Porn and Vodka

That’s all it takes to be inspired.

“A cover of a book is just a blind door that opens up diversity and beautiful language,” says Marc Lathuilliére on the cover of La Pornagraphe. “We cannot judge a book by it’s cover.” He goes on that in vodka, you can see right through the liquor, but you cannot fully disclose the powers of alcohol by looking at it. What a novel concept. And unlike other designers in the Thirty Conversations On Design series, he says that design is not to make things more simple.

I’m reminded of when I heard Phil Freelon, one of the lead architects of the newest African American History and Culture Museum in D.C., speak at TedxRaleigh. He said, “Design is better if you have to go find the meaning behind it.”

“This is a glorious time for designers because we are finally getting feedback.” Ze Frank, I think you may be on to something. Watching someone talk about what they’re passionate about is always a pleasure, right? Social design, that’s what inspires him; when a design grows on it’s own (shout out to Jane McGonigal of course). He mentions that we are reaching a point where many people design for many people, but what he would be interested in is where many people design for one person (or problem).

“Let’s make life less lonely,” he jokes. And then- probably a Phillip Motley favorite- he says, “the devil is in the details.” Yes, he is.

Katie Kirk and her part-time husband, full-time best friend, Nathan Strandberg inspired me when they said that a sign of great design is when you say ‘wow’ and ‘of course’ in the same sentence. Okay, so that’s the game plan from now on: to have people react this way with my work.

Since I started the iMedia program, I felt as if it was preparing us as both strategists and designers, a combination of the left side of the brain and the right. Michael Garcia Novak took this concept and shook it a little bit into a different perspective for me. Imagine this… designers as entrepreneurs. Wow, of course.

Novak points out that designers have an understanding of problems and the people that have them. After all, every single design is solving a problem. But designers haven’t explored the business of being creative enough.

In the context of iMedia, we are the ideal creative entrepreneurs when we graduate- we understand every possible medium of communication on some level, and we can strategize a way to present a message appropriately. The combination of strategy and creative is a pretty rare hybrid to find.

If all else fails, let’s follow Marc Lathuilliére’s advice to be inspired by a book called ‘La Pornagraphe’ and a bottle of vodka (or Chip Kidd’s to drink higher quality liquor).