Day: May 30, 2011

While tidying up a few things in the archives, I came across this post from a little over a decade ago about the first and second First Things First manifestos. These made a huge impact on me at the time, one of those recurring phases when I was extremely aggravated about a lot of the crap that went along with being a graphic designer, and as good manifestos are wont to do, they articulated a lot of pent-up frustrations I had. They’ve also stayed with me in a very conscious way ever since, whether or not I have always been able to effectively follow their calls to action.

The admonition to consider the impact and the ethics of the work that I do has certainly influenced a lot of my choices since then. Thanks to First Things First, I put more energy in working in the non-profit and arts sectors, teaching, making things for personal reasons instead of commercial ones. (Much to my financial ruin over the years, but I certainly bear plenty of the blame for that.) At the moment, I am working for a profit-oriented company for the first time since I read these manifestos, and I’ll admit that some things involved in that give me pause now and again. I still believe, however, that design can be an agent of change, and of improvement. I certainly think that type design can be an incredible tool for these things — improving legibility, literacy, engagement with words. Part of the attraction of working in Indic scripts, for example, is that they so badly need good typefaces to express and promote those languages.

The other thing that strikes me is that in the decade since I read these manifestos, I have met and become a colleague to many of the people behind them, and have been encouraged by their examples — and often the things they’ve actually said to me — to keep the faith and keep trying to use my talents to make things better if I can, to try and improve my profession at the very least, and hopefully make things better in the world at large now and again if possible.

While I’m at it, here’s a listicle that ran this past Friday:

Hay Festival 2011: John Waters on 10 things every role model needs
Words of wisdom from film director John Waters at the Hay Festival

1. History. You can’t have a one-night-stand role model. No one can become a role model in 24 hours. It helps a lot if you knew them when you were young, so they sort of grow or fester with you, like Johnny Mathis was for me.

2. Be extreme: all my role models have to be. They have to be braver than I’ve ever been. Even to survive success is hard, no matter if it’s widespread success like Johnny Mathis had, or Bobby Boris Pickett, who his whole life just had to sing one song [The Monster Mash]. Today too many people are trying hard to be extreme. For the people I admire it was natural, and they turned it into art.

3. Style You can have bad style, but you have to have some style. That’s why I wrote about Rei Kawakubo, who reinvented fashion to be damaged and to be everything you hoped it was not when you bought an outfit. And she quadrupled the price. That’s a magic trick.

4. Be alarming – I think that’s important. And it’s different from being
shocking. Alarming threatens the very core of your existence, it doesn’t
just shock you – but you don’t know why it makes you nervous at first. You know, St Catherine of Siena drank pus for God. That was important to me because I thought: I want to be her, I don’t want to be half-assed! If I was going to be a Catholic, it would have been before the Reformation.

5. Humour It’s very important to be well-read, but I never understand why people are so sure their partners have to be smart. What kind of smart do they mean? I’m not interested in talking about literature in bed! I like people who can make me laugh. Humour gets you laid, humour gets you hired, humour gets you through life. You don’t get beat up if you can make the person that’s going to beat you up laugh first.

6. Be a troublemaker All art is troublemaking, because why go through all the trouble of making it if you don’t cause a little stir?

7. Bohemianism Bohemia saved my life. And by bohemia I mean all sexualities mixed together, and people who do what they do not to get rich — freedom from suburbia. People who want to fit in but don’t are losers. Bohemians are people who don’t fit in because they don’t want to.

8. Originality Someone unique like Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, is an easy role model to have. She could fit into any of these categories – her outfit looked like Comme des Garçons, and anybody who could scare children like that… The problem was, I wanted to be her. And as I turn 65, that has sort of come true.

9. Neuroses I think it helps to be neurotic. Neurotic people always end up being in the arts. If your kid fits in while in high school they’re going to be a dull adult. I still see a few people I went to high school with, but the other ones, when they come up to me I say: “I’m sorry, I took LSD, I don’t remember you.” It works, because then they aren’t offended personally. It’s really just manners.

10. Be a little bit insane That’s different from neurotic. You can stay home and be neurotic. You have to go out to be insane. You can be a little bit of both, but both need to be joyous. As long as you can find a moment of joy in even your worst behaviour, it’s something to be thankful for.

[Taken from The Telegraph, 27 May 2011]