MICHAEL BIERUT: Thank you so much for having me here.
I'm sort of just warming you up for Salman Rushdie, I suppose.
I'm less significant in every possible way.
But we have a nice, intimate the little space to talk.
I'm a graphic designer.
That's my name, my Twitter thing.
That's me on Easter Sunday, 1969, in suburban Cleveland,
Ohio, which is where I grew up.
That's my mom and dad, obviously,
and those are my younger brothers,
who are fraternal twins.
Their names are Ronald and Donald.
They have rhyming names, OK?
That explains everything you need
to know about what it was like to grow up
in suburban Cleveland in the '60s.
My mom doesn't understand why that's
funny to give kids-- they're twins.
Was I supposed to give them completely unrelated names?
It's a naming problem.
At a very early age, I realized I wanted
to be a graphic designer.
I was good at art, but art always seemed kind of hermetic
to me.
Artists went off to, as I imagined,
they went, like to garrets or studios or closed rooms,
then just would do paintings and things,
and then sometimes would die.
Then their paintings would be discovered.
Sometimes the paintings would be sold in their lifetime.
But it just seemed like coming up
with ideas for paintings just seemed really hard.
When I realized there was this other thing called
graphic design that, in effect, was being creative as a means
to another end, I thought it was really exciting.
And I can still remember the first time
I saw a piece of graphic design that really excited me.
I was probably maybe eight or nine years old.
I was being driven by my dad to get a haircut.
We were stopped at a traffic light.
And my dad looked over to the passenger side of the car where
I was sitting and looked out the window,
and saw a piece of industrial equipment
called a forklift truck.
Do they have those here?
They do that, right?
And he said, oh look, that's really clever.
And I looked at the truck, and I said, what?
He said, the way they wrote the name of the truck.
And on the side of the truck it said Clark.
And I said, why?
And he said, well, look.
It does what the truck does.
And so he said, look how the L is lifting up the A.
And I was like, oh my god.
Is this happening all over the place?
Are these things everywhere?
And so at that moment, I sort realized
that something about that-- it was like art,
it was like creativity, but it had
nothing to do with painting a bowl of fruit, like Cezanne,
or some women with their noses sideways, like Picasso, or just
splattering paint like Jackson Pollock.
This is like, our name is Clark.
We make forklift trucks.
What do you got?
It just occurred to me.
The L can lift up the A.
So I just thought, if I could do that for the rest my life,
I'd be happy.
And I have, and I am.
So I'm with you today.
Here I am at Google.
Thank you.
So I'm just going to show you one project that I worked on.
And you guys recently changed your logo, which
I like very much, by the way.
I was really early out of the box in Twitter
and said something like, this is really good.
And it was one of the few really impulsive things
I've ever done on Twitter.
And then journalists started calling me up
to get me to weigh in publicly about the logo.
But I've designed logos that other people of weighed in
publicly on.
And I'm sort of-- I don't think everyone should be weighing
in publicly about logos.
And a lot of times I sort of think if-- back in the '60s,
there was a little private moment between me and my dad.
Very private.
If my dad was drinking a beer with our next door neighbor,
and he had brought up that logo with another adult,
that guy would have thought he was insane.
You know what I really like?
What do you like, Lenny?
That logo for Clark Forklift Trucks.
Ever seen it?
Like my next door neighbor would be like, what the fuck?
What?
So people didn't talk about logos in these days.
They talk about them all the time now, don't they?
I mean, you put out a logo and all
of a sudden it's like people are analyzing it.
I don't know if you read "The New Yorker" over here.
But some lady in "The New Yorker"
wrote this nostalgic poem about how beautiful the old Google
logo was, which personally, I just
thought that was preposterous.
She was saying, oh, the serifs were
referring to centuries of literary tradition,
and now it's all been sanded away.
I just think the way that all the O's line
up on in the search thing is just-- it's all very nice.
So at any rate, I'm going to going to show you something
that I worked on.
And it's something that actually came out very well,
but had false starts along the way.
So for the first time anywhere, I'm
showing the first thing that we proposed, which was rejected.
I've never shown this before.
The thing that was accepted is, I think, still on view
as part of Designs of the Year at the Design Museum
here in London.
But the rejected thing has never been shown
publicly outside of the client.
So here you go.
Oh, this is for this book.
And so what I really find interesting
is how design is about solving problems and doing things.
And so it's art or creativity for a purpose, right?
So the purpose has to do with how you do something.
And when I'm working with a client,
the first thing I try to do is figure out
what they're trying to solve and how to solve it, basically.
OK.
So this was actually the end, about designing two dozen logos
at the same time.
So the client is the MIT Media Lab.
You guys know what that is?
It's Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1985, or 19-- I'm trying to do the math here.
It was the 20th anniversary in 1910,
so 1990-- I thought it was 1985--
celebrated their anniversary.
And they had been started at MIT to sort of explore
where media and technology could all meet up.
It's actually a couple of buildings
that house a bunch of small research
groups, two dozen little research groups that
more or less have free rein to just explore
whatever they want.
On the occasion of the anniversary,
this wonderful new identity system
was created by a guy who was then at the Media Lab
named Richard Tay.
Then he came to Google.
I think he might still be at Google in California.
He's a great, great, great designer.
And if you don't know what that looked like,
this is what it was.
And the trick with this was, that thing
you see there was just one permutation of the logo.
He had written an algorithm or something,
or someone wrote some algorithm.
You guys all know what algorithms are.
I use that word a lot.
I really don't know what it means.
I went to art school so I didn't have
to take anything beyond Algebra II in high school.
I apologize.
You can kick me out now if you want.
So within that system, there's a bunch of squares.
And then those squares have colors
that extrude off the squares.
And then it makes 40,000, supposedly, different versions
of that thing, OK?
So it's really-- I thought was really cool.
I saw this thing and I was like, that's really, really cool.
I wish I'd done that.
To my surprise, the founder of the lab,
Nicholas Negroponte, called me up and said, hey,
could you design a logo for the Media Lab?
And I said, but you have a logo.
He said, what do you mean?
I said, that thing that Richard Tay did with the 40,000
different versions.
He said, oh, you know, that's not really a logo.
That was a thing for the anniversary.
We want a logo logo.
And I wasn't sure what he even meant by that.
So I went up to Cambridge, Massachusetts,
where MIT is, where the Media Lab is, and we
had a series of meetings.
And I finally figured out what he was talking about.
I met with some other people up there.
And yet I sort of really-- I actually
met with Richard and [? Rune, ?] another designer.
The two of them had actually done that system.
And I said look, they've asked me to mess with this thing
and I don't want to mess with it.
So give me some advice.
So I met with them to understand what they were doing
and to see what the whole system was.
So I'm just going to show you the presentation I did
for the first time we did it.
This is the thing I've never shown anyone before.
OK.
So the Media Lab actually has a history
based on the architecture of the original building, which
is by IM Pei.
And then in the IM Pei building, there
was a couple of art installations
that a designer named Jacqueline Casey riffed on.
See all these little stripey things?
So she created this identity that had little stripey things,
see?
So that was her idea.
So everyone's business card had a different bunch
of stripes on them.
So this idea of everything kind of being the same but different
was already there right back at the very beginning.
It was the 25th anniversary, not the 20th.
The 25th anniversary, Richard and his team
did something based on a new building
that the Japanese architect Maki did for them
that was-- in addition to the Pei building, the IM Pei
building.
And this shows a little bit of that in action,
if you can see that.
So the good qualities of that are that it sort of extends
that original identity in a way that I thought was thoughtful.
It's a metaphor for the new building,
because the building had atriums,
and it sort of did stuff like that.
And the last one, it sort of was just
a demonstration of how ingenious and innovative and imaginative
the MIT Media Lab was.
However, the shortcomings were-- as I finally
got them figured out-- it sort of is
very-- what's the word for it?
It's a look at me sort of logo.
It kind of like demands attention.
And part of the issue they have is that all
these other-- they have all these other things going
on there that like to be the protagonist as well.
So here's this other thing that really
is supposed to just be kind of signing off or endorsing
those things, but it's very active and clever for that.
And then it has this entropic sort of thing.
And entropy is another thing I'm not sure I fully understand.
But as I understand it, it has do with the general dissipation
of energy over time.
So those 40,000 different versions, I actually
talked to the person who was head of marketing.
I said, well, how do you decide which of the 40,000
different versions to use?
If someone says, send me your logo, what do you send them?
She said, oh, I just send the same one over and over again.
So they sort of-- it's tiring to manage 40,000 different logos.
And I said, do people think, well,
this logo is better for this?
No.
The thing that makes them great, the fact
that they're all sort of the same and equal,
actually makes them not work well
to distinguish meaningfully any of the activities of the lab.
And then also, it's really hard to look at that thing,
particularly when it's changing all the time, and think,
oh, when you see that, think MIT Media Lab.
So it needs a name with it.
So we said we would figure out a way
to do something that recognized the legacy of the lab,
make it a little bit stronger and louder,
and come up with a way that would let
it work with everything else.
So remember this grid.
This is the grid that underlies Richard Tay's system.
We started with that grid.
And then we decided we would build this alphabet from that.
So every one of these letters, M-I-T- M-E-A-D-I-A-L-A-B,
are all based on that basic configuration.
So I thought, this is nice.
We're sort of paying a little homage to the 25th anniversary
thing.
And then you get something like that on one line, or like that.
Now look carefully at that, because this
is-- when we went up to show this to Nicholas Negroponte
the first time, he said, oh, you almost got it.
And I'm like, what?
And he said, oh, this is all you have to do.
So I'll show you in a second.
He said, just take away those two things.
Then it's a perfect square.
And I said, but-- and he said, no, it still
says MIT Media Lab.
It's like MIT Media Lab.
So this is why he's the head of the Media Lab,
or the founder of the Media Lab, and I'm
just a vendor, basically.
So it almost works, I think.
And you can sort of make it-- so but this
is the thing I liked the best.
You kind of could take that thing,
and then superimpose the other thing on it,
and it sort of seemed to kind of have
the same basic underlying DNA.
I liked that part of it.
So then we did a bunch of little animations to show, really,
it's there, right?
Or maybe you prefer this one, MIT Media Lab or something.
Or-- cute.
Or-- this is everyone's favorite.
Voila.
OK.
So then from those eight letters,
it's really easy to extrapolate the whole alphabet.
And so then we said, you can do everything in that alphabet,
and hurray.
And so see how it says Mediated Matter?
That's one of those two dozen research groups
they have there.
And Molecular Machines, Opera of the Future, Social Computing,
Synthetic Neurobiology , et cetera, et cetera,
all written in the same typeface.
And stationery, business cards.
You can have a square business card.
As long as you're not going to be practical,
why not have a square business card?
Custom roll tape, posters, presentation slides.
So these are just quick sketches we had
done to kind of sell this idea.
And you see it becomes like a pattern in the background.
For some reason, I've got a designer who just-- I've never
seen him wearing cufflinks, but I think he just fantasizes
this world of important people who are always
like mafiosa, kind of like wearing cufflinks that
needs logos on them.
And then he has that piece of base art
and he knows how to Photoshop on it, I think.
That lady with the button.
So that was that, right?
OK.
So communicates the name, flexible and neutral,
builds on the current symbol.
But Nicholas and his is guys couldn't-- they presented this.
I was never there for the presentations.
He said, OK, it's up to us to kind of convince
all our colleagues, the faculty and the staff and everyone,
and get excited about this.
And he couldn't put it over.
They wouldn't accept it as the right solution.
I actually think the thing that he
saw in it, that crazy thing where the 11 became nine, just
somehow is just one of those cases where it's a square peg,
and the hole is almost square, but not quite.
And you just think, give me another hammer, and you go,
bang!
And it's still-- all you guys have been in that situation,
I assume.
And sooner or later you realize that it just
isn't going to work.
And they're a wonderful client.
They're just so great to work with.
They're so trusting and supportive.
So they said, you know, let us think about this for a while.
We're just going to take a pause.
Then about a year later, they called me back
and they said, OK.
We want to try again.
And we want to do something really clear and simple.
Forget about anything that came before.
What would you do if you could do anything you wanted?
To And I actually dread that question.
You know, I became a graphic designer, remember,
specifically because I don't want to do anything.
I want people to come to me and say, I have a forklift truck.
Our name is Clark.
What do you got?
And I say C-L-A, got it!
But if they say, we don't have anything.
We have nothing.
What do you got?
I'm like, what do you mean, what do you got?
What do you got?
So they said, go for it.
What do you have?
So we came up with this thing instead.
So this was basically what we presented the second time.
So there's something really interesting about MIT
in that it has two Titanic figures
in American graphic design, at least,
this lady Jacqueline Casey and this lady Muriel Cooper.
Muriel Cooper, along with Nicholas,
was one of the co-founders of Media Lab.
Jacqueline Casey was the lead graphic designer for decades.
Really remarkable.
Two women in a over-the-top, high tech,
quintessential American east coast high tech environment.
And they basically defined the way
that MIT looked for decades, through the '60s and '70s,
into the '80s.
Interestingly enough-- usually I ask,
are there any graphic designers here, or people
who know about design at all?
Thank you.
So name some typefaces, et cetera.
I'm not going to get too deep into that.
But Jackie Casey, as much as anyone else,
introduced Helvetica to the United States.
Other people get the credit for it.
She actually played a big role in it.
Here's some of the posters she was doing back
in the '60s and '70s.
Very influenced by European design.
These are really visionary, cool things.
Muriel Cooper, this is early stuff
she did about manipulating type and data in 3D space,
that she really made the reputation of her students
and the early days of the Media Lab based on.
And so they're both brilliant, brilliant designers.
And note that thing there.
That was by Muriel Cooper.
She did that in the early '60s.
If you don't know it, I bet it's in here somewhere.
That's the mark for MIT Press.
She did that, I think, in '62, I believe.
And imagine how hard this was to sell in '62.
I will now explain to you why this says MIT Press.
M-I-T-P. But it also looks like books on a shelf.
Also, it looks kind of digital in some vague way.
And there are sketches showing, OK, I'll
put a dot there, cross that, close that up.
Are you happy now?
But luckily she talked them into doing something abstract.
And this thing has been around now since '62.
And they said, we want something like that.
Not 40,000 versions, not something that
has to be blah, blah, blah.
We want something that's that simple, OK?
OK.
Easy.
Now I asked what you wanted.
Now they tell me what they wanted.
Thanks, guys.
So first we sort of looked at the way
you could write the name.
The full name, abbreviated.
Then we looked at-- when we you this sort
of work, you generate lots of stuff like this.
I think of some of these are interestingly bad.
Some of them are just bad.
Some of them are boringly bad or predictably bad.
I don't know, they're really problematic.
We did a lot of those things.
Then finally, almost guiltily, I said,
remember that seven by seven grid we had?
Maybe there's something we could do with that.
So we thought, OK, if we sort of combined a letter
for-- like M and L with the words MIT Media Lab-- maybe we
could start with that thing.
Remember that we were told not to worry about that thing
any more, but I was still obsessed with it.
Underneath it, remember is this 49-unit grid, seven by seven.
So if you-- remember, we built all these letters off it
before.
All's we need now are two letters, an M and an L. There's
the M, there's the L. Makes an overall kind of L for lab,
which is what they call it for sure.
Put MIT Media Lab next to it.
So that seemed interesting enough.
And then I remember-- I have a young man working for me named
Aron Fay who's really great.
And I'd like to take full credit for everything
you see right now at the Design Museum,
and the Designs of the Year exhibition.
I vaguely remember saying, you know,
it would be cool if we used the same system to do logos
for all the research groups at the Media Lab.
And it was Friday.
And I said, have a nice weekend.
Then I walked out.
And I came in on Monday.
Here's those groups.
And Aaron said, I think I got something.
And what he had was a logo for each of them,
built on the same scheme.
See, there's an A and a C for Affective Computing,
a B for Biomechanics, CC, Camera Culture, CP, Changing Places,
Civic Media, Design Fiction, Fluid Interfaces, all the way
through.
And what was cool about this was they all sort of went together.
But it was like a bunch of different logos.
They all go together like the previous schemes.
But this time, each of those groups
can grab one of these things and sort of
think they've got it made.
And not only that, but there are lots of different ways,
once you've established the rule set
for how you make these, the underlying grid,
you can rotate the things.
Each of these could be a different version, actually.
So then we did this little animation for it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Voila.
So OK.
So that one worked.
They liked that one.
Thank you.
The reason it worked was that I think
it struck a balance between a central theme
and the variations.
The variations were sufficient to help each of those research
groups engender a sense of esprit de corps,
but the central theme helped them feel unified that they're
all about one big idea, which is the innovation that
is enabled by the environment created by the Media Lab
overall.
And what was really cool about it--
and I think what people miss when they focus on G-O-O-G-L-E,
and the way it's written in the new logo,
is that that actually is really an extension and an embodiment
of the overall design language, that material design language
that you guys have been developing.
And I think it all fits together.
And I think when this sort of thing
works the best-- I don't know if Clark Forklift Trucks has
a whole design language that goes with that logo--
but I think you guys definitely have an integrated design
language that can help people answer all kinds of questions,
not just where do I put the logo,
or what does it look like, but how do I solve this?
How do I design this little part of a bigger product?
How does that product fit in with something else?
I think good design can tell you how things go together
and give you a characteristic way to make everything appear.
So what was really nice about this,
it gave us this kind of like coherent design language.
I remember when it was getting ready to launch,
people said-- we did an alphabet with it, too.
We kind like updated that old alphabet, did an icon system.
So this is the Maki building.
See, there's an M on that elevator,
an L on that elevator.
When the elevators are on the same floor
it sort of makes the logo.
We redid the signage in their buildings.
So then you can take the ingredients of the logo
and upend it to kind of have an arrow pointing up.
It's very low tech.
It's like a 49-bit logo, in a way.
But I sort of thought, the only thing that's
timeless-- this is sort of the equivalent of doing a cube out
of marble as a sculpture.
It's not going to change.
It's going to endure.
It can't be made-- it's not going
to look any more old fashioned than it looks today, because it
already looks old fashioned.
And so they have a lot of screen-based communications.
It works lovely as a pattern.
When different labs share the same area,
they can put a sign like that.
And then if you ever go-- anyone ever been there?
If you go there, they sort of-- it's open plan,
and they have lots of tours coming through.
And the groups will put up a sign to say who they are
and what they do.
Lots of media stuff like this.
Kind of simple way of, like, being inside the logo,
if you work there.
Boulders, floor plans, [INAUDIBLE], posters.
Oh, and then when two groups collaborate on something,
they can superimpose their things
and get some new hybrid thing.
They launched the new identity at an event
they had there for their community
that they titled "Deploy," partly,
I think, in honor of the new logo,
but because of other things as well.
And so you see it says D-E-P-L-O-Y on the back there.
And so they did a whole bunch of stuff with that.
All these posters basically say "Deploy"
in different ways using the same language.
Black and white.
Tote bag carried by a gal wearing
a black and white striped shirt in front of a black brick wall.
That's how to do it.
Little button.
Some smaller buttons.
This is not toilet paper.
It's packing tape they actually made, crumpled up.
We just made that up.
I don't think it's physically possible to have--
but they could.
And made with a little bit of love, too.
So perfect timing.
Thank you.
It's time for questions now, if you want.
[APPLAUSE]
MALE SPEAKER: Perfect.
So we have at least 10, 15 minutes for questions
if there are any questions.
You have to shout out nice and loud,
and Michael can repeat it.
MICHAEL BIERUT: I will.
I will.
Yes.
AUDIENCE: Do you value rejection in the creative process?
MICHAEL BIERUT: Do I value it?
I love it.
I really, really love it.
I'm so glad you asked that question.
OK.
So when I'm presenting something,
the thing that really scares me, the thing I really dread--
and I hate it when it's happening--
is, you see how this is-- I'm not putting
this on just for you guys.
This is sort of how I get when I'm presenting design work.
I get sort of progressively more animated and excited
because I'm excited about it.
I'm not trying to sell.
I just really like--like I said, I like what I do.
And I'll be behaving like this, and the people I'm talking to
will sort of be like-- and then at the end, they'll say,
you know, well, you've certainly given us a lot to think about.
And then I remember the first time, the first couple
times I got really rejected.
And I remember going to one thing where, literally, it was
a much smaller group than this.
And I was about as far as I am from you.
And I was talking.
And I remember this was the old days,
and I think I just-- I didn't even have slides.
I was presenting with pieces of cardboard,
like Don Draper in "Mad Men."
I had boards, right?
And I probably had 20 boards with my designs on it.
And about the second one, everyone in the front row
started kind of doing body language, things like this.
And kind of like-- and then by the third one,
by the fourth one, they started, like,
literally-- I'm this far away.
Like you and your friend there would kind of go like--
And I had one of those weird out-of-body experiences,
where I'm still talking, I'm saying, and then for the logo,
we decided-- and as I'm talking, I'm thinking,
boy-- I had this other dialogue.
It's so odd the way I can hear my voice inside my head.
How is that?
Your brain is up here, and your mouth is there,
and you hear yourself talking.
And I was having this kind of like sense
of detachment from reality.
I was actually losing track-- then
I started just getting really focused on how many boards were
left, because I just thought, as long
as-- it was like Scheherazade, actually.
As long as I keep presenting, everything will be fine.
And then eventually I have to say, so what do you think?
So predictably, these guys hated it.
And I was young then, and I didn't know what to do with it.
Now when that happens, I stop on the third thing, and I say,
wait.
You guys really don't like this, do you?
Tell me why.
And I have to admit, some of the best meetings I've ever had
proceeded from that question.
And sometimes I'll be with some of my younger designers
on my team.
And someone will bring up some objection
to what we're showing.
And I think your natural impulse is
to rush to the defense of the thing you're showing,
the poor thing you're showing, which needs
to be defended at all costs.
And I don't do that anymore.
I just kind of like, give me more.
Give me more.
I mean, do you hate it because of the color?
Do you hate it because of the typeface?
Do you hate it because of the basic idea?
Do you hate me?
And I really will-- and if one of my designers
tries to defend the thing, I'll no, no, wait, wait, wait.
Go on.
And then I'll repeat it all back to them.
I'll just make sure I got it all.
And what's really interesting is it that every once in a while
I'll present to someone who just loves everything,
and they really do love everything.
But almost every time, someone has
some objection, or some reservation,
or some criticism, or something they just outright hate.
And I just find those things really much, much more
interesting than, oh, I love it.
It's so great.
Every once in awhile someone says, I love it, it's so great.
And that's interesting enough for me.
I mean, I'll take it.
But people rejecting you is so fascinating.
And in a way, the luckiest thing we had with this
was, that first idea was not right.
It really was not right, and it was correct
that it was rejected.
And in a way, if I have any regrets at all,
it's that I just played the whole thing through.
And had they accepted it, I would've said,
congratulations, enjoy your new graphic identity,
knowing that it wasn't quite right, actually.
So confessing right before you all,
if I had a shortcoming that I would do over myself,
I would've said, maybe you're right.
This isn't quite right.
I'm not sure it's going to do it.
So in a way, I don't reject myself enough, actually.
I guess I'm just so hungry to have other people reject me.
There's some kind of psychological component to that
that I'm not eager to explore right in front of you.
However, that couch awaits me, and maybe I'll
just lay down and free associate later.
Yeah.
There.
AUDIENCE: How do you separate objections
based on personal bias?
MICHAEL BIERUT: So the question is,
how do separate objections based on personal bias
from ones that are based on rationales?
Well, sometimes I think that all objections
are based on personal bias, because particularly, there's
part of every-- almost every kind of design
expression, every product you guys design,
every decision that anyone making anything makes--
some of decisions are made because they are answering
a functional requirement.
And you can actually say, yes or no, this is right,
that's wrong.
We'll do this just because this works better than that.
But almost always, there's still some things left over
that someone has to decide.
And there is no right or wrong.
And people hate to call that taste.
People hate to call that style.
But I mean, it really is a dangerous thing,
and it really is taste.
And so when someone rejects something,
I sort of will assume it's some combination of all
those things.
I try not to have a conversation based on taste just
because it's so arbitrary.
So I'll try to ease us back into something that has more
to do with the objective world that we can all together
agree on.
You know, you like blue, but all your competitors
use blue, so if what you want is differentiation,
blue may not be the thing that gets you differentiated, right?
On the other hand, maybe you really
don't want differentiation.
Maybe you want parity with all your competitors,
you want to fit in.
And then people can have-- they're almost relieved
to have that discussion, because it makes a lot of people
nervous to talk about having an opinion about a color,
actually.
So they don't want to do that.
They want to talk about something
you can put on a spreadsheet.
So it's a complicated thing to work through.
And a lot of it is-- in the back of my head, sometimes,
it's like, you really don't care one way or the other
at the end.
Just let me do it my way, because I really do care.
And I think there's a lot of designers who lead with that.
And it sort of takes nerve and kind of arrogance.
And I'm not sure I have either of those things.
So I usually just kind of do with a patient,
kind of conversational one.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: How do you maintain your artistic integrity when
a client is challenging it?
MICHAEL BIERUT: OK.
So the question is, how do you maintain
your artistic integrity when you're
working with a client who might be challenging it?
There are cliches about people from the Midwest,
the Midwestern United States, like Ohio, where I'm from.
One of them is that we're very polite.
And I do think I'm really polite, and unconfrontational.
So I can count-- I don't think I've ever
had a meeting where I actually stormed out in a huff,
or even raised my voice.
I mean, I just don't do that, not at work.
I mean, like watching a sports event-- I mean, I just--
I'm very unconfrontational at work.
So this idea that-- and also, I have to admit,
I don't value my own artistic integrity
that highly at the end of the day.
I don't, actually.
I mean, someone's asked me to do a job for them.
And you know, say what you will.
But I put this deck together for you guys.
I just looked at it now.
But over in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
they look at this stuff all day, every day.
This is their thing.
This isn't my thing, this is their thing.
And as far as I'm concerned, it has nothing
to do that they're paying me.
It has to do with the fact that I've created a house for them
to live in.
And it doesn't matter if I think there's something really,
really fun about having stairs with no railing
because I think that looks really cool.
If my client has six-year-old twins,
they're going to fall off the stairs and kill themselves.
So it doesn't matter, my artistic integrity.
I have to hold my nose and say, OK, I
have to figure out a way to protect your kids
on those stairs, right?
So usually if there's-- artistic integrity doesn't come into it.
I do dislike people that are horrible
and mean, or are dumb, horrible, and mean.
If they're dumb and nice, sometimes that's OK.
And I actually like-- smart and mean I actually
don't mind that much.
It's dumb and mean that is just intolerable.
So again, there's a lot of people-- I mean, to me,
I just will quietly walk away from certain things
where I can kind of tell it's not going to go well.
It has much less to do about me as an artist,
and just more to do with, given that you're
awake X many hours a day, and you
spend this much of your wife working, how much of that time
do you want to spend really dealing
with unpleasant people who, for some reason,
have the energy to make you do things you don't want to do?
I mean, if you're lucky and you structure
your life and your business the right way, you can set it up
so you're in a position to avoid a lot of that
without hurting anyone's feelings.
I've never told anyone, you're a jerk, and I hate you,
and I don't want to work with you anymore.
I usually say, it's not you, it's me.
I'm sorry.
This isn't working, so if you don't mind-- so I do.
Yeah.
Sorry.
AUDIENCE: My question is about the relationship
between technology and visual identity.
Does it matter?
MICHAEL BIERUT: So the question is-- correct
me if I'm saying this wrong-- but we're at a point
now where, potentially, an institution
or an organization's identity could
be adapted almost infinitely by not just its users,
but by its audiences, to work in different ways.
And is this a good idea?
Is this what the future holds for us?
I actually think the answer to both those things
is yes and yes.
I don't think it's-- sometimes a situation calls for something
which is unequivocally immalleable.
It's not going to change at all.
Other times, it's-- what I've gotten really interested
in lately is the idea that-- I've noticed that some
of the brands I admire the most, actually, have very little--
they've got a real kernel at the core.
But it's not that big, and it's not telling people
that much what to do.
We have this store over in the states called Target.
You guys-- OK, so Target's this inexpensive store
that has a reputation for from being hip and design conscious.
And one of the genius things about Target
is their name is Target.
And back in the late '60s, they went
to some really good designers and said, we need a logo.
And these great designers came back to them and said,
we got it.
It's a dot with a circle around it,
and underneath we're going to write the word target.
Now if that happened today on social media-- like,
my five-year-old could do this.
How much do these people get paid?
Total fail.
People would say, it's not clever at all.
But because they weren't clever, they weren't preemptively
clever on behalf of every future generation, all these great ad
agencies, all these great designers, all
these great marketing people, all these great business people
have done all these really interesting things
with that basic, simple piece of geometry.
And it was enabled not because-- what made it possible
was the simplicity of that original conception,
and I would almost say the humility
of the designers who actually put that forward as the idea.
Very recently I did a logo where I literally was thinking,
I really think this is the right solution.
The only thing wrong with it is that no one
will think I'm clever.
It just isn't clever.
There's nothing clever about it.
I'm not even sure this is that clever.
The music video makes it look kind
of ingenious and everything.
But I don't think-- inherently, it just
is this kind of workmanlike of thing.
What I like about it, too, is that I remember,
there were like two dozen groups.
If I recall, about half of them liked
the logos we did for them.
The other have didn't like their logos.
And I was like, this is simple.
I mean, it's a 49-square grid.
And once you explain the rules of the geometry, what's
your idea?
And they would come back with things, and we'd say,
that'll work if you do this.
And then eventually we-- through a very quick series
of kind of fun negotiations-- co-designed
every one of the remaining logos with the users.
And I don't remember even which ones those were,
because it was sort of the system designed it in the end.
So I think there's lots of different examples of how
that'll happen in the future.
I think that it's partly-- it's certainly enabled
or accelerated by technology.
But in a way, some symbols of world religions,
or countries, or the peace sign, simple things that people
can draw in the sand, or with a piece of chalk
on a wall-- in a way, those things
are the ultimate distributed design systems.
And it has less to do, I think-- it has as much
to do with the inherent simplicity
of the original conception as it does with the technology that
enables it.
Is that a long and-- Yeah.
AUDIENCE: One of the things I have to do
is go and find customers.
Now I have three options in terms of showing them product.
Either I go with the Google logo,
or I brand it for them specifically,
or I just use a made up, fictional company.
Which one do you think resonates best?
MICHAEL BIERUT: OK.
So some of you guys must face this problem.
When he goes in to a potential client or customer,
he can brand-- you're branding a prototype or something,
I imagine, or--
AUDIENCE: Well, no.
Just the stuff that you could tell the customer
that they have the ability to brand themselves.
MICHAEL BIERUT: They have the ability to brand themselves.
He can put the Google logo on it,
he can put their name on it, or he
can put, like, Newco or some other pretend name on it.
Which is the best one?
You know, it's funny.
I think if Google were a startup--
this is just my opinion, OK?
I've been here for all of an hour or two,
so just take this as you will.
I think if Google were an unknown startup,
it would have a sort of requirement to kind of really
establish its name out there.
I think, if anything, Google, like a lot of other companies,
sort of has the other problem.
They're just seen as being-- I think your customers may
welcome the fact that you're kind of,
oh, you put our logo on it.
That seems beneficent, in a way.
And I think the only reason not to do
it is if their own logo is so ugly it makes everything
look terrible, right?
I assume.
Or else if you just kind of set it in your typeface
that you use for alphabet and all that other stuff?
That's another way you could do it,
I suppose, just to neutralize the whole thing a little bit.
AUDIENCE: So you think the logo resonates well with customers?
They don't get sick of seeing their own logo?
MICHAEL BIERUT: No, no.
Customers don't get sick of seeing their own logo,
you kidding?
No, they love seeing their own logo,
particularly if they're going in with the fear of thinking
that they're giving something up going into a situation.
To see themselves acknowledged in that way, I think,
is probably reassuring.
I've done lots-- in that book, you'll find some examples.
There's some work we did for Saks Fifth Avenue, where
basically we were asked to do a brand new logo for them.
We couldn't come up with one.
Instead, we found a logo they had from the early '70s
and did this sort of remix of it.
I remember going to that presentation so happy,
thinking, they can't hate this because it's already
their logo.
They can't say, we don't want that.
You can't say that.
You already have it.
Ha ha!
So you know, I think that people just really-- I mean,
logos are weird because on one level,
they're this weird piece of commercial marketing--
they're a commercial marketing tool.
On the other hand, people do take them personally.
It's someone's signature.
It's the flag that they fight under.
It's the sign over the door they go to five days a week or more.
So it does mean a little bit more to them than just colors
and shapes, I find.
MALE SPEAKER: One more.
AUDIENCE: If you were a client, how
would you choose a graphic designer or agency
to work with?
MICHAEL BIERUT: The question is, if I was a client,
how would I choose a graphic designer or agency
to work with?
That's a really good question, because I actually think that
that's-- when people are trying to get good design out
of a process, I think.
There's some people in the movie business
who sort of say the same thing, is
once you have the script, the director, and the cast,
and maybe the director of photography, the movie
is 95% done before anything starts filming.
It can only get 5% better or worse,
because those ingredients are like setting the tone.
And I think the same is true when you hire a designer.
I think you're making the primary decision about what
the outcome is going to be just through that, because once you
do that, you're already kind of putting yourself
on a certain track, whether you do it knowingly or not.
Just like a lot of decisions one makes in life.
Why did you go to that college?
What would have happened if you wouldn't have sat down
at that particular seat at the cafe next to that guy?
And then all of a sudden your life is changed, right?
Thus it also is with choosing a designer, I suppose.
I mean, I would love to hire designers all day long.
I think there's so much good work out there now.
It's all so visible.
I just would see things that you admired,
and then find out who's doing them,
and then meet those people and see
whether you like those people.
if you find somebody like who does work you admire,
and you're someone they like and you do work they admire,
that's true love, isn't it?
I've been married for going on 40 years
now, or 35 years, actually.
Dating the same girl for 40 years.
So I know all about true love.
Ask me about that sometime.
You had your hand up before.
I just want to have one more question.
AUDIENCE: So my question was, how much time
needs to be spent researching the client,
understanding their culture, their DNA?
MICHAEL BIERUT: I actually think that's really a critical thing.
And I think that it's something that I
imagine-- it's tough no matter what the situation is.
And people usually assume that researching a client,
and understanding what the situation is,
is really necessary when that situation is
kind of complicated or exotic, or no one understands it.
I've actually found that it's much worse when--
the more dangerous thing is when everyone thinks
they understand it already.
It sort of is-- one thing that's nice about designing for,
like, the Media Lab, what I just showed you,
is that what they do seems complicated and mysterious.
But everyone-- for instance, I think
a lot of the reaction that came out about the Google logo
had to do with, everyone thinks they
know everything there is to know about Google,
because they're on your site all day every day.
And what else is there to know?
They think they know you.
They wouldn't presume to know that much about a lot
of other entities in the world.
But they think they know you already.
And I think that that's actually,
from a designer's point of view, much more dangerous.
I think it's because you assume you know it all already.
And the questions always are, what don't we know?
What do we know today that isn't going to be true tomorrow?
What do we anticipate is going to happen tomorrow?
What do we have to put in place for the thing that's going
to happen five years from now?
So I think understanding those sort of factors.
And I think, just as importantly,
getting a sense overall of what the culture is like,
and what the spirit of the place is like.
Those are really fundamental to both establishing
the kind of rapport that makes for a fun design process,
and for ultimately coming out with a good solution.
And it's true for a really big organization.
It's true for a really small one.
Well, thank you so much.