Finding Satisfying Work, Affecting Eternity, and Other Practical and Existential Thoughts about Design
Since April 2021, the Chicago-based design consultant and teacher Joseph Michael Essex has posted intriguing visual-verbal aphorisms on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, pithy sayings accompanied by the barely-visible words “Design is everything. Everything is designed.” He calls the series “Thinking Aloud.” Essex is a true design leader, having worked at PBS, Unimark International, Center for Advanced Research in Design, Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, and, with his wife and partner Nancy, EssexTwo International. In recent years, he shifted some of his focus from client projects to consulting with other designers on how they might improve their practices by attracting better assignments, becoming financially stable, and finding greater satisfaction in their work.
When Essex posted the above image earlier this year, I knew it was high time for an online sit-down to get some questions answered. Our conversation is below (edited for clarity and length).
Ellen Shapiro: Many young designers complain online that they can’t get interviews, much less a job offer. What’s going on? Is there too much competition from people working remotely? Or are our schools churning out too many graduates for the jobs available?
Jospeh Michael Essex: Most young designers don’t have an opportunity to compete for the better assignments. Large clients and agencies have gatekeepers, the people responsible for collecting proposals, but they lack the ability to evaluate the content other than to compare prices. Often, they’re accountants or purchasing agents. They don’t write the RFPs and aren’t qualified to assess the capabilities or expertise of those submitting the proposals. Young designers have almost no chance to get on the RFP list, much less to win the business—unless they make an effort to identify the gatekeepers in the organizations they want to work for and ask to be considered. They can also connect with those in the appropriate departments (advertising, marketing, corporate communications, public relations) for consideration.
Another way to get started is with small or mid-size organizations and grow with them. Younger clients are more likely to listen and embrace new ideas, new technologies, and newer methods of communication.
Actually, I don’t get the sense that the individuals baring their souls on Reddit are hoping to get RFPs from large organizations. They’re upset they can’t even get an interview at a small local ad agency or marketing firm.
JME: The Wall Street Journal once posited that it takes between ten and twelve points of contact before someone with something to sell is contacted by a person who needs the service or product. Getting new business opportunities has always been difficult and expensive in time and money. It takes persistence, tenacity, diligence, and patience—all good qualities in those looking to build a career.
Another important issue is that small local ad agencies and marketing firms don’t hire out work they think they can and should do.
Designers—young and seasoned—have a much better chance for success by going directly to clients who need the work rather than to the client’s outside agencies. Plus, if an outside agency hires you, you’re never allowed to present directly to the client.
ES: What about doing great work, posting it on Behance and Instagram, and letting clients find you? You don’t think that works?
JME: Picasso said inspiration only finds you when you’re already working. All successful communication connects linearly from awareness to concern to a dialogue that provokes a response. Clients are not trolling the Internet without a specific motivation!
More clients should be aware that design and designers could benefit them. By demonstrating how design-as-a-process will help them accomplish clearly defined objectives—like making a profit—they’ll see how design might benefit them and their organizations. They’ll begin to check out designers, and a dialogue might begin, culminating in a positive response.
ES: I attended an AIGA/NY debate in which half the people on stage — who had great jobs, even teaching jobs — said they were self-educated through YouTube videos and such. Are graphic design degrees necessary anymore? Desirable, yes, but essential?
JME: You might remember ‘Hall of Fame’ designers who didn’t have a formal design education. Some had degrees in parallel disciplines; others came to design through the back door with marketing, advertising, and illustration degrees or as paint and canvas artists. As long as clients see design as decoration rather than a discipline, formal education in graphic design is only a small plus. As long as young designers see design as a tangible physical thing to be made, with a top, bottom, back, and front, they’ll be supporting players rather than principals or critical contributors. If a designer can design one thing well, they can design anything and everything. The principles and the process are the same. If young designers view themselves and their work in the broadest possible context, they will not only have a career, but their contributions will be meaningful.
ES: Yes, Charles and Ray Eames were our design-school heroes. But aren’t designers of all ages and backgrounds more concerned with screens and apps than backs and fronts?
JME: Before doctors are permitted to specialize, they go through six to eight years of college, medical education, and internships. Each experience gives them broader exposure to human conditions and the human condition. A designer needs a similar educational path, beginning with a fundamental understanding of communication across all disciplines, media, and processes: how communication works, the spoken and unspoken, the pitching and catching, the preparation and presentation, the sympathy and empathy that connect us to one another.
When an art school plans a curriculum with the goal of students ending up with a job, they short-circuit the experience. Sure, parents who are reluctant to pay for art school are happy when a job is promised in four years, but the reality is that the more narrowly defined the job, the more likely it will not exist in a technologically driven world that evolves every seven to ten years.
ES: Many designers who previously had small offices and were doing quality work for big-name clients can’t even get those clients on the phone. It seems that either you own (or work at) a major agency or branding firm, or you have to find another source of income and satisfaction. Painting, pottery, anyone?
JME: I’m all for painting and pottery, but in my experience, there’s a continuous ebb and flow to design’s relationship with business. In the mid-70s, I worked at the Chicago office of Unimark. We did everything from event invitations to the design of next-generation gas stations, and extensive monthly invoices were sent and paid. At one point, though, Standard Oil’s management decided they were being taken advantage of and outfitted a big in-house design operation. A few years and business issues later, Unimark closed its doors.
After a while, though, new egos on Standard Oil’s executive floor decided they weren’t getting enough new ideas from the in-house design staff and started sending the big jobs with big budgets to design offices all over the country.
Things change over time.
ES: So, what do we do about the ebb and flow? One obvious answer is to rely on something other than one or two big clients for your livelihood. But other factors like recessions, stock market crashes, and events like 9/11 severely impact business opportunities. There are no protections and no insurance policies.
JME: Ellen, you and I have been doing this work for far too long not to recognize these issues are not unique to the design profession. Whether we are sole proprietors, manage a six-person office, or a division of an organization that has offices in six countries, we can’t avoid the responsibility of doing the best we can, no matter the circumstances. No one can avoid being vulnerable to what happens in our neighborhood, country, or world.
ES: Ah, we’re starting to delve into existential issues in graphic design (and illustration and photography and …). If you wrestle with big questions about life’s meaning, you are having an existential crisis. So, with the advent of A.I., which is thrilling to some but a threat to many, are the creative professions that serve clients having an existential crisis?
JME: Do you remember when ‘commercial artists’ did rough sketches, made layouts, and prepared mechanical art for printers? How about ‘speccing type’ and getting galley proofs from the type house? Or waiting for contact sheets from photographers. Not to mention location shoots involving airplanes, hotels, car rentals, and a crew of grips, gaffers, and gofers? When processing film and printing contact sheets took time, we took more time to think about each shot, ensuring we got it right and fixing it in the camera rather than later in Photoshop. Things change, some for the better, some not so.
ES: Yes, I remember it well. Now that we can instantly download photos and push a button to replace selected areas with A.I.-generated content, is that a better or worse situation?
JME: Artificial Intelligence is just that, artificial. AI will create an opportunity for thousands of choices and combinations of things no one has dreamt up before. But, like with most Big Data, we’ll still need to make choices. We must develop criteria that serve a defined purpose and accomplish an anticipated outcome. We need talented, intelligent, prepared people to make conscious, meaningful choices.
ES: Is there a different kind of consulting that clients need now that designers can provide, perhaps with some retooling?
JME: Yes. Clients desperately need a perspective that only independent minds can provide. They need today’s version of a consigliere, a Leonardo da Vinci-like voice in the ears of the Medicis, telling them what they might already know in ways they can’t ignore. They also may need a Flâneur, who strolls around, watches and listens, asks questions, and shares the thoughts of those unburdened by experience.
ES: Tell me about the Flâneur concept. Who will pay for it, and what will the benefit be?
JME: I don’t know if anyone can make a living from it, but I think it’s worth finding out. In my new discipline—helping develop leadership skills in creative people—maybe this is a good time and place to become a flaneur, someone who observes and transmits enlightening observations.
ES: Your trademark and mantra is ‘Design is everything. Everything is designed.’ Some people don’t agree with that. Once, when I complained to the person I was with—an author and musician—that the room we were in was badly designed, she rolled her eyes and said, “Why do you care? That’s not important! What’s important is what’s in your head and what you do.” How would you answer her?
JME: When I insist that ‘everything is designed,’ it doesn’t mean it was designed well. People make good and mediocre and bad choices. Responsibility exists for making those choices.
ES: Who decides what’s good or bad? I once fled from a date’s apartment with red-flocked wallpaper on the walls. Why even get started when you know it will never work out?
JME: Your experience and your instincts are well balanced. However, individuals rarely make choices without a particular outcome in mind. The host chose the wallpaper because it was pleasing to him. He assumed it would also be pleasing to his guests. In this case, the design choice was both good and bad. He got to enjoy his choice, but all alone.
When a client insists that all 200 words must appear on a single slide, his choice is about the importance and sanctity of his every word. While he gets his way, he loses his audience.
ES: What do you ultimately hope to do with these visual/verbal aphorisms? A book? A TED talk? How will you use them to communicate the value of design to non-designers?
JME: A book? That seems more self-conscious than I’m comfortable with. A TED talk? Maybe I’ll ask Ricky [Richard Saul Wurman] what he thinks. But in 20 minutes? I can’t talk that fast.
I grew up without a father. I always thought I missed out by not having someone in my life to point out the important stuff I missed while it was happening. I’m hoping that ‘Thinking Aloud’ will be that heads-up for someone.
ES: For someone or many people?
JME: I’ve had an opportunity to teach at several art schools and universities. I try to make this case to all my students: Don’t design for the thousands of people who will read the report, wear the dress, visit the site, or follow the signage. Design everything for a person, one at a time.
Years ago at EssexTwo, Nancy and I reprised a project first designed by John Massey at the Center for Advanced Research in Design. It was a memento for incoming teachers for the Chicago Public Schools. Silkscreened on 7,000 small polished stones were the words: ‘Teachers Affect Eternity.’