce your ear, or say all the right words. 

The thing is, much of the world doesn’t work this way. To be a Christian all you have to do is say you are. The same is true for most jobs that are considered unskilled. No one is going to check to see if you are really a dishwasher or a waiter. Sure there are limits to what you can say about yourself, but for much of the world, especially much of the middle class world, “fake it til you make it” is a tried and true recipe for success. 

It just doesn’t work in the creative world.

About a month ago, a very successful author posted something on FaceBook  about “being” an author. They were giving the tried and true advice I included above: A writer writes. Many of the replies showed that the other fans of this author were not “getting it”. They were under the impression that if you had a good enough idea, or sufficient raw talent, then that was enough. 

I don’t blame them, it took me decades to work this out, mostly by failing, over and over.  So allow me to save you that failure if I may.

The reality is this: If you want to make a living in a creative field you’re going to be facing a long uphill battle. I promise you, it will be a slog. There are three major reasons for this.

The first is about the numbers.
The truth is there’s a lot more people who want to do the work than there is money, and there’s not a lot of money. Sure there are success stories, but these people are vanishingly rare. For every Stephen King or Elton John there are tens of thousands of people who you will never know doing the exact same work for next to nothing.

Because of this, to succeed, even at a modest level, means you have to find a way to separate yourself from the pack. It very much is a competition. To be better you need to do more than just want to be successful. After all, everyone else also wants to be successful, and some of them surely want it more than you. Really wanting something is just the floor, not the ceiling. It’s the minimum standard.

Sure, there is a component of luck to this as well, but luck will only take you so far.

The second is about the process.
You don’t get good at any craft (be it writing, or painting, designing, or playing an instrument) by doing it once a week or once a month. You have to do it over and over, hour after hour, year after year. You have to practice it until your fingers bleed and your hopes turn sour. You have to practice until you reach the point that you are sure no one else in the world is going to care, and then you have to practice some more.

The value of art is in the doing, not the thinking. You can have a million dollar idea for a movie or a novel, but until you do the work of making that idea a reality – something you can hold in your hands or show to others – it’s not worth two cents. Art without action is nothing. Ideas, like desire, are just the floor, not the ceiling. You need something else.

The third is about standards.
It’s not enough to do the work, you have to do it well. You have to be demanding of your creative output. You have to hold it to the white hot fire of criticism, and burn off all the bad parts. You have to develop a critical eye. You have to be willing to be discontent. You have to suck, over and over until your work starts to suck less; until you reach the point where you stop making the obvious mistakes and start making the subtle yet challenging real mistakes, and then start all over again.

This is the point Michael Elins was trying to convey to me all those years ago. Good designers are always comparing their work to other designers, usually the very best, and then working hard to perform at that level. They talk to other professionals in their field, they notice all the work that is being done, and they are fucking critical about it. Most importantly, they are critical of their own work.

The thing is, this part is hard, perhaps the hardest. Just having the ego to think that you can create, that your ideas are important, that something living only in your head needs to be in the outside world, is super difficult. Especially, if no one else in the world gives a damn. Sure, you can surround yourself with others who care. I was in several bands when I was a musician, but even that wasn’t enough. The enemy is always the person you face in the mirror. If you shit too much on your own work, if you are too critical, you can shoot yourself down and keep yourself from creating. If you are not critical enough then you can go on for years being mediocre and never understanding why you’re not finding success. It’s a very fine balance, and it is always changing.

And even then, even if you do all three of the things I mentioned above, your success is not guaranteed. You can go your whole life and only those close to you will see your efforts. Look up Larry Todd, of Aline Kominsky-Crumb. There are famous painters like Van Gogh, Cézanne, Monet, and Gauguin, who died before they became popular. Even authors like Sylvia Plath, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Edgar Allen Poe, even fucking Herman Melville, all gained notoriety after they passed this earthly veil.

You can have all the desire in the world, you can do the work, and you can do the work at a very high level, and still not find success. That is the size of the mountain you are facing. All of us creative types face this, and yes it is fucking daunting.

But also, who cares? So what if it is hard? Everything is hard, everything is difficult. Just getting out of bed some days is too much. Don’t let the size of the thing fool you. It’s mostly in your head anyway.

Knowing all that, if you still want to be an artist here’s my advice:
First of all, if you want to be something, then be it. Don’t wait for someone else to give you permission. If you want to be a novelist, then write a novel. If you want to be a musician, then play your heart out. If you want to be the best chef in all of America, then start cooking up your own recipes. 

Don’t wait on desire, do the work.

If you want to make money at your passion, if you want your passion to be more than just a side hustle, then you need to not only do the work but mix it up with the big boys. That means you need to be critical of your art, you need to refine it, edit it, make it better. You need to make it the best you can, and then you need to find a way to make it better. This is a journey, and it is NOT going to happen overnight. Developing a critical eye for your shit takes time. This is why there is no such thing as an overnight success, because becoming a professional takes hundreds or even thousands of hours of patience and dedication. They don’t pass that out at the corner. If they did then everyone you know would be a success. 

Perhaps most important, if you tried to do something creative but didn’t have the wherewithal to take it to the top, DO NOT LOWER YOUR HEAD. Keep your chin up. You braved more than most. Failure is not a failure unless you decide not to learn from it, so learn. Maybe you’ll learn (like I did with music) that it’s just not an art for you. Maybe you’ll learn you just needed a break to let things settle down, before you start again. Maybe you’ll learn that it sucks and the big boys cheat (they do), and the work is totally unfuckingfun (it is).

Being a creative means taking it on the chin. Always. There is no path forward that doesn’t come with pain. Easy street is for suckers, not for us. Sometimes the only way to tell that you’re on the right path is when the blows come hard and fast and you keep going anyway.

But also, there is no shame in bowing out either. This is your life, you get to create it anyway you like. In fact, your life is your best creation. If you step down a path that gets too weird or too dark, it’s totally okay to walk away. Only you can set your standards, and only you are responsible to them. No one else should have that power over your passion, so don’t give it to them.

Bottom Line:
If you want to live, (not succeed, but live);
if you want to be happy (not content, but happy);
then you have to find joy in the work.

Find joy in what you do. Find joy in what you create. Find joy in the creative process. It could very well be the only happiness you will get from your passion, so celebrate it. Make the most of it. In the end, this is the only thing you are guaranteed.

Dwelling design and politics

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What if the great rift that separates the left and the right were not in fact a product of political belief, but an artifact (at least in part) of design?

This is at heart the premise I’ve come up with while reading over a wonderful book called The Death And Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. I should start by saying this is not Ms. Jacobs premise at all. Her book is about urban planing and how the way a city is designed will effect the way people live within it. The book is wonderfully clear, straight forward, and has taken my mind into places of design I had never contemplated before. More importantly, it made me question the way we socialize and how that socialization might change our character.

At the beginning of her book, Ms. Jacobs talks about the use of sidewalks. Not as a conveyance (although that is covered too) but as a social structure. Its about how the many small things, corner grocery stores, bars, front porches, stoops, stairways, and any old place that people will use to congregate, will give those living on a street a sense of shared ownership. Such places allow the people living and working there to establish social relationships that are numerous, shallow, and yet important, and at the same time they make a sharp divide between public social lives, and private ones.

While her book mostly talks about these relationships in the context of a city, I could not help but translate this into the small-town world I grew up in where everyone on the block knew your name, and if you did something stupid they would be happy to tell your parents. I got my first job though small town connections, and my first sense of the world though them as well.

Mind you, these small town connections were not always appreciated. I remember vividly one Friday afternoon when a Clovis cop gave me a tongue lashing for throwing my bundled up dirty gym clothes against a street sign. At the time I thought he was being a power-hungry jerk, but I never tossed anything at a street sign after that. Moreover, what I now understand as an adult but could not see then as a sullen teen was that his anger was not directed at any potential damage to the street sign, his anger came from a sense of ownership. He owned that sign, at least in part, because it was part of his world, and he felt a sense of responsibility for it. In the same way he felt responsible enough to me and my actions to say something.

That is both the gift, and the cost of group ownership. The joy and the responsibility, both at the same time. And I believe that this is a crucial element to small town America, and more importantly large city America.

Except it is no longer an element in either.

How many of you know your neighbors? How many of you trust them? No I don’t mean trust like share your innermost secrets with, that kind of trust belongs within the private relationships of your family and close friends. By trust I mean trust enough to leave a key to your house with them, and conversely owning a key to their house in your home.

I ask this because Ms. Jacobs mentions that on her block the local deli has keys to half the homes around it. This is an informal thing. The deli owner is not paid for this, and does not offer it as a service. That he holds their keys makes it easy for relatives or outsiders to visit, even if the owner of the house is not home. You can tell your friend, “Go down to the deli and ask Joe for the key.” Its safer than keeping a key under the doormat, and it means that anyone coming to visit is noted on the block and looked after.

So why does Joe the deli owner do this? He doesn’t get paid, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to any more service. Why do the home owners do this? There are no contracts, no signatures, nothing legal at all, and such a situation is ripe for abuse. Yet one block over it’s the candy store that holds the keys for that block, and the next block it’s the cleaners, and the block after that…

At the heart of these relationships is a thing called public trust. Its not a close relationship, its not like a close friendship, its more informal, and much more shallow. Its trading a little bit of your private space for a little bit of theirs. Its exchanging small bits of information over coffee. Its the bits of gossip that are helpful and not necessarily hurtful. Helping the new mother with the complex ins and outs of the school district, telling a lost neighbor the quickest way to the bus stop, offing a cup of flour to a neighbor who is out, feeding the neighbor’s cat when they go out of town, or driving a neighbor to the airport.

These things are not all that important. There’s is no specific reason why one “needs” to do these things for or with their neighbors, yet by doing these things one gains a sense of belonging, a feeling that they are part of a larger community. Everyone starts to own a part of a public space that is independent of them, yet beneficial to them.

And beneficial it is. As Ms. Jacobs points out, city blocks that have a shared sense of ownership experience much less crime. The kids are much less delinquent, there are less robberies, and much less strife. Why? Because everyone is watching out for everyone else. If your kid acts up, your neighbors will tell you about it. If a suspicious looking guy starts following women, he’ll be accosted. If a drunk gets too angry, he’ll be held in check. Someone is always willing to call the police for you, because they know you’ll do the same for them. And why do they do that? Because they know you. They see you everyday walking your kid to school, or buying a cup of coffee at the newsstand, or picking up a head of lettuce for your wife and the corner grocery. They don’t know you well, but they know you well enough to have a sense of belonging to you. By living in their area and interacting with them you have become one of “them”. Part of their team. Close enough to call the cops if a burglar starts to pry open your window, but not close enough that they need to know everything about you.

And its this sense of community, this belongingness, that I think sits right at the heart of our political divide.

Let me first start out by saying that I don’t think one political group has more of a sense of belonging than another. I think they’re both pretty equal right down the line, because I think the desire to form and maintain social contacts is equally distributed amongst the entire population. Sure some people want little public contact, and some people want more, but on average, either group of people has pretty much the same desire.

So since it is not lacking of desire, then what lies at the difference between the two political sides. Well I think it is the way in which we form and maintain or social contacts.

Rural Americans live far apart from each other. I know people who would have to walk a half mile to knock on a neighbor’s door. This is a massive distance when compared to a suburb like ours (about 60 feet, to either side), or an apartment in the city (as little as across the hall, or as long as 30 feet down the hall). This distance makes for some interesting things. For instance our more rural cousins enjoy a lot more privacy than those living in the city. They don’t have to put curtains on their windows so the neighbors can’t see in, there’s not a house close enough to worry about. On the reverse side, our city dwelling cousins enjoy much more social contact. All I have to do is step outside the front door and I’m almost guaranteed to talk to someone. Teri jokes about this all the time. If we lived in an apartment it would be even easier. I’d just have to open the door. Now compare that to our friends living out in the country. Short of picking up the phone (or the internet) the only way they can have a conversation with someone not in their house is to get in a car and drive.

Now neither of these are good situations or bad ones. As far as I know there is no empirical difference between living in the sticks or living in the smog, with the exception of personal preference. One might prefer one over the other, and most people do, but the homes themselves are similar enough for all practical purposes, except for one obvious point. People who live in the city will have the opportunity for a larger and more complex social circle. In short, they will belong to a larger social group than those living in the country.

Now if you’re with me so far, then the rest should be easy. This is where we get to the heart of the political aspects. You see, one of the key differences between liberals and conservatives is how they see those around them. Both groups believe in helping their fellow man, both groups I believe genuinely care about other people, but both groups show their care is significantly different ways.

Conservatives like to keep their giving private. They like to donate to their church, or their school. If they see a poor man on the street, they like to hand their $20 over to that person themselves. And based on the amounts that they give, conservatives they care very much about their fellow man. Much more, in terms of dollars, then liberals.

But in all these things the giving is happening to someone who is socially close to them, or to an organization that is socially close. Why? Well look at the relationships a person maintains while living in the country. Family they see everyday, sometimes too much of them. Neighbors they see occasionally. The same is true of shop owners, and other merchants. The only other places they can make and maintain public relationships is either in school or at church.

Seeing this, a pattern starts to arise. Rural Americans will likely not have many social relationships, but the ones they do have will be tight and deep. And what do we see when we look at how conservatives give? We see them spending their money in the places that are close to them.

Now lets visit our liberal cousins living in a city. City people have much more opportunity for public trust, and use this to their advantage. While their rural neighbors might use 20 acres to gain a sense of safety, a city person uses their neighbors (and curtains) to the same effect. When we look at how city people like to give, we see they want to spend their money not on churches or on schools, but on their neighbors and their neighborhoods. Because they live in a tight web of social interactions they know that handing a poor person $20 might or might not help them. But they also know that handing that same $20 to the right person, within that poor person’s neighborhood, will definitely help them.

When a city person says that giving money to the poor is beneficial, what they mean is inserting money into the right place in a poor person’s social network, will greatly benefit them. But consider this same problem from the point of view of their cousin in the country. The country cousin doesn’t have a large social network. Such things are completely invisible to him. If you told him you keep a key to your house at the local deli he might go into shock. The idea is foreign to him. So saying you want to spend money on a thing he doesn’t see strikes him as foolish. “Why don’t you spend that money in church instead,” he’ll say, because this is exactly how he would solve the same problem in his social network.

“But that doesn’t work over here,” his city cousin would reply, because in his world this is true.

And thus we find ourselves at odds. Not over the desire to give, but the method in which it is accomplished. And these alternative methods of giving hold their roots in the ways that we live amongst each other. In short, the design of our communities constricts the way in which we view a problem, and how we come up with a solution.

Is it any wonder that liberals generally come from big cities and conservatives from more rural areas? Perhaps one of the reasons Americans become liberal or conservative might have something to do with the design of their surroundings.

Don’t know. Create

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the Tree of Knowledge, you know, the one from the bible. The fruit tree that if you plucked one, and ate it, it gave you knowledge, and a free trip out of paradise.

You know what I think? I think that is all horse shit. You see I’m pretty damn sharp at times, and I know a thing or two. I don’t know everything mind you, and sometimes the lack (not knowing everything) drives me crazy, but I do know some things, and you know what? Knowing ain’t worth shit. Really.

Think about it. What do you know? If your average, then I’ll bet you know a little bit about a lot of things, and a lot about a few things. Maybe even a whole funking lot about one or two things. So what has that knowledge gotten you? Did you ever get laid because you knew about Socrates? Did you ever earn a good meal at a restaurant from knowing romantic neo-classicists? Ever got a broken car to work because you could conjugate French verbs? Yeh, me neither.

See I don’t think that tree in the garden was about knowledge. I think it was the Tree of Creativity. Think about that for a moment. Creativity is the thing God starts out doing. His first job in the bible. It is his main gig, his bona fides. If you ask, “are you qualified to be my God?” He’ll respond, “Well, ah hum, I did creates the universe,” all while buffing his nails on his shirt.

Creating is right there on God’s turf, his main thing. When you create, you are actually being a little God like. Remember Man was created in his image. I think that means, we could create like he does. Not on anything like his scale, mind you, but we sure as hell can create.

And man, is creation the coolest thing or what? It is the best drug, the only cool high, and there is never any hang-over. Making cool shit up is just the bomb! With nothing but a computer, and a little bit of time, I can make up people out of thin air. Try that, mofo. I’ll bet you can too. I can put scars on people who are flawless, or remove their flaws and make them sexy. I can make them look like anything I want. Hows that for power?

Creation is the only thing that could get poor Lucifer to give up his cushy day-job, and move on down to hell with a third of the angels. You think they gave up Heaven for knowledge? Dream on brother. They gave it up to create. No wonder God gets jealous. No wonder he kicked out Adam and Eve. He couldn’t hang with the competition.

So I may not know shit any more, but watch out, because I sure as hell can create. I am a fire-breathing, book reading, mind bending cre-a-tor. I can make up cool shit at the drop of a hat, for a deadline, and pull it off on time, and under budget. Beat that bitch. And you know what, that is the power of the gods.

Here’s an apple kid, Wanna bite?

The Language of Art

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This morning I talked with an Art Director about a piece of art she had done. She needed a little bit of advice in a few areas about photoshop usage (hence the conversation), and I was doing my best to help. The problem was our conversation was over the phone, which is a medium almost completely unsuited for talking about art.

You see I work as an artist (really an artisan) in a field full of artists. We, collectively, put together some pretty cool stuff at times, and it’s hecka fun. That is until we start talking about art. Then its rather boring.

Us artists types are visual people. We put things together so you can see them.  Think a picture and a thousand words. But when we talk about our art, it is done so in a very abstract way, and the conversation would be entirely meaningless if you could not see what we are talking about. If a part of an image needs to get brighter (as in closer to white) we might say, “make it hotter”, “brighter”, “whiter”, “open it up”, or even “more sunny”. All of these terms I have heard before, and they all roughly mean the same thing. Alas, when the topic gets more complex, then words tend to get confusing. That’s when we extend into metaphor. Make it like her face, or like that clock, or (referring to another poster) like Pearl Harbor.

Now if we were engineers, then we would have a very exact language, and could be extremely specific about what we want.  But artists don’t work like that. We’re not used to working with words, and if you listen to our conversations it shows. One of these days I’m going to record a conversation about a piece of art we’re working on, because out of that narrow context, the conversation has got to be somewhere between banal and silly.

So this morning, when I was talking to my friend, I had to really be careful about what I said. I could not see what she was seeing, and I could not show her what I meant visually, so we had to constantly double check our meaning by asking if we understood each other. She would say something, then I would repeat it, and then she would repeat it again. This happened over and over, but was necessary to ensure that our differing experiences about the art remained in sync. No doubt a linguist would have a term for this kind of verbal “fact checking”, which is retrospect is not all that different from the way a computer makes sure it has got all the pieces of a file correct, when you send something over a network.

I’m rather sensitive to this kind of communication because I do it a lot. I am constantly exposed to new Art Directors (new to working with me, that is, not necessarily new to the business)  and every time I work with one, I have to make sure what they say means the same thing as what I say. If we were engineers, for instance, then the language itself would be specific enough that it would not require much in the way of repetition. Some people use words in such a way as there really cannot be a second meaning to their sentences. Alas, with visual people, such specificity is tossed aside in exchange for speed. All one has to do it point to the artwork, and save those thousand words for something else, like what to order for lunch.

But such language usage goes beyond just the specific lingo of a given design shop, or Art Director.  Artists, I have noticed, tend to not use word play, or make jokes with puns, like others professionals I have worked with. Perhaps this is because they have set aside verbal acuity, in favor of visual acuity. If this is so, then they have made a good choice because most of the people I’ve had the pleasure of working with are damn good. With art, that is.