http://www.onyourwayhere.com en dave@iamdavedawson.com Copyright 2011 2011-05-17T07:43:08+00:00 http://www.onyourwayhere.com/conversation/ian-curry/ http://www.onyourwayhere.com/conversation/ian-curry/#When:07:43:08Z Did you know what you wanted when you graduated from undergrad? It’s been a zigzagging path. I studied comparative literature in undergrad. My thesis was on this Marxist, surrealist poet from the ‘30s who was writing using Quechua indigenous song structures in his poems. It was fascinating to me, but there weren’t a lot of professions related to that type of study. There was a group of people in that program who were into the deconstruction of books: taking them apart and putting them back together. They formed a pretty tight community around the letterpress shop on campus. It was a great place and we were exploring design without really knowing it, because we were thinking about it from a literary perspective. At the time I didn’t know that I was getting into design. I was just discovering this thing that I really liked doing. How did you feel about design at the time? I thought these were competing impulses: to do something good and socially responsible or to do something creative. I really saw them as being fairly opposed. Local Projects is a place where you feel like you’re doing something good, but you’re also doing something creative, and at the same time it’s a successful company. It wasn’t clear that there was a path I could follow. I had these non-profit jobs where I would be laying out the newsletter and I found that I would clear out all of my work so I could focus and enjoy doing that. I thought to myself, “this is what I really like doing.” Were there any choices that stand out as really shaping your life? I’m not a super dynamic person. I was talking to a friend from school; we were talking about how both ended up in design. He would say, “I just met this guy and started working on this, and met another guy who was working on that, and then somebody offered me this” and I would describe that as dynamic. Things just happen all the time he’s following his interests and things are just coming together. It could be a matter of perception, but I just set my sights on something and plow towards it really slowly. I seems silly to say I just sat down one day and declared, “I’m going to be a designer. That’s going to be my profession.” But that’s actually what happened. I think it was in the midst of working at non-profits and realizing that’s what I wanted to do It’s funny to look back on it, because now it feels like such a middle class, semi-bourgeois profession. It doesn’t feel really risky, but at the time, my mom would call crying, “what are you doing with your life?” My parents are actually very supportive, but they did not totally get what was going on at the beginning. They really wanted me to go to law school. I guess compared to going to law school, being a designer is a fairly bohemian choice. Copywriting was my first creative job. I remember being really nervous going in there the on the first day of work, knowing someone was going to ask me to do something creative. I wouldn’t call the work I was doing wildly creative, but I was being relied upon for something other than administrative abilities. That reality of that freaked me out at first. Whenever you go into a creative profession, you’ve got to develop that kind of confidence to know that you can do something pretty good, most of the time; that you can be relied upon by someone who will pay you money to go and do these creative things. It’s pretty stressful early on. I mean, it’s still pretty stressful sometimes. How did you make that initial career decision? Looking back on it, it seems like a very normal thing to me now, but it wasn’t at all when I made that decision. It was very much a decision where I put a stake in the ground and said, “This is how it’s going to work out.” It felt like such a major decision to pick your career at the time. I think I was 25 or something. In some ways I look for other things like that where I can put a stake in the ground because it feels like that’s where really important things happen, when you make a decision and you stand by it. Even when it’s kind of scary or even when you feel like you’re not doing well at it and it’s not going to work out. That was probably one of the most important decisions I ever made. Otherwise I wouldn’t have moved to New York and I wouldn’t have gone to ITP; all these things kind of stemmed from that. Something else would have happened but it felt like a lot rippled from that one decision. Where there choices made by others that impacted your career? Robert Fabricant was one of my professors at ITP. He has a really amazing knack for passing by your desk as you’re banging your head against the wall trying to figure out an interaction design solution, and saying, “Why don’t you do it this way?” And it solves something you’ve been thinking about all day. It was that way in his class and I just really wanted to learn how to do that. I begged him for an internship at Frog Design and that’s how I ended up working there. That was a big break. Up to that point I had done some design stuff. I was up in San Francisco, mostly learning on my own. Coming out of school and going to work there was a massive escalation of the level that I was working on, and the kind of people I was working with, and the skills that they taught. It was very traditional; someone gives you a break and things change. Career-wise, that was a very important turning point. Do you think being richly experienced make you a better designer?  Not necessarily. There are some people that never leave their home but who are amazing designers. Does being richly experienced make you a better person? Absolutely.]]> 2011-05-17T07:43:08+00:00 http://www.onyourwayhere.com/conversation/liz-danzico/ http://www.onyourwayhere.com/conversation/liz-danzico/#When:18:58:03Z How did you get started after your undergrad? I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was an undergrad. No, that’s not true. I knew, but had no words to express what that was, so I was an English Major. I started to become somewhat aware of information design, instructional design, and information and design together and that became what I wanted to pursue. I had no idea what it was called. I thought it might be “advertising,” but that didn’t seem right at all.  All I knew was that I had no idea how to do that and I wasn’t ready to start, so I decided to travel. I went to Japan for a couple of years. While I was there I studied for the GREs and found graduate schools that focused on design and writing. I came back and went to Carnegie Mellon. I’ve always been a little bit too concerned with the right manners, and knowing the right way to do something. If I want to learn how to do something — whatever it is, like interview someone — I’m a little bit too hesitant to just dive in. I will first go research the proper way to interview someone. So while I was an undergrad, what I should have done was say, “What is this? I’m going to figure this out and go get a job.”  Instead I decided I would travel for two years, study for the GREs, find a great school, go to graduate school and then get a job. That’s a perfect case study in the way that I approach things. When you graduated, did you have a plan that you wanted to follow? No. I don’t think there was any plan. I’m a terrible planner and I’m trying to figure out if that’s intentional or not.  I’ve said this before: if you know what you believe in and you know what you’re passionate about, you can make good decisions. Because what’s presented to you and what you choose to do are very closely aligned with what you believe in. I think it’s really important to have short-term goals and check in with yourself to see how you’re doing. Otherwise you could be in a position of never failing, never taking a chance and never failing. If you can’t fail, then you won’t know what you believe in. Do you think it’s necessary to fail to be successful? I wish I knew.  I really wish I knew. I think you have to see failure to be successful. I know that sounds like something you would find in a fortune cookie. But if you don’t see it, and by that I mean if you don’t put yourself in a position where you can see what is on the other side if this doesn’t work, if you don’t see the realness of failure, then how can you possibly say you believe in the project? Then it’s not really your success; it’s someone else’s. Were there any specific people that really made an impact on you? There was this woman named Jeanine who was my creative director at a larger company. I’ve always been like a bit of a perfectionist and she was not. She used to come to my desk and stand behind me and I could feel her shaking her head. She would say, “Liz, you’re working too much.” She would walk by later in the day and say, “Liz, you need to go home,” or “Liz, when was the last time you had a vacation?” She sat me down a few times and told me how I have let go and stop being a perfectionist. I didn’t believe her for the longest time, and then I thought, maybe I am working too hard and I should go home when everyone else goes home. I was always the first person there and the last person to leave. So for a few years I started “regulating my passion,” I would stop even if I wanted to continue working. But I’ve realized that the people that I respect the most, the people who are doing great things, are people who care so much about what they do that they can’t stop. They are not unhealthy. There are those people who are unhealthy, but I’m talking about the people that care so much about what they do, that they go out of their way to have coffee and do interview projects [like now]. They care. They are not working too hard. They care about quality. I realized that this person was not recognizing the difference between someone who is a perfectionist and someone who deeply cares about quality. I think I have a bit of the perfectionist thing and that needs to go, but it can be an endearing quality. I just deeply care and I love that. What is nourishing about the world to me is that I love what I do. It took me a few years to realize that if I’m a healthy person and everything is in balance, I don’t need to curb that. Everything is just in balance. So that person, she tried to regulate me through this advice she gave me. But then I ended up reversing it, which I’m really happy about. How does one create the best possible opportunities for oneself? By going back to what you believe in and that set of interests or beliefs that surrounds you. Maybe you write about it, read about it, or just talk about it, and the people that are attracted to the same thing will come to you. That goes for professional interests and personal interests. You’ll be invited to things or you’ll start your own things and those opportunities will just happen naturally. I know it sounds too good to be true and not even good advice, but it is absolutely true. You’ve probably seen it yourself in the typography community. Oh definitely. I’ve seen it a lot just in my short time in New York. It’s strange but if you do know what you believe in and that could be in an area that is super-wide, like local food or small like raising honeybees on rooftops, as you start talking about it everyone you know will start sending you things and saying, “You know you should…” and all those opportunities will start popping up everywhere. That’s how it happens. At the next party you’re at, or the next dinner or conference you’re at, somebody will say, “…not only that, but we actually need someone to work on this project.” But it’s important that you evaluate what you really believe in from time to time. You can’t say yes to everything and you can’t believe in everything. You have to make some decisions. Are there any missed opportunities or decisions that you wish you had taken advantage of? I went to Japan to go to graduate school and during my time there I realized that one doesn’t need to be so structured. Not everyone needs to go to school; I’ve got plenty of time. I had found a program that sends people to visit parts of South Africa. I remember coming back and talking to my parents saying, “I’m not going to go to grad school, I’m going to Africa and I’m going to do this project,” I remember my parents telling me, “you’re going to be too old when you come back.” I listened to them, which I shouldn’t have done, and I made this decision based on what someone else had advised me to do and I didn’t go. That’s one thing I regret. I think it’s very important to sort of follow your own intuition. Age, color, or location, none of these things matter if you know what you believe in and you want to do it.  Everything else can wait and it does. We know that so much more now, but at the time nothing was as public as it is now. Things worked out pretty great, but yeah that’s one thing I look back on and I wish I had done because I didn’t follow what I knew to be true, doing what I actually wanted to do rather than some one telling me that I was too old when I was 24. Where do you think the motivation for decision-making come from? The fear of indecision. I don’t think we can wallow in indecision. Otherwise we would be just like wallowing in this dream state of nothing. I think we often have deadlines or people over us demanding decisions, but making a decision just feels better.  I wonder if decisions are cultural because where does motivation for making a decision really come from? It feels like making a decision is the right thing to do. It feels better when you’ve made a decision. For example, we’re sitting here and neither of us are really hungry, but it feels better to order than not to order. But if we we’re in a different culture like Fiji for example, where time doesn’t matter; it doesn’t matter if you order.  You can order now or in five hours. Therefore we would not make a decision. So no, the motivation to make a decision is purely cultural. I think the culture of work by deadlines and the culture of family when it comes to tradition or holidays, sometimes by human need, obviously with more basic decisions.  Do you think being a richly experienced makes you a better creative? Yes and I think that the more experiences you have, the more informed you are, although it’s not necessary to travel or have those experiences. Every time I go somewhere here in New York, talk to someone new or when I travel, I’m just so surprised. What I thought to be true, like this glass getting filled with water throughout dinner, or that we are polite to one another because we are friends is not true in another culture. What we know to be true is only true because it’s true in this culture, which is the United States, in New York, in Carroll Gardens. Everything is cultural and that’s fascinating. It makes you feel so humble, small and aware. ]]> 2011-03-30T18:58:03+00:00 http://www.onyourwayhere.com/conversation/jason-santa-maria/ http://www.onyourwayhere.com/conversation/jason-santa-maria/#When:02:51:58Z How did you get started on this path after you finished your undergrad? Wow, I don’t even know anymore, there are so many intersecting lines. I basically started out in an agency where the workload was split between print and web, about down the middle. That’s where I really learned to build websites and to love the web. After that I went to a primarily interactive firm for a couple of years. Then I ended up freelancing off and on for a bit and ended up working with Happy Cog for a number of years. I then went back out on my own again and now I’m employed by certain companies but also not home to just one of them. So I’m kind of wearing a lot of hats on any given day. If you had a plan when you finished school and had stuck with it, where would you be, or what would you be doing right now? That’s a really good question. I think when I got out of school, I kind of already sparked an interest in the web for myself so I probably would be working on the web. I guess in my head I kind of thought I would end up at a really prestigious firm. At the time I think I wanted to work at a place like Chopping Block because I just loved the stuff that they did so much. If things had just panned out exactly that way, I probably would’ve ended up at a firm of some sort. Were there certain decisions that you made or someone else made that diverted you from that path? Well, I definitely don’t think my career path was my decision alone. So many factors go into starting at a new job or leaving a job. I think, if anything, my nature of being afraid to commit to one single thing, or doing one thing everyday has led me in this path of doing so many things. I don’t know if that is going to work out well in the long run. If it makes me too faceted to be strong at any one thing, I’m not sure – I hope it doesn’t. But right now, I enjoy the variety, the diversity, and the kinds of things that I get to work on; I get a good taste of a lot of different things and it lets me apply the skills I have to them. Is there one decision or experience that sticks out in your mind as career changing? I guess it was moving to New York. I was at a position in Philadelphia where I was with Happy Cog, working both with the Philadelphia office and the New York office. It dawned on me that I didn’t have anything specifically holding me in Philadelphia and I could try going somewhere else. So I decided to move to New York and it was totally life changing. Just coming here and immersing myself in the community opened up my eyes up to a lot of different things, a lot of different areas of the discipline that I think of as design. When I was in Philadelphia, I think I had a much more cordoned off view of what graphic design and certainly web design were. I feel like now my view is much more broad. An experience like that changes your thinking about what it is that you do and where you want to go. Do you believe that being richly experienced in life makes you a better designer? Absolutely. The more life experience you have, in most cases will equate to experience with people, experience with life situations, and the way that people react to situations; which influences you and how you might communicate with someone. The best storytellers I know are usually older people, because they have more life experience. They understand how to tug at people’s emotions, how to say the things that will get a reaction from people and how to make something engrossing and interesting. That only comes with observation and being in many situations yourself. I feel like life experience compounds itself and it rewards at every turn. So immersing yourself in a different culture might change your perspective on design. Certainly, yeah. Either a different geographic culture or a different ethnic culture, absolutely. Like moving to China Town… Yeah, or just moving to China.Those things have great impact because you get a completely different perspective than your own. Any opportunity that you have as a designer to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, gives you great perspective. How do you think someone can create the best opportunities to make the best decisions in their career? For me, It sounds silly but I try to just keep an open mind. There are people who are optimistic or people that seem lucky, I feel like those people just leave themselves open to opportunities. Part of it is being at the right place at the right time but it’s also being able to recognize when an opportunity is in front of you. Which is much more difficult than you would think, seeing an opportunity in front of you and knowing that you might be able to be a part of it. It takes time, but it also takes the ability to keep your eyes open. There are so many opportunities all around us all the time. Every person you meet is an opportunity to change the career you have. They might be able to take you in and employ you, or they might be able to introduce you to someone else. I don’t mean that to sound like you’re taking advantage of someone, just that every person you meet has a perspective and their own life experiences and those can combine with yours to make something new. So first impressions are important? They can be, yeah, but I don’t know. It’s all about personality. There are many chances for impressions. Good point. Are there any common decisions that some people just starting off often make? Mistakes that can be easily avoided? One of the decisions that I know a lot people getting out of school want to make and I know I did, too, was to think that it’s a good idea to start your own company. This doesn’t apply to everyone, but I feel like the vast majority of designers, not entrepreneurs or anything like that, the people who want to learn visual design, one of the best things you can do is study under someone. Actually be an apprentice to someone or work at a place where there are people who have senior experience over you. You can learn vast amounts everyday just by watching. Just by listening and watching. When you strike out on your own right away, you miss some of those opportunities. Of course you can learn tons on your own; you might be able to learn that same stuff, it could just take much longer. But the insight that you can gain from someone who has that experience is immensely useful. Agreed. When I first started out, I felt it was really important to have a creative director to learn under. Well, the knee-jerk reaction is that you want to get out there and start making amazing work like all the work that you’ve been looking at while you’re at school. It doesn’t always work that way. That’s okay because it takes time to really develop a sense of yourself and a sense of your own style, a sense of your own taste, and I think it’s totally okay. There’s always time to do good work. Where does your motivation for making decisions come from? For me, motivation is where I can learn something. Learning drives almost all of my decisions. Finding myself an opportunity to grow is more important than almost anything else. I realized in my career that the times when I’m not happy are when I’m not pushing myself to learn something new. I need to be someplace that I can learn.]]> 2011-02-21T02:51:58+00:00