Print Ain’t Dead!

Whether standing in line for checkout at a supermarket, sitting in a local coffee shop, or browsing in a modern bookstore, it’s not unusual to see magazines with $15, $20, even $25 price tags. Deluxe paper, niche topics, beautiful design; at a time when there are plenty of articles about the decline of newsprint sales, where on earth did these elegant creations come from?

They’re known to the world as independent magazines, as if this emphasizes their maverick attractions. There are the lifestyle giants that fall into this category, like Kinfolk, the magazine about slow-living that’s cultivated a huge audience of alternative aspirationalists, and Monocle, the high-end bible for business entrepreneurs and jetsetters. You might know Cherry Bomb, a magazine founded by two restaurateurs in Brooklyn that features interviews with women chefs, or Gather Journal, the digest for the organic food movement that comes complete with rustic art direction. (We’ll even give our own Ninety Nine U magazine a plug here.) Designers inevitably love these lovingly-designed magazines: they collect them, they read them, they study them. Some even make them.

Soda Books, Berlin

The idea that print is dead has been prevalent for over a decade, digital warriors saying print is dead and buried whilst print devotees proclaiming with reverence that its fighting back. Digital vs. Print: the two pitted against in a bloody battle to the death. Which will win? The presence of the defiant, glorious spines of Cherry Bomb, Gather, and more, along with their vibrant online community of followers tells a whole different story though, as does a recent report showing that the number of magazines in the U.S has stayed consistent since 2008, varying from around 7,100 to 7,300 over the years.

The truth it, there’s no real battle. Print is in a co-dependent, productive relationship with digital, and the function, meaning, and use of a magazine is simply evolving as times and habits change. It’s no surprise that the Internet does fast, cheap disposable content and vital, instant news much better than print does, which is why newspapers have had to adapt: its true a certain kind of print is dying, but digital media has created a space for more interesting, thoughtful, and innovatively-designed printed material.

The central change is a liberating one. Print is no longer the business model: print is the heart, the core expression, of an idea. And it’s this shift that has allowed graphic design to flourish. The idea given visual presence; the idea as an object.

***

The turn of the century is always a moment given to apocalyptic predictions. For print in the 2000s, several things began happening all at once to create the kind of landscape where people could easily—and with style—self-publish.

Large publishers became distracted and obsessed by the developing power of digital—there were countless conferences about how the iPad would change publishing, and titles like Wired and the Guardian poured huge amounts of cash into digital projects. Meanwhile technology gave way to better versions of InDesign and desktop equipment steadily democratized, making it a lot more accessible for people to experiment creatively with page layout in their own homes, in coffee shops, in libraries, wherever they were.

Images courtesy of Newspaper Club.

In 2009, a small, idealistic Glasgow-based printing company, The Newspaper Club, helped shift the landscape even more. Inspired by the original power and presence of the newspaper, the small company would allow all types of clients—from students and photographers to large tech companies—to self-publish by uploading their designs online. In the same year, Kickstarter partially solved problems of funding. Print self-publishing flourished because, some might say ironically, of the Internet.

For graphic designers with passion for editorial, the change in technology was a revelation. At mainstream magazines things like the quality of paper often gets cut in order to keep costs down and a lot of design decisions are driven by marketing and profit requirements— a cover’s design often determined to be what spurs mass market sales. When creating their own magazines, people could do something different, outside of market place constraints. And because of low print runs, they were able to experiment. They could do more with die cuts, they could select higher quality paper if they wanted to.  

This freedom and potential was especially revealed to others when they saw the success of a small group of film enthusiasts in 2005 in the UK. While sipping beers in London pubs after work at their jobs for commercial publishers, the group dreamed up the idea of a different, cooler kind of film magazine from the uninspiring commercial glossies around them, one that would reflect the independent cinema they loved. They called it Little White Lies, which is now a film buff’s favorite. 

Images courtesy of Little White Lies.

“Film magazines at the time were dominated by clouds of cover lines. We felt like these were a cheap marketing knee-jerk response that most magazines on the shelf were blindly perpetuating, and didn’t seem to be questioning,” says the founding art director of the title, Paul Willoughby. Today, he works with the Little White Lies founding editor Danny Miller at their Human After All design agency; after they first published Little White Lies and it gained attention, they then went on to publish a magazine for Google and started up another magazine, this time about subcultures, called Huck.

“With Little White Lies, we aimed to make a magazine with a very pure visual approach, eschewing the design conventions that were steering magazine culture towards a homogenous mass.”

Illustration was their prime differentiator; a signature strength, and one ripe for a renaissance in editorial design since it had died away during the arrival of Photoshop compositions. Presenting illustrated portraits on each cover with little or no cover lines, and illustrating the magazine’s interior in its entirety, Little White Lies catered for intelligent, curious readers, and their appetite not just for intelligent film writing but for fresh perspectives on design. On the other side of the globe in San Franscisco in 2003, a similar tactic had been taken by best-selling author Dave Eggers for his literary magazine The Believer: each cover of the magazine beautifully illustrated by notorious comic artist Charles Burns.

Both magazines were probably aware of each other online, drawing confidence from the other, as several blogs had sprung up showcasing the work of innovative editorial designers. One such blog is magCulture, founded by self-proclaimed magazine enthusiast Jeremy Leslie, a graphic designer who has art directed numerous titles including Time Out and the very design conscious 1980s style bible Blitz. The blog loves print, but celebrates it using the Internet, seeing it not as a threat but a way of transmitting forward thinking enthusiasm.

Images courtesy of The Believer.

“The networking of the Internet allows people who are making magazines in different countries to realize what other people are doing, to get inspired and see how they can do it,” says Leslie. “People say there’s now an independent magazine renaissance, but really, there have always been people making independent magazines. In the 60s, you had the alternative press, there was the avant-garde in the 70s, fashion mags in the 90s. The difference is today magazine makers can see one another around the globe.” A few lightening rod shops then stock these publications—Do You Read Me!? in Berlin, PRINtEXT in Indianapolis for example—and in London, to help distribute these magazines, a delivery service called Stack established in 2009 to sends subscribers a different indie every month.

mono.kultur, the interview magazine taking on one person at a time was established in 2005 in Berlin; in London, the first issue of Monocle, for the stylish world-traveller, in 2007; Fantastic Man, the ground-breaking men’s style tome, appeared in Amsterdam in 2008; Apartamento, for those with eccentric interior design tastes, in the same year from Barcelona; for stylish women carrying great books as well as solid purses, The Gentlewoman, from London in 2010; and then Kinfolk, for the aspirational creative, from Portland in 2011.

With each new magazine, a design and style emerged to react to and energize its reader: design directly expressing the identity of the person carrying it.

***

I contributed to the magCulture blog for two years between 2015 – 2017, and during that time, I’d receive around three or four new magazines each week. New titles crop up all time, some good, some great, some bad, and some wonderfully peculiar. When tracing the origins of these titles, it often is apparent that the idea for an independent magazine first appears online: people develop their opinions and voices writing blogs and sharing ideas on social media, they connect with like-minded individuals, and the next step from there is to create something permanent.  To give visual shape to beliefs, opinions, and preferences through graphic design. An identity. There’s something defining about making a magazine: This is who we are. This is what we look like.

The ones I find the most exciting are by those who feel underrepresented in the mainstream; makers create their own space through self-publishing, an act of legitimization where design subverts the media norm. From New York, there’s Banana magazine about Asian-American creatives with a mission to obliterate stereotypes: its design is a lively, energetic assortment of stimulating cross-cultural references. From London, there’s Niijournal, a fashion magazine exploring issues of diversity in the British fashion community, showcasing shoots only by and with people of color; its title pages are the color of various hues of black and brown. There’s the fiery and fantastic Krass Journal from Adelaide in Australia; a third wave feminist title about queer theory and gender politics. Its active design breaks away from feminine stereotype; its typography jarring and loud as if demanding for people to pay attention.

In 2013, Riposte appeared in London, an alternative to mainstream women’s magazines fronted by a design curator Danielle Pender and creative director, Shaz Madani. Its name is a blatant proclamation that they are a riposte to mundane mainstream content shackling women with unattainable beauty standards. Instead, Riposte features strong, intelligent role-models with plenty to say. With a brave, all-type cover featuring the names of the women interviewed in the pages, the first issue visually expressed its aim: This magazine is about more than the way women look. This is about who they are. Their minds, their words. Their energy.

Images courtesy of Riposte Magazine.

“The typographic cover was a way of stripping away the over styling and false glamour, to try and shift the focus back on to the women, their achievements and what they have to say,” says Madani. The design decision defied the conventional wisdom that all-type covers are newsstand disasters, and that year, the cover secured Riposte a nomination for the Design Museum’s Design of the Year Award in the UK, and it won them gold at the European Design Awards too.

“Now that we are a bit more established with our own voice, we’ve started to introduce photographic covers as we as the type ones,” adds Madani. “With this we aim to change the way women are perceived. As an indie publisher we can push and challenge what more traditional titles are not able or willing to do. On our last cover, we featured black activist and cancer survivor Ericka Hart with her post-double-mastectomy, post-reconstruction breasts gracing our cover.” 

Design can perfectly express what magazine makers most believe in.

That’s not only for individuals creating initially self-funded, passion driven projects alongside their day jobs. Online media platforms and companies have embraced the creative potential of a magazine as a way of articulating core values. The traditional media enlivens parts of their business that other solutions can’t reach. Airbnb, Google, and Net-a-Porter, and other Internet regulars have made them. A magazine is a character: it can purely represent the voice style, tone, and look – the innate personality – of its makers.

The Vice magazine model especially articulates why print publications can be central to a brand: the publication that started the empire still exists, it anchors the world wide media giant, it defines and maintains their irreverent voice, even though money comes from partnerships, events, and TV channels. The media giants have also taken heed of independents and their flair for design as enlivening the meaning of a magazine: memorably in 2015 for example, The New York Times Magazine brought in Matt Willey as art director, who has his roots in the independent magazine community where he launched men’s mag Port and guide for the modern adventurer, Avaunt.

It’s safe to say that the idea that “print is dead” is dead. Print was never really going to go away in the first place, it’s simply evolving. If there ever was a threat to the future of magazines, graphic design saved the day; freed by the internet to not have to bother with certain kinds of content, designers can concentrate on new ways of producing and presenting the page and the image. They can create publications that complement the Internet, that emerge from it, and that feed back into it. In a new world magazines mean something different to what they once did, but they are as necessary as ever, as lovely objects, statements of intent, emblems of defiance, and personal and collective manifestos.

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Connecting the Dots: Why Tech Brands Are Embracing Illustration

When you think of tech brands designed to improve our working lives, you probably picture whimsical illustrations of delighted people getting things done. Those warm and welcoming line drawings have become such a part of the digital landscape that we may not even think to ask: Why use an art form invented by cavemen to represent the most modern technology on the planet?

“So many tech companies are focused on productivity, which boils down to work—and work isn’t always fun,” says Russell Shaw, art director and illustrator at Slack. “We’re trying to remind people that, yes, this is about work, but it should also be fun. Illustration is also a great alternative to yet another stock photo of someone staring at their phone—a good a way to humanize a concept while also making it feel new.”  

For Dropbox, which today announced a complete redesign emphasizing color contrasts—think purple letters on a salmon background—the link to illustration is embedded in the company’s history. “When Dropbox was brand new, the idea of cloud storage didn’t exist,” says illustration lead Michael Jeter. “The product was very buggy, and the company discovered that users were along for the ride out of loyalty to the people who made the product, more than the product itself. We did anything we could to make people smile, to make them feel like there’s some humanity behind what we’re doing. And it’s a tradition that’s carried on today.”

Images courtesy of Dropbox.

As Jeter points out, cloud storage is a commodity: Users can quickly migrate to Box, Google, and a dozen other competitors, and it’s hard to forge a brand connection with an empty square on a computer screen. When it comes to tech, most users will stick with the first product they truly understand—yet another reason to put illustration front and center.

“If you want to exaggerate the benefits of a product, and drive home how powerful a tool is, that’s something that illustration is really good at,” says Meg Robichaud, illustration lead at Shopify, a Canadian company that allows entrepreneurs to set up digital storefronts. “At the end of the day, illustration is just another communication tool, but it’s a great way to persuade people to love the weird little thing that your product does, while explaining it at the same time.”

It’s also an effective way to unify a brand across multiple realms, from product to website to blog and beyond. But if you’ve got a team of illustrators tackling dozens of assignments, it’s difficult to keep things standardized. When Shopify moved away from predictable icons to metaphorical illustrations of business owners going about their day, the new style introduced a lot more variability, and some headaches, too.

“When I first came to Shopify, I was excited about making this beautifully-neurotic style guide, but as I started seeing all the different ways that everyone draws noses and ears, I realized there’s no way to make a guide that’s detailed enough to capture it all,” says Robichaud. In the end, the four illustrators agreed on some fundamentals, like the thickness of a line stroke, folds and shadows on clothing, and the details on hands and feet. But ultimately, they were more focused on the tone of each illustration—when characters should convey a positive, neutral, or negative attitude—which would naturally vary with each situation.

Images courtesy of Shopify.

In a similar way, Dropbox created custom brushes, line weights, and color palettes for consistency, while leaving the door open enough for each artist to express their personality in their concepts. As the product’s users have gotten increasingly savvy, Dropbox has moved away from literal icons that represent folders and speech bubbles that denote comments. Now, a roped-off club says “access denied” without the need for words, and a pair of fishbowls represent storage options—clever metaphors that make users stop and think, and even smile.

“The design world has really fetishized the idea of everything being extremely simple and ‘gettable’ for everyone, and at Dropbox, we’ve got no loyalty to that,” says Jeter. “If you go on a date with someone and they immediately tell you everything about themselves, you’re just not that interested, but if you have to figure them out on your own, you start to connect with them. When we use Easter eggs and inside jokes, there’s a chance not everyone will get them, but the people who do get them suddenly have a much more human connection to our brand.”

“I think it was Michael Bierut who pointed out that as consumers get more and more informed, they’re less interested in meaning that is handed to them in a very on-the-nose way,” says Slack’s Shaw.” They really enjoy looking at something that is a little bit abstract, and then filling in the gaps; rather than saying, ‘Here’s the data’ without any emotional connection, we’re reinforcing a sense of storytelling and play.”

Illustrations from Slack.

As illustration and UX grow more sophisticated, everyone’s looking for ways to quantify impact: Robichaud is starting to plot out A/B testing options to back up her long-held hypothesis that illustration is the best way to move frustrated users to a solution. Dropbox lore has it that the aforementioned fishbowl illustrations kept thousands of users from abandoning the company’s paid plan, generating as much as a million dollars and solidifying the brand’s commitment to the art form. But Jeter is convinced there’s still plenty of room for evolution.

“Now that illustration has been co-opted as a tool in tech, everyone’s gone to this childlike, friendly style where characters are smiling at you like the Stepford Wives,” he says. “But [there’s a disconnect between] product engineers making these sophisticated tools that are incredibly nuanced while communications teams are dumbing down the messaging, as if they’re talking to two-year olds. As the industry grows up, I think we’ll find illustration styles that are even more sophisticated, but that can still help people connect to the brand. Ultimately, illustration can help you understand that the company as a whole is thinking about every little detail of the product—it shows they really want to make the best possible thing for their users.”  

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Eike König: Deliver the Unexpected

One word connects almost every graphic designer, illustrator, or young type enthusiast that I come across in Berlin: one inconspicuous code word that binds together a continually growing, ever-connected chain. That word is an expected one: it’s Hort, the German word for “nursery.” 

“Hort is where I discovered my stencil technique,” says an illustrator selling prints at a zine market. “Hort is the best place to grow,” says a code wiz turned typographer. “Hort is where I realized I shouldn’t work ‘for’ a client but ‘with’ them,” says a graphic designer at a poster show.

They’re actually talking about Hort studio, the Berlin-based graphic design collective founded in 1994 by Eike König; a studio known for its commitment to reinvention, its support of young designers through its internship program, and its playful sensibility. It emerged from the Frankfurt techno scene in 1994, a disruptive, vibrant blip in an otherwise repetitive song: König deliberately rejected the agency model he observed around him, and also the idea that a designer should be associated with just one aesthetic.

Hort was founded on the principles of play, fair pay, honesty, change, and exploration. König penned eight golden rules for his dream studio, including 1. Have fun, 2. Get paid, 3. Don’t work with assholes, and perhaps most crucially, 8. Quit when you don’t have fun anymore. In 2007, the studio moved to Berlin, and has worked with institutions such as Bauhaus Dessau, and global brands IBM, Microsoft, Nike, and The New York Times.

Hort is not, and never has been, just König. As I write this, Hort is Anne Büttner, Eike König, Elizabeth Legate, Tim Rehm, Tim Schmitt, Tim Sürken, Alan Woo, and its network of freelancers. (By the time this is published, more names will probably have been added to the list.) Just like Hort is not just König, König is not just Hort: since 2011, he has been a professor at Offenbach University of the Arts, and since 2015, he has been producing his own artwork and prints. And just as the studio changes, grows, splinters, mutates, waxes, and wanes, though, so does König. It’s been a long process, and one that is by no means finished.

For this story, König was photographed throughout Berlin.

When did you first become aware of graphic design?

When I was quite young, during the Cold War years especially.  Magazines were filled with infographics about the current global political climate: I found them touching and exciting. What was the power behind something so little? I figured out that the power was graphic design. I was also into music growing up. I loved records, especially the records that my cousins collected. I would go hang out with them and play close attention to the music that they were buying and listening to. I liked the ritual of a record: opening it up, taking out the vinyl, putting it on the player, and then listening to the music and looking at the artwork at the same time. There was a strong connection between the visual moment and the listening moment, which I was drawn to. Back then, I listened to music in a different way from how I do now. I took my time with it, I sat down, and I didn’t do anything else. Nowadays, music is more like having a nice background noise. It’s atmosphere in a room and not a ritual.

Were there particular sleeves where you found the connection between the visual and the aural was especially strong?

One of my cousins was listening to Pink Floyd a lot, so I got into Hipgnosis (fairly early on the designers behind Pink Floyd’s albums) I liked the way the covers told surreal stories using photography, and how by putting an image in an unusual context, a new story was created that you didn’t necessarily get straight away. I always appreciate it in design when there is something I recognize put into an unrecognizable context. Complex juxtapositions make you think in a deeper way. I found it very clever how Hipgnosis could translate the complexity of the music, the emotions of the music, into something that visually doesn’t just tell the same story as the songs but gives the album another layer of meaning.

After learning about Hipgnosis, I also got into Peter Seville of course, and his work for Joy Division. I admired the label 4AD, so I was looking at the work of Vaughan Oliver. At the same time, I got into magazines like i-D. With independent music labels and new youth culture magazines, designers were suddenly being connected to their output. Before, the designer had been invisible.

That’s how I got into design, and then I enrolled at the University of Applied Arts – they’ve since changed their name – in Darmstadt. I didn’t really know at that time what design was, though. The universities were focusing on educating people to go into ad agencies. When I got there, I realized that 90 percent of the students were going to go into advertising, which was a completely different world from where I wanted to be. 

You were admiring independent practitioners like Saville and Oliver, so you were looking at a model that hadn’t yet become pervasive. The idea of an independent practitioner, let alone an independent design studio, was still rare.

Exactly. It was a shock getting to university and figuring out there that what I wanted to do didn’t yet have its own framework or structure. I also had no real understanding when I was 19 of what design could really do. Design was not taught in school. You only knew what art is and what music is, but not what design means in your life. Yet everything is design. It’s very important.

I think even nowadays, most students starting out don’t really know what graphic design is or what it can do – I see that with my new students every year at Offenbach. They don’t really know how broad it is. Most people think, like I did, of record sleeves and infographics. I didn’t think about what typography is, or what a way-finding system is. I thought design was creating artwork for a product. Getting to art school was frustrating because I was a big fan of people like David Carson. I was fascinated to see that there was a designer using a platform like Ray Gun magazine to experiment and provoke. I wanted to do that. I didn’t want to work in an ad agency.

What was it about Carson’s form of experimentation that you found so effective?

How he would take an image and place it somewhere else so that it didn’t have its previous context, but gained a new one, like what Hipgnosis did. If there is a disruptive moment, it instantly grabs your attention. 

I started to wonder, How can I not simply follow the rules that come with a platform? How can I hack something? That fascinated me from the start. How can I question things that have been built and developed and ingrained into an audience’s way of perceiving? How can I not repeat, but create something new? How can I put my own signature onto something? How can I deliver something to society that is more than a repetition?

At university, they didn’t want that. They wanted to educate people so that they would become functional workers. You weren’t educated to be a critical designer. It was about selling things. It was, “How can you make something that’s not great-looking something that people will buy?” You know, it was all about capitalism and tricks.

Apart from this emphasis on advertising, was there anything else about the university’s approach to the design process that you objected to?

The school came out of the thinking of the Ulm School of Design, and emphasized a holistic, multidisciplinary approach like the Bauhaus had done. It was closed-minded about pop culture, though, and more interested in the idea of designing something timeless. I was more open to the idea of the contemporary. I was interested in history, of course, but I also thought history is history. I wanted to create work that is rooted in its specific time, so that people could work out later where it came from. I’ve always liked that people can say, “Oh, this is the first time that a designer worked with a computer.” I don’t want to design something that looks like it was designed in the 60’s.

When did you get to put these feelings into practice? When did you first get to design something that you felt was truly “timely”?

I worked in an advertising agency during university, but then I started working at a record company, a techno and dance label in Frankfurt called Logic Records. That’s when I started making work that felt rooted in its time. I was 23 or 24. I was interning at the label, and then eventually I was asked to be the art director. I decided to quit university and accept the position.

There was a new genre around: techno. It’s amazing to see a new genre rise. It doesn’t happen very often. Techno at the time had no fixed face, so being involved at its genesis meant that I was able to explore different visual looks for the new genre. It was during a time when Frankfurt was one of the most important cities for techno music.

What kind of “face” did you envision for Frankfurt techno?

I didn’t want to design a cliché. The cliché would have been to do what other people had done in the 80’s for electronic music, drawing on the idea of a utopia. Using electronic imagery felt too easy, and I never like to go with the first association that comes to mind. Why not give the audience a visual experience that is different from how the music sounds, to jar and juxtapose and create new connections?

The label was successful, and they were open-minded and said, “Do whatever you feel is right.” I could explore, using the format of the record sleeve. I decided to design every single sleeve in a completely different way. Sometimes I did collage; at other times, it was purely typographic and Swiss. Sometimes I had a photo concept. The label liked it and said, “We don’t want to have a fixed identity; we want every product to look individual.” There were other labels that had more of a recognizable face. Our face was to have many faces.

This sounds a lot like your approach at Hort, where you emphasize the importance of trying things out, experimenting, and starting from scratch. At Hort, you don’t want to repeat an idea too often. Do you think these techno record designs were the root of Hort?

Yes; it was the DNA of Hort. I didn’t ever want to repeat. It’s easy to find something that looks good and works well, and then reproduce it over and over again. It’s clever from a business perspective, but it’s not challenging. I didn’t want to be the kind of designer that has a visual identity that they put on each record. It then feels like I’m taking over. Like I’m using myself and my aesthetic as the promotional tool.

You don’t want to be a designer with a brand.

Every musician and producer I’ve ever worked with is unique, so they should get something unique from me.

You mentioned quitting university to work full-time at Logic. What did you learn at the label that you weren’t getting at school?

I was trained not just to be a designer, but to work with a team and find the right people to collaborate with. I learned how to support and motivate others, and how to critique.

After about a year, I had complete freedom; it was a dream job. I got money, I could work with a product that didn’t hurt people – unless it’s bad music…but then you can turn it off. – I was also going to clubs, raving a lot, so my lifestyle became my job, and I never expected that that could happen. I learned that the culture I was surrounded by could be part of my working life.

How did you come to the decision to leave the label, go out on your own, and set up as an independent designer?

The great thing with vinyl at the time was that it was like your business card. If someone saw the design and liked it, your name was written on the sleeve, so they could contact you and say, “I want to work with you.” That started happening to me quite a lot.

I suddenly found myself in a situation: Did I want to work for different people or one client? I didn’t have to think about it very long, though. I was 25; I was naïve. I was like, “Everything is running so smoothly so, why not just jump in and try being freelance?” I wasn’t scared; I had no idea how things worked, and I had no business plan.

Logic supported my decision to go and said I could continue to collaborate with them. And amazingly, everything worked perfectly. I never had to ask someone for work; word just spread around that I was available. The design scene in Germany at the time, especially for music, was very small.

You formed Eike’s Grafischer Hort. When and why did you drop the “Eike”?

I was flying first-class, staying in fancy hotels; I wasn’t saving money. After three of four years working in this way, I had a breakdown. I was so successful in such a short time and I started wondering, What will be the next step? What comes now? It was all too fast and I feared the blank page. I kept thinking, What happens if I don’t have another idea?

Because of that, I looked inside myself and realized, “OK, I want to work with other people.” This was in 1994. I wanted to learn by having discussions with others, so I got my first employee. I still want discussions; it’s a crucial part of my process. Eventually, we dropped the “Eike Grafischer” and just became Hort because I didn’t want the studio to be about me as a brand – I wanted it to be a collective. Now, we’re seven people in our office, plus a couple of interns and our network of freelancers outside the office.

How do you choose the people that you work with?

Designers often start as interns; it’s the way that I get to know them. They do internships for six or seven months, and then during that time I can figure out how well they fit into the idea of Hort. I like when people are up for conversations and are open to critique; when they step back from ego, when they can work in a team. Right now, I think more than 80 people have gone through Hort. We still have contact with a lot of them. We keep in contact and create a network. I also wanted a flat hierarchy from the start.

Can you tell me how the flat hierarchy works on a practical level?

We decide on jobs together. Everyone has their own little company within the studio, and they work on their own projects, so they can design their own future while being a part of ours. We only join forces on the bigger projects. It’s a modern way of working. It’s important that people also have their own thing going on because it keeps up the creative energy and flow and mental health. That’s always been important, for myself too.

When a new client comes in, how do you divide up work or decide who is going to get the project?

In the beginning, I had to think about people’s strengths and decide who would fit a project best. Now, though, we’ve worked together for such a long time that I don’t have to do that anymore. I usually get the first email from a new client, and then the whole team sits around the table and we discuss each job together. We debate whether it’s too small, too big, whether it’s challenging enough, whether there will be too many problems. We decide together; that means that the whole team is involved.

It’s completely organic. Back in the old days, especially, I would put people together who had never worked together before, in order to create a spark. The work you get out of collaboration is much better than if one person does it alone, especially if it’s two people who you might not necessarily think would fit together neatly.

When you put two people together who don’t normally work together, the drawback is that things become less efficient in terms of working under deadlines. Can you tell me about time management at Hort?

There’s a lot more discussion when you work this way, at the cost of time and energy. But people then learn from each other and share, and that’s what I always wanted. For sure, things do take longer. Absolutely. We have had to build this into our strategy. The way we work doesn’t have a rhythm. You can’t say, “In a week we’ll have completed that, and in the following week, we’ll have completed that.”

Often, we have to have quite difficult discussions with our clients to get them to understand that design is a process. In the beginning, clients come with a specific image in their mind and a concrete timetable. A new client will say, “We want a new identity.” We will ask, “When do you want it by?” and then the reply will be, “We want to launch in three months.” We’ll take a look at the brief and say, “Oh. It’ll take us two years.” The clients are always completely shocked.

If you’re allowed to take your time, than the outcome will be much more exciting and precise then if you follow a strict, systematic method. No single job is like another one. There’s no recipe for how to solve a problem.

When you’re working for certain music industry clients or smaller independent ventures, it’s a lot easier to negotiate the kind of freedom you’re describing. How did you negotiate time when taking on major international clients?

First, we deliver something that they don’t expect. I remember the first job we did for Nike, which started as a brief for the packaging design for the LeBron trainer. We thought, Sure, we could design the surface of the box, but then it’s just a nice skin. Why not create an entire system, and with that system, there could be a connection between the box, the poster, an in-store decoration, even the fashion? We created a typeface based on the characteristic of the shoe, so that Nike could do whatever they wanted with it. Nike was surprised but also pleased. They said, “Oh, why don’t you also do the visual guidelines for the entire season?” We developed the guidelines, including store applications, fashion components, posters, everything – a big identity that started off as the design of a box.

Nike now always expects something unforeseen from us, and I think that’s our trick. We don’t just deliver; we create something that lets them imagine a bigger picture, a picture they haven’t seen yet. It’s much more interesting to us than finishing a job in a short time and getting the money quickly. Most of our clients understand that. They come to us and are open about seeing where things could go. Everyone comes with a picture in their mind, but we prove that it’s not always about delivering that image by, first of all, showing them something unexpected.

We’ve talked about how you went from art director at a label to independent practitioner because you wanted to be on your own. Then you realized that what you thrived on was being in a team and bouncing off others. In the past two years, though, you’ve started working on your own again and reclaimed the name “Eike König” as something independent from Hort. You’ve been working on your own typographic prints and posters. How have you found it returning to something that is entirely your own and that has your name on it?

I do three things, and all with the same passion: I have the studio, I teach, and I do my personal work. With my personal work, I am still a designer. I still use the same methods of design and typography. It’s not like I’m knitting or creating sculptures. It’s the same as what I’ve always done, but with the stress of a schedule taken out of the process, and I find this incredibly rewarding.

Ultimately, I made the decision to spend some of my life focusing on my own personal work because I realized it’s good for my health and my brain. It’s not a different way of thinking from what I do at Hort, but it’s a different context. I’ve learned that I need three elements in my life: I need the team at Hort, I need my students, and I need time to work on my own design projects. It’s the combination of these three things that keeps me balanced.

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Fatherhood Forces a Selfish Creative to Grow Up

A friend called the other day. His partner is expecting their first child within the week. Two years ago they were living in a yurt. Now they’ve got wish lists of baby shower gifts on all the major e-commerce sites.

“I’m cranking on projects as fast as possible and remodeling the basement and replanting the yard,” he said, a little breathless, like a guy on too much Adderall.  “But, really, I can’t wait! I’m super excited.”

I’ve never had an expectant parent tell me they were scared to death and kind of resentful, or worried that their entire way of being was about to change, or that their career as an artist/writer/musician/creativist was about to nose dive into a lumpy sea of incredibly malodorous baby poop…at least not within the first two paragraphs of a conversation.

This time it took about three minutes. My friend is 35. Because parenthood is a place that you can’t quite begin to imagine before you’ve found yourself marooned there (no matter how many books you’ve read), the only thing he really understood at this point about the coming years of self-sacrifice was the specter of sleep deprivation.

“I need a clear head to work,” he bemoaned. “There’s a certain flow to my day. How am I supposed to get anything done? What have I gotten myself into?”

***

Like many an aspiring artist before me, I entered the writing game, in part, because I fancied myself capable of making some kind of mark on the world. I started working at my craft with serious intent beginning around 11thgrade.

Later I followed my muse through the seamy underground milieu that became my journalistic beat—sometimes I pictured her as one of my idols, the anthropologist Margaret Meade, updated for the task with black jeans and Dr. Martens, a stainless steel throwing knife strapped to her ankle. I lived with a crack gang in LA, hung out with pitbull fighting middle schoolers in the ghetto of North Philadelphia—the most disappointing of the dogs were hung with electrical wiring from rafters of abandoned houses. I embedded with the Animal Liberation Front on a raid of a federal research facility—29 cats and seven miniature African piglets were saved that night. I lived inside a refugee camp in Gaza during the early days of the Palestinian Intifada. I even risked a days-old marriage engagement to my future ex-wife with an assignment at a swinger’s convention on the Gulf coast of Florida. I shall never forget one husband from Alabama, his greenish teeth: You gonna get with my wife, ain’t cha?

By the time I was 35, I felt like I was beginning to make some progress—the work I’d produced was the evidence, little darlings that had come alive and could speak for themselves.

When the idea of actual children came up, however, I was pretty militant: I believed I had a higher calling on this mortal sphere than mere parenthood– which, after all, is something anyone who is physically able can do. I wanted a quest, not an heir. To devote so much time and effort to the vain purpose of reproducing myself seemed a waste of my talent. I was, after all, the great river of Mike. I had a turbine to spin. Work to produce. A legacy to leave. To waste one drop of energy on such a mundane pursuit as child rearing seemed unthinkable.

That scene in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Where Paul (George Peppard) goes with Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) into the New York Public Library and takes out is own book? And she makes him sign it?

I could have died happy right there.

***

After no small amount of drama, I learned that nature takes its course, despite one’s grander plans. I might have considered myself an artist, but I was still human. My wife wanted a kid. I wanted my wife. I suppose that’s nature’s plan.

Going into fatherhood at 37, I remember being super excited—furiously baby-proofing the outlets and toilet seats, adding gates on the antique hand-tooled staircase, upgrading the master bathroom, equipping the whole house, upstairs and down, with air conditioners against the impending summer of high pregnancy.

I also remember being deeply fearful that I’d inalterably screw up this human life I’d so selfishly created. Or this human life I’d so selfishly created would inalterably screw up the artistic life I’d so selfishly created for myself.

At the time, I had some understanding of the sacrifices that were about to be made as I entered parenthood. I knew there would be no more staying up to all hours partying or reading, sleeping until the early afternoon. No more bragging about how, as a self-employed creative, I owned every hour of every day and nobody owned me. No more spontaneous smoky salons, full of deviant artistic types, taking place in my dining room. No more unplugging the clock, no more ignoring the needs of others, no more onanistic pursuit of the creative brass ring.

No more pandering to the spoiled and ill-behaved bon vivant who represented my inner creative.

For fifteen years, my talent had been my child. And there was nothing I wouldn’t give to him, do for him, sacrifice for him.

And believe me, he could be a crazy little fucker.

***

The first night we brought home my son from the hospital, we put him to sleep between us in the bed. Exhausted, my now-ex fell asleep immediately. I lay there wide awake, afraid I would roll over and crush him. As the hours wore on, I noticed my kid had a stuffy nose—kind of like both sides of the family, we’re all allergic. I stayed up all night, watching his chest move up and down, terrified he would stop breathing.

Over the next months and years of my fatherhood, the selfish creative inside of me was forced to grow up, though not without a fight. We don’t need to go into all the sordid details—let’s just say I was left with enough material to write a novel called Deviant Behavior, which I like to think of as a memoir of male post-partem depression.

But as time passed, and I realized exactly how much this kid needed me—and how rewarding, in the most elemental way, time with him could be—my creative self managed to mature and become a mensch, which is a Yiddish word that means, in a nutshell, “a person who does the right thing.” There was a new baby in the house. Everyone else had to grow up.

And so it was that I began to keep regular hours. I would stop work every so often to take a baby break, often interrupt my work entirely because some super-important errand had to be run (one of my crucial designated duties). Over the next two decades, hours of perfectly good creative time were spent sitting in doctor’s offices, on the floor playing with toys, on the couch watching Pokemon, in tiny chairs and then bigger chairs in school classrooms, on buses going to fieldtrips, in godawful bleachers, in a car driving back and forth from college.

Along the way, I learned that the mighty river of Mike could be diverted and that more tributaries could be formed, additional turbines supported. The old maxim about getting more done when you have more  to do? I had a kid to help raise. Soccer and basketball teams to coach. Carpet wrestling to engage in. Homework to supervise. Ice cream to dip. Story time. Jump shot. Junior Prom. The Talk. Driving lessons.

Oh, and my career.

I have a photo on the wall of my office bathroom, one of my favorite hero shots—a selfie I took in a motel room in central California at six or seven in the morning. I was with my son at a basketball tournament. He’d played two games the evening before and was still asleep. I had a column due Monday morning. I wheeled the desk chair into the bathroom. The counter made a decent desk. The photo records the moment, the hero in a true life setting, daddy getting it done.

My son is 23 now. My services as a father are still needed, most often via text; we do on occasion collaborate on projects as colleagues, though that’s a piece for a different day. Sometimes, looking back on the years of his childhood—the early mornings, the school projects, the usual family sturm und drang—I wonder how I ever got anything done, much less managed to create some lasting pieces, and, yes, to make a small mark. Sometimes I also think about the way my son’s life changed the course of my career entirely. Because my son needed me, and because I wanted to be there for him, I made different choices, I stayed close to home and kept my travels to a minimum.

But I also know, without a doubt, that of all the stories I’ve done, of all the places I’ve gone and the people I’ve met, nothing has taught me as much as fatherhood. 

Because raising a child is the ultimate creative act.

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Grape Expectations: The Transformation of Wine Labels

If you’ve noticed a change of scenery as you peruse the offerings at your local wine shop, you’re not alone. The last decade has seen major upgrades to the little 3×6” billboard on your favorite bottles of Chianti, Merlot and Chardonnay. You’ll still find the occasional black-and-white engravings of terraced vineyards and the old, ivy-covered French chateau rendered in pen and ink. But more often you’ll find labels that take their cues from gig posters, abstract expressionists, and modern typography. What explains the radical transformation?

The short answer: A new generation of wine lovers is coming of age (literally) just as a new generation of graphic designers and vintners are abandoning old rules that they never really cared for.

Labels from Makers & Allies

First, a bit of history: The French dominated the wine industry until well after WWII. By the 1960s, things had changed dramatically: In blind tastings during the so-called “Judgement of Paris” in 1976, California wines beat out their French counterparts—the first in a series of controversial victories that opened eyes and opened new opportunities for vineyards all over the world. In France, a label’s iconography, such as the chateau, was anything but arbitrary—those little castles actually represented the region of origin, and were touted as an indicator of quality; labeling laws in America and newer wine regions focused on the grapes instead. That subtle but significant shift has helped open doors—and oak barrels—to new audiences.  

“For so long, wine was inaccessible to most people,” says Frans De Villiers, designer and strategist at South Africa’s Fanakalo design studio, which specializes in wine and spirits. “The product was marketed in a way that said, ‘If you’re not fancy enough, you can’t enjoy this.’ But people are starting to realize that wine can’t be this inaccessible commodity that’s only for certain people—you can celebrate something unique without shutting people out.”

According to the Wine Market Council, the community of wine lovers is growing bigger—and younger. In 2016, the youngest Millennials turned 21, adding more thirsty palates to a generation that consumed 42 percent of all the wine sold in the country—more than any other generation. And it’s not all Two Buck Chuck: Surveys found that 17 percent of all those younger drinkers had bought a bottle worth more than $20 in the previous month.

“Wine buyers don’t want to drink what their parents or grandparents were drinking,” says Sarah Berger, co-founder and creative director at Makers + Allies, which also specializes in wine and spirits. “There’s a new type of wine buyer out there, and they’re a bit more daring.”

In spite of the old trope about judging a book by its cover, a wine label speaks volumes. Once a narrow representation of the winery itself, wine packaging now aims to make an emotional connection with a person—from the moment it’s placed on a store shelf to the decision to proudly display it in your home.

“A classic label says, ‘This is a traditional product that offers certain guarantees of quality,’ but it doesn’t provide much more than that, which makes it hard to stand out on the shelf or tell a story,” says Javier Suárez, senior designer at Atipus, a Barcelona agency. “Smaller wineries are more willing to break the rules, creating a new language that will give them access a new market niche.”

And that language generally begins with a story—the story behind the vintner, the grapes, or the land where they’re grown.

“An important part of our creative process includes visiting the environment—getting into the cellar or the vineyard and walking the grounds with the winemaker,” says Berger. “Making wine is a labor of love that can take 18 to 20 months, which means our clients are really invested in the process.”

Labels from Simple Solace by Makers & Allies

Makers + Allies’ client Wonderwall releases a new vintage with a different theme each year: In 2014 the agency paired historic imagery of explorers with bright colors and bold typography; the following year, portraits of well-known artists continued the theme. The founders of No Pasa Nada started making wine as an escape from the 9-to-5 grind, and soon recognized that most wine aficionados pour a glass in search of a similar escape. So for their wine, Simple Solace, Makers + Allies crafted Dali-esque visions that start with black-and-white clip-art circa 1950, and explode into a kaleidoscope of modern imagery. “We’re never just creating art for art’s sake,” says Garrett Deiter, Berger’s husband and co-founder. “On the back of the bottle, we always tell the story that inspired it.”

For Vi Novell, a “young and perishable wine that’s ill-mannered and traditional in equal parts,” the idea was to craft a wine that was a tribute to celebration, so Atipus created a series of simple, bold designs that look just like wrapping paper. For the design of Rojalet, Atipus looked to the name itself, which references the characteristic red soil where the grapes are grown.

Label from Rojalet by Atipus

“We decided to represent the red soil through an abstract vision of the soil’s strata and layers, playing with colors, textures and shapes,” says Suárez. “For the aged red wine, we looked for the sobriety of black and gold, embodying a more mineral touch with the textures. We used a more vivid and bright color range for white wine, something that reflected a fruity and fresh taste. And finally, a black background and subtle colored lines, to reflect the intensity of the young red wine.”

“If you want to be completely frank, you might say that wine is nothing more than fermented grape juice, which means there will always be a need for stories to add another dimension to the brand,” says Rohan Etsebeth, another designer at Fanakalo. “That concept comes through on shows like Chef’s Table—people want to look at the biographical side of these chefs, even though they’ll never be able to afford a trip to France to eat one of their meals.”

Labels from Die Kreatuur by Fanakalo

The iconic beard illustrated on Beau Constantia’s Pas de Nom labels is a tribute to Japie Bronn, the farm’s manager, who had planted vineyards in South Africa dating back to the 1950s; he worked into his 70s until passing away in 2015. Just as another client, Lukas van Loggerenberg, was preparing to bottle his first vintage, he broke his leg playing soccer and was forced to ask friends and family for help—thus the name Break-A-Leg, which features a modern Photoshop collage. The artwork for Die Kreatuur (“The Creature” in Afrikaans) was originally created for another winery which took a pass; years later, when Fanakalo’s founders invested in another winery producing a blend, it was the perfect fit.

“Wine is like a souvenir that you take to the table,” says Fanakalo’s third principal, Jan Solms. “You always want something that looks beautiful, that leads to a story told over dinner.”

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The State of Digital Design: 2017 Edition

We partnered with The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) to bring together some of the best minds in the digital space to get their insight into the current state of digital design. Pauline Ploquin of Struck, Wesley ter Haar of Media Monks, Derek Fridman of Huge and Michael Burkin of Doberman shared their perspectives on a “digital agency’s” place in a world where everything is digital, the agency’s role when large corporations are building internal digital teams, and how the biggest changes for improving client collaboration have nothing to do with technology. 

Positioning your agency as a “digital agency” used to be a differentiating factor in the marketplace. Now everything is digital to a large degree. So how do you refer to yourselves now?

Ploquin: For the customer digital is now the whole brand experience. So we have been moving away from really calling ourselves a “digital agency” and are focusing on positioning ourselves as a branded content and experience agency.

Fridman: We are anti the use of the word “digital” as a catch-all because it’s not about hardware. It’s about telling a compelling story. Digital is a limiter. Internally we say, “The best digital is invisible.” It’s when you don’t have to look at a screen and don’t have to engage an app or a web property but you are still having a connection to a brand that’s done through the air.

As digital specialists, does stopping use of the term “digital” as a differentiator for your agency give credit to the quality of work rising by traditional agencies, larger consultancies, and in-house teams?

ter Haar: I’ve actually rallied against the removing of the word digital from our industry because I think we underestimate the difference between what our companies offer versus companies that are new to digital. By losing some of the terminology and no longer proudly waving that flag we are giving away ground to companies that aren’t digital. Just because you have digital deliverables on your platform doesn’t mean you are digital. It is difficult to build digital within your practice or network if it’s not part of your DNA, as it’s driven by a mentality that is difficult to replicate at scale within companies that are hundreds of thousands of people. It’s such a cultural shift.

Ploquin: What I’m noticing with the new talent we are recruiting here is that they don’t differentiate between digital and non-digital. You’re a designer and that’s it. You make stuff.

With the increase in in-house digital teams at larger companies, is there still a role for digitally-focused agencies in the future? And what challenges do you see companies experiencing bringing in these specialties?

Fridman: Back in the day we would engage with a client and they would say they had some internal people working on digital, but these people would be a good couple of years behind us. That was great for us, as we could come in and help the client be successful. Fast-forward to now and people running the digital departments within companies are people like us. People at an agency that decided to go client side and make their own “agency” internally. Our clients get someone who has been there and done that and knows how to get the best work out of an agency and also help them bolster and build a team internally.

We’ve also seen other clients struggle to find the right level of talent who want to work on the client side. For a young and hungry designer the idea of working on the same stuff day in and day out isn’t very appealing. So larger companies are typically hiring people who are stationary, have a family and don’t want to move. The folks who have worked in the agency space are much smarter as to how we agencies like to get involved. So we have found our place is about asking how we can help their team get to their North Star.

Burkin: The fact that design innovation has a much more senior seat in these organizations is a good thing. Across the board these folk are serious about being design-led. They also recognize that no matter how good their teams are, they still need another perspective. It’s not a judgement on their team’s ability, but they actually need someone to come in and challenge some of the orthodoxies and help them fast-forward to another place.

What is your agency doing to foster that innovation?

Ploquin: It was interesting to read in the Soda Report that there is a big gap between what our understanding of what innovation is in a digital agency versus what clients imagine innovation is. For them it’s the shiny object and virtual reality. Those are shiny objects, not a long term strategy. The next frontier is the mind of the consumer, so we geeking out on neuroscience, rather than just virtual reality.

What changes have you made in your process in the last year in order to work more collaboratively with your clients?

Burkin: This might sound small, but it has bigger implications: We are doing much less documentation. For the vast majority of our project work, we have ditched wire frames. They’re slow and not the best way to communicate design anymore. Our brave and creative clients have much more interest in spending the time we have together to iterate rather than us create a bunch of decks that we present to them and then wait for feedback and waste a lot of time on. We are killing the deck!

Fridman: We made a fundamental change a few years ago to the model of “Present, go away, present, go away.” It doesn’t work and what we found is that we truly have to make ourselves partners in what we do. We set that as an expectation from the start: That your people are going to hang out with our people, and our people are going to hang out with yours. They see inherent value in their teams spending time with us and at the same time we are a lot more comfortable not disappearing and coming back. This way we can work hand-in-hand from day one.

* This interview has been edited and condensed. For a deeper dive, read the full 2017 SoDA report. 

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Step Back in Time with Ebbets Field Flannels’ Vintage Jerseys

More than any other major league sport, the history of baseball is intimately connected to graphic design. Think Yankee pinstripes, Dodger blue, and the Tigers’ Old English D. As a young boy growing up in 1960s Brooklyn, Jerry Cohen was well aware of that connection: While most of his friends were tearing open new packs of baseball cards in search of their favorite players, Cohen was focused on the uniforms, the logos, and the colors.

Fast forward to Seattle, 1987. Cohen is searching for an original wool baseball uniform to wear onstage while performing with his rock-and-roll band. When he finally realizes he’ll need to make it himself, he discovers a warehouse in Rockport, New York, with yards of baseball flannel dating back to the 1940s. Cohen made a few of his own jerseys, and before too long, people were asking to buy the shirts off his back. And Ebbets Field Flannels was born.

Three years later, Sports Illustrated highlighted the company, which quickly led to celebrity commissions from Spike Lee and David Letterman. Ebbets Field Flannels provided jerseys for 42 (the Jackie Robinson biopic), and outfitted Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and other Hall of Famers at the closing ceremonies for Yankee Stadium in 2008. A die-hard Mets fan who now oversees 22 employees, Cohen recently added football and hockey jerseys to EFF’s collection, but vintage minor-league and Negro-League uniforms will always form the heart of the lineup, along with those from the historic international baseball hubs of Japan and Cuba.

When you decide to create a “new” product, where do you start?

I’m not like most clothing designers who think, “What will people like next season?” I follow history. It’s my job to be a curator and accurately take a two-dimensional form—often a black and white photo—and turn it into a three-dimensional form, which is a living, breathing piece of clothing. If I have any talent, that’s what it is.

I’m a little cagey on the subject of research; I don’t like to tell people about my methods because I have a lot of competition, and I’m not going to make it easy for anyone else. But I’ve collected a lot of reference materials over the years, and sometimes it’s very serendipitous—stuff comes across my desk and I follow leads, like any good detective.

What’s the most difficult thing about recreating these uniforms?

In many ways, it’s harder to do a simple thing than a complicated thing. Today’s graphic designers go their entire lives using Photoshop or Illustrator and many of them don’t understand the elegance and simplicity [of doing things by hand]. If you look at baseball graphics or athletic uniforms of today, the general approach is more—more colors, more layers, more of everything crammed into a very small space. But back in 1915 or 1945, it was the opposite; design literally meant someone drawing with a pencil in a sporting goods store, then someone else rendering that illustration into dies that were used to cut felt lettering.

Describe your typical customer.

When we started, there were still plenty of old timers who went to the games of the San Francisco Seals, let’s say, so that was our original market. Five or six years ago, we discovered a new market—much younger people who are driven by the craftsmanship of the products as much as they are by the history and the teams.

Now, our audience is much more diverse—we’re working with ACE Hotel and other contemporary brands [including Jack White’s Third Man Records], who seem to like our vintage approach. With so much cynicism in marketing—particularly in sports-related products—everything is so “of the moment,” but when the moment changes, all that stuff really seems obsolete. We try to sell timelessness.

Designers are always trying to connect people to brands, but it’s hard to think of a brand more powerful than baseball—simple letters and numbers and the words “New York” seem to add up to a lot more. True?  

That’s where the history comes in—putting the letters and the colors in the context of history, finding those touchstones, and even bringing a story to people that they may not be aware of. If you could describe the Ebbets approach, it’s not, “Here’s a Yankees hat like they wore in the World Series,” because that’s been done. From the beginning, back in 1988, it was, “Do you know about the Negro Leagues? Did you know this whole other universe existed and it was wonderful and rich, full of all these amazing characters?”

As historians, we’re always trying to find those little stories, so that every product we make has some emotional connection or historical resonance. It’s not always possible to discover all the details about some of the more obscure teams, but I always try to find one or two things, even if it’s just a couple of interesting statistics from an old class B minor-league team from the ’30s. Because you have to give people something to sink their teeth into, beyond a black hat with a white “A” on it.

In one interview, you point out how much you love design from the ’30s to the ’60s, and although you’ve considered creating uniforms from the ’80s or ’90s, you’re not in any hurry. What was it about that earlier era?

I’m sure there are people who would respond to something from the ’80s or ’90s just as powerfully as I respond to something from the ’50s. But to me, the ’80s is when designs became dispensable and transient, with polyester materials and logos changing constantly, so I tend to lose interest.  

Right around the ’70s is when you see regional domestic manufacturers get phased out of athletic garments, and big guys like Nike take over and it becomes more about marketing opportunities. Then the computer programs kicked in and everyone had to have their own Pantone color; it wasn’t just red anymore. We’ve recently started making more vintage collegiate uniforms and we have to explain to the schools that back in the day, there were really just seven or eight colors that everyone used; they didn’t make felt out of Harvard’s burgundy Pantone—those specs just didn’t exist. And there’s something I like about that.

It’s like playing music: Today you can have 64 digital tracks on top of one another, and the ability to make any sound you want, or you could hand someone an acoustic guitar and say, “You have to do it with this.” For me, it’s more interesting to work with a limited set of tools.

Today, no new professional sports team would choose to do something as simple as what the Yankees still wear: a one-color interlocking monogram. And yet, you can’t measure the value of that Yankees logo because it has 70 or 80 years of history behind it and it hasn’t really changed. I don’t mean to sound like everything was better “back in the day,” because that’s not true, but there’s something about American style from 1935-1972 that, for my taste, represents something really special.

You’ve been at this 30 years. Have there been any special moments when you were struck by the impact that your company has had?

The kind of people who buy our stuff are the kind of people I’d like to hang out with—experts in other fields. Early on, Spike Lee adopted us, before the Sports Illustrated article even came out—you’d open a magazine and see him wearing one of our Negro League jerseys. I remember opening up a copy of the Sunday New York Times, and seeing documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney in the section where they ask notable people what they’re watching and listening to, and under “What I’m Wearing” it says “Ebbets Fields Flannels”; I had no idea we’d be in the New York Times when I woke up that morning. I’m a huge Beatles fan, and 20 years ago Michael Lindsay, the director of the Beatles documentary “Let it Be,” called us out of the blue and asked to be put on our mailing list—and we still still talk to him. I love it when that sort of thing happens.

And of course, working on uniforms for 42 was a great experience for me personally. Jackie Robinson is part of the DNA of our company: Growing up in Brooklyn, my dad would tell me stories of Jackie Robinson and from there I learned about the Negro Leagues; it’s a springboard to everything we do. So getting to work on that movie, taking my dad to the premier, and seeing our work up on the screen—that was really special.

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How to Work with Assholes: A Survivor’s Guide

Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and one of the founders of the Stanford d.school. He is also the world’s leading authority on assholes in the workplace. We sat down with him in Palo Alto to discuss his new book, The Asshole Survival Guide.

The Asshole Survival Guide is the second volume of your research on the subject. Can you give us a brief synopsis of vol. 1? What is the “No Asshole Rule?”

There is a rule, and also a lot of sub-rules, but it basically comes down to this: Don’t hire assholes. These are people whose behavior damages their fellow workers, fellow human beings, and ultimately themselves. They are the jerks and bullies and two-faced backstabbers who make you feel oppressed, humiliated, disrespected, or belittled. We all have stories about these people, but my original motivation was actually more positive: What does it take to build a truly civilized workplace?

That’s what led me to the new book, The Asshole Survival Guide. Given that you are likely to encounter one of these unpleasant people sooner or later, what can be done about them? I analyze the roots of their behavior and offer some strategies for dealing with them.

What can be done about them?

First, keep your distance. A surprising amount of research indicates that the easiest solution is also the most effective: The closer you sit to a toxic personality, the more likely you are to be infected. Bad behavior is contagious. Even an extra 10 feet can help. Second, slow the rhythm. I did a study once of telephone bill collectors who had to deal with abusive behaviors every day. The most effective ones had mastered the art of introducing long pauses before answering. Wait as long as you can before replying to hostile e-mails; find ways to postpone meetings. Third, look in the mirror. This is not so easy, but make sure there’s nothing in your own behavior that might be provoking others to behave in aggressive, insulting, or demeaning ways.

Most of the business books I’ve read talk about the secrets of visionary leaders, the “seven habits” of successful entrepreneurs, and so on. You talk about assholes. How did you come to be so interested in this view of business?

I remember my father coming home one day and describing some guy at work and punctuating his story with, “What an asshole!” How many times have we all heard that—and remarked at how perfectly it captures the essence of an interaction? What triggered my initial essay was the daily experience of my wife, who was managing partner in a law firm: She described her job as “asshole management.”

My “legitimate” field of research is organizational dysfunction, and the more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that these individuals are a major source not just of unpleasantness but of inefficiencies: They are bad for business. I’m not talking here about someone who loses his temper once in a while or who might just be having a bad day—I’m talking about “certified assholes” whose behavior is an enduring personality characteristic.

The Asshole Survival Guide mixes charming anecdotes, case studies, earnest how-to advice, and some very hard-headed behavioral science. Was it hard to bring these voices into alignment?

Not really. I’ve been a professor for more than thirty years and the thought of writing one more peer-reviewed article for some academic journal was starting to demoralize me. The “research” for this book was actually pretty easy because my readers basically did it for me. In the ten years since The No Asshole Rule was published I’ve received something like eight thousand e-mails from people who wrote to tell me their stories, ask for advice, or just vent. True, there’s a lot of storytelling in the book, but it’s grounded in a pretty wide-ranging scientific literature.

Although you draw upon scholars at universities around the world, most of your focus is on the assholes in America. But is there a difference between American assholes and assholes from other countries?

Good question, and it does point to the cultural specificity of certain behaviors. I’d prefer to say that we are at a moment, historically speaking, that could be called “peak asshole.” All the well-documented forces that turn people into jerks are in place: power imbalance, sleep deprivation, people who are overworked, overcrowded, and in a hurry. What we can say is that largely on account of social media, asshole behavior and the ability to fight it are escalating in tandem.

You make it clear that your main concern is the workplace but that the principles you present are applicable to subway riders, sports events, even nonprofits, and more. Would you say that it’s also applicable to politics?

Well, I do have a section on how to deal with the narcissistic personality: “Narcissists crave constant praise and flattery; they desperately need to believe they are beloved. Although narcissists are often abusive and insulting, they are thin-skinned and don’t tolerate people who question their judgment.” I think I’ll leave it at that.

If you had to compress your decade of research into a single mantra, what would it be?

Easy: “Be slow to label others as assholes, be quick to label yourself as one.”

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