OK, this fits my impression of designers and the graphic design industry perfectly. It’s a story from Michael Bierut’s first job internship.

Graphic design is easy, of course, so we kill ourselves trying to make it hard. I should have remembered a lesson I received at one of my first job experiences, a summer internship in the design department at WGBH-TV in Boston. I had been assigned a rare design project. Given my status — I was the most junior of three interns — it was probably something like a hallway flyer for the annual blood drive. I labored over this 8.5 x 11 inch opus all day, never forgetting what I then held as the twin tenets of responsible design practice (one, create something absolutely without precedent; and two, demonstrate to onlookers how clever I am). Given my predilections at that point in my nascent career, this probably involved merging the home-grown rigorous modernism of Lester Beall and Will Burtin with the formal experimentation of Wolfgang Weingart and April Grieman. My only inhibition was the lack of a Macintosh computer, which would not be invented for seven years.

Late in the day, the station’s head of design, the legendary Chris Pullman, came by my desk. “What’s this?” he asked. Breathlessly, I described the visionary thinking that informed the yet-unfinished masterpiece before me. Pullman stared at the mess for a moment, and then his face brightened. “Hey,” he said, as if a great idea was just occuring to him. “Why avoid the obvious?” He then took away everything but the headline: GIVE BLOOD NOW. “Try that!” he said cheerfully, walking away.

Poor, poor Obvious. Come sit by me. I’ll be your friend.

From an article over at Design Observer. It’s a pet peave of mine, when designers reaching for clever end up in the dustbin of confusion.

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