Let’s not assume that Paula is doing her own computer work. Paula’s got people to do that for her. You’ll notice on the video that she shows you the sketch, but not the computer file. I wonder if the senior partner at Pentagram laid out the logo or if a lower designer handled that? My dollar’s on the designer.

That brings up rebuke point #2: “Ö whatever we think of.” Paula’s quote implies that her team at Pentagram can do anything they want now. Not that she can. According to Paula, all she can do is get her email out.

‘Apple didn’t do their researchÖ’ Please, man. Always looking to bring down whatever giant lays in front of you, eh, Adrian? There’s nothing wrong with this. This is fine.

Adrian,

Apple couldn’t have found a better endorser for their products. Apple knows what they are doing. They want to convey the idea that you don’t have to be tech savvy to operate a Mac. The Mac is transparent. It doesn’t get in the way of your ideas. She may not do the work on the computer, but she makes the decision to be a Mac only company. Here is a link that might convince you that Paula is a great person for Apple to have on their side.

This particular pitch simply isn’t targetted at buyers / users like you, Adrian - being both tech-savvy and tech-interested, Apple’s move to approach and attract the “I’m scared to even turn the damn thing on” user isn’t going to hit your bull’s eye.

Scher happens to cover several bases as a spokesperson: the predominate amount of design-savvy and involved individuals working on Macs know her well, those not necessarily that familiar with design will still have seen some of her work and will know she’s notable / noteworthy, she is someone who’s not necessarily that keen on the tech but still works in a business that works with it - getting that type of person to say their product is great is really quite a sales hook.

Also, it’s particularly naive to think that she has no say whatsoever in the purchasing decisions - you can simply assume that anyone in the “Partner” position at Pentagram is absolutely making the command decisions, no less so due to their business model: each partner has a team working with them to realize their ideas / strategies, and they are the boss and “owner” of that team. Check out the site: http://www.pentagram.com/people.htm - you don’t make partner their without both name recognition and the ability to make the big decisions.

Paula is absolutely anti-tech in most instances - she was taught and “raised” in the period of design when craft was a responsiblity of the hand and the mind instead of the microprocessor. Having attained and struggled to reach some level of personal craft, the computer becomes not only a sort of nuisance but an outright threat to abilities that were previously only the possession of those who put in the blood, sweat, and tears to get them. She’s been around to see what life before and after them has really been like, and I’m afraid a large majority of us are confined to direct knowledge only of life post-computer.

In reading books and accounts like “Make it Bigger” as well as time talking with those who were around even before Paula came on the scene, the computer is a really bittersweet tool: it affords some remarkable polish and precision that was an extremely difficult task to accomplish beforehand, but it also makes so many of the technicalities of our work so accessible as to become trivial (which crosses into what’s also so challenging about the enormous amount of amateur participation in “graphic design”: inexperienced practitioners assuming they have what it takes to do the job simply because they have the same software as the professionals).

Paula would gladly go back to paste-up and to everything that is so inherently human about it - go back and re-examine her discussion about why a computer should be like a lightbox rather than a typewriter…She’s arguing for the intuitivity of the hand and for the many ways that the computer tangibly interferes with this sensitivity.

Consider it simply public name-dropping on Apple’s part to utilize Paula’s identity in the pursuit of selling you a new computer, Adrian, and leave it at that.

If nothing else, consider it a portion of their initial “Think Different” campaign and the further pursuit on their part to make us think of the Apple less as a piece of technology and more as an integrated portion of many aspects of our lives. The less it feels like a gizmo and the more it feels like a refrigerator, the better they’re able to keep a steady flow of their product in our homes and offices.

What really concerns me in this, Adrian, is the technocentric undercurrent of your posting - the computer is simply a tool, somewhat like a pencil, paper, brush, or other supply. The computer is also, rather frustratingly enough, greatly unlike a pencil, brush, paper, or other supply in that its basic functions and functions continue to morph, change, and diversify with increasing rapidity.

Unlike the consistent knowledge necessary to successful operate any of the true hand-media, the base knowledge to navigate computer environs is continuing to grow by leaps and bounds.

Despite the ways that the computer has served to accelerate and amplify the speed and variety of design projects / product, it has clearly been as much a detriment as a benefit to this field. Speed of execution has reached critical mass while the speed of conception and project consideration has remained somewhere closer to human pace - a disparity that has promoted a wealth of paltry materials to be produced virtually overnight, all thanks to that glorious glowing box we all have around.

Your comments start to suggest a computer-related attitude that has only ever grated and annoyed me and several others: tech-snobbery and tech-class-consciousness. The general attitude that those who don’t work with / on the systems are clueless and their work remains somehow unenlightened and uneducated as a result.

The beauty is that Paula has the resources and cashflow to be able to afford people “sophisticated” enough to take care of whatever significant computer needs her work demands - the rest of us just happen to have to take care of these things ourselves. The computer is an available resource and tool for the production of graphic design, but it’s shackling designwork and design education to almost exclusively technical training and fast edging out the necessary time and training required to think visually and execute creatively.

There’s really only so much longer that I think it’s a very valid practice to spend hour after hour after hour sitting in front of a screen and developing carpal tunnel when we could be doing “real” work and go back to our brushes, pencils, and paper. Additionally, it will very much be my goal to train other designers to consider the computer only one more item on the tool-rack, and one which has a large amount of baggage and hassle attached to it.

“The only designer cliche that saw more overuse in recent years might be the old ‘the computer is just a tool’ line.” Stephan Sagmeister, My Year Without Clients

No idea. I just thought I would be a jerk and throw that in the conversation. The first cliche he was talking about was how every profession thinks that they are storytellers.

Maybe Stephan was saying that the computer has more influence on our design than we would like to admit.

So maybe I’m falling prey to too much of a John Ruskin “hand-craft is the only true medium” line of thinking, but I really find a significant amount of the work produced exclusively on computer and without any trace of the hand in it to be exceptionally dry and pretty mundane.

I think it’s tech-snobbery to condescend those who can “only get their e-mail out” of a computer and assert that some level of computer competence is now the benchmark for design savvy.

What I’m really arguing for is a whole-hearted evaluation of what benefits the computer has really provided to designers, and a regular examination of whether it really “saves time” when working or if it simply convolutes processes and decisions that can be made more speedily and with far more interesting results by the hand and the eye alone.

HTML and the web are bound by necessity of the computer and I won’t argue that there are some really beautiful examples of work in the medium - I’m also not saying that there are no examples of good computerized design out there.

I’m guilty of a hands-on/DIY-is-better mentality because I think it routinely generates work with more life and liveliness than the work where you immediately notice the Photoshop and Illustrator “brushstrokes” - the exciting computer work is often the work that seems to cover up its computerized inner workings.

I think your pieces in “Works on Paper” demonstrate this point perfectly. While I know without a doubt that the digital work you’ve done has informed the printmaking you do, I also know how much energy, electricity and momentum those pieces had as a direct result of their physicality - both in process and in end result. Your physical hand makes all the difference, Adrian.

You’re dead-on that most of us are now working as some hybridization of the by-hand and by-mouse designer - I’d just like to continue tipping the balance back towards the hand.

Sagmeister is digging at what seems to be a consistent designer excuse for what’s ultimately lackluster work: “The computer is a tool like any other” - and that said, it should be a tool that’s picked up for specific intent when necessary and left in the corner at other points for differing intents. Right now it’s an overused tool that’s hedging out a lot of methods with far more history and longevity behind them…

I’m curious, Bennett, in Sagmeister’s quote about every profession thinking they are storytellers if he was targetting designers and illustrators in particular, or if it was a more sweeping comment.

Adrian, I would definitely pick up My Year Without Clients if you get a chance. It is worth the cost, especially since it is a paper sample from Utopia/Appleton. I’m not sure if they charge, but I got mine for free. It comes with several other small red covered books by other designers. Are you sure you don’t have it already? The book is a couple of years old and I couldn’t find any info on their website on where you can get it.

Paul, Here is Stefan’s example. “Read that this guy who designs roller coasters for theme parks say it’s all about telling a story. It seems everybody in design today thinks they are in the storytelling business… . I would be interested to hear what an actual storyteller, say an author of children’s books, think he/she is doing. Probably engineering.”

I can’t believe you guys would argue over such a petty thing… Get a life

that is where you are wrong, details are in the design, not the other way around