Interview with David Barringer

August 13, 2009 0 Comments

David Barringer is an author, freelance writer, graphic designer, photographer, and artist. In 2008, he won the coveted Winterhouse Writing Award for excellence in design writing & criticism. This year, he published There's Nothing Funny About Design with Princeton Architectural Press. Over the course of a four-day Email interview, David shared his thoughts on design, writing, specialization, and romance.

Jason Tselentis: At this stage in your career, do you consider yourself a writer? A designer? Something else? A book maker?

David Barringer: I am a writer and designer of books and magazines. As a freelancer, I write essays on design culture and the occasional book review, and these are published in print and online. I write fiction as well, and I design and contribute to the literary journal Opium Magazine. I write and design my own books, including my novels and design books, and I have created other hybrid projects, like the Dead Bug Funeral Kit, the Writer's Specimen, and Picasso Plates, a project for kids. At this stage of my career, I think I am no different than anyone else about to turn forty, in that I am re-evaluating what the heck I'm going to do next. I will continue to write and design, but now I think I will teach as well.

JT: What would you teach sophomore and junior design students, who are in the middle of their university career?

DB: I would teach courses on critical thinking and writing on art, design and culture. Students need to be able to observe, evaluate, criticize, and write persuasively. Thinking and writing critically develop your personality, improve your ability to control the design process, enable you to communicate clearly with peers, bosses and clients, and protect you from being taken advantage of in the workplace. I think my law degree and my experience in writing and design would equip me well. I have written two books of design criticism now, about ten books in all, and I have worked as a writer since 1992 and a writer/designer since 1997. I have always been wary of teaching before I had experience, but now I have plenty of it. I know very well how important it is in your life and your work to think and write well.

JT: You state that, "Students need to be able to observe, evaluate, criticize, and write persuasively." Do you see today's designers lacking these abilities?

DB: Everyone lacks these abilities until he or she decides to develop them. No one sits down at the piano for the first time ever and plays Mozart. We learn and train and practice to gain a level of competence in music or writing or design. Writing well enables you to think well. And any creative endeavor depends on a host of skills and abilities and energies, and these ebb and flow during one's working life. I can write terrible essays three days in a row, and the fourth day write something unique and satisfying. Writing, like designing, is a constant struggle. But there are certain skills anyone can work on, and which I work on all the time. I fight against lazy thinking, bad grammar, bad punctuation, prejudice, cliche, the mindless repetition of someone else's ideas, awkward sentence structure, and on and on. I often write twenty pages of notes for a five-page essay. Similarly, for designers, the work of critical thinking and writing is what happens backstage, before the curtain opens on the final design. That critical work is not itself for publication, though it helps determine the final design and might be used to explain the design to a client or viewer. When that critical work is for publication, however, I feel more comfortable taking a writer to task. Deyan Sudjic's recent book The Language of Things (W.W. Norton, 2009) exemplifies poor writing. Passive construction alone dooms him chapter after chapter to fail to identify any authority or agent for his observations. If an editor had insisted he improve his sentence structure, Sudjic might have improved his thinking. And notice that I'm not engaging in any ad hominem accusation that Sudjic is a bad writer. Instead, he has written poorly, and poor writing can be worked on. I write poorly sometimes, but I work hard to notice this, to edit and rewrite, and to improve the writing. That's the important thing.

JT: How do you feel your skills as a designer & writer position you within the environment better than somebody who only designs or only writes?

DB: As a creative person, I have more power to control what I make. I can write the book or magazine and also conceive and execute its design. Professionally, I can achieve efficiencies in speed and cost. I can get things done faster, and I am a staff of one. But this means clients want to pay me less. So I can offer a refined and efficient expertise, but I have to be careful not to undervalue myself. This year, for a client, I researched, wrote, designed, illustrated, and typeset a book on the future of the legal industry. In this one project, I drew on my legal knowledge, my background in journalism, and my skills as a designer. If I chose, I could become an expert in the niche area of writing and designing legal materials. If you're a freelancer, a consultant, or in any way working on your own, which is becoming more common, then you should become an expert in a substantive area. So you couple your design skills with a knowledge of the restaurant business, the real-estate market, or parenting. You can own a niche market defined by design and content. This also means you'll need business skills as an entrepreneur who can market and properly value your work.

JT: Many designers possess those attributes you mention above. However, they may have lost a job recently, or their client pool may have dried up. What advice can you give to them to press on as designers?

DB: Hardships of any kind won't change my advice to anyone regarding their work. No matter what, you have to stick with doing the work you love to do. Even in good times, you will endure compromise and failure, so you better love the work. If you lose a design job and you still love design, you need to stick in that industry, somehow. Some friends talk about leaving their familiar industry to find success and easy money in some other industry. I think they're tempted by a kind of romance. They don't know anything about this new industry, so that mystery tempts them with the promise of a better working life. If you hate what you're doing, that's fine. Try something new. But don't be tempted to bail out on your love just because you're going through hard times. I keep telling my brother, who is working day jobs while acting in New York, to stay close to the work he eventually wants to do, even if the menial job he has today doesn't have a future. As long as you're paddling in the same pond, you will make connections in the right industry, meet the right kind of people who can help you later, and prove to any future employer your sincere commitment to the industry. Designers should take new classes, expand their skills, study on their own, and be prepared to scramble for new projects and new employers. Designers have the capacity to serve a wide variety of industries, so as long as they keep designing, they can adapt to changing economic conditions. You should also continue to work on projects on your own, like websites for family members, photography books, or just filling up sketchbooks with ideas. If you're unemployed for a length of time, you will be able to show potential employers that you never stopped working, never stopped expanding your skills. You remained productive, passionate, and valuable.

JT: Regarding personal connections—dare I say, romance—how hard is it to design your own books?

DB: It can be so hard that I give up. That was the case with the cover for There's Nothing Funny About Design. I designed the interior of the book, which I enjoyed and had no problem with, but I designed over thirty covers and was never satisfied. As the author, I knew too much about the contents of the book, all its many themes and moods, and I wanted something impossible: a cover that perfectly captured the whole book. I made what in retrospect has turned out to be a wise judgment: I asked for help. I asked another graphic designer, Felix Sockwell, to do a cover. We talked about concepts, and then he did his thing. He quickly designed a handful of covers, I picked the one with the strongest, most relevant meaning, and he refined it several times until it was done. Sometimes being the author of a book has enabled me to get to the heart of a cover design quickly, to create something that is not obvious or literal but rather has a complex, satisfying meaning. But other times my personal feelings cloud my artistic judgment, and I am saved instead by recognizing this as a crisis, stepping back, and acting instead as an art director. Design can be as much about asking for help as it can be about doing it yourself.

JT: In 10 years, when you look back on your career, what do you want people to remember you by?

DB: Do you know something I don't? Have you been reading my medical records online? I'm turning forty, not eighty. I suppose I want people to know my books. That's a natural desire for an author. But I still feel like I'm just getting started. It's a strange thing to feel, although I think that feeling is symptomatic of being a creative worker. You have to psyche yourself up to keep working on the next big creative endeavor, whether it's a magazine, book, screenplay, lecture series, art installation, or product launch. Besides, I'm not an employee. I don't have a career. I just work.

JT: I am not suggesting your career will end in 10 years, David. Far from it.

Written by: Jason Tselentis