Design Assembly: Michael Bierut Interview
Design Assembly landed a great coup interviewing renowned Pentagram partner Michael Bierut. The entire interview is interesting, however his thoughts on the New Zealand flag process are worth highlighting here.
On the New Zealand flag consideration project and alternative design:
That kind of thing generally doesn’t end well.
On the other hand if you look at the history of enduring pieces of graphic design that we now look at with some affection or admiration, a lot of them come from very strange processes. They weren’t all by professional designers that were appropriately compensated financially. They were the result of amateur competitions and people who didn’t know what they were doing going off and doing things. Somehow it just sticks and develops and goes on.
No one appreciates a professionally managed design process more than I do and I love being treated with respect by my clients when I am working with them. It pains me to see people behaving cynically or dismissively or undervaluing graphic design and what design can be.
In that sort of situation there are different ways of looking at it. It’s like a lottery — someone will win and maybe the more good solutions will prevent the really bad from happening.
It’s an interesting exercise. Why not try and design something nice and see what happens.
Part of it with things like that, is that you get so poorly briefed and there is no feedback. The client or whoever is commissioning the work isn’t really engaged and not committed to making it work too. People think falsely, like love at first sight they’ll see it and it will be perfect. It’s amazing how rare that is, it’s really, really rare.
I’ve done a lot of very good work where the first time or the first few times were a failure and you don’t get that opportunity when it is a competition. It’s everyone heaving these things in the direction of what they think the bulls eye is and no one has any idea of what success looks like.
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