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Helen Walters—Head of curation at TED—navigate and questions the potency of Design Thinking. This interview was featured in Open Manifesto #6, which focused on the theme ‘Myth’.

Note: This interview took place before 2012 and refers to specifics from that time.

Kevin Finn: ‘Design Thinking’ is the hot topic of the moment, but what surprises me most is that business schools and corporations seem to be more interested in this area than the wider design community appears to be. Why do you think designers tend to bristle when Design Thinking is mentioned?

Helen Walters: It’s definitely curious. Executives seem to get very excited at the mention of Design Thinking (alternatively, they just look a little blank). Likewise, at BusinessWeek, when we were compiling the lists of the best schools to teach innovation or Design Thinking we researched many different programs around the world. The business schools definitely seemed to be more engaged with the topic, and very motivated to get in on the action. It’s like they’d read the memo that design-based skills might provide the competitive advantage of the future. In parallel, some design schools had also spotted the increased interest in the intersection of design and business, and marshalled their resources accordingly. But many designers and design educators actively roll their eyes at the topic of Design Thinking. It really prompts an interesting reaction: a knee-jerk ‘ugh’ of irritation and disgust.

I think this happens for a number of reasons, many of them fairly reasonable at first glance. As so many designers like to say when I’ve broached the topic with them, how would I like it if someone referred to ‘Journalism Thinking’? (Meaning, cut and paste to apply to your own field.) Many designers see Design Thinking as implicitly implying that ‘design’ is somehow not enough. They study for years and years to master a craft and a skill and yet, suddenly, these business folks are bandying around post-it notes and claiming to have mastered all that’s necessary to embed design in business. It’s galling, really.

There’s also the question: What does ‘Design Thinking’ really mean, anyway? Ask even those who are in the business of promoting the discipline the most; all of them have slightly different definitions. Tim Brown of IDEO talks of design applied to save the world. Roger Martin talks of the opposable mind and the tension between the creative and the analyst.

Don Norman thinks it’s a term that deserves to die, while Larry Keeley of Doblin (with whom I’m working at the moment) calls for everyone to recognize the huge complexity of design and not to settle for superficial band-aid fixes, which won’t last or satisfy in the long-term. Offering up Design Thinking as a design-based process that guarantees business success is disingenuous in the extreme, and perhaps designers, attuned to the mess and chaos of their own process, recognize this most clearly.

The thing is, the truly successful marriage of design and business involves collaboration and insights shared throughout every department of an organization. It’s not good enough to create a prototype and hope it’ll somehow be successful in the market. Designers and executives have to put down their suspicion and work together, each one reassuring the other that they’re working towards the same goal. This happens all too rarely.

The problem isn’t aided by the fact everyone thinks they’re a designer, many of whom only understand design on the level of arbitrary personal taste. So, doesn’t Design Thinking as a process help explain that design isn’t just an aesthetic add-on, just like journalism isn’t only about the arrangement of words? Although it’s an area more widely understood, if we look at the ‘Journalism Thinking’ analogy—and it’s only an analogy—could an even better understanding of journalism increase the number of people who can identify the analytical side of journalism, while exposing the hacks? Good journalism involves deep research, investigation, cross-referenced details and facts, story-telling and the craft of putting words together in an engaging and clear manner. And couldn’t this greater awareness even help newspapers with their goal of charging for content online in order to pay quality, trained journalists for their quality content and work? Is naming these processes with the word ‘thinking’ just an unfortunate semantic (or branding) issue?

There are a couple of things here, and actually the journalism analogy holds up better than perhaps first anticipated. One thing that I think both journalists and designers have to come to terms with, to accept at an atomic level, is that their industries have changed massively and irrevocably with the developments of the modern world.

The arrival of technological tools, which afford access to all, have fundamentally changed the nature of disciplines that—at their heart—serve an audience. Now that everyone can design, can write, can blog, can (pretty much) produce 3D objects, this reality changes what it means to do these activities as a professional. Now, as you rightly point out, in some ways this enormously aids the standing of both professions. As people realize how very bloody hard it is to design something beautiful or to write something insightful, they might step off and cede the floor to those trained in those professions.

On the other hand, there’s no reason to assume that they’ll do anything of the sort. Unless there’s an active outreach on the part of those professionals to explain why the depth matters, why the process counts, it’s distinctly possible that people will do their thing and be totally happy, oblivious to the fact that there’s another way, while at the same time being dismissive of what they see as the indignant bleats of a dying breed.

I say this entirely without rancor or blame. I think it’s up to those of us who chose to immerse ourselves in learning the deep craft of a profession to ensure that we are not so enamored with how things used to be that we can’t also seize these tools and add them to our own boxes of tricks. Explaining and showing—through words and deeds—why someone should pay for a service they can likely get for free or for cheap on a crowd-sourcing site is also critical. I don’t see designers doing a particularly good job of explaining their worth, at least not at a consumer level. This is somewhat different at the corporate level, though we’re also seeing seismic shifts in this realm too.

On an aside, the other day I found myself unexpectedly crossing a picket line of union workers striking outside a restaurant in Manhattan. I felt really uncomfortable crossing the line, but I was struck by the behavior of the striking workers—and their comments to me and all those choosing to go into the restaurant. Having strangers scream at me that I’m a “scab” and “a disgrace to my mother” had a curious effect: It ensured that I went into the restaurant and, in my own small belligerent way, exhibited my right to make my own choices, despite the fact that my sympathies were actually with the strikers.

But their antagonistic behaviour, screaming at those who really weren’t actually responsible for the problem at hand, turned out to be an approach that backfired with stubborn mules like me. Sometimes I see designers metaphorically screaming at clients and consumers who don’t know any better—and how could they, given the absolute dearth of design education from the earliest age? Those being screamed at might either learn to tune out this antipathy, or perhaps actively head towards it. We need to promote a better education of what design is, who benefits from it, and why it matters. Designers need to drop the resentful defence and step up to become their own best champions. God knows, no one’s going to do it for them.

To an extent, I do think the Design Thinking issue is a semantic one. But there’s another issue here too: The identity crisis of the design field at large. Think about it, there are so many sub-specialties of “design.” Someone who designs a font can square up against someone who designs a website, who can line up against someone who creates textiles, and so on. All rightly claim the title of designer. All rightly claim to think while they design. In the end, Design thinking is a particular process employed by corporate innovation departments who understand that design is important and want to ensure it’s embedded in their business. Yet, there’s little clarity about what role any one type of designer plays in the Design Thinking process (merely to facilitate the discussion and to pretty up the post-it notes?) Again, it’d be helpful if the design industry, at least its leadership, could figure this out… stat!

You’ve alluded to a point that I’ve been grappling with for a while: Do the vast majority of designers you encounter understand the term Design Thinking? Could their reticence for this movement simply be a misunderstanding of the term, resulting in it being easily dismissed? For those who fully understand the term, I doubt they would offer up Design Thinking as “a process that guarantees business success.” As you point out, this would be disingenuous in the extreme—and hardly believable. Shouldn’t Design Thinking be seen like any other tool—used where appropriate and in the proper context of a wider strategy? This is something only designers can explain—but only if they fully understand it first. In your opinion, has Design Thinking been dismissed by the majority of designers before it has been fully understood or interrogated?

I’m loath to make sweeping generalizations. I know and talk to a lot of designers from lots of different disciplines. But particularly in recent years, my work has seen me focus more on those working within larger corporations, who are often a lot more familiar with Design Thinking and its practices than, say, a solo practitioner focusing on designing book covers.

But even with those who use Design Thinking as a matter of course in business, it does seem like they often use different definitions, and this does slightly worry me. I remember having a conversation with a woman who runs a large corporate innovation department in the United States, along with a design consultant she’d actually worked with for a number of years. As we talked, the disconnect in how they viewed the discipline—two people who actually worked together—became embarrassingly obvious.

Later that day, when we were talking separately, she also pointed out the confusion, and wondered aloud what was going on. She also made it clear that such opacity and lack of clarity played poorly with her own superiors, who were without exception from the business side of things, and were already suspicious of what they all see as the often arbitrary nature of design.

The success issue is also interesting. I’ve seen the process of Design Thinking laid out very clearly in a number of places, the inference being that if you follow the steps carefully, you’ll have success. There’s a sneaky trick here though, in that even failure is couched as success. So if a product fails in the market, it’s not a failure, it’s learning. (You see this in the tech industry too, where companies don’t fail, they “pivot.”) Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for prototyping, for trying things quickly and, of course, for learning from everything you do. But this, too, seems disingenuous. At a certain point, can’t we just accept that our original great idea simply didn’t work as anticipated? Having to re-frame everything as a secret success, despite its appearance as an abject failure, is plain exhausting.

In that vein, and to return to one of your earlier points, it’s interesting that there are so many definitions for Design Thinking. But you also highlight there are as many different definitions for the single term design, depending on who one speaks to. It appears designers feel threatened by offering a thinking process (tied to their profession) to be applied in different areas for purposes other than creating a piece of design—a designed artefact. There is also the ridiculous myth that designers and artists have a monopoly on ‘creativity.’ The reality is that creativity is myriad—and universal. People in business need to be creative; people in medicine need to be creative; people in science need to be creative, people in plumbing need to be creative, and so on. Couldn’t the same be said for design? Design is myriad and universal, it’s a process, and no-one should claim to have a monopoly on it. However, since designers are trained in this area, they are obviously best suited to guide others and continue leading by example through their professional practice of designing. And if collaboration is a critical tool, cited by many as a key to the future, doesn’t Design Thinking fit into this role of collaboration when used properly?

I think you’re absolutely right, that everyone has the right and the ability to be creative, and the sponsorship of creative thinking in every department of an organization, whether it’s deemed part of an ‘innovation’ unit or not, is really critical for long-term success. Google was very clear about this from the beginning… Its leadership was as creative in its thinking about how they filed for IPO as they have been in giving its engineers conditions that are conducive to developing innovative new types of software. And note, you’d hardly call Google a particularly design savvy company.

You’re right, too, that design is ubiquitous, and design affects everyone. Mothers are always trotted out as an example of an “everyday person” to test an idea on, which is trite and a little offensive. Nonetheless, my mother, untrained in design as she is, has just as much right to critique the interface of a bank ATM, a telephone handset or a chair as someone who’s deeply versed in the nuances of UI (User Interface) design, industrial design or furniture design. That isn’t the case with disciplines such as engineering, aerospace or even law, where she’d happily cede the floor to the “experts.” This is part of why good design is so critically important and often why the very best design is the design you barely notice. Remembering to look through the eyes of the layperson user or consumer and to retain a “beginner’s mind” is a key skill of a good designer.

The companies that are held up time and again as being those that truly get or understand design are organizations like Apple or Pixar. Designers there are an integral part of the decision making process—and I think it’s interesting that they’re not the firms that talk about applying principles of Design Thinking in their business. My concern is that Design Thinking has become a way to paste some of design’s techniques on top of an inherently uncreative process, or a neat way to add some of the more superficial practices of design into a culture that actually stifles genuine innovation. None of this will pay off in the long run.

On the other hand, I do think there’s benefit in introducing the practices of design to an inexpert audience, precisely in order to illustrate and educate as to why professionals are useful and necessary. In this case, perhaps it becomes a question of framing: Those looking to implement Design Thinking practices need to be thoughtful about what they’re promising and delivering. What’s that old business cliche? “Under promise, and over deliver.” We could use a little of that when it comes to Design Thinking.

Having researched this area in depth, what’s your own definition of Design Thinking?

I think as it stands right now it’s evolved into being a process or a lens that can be applied in the innovation practice. It is most often overtly used outside of a traditional design department. But it’s useful in showing executives that design can be a critical element in creating something that’s truly useful and that has a chance of standing out and being successful in the market. And that “something” often isn’t what we have come to think of as the traditional artifacts of design. This is about systems and contexts, rather than products and objects.

Currently, design educational institutes annually churn out armies of graduates, all of whom are looking for similar jobs—which are essentially to create ‘designed artefacts.’ In your opinion, might the Design Thinking discipline provide more opportunities for design programs (and inevitably design graduates) to explore, in order to develop wider roles for designers?

Yes, I think that Design Thinking points to a new movement in design, to move beyond the artifact or the object and apply design to systems, markets and industries. Designers always seem to love to broaden a question they’re charged with trying to answer. In fact, as we all know, the very best designers cast around any space in which they’re working in order to consider the context of the problem.

In the past, they would complain of only being thought of in terms of styling the look and superficial functionality of a final product, by which time it can be too late to ask the most challenging (and important) questions of all: Should this product exist in this way? How else might we think about this challenge? Does this product even need to exist at all? Allan Chochinov is starting a new MFA course at the School of Visual Arts in New York (disclosure: I have the distinct honour of advising students’ thesis projects), which he deliberately christened Products of Design, and not Product Design. Allan is very smart in realizing that the discourse has moved beyond objects, even though creating those objects to be as beautiful and functional (and appropriate) as they possibly can be is still a key skill.

That Design Thinking has formalized this process can, perhaps, be helpful in furthering the argument that designers have a part to play in broader challenges. The redesign of so many of our systems—from government to urban infrastructure—can likely be helped by the application of the talent and thinking that designers can apply. Creativity, intuitive thinking and the skills that designers are trained in, and which they practice over years, will be critical to shaping the world we want to live in. And once again—to be clear—not every designer will want to get involved in Design Thinking type challenges, and that’s totally okay.

Beyond all this, with increased interest in design, right across the social, business and government spectrum, do you feel design might be entering a new golden era?

I wish I could be so bullish, and I certainly think that we’re entering a critical era for design. But for Design Thinking to be more than a passing fad, it’s really necessary that those preaching its virtues are able to talk about its benefits in very specific detail. So far, there’s been a lot of talk and a lot of enthusiasm, but a distinct lack of figures and proof of impact to back up the hype. As Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management so rightly points out, the words “prove it” are the kiss of death for most innovation projects.

But businesses go bankrupt if the figures don’t match leaders’ enthusiasm, and the proof is in the pudding. The leadership of the design industry needs to figure out how to train those who can be convincing spokespeople for the value and worth of the discipline in the boardroom. It’s a challenge; generally people get into design to design, not to manage, and that leaves a vacuum at management level, which does the industry no favors at all.

If this doesn’t evolve, designers may find themselves left behind, unable to exploit the opportunity that’s now at their fingertips. But we are seeing an increasing number of programs that are trying to figure out how to teach this stuff (on a global basis) so hopefully a lack of evolution is not how this will play out.

Allan Savory—influential and thought-provoking scientist and environmentalist—dissects the myths around fossil fuels and climate change and offers a solution that could possibly save the planet. This interview was featured in Open Manifesto #6, which focused on the theme ‘Myth’.

Note: This interview took place around 2011 and refers to specifics from that time.

Kevin Finn: As with many countries in the world, climate change is a big public concern in Australia. Currently, there is fierce debate about introducing a carbon tax on the greatest emitters. A recent Productivity Commission Report has provided data on policies from other countries who are also looking at various ways to tackle climate change. This has boosted the government’s resolve to introduce the tax, but the Productivity Commission Report also highlights a “deeper picture that abatement policy around the globe is inept, inefficient and often ineffective.” Political posturing and big business lobbying are a constant hindrance to implementing anything serious and sustained, but do you feel a carbon tax is a good way to, at least, actively begin tackling climate change, or is a tax of this nature too focused on fossil fuels alone?

Allan Savory: Personally, and for a number of reasons, I don’t like the very idea of carbon trading in such a serious situation—reasons that I do not see in the current public discussion. The underlying idea concerns me because the principle seems to allow carbon emissions from one source (fossil fuels) to be sequestered through practices on the land (agriculture). This assumes most of the climate change—that we unquestionably face—is due to fossil fuel emissions. But it is in direct conflict with reality when we consider agriculture is contributing as much to climate change, and possibly even more than fossil fuels.

Let me explain this, as I did recently in my keynote address at a United Nations conference on desertification and climate change in Bonn, Germany. In that address I began by laying out the situation. Here are the points I made, and which I believe no informed scientist would argue:

– I bring you good news and greater cause for optimism than at any time in history.

– First though let’s look at the position: Agriculture is the production of food and fibre from the world’s land and waters.

– Agriculture made civilization possible, but also destroyed many civilizations and caused the great man-made deserts of the world.

– Currently agriculture produces more eroding soil, by far, than food every year, and the threat to civilization is now a global one.

– Taking into account that factory farming; loss of carbon from soil that is damaged, as well as lost soil; annual burning of billions of hectares of grasslands; periodic burning of forests and the resultant desertification; frankly agriculture is probably contributing as much—or even more—to climate change than fossil fuels.

– We have to note that most of today’s floods, droughts, poverty, social breakdown, abuse of women and children, and violence, are due to desertification that has nothing to do with fossil fuels and was occurring thousands of years before we discovered coal and oil.

– Finally we cannot ignore the fact that climate change will continue in a post fossil fuel world, due to agriculture, unless we address the agricultural situation. And we cannot develop globally sound financial or economic systems without regenerative healthy agriculture as the foundation (because all wealth that sustains any community is ultimately derived from the photosynthetic process—that is: plants on regenerating soils).

– All that I have summarised here, I do not believe any informed scientist would argue.

– So why are we not more aware?

– Possibly, more than anything because our science has been reductionist and management—especially of agriculture—cannot be reductionist in a holistic world.

I went on to describe how, in our reductionists mainstream scientific view, we see biodiversity loss, desertification and climate change as three separate issues—always dealt with by different conferences, organizations, etc. The reality is our world is holistic in nature. Without biodiversity, loss desertification does not occur. Desertification, on the scale now engulfing the world, will alone change climate. But this is, of course, being rapidly accelerated over the last couple of hundred years by excessive use of fossil fuels [which is made from] past biodiversity. So whether we like it or not—biodiversity loss, desertification and climate change are one indivisible issue.

From there, I explained that mainstream scientists, media, environmental organizations, etc, are showing little or no awareness that climate change is being caused by agriculture and fossil fuels. And of the two, agriculture is the more dangerous, because it will continue climate change post fossil fuels.

I pointed out that the recently appointed Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, chaired by Sir John Beddington, had immediately and publicly warned that agriculture would need to adapt to climate change! It’s like the frog in a pot of water—which has been put on to boil—being told to adapt!

Next, I pointed out that humans, including all scientists, use a core decision-making framework in which all conscious decisions, actions, policies, projects, etc, are formed to achieve an objective or goal. And that no matter what profession any scientists has trained in, from any university in the world, they would unknowingly only be trained to use three tools to address global desertification/climate change. Those three tools are: Technology (in it’s myriad forms), Fire or Resting Land (non-disturbance).

Of these three tools, with which scientists and climate scientists, etc, are addressing desertification/climate change, two lead to desertification (fire and resting land) and the third (technology), even in the most imaginative form, cannot reverse desertification, and thus climate change.

This is because where resting land or oceans will restore biodiversity over time, it has the opposite effect in low and seasonal rainfall environments, which constitute most of Earth’s land area. These are the vast desertifying regions in the U.S., Australia, China, Africa, Middle East, North and South America, etc, where we have to restore rapid biological decay of annually dying plant material. Only one thing can do that: Large herbivores in vast numbers and herds. This means mainly livestock today. But livestock as we know are vilified by environmental organizations, United Nations, media and you name it—vilified almost as much as oil and coal [due to their methane production].

I did point out that it is imperative that we find benign mass sources of energy and mobile energy for transport with the utmost urgency in order to curb emissions from fossil fuels, and this is the arena of high technology. There is no imaginable low-tech answer at present. However the contribution of agriculture to climate change is, essentially, a low-tech area where I believe we have most of what is needed now.

You cite agriculture as being a major contributor to climate concerns, but how can this be resolved when another major and serious issue for the future is food, particularly in relation to rising global population and increased demand?

We simply have to recognise that agriculture cannot adapt to climate change, which it is certainly helping to cause along with fossil fuels. The simple fact is that we have to start producing more food that doesn’t involve eroding soil, as is the case today. There are no alternatives or options, and the sooner denial, and confusion from corporate and institutional scientists, ends the faster we can tackle the problem.

Fortunately most of the knowledge required is available in the various organic or sustainable agricultural organisations and practitioners. It is also available in my [organisation’s] own work in reversing desertification over the bulk of Earth’s land area, combined with our ability to enable governments to formulate sound policies using the holistic framework. And clearly we will need to stop the unwise practice of feeding the bulk of grain produced to livestock; livestock is so desperately required to remain on the land in vast quantities in order to help end land degradation.

All this isn’t easy to explain in short sound-bites, as people seem to need these days. But it is relatively easy to begin planning, once we put this whole matter of human survival on the war footing, which we should be doing. When we finally take the matter seriously, and put it as required on a war footing, we will also have to change our financial and economic systems, and also measure economic health.

Obviously—in a finite world—we cannot continue current financial fancy-footing to meet our expectation of constant growth in material terms alone. And any future economy will need to be built on a foundation of agriculture that not only produces food, but provides the only true source of long-term wealth that can sustain any nation.

Even though the term ‘sustainable’ has developed—for better or worse—into a mainstream catch-phrase, would you agree the phrase itself is a myth, if not a dangerous mindset, considering it seems untenable to sustain our current practices? Further to this, does mainstream media have a greater role to play in helping to better educate about these particular issues; are documentary films like The Inconvenient Truth helpful?

I do not like the term sustainable, but prefer ‘regenerative’—a term introduced by Robert Rhodale [an American adherent of organic farming and gardening]—when applied to agriculture.

Frankly, sustainable has been trivialised and has become pretty meaningless, as a result. I regularly find ridiculous projects without the slightest chance of being sustained, but which claim to be sustainable simply because it’s a buzzword, useful in raising funds, etc. Currently the mainstream media simply tends to reflect the mainstream institutional views and this really isn’t helpful. The true leaders of society are freelance writers and smaller interviews, etc, outside mainstream. That said, every now and then mainstream media does investigate new scientific insights and counter-intuitive thinking.

Documentary films are wonderful but, currently, even these reflect the mainstream paradigms. We see great films about charismatic species in the biodiversity loss field, but rarely, if ever, see the simple facts that, without biodiversity loss (from the simple mass of dead plant litter and micro-organisms) man-made desertification would not occur. There are great documentaries on desertification but, again, they reflect mainstream beliefs, not science.

An Inconvenient Truth was effective in creating greater public awareness of the serious nature of climate change. However, the entire emphasis was that fossil fuels are causing the change. I found no mention that agriculture is causing as much impact, and possibly more, than fossil fuels. Nor did it mention the reality that biodiversity loss, desertification and climate change are inseparable. There was no mention of the vast biomass burning that takes place on billions of acres annually in the grasslands that are generating desertification.

Al Gore is not to blame, because he was obviously being advised by mainstream institutional scientists and thus reflected mainstream beliefs. Perhaps as we get beyond denial we will place this entire issue of global environmental degradation on a war-footing, and finally get beyond simple trotting out the same old beliefs. Only then will we finally be able to address desertification/climate change.

At some point the media has to help get the word out that only livestock, properly managed and in far greater numbers, can now do what is required to reverse desertification. Since this view is counter-intuitive, although strongly supported by sound science, we cannot expect mainstream media to touch it and risk ridicule until we get beyond denial and face harsh realities.

Equally as important as media—if not more important—is big business, which is also required to get on board, in realistic terms. The challenge is always the narrow focus of business, which is generally only concerned with the bottom line, growth and profit-making. I accept that you aren’t supportive of a carbon tax, but it is my understanding that a carbon related tax on the biggest emitters will help generate innovation in renewables and green technologies as a means for those businesses to side-step having to pay a carbon tax, particularly—but not exclusively—businesses involved in the resources sector, which mine the earth and therefore impact the soil and land’s ecosystem. Although dealing with fossil fuels is only part of the picture, doesn’t this approach take a necessary step—a catalyst, if you like—for big polluting businesses to regroup and seek alternative means to produce their products or services with a lighter footprint? If successful, couldn’t this model then perhaps be applied to agricultural industries, too?

Although my private view is not supportive of a carbon tax, I do not publicly condemn this approach because every little step forward that alerts people to climate change is important. Apart from reasons previously stated, I fear corporations paying a tax are simply passing it on to consumers as a business cost, while continuing to pay obscene salaries and bonuses with the aim of earning obscene profits.

So, ultimately, corporations will ensure the general population is once more paying the environmental costs of their doing business. And I fear governments will not use those monies wisely, because no government at present has the capability to reverse the desertification that is playing such a major role in climate change over the greatest areas of Earth’s land surface. Planting trees, which usually becomes the promoted way to tackle climate change, doesn’t do what is required over most of the land because rainfall is too low to sustain full soil cover under trees.

For example, I recently heard about the wonderful results of agro-forestry in Niger at a United Nations conference on desertification. Wonderful work that I truly support. However when I asked the speaker what percentage of Niger has adequate rainfall for what was being demonstrated, it turned out to be 11%. What of the rest? And when a speaker reported on similar wonderful results in Kenya and stated that Kenya was soon expected to mandate 100% of farms will have such practices with 10% tree cover, I asked what percentage of Kenya has high enough rainfall for such farming. The answer was 15%. What of the rest?

At some point we have to get serious about desertification, which means reversing it over our vast grasslands and savannas of low rainfall. Something that can only be done managing grasses, and using livestock that are correctly managed. Being counter-intuitive, and with livestock vilified almost as much as fossil fuels, no government will address this issue till there is massive public education. This is because both institutions and democratic governments never lead new paradigm-shifting scientific insights till public opinion shifts. Research and centuries of experience prove this.

Are we looking at a bigger cultural issue here, considering the insatiable consumer culture and general consumption rate of the global population, which the design and advertising professions unfortunately helps propagate? Or is it a case of introducing better consumer goods and services that can meet the rising demand, but also contribute to reducing climate change? For example, are you familiar with the Cradle to Cradle philosophy, developed by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart, where one of their basic principles is Waste = Food?

I am fully aware and supportive of Bill McDonough’s great work, and we need to shift to such practices on a vast scale to reduce our current insatiable appetite for environmental destruction and waste. In so many walks of life and in our economies we need to begin mimicking Nature’s millions of years of tried and tested principles in commerce and industry—just as we are doing in successfully reversing desertification with holistic planned grazing, which is mimicking nature.

Yes, we are looking at vast cultural problems and a need for fresh thinking. We need to engage rapidly in orderly planned changes in our ways. A number of wise and far-sighted people globally have been pointing this out for some time.

However, like my own work, they too face enormous problems—the normal denial that humans practice in the face of looming threat; the orchestrated confusion by some major corporations (just like the tobacco industry did); the mainstream economist fairy-tale world, in which economies cannot be sound if they are not showing constant growth in a finite world. And then there is agriculture, which is ultimately the foundation of all economies, producing more eroding soil than food while population growth continues.

The choices are clear—either governments and people unite globally and put these issues on a war-footing to work out solutions as rapidly as we can, or we continue in denial and orchestrated confusion till we face the issues realistically at far greater cost to humanity. If we leave these issues until a point where denial is no longer possible, apart from the far greater suffering and cost to humanity, we risk the possibility of being too late. That is not alarmism on the part of the people warning, but just sound knowledge of Nature’s functioning in what are called feedback loops that, once started, tend to gather momentum in a runaway manner.

Considering the constant lobbying from various sectors against real action on climate change—and which you and your colleagues have been the victim of—are we suffering from a culture of short-term self interest: Corporate, economic, political, materialistic? Do you think we will ever move toward—what many call—a culture of ‘enlightened self interest,’ where those very same self interests highlighted above can actually be channeled into a greater good for the planet, and all on it?

We can only hope humans survive long enough to begin to make all daily decisions in our lives, and in business, community and governments in our enlightened self interest. Currently we do not do so, not because we are bad, evil or foolish, but because of the way all conscious decisions are made by all humans and have been since our evolution. So even those actively lobbying in denial of anthropogenic climate change—in what they believe might be their business’ self interest, academic ego self interest, or any other self interest—they are accidentally acting against any enlightened self interest for them or their families.

We could look at short-term self interest versus long-term, but in doing so, we soon realize that any action in short-term self interest that damages us later cannot actually be in our self interest, at all. Once we acknowledge this, it is not a great leap to understanding that any decision or action that we take that damages another human or the environment is unlikely to be in our own long-term self interest.

I know religions have tried to get people to act outside their self interest, but all humans, including those doing the most good for humanity, I believe act in their own self interest. I know, that having devoted my life to trying to help others, at times at great cost, I have only acted in my own self interest. I simply cannot live with myself not doing so and thus every action helping others has been in my own interest.

The problem today is unenlightened self interest and all of us are guilty of such actions, including the saints throughout history. This is simply because the core decision making framework (discovered in 1984) of humans has two flaws that make environmental damage almost impossible to avoid in our daily actions. The two flaws concern the fact that every conscious decision is, and always has been, made towards an objective or goal. This is linear in a holistic world. And over more than a million years, most of human existence, we have only had two primary “tools” through which to manage or manipulate our environment at large. I’ve mentioned them earlier, but it’s worth revisiting them again. Those tools? Technology, in ever increasing sophistication, and fire.

Some time around 15,000 years ago, after domestication of plants and animals, we developed the idea of another tool–resting the environment to allow for its recovery. So for all time, right up to today, in our attempts to address climate change we only consider these particular tools through which we apply our creativity, money or labour. In lesser situations, we have long used small living organisms as tools-—insects to protect crops, micro-organisms to make cheese, diseases to kill animals or humans, and more. And of course we always make the decision to use any tool, or take any action, through one of more of many factors—research results, past experience, cost, cash-flow, profitability, intuition, fear, compromise, expediency, expert advice, and so on, endlessly.

From personal life, to family life, through to community and governance, if we peel the onion on even the most sophisticated decision making measures, we consistently find this core approach—whether Bushman family or a sophisticated scientific team at NASA engaged in space exploration.

The second flaw in our core framework is that there is no tool here that can prevent biodiversity loss or desertification over about two thirds of Earth’s land area. Again, only large herbivores and their symbiotic relationship with micro-organisms in their gut, used as tools, can prevent or reverse desertification, including its role in climate change. Of the human tools of centuries, two lead to biodiversity loss and land degradation in seasonal rainfall environments, and especially of low rainfall (these are fire and resting the environment), while resting the environment does lead to stability or recovery in perennially humid environments.

So we now know and understand why, from the earliest days of modern city-based civilization in the Fertile Crescent and the East, where most of today’s great religions developed, no human could avoid environmental degradation through agriculture. For any human, no matter how pious, to make either an ethical or genuinely self interested decision was hardly possible, other than in a permanently humid environment. I include ethical decisions or actions because no action can be truly ethical if it is only directed toward another human, but damages the environment.

[A prominent South African and British Commonwealth statesman,] Jan Smuts, who I believe was one of the brightest minds of the past century, believed humans would ultimately evolve into ethical beings. I believe using the holistic framework in decision making now makes this possible. While developed to enable us to reverse desertification, only after finally getting the framework functioning in all manner of situations, did this fact dawn on me. It was not through wisdom or design, but discovered by accident.

The general denial you refer to is compounded by fear: Fear of losing jobs, fear of losing a competitive business advantage nationally and internationally, and ultimately the fear of how much the investment in stemming climate change will cost—in financial terms. It’s astounding to think there are still climate sceptics generating fear campaigns based on narrow short-term goals. But you and your colleagues are proving that making a significant impact on climate change—reversing desertification, in particular—is not cost prohibitive, that it is very achievable in real terms. Constantly having to highlight the necessary steps we need to take in order to achieve this is one hurdle. But is a greater hurdle proving that implementing measures to reverse climate change won’t cripple economies?

I do believe that the Australian Paul Gilding [an independent writer, advisor and advocate for action on climate change and sustainability] who recently published “The Great Disruption” has outlined and explained far better than I could what is happening and is likely to happen.

Using the Second World War analogy, he has pointed out how, when faced with gradually developing grave danger, we always act in denial, despite those people warning. Only when things reach a point beyond any possible denial do we act collectively. At that point action is far more drastic and costly but, regardless of the cost, we don’t look towards what we might like to do. Instead, we look towards what we have to do—to survive. Climate change appears no different, and our behaviour today mirrors pre WWII behaviour.

There are two essential requirements. We have to stop excessive pollutants, including CO2 from fossil fuels, and develop alternative mass energy forms, including those that will cater for transport using technology. And we have to sequester the already excess ‘legacy load’ of carbon from the atmosphere into the Earth’s soils and oceans, while maintaining the essential normal carbon cycle of life. Now that we do know how to reverse desertification at low cost, while increasing food production and incomes, we also know we can sequester the legacy load through agriculture, but mainly in the world’s vast grasslands and savannas using increased livestock.

For many years I have been saying this is the greatest (and if lost, the last) battle humans will fight—the battle to learn to live in harmony with ourselves and our environment. Gilding explains better than I that we are, despite denying it, soon going to hit the wall. In a finite world, we cannot follow current flawed economic concepts of constantly growing GDP (where building jails scores as important as building schools and infrastructure), while producing more eroding soil than food and causing desertification and climate change. The problems arising, from both faulty economic thinking and environmental degradation, are now hitting all governments like one tsunami following another.

The wall, that Gilding predicts as inevitable, will be hit sometime soon—without reasonable doubt. No business or industry will be too big to fail, and no cost too high. I firmly believe that, inevitably, the later the decision to place the survival of civilization on a war-footing (as post-denial action will be) the higher the cost monetarily—and in human suffering.

So in answer to the kernel of your question, early action (and already we are beyond what would have truly constituted early action) means less disruption, and the rapid developments of many new businesses that are sound socially, environmentally and truly economically. Fundamentally, in future we cannot discount as irrelevant environmental costs, or allow any business to pass on such costs to the public or future generations. Today’s tragedy of the commons financing and economic systems, and most businesses, is they are clearly unsound, ignoring, or passing on environmental costs. Although change is always scary, when we look at things historically, many of the major instances of change, which led to great opportunity and vast new businesses of greater diversity, were initially frightening or risky at first glance.

One area of change that is constantly resisted—reversing desertification—actually offers immediate and vast opportunity: Income, food production, and reduction in costs dealing with the many symptoms of desertification, as well as our greatest source of legacy load carbon sequestration. Rather than fearing change, a more informed public, as well as governments, should be more fearful of not changing.

Where do cities factor into all this? Cities continue to grow as populations increase and relocate from rural to urban areas. And mega cities, like Istanbul, Mumbai, Shanghai and Sao Paulo—to name a few—continue to expand. Could this trend actually inadvertently help divide mass population from dedicated mass grasslands, where the large animal herds that you call for can graze?

Years ago when people began seriously calling for the development of sustainable agriculture we produced a short video, in which I pointed out we could sustain agriculture tomorrow if we could abandon our cities. We should, I urged, be calling for sustainable civilization. Civilization is city-based and so we have to learn fast how to sustain cities. This will take several things that we can foresee, and many good people are already working on them, although not yet with the resources that the gravity of the situation requires.

We need to develop mass benign energy sources, including those suited to transport. We need cities that mimic nature in the cycling of waste, so there is virtually no waste. We need agriculture that is regenerating soils and rebuilding ocean life. And we need to better use available rainfall over all areas of the world’s land, because we are close to fighting serious wars over water. In fact, most of today’s floods and droughts are entirely due to agriculture. The relatively few meteorological droughts and floods are considerably worse than they should be, due to agriculture. These droughts and floods are being caused by agriculture causing climate change, rather than by climate change itself.

Generally speaking, cities will need to be balanced more in tune with the rural populations that surround them. Currently, this is hard for people to envision, due to the belief that most of the world is overpopulated and over-exploited, and mass rural emigration to cities is the result. Added to this, there is, of course, the lure of city amenities.

However, I believe today’s faulty agriculture is largely to blame for rural to urban migration. For crop farming to be ecologically viable we need smaller, more diversified farms. But due to faulty economic concepts, which are mainly aligned to scale, farms have become ever larger, mono-culture establishments that are not ecologically viable. At the same time, ranching lands have tended to be divided into ever smaller units, due to economic policies, death taxes, etc. But to be ecologically viable, they need to be larger units. Fortunately, there is no need to confuse ownership and management. The simple solution is that large owned farms can be divided into smaller management units—and vice versa with ranches.

In addition, under faulty current agricultural/economic policies, the tropical forests are being over-exploited and destroyed while the vastly bigger grasslands and savannas are actually desertifying because of under-exploitation. I repeat the solution: We can only reverse desertification, and all it’s terrible symptoms, by greatly increasing livestock numbers and providing far greater employment and income as we have demonstrated through the work of my organisations. The beneficial economic, social, environmental and military consequences of what I am saying are truly mind-boggling.

One other thing, which is also very clear; factory farming of livestock needs to end—and end fast—because it is so damaging in all respects. For example, the millions of cattle being fed grains in pens need to be returned to the land where they are desperately needed to reverse the desertification in both the U.S. and Australia—to name just two countries leading such socially, environmentally and economically unsound practices. Feeding grain to cattle, which has induced excess oil production post WWII, accompanied by skillful marketing ploys, will hopefully end. In its place, we should see on rangelands far greater production of carbon and water sequestering cattle, producing a more healthy and nutritious beef.

Do you subscribe to some of the more community-focused trends emerging in cities, for example guerrilla gardening, where people in cities anonymously plant vegetables and herbs in public areas for the general community to avail of—free of charge? Added to this, there has been an increase in consumer preference for farmer’s markets, as well as food packaging labels detailing the air miles the food has travelled. Are these trends heading in the right direction?

These are small steps, but steps in the right direction. They mainly indicate growing public unease and concern. And it is only public concern that will awaken us to do what is needed to save city-based civilization and force the political will to act. Viewed, as we need to, on a global scale beyond simple “objectives” like growing or buying locally to reduce what is called the carbon footprint of food, these measures are unlikely to save civilization. They are feel-good moving of the deck chairs on the Titanic. Agriculture, including annual grassland burning and desertification, as I have pointed out many times, is contributing as much, if not more, to climate change than fossil fuels are. We have to attend to that issue globally, putting it on—what Paul Gilding called—a “war-like footing” where cost is not considered. Instead, it is simply seen for what it is: What we have to do for civilization to thrive.

With current agricultural practices being such a concern, and with the increase in the size of cities, what are your views on vertical farming?

I believe the problems associated with sustaining mega-cities are so great that no idea should be condemned or criticized—by me or anyone else—without a context. First, looking at it as the proponents do, without holistic context, vertical farming is an objective: Construct tall buildings designed to grow food that takes up little space, while cycling the water. And they will achieve that objective. More food will result and, as proposed, it is likely to be disease free.

Like all objectives we can almost always achieve them. But when dealing with environmental, social and economic complexity—as this is, we routinely experience unintended consequences later. Long-term, and realistically, such objectives, and the means to attain them, should be tested toward a holistic goal for each city. These will be similar, because humans are. A ‘holistic goal’ is the new concept that drives decision making, policies, projects using the holistic framework to help us deal with the full complexity as is vital.

The ‘holistic goal’ would be a statement of how the citizens want their lives to be, based on what they value most deeply in life. That quality of life would be supported by all the forms of production which would ensure such lives, and that in turn would be tied to the life-supporting environment of the city.

With a ‘holisticgoal’ we would have a context to enable people to assess vertical farming. There are some considerations that appear immediately, such as it being a closed system for water and atmospheric gases but not for nutrients, unless human waste is used somehow to return nutrients. There would be some concerns, which would need assessment, about the food being disease-free, but low in quality, and thus leading to disease. More detail than I have now would be needed to fully test that such buildings and production will truly be socially, environmentally and economically sound, short and long-term, for the city.

This would then automatically involve looking at the state of the environment that sustains the particular city, and what would be needed in that greater area to produce more healthy food, while sequestering legacy carbon and water, also essential for that city to survive. Following this, there would be a stage where one looks into marginal reaction per dollar invested in the vertical farming buildings versus invested in the environment sustaining the city.

I have a gut feel that the return on investment, toward the city’s ‘holistic goal,’ would be considerably higher in the surrounding environment farming areas.

No point going on, but I hope you get the idea. We are in today’s troubles globally because every human decision is made toward an objective but the real world is holistic in nature. Only by making our decisions, actions, policies, and projects using a holistic framework have we any real chance of sustaining city-based civilization.

We’re constantly being bombarded with advertising and marketing campaigns for organic foods, which pitch a more healthy, environmentally-friendly and wholesome option for the every day shopper. Do you think the whole idea of ‘organic food’ is a help or hindrance for the climate change campaign, or does it simply highlight that, as a society, we are currently living on ultra-processed foods?

Once more, growing food organically is an objective, as is producing grass-fed organic beef, for example. Great ideas, but frankly, if we intend to save civilizations, we need to go deeper in our thinking and practices.

Remember all the food in the world was grown organically in the past. And 100% of the beef produced was organic and grass-fed. That is what we had pre-fossil fuels, and that is the agriculture under which some twenty civilizations failed in all regions of the world. The only thing that has changed since then is that we now have an even more environmentally destructive mainstream agriculture, and the problem has gone beyond regional to being globally threatening.

This is not an alarming or doomsday comment, I am only drawing attention to the fact that, throughout history, all humans have made decisions toward ‘objectives’ and there are inevitably unintended consequences. If we, as we must, begin to take current and past destructive agriculture seriously to avert global tragedy, we can solve these problems. Almost all the knowledge we need is available in the various branches of organic, sustainable, biodynamic and mainstream agriculture. It is our core decision-making framework that led to the demise of past civilizations and has led to our current situation. By simply using the holistic framework that addresses the two simple flaws in the core framework, we can—and will—begin developing the new agriculture that can truly sustain cities, sequester the world’s legacy carbon, sequester amounts of rainfall that dwarf the world’s great dams and produce the food we need to sustain cities.

So while supporting organic agriculture and grass-fed beef, I keep appealing to people to look deeper. We need some trusted form of recognition or certification of holistically sound food production—production that is genuinely regenerating soils, communities and environment, on which the entire fate of humanity depends. And to help us reach that point, governments should stop subsidizing environmentally unsound agriculture, as they do today. Governments will not stop supporting agriculture that is endangering humanity till a more educated and aware public demand sound policy.

Politicians support policies subsidizing “cheap food,” as is the case in the U.S., to buy support from an ignorant public. However, in the U.S. case—and it is typical of other governments—it is probably the most expensive food ever produced in history with all the environmental/social costs eventually having to be paid by the public one way or another—flood damaged homes, failing rural towns, emigration to cities, social breakdown, obesity crisis and medical costs, and so on.

Image credits

Allan Savory portrait provided by Allan Savory

Harvesters photograph by Alf Ribeiro/Shutterstock

Factory Chimneys photograph by Vadym Gryga/Shutterstock

Sao Paulo photograph by SNEHIT/Shutterstock

Factory Farm photograph by 1968/Shutterstock

Vertical Farming photograph by Aisyaqilumaranas/Shutterstock

Wally Olins—hugely influential co-founder of the seminal branding firm Wolff Olins and then Saffron Brand Consultants—provides a masterclass on all things identity and branding. This interview was featured in Open Manifesto #5 which focused on the theme ‘Identity’. (Sadly, Wally passed away in 2014, aged 83.)

Note: This interview took place in 2008 and refers to specifics from that time.

Kevin Finn: Briefly, what is the difference, if any, between a corporate identity and a brand identity?

Wally Olins: Well at one level, brand identity and corporate identity and reputation—all of these words—stand for the same kinds of things. But there is no doubt though that the semantic difference between brand identity and corporate identity is profound. ‘Corporate identity’ is an academic, almost loose woolly term, whereas a ‘Brand’ is about money. So when you start talking about a brand you start talking about a subject that is very close to a corporation’s real interests.

Do you mean Corporate Identity is something more cosmetic?

Some people might think so. If you like, it’s a derivation of another phrase ‘house style’ which is no longer used and which implies an external presentation of the organisation. Corporate identity doesn’t necessarily imply external. ‘Brand’ certainly doesn’t imply external, although some people think it does.

But when you talk to a commercial organization about brand strategy they know that it is about money and is therefore worth talking about. The long-term implication is that it puts brand strategists and brand consultants right at the heart of the business world. Corporate identity does not do this. This also has knock on implications we can talk about later if you want, in relation to advertising agencies and so on.

Before we get into that I’d like to talk about a wider issue, about your views on how branding, and its associated activities, has broadly shaped our society today.

Well, again, branding is at the heart of today’s society simply because branding is about manifestations of identity. It’s a demonstration of who and what you belong to, and in a world that is increasingly competitive this is important, not just in commercial life but in every kind of activity you can think of including sport, the Nation, the city, the family. Inevitably then, what brand you choose to belong to, what brand you choose to associate yourself with is of profound significance.

My view is that corporations are increasingly going to be seen as being socially responsible because, if you like, ‘conspicuous consumption’ is to a certain extent giving way to what you may call ‘conspicuous compassion’. That means people who buy things want to be seen to be giving as well as buying. And corporations with which they deal will have to demonstrate an association with some kind of socially responsible activity. And that in turn means a knock on effect for not-for-profits and charities.

When you start looking at that area you can see that the brand becomes particularly significant because the only thoughts that a charity or a not-for-profit can engender in people’s minds, are emotional. You don’t get anything out of going to a charity except emotional satisfaction. And that brings you back to branding again.

With branding being such an integral part of today’s society we’re somewhat over-saturated every day by this branding and general visual stimulus. To some extent, do you think the general public tends to switch off or become numb to all this? Or is it more a case of branding having heralded a kind of visual literacy amongst the general public?

I think, if you’re talking about luxury brands, or consumer brands—the things people buy—there is such a plethora that certainly some people are becoming numb. I think that’s true.

On the other hand, one should never underestimate the ingenuity of commercial organisations to seduce people. And if a commercial organization believes that it will be in its interests to become charitable, or to be seen to become charitable—I don’t want to sound cynical here but the appropriate phrase is ‘enlightened self-interest’—if they see it as being in their interest to be socially responsible, then that is what they will do. And that is a very powerful mechanism for change.

There is another mechanism at work, which is also significant; branding has entered sport, and the arts, and music, and culture in a huge way, both for better and worse. For better: because it makes them more professional, more effective and more available. For worse: because it inevitably has the effect of commercialising them.

In your recent book ‘Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook’ you state there are some who claim: Brands represent the consumerist society at its sickest. How do you respond to critics of branding, for example the Naomi Kliens’ of the world?

Well Naomi Klien has written a very interesting book [No Logo] but it is based on an entirely false premise. The idea she works with is that the brand itself has a morality. In reality the brand has no morality. It simply presents whatever it is representing in the most powerful and visual and emotional form.

Someone, I’m afraid I can’t remember who, recently wrote a book that was violently anti-brand on the basis that ‘brand’ had spawned the fascist Nazi and Communist governments in the 1930s and people have written serous reviews about how appallingly subversive brands are, and so on and so forth. What these people fail-—or choose not to—understand, is that the brand is without morality.

I’ll use an example: the Red Cross or Amnesty International. Do they make the brand good? The ‘brand’ is used, as a tool, by people who want to communicate a series of ideas and if they happen to be good ideas, or beneficial ideas or charitable ideas then the brand is ‘good’. If they are commercially seductive, then some people might regard them as ‘bad’. If they are politically motivated, depending on your own political motivations, people will look at them accordingly. The brand doesn’t have a morality. It is something we use. We need to belong. The brand is a demonstration of belonging. So [No Logo] is wrong. It is based on an entirely false premise.

Brands aren’t good or bad. You could say capitalism is good or bad. What [Naomi Klein] is saying is that capitalist society at its sickest uses brands to seduce and manipulate people. Well it does, if you choose to be seduced and manipulated then you will be. But if you don’t choose to be seduced and manipulated you don’t have to be.

Where in all this does the responsibility of the graphic designer fall? Do they even have jurisdiction? For example, Peter Saville says about branding: The job is to steer and engineer people’s perceptions of things towards a profitable outcome for your clients—that’s the job… It’s a misleading conspiracy, you know. It’s smoke and mirrors. The brief is: make us look like we believe in something, make us or our product look believable, [and] look like we mean something. That’s the job. Isn’t this a sound argument?

Well, I think that is a rather extreme way of putting it but fundamentally, I don’t disagree. Where I think he and I might disagree is in the assumption that one can create a smoke and mirrors idea with which one can consistently fool people. But this is not likely to work for very long because when people find out that what you sold them is rubbish they won’t buy it again. It is a mistaken assumption, as Naomi Klein believes, and Peter may suggest he believes (though, I’m not saying he does believe) that you can fool all the people all the time. You can’t. If you are seduced into buying something and you don’t like it, well you won’t buy it again.

Of course, that is the power of a brand—it makes a company/product very visible.

It makes it very visible and very seductive the first time. And if you don’t like it you won’t have it again. And that’s the point. You know, this is not Nazi Europe. You have a choice. You can turn off. And I can give you a number of examples of this.

MG was a much loved car brand because for over forty or fifty years it built up a reputation for being the first fun car that lots of kids had. It looked lovely and won races, and all that kind of stuff. Over the following thirty years the company which owned MG systematically destroyed it, apparently almost on purpose. They destroyed everything about it: they produced lousy cars, they put the badge on cars that were entirely inappropriate, and so on. In the end, even the greatest admirers and lovers of MG weren’t convinced. They’d buy the old MG cars and not the new ones.

That is a company which destroyed itself because it was cynical and misused its heritage. But people didn’t fall for it. One can think of other examples of products or organizations that destroyed themselves in this way. All the time there are organisations that stop existing because they’re no good any more.

Another example: Andersen Accounting. One of the ‘great five’, the biggest of them all, destroyed itself overnight. It happens again, and again and again. It is absolutely not the case that people are victimized, seduced and manipulated by brands to the extent that they go goggle-eyed and buy them despite anything else—they don’t.

So while I don’t disagree with what Peter Saville says, what I don’t think he takes into account sufficiently is choice. There are hotel chains I don’t go to no matter what the advertising says, no matter what the communication says, because I don’t like the experience.

The issue is, if you’re buying products that are so similar in rational terms, like price, or quality or service, then it is almost impossible to choose rationally. Then you have to choose by emotion.

Another interesting thing Peter Saville said was, and it perhaps has to do with the visibility of a brand and the social responsibility of a brand: “a key thing for a brand is that it must be a regular and frequent ‘news generator’. If it is not generating news it is clipped out of our awareness. And the news it generates must be on message.” Would you agree that, in today’s world, it is the news cycle which dictates how people see a brand in a more detailed way?

Yes and no, because that does not take into account web content. That was true until a very few years ago, simply because all content about anything was generated by the conventional media. Now it can be generated, and is generated, by everybody. So, if I want to make a noise about this watch [pointing to his wrist watch] and there hasn’t been much in the newspapers, or on the radio, or the television recently, I’ll make a noise about it in a blog. And I’ll put it on YouTube, or My Face, or Your Face or Upside down Face, and I’ll make a noise about it, either because it’s lovely, or it’s not lovely, or because I feel like it.

Georg Jensen is the name of this watch brand. Georg Jensen was an incestuous rapist and so on. Obviously, I just made that up. But if I put it on the web somebody would pick it up and there would be a whole performance about it. [Both laughing.]

It’s interesting that you mention Facebook and the web. How has technology changed things in branding?

Well, for people of my generation, not at all. I mean we kind of know about [new technology] and we use it in a hopeless, pathetic sort of way. I am very uncomfortable with it. But I recognise that it has immense power and the power that is has hasn’t even affected your generation [pointing at Kevin Finn], you’re too old for it. The power has affected twenty year olds, twelve year olds.

I was asked yesterday about the Wolff Olins 2012 Olympic logo, which I had absolutely nothing to do with because I wasn’t involved in the company then. And as I mentioned yesterday, the first time I even knew about it was when a journalist phoned me. But I could immediately see the Olympic 2012 logo was not a piece of standard print design.

So what’s it about?. It’s designed for the web. So I looked at it online and it’s marvellous. It changes colour, it jumps around, it works with other logos. So how will [technology] change for generations below you? It will change life hugely. How? A) They will be able to answer back, and they already do. B) Everything will move, and dance and jump around the place. It’ll be quite different.

Of course there is also Wikipedia, where users can add content…

User content is going to be increasingly significant. A great deal of it will continue to be partial, ignorant and ill-informed, as it already is. And there will be more room for the lunatic fringe. It’s a bit like having proportional representation in an electorate.

In England, which is a profoundly democratic country, we have a deeply undemocratic voting system—fortunately. First past the post, wins. Everyone else doesn’t matter. Either you win or you lose. If you win, you’re in. If you lose, you’ve had it. Which means, lunatic fringe parties get nowhere.

Now if you are a democratic society and if you have the web, however lunatic or fringe you may be you can scream and shout as loud as you like. In theory, that’s a great thing but in practice it’s not, because it encourages maniacs of every description to make much more noise than they deserve.

I’d like to revisit the 2012 Olympic logo. You quite rightly say that this is for the generation to come. But it’s only a few years away. Will this logo alienate the older generation because it is so focused on the coming generation?

The older generation always get alienated. I mean people from my generation are always walking around saying things were much better when they were younger. But I don’t agree. If anything, things were much worse when I was young.

If you read any novel from, for example, the late 19th Century you’ll see how much better people thought things were in the early 19th Century. Or you can see early Victorians talking about how much better Georgian society was. Old people think young people are hopeless and young people think old people are kind of half-witted, which may well be true [smiling].

You also mention in the introduction to your book ‘Wally Olins: The brand Handbook’, that: ‘A brand is simply an organization, or service with a personality.’ Is branding easier or harder to achieve with actual personalities at the helm of a company, the most obvious example being Richard Branson?

It’s much easier at one level because you can focus on that personality and people can recognise that person. But it’s also much harder because the personality is not everybody’s choice and also you can’t control how the personality behaves.

If you’re looking at Nation branding, and that whole area, in which I am very much engaged, you can see how perceptions of the United States have changed in just a very short time. Right now as we talk in November 08, 2008—Bush is bad, Obama is good. [Both laughing.]

Now clearly [laughing] that is so simplistic in relation to a country like the United States as to be laughable, I mean we both laughed when I said it. But personalities are incredibly important in making imagery really palpable for people. But they are very dangerous because they are hard to control. You don’t know what those personalities are going to do.

Take for example Michael Jordan for Nike: suppose he turns out not to be such a nice chap after all? So I’m personally, very, very, [pause]… ambivalent about the use of personalities in the development of brands—very ambivalent about it. Other people take a more sanguine view.

You mentioned Barak Obama. In The Wall Street Journal recently, when John Maeda commented on his new role as president of the Rhode Island School of Design he stated: ‘the president is the human logo (of a school)’.¹ If this is the case, one could argue the new president elect Barak Obama has, and will continue to dramatically change Brand America. Would you agree?

Well it depends of course on what Obama does but it will change perceptions about America hugely. You can’t look at any major country without seeing the leading figures for those countries because they are figureheads.

[The Russian President, Dmitry] Medvedev is seen to be the puppet of Putin. And Putin is still seen to be in charge. For better or for worse that is the way Russia is perceived. The President and Prime Minister of Lithuania don’t matter much because nobody knows them outside Lithuania, and there may be a few places where people don’t know them inside the country either, but not very many…

[Laughing] You mentioned you are involved in the branding of Nation States. Do you think countries really need to have branding? I understand that we can think of Britain and The Netherlands and Japan and we can recognise their values, traditions and culture. But this perception isn’t manufactured in any way. It happens organically and by its own accord. So do you think a manufactured branding process, for an organically established national identity, is necessary or good?

Well, the first thing is: it happens anyway. So whether you attempt to manage it or you don’t attempt to manage it, it’s there. All things being equal, you are more likely to be influential if you attempt to manage it as opposed to not doing so. That’s the first point.

The second point is that you can reasonably assume that the branding process within most countries is not really managed well because all the people you are going to deal with are so consumed with their own area of activity, whether it’s tourism, brand export or foreign direct investment, and so jealous of everybody else’s area of activity, and so determined to hang on to budgets and power, that they don’t cooperate much.

Even if you don’t like [the idea of branding countries], you can derive some satisfaction from the thought that it doesn’t work very well. However, there are some nations that, broadly speaking, have a perception that is kind of in line with the reality. Many, however, don’t. The perception is out of date because the reality has changed.

Poland is an example of a country which has changed dramatically over the last 25 years. But the perceptions of Poland are still stuck in the eighties and early nineties—they have not changed sufficiently. And that does affect tourism and inward investment and brand export and its proper that perceptions should be changed to align with a changing reality.

Malaysia is an example of a country where (whatever you choose to call it) the ‘country of origin’ effect is more or less negligible. The shirt doesn’t increase in price if it has the label ‘Made in Malaysia’ appear on it. I mean, at a very simple level, if it did help to have ‘Made in Malaysia’ on the shirt then Malaysian products would earn more foreign exchange and that would help the economy of the country.

So there are issues here [in relation to branding countries] to do with economics, with finance, with inward investment. There are issues to do with culture. There are issues to do with understanding and misunderstanding. I mean, I’ve got some research about Germany and about America, and about Britain, and when you look at the misperceptions you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. And it’s better if one tries to deal with these.

[Laughing] You mentioned the cultural aspects and the understanding and the misunderstanding between countries. There is a design consultant [Simon Hong] based in Sydney who has recently branded Abu Dhabi. In your opinion, how can someone who is not immersed in that culture, who doesn’t live there, how can they brand a city or a country?

Well, your example relates to a country which is an artificial construct. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, all those Gulf countries are new. They didn’t exist before. They emerged through the discovery and development of huge natural resources.

But the question you are asking is: how can a foreigner understand a nation with whom he/she has no kinship? First of all, if you’ve got any sense, you don’t work alone. You bring in expertise. You read some history and you work with people who understand the country a lot better than you, or who are much closer to it than you are. You work with historians, cultural experts, business people and that way you get to understand the country.

I like it because my training was in history, and I read a great deal of history and have a strong interest in anthropological and sociological matters. I like it and I enjoy it, and I think I am quite good at it [smiling].

[Smiling] I guess the other side of the situation is that being a foreigner provides some objectivity. In this instance one has no ties to a perceived tradition, which has to be projected…

Precisely. And if you have—I guess you could say, ‘courage’—you say what you think. And people inside the country find it hard to be objective, whereas those outside the country might find it easier to be objective. A certain amount of charm and brutality goes down as well. One needs that mixture [laughing].

[Laughing] As a matter of interest, now that we are talking about countries and branding, what are your views on Brand Australia?

[Pause] I think it is one of the less unsuccessful efforts. I don’t think I could go quite so far as to say it is very successful because very few nation branding programmes are. But I think it is clever. I think it gets to the point about Australia, this kind of brash, self-confidence… I think it is rather good.

No doubt there will be many Australians happy to hear that it is—as much as it can be—a successful brand.

Now, you mentioned the current global economic downturn in a previous conversation. Usually, when times are prosperous, branding, advertising and design are pretty much in favour because these are perceived as a luxury, which companies can afford. In today’s financial climate, priority lists in companies will change and the ‘luxury’ communications services may well fall to the wayside. In your opinion, do you think that branding and communications are more essential in an economic downturn, or is it justified to cut these from the company priority list?

I think if I was talking to a large newspaper, or if I was on television or the radio, and someone asked me this question my answer would have to be ‘now is the time when you have to spend more’ [smiling]. If you want the truth, if you want to know what I really think: being cautious at this time, for most companies, is sensible—until things settle down a bit.

Nobody knows how deep this crisis is going to be, how long it’s going to last. Nobody knows how consumers are going to be affected. Nobody knows whether this will profoundly change the spirit of the times—nobody really knows.

But, because I am an entrepreneur, I have to be optimistic, as entrepreneurs are. So my inclination is to think that the crisis is not going to be as long or as deep as people think. But that’s possibly wishful thinking.

If I were in this situation and I were running an organization where I didn’t actually need [branding and design] right now I’d say: “I’m going to wait for a few months and see what happens”. And that is what is happening with many of our clients. That’s the bad side or the reverse side of the coin.

The obverse side of the coin is that so many companies have gotten themselves into so much trouble, particularly in the financial services sector, that if they are going to try to regain trust they’re going to have to, if you’ll forgive the expression, rebrand themselves. They’re going to be doing different things, or the same things in different ways, and they’re going to have to—to coin a John Major ² phrase—‘Get back to basics’. They’re going to have to stop bull-shitting and start trying to regain trust. A certain amount of humility wouldn’t do any harm, either. An apology wouldn’t be unwelcome.

Some of these financial services companies will be doing slightly different things in slightly different ways and will have to project a different idea of themselves. Some will be merging and acquiring. My judgement is that Relationship Management will come back into demand. If we’re talking about high-tech and high-touch, high-touch is going to come back and high-tech is going to be more subordinate. That means financial service institutions are gong to say: “Look, we’ve got a human face after all—look at that!” And that’s going to entail a bit of rebranding.

So it isn’t all bad news. In fact, we’re actually working for a very large financial institution right now on a major rebranding programme.

Of course, it’s very difficult to put a value on a brand, to decipher its equity and worth. Perhaps it’s similar to the world of art where Damien Hirst believes art “is only worth what the next person will pay”…

That’s my view entirely. I think these econometric measurements about the value of a brand are utterly worthless. I know people love them. I know people want to put them on their balance sheets. I’ve written about this in my new book (Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook).

I don’t know what the econometric brand evaluation of Lehman Brothers was in July of 2008, but it certainly wasn’t the same as it was in October. Organisations like figures. They think they are ‘facts’. But many of these so-called facts are not facts at all. They are facts in inverted commas—they are faction. They are an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable.

There is only one way to determine the value of a brand: How much are people willing to pay for it? There is no other way. The rest is a chimera, a mirage.

The idea that a brand is an asset is one of the reasons why accountants have trouble…

Of course it’s an asset. It’s a huge asset. But it doesn’t mean you can precisely value it because it can be struck by lightening any time. It is not a piece of capital equipment. It is an intangible asset, which means exactly what it says-—it is literally intangible.

Like market shares that are driven externally by forces beyond one’s control…

Exactly. And, you see, one of the problems we have is that business is dominated by organizations like McKinsey,³ who believe that if you can’t quantify it, it isn’t real.

Well, if you took that view, you can forget about music, and art, and Shakespeare, and theatre. That view is absurdly rationalistic. But if you go to business school—I teach in business schools—they’re trained to quantify the unquantifiable.

I’ll finish on this question. In your most recent book Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook you say that: “branding in the 21st Century will become increasingly important, not just for commercial reasons but for cultural reasons and a sense of place, as well as differentiating ourselves and our aspirations from those around us.” Do you see this as being important for companies and organizations or does it extend to a wider view, for example countries, cities and individuals?

Oh, countries, cities and individuals. I think branding is a phenomenon that… I said somewhere or another that: Branding is the greatest gift that commerce has given to culture.

I think increasingly, the next four or five decades will be important for cultural branding. If you look now at the way huge cultural organizations are becoming global, for example The Louvre in Abu Dhabi, or The Met. Now I’m not suggesting that it’s all good. What I am saying is that whatever it is, if it can be made more accessible to people it will be done through branding. So sport, the arts, culture, universities—for example, three or four universities now have campuses all over the world. These aren’t campuses in the traditional sense, they are franchises—the word ‘Columbia’ or ‘Harvard’, or whatever it is, will be treated as a franchise in the same way ‘McDonald’s’ is. That is a rather overworked way of putting it, but there is truth in there.

But that does not mean the world will become homogenous and bland because, however globalized the world is or becomes in terms of universities or McDonald’s, or whatever, there are always new people and new companies and new ideas that pop up.

If you want to have a little instance of this, Wolff Olins is now part of Omnicom, so in a sense it has become part of a major communications empire. But my colleagues and I have started something else, which isn’t like Wolff Olins. Or at least if it has certain characteristics of Wolff Olins it also has certain characteristics that Wolff Olins couldn’t possess because we are independent. All the locations are part of one office—no profit centres. You can’t do that in a big company. How do you make it work if there are no profit centres?

Of course you can also have an icon, for example the Sydney Opera House building, which can work as an extension of the organization’s identity, become a brand in itself, or be part of Brand Australia…

Or the Guggenheim in Bilbao—all that kind of stuff is going to happen, all of the time. So I don’t think we need to worry about the future of branding. It certainly won’t be bland!

Image credits:

Wally Olins portrait provided by Wally Olins

Abu Dhabi identity / Shutterstock

Legendary Art Director/Designer George Lois talks about his politics, discusses his unique relationship with Esquire editor Harold Hayes, reveals how Paul Rand influenced Bill Bernbach and debunks the Mad Men TV series. This interview was featured in Open Manifesto #6, which focused on the theme ‘Myth’. (Sadly, George passed away in 2022, aged 91.)

Note: This interview took place in 2011 and refers to specifics from that time.

Kevin Finn: I’d like to start with a recent topic. Last week, millions of people around the world welcomed the death of a symbol—Osama Bin Laden. However, amid all the celebrations there’s been a debate around whether capturing Bin Laden, rather than killing him, would have provided the opportunity to demystify and weaken his influence. In your opinion, has killing Bin Laden inadvertently strengthened the symbol and created an Islamist-style Che Guevara equivalent?

George Lois: Well, first I should say a little bit about what I’ve always believed in. I’m anti‑war from day one. I’m a left‑winger. People in America are afraid to admit they’re liberals. I’m not afraid to admit I’m a left‑winger and I don’t give a shit what anybody thinks.

I was forced to fight in the Korean War and I understood first hand the stupidity of the war. That was one of the first of our stupid wars. Actually, we were defending a racist, a fascist premier of South Korea. I mean, people still think the Korean War might have been a good war. As for Vietnam, I think it was kind of a war/genocide.

I went to Korea on a troop ship with 5,000 guys. We went to Yokohama port, Japan, before we continued on to Korea. There were 5,000 guys leaning over the edge of the boat looking down at the people on the port. They were a completely different culture. There were a lot of women dock workers. They were all walking in clogs, etc. And 4,900 of the 5,000 guys were yelling, “Yay, yay, socha hachi. Hey, hey, gooks,” and they were doing slant‑eyes, etc. I realized—though I’ve always understood—that I was living in a racist society.

In fact, when I just turned 20 I took basic training in Camp Gordon [now called Fort Eisenhower], Augusta, Georgia, in the middle of the Jim Crow Deep South. Colored drinking fountains, white drinking fountains… racism all over. So I understood racism back then, and I understood wars that we were involved in were stupid, including the Iraq War.

But, if you ask me about Obama and whether we should have done what we did, you bet your ass. I changed from being a guy against war and violence to a guy that said, “Kill that motherfucker.” I mean, he came down here and he did what he did to America. I don’t believe we did anything wrong. I think Obama did everything exactly right. I’m with the Navy Seals. I fought alongside the Navy Seals when I was in Korea.

So, as to whether America did the right thing, and whether Obama did the right thing, I’m with him 1,000 percent. Am I with him about his decision a year and a half ago to increase the war in Afghanistan? I thought he was absolutely wrong. I’m still furious at him. But I’m still with him because I think he’s 1,000 percent, 2,000 percent better than anybody else we could have had. I think we got the right President at the right time. But I’m still furious that we’re not the hell out of Afghanistan.

But your specific question was about Osama Bin Laden. He should rot in motherfucking hell. I have a very personal hatred of him above and beyond of what he did because my best friend was a football player, a great buddy of mine by the name of Dick Lynch. His 28‑year‑old son was in the first building at 9/11… which killed him. His father and I went down to ground zero the next day and we were allowed to go all the way through because he was a football player. He was from Irish heritage. He played with Notre Dame.

All the cops and all the firemen were Irish and they all know him and they let us go all the way down right into ground zero. We had to look through barrels of arms and legs that they’d found just to try to identify him. If I could have, I would have gone to Afghanistan as a Lone Wolf, found Bin Laden and killed him myself. I would have slit his throat. I ain’t got no problems with killing Osama, if that’s the question.

Obama said it was justice, and I say it’s justice and revenge. I mean I’m a macho son-of-a-bitch. And at the same time I’m very much against wars because I think it puts young men and women in harm’s way. It’s not the direction our country needs to go in. For many years, our male, conservative sons-of-bitches, Republican goddamn leaders have taken us there. But Obama getting Osama Bin Laden was just masterful, and I love the President for doing it.

It’s interesting, Bin Laden, and Al Qaeda, and groups like that have really understood how ‘sensational terrorism’ can use news media as a powerful promotional tool. It’s probably not too dissimilar to the Vietnam War, which was the first televised war, where the American establishment was trying to tell the country “we’re winning the war, here it is televised, we’re doing so well.” They were using television as a sensational tool, which ultimately backfired…

Oh sure, they were using it. I mean it’s amazing that they were showing plenty of goddamned combat on American television… You know, you would think the opposite. I mean, George W. Bush—that son-of-a-bitch— wouldn’t allow any photographs of American coffins returning to America. I fought in a war where we lost over 30,000 men, as many men in three years as Vietnam lost in six years. The Korean War was twice as vicious as Vietnam, but nobody really understands that. I think I was the only guy in the army that knew it was a bullshit war.

So, I’m a big‑mouthed Lefty. I mean, if you look at my Esquire covers… You can smell my politics.

Yes, your political and social views are seemingly inseparable in much of your work, particularly of that era— the ‘60s and ‘70s. Was that something you fought to include, or was it the culture of the time, which welcomed that kind of approach?

No, I lost a lot of business by showing who I am. I really lost a lot, even later than that, in ‘75 when I got Muhammad Ali to join me and start raising hell about Rubin Hurricane Carter, who was absolutely screwed and had already been in jail for 15 years or so for supposedly killing three white people.

I got dozens of celebrities to back us, and I was raising hell with getting Rupert Hurricane Carter out of jail. He was being depicted as this crazed “nigger.” I lost two big accounts because of it. One client called me in and said, “Stop working for the nigger.” I said, “Well, I’m not gonna stop working for him because the guy’s innocent.” He said, “Lois, I just told you—if you don’t stop working for the nigger, you’re fired.” I said, “Well, I guess I’m fired—so go fuck yourself.”

So I lost the client, who at that time was my biggest account. It was a six million dollar account and I walked out. I went back and told everybody in the agency. You know, when you tell people that you lost a big account, everybody’s scared shitless that they might get fired. Right? I remember I called everybody in, and there was like 60 people. I told them the story: “I told the guy to go fuck himself so the account is gone.” But, you know, 60 people gave me a standing ovation. How’s that for good people? People who understood what I was about; somehow I picked the kind of people that I wanted to work with, you know? People who cared about doing good things, about helping the poor people and helping the disadvantaged, and doing things like finding the racial injustice— all of the good stuff that I learned from my father, to tell you the truth.

So I was controversial from that point of view, but it was funny the way I lost accounts but not my reputation… I’ve got a reputation of being some kind of legend. They call me genius all the time. I did revolutionary, breakthrough advertising and editorial work. So I get unbelievable respect and good fame, and well-deserved fame by the good people of America. So I never really had a problem with how I feel about the war and how I feel about the government, etc. I guess somehow I’ve been lucky. Maybe it’s going to hit me sooner or later.

[Laughs] For me, it says more about integrity and principles than anything else and you made this visible through many of the Esquire covers. As for Esquire, there wasn’t a magazine like it before you got involved, and there hasn’t been anything like it since. Why do you think that’s the case?

Well, there were good magazine covers before. I think a lot of the good ones were—I’d swear they were—[American painter and illustrator] Norman Rockwell covers. But they were all about how wonderful American life is, and how homely and beautiful everything is. As he got older, he did some really good paintings, magazine covers of young black kids going to school with the cops watching them. But as far as just terrific covers, Norman did covers that America would watch—and get excited about.

And maybe there were some Life magazine covers along the way, due to their great photojournalism. But every once in a while they did a photograph that just got knocked back… When I did the covers for Harold [Hayes]… Actually, you know, before that, I hadn’t done a cover in my life. I don’t know if you ever read about how it happened…

Tell us…

Harold asked me to go out for lunch with him. I didn’t know what he wanted. Basically, he said he’d been reading about me— this “hotshot art director.” It was the first time an ad agency had an art director’s name on the door. At the time, we were the second creative agency in the world, after Doyle Dane Bernbach, so he was reading about Papert Koenig Lois—George Lois, and blah, blah, blah. Something made him call me up, because I was an art director and a designer. At lunch, he simply asked me if I could help him figure out how to do better covers. I said, “Well, how do you do them now?” He went through this litany of how he, and the other people in the art department, and the writers were all involved. He explained there were eight or nine or ten people involved in the decision every month, because they knew what was going to be in the issue. Between them, they decided what story should be made into a cover; what story deserved a cover.

He went on to explain that they all then went away to think about it and then came back in a couple of days with an idea or two. They’d pick three, or four, or five that they liked, and cut them. In the middle of it, I said, “Woah! Woah! Group fucking grope!”

He said, “What?” He was a Southerner, you know, and I was a little worried about it when I first met him because every Southerner I knew was a goddamn racist. But he turned out to be a trombone‑playing, ex‑Marine liberal.

And a maverick…

Which is an oxymoron.

[Laughs] Yeah.

[Laughs] In any case, he said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Well, you can’t do great work with six or seven people working on something. Great work is done by one or two people, together.” He looked at me like I was crazy. Everybody in America—and everybody in the world—talks about “teamwork!” And I’m sitting there saying, “Teamwork? Bullshit!”

“So, what are you talking about?” he asked. I said, “You obviously don’t have anybody there who knows how to do great covers because, otherwise, they’d come in with something and they’d show it to you and you’d fall down.” So I said, “Go outside [of the magazine] and get somebody.” He said, “I…you…I…you can’t… You mean, a designer?” I said, “Yeah.” He replied, “Well, how could they possibly understand my magazine?” I said, “What are you talking about? I’m an advertising guy. I read people. One day they come to me talking about their account. And if I get the account, within two or three days, I know more about their business than they do.” I told him I understand what they’re saying and I understand what they’re doing, and I understand how to make them famous.

I told him, any great advertising person or designer can look at the issue and figure out something that knocks you out and sells the magazine. And he said, “Well, who could do that?” So I started to give him names. Finally, after I gave him three or four names, he says, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” And with a Southern accent, “Hey, George, you’ve got to do me a favor, old pal.” I said, “Yeah?”… “You’ve got to do me just one goddamn cover because I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

And that’s when I said, “OK. I’ll do you a cover. I owe you one cover. Tell me what’s in the issue.” He said, “Well, I got to go back and get…” I said, “No, no! Just tell me. Tell me right off the bat, right off your head, right now. Tell me what’s in the issue.” He said, “Yeah, but I need a cover in three or four days.” I said, “Yeah. OK. Just tell me. Tell me!”

So he told me. I didn’t even take notes. One of the things he mentioned was that there was going to be a spread on Floyd Patterson, who was the world’s boxing champion at the time… He was fighting [Sonny] Liston, who was a nine to one underdog. I said, “OK. I’ll bring you a cover. I’ll send you a cover next week.” He said, “Next week. Really? What do you mean, a sketch?” I said, “No, a finished cover.” He thought I was crazy.

Anyway, when he told me he was doing something on Patterson and Liston, I immediately knew what the cover should be. Because I’m a fight fan, and I knew Floyd Patterson, and I watched him train. I knew that Liston would beat the living shit out of him. I just knew it. Even though Liston was the underdog.

I immediately called Harold Krieger, my photographer, “Get me a guy who’s built like Patterson.” We shot at St. Nicholas Arena, which is a fight arena up there. I think it was a Sunday. I got the pictures on a Monday morning, comped the cover and sent it over Monday afternoon, I think. Or maybe it was Tuesday morning, I forget.

About an hour later, Harold called and he said, “George.” I said, “Yeah?” He said, “I never saw a cover like this in my life.” I said, “No shit.”

And then he said, “But you’re calling the [result of the] fight.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “But suppose you’re wrong.” I said, “Harold, I’m not wrong. I’m 100 percent sure. But look at it this way. You’ve got a 50/50 chance. If I’m right and the cover comes out—and I know I’m right—you’re Joe Genius, and everybody in America is going to say, “Whoa. Read Esquire magazine.” What a ballsy thing! And if it’s wrong—you’re fucked! You’re probably fucked, anyway.”

You know what he said to me? “You’re crazy.” And you know what I said back? “Harold, no, no, no. I’m not crazy. You’re crazy, because you’re going to run it.”

[Laughs] And he did.

And he did. And now, let me tell you, I found this out many years later—six years later. Someone put together a book about all this, researched the memos and everything. When Harold showed my cover to the other people at Esquire, a couple people said, “Wow, it sure is different.” But almost all of them said, “But if he’s wrong about the fight, we’re dead.”

One of the Esquire founders, Arnold Gingrich, said no way, you can’t run this. Harold had just become the editor after a three‑way fight between him and two other editors. So he was pretty much on his own when he came to see me about covers. And, even though he had just gotten the job, he said to Gingrich, “If you don’t run this cover I’m quitting.” I didn’t know about this—and he didn’t tell me about it. Harold was a man’s man. He was the editor; he made the decision…

Anyway, Gingrich “let him do it” and when the issue came out—a week before the fight—it was bombed, because of all these sports records. All the sports writers—everybody—bombed it, saying how wrong it was, that it was ridiculous, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In fact, in that issue there’s a publisher’s page by Gingrich, which says, “You see that cover? We didn’t do it. A designer by the name of George Lois did it. We think he’s wrong.”

You’re kidding!

I swear to God. Absolutely. I tell you, if you can find an original issue you would piss in your pants when you read it!

In any case, the night of the fight Liston just massacred Patterson in the first round. The next morning there were 100 articles all over TV, etc., etc. about how Esquire had called the fight. As for Esquire? I think they tripled their newsstand sales.

And I also found out, only four or five years ago, that Esquire were a couple of weeks, maybe a month, from going bankrupt. A few years ago Vanity Fair did a big story about me and the Esquire covers. They got together all the living guys, all of the editors, the writers, etc, for a photograph. I met many of them for the first time at that photo shoot because I never went to Esquire magazine. I always worked from my agency…

So you just did the covers and sent them over?

Yeah. I never went over there. I think a lot of people believe I was the art director of the magazine. I was never the art director. I just did their covers. And I did the covers my way.

But, when I met all these guys at the photo shoot, they were all telling me, one after the other—Peter Bogdanovich, Gay Talese and Nora Ephron—how they didn’t expect to get a paycheck that month. That’s how serious things were for Esquire. I didn’t know anything about it. Harold never told me any of this stuff. But almost immediately after I started doing the covers, their circulation went from 400,000 to almost two million.

You see, Harold understood it could take a long time, and a lot of hard work and risk, for people to understand how good a magazine is, and that the fastest way was to do something that knocked people on their ass. He had that kind of instinct, and it paid off for him.

I mean, to this day people say, “Gee, George you had some guts to do those covers.” But I say, I didn’t have any guts to do them. I did them because I wanted to do them. It was Harold Hayes who had guts… I mean, he had the biggest balls in the world. And I was saying this even before I knew all the back story about him threatening to quit if they didn’t run that first cover…

That’s part of the rarity I’m talking about with regards to magazines today.

Well, when you ask why can’t it happen today, it’s because there are no Harold Hayes. But I’m not saying there aren’t great editors. I think David Remnick of The New Yorker was a great editor, Graydon Carter [of Vanity Fair] is a great editor. But there ain’t nobody yet that’s had guts like Harold; it’s beyond guts. Anybody who wanted me to do covers would know right off the bat what the ground rules are, I would do the fucking covers my way. But nobody’s going to buy that today, not in this chicken-shit world. The only guy who brought it was Harold Hayes because he was just special; he was an incredible guy who understood, who had the instincts and the understanding… He understood: if you’re working with talent, you let the talent do it!

Remember my first lunch with Harold when I talked about the “fucking group grope?” I said to Harold, “Do you sit down with Gay Talese or Norman Mailer and have discussions—and a group grope—about how an article should be written?” He said he didn’t. “So then why the fuck would you do it on a magazine cover?” He looked at me like I was crazy, but when I proved to him that I could understand what the magazine was all about, he understood.

By the way, when I did those covers every month, I’d meet Harold first. We’d have lunch every month at the Four Seasons, which was a great restaurant. He gave me a rundown of what was good in the issue. He and I would decide what the cover would focus on, without any regard to what he thought was the most important article in the magazine.

Once, there was a big story on what was going on with the avant-garde art movement and I’d said I had to do a cover about that. So I got Andy [Warhol] drowning in a can of tomato soup. Once there was a story about the lieutenant who was responsible for the My Lai Massacre—killing 500 civilians: kids and women—I knew I had to do a cover on that.

After I did three or four covers, we really trusted each other. I called him up and said, “Look, I want to do a cover, are you with me? I want Muhammad Ali, I think he’s a great man. You with me?” He said, “Yeah, I am. I think he’s a great man, too.” I said, “Everybody in America hates him. The blacks hate him because he changed his religion from Christianity. The whites hate him because he’s the big bad black kid… Everybody maybe hates him because he won’t fight for America. They say he’s a traitor. I think he’s great. I want to do a cover… I’m going to do a cover of him, showing him as St. Sebastian.”

I then said, “Now Harold, we’re going to get into big trouble when we run it. You might lose a lot of advertising.” “Yeah!” he said. [Laughter] Just that one word—“Yeah!” That’s how great he was. Because he understood when you do a really, truly great cover you can lose advertising. But he didn’t give a shit, because he knew he’d get the advertising back—two‑fold, or three‑fold—in a couple of months. He knew that a great cover would excite everybody in America. The really intelligent readers in America would just say, “What a great magazine.”

When I met you and heard you speak in Dublin, it was very clear to me that you’re a great persuader. You’ve been able to persuade Andy Warhol, Muhammad Ali, Richard Nixon, Mick Jagger, William Calley, and lots of people, to do things that you needed them to do…

Yeah. Well, there’s no doubt I am a persuader. The point is, I know how to “sell.” But it ain’t bullshit.

Exactly.

I’m telling them what I really think. What I know in my guts, what I know in my heart. Anybody I talk to, they may not even really understand what I’m talking about but they look me in the eye as if to say, “This kid, this guy really knows. The guy really believes this.” As I got older, as I had more and more success, it got to the point where people would say, “Boy, this guy really believes in this thing—and look at his track record.”

So I got a lot of people to say “yes” who didn’t quite understand what I was doing, even though I explained the shit out of things. Campaign, after campaign, after campaign; I got away with doing it my way, and my way would make these guys multimillionaires… would make some of them billionaires.

And to this day I’m still working day and night. I’m working on some great projects. I get the big idea, I sell it, I show it, and I don’t think I’ve had an argument with a client in the last 10 years. They just look at me and say, “Yeah!” I say, “Yeah? Do you understand what I’m doing?” Sometimes I make them tell me what I’m doing. Sometimes—nine out of ten times—they explain it, and then some. So, for a creative person, the fight is to find great clients. And I’ve been lucky. Have you ever seen that documentary film, Art & Copy?

No, I haven’t seen it, yet.

It’s amazing. I was part of the film and I got people from all over the world calling me wanting me to do advertising, after they’ve seen it. I guess there were some moments in it where I was pretty passionate.

But a guy calls me up and says, “Just saw the film.” I said, “Yeah?” He said, “I’ve invented some eyeglasses for people who wear different close-up glasses and far-away glasses, like a lot of people over 40 years old do. I’ve invented prescription glasses with a lens that magnetically connects to a frame that I designed—a very special frame—with a little lever over the bridge of the nose. Using it you can focus on reading a newspaper, looking at a television set, or a movie, or a mountain range, all with the same pair of glasses.”

I said, “You’re kidding. That’s amazing. What’s the name of the glasses?” He said, “Trufocals.” I’m like, “What the fuck is Trufocals? What a terrible name.” He said, “What do you mean terrible? That’s the name. It’s on all the packaging now. It’s on all the glasses and we’re ready to advertise.”

I said, “Well that’s a terrible name.” I said, “I tell you what. I’ll do it if you let me rebrand it.” He thought I was crazy. “Rebrand it?” he said. “Yeah,” I said. “Look, this is exciting. Give me three or four days. Let me work on it.”

He’s based in California so I said, “If you’re coming in from California, I’ll show you what I’m talking about.” Anyway, he did. He talked to his marketing people and he said, “Let’s go talk to this crazy son-of-a-bitch.” He came in and I convinced him in about a second, because I showed him the name I came up with. I did a logo and a name called “Superfocus.” I also did a campaign with famous people putting on these glasses saying, “Now I see the world in Superfocus.” If you go to my website you can look them up…

But he instantly understood; threw out everything they’d done before and spent two months redoing everything—with a lot of money. At the beginning, we were going to run a three-month long campaign. But after two weeks, he calls me up and he says, “George, we’ve got to stop the advertising.” I said, “Why? What’s wrong?” He said, “George, we’re getting thousands of orders… We can’t keep up with making the glasses to fill the orders.”

I’m finding clients like that today… Clients who are entrepreneurs, who are all ‘big idea’… Really, I’m working on more exciting projects now than ever before.

In 2000, I retired. Ever since then my wife says, “George isn’t retired, he’s just tired.” I work night and day. I work with my son, just he and me, and no other people around. He’s a master on the computer—masterful. He was a photographer, and when I retired from my agency I said, “Luke, you’ve got to find me a young guy who is really terrific on the computer.” I worked with a lot of kids at the agency, and I could never work the goddamned computer. At the same time, I could never really teach them the power, I could never really make them understand, you know, what a great tool the computer is. They just didn’t get it; they didn’t get interested in what I was doing. They were just interested in the tool.

But Luke said, “Hey Pop, let me do it. I’ll do it.” I didn’t think he could, but the year I retired—or thereabouts—he went out and he bought all the equipment. I sat down one day and I said, “Holy shit, I hope the kid knows what he’s doing.”

I told him I wanted to do this, and this, and this, and this. So I’m sitting there writing, and he does it in front of my eyes. He and I have been working together ever since. We’ll work on four or five, maybe six projects at the same time—just me and him, alone.

That’s really nice.

I love it. I tell people: I used to go to the agency and, in the morning, when everyone came in, I’d have to say hello to 50, or 60, or 70 people. That takes a lot of time.

But now you’re freed up to actually work.

[Laughter] Yeah, now I go over to Luke’s studio and say, “How you doing, boy?” He says, “Hi, Pop.” We give each other a kiss. We sit down—bada boom, bada bing boom, boom, boom, boom…

[Laughter] Now… speaking of working, and speaking of advertising, you’ve been very vocal about the Mad Men TV series, which you say misrepresents the advertising industry by ignoring the dynamics of the creative revolution that changed the world of communications. You’ve said that mortal sin of omission makes Mad Men a lie. That’s pretty vitriolic. Is there anything in Mad Men that you think is even close to the truth of your first hand experience?

Well, I don’t know. I mean, I could be missing some of it because I never watched much of it. I’ve had people say, “Well, you know, I tell you George, there was something I saw there that was pretty good…” I say, “Maybe.”

My basic argument, as I wrote in Playboy [see reprinted article at the end of this conversation] just before the series came out, everybody was hearing this buzz about this new TV show. It was everywhere, you know, and I was getting people calling me up saying, “Hey, George, they’re doing a show about you.” I must have gotten a hundred phone calls. And I’d say, “Huh? What are you talking about?” Then, I found out they’re doing a show about advertising in the ‘60s. So people said, “Well, if it’s not about you, then you must be doing the consulting.” Which I wasn’t. Then, finally, out of left field, I got this call from one of the producers saying he kept hearing my name from everybody that he called.

So I asked him, “You’re doing a show about advertising in the ‘60s and you’ve never heard of me?” He said, “Oh no, I’ve heard of you.” But I cut him off and said, “You’re full of shit…”

I understood right off the bat it was going to be a show about normal bullshit establishment agencies, where guys are shtupping their secretaries, and guzzling martinis and, you know, I said to him, “If you want to know what the hell was going on in the ‘60s get a book called ‘George Be Careful.’ It’s out of print, but I’m sure you can get it on Amazon. You’ll find out what happened in the ‘60s.”

Anyway, I figured that was the end of it, but I got a call maybe three or four days later. “Wow! Wow! We could have done a series just based on your book.” He started describing stories, things that are in the book and I thought “yeah, yeah, yeah—schmuck!” I told him he could’ve done something that made sense, something that was historically correct, something that really happened, about the ‘60s being a heroic age, instead of being a bunch of scumbags who only have one thing on their mind—screwing their secretaries, or whatever the hell else they did in the show. So maybe there’s something in the show, here or there, that’s got something right. But the whole basis of the show is so wrong, it’s infuriating.

It’s interesting because…

It’s infuriating because, you know what? I get people saying to me all the time… “Hey, George Lois—(as well as other people, but)—he’s the original ‘Mad Man’…” And that’s infuriating because I’m not like any one of those sons-of-bitches! Know what I’m saying? But they still call me the original Mad Man, and they say it in a good way. I’ve read maybe 20 people who have written and said they based the TV show on me, and it’s a lie. It’s not based on me. It’s just that I was the hotshot in advertising in 1960, ‘61, ‘62, ’63… The fact people could characterize me as having that kind of ethos, you know? It’s not me, baby, no way!

On another note, your agency—Papert Koenig Lois—was the first ad agency to ‘flaunt the name of an art director on its masthead,’ which I believe ‘immediately raised the power, prestige and salary of graphic designers throughout the industry.’ Why do you think the value of a graphic designer increased exponentially, simply by changing their title to an art director in an ad agency?

Well, you’ve got to first understand the history, which of course begins with Bill Bernbach, who started Doyle Dane Bernbach in the ‘50s. It’s also based on the fact that Bill was lucky enough to have had the chance to work with Paul Rand.

When Paul did advertising he worked by himself: he wrote everything, he did everything himself. Someone at DDB suggested to Bill that he should work with Paul. Paul was a tough guy. They said, “He may not want to work with you; he may throw you out of the room. But maybe you can get along with him.” When he went to see him, Paul almost told him to go fuck himself.

Now I had many talks with Paul Rand and Bill Bernbach, separately, so I got the story. Paul was very suspicious of Bill, but after a while, we’d be working on stuff and, before anyone wanted him to work on it, Paul would say, “Hey, I got a headline.” He had it all figured out. But Bill would say something like, “Gee, Paul, I like what you’re doing. Maybe instead of saying “blah, blah, blah” you should say it this way and … Here’s a little piece of copy maybe you could use.” And Rand started saying, “Hey, he’s really helping me. That’s good, you know?”

Of course, what Rand understood was, when you work with a graphic communicator the advertising can be better—Duh! No shit. But it was an epiphany to Bill Bernbach. An epiphany! Because before that he, like the rest of the world, would write copy like a copywriter and go to the art director’s room and the art director was sitting in a room with his thumb up his ass waiting for a piece of copy so he could do a layout.

So Bill’s epiphany in the ‘50s was that he began to understand great advertising is not a copywriter working by himself—almost never, actually—but that a copywriter working with a gifted art director could make magic.

All that time Bill had his agency—and he did what he did—but he revered the art director. I mean, writers in DDB did OK, because he was a writer and he could do that. But he treated Bob Gage, and me, and Helmut Krone, and Bill Talman, like we were gods. In any case, when he started his agency he went to Paul Rand. It’s a little known fact, by the way. He said, “Paul, I have two accounts and I’m starting an ad business and I want you to come in with me.” And Rand said, “Go fuck yourself.” But then he said, “There’s a kid—wait, wait, wait a minute, don’t go. There’s a kid in the promotion department, by the name of Bob Gage. I think he’s got a lot of talent.”

Bill Bernbach got that guy, Bob Gage, to be his first art director and Bob Gage made Doyle Dane Bernbach the success it is today, the success it became, because Bill immediately had this one terrific designer and thinker, a guy who could write, a guy who understands—a guy who understood humanity…

There was a great graphic bunch. He hired his first writer, Phyllis Robinson (who died in 2010). Together they did the advertising that made everybody in America who had brains say, “Wow, what the hell is going on?” They had something terrific going on. So Bill understood the power of the art director, and he revered it.

I always said—in fact, I once told Bill when I was 26 and he laughed his ass off—I said, “Bill, I, um, I do great advertising when I work with a great writer.” He looked at me and said, “Yeah?” “Bill, I do great advertising when I work with a mediocre writer, with a fair writer.” He said, “Yeah?” “Bill, I do great advertising when I work with a lousy writer…” He said “Yeah?” And I said, “Bill, I also do great advertising when I work with no writer.” And he looked me in the eye, shook his head and said, “You’re right,” because the first day I got to the [DDB] agency, when he and Bob Gage hired me, Bill came into the office at nine in the morning or 9:30am to welcome me. But I had been there from 5:30 in the morning, which I always did.

Strewn over the floor were about ten layouts of tissue paper, stapled to bond paper. Bill came in and he looked at my room. He said, “George, welcome. But what are these, what are these layouts?” I said I was working on ads. When I got to the agency at 5:30 in the morning there was a requisition on my drawing board for a product called Kerid, which was an earwax removal. It was a liquid that you put in ears. So I told him about the product and he said, “George, I understand the product. I’ve got the account, you know!” (Like he was saying, “you schmuck!”) I said, “Yeah, well, anyway. I’m working on some ads.” And he started to glance at them.

They were on the floor. They were, you know, simple, beautiful drawings with headlines and body copy written out. He said, “George, these are remarkable. Who’s your writer?” I said, “Bill, I just came to work at 5:30 this morning. The brief was on my drawing board. I’m just working on them.” He said, “Yeah, but who’s your writer?” And I said, “Bill, I don’t need a goddamn writer.” He looked at me and said, “I’ll be your writer from now on. I’ll do all your writing.”

He understood that a great art director runs the show. I don’t care who your writer is. You know, you can work with a writer… Can I say something here?

Go for it.

They don’t put it down. I put it down! You know what I mean? I do whatever the hell I please. And if you work with a great writer, well, terrific. But one of my problems is, when you work with a great writer it’s very difficult because one out of ten times great writers come up with a line that you can do something with mnemonically, visually. When I create, I do lines all the time in my head and I can see them visually. I turn down 20 lines that I think are terrific until I get one that works, you know like, “I Want My MTV.” Then, visually, I’ve got Mick Jagger picking up the phone. Visually you see him picking up the phone and you remember the line “I Want My MTV.” How can you forget it?

When we started Papert Koenig Lois, besides the fact Koenig and I had left Doyle Dane Bernbach where we had the greatest jobs in the world, the big news was there was an art director’s name in a major agency. Even though the art director was, kind of, king at Doyle Bane Bernbach, what happened with Papert Koenig Lois really dotted the “i”. Three or four months after we set up Papert Koenig Lois, Bernbach smelled it; he smelled what was going on and gave his five top art directors $20,000 raises. That was a lot of money back then.

He figured it out, and he told me about it a year later. I said, “Bill, when you gave everybody their $20G raise, it was a big thing and everybody in town knew it. What made you do that?” He said, “You did!” He never cursed, he was a real gentleman, but it was almost like saying, “Fuck you, you did it.”

But he really understood, you know. By popping “Lois” in the company name this changed the dynamics of, well, certainly the payroll. This was in 1960—’61. By 1963 or ’64, top art directors in the so-called creative agencies were making, like, $200G’s. You know how much money that was back then? They knew the name of the game was the art director.

Again, I’m not negating the writer but the point is—and it sounds terrible for me to say this—but you can always find a writer. But if you’ve got the right art director you don’t need a writer. I mean Bob Gage didn’t need a writer. He was a terrific, very sweet man and he worked well with Phyllis Robinson and everybody else there. But if he was alone, trust me, he would’ve done great advertising, following in the footsteps of Paul Rand.

As for Paul, he said, “I don’t need no copywriter, those motherfuckers.” [Laughs]. Paul was a wonderful guy. He was the most cantankerous man that ever lived. One of the great stories about Paul Rand was, whenever he got an award he’d say, “Get Lois to give the talk about me— to present the award to me.” The awards people would call me up and say, “Paul Rand wants you to do the talk on him about getting this award in New York.” This was the Type Directors Club calling me! I said sure, I’d be glad to do it, right? I mean I had done about four before.

So, I gave a talk to more than 800 people—type directors, every type director in New York. I gave this talk and Bill [Bernbach] was on the dais with me. Anyway, I love to talk about Paul. I gave this wonderful, edgy talk about him and then 800 men—every one of them was a man, there were no women type directors back then—they were cheering and cheering and cheering and cheering.

Bill stood up and then he stood next to me and they were still cheering and cheering. They didn’t stop. They’d gone on for minutes. I looked over at Paul, like maybe there’s a tear in his eye or maybe he’s choked up a little bit, you know? And he kind of leaned over to say something to me and I figured, “Oh, he’s going to say something sweet.”

He said, “George, everybody in this room is an asshole except you and me.”

[Laughter] Isn’t that great? When I tell that story to guys just like Paul, like Lou Dorfsman when he was alive, and Herb Lubalin when he was alive, the guys I really respect. I’d tell them that story, and they’d laugh their ass off. They used to say, “That’s Paul. That’s why he was so loveable.”

Imagine it, “George, everybody in this room is an asshole except you and me!” And those people are cheering and cheering. [Laughs]

[Laughing] Part of your power and charm is your ability to captivate people with stories…

People say I’ve got a million stories and I say, “Well, I’ve got a story for at least every week of my life.” Working in advertising and working in what I do, I’ve got to. There’s got to be stories; you can go into work on Friday and say, “Gee, what’s the best story this week?” I can think of loads of things that happened.

But I was lucky. When I started out I had a lot of other great stories—before I started my own ad agency. But once I started my own ad agency I had a lot more stories because you’re involved in so many more things, you know? I tell designers that if they’re not brave—if you’re not literally, physically and mentally brave, you can’t be a great art director. And in order to be physically and mentally brave, and to be able to sell your work, you’ve got to be able to know how to talk passionately about it.

So when I tell stories, I think they add up to something because I’m not telling them out of left field, you know what I mean? It leads to a lesson.

I guess it’s really a result of living life, and being able to tell those stories in a compelling, interesting and unique way…

Yeah, well, you know, I’ve been married to the same woman for 60 years and loved every day of it. And we went through some hard knocks. Lost my 20 year-old son the week after his birthday. I still cry every night over it, you know? Life ain’t easy. But life is a joy, and you should live your life joyously and passionately. And you should want to get things done every day of your life!

Editor’s Note: Below is the Playboy article mentioned in the interview above.

IT’S A MAD WORLD

With a dissenting view from George Lois, the original Mad Man.

‘It’s a Mad World’ originally appeared in Playboy Magazine (August 2010 issue) © 2010 Playboy. Following is a transcript of the original manuscript, kindly provided by George Lois and reprinted with the generous permission from Playboy Magazine.

The buzz in town was that a great TV series was about to premiere dealing with the ad game in the 1960s. To me—and those savvy about watershed advertising and media events in American culture—that meant only one thing: a popular television show dealing with the explosive triggering of the legendary Creative Revolution was about to be born. In the ’60s, the dynamic impact of ethnic, passionate, and supremely talented graphic designers and copywriters had turned the ad world upside down, commanding the attention of America and the world with bright, witty, entertaining advertising. The Creative Revolution exposed the traditional advertising world for what it was: Wasp-driven, hackneyed, untalented–simply put, hacks. The news of the Mad Men series was exhilarating to all of us who played prominent roles in that watershed event, but, I wondered, how could they do the period justice without contacting me, the original Mad Man, for input, to consult, or whatever.

And then, out of the blue, a Mad Men producer called me and told me they were tracking down some “real Mad Men” (and a few Mad Women), to film some promos for the show, and every old-timer they contacted blurted out something like “You gotta get George Lois–he was the catalyst who dominated the ’60s.”

“Whoa,” I said to the clueless Mad Men caller. “You mean that you guys are doing a TV series based on advertising in the ’60s and you never heard of me?”

“No, no,” he protested, “we know who you are.”

“Bullshit,” I said, and told him that if he really wanted to know what happened in the ’60s, he should read my biographical book George, be Careful: a Greek florist’s son in the roughhouse world of advertising. “It’s a blow-by-blow account on how I triggered the Creative-fucking-Revolution that changed the ad world,” and hung up, plenty miffed.

The stunned producer called back a week later and with bated breath said “Wow! We could have done a TV show just based on your book! That scene when you hung out a window and threatened to jump if the client didn’t buy your Matzos poster was hilarious!” I told him to kiss my ethnic Greek ass and hung up.

Gradually, but surely, after the revolutionary Bauhaus design movement and during the post World War II period, a counterculture began with the advent of young, basically Jewish, American modernist designers, culminating in the early 1950s when copywriter Bill Bernbach started working with the pioneering Paul Rand, the guiding mentor of the New York School of Design. It was the first time two creative geniuses—one a copy writer, the other an art director—had teamed to create ads together. The experience inspired Bernbach to found the now-legendary agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, joining talented copywriters with visionary graphic designers, and the first truly creative agency was born. Power had been taken away from the account executives and businessmen and transferred to the talented people who actually made the ads. It was an inspiring time to be an art director like me with a rage to communicate, to blaze trails, to create icon rather than con. The times they were a-changin’.

Suddenly, in the very first week of the 1960s, as the wunderkind of the New York School of Design and after a thrillingly successful year as an award-winning art director at DDB, I left Bernbach’s atelier, and with two copywriters as partners, started what seemed unthinkable at the time–the world’s second creative agency. Papert Koenig Lois inspired and triggered what is revered today as the Advertising Creative Revolution—when a handful of other creative groups, buoyed by the instant success of our trailblazing firm, also formed agencies based on the art director/copywriter team concept. Madison Avenue would never be the same. (PKL was the first ad agency that flaunted the name of an art director on its masthead, immediately raising the power, prestige and salary of graphic designers throughout the industry.)

That revolutionary counterculture found expression on Madison Avenue through a new creative generation—a rebellious coterie of art directors and copywriters who understood that visual and verbal expression were indivisible, who bridled under the old rules that consigned them to secondary roles in the ad-making process, which was previously dominated by non-creative hacks and technocrats, and who became the heroic movers and shakers of the Creative Revolution. Those men and women, mostly the offspring of immigrants, bear no resemblance to the cast of characters in Mad Men.

Up to that time, the traditional advertising agency (depicted in Mad Men as the fictitious Sterling Cooper agency) was comprised of fools and frauds who ran ideas up a flagpole to see if someone saluted; when clients were arrogantly conservative; when the art director had no part in the creative process as he sat with his thumb up his ass waiting for the talentless copywriter/account executive team to deliver copy for him to form into a traditional uninspired layout; when committee group-grope reigned and lawyers restrained—all resulting in insipid, brutally dull and/or obnoxious TV and print campaigns that contaminated the American scene.

That mind-numbing mediocrity was more typical of the ’50s than the ’60s (and they still exist today). Mad Men misrepresents the advertising industry by ignoring the dynamics of the Creative Revolution that changed the world of communications forever. That mortal sin of omission makes Mad Men a lie. Matthew Weiner, the creator and show-runner of Mad Men, rejects my feelings about his show by stating that “George Lois is a legend… but Sterling Cooper is not cutting-edge; it’s mired in the past,” calling his characters “dinosaurs.” Huh? In creating a popular TV show based on an ad agency, the producers went whole-hog to depict the scum of the industry, rather than the upbeat world of culture-busting creativity. Mad Men has given the world the perception that the scatology of the Sterling Cooper workplace was industry-wide. In their advertising, they have the balls to proclaim that “Mad Men explores the Golden Age of Advertising,” but they surely know they’re shovelling shit. Their show is nothing more than a soap opera placed in a setting of a glamorous office where stylish fools hump their appreciative, coiffured secretaries, suck up martinis, and smoke themselves to death as they produce dumb, lifeless advertising—oblivious to the inspiring Civil Rights movement, the burgeoning Women’s Lib movement, the evil Vietnam War, and other seismic changes during the turbulent, roller-coaster 1960’s that altered America forever. (In the after-hours, when the Stering Cooper stiffs were screwing their staff, we athletes at PKL were playing ball on the best amateur softball and basketball teams in New York City. To each his own.)

The more I think and write about Mad Men, the more I take the show as a personal insult. So, fuck you Mad Men–you phoney “Grey Flannel Suit,” male-chauvinist, no-talent, WASP, white-shirted, racist, anti-semitic, Republican, SOBs!

Besides, when I was in my 30s I was better-looking than Jon Hamm.

Image Credits:

George Lois portrait provided by George Lois

Esquire covers sourced on George Lois’s website

Jessica Walsh—influential designer, founder of &Walsh, and business partner with Stefan Sagmeister [Sagmeister&Walsh]—talks about the importance of play, following your heart and the fallout from fame. This interview was featured in Open Manifesto #8, which focused on the theme ‘Change’.

Note: This interview took place in 2015 and refers to specifics from that time.

Kevin Finn: Stefan [Sagmeister] once said: “Jessica is half my age, half my size and twice as smart.”

Jessica Walsh: Wow! You did your research. [Laughs]

How do you feel you’ve changed or influenced the business since you’ve become a partner?

What’s genuinely great about my relationship with Stefan is that we both really respect each others styles and ideas, but we have very different ways of looking at things. As he said, we’re two totally different people. I’m a small woman who’s half his age and he’s a very large Austrian man.

We come from very different places, so we see life in different ways and we bring that to the work we’re doing. That’s cool, because in some ways we have this similar style, but in other ways we don’t, which means we can push each other. If he has a really great idea, I might see things in a slightly different perspective and I’m then able to bring something to the table, and vice versa.

That’s more about the work. However, in terms of the business, do you think, now there are two of you—as opposed to just Stefan running the business—your influence on the business approach has changed things?

We’ve been doing much larger branding work since I’ve been involved. That started when I joined. I had a lot of experience doing photo shoots from the previous job I had worked at. He had this client Aishti and I started doing quite a bit of the art direction for the photo shoots.

That work brought us quite a bit of other work in that direction, and that evolved into doing larger re‑branding and advertising campaigns that also required TV commercials. The scope of what we do as a business has become larger since I’ve been involved.

To switch things up a little, you’ve stated many times you highly recommend that people get naked. You’ve said that jokingly, but you’ve also used it as a very effective marketing tool when you became partner in the business. What interests me, though, is your project 40 Days of Dating. That was really being naked, because you exposed yourself in numerous ways: you became open with your doubts, your fears and being vulnerable. My question is: Should others consider a good business or personal strategy as being open and vulnerable?

Certainly… Both! I would say, for me, a large part of my desire and drive is because I grew up in a small town in Connecticut where I felt like it was very closed and everyone had a facade and was trying to make their lives seem so perfect.

For me, that was a very difficult environment to grow up in because of all these expectations, and I felt like people weren’t very genuine. That’s partly why I’ve had this desire to completely break out of that mold and be real and open.

Also with social media and everything, everyone is constantly curating their lives to seem so perfect, when it’s really not.

Everyone has ups and downs and everyone has shitty days. I don’t think it’s a very healthy thing as a society that we seem to be ignoring that, especially if you’re raising kids now, and if that’s what they’re seeing— these social feeds of perfect lives. That’s not how life is.

So that’s part of the reason that we wanted to take that leap and do 40 Days—to be real and open with it. That project is not even… There’s so much more. It’s given myself and Tim [Goodman] confidence to do bigger things. Right now we’re working on a project that’s also a social experiment, one that’s much larger in scope than 40 Days, and way more deep and real. [This project is called 12 kinds of Kindness and was launched after this interview took place.]

I want to discuss your personal initiatives because, when we spoke previously, you mentioned the amount of time involved on these projects is quite extensive. Does this put a strain on the business?

No. I’ve had… I don’t know what you would call it—creative block—a couple years ago, where I was really too overworked with all the client stuff. When I’m not happy with the work I’m doing, I don’t make good work. Even if I’m working 24/7 on client stuff, that doesn’t mean that I’m producing a lot. I find that when I mix it up and do these other projects, which keep me inspired and loving what I’m doing, this inspiration and passion feeds back into the client stuff.

It doesn’t take any time away because I’m actually faster, because I’m more into it and excited about what I’m doing.

I also know that when the wonderful Debbie Millman interviewed you and Tim she asked about the Warner Brothers 40 Days of Dating film proposal. At the time, you were really unsure about doing a film. In contrast, Tim was very sure about it and was really keen to pursue it. What changed your mind about going ahead with the film?

When the 40 Days blog blew up and went viral, perhaps one of the most exciting things that I got from it was that we really connected with people. We were getting emails from all kinds of people saying how the blog touched them in various ways, or inspired them to go to therapy. Or that it made them think about relationships differently. That’s so incredible, that we—as designers—have these tools where we can connect with people in a really efficient, fast and easy way.

It’s a pretty powerful thing, and it clicked something in me that was pretty amazing. At first I was, like: “Oh no, a movie! They could turn my life into anything.” Then I realized that a movie would simply be advertising for the project, and drive more people to read the book and to read the blog, and in a way would give us a bigger audience for the future projects that we had.

40 Days of Dating, and the reasoning behind it, was a social experiment, which developed into a highly successful blog and then to a very successful book and now into a film… Do you think designers are truly in a position to influence or change culture?

That’s a very big statement. Certainly ideas, and good messages, can change culture. And design is one of many tools you can use to get those messages out.

The reason I ask is there’s a lot of chatter around at the moment in design circles about how designers can change culture, that designers can change the world…

I’ve always been wary of that whole “Design can change the world” thing, because I don’t think design can change the world. People can change the world—and good ideas.

Graphic design, like filmmaking or documentaries or any of these things, are simply communication tools to get those ideas out there. Yes, it’s a very valuable, awesome tool but I don’t believe graphic design is going to change the world. But the ideas can…

Many might say that you became famous almost overnight. Once you became a partner with Stefan, that really jettisoned your profile in a much more high profile way. Has this changed you in any way? For lack of a better way of saying it, how are you dealing with being famous, all of a sudden?

When it first happened, I have to say, it was quite overwhelming because I felt like all of a sudden people expected something of me, and that now people were watching me and that I had to be constantly delivering a certain level of work, or that people would critique me. I got really caught up in it for a moment. There was maybe six months after the partnership first happened where I was quite depressed from it all. Then I realized how silly it was. The only expectations are what I put on myself.

At the end of day, all I can do is to do the best work I can that makes me happy and that drives me and keeps me excited and motivated about life. Some people are going to like it and some people are going to hate it, and that’s life. I can’t worry about everyone in the world liking it.

That’s how it was when I was growing up. I was always trying to please people. In a way this realization was good for me personally, because I was, like: “I have to get over this. Some people are going to hate me. That’s fine.”

[Laughs] Of course, it also now puts you in a position to influence certain things, because of your high profile.

It has a lot of benefits, this high profile. It allows us more work so we can be choosier with the work that we take on. When we can be choosy, we can do better work—and that only leads to doing better work.

It also means if there’s something I believe in, or an artist I really like that I want to promote, I have a huge network now that I can do that. It’s really nice. [Laughs]

You mentioned previously your role is quite varied and that the role of a designer is changing rapidly. That said, some designers would subscribe to being a generalist whereas others subscribe to being a specialist. Do you have a view on either of those?

You have to be one or the other and not in the middle. I find that people are very successful when they are super specialized in something, even sometimes very random. For example, I have a person that does body painting for my projects. That’s all she does—body painting! And she gets tons of work, because it’s so specialized and there are so few people in the world that do that.

If you’re an absolutely incredible film colorist, and that’s all you do, you’re going to do well—if you’re really good at your job. But I don’t think you can now just be a graphic designer. You have to be able to work across—or at least think across—a few different mediums.

You describe yourself as being a: graphic designer, art director, illustrator, copywriter, strategist, project manager, and animator, among other things. But would you describe yourself as an artist?

It’s funny, because a lot of people call me an artist and I’ve always been really hesitant. It somehow seems like if I call myself an artist, that’s somehow pretentious. I don’t know why I feel that way. It’s in my own head. It somehow seems like a level above what I am…

[Both laughing]

Previously, I’ve asked Stefan the same question—about whether he sees himself as an artist—and his response was a resounding “No!” But when I asked Ji Lee if he thought Stefan was an artist his response was: “He’s absolutely an artist.”

For me the difference between an artist and a designer is that design has a function, and art doesn’t need to. Art can be purely form. I do believe that most of the work that I do functions somehow. Even if it is not for a client, it still is wrapped around some message or idea I want to get across. In that way, I do think I am a designer.

One of your beliefs is: “Don’t expect people to change.” Why do you subscribe to that view?

That came from earlier relationships I’ve had, where I thought I could change people—and that the relationship could work, as well. Little things like: I’ll get him to do the dishes, you know? These flaws which everyone has. But I realized that people don’t really change that much, and if they do it’s on their own terms and over time. You can’t go into any relationship, whether it’s romantic or a friendship or a business partnership, thinking that you’re going to be able to change them. You have to accept people for who they are, and let them grow as they grow.

Of course the other side of that equation is changing people’s views on things. For example, you talk a lot about some of your clients who, when you’re presenting work and their response is: “I don’t know. Should we have that [component] in there?” But your response is often: “Absolutely. Trust me. It’s going to be awesome.” Is trust a big part of the work you do with your clients, and how do you instil trust?

It’s a big part of how we choose our clients. We like to work with clients who really love the work that we’ve done in the past and are looking for that mentality we bring. We like to work with clients who we think are open‑minded and flexible to new ideas. If that’s the case, then it’s usually pretty smooth from there. Of course we’re not mind readers, and sometimes a client surprises us and turns out being not quite as open or flexible as we initially thought they were. Then it’s more of a push or a struggle.

But I also find that fascinating. I think, if I wasn’t a designer I would’ve gone into psychology. Especially when you’re running a design studio, a lot of it is client management, and a lot of that is psychology.

Do you have systems in place to navigate those sorts of conversations, when a client might not turn out to be the way you would hope? Do you have a mechanism in place where you say: “We will withdraw from that client,” or “We will only see it through to a certain point”?

It’s completely based on the situation. There have been projects, which we’ve moved on from. For example, one client didn’t like what we did; they wanted something that was totally different, something that wasn’t us, and we didn’t feel like we would do a good job for them. We’re not really interested in this type of situation. We have enough work coming our way that we don’t really need to do work just for the money. When we take on a job, we want to do stuff that’s going to benefit our clients. If we feel like we’re not the right people for the job, then we’re not going to do it.

Many would say: “Jess, Stefan. You guys are in a really privileged position to be able to do that.”

We are.

To counter that, I remember somebody saying the same thing about Vince Frost. Their view was: “But Vince, it’s easy for you. You get all the good briefs.” But his response was: “No, I get the same briefs everybody else does. It’s what people do with a brief that counts.” Would you subscribe to that view?

I don’t think that’s true. When you get to a level where you’re more well known, you do get more briefs coming your way and you can be choosier. I do think there’s an element to it where, as he said: “It’s what you do with it.” Of course. Over time, as you do more and more of the work that you feel represents you and your studio, you get more and more opportunities.

Do you get a lot of people requesting similar work you’ve done for a previous client? I guess, it’s part of choosing a client, but is there a mechanism you have in place to help avoid requests to do similar work?

Luckily, the reason a lot of clients come to us now—or a large part of it, at least—is the conceptual side. They don’t really know what they’re looking for and they want us to answer that, because we have become a bit known for doing that, which is great. Occasionally we do get people that say: “I love that type installation you did, and I want the same type out of coins but for this brand.” That’s not really interesting to us. It’s much more interesting to us if we can evolve how we’re working and create things that are new.

My personal belief is that a designer’s greatest skill is being able to make decisions. In some ways, you seem to help the decision process by creating rules in certain situations. Are those rules arbitrary? For example, with the EDP identity project, you deliberately decided to use only four shapes. Is that driven by specific thinking related to the project, or is it arbitrary—or do you it mix it up?

Some of them are arbitrary, but most of them I would say are based on the content. At our studio, when a client comes to us we spend quite a while purely on the research phase of who they are, meeting them, learning about their history; and really understanding the content we’re designing for. Often times, those restrictions come out of learning these things.

For example, EDP was probably one of the more random ones. We knew we wanted to create some ‘morphing ball of energy’ because that’s the core of what they do. We were struggling formally about how we might get there, so that ‘shape to trait’ was somewhat random, but it allowed us to get to where we wanted.

We tried it out and it was working and so we deliberately decided to stick with it and see where it went. It was a big evolution. We started with the logo, but then we asked: “Can we make illustrations like that?” “Can we animate those illustrations?” And that’s how it evolved into the TV commercial.

To finish, and this might sound like a strange question but, with so much attention on you how do you deal with doubt?

I would say that I’ve become much better over the years at trusting my instincts. When I do have doubts it’s usually when I’m doing something very new, something that I haven’t done before, like this new personal project [12 Kinds of Kindness]. It’s so much further from anything I’ve done, and that really scares me, but at the same time I know that scary feeling is usually a good sign. It means you’re doing something worth doing.

This whole fame thing is funny to me, because I don’t think you can get fame by trying to get fame. You have to be honestly good at your craft, or whatever it is you do. Then that [recognition] follows. I don’t know anyone that’s like: “I’m going to be famous!” Or: “I’m going to be rich!” Or: “I’m going to fall in love!” I don’t think you can chase these things. They come naturally through honestly living and doing.

Image Credits:

All images provided by Sagmeister & Walsh

Helen Palmer—cultural tourism expert—discusses how culture defines (and brands) cities and nations. This interview featured in Open Manifesto #7 which focused on the theme ‘Enlightened self-interest’.

Note: This interview took place in 2017 and refers to specifics from that time.

Kevin Finn: Can you briefly define cultural tourism?

Helen Palmer: [Laughs] That’s a challenge in itself—not to mention describing it “briefly.” The way that we [Creative Tourist, now called Palmer Squared] look at cultural tourism; it’s about positioning a destination off the back of its cultural offer. The importance is that people are making decisions to visit a destination, based on their perception of that place’s cultural offer.

That’s not to say that the rest of the destination offer isn’t important as well. Of course, it is. But it’s the culture that leads the decision-making. It’s also fundamentally about increasing the number of visitors and increasing the visitors’ spend—and about changing perceptions of your place. That’s how we address cultural tourism.

There is a school of thought in academia, which focuses on engagement with local cultures, which is how they define cultural tourism in a very quick, brief way. That’s important, too. But when you’re working in the sector, it is ultimately about more visitors and visitor spend.

When we talk about the culture of a place—a destination—can it be manufactured, or is it important to start with the truth; something that’s existing?

It has to be authentic. It has to be real, so that people’s experiences match or exceed their expectations. If you try and manufacture something your visitors will see straight through it. It simply won’t meet their expectations; they’ll be disappointed, and they will tell more people.

It has to be rooted in the place, the culture of the place. The history of that place is really important, as well as whatever the contemporary offer is.

Lets say we’re talking about a city—though it could be a place—it seems to me it’s in their self‑interest to foster cultural tourism: lifestyle and culture, but in economic terms, as you pointed out. How do you convince local government, or a city council, to embrace this in a holistic and a long‑term way, because it does have to be holistic and long‑term.

Yes, that’s right. I’ll give you an example of what happened in Manchester. There’s a Chief Executive and a Leader [who held these roles at the time of this interview]. The Leader is an elected member, and the Chief Executive is a staff position and it’s the most senior staff position in a local authority.

The Leader would describe himself as a cultural attender. The Chief Executive would describe himself as quite the opposite. What he has really grasped and understood, over the last 10 years—particularly, I’d say over the last six or seven years—is the role of culture in the perception of place, and how important that is in relation to all aspects of a city, whether that’s about opportunities for local people, local residents or whether that’s about people who are working in the city, but also about inward investment.

For lack of a better phrase there are soft elements which businesses look for in choosing places to invest in, and those elements are intangibles. They’ll have a list of requirements or interests—for example access to a skilled workforce and good transport infrastructure, those kinds of things. But their perception of the place and its culture could be a defining factor for them in choosing to invest.

That could be influenced by what they are thinking with regards activities their family can do there—if their family moves there—right through to what their employees or people visiting them can do if they’re based in that particular location.

It’s quite interesting, when you see local authorities deciding on spec to build some kind of business park in the middle of nowhere. That approach is perceived as quite out‑dated thinking now. Unless it’s something where you might have a cluster of businesses already signed up to move in, that’s a different matter. But building something on spec, when you’re miles away from anything, that’s quite difficult now.

That’s culture, at its broadest sense, and it includes what we refer to as the wrap‑around: the restaurants, the bars, the shopping, etc. All of those other aspects are just as important as whether they think there’s a good concert hall or good galleries, or theatres, or whatever.

When dealing with councils, you have to constantly plug away at it. But we also took part in Simon Anholt’s City Brand Index, which is an international research project. Cities are ranked based on six factors. They ask panels of people in different countries what their perceptions are of those places. It was really illuminating for senior people in Manchester because it gave them an opportunity to see how people perceive the city—including referencing other cities that are doing very well.

Actually, Australian cities did very well, as did Canadian cities. Obviously, a lot had to do with good weather, particularly in Australia—maybe not so much in Canada. Also, safety and a good place to live, a good place to raise children. All those sorts of things. There might be deep‑rooted perceptions about the New World, as it were.

It’s really interesting, when you talk to people about their different perceptions of places. That was a long‑winded answer, so I don’t know if I’ve answered the question…

You have! While you were talking, a thought occurred to me about the City Brand Index. I assume it’s a really good tool when speaking with local governments and city councils in the event of any push‑back around investing in cultural tourism. It proves you’re not making it up, not trying to push an agenda. It states: “Here’s an opportunity, and it’s in your interest to at least consider it.” By the sounds of it, there is a lot of work around cultural tourism already happening, and which you can leverage. But are there many successful models out there? Or, is it at a stage where it’s still developing?

It’s really funny. As I mentioned in my talk [at the State Library of Queensland, Brisbane], I’ve been technically doing cultural tourism for over 20 years. But it’s only in the last few years that it has actually been called cultural tourism. I think major cities—like London, Paris, New York—are perceived as cultural destinations because of the wealth and breadth of their cultural assets. They get a lot of visitors off the back of their cultural heritage, in particular.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re doing a good job on cultural tourism, but they are way ahead of the game, in terms of people’s perceptions, the number of visits, and visitor spend. They are always going to do very well on that score.

For other places, it’s been a bit of a wake‑up call in recent years. Those of us who work ‘with’ the public sector, and those who work ‘in’ the public sector, will know that you go through trends, the latest things people need to look at. We’ve gone through a long period of local engagement in the arts in the UK: local audience development, focusing on those immediate audiences. Particularly the museums and galleries world has been funded as such, those with box offices and a pressure to sell tickets. But there hasn’t been a focus on how to generate visits from tourists. Historically, the two worlds haven’t worked together very much, unless it’s been around a major event, for example like a Commonwealth Games, or an Olympics. It tends to only happen at that level of major event—and quite often sporting events.

The cultural aspect gets tacked on, as was the case with Cultureshock, which is a cultural programme I worked on for Manchester’s 2002 Commonwealth Games. Yorkshire had the Grand Depart for the cycling tour, which was a great success. Those types of occasions are almost forcing the two sectors to work together. But on a day‑to‑day basis, they don’t have a lot to do with each other.

But because it’s now a priority for the Arts Council England and Visit England, the cultural sector’s had to wake up to this. In saying that, I’m not sure that the tourism sector has particularly woken up yet. There are public sector tourism agencies, but the commercial tourism sector doesn’t see a lot of return.

I’m not talking about high volumes of people outside of capital cities. As you said, Kevin, it’s a long‑term approach. I’d like to think that Manchester’s an exemplar case study with the work that we do with Palmer Squared. In many ways Visit England and Visit Britain have validated that. But we’re just a few years ahead of the game. We’ve been doing work in that area, specifically with Palmer Squared, for about six or seven years now.

In terms of wider examples, I’m not sure that I would say that there are too many of them. I think I mentioned—it might have been in the Brisbane talk or the one that I did in Rockhampton—that there are other ways to approach it.

For example, the French city of Nantes is working with a performance‑based organization. They’ve created these really quirky films to show Nantes in a very different way. They’re actually embracing this and using it in the official tourism promotions. I think we’ll see some more good examples in a few years time, when things have bedded in and more people are taking it forward by doing different things.

Of course, when you look internationally there are some interesting examples. But what often happens is that they’re funded for a particular period of time. Then the funding runs out and you just watch them slide back, or people move on, or they focus on the next thing they need to get funding for.

That’s the danger. People lose enthusiasm and move on to the next big thing. I do worry that might happen, because it does take a lot of commitment.

There may be another danger. I read in a recent report from Deloitte that they estimate the Sydney Opera House will be worth AUS$4.6 billion Australian to the Australian economy over the next 40 years. That’s taking into account everything from land value, ticket sales, right through to its contribution to the national identity. I’d argue that’s…

I’d love to see that matrix of how they worked that out!

It was reported in The Independent and I think the newspaper was a bit suspicious of the report. But I’d argue that’s cultural tourism at work, probably at its peak, because it’s a large‑scale example. However, in those large‑scale examples, is there a danger that it could actually decrease investment in other avenues, simply because it’s a big‑ticket item? Is it possible for other cities and places, which don’t have a high‑profile landmark, to foster cultural tourism effectively?

The thing is cultural tourism is not about one venue. Yes, it might be the flagship, but it’s actually about the rest of the city offer. Sydney has a wealth of quality cultural aspects, and not just buildings—whether that’s festivals and events, as well as places like the Carriageworks, etc. It’s important to remember this is not based around one specific venue or attraction.

Of course, you might use one venue as a hook but it’s actually also about the content. There’s also a difference between a first time visitor to Sydney: The Sydney Opera House will be on the list, and they tick it off. But it might simply be they stand outside and take a photograph—and not even go in and see anything.

That comment was also mentioned in the article: a high percentage of tourists said the Sydney Opera House was in the top two or three things that they would want to visit and see. I guess my question uses Sydney as an example, but isn’t there a danger for other places, too, where city leaders might say: “Oh, we’ve got that covered because of our landmark building. So the cultural tourism thing? That box is ticked. We need to move onto something else”? In your experience, have you come across that kind of thinking where city leaders believe it is just a one-ticket item and then they’re done, moving on to something else?

We certainly went through a period in this country around about the millennium where major capital projects were funded in lots of places up and down the country. There was a sense of: “All right, we’ve got our big flagship,” Obviously, Gateshead has got The Baltic, The Sage and The Angel of the North by Antony Gormley. There are a lot of major, major, capital investments. But what’s been really interesting, is that people have realized it’s not necessarily enough on it’s own—that they have to work in partnership.

Partly this is a result of education about what tourism really means, that it’s not just about buildings, per se. It’s about content. As I’ve said in my talks, it’s about getting under the skin of a destination. So, if you’re a first time visitor, of course there will be certain things that you want to tick off and you say: “Well, I’ve done that. I‘ve seen that.” But it’s actually about getting to know a place and feeling confident to step through the door of those flagship venues. It’s also about seeing and doing things you possibly wouldn’t have thought that you would do.

The smaller scale, intimate, experiences are often programmed specifically with the visitor in mind, but actually have a benefit for locals, as well. Policy makers need to be educated, particularly to avoid thinking it’s about having one big shiny thing. The focus needs to be around what’s going to keep people coming back? And that applies to locals, as well as visitors.

It’s interesting: you frequently mention the notion of perception. When marketing cultural tourism in a city or a place, you’re belief is: No logos; No strap lines; No slogans.

It sounds like you’re suspicious of branding programs. But perception and branding have a very close link. How important is branding in all of this? In your opinion, how can you brand a city or a place?

I am a consultant, so I’m dealing with this all the time. I work with lots of clients and creative design agencies to develop identities. I’ve spent over 20 years doing that. My point about destinations and branding is—and I don’t know if it’s the same in other places, but in the UK—in the ‘90s and naughties, we went through a period where local authorities, in particular, believed that the route forward was to create a new logo for their place. This is the misunderstanding between the local authority profile and the profile of the place—and getting mixed up between the two. They believed they just needed a strap line. Frankly, I believe towns and cities up and down the country were hoodwinked by a lot of design agencies who saw this as a market opportunity suggesting to everyone and anyone: “Oh, you need a new identity.”

These design agencies would do a little bit of quasi‑research to find out about the essence of the place. Then they’d come up with some naff logo and strap line. I could reel off numerous examples. We went through it for Manchester in the ‘90s and got really lambasted for it—and rightly so. I think pretty much every city and major town in the UK went through this process, and some are still doing it.

It’s meaningless. Just because Leeds has a strap line that says, “Leeds. Live it. Love it.” What does that mean? How is that relevant to a local resident or a visitor with the associated logo? Edinburgh had the Incredinburgh debacle resulting in the head of Marketing Edinburgh losing their job. You can see it’s a bugbear of mine: “Suffolk, a curious county,” or “the curious county.” I mean it’s all nonsense.

That’s my frustration. I had a long conversation with Peter Saville about this and he has always said that good places don’t need strap lines. Places like Paris and London. It’s also interesting when everybody refers to New York with the I (heart) NY logo. People have misunderstood what that was originally set out to do. The I (heart) model is now used for every place, including Manchester. It’s seems like it’s everywhere and for every city!

Of course I (heart) NY logo was really about getting local people to love their local city and collectively do something to change it because it had gone downhill—so far that locals were scared of going out at night. Never mind visitors weren’t going to New York. That was a very, very different approach but it gets used as this example by everyone, and at will.

In a previous interview, I spoke with Milton Glaser, who designed the I (heart) NY logo. And Paula Scher, from Pentagram also did a review on the logo (in Open Manifesto #5). As you point out, the misconception is that the I (heart) NY logo was designed for Manhattan and New York City, but it was actually for New York State. It was designed for the tourism board—for the entire state—but has since been co‑opted by New York City. Actually, probably co‑opted by just Manhattan. Ever since, it has been associated to NYC, as opposed to NY state. And it has been co‑opted by cities around the world.

But the I (heart) NY logo really represents an attitude—a lived statement. It’s an invitation to adopt a community feeling about a particular space or place. And the I (heart) NY attitude has become vernacular. In and of itself, it is, perhaps, a logo. Perhaps you could even call it a brand identity, but it is gone beyond that because it is more about a universal feeling and an emotion. That’s how I interpret what you’re saying, in terms of ‘no logos and no slogans.’ It doesn’t necessarily have to be a manufactured stamp.

Yeah, it’s that challenge where you’re trying to encapsulate the essence of a place in a single strap line because it’s never going to be fully representative. It’s always then going to be the result of generalisations. Actually, if you use it on another city, or town, or place, it probably would apply just as well. Slogans don’t have that unique aspect to them. We’ve just ended up with lots and lots of naff statements that are associated with towns and cities.

But you also get it with rural counties. And it’s a lazy way of looking at cultural tourism or place marketing. I think it’s an old fashioned approach and it indicates people don’t fully understand how to market places or how to go about commissioning it. That just disappoints me, really.

Does this apply to Manchester, because I believe Peter Saville, who is the Creative Director of the City of Manchester, has created an M icon? There’s no strap line, but there is an icon. Is there merit in having some kind of go-to mark?

It’s really interesting. I’ve worked with Peter for a number of years and he never wanted to have any kind of simple icon mark. I think in the end there was a bit of pressure on him to create something. He came up with the M icon, but it was never meant to be used as a logo. It was meant for specific uses, particularly when Manchester is doing work internationally and when you’ve got a lot of partners working on an initiative.

In this context, it’s a symbol of a unified city region, not just the city of Manchester, but the 10 boroughs.

For example, when Manchester goes to the property event held in Cannes, the M icon is used. Of course, there have been cases where the council has occasionally used it completely inappropriately, sticking it on job ads and things like that because, fundamentally, they’re misunderstanding what it was intended to do. But generally, it’s used quite sparingly.

Another example: when we had the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester the M icon was used as part of the welcome messaging around the city because, again, it’s a partnership of agencies working together and to be there as the host city for things like those major conferences.

So in terms of marketing a destination, let’s assume there is limited or no use of a specific icon, and definitely no strap lines or positioning lines. How would you then market that place? Is it through various communication channels that are specific and targeted? Is it through media, or what other people are talking about? Or is it testimonials from people who’ve visited? How do you market that?

It’s sort of all of this. The interesting thing is that a blanket message across different markets doesn’t work. Of course, it’s the same for any product or service you’re promoting. You do have to think about tailoring the message according to the market. When approaching this for Manchester, yes, we’ve set up Palmer Squared, which has its own identity. But we don’t just promote Manchester through that vehicle. We promote the north of England’s cultural offer. We never wanted to be wedded to, or to just be seen as, an official channel for Manchester. We’ve always wanted to be seen as being independent, which we are now.

We use lots of different channels, not just our own. PR is really important. The way you talk about the place is really significant and, through the cultural narrative, how you articulate both the heritage of a place, through to the more contemporary feel of the place, is incredibly important. We have worked really hard on this. When we do campaign activity, for example Manchester Weekender, those strong heritage roots come through.

We don’t shy away from our heritage as I think a lot of post‑industrial cities in the U.K. do, trying to reinvent themselves as shiny, new, contemporary places. There’s almost an embarrassment about our industrial heritage, but actually that’s what makes us particularly unique and it’s important because that’s what we’re known for internationally, as well.

We do a lot of work on the PR side but also in the campaign activity and how we draw through the content and use that content in lots of different ways. Adding to this, we have quite a contemporary look to the Creative Tourist identity [now called Palmer Squared]. We use a lot of illustration to ensure we are not bound by photographs… Because what often happens with place marketing campaigns is there’s an over‑reliance on pictures of buildings, or people having a good time.

[Laughing] Yeah, happy people stock shots…

Exactly! They could be any city or any place. So we try to take a different approach with the quality of the content, but also with the quality of imagery—and all of that does come through, hopefully helping people identify with it more and in a way they hadn’t expected.

I believe a lot of tourism agencies over the last 20 years when talking about particular destinations all ended up sounding the same. If it was a city, they all wanted to claim they had this or that: for example, we’re near the countryside, or it’s only an hour from the coast, etc. You just ended up with this amorphous description of places in the U.K. that could have been anywhere.

We try to bring more of the personality through; what makes the place different from other places. We do that with any destination, wherever we work, because every place is different. It’s just, historically speaking, some places have lost their way in articulating what their cultural narrative is, or they’re simply hanging on to something from the past, something nostalgic, a nod to their heyday—and they need to change.

You talk about Manchester Weekender and other events or initiatives that—if we take Manchester as an example—suggest the Manchester brand could be an amalgamation or an aggregation of various independent but connected brands in their own right, those you’ve leveraged and promoted collectively. In other words, it’s tactical and market specific. So when a diverse range of brands are talking collectively about one destination, does that simply reflect diversity, because you’re coming at it from whatever angle you need, and depending on the cultural tourism you’re promoting? Is that where branding can come into play?

Yes. Also, as I said, Manchester is probably known for a handful of things internationally. One is football. One is, as we like to say, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. But that’s always contested. [Laughter] And music, particularly The Smiths through to Happy Mondays. I’d say actually Joy Division through to Happy Mondays.

Now that doesn’t represent the whole of the city, of course, but at least there is a level of international awareness regarding Manchester. And we have a job to do in changing peoples’ perceptions, that the city is more than that. We don’t have the flagship building that people will associate with the place, so people’s visual perception is often really out of date because the thinking might be: “Industrial revolution? There must be lots of factories and chimneys.”

Meaning: I don’t want to go to Manchester because it’ll be smoggy [laughs] or dull!

Once, on the train from Manchester to Stoke‑on‑Trent—world capital of ceramics, as they like to call it—I overheard an American guy talking openly.

The train goes through beautiful countryside and, although he was on own, he was chatting to anybody who’d listen. I won’t try to do his accent, but he was like: “Wow! This isn’t at all what I thought it would be like. I thought there’d be lots of factories and chimneys.” And this is an educated man on business in the U.K. who still thought that ‘up north’ was just full of factories and chimneys!

Often, there are these huge out-of-date perceptions.

And we also struggle with the visual representation of Manchester. Liverpool doesn’t have that because it has its waterfront. It has the Three Graces, which is quite an iconic image. It also has The Beatles, as well as football. I think a lot of places will struggle with visual representation.

I’m sure actually Brisbane has some similar issues, though it’s quite a beautiful city. But I imagine people don’t visually know what to expect because it’s not known for having an iconic flagship like Sydney. That’s always a challenge.

Now I’ve forgotten your original question as I’ve been wandering around with my response. Oh yeah! Brands—different brands! [Laughter.]

The way that we approach cultural tourism is: ‘It’s not democratic or diplomatic.’ You don’t always promote the same perceived lead brands. You promote what is appropriate for the different markets and depending on the time of year as well. Just because a major gallery exists it doesn’t mean you will always lead with that as the story, because they might not have an exhibition that relates to the market we’re looking at. It has to be market‑focused.

The title of your talk in Brisbane had a rather provocative title: Cultural Tourism: Curb Your Diplomacy. One would suspect promoting cultural tourism involves managing multiple stakeholders with multiple agendas. In your opinion is diplomacy in general, or in specific terms, actually counterproductive? Or are we talking about separate things…

It’s slightly provocative. Often, the way the public sector has worked in the past—when it’s worked in collaboration—has been dominated by a perception that everybody has to be equal and that the profile, if they’re working in a joint marketing way, everything has to be equal.

That’s product‑focused, not market‑focused. That’s very much about egos at the table saying: “I need to get as much profile as them, and they shouldn’t be getting more profile than me.” We just don’t work that way. It’s not about who’s turn it is. It’s simply about what’s right for the market.

That is sometimes really difficult for people in the public sector to get their heads around, because they’re fundamentally used to working primarily with the public sector. And the cultural sector is more often than not funded by the public sector.

It’s not to say that there aren’t private sector organizations that one might work with, particularly the tourism industry. Even so, it is still very difficult for some people to leave their egos at the door and sit in a room and think of the bigger picture. It’s taken us a while to get to that point in Manchester.

I’m sure it’s also influenced by those who say: “Well, we’ve put this amount of money on the table, therefore we want to get this amount back.” But the person with the biggest cheque book doesn’t necessarily need to get the biggest megaphone.

Exactly! Actually, on the whole tourism agencies are set up as membership organizations. So people buy into campaigns. If you buy into a campaign, then you get profile in that campaign. It’s completely client‑focused and not market‑focused.

Incentivized for funding…

Campaigns help get information through but it’s often on behalf of a random collection of organizations. I’m sure members of the public understand that, to a degree. But we don’t operate that way. We’re not a membership organization, so we don’t have to include certain organizations.

We’ve historically worked with the Manchester Museums and Galleries Consortium which is not a membership organization, either. It’s a collective of venues working together around different areas. They are big enough to say: “Yep, fine, you get on with it. We know that it’s for the benefit of the city and therefore it will benefit us.” But it’s taken a long time to get to that point.

That actually goes to the heart of the theme for this issue of Open Manifesto 7: Enlightened self‑interest. Obviously, some organisations you mentioned have a self-interest, but it’s enlightened enough to understand that it’s also got to benefit other people, and the by-product will benefit that organisation anyway. The thinking is: “Because if it benefits everyone, it benefits us.” We’re talking about culture, but that must be a cultural shift for many organizations. Is this still a barrier for you?

Yeah. Many of those organisations are publicly funded and the funding situation here [in the U.K.] for the arts is really difficult. There have been significant cuts, which have impacted on all the funders of the arts. And sponsorship outside London is difficult anyway.

The majority of private sponsorship and philanthropy that’s going into the arts is in London. For some funders, if the Arts Council is seen to be behind something, they feel like they need to be at the table to demonstrate they’re part of whatever the project is, which is not necessarily the right reasons for being at the table. There are also people at the table thinking: “There’s going to be money coming out of this. And I want a piece of that.” So it’s vital to understand people’s motivations regarding why they’re at the table. In some cases the local authorities told them they should be there, or they feel they need to be there because of other people who are at the table. Then you end up with an unwieldy group of far too many people. And worse: whoever shouts loudest gets the attention.

All of them looking for an equal share of the pie regardless.

Or smaller organizations, thinking: “It’ll always be the bigger ones who get all the attention.” There’s a lot of that to get through. We spend a lot of time managing those kinds of relationships and trying to encourage other destinations to think similarly.

Obviously, we’re based in Manchester but, in the other destinations we work with it’s about trying to encourage those lead organizations, which tend to be local authorities or tourism agencies, to take the lead because somebody has to take a lead when you’re talking about cultural tourism.

The lead should be from within the cultural sector, but in some places it isn’t. So it’s about encouraging them to know how best to work in partnership and what the benefits are. If people step out along the way, then you have to just take that on board. We just need to accept that it simply may not be for them. The important thing is if there are big players in your destination, you absolutely need them around the table. There has to be an incentive for them to be around the table. And that isn’t necessarily about money. It’s an ongoing cultural shift where the larger organizations are encouraged by funders to think about how they support the smaller organizations.

Of course, in the private sector it’s really competitive but it’s a very different experience when you get into the public sector… For example, I was at a hoteliers forum just after I got back from Australia. Now, I’ve been at different hoteliers forums in Manchester, but this one was for a particular part of the city, so not the whole city. Actually, because they were a particular area of the city, they did seem to be more willing to collaborate. But if you take a general hoteliers’ forum, it’s everybody in and everybody for themselves. I know this might be a sweeping generalization, but there’s more of a sense of competition. There’s a sharing of information up to a point, but then commercial sensitivities come into play.

Thankfully, many of those commercial organizations do now understand they need each other and they grasp the importance of critical mass. They also understand how things in the city are impacting them as an individual organization, as well as members of an industry sector. Even as commercial organizations they have to think in different ways and talk to people that they perhaps wouldn’t have, even 10 years ago.

In terms of everything we’ve been talking about, does it matter whether we’re talking about a city or a place? If you scale this up to a country—what we refer to as nation branding—can cultural tourism in the way we’re discussing be successful? For example, in the 1990s, you had Cool Britannia under Prime Minister Tony Blair’s stewardship.

I knew you were going to mention that.

Well, that’s probably one of the more focused attempts at trying to create some kind of a destination brand around a country. Others have approached it differently, but Cool Britannia is probably one of the most memorable, at least in my experience. Whether it’s successful or unsuccessful in its objectives is a different question. But is it possible to scale these ideas up?

What’s interesting for me about Cool Britannia is that this was a national government attempt to reposition the country. And it’s really interesting when you look at the cultural people who were involved with it in the early days—bands like Blur and Oasis. When it started off the perception was the government understood that it wasn’t just about chocolate box heritage, that there was a contemporary culture being promoted around the world, particularly on the commercial music front.

But then they went too far with it and it just became naff. I bet all of those people who were originally associated with it now look back and cringe, thinking: “I can’t believe I was involved in that.” [Laughter] Because Tony Blair with an electric guitar is not the kind of image you want when trying to convey Cool Britannia around the world. It’s just not authentic.

It comes back to the fact it’s just a sound bite. It’s that kind of politics that we had during that era, that it’s more about the photo opportunity and the sound bite than the substance. It might have started off in the right place, but it really went in the wrong direction.

Visit Britain now has this Great Britain campaign, which they’ve been rolling out internationally. They’re using a lot of celebrities to endorse it, including actors and musicians. But they’re not necessarily people you would associate as being cool. They’ve got Stephen Fry, Julie Walters, Judi Dench and the stars from Harry Potter and Downton Abbey, among others. So they are internationally renowned cultural icons, if you like, who’ve come out of Britain and who are saying they like a particular part of the country. It’s a much more mainstream approach.

I find when government bodies try to get across the intangible cultural feel of a nation, they will always slip back into generalities because it’s quite difficult to articulate. The more you try to scale that up, the more general it becomes. I think that’s why you end up with these very general campaigns that can often go off in the wrong direction.

I’ve been to events in Los Angeles, which have been organized by—I’d better be careful what I say here now—let’s say ‘national bodies.’ The way that they’ve presented Britain is not necessarily the Britain that I know. It is hung on stereotypes. And that’s not unique to just this country. That’s every nation doing pro‑active tourism work. They will tend to hang it on those visual icons: the London bus, the Chelsea pensioner, the Beefeater, those things that are instantly recognizable. But you end up with people thinking London is the U.K. You go to America and people ask:

“Where are you from?”

“Manchester.”

“Is that near London?”

[Laughing.]

The response I have in my head is often: “Well, probably to you it is, but Manchester is a different world.”

What often happens is that those major capital cities tend to dominate the national perception and narrative about a place.

Yes, I think Australia has a big problem with that when it’s speaking to the international market. It tends to trade off very, very clichéd stereotypes. It’s a lazy way of approaching it because it could be done in a much more authentic, more educational, and more genuine way. That said, there are campaigns that have attempted to do that, particularly with regards to Indigenous culture. But it’s sugar coated. It’s stereotypical. The experience may align with a tourist or visitor’s perception in the first couple of days but pretty quickly they’re likely to see an entirely different story—which is the reality. Maybe that’s the intention. Grab people in and when they’re here, they’ll figure it out for themselves. Perhaps there’s room for an international dialogue, which isn’t based on stereotypes or clichés. Have you seen anything like that?

What’s interesting is that visitors are now becoming much more sophisticated. They are not relying on official channels or going into local travel agents and booking their holiday. My parents actually still do—bless them—because they don’t have a computer. Well, actually they do have a computer, they just never switch it on.

The market has changed so dramatically that people will generate their own research about the place. And particularly in the cultural tourism world, the likelihood of them going down official channels has diminished—word of mouth is going to be important, but they also want to find out their own information. Of course, you can see the sales of guidebooks are plummeting. There’s so much information on the Internet now that people will form their own opinion.

Now, whether it’s right or wrong is a different issue. I mean, I still am amazed at how many people still use TripAdvisor when for me, it’s not authentic anymore. It just simply isn’t. I think in its early days it was a useful tool, but I wouldn’t use it now. I just wouldn’t believe anything on there.

Then there are a lot of people who will still listen to a stranger’s opinion regarding a place and take their advice, rather than an official channel, which is quite an interesting shift. That’s a massive cultural shift.

Take the stereotypes of Australia, as an example. A lot of people who visit will never go near the bush. They will go to the cities and the beaches. So there’s a lot more that needs to be done in that dialogue. I think there’s a safety mechanism with people hanging onto those stereotypes and those national icons, because they know it’s a quick reference point. I think we’re a long way from ditching that. The London bus example is really interesting, because the buses are completely different now.

Heatherwick redesigned them…

Yeah. So they don’t look anything like the previous buses, but they’re still the red bus.

A few years ago I spoke with branding guru Wally Olins. We talked about nation branding, and he had similar views to you, that it’s perhaps difficult—or even contentious—to brand a nation, but the reality is that it will be branded through perception anyway. And when considering countries, they are going to be in constant flux, regardless. So his view was you’re better off trying to at least manage that process, so that you can help guide the perception. There is a fine balance between branding—as we know it— and avoiding the approach of: “Let’s just leave it up to the people and see what they say.” It’s really about management. One of the principles that I use in my branding work is: branding is not what you say you are, it’s what other people say you are. The challenge is managing the gap.

Absolutely!

I believe this is what you’re referring to, in terms of changing perceptions, but not using slogans. It’s a tricky line to walk, but that’s where it is. That’s where it happens. It means you can be more flexible, though. You’re not bound by one statement or one thought. You can move.

Exactly. Simon Anholt also does a Nation Brand Index, as well as a City Brand Index. There are certain groupings of cities that are based on perceptions of the nation, more than the city. African cities, Middle Eastern cities—they don’t score well.

I guess that makes sense, considering the power of perception.

As I say, Australia and Canada score well. In terms of the U.K., the perception is that we’re not very friendly, and that the weather’s bad. It affects perceptions of individual cities, as well as it does the nation. There are things that are wrapped up with the national perceptions that impact on an individual place, and these perceptions are almost outside your control. But you just have to work with that.

That said, even though the U.K. is not known for its weather, we still get a lot of visitors, because of the quality of our tourism offer and our cultural offer. It’s unique to us. There are things that you can work with and adapt to—but there are other things, like people’s perceptions of the Middle East and Africa, that are generational and they’re gong to take a lot longer to shift. And if a country is enduring political strife, that just reinforces people’s perceptions.

Also, people’s geography is often not very good. Africa just gets lumped in as this one place, rather than the reality of lots and lots of different countries, not to mention the differences between those countries. It’s just a lazy way of thinking, but it also demonstrates people’s general lack of knowledge.

You mentioned Peter Saville earlier. When I spoke with Peter a few years back, one belief he mentioned about branding—and this goes to perception—is that, as a brand, it’s important to be in the news. It’s about being a news story, because that’s going to shape more perception than any official brochure.

If we go back to the topic of PR, of media—but also if you look at those areas, geographically, which you’ve mentioned—when we see Africa in the news, it’s usually not good news. When we see the Middle East in the news, it’s usually either a bit awkward or not good news. That goes to people’s perception of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Tanzania, etc. Again, what Peter was advocating is developing your specific news story. That’s where branding can happen, because that’s where perceptions can get shaped or altered. It’s not necessarily a traditional space that marketing and branding people will inhabit because, for a start, you can’t manage it, and that’s scary for them. But it also doesn’t give them a physical output, a designed artefact—like a logo, or a brochure. Marketing and branding agencies still seem to be addicted to an output, rather than an effect.

Absolutely, yeah. The tourism industry, in particular, is still obsessed with leaflets and brochures. The Arts are too, to some extent, but the tourism industry in particular. It’s as if when they wonder what they should do someone says: “Let’s produce a leaflet.” They’re not market‑focused, and they’re scared of making dramatic changes. Their default position is: “It’s worked in the past, so we’ll do that again.”

Most organizations are really well behind the curve when it comes to digital engagement. This is something we tackle quite a bit with Palmer Squared. That’s one of our strengths. It can be quite frustrating when talking to other organizations, places, clients, whatever, when they’re well behind on that journey.

The public sector is particularly well behind. Now, I’m not saying that the commercial tourism sector is necessarily at the forefront, but they’ve certainly understood the potential a lot quicker.

Many fall back to their safety net: “We’ll do what we’ve always done. And we need a website, as well. We have to be on social media, too.” But they say this without understanding what engagement with consumers is now about, or the importance of content‑led marketing, because there isn’t a physical output.

All bias aside, the fact Manchester now has two world‑class football clubs, and the messages this has sent around the world, and what that means for the city and the level of investment that’s come into the city, is enormous. Previously, when working internationally, everybody would just talk about Manchester United. Now they ask: “Which team do you support?” (I’m a Manchester City fan, by the way!) It’s things like that which can make a massive difference over a relatively short period of time. Yes, it still reinforces the football message, but actually, it gets people thinking in a different way.

From a perception point of view, Manchester United in particular—but I assume Manchester City as well—is seen to be an internationally successful business, a brand, which just happens to be a football club. That’s the difference. It’s that shift where people begin to think: “Whoa, all right. They are really savvy businesses.” In some ways, this could be a hook for inward investment, because they’re not just seen as a football team. They’re seen as a business. I feel this is the perception being promoted now, which I imagine is helping Manchester broadly. Which goes back to the point that it can come from any angle, to promote any aspect of any destination, as long as it’s articulated clearly in terms of the perception.

Yeah, exactly. The interesting thing about Manchester City and the investment in the club, it’s actually investment in Manchester. They are investing in a whole range of new facilities, to create this sports city around the club. It isn’t just about the club and that’s quite a different shift. It’s also quite different to how Manchester United approach it.

Of course, the way Manchester United embraced branding, merchandising and their international markets, they really knew what they were doing. They’ve got a massive following all over the world. And this brings in a lot of money.

Obviously, there are a lot of true football fans who don’t like the way that the football industry is going. That’s a whole different conversation. But certainly, thinking more broadly about backers of football clubs investing in the city as well as the team is very interesting to watch.

I’ll finish on one last question, and it’s a local question for me. I was intrigued when listening to the Q&A after your talk. You were rather scathing about the positioning of Brisbane: Australia’s New World City. I agree it’s ridiculous. But did the perception you had of Brisbane before you visited change during or after your visit?

It’s really interesting. I’ve been to Melbourne and Sydney a few times, but I’d never been to Brisbane or Queensland before. I asked a lot of people: “Do you know Brisbane? Have you been to Brisbane?” Not that many of my friends or colleagues had been, but those who had said: “Actually, it’s a really great place. I really like it.” But I didn’t really have a visual picture of what the city was going to look like. I thought it would be a smaller version of Sydney—somewhere between Melbourne and Sydney, in terms of what it might look and feel like.

I was really surprised at the size of this city, which I know sounds daft. The U.K. is tiny in comparison, but I wasn’t expecting Brisbane city to be as big as it is. That’s maybe me sounding really parochial.

Not at all. It’s validating the fact that the perception of Brisbane really is unmanaged.

I also didn’t know about the wealth of the cultural offer. And I think this is something—I can’t remember if I said this to you Kevin, when we spoke previously—but one thing that Australian cities do really well is embrace the waterfronts. In the U.K. we’ve had a tendency to turn our back on waterfronts, particularly these polluted industrial rivers and canals. But we’re sorting that out. It’s obviously changing now and Birmingham was the first city in the UK to see the value in embracing their canal system and making it a feature within the public realm.

It is impressive the way Brisbane has embraced its waterfront and how important that is to the life of the city. I just spent a lot of time wandering around and watching how people interacted with the place, and how important being by the river seems to be. But what was interesting is that the collection of cultural organizations [at South Bank] hasn’t made a real connection with the river. It seems that their backs are to the river. I think there is an opportunity to turn that around. Of course, I don’t mean physically, but to turn that around and embrace their location.

There seems to be a great cultural scene around that precinct. I was lucky to meet quite a lot of cultural practitioners. There are a lot of very good people doing very good work, and that’s just not visible to us at all here in the U.K.

Having been to Sydney and Melbourne, I know the depth of the cultural offer of those cities, but we’re not really aware of what’s happening culturally in Brisbane. But like other Australian cities, Brisbane is really clean and feels very safe. I had anticipated that’s what it might be like. Of course, the issue around the lack of public access to wi-fi was very frustrating. That does need sorting out. But it has exceeded my expectations.

Aside from your—shall we say—distaste for slogans and taglines, I find it interesting that the Brisbane: Australia’s New World City positioning had no bearing for you, or your experience here. In fact, it’s probably null and void, if not misleading, because there’s no context around it.

I didn’t know about it until I was told about it. And then when I was walking past the information center in central Brisbane, I did actually see it. But I haven’t clocked it. It has no relevance as far as being something that might attract a U.K. visitor. I don’t know what it means. I simply don’t know what it means.

Cities can’t rely on—or stop with—a slogan or a tagline. It has to be validated. It has to be communicated on multiple levels. It has to be reinforced. I truly believe branding can be incredibly dangerous because you have to live up to it, and if you don’t it exposes you. You’ll be found out very quickly, particularly in today’s day and age. Whether or not cities employ destination branding, a slogan or a positioning line, it has to be given context, whether that’s domestically or internationally. For me, perhaps one of the core take‑outs from our conversation today is that cultural tourism is a long‑term dialogue to provide context that will help shape a perception. And there’s a lot of benefit to that approach…

Yeah. One key thing which is particularly relevant for Brisbane—in the same way it’s relevant for other places that aren’t capital cities—is not to compare themselves to someone else, to another city.

I’ve heard people say Birmingham is UK’s second city. Well, it’s actually not. But what does that mean, anyway—second city? Does anyone want to be seen as a second city? Peter Saville would always say he always thought Germany was an interesting example, where you had a lot of cities that were very strong in their own right. It was more equal than somewhere like the U.K., where Peter often says London is its own country now. It’s almost split off from the rest of the U.K. So there’s no point comparing yourself to London or Sydney or New York. It’s pointless. You need to be who you are, and then as you said, Kevin, focus on how you articulate that.

Image Credits:

The Angel of the North by Antony Gormley / Shutterstock

I (Heart) NY logo sourced on Milton Glaser’s website

M logo, City of Manchester, by Peter Saville

Influential British designer Peter Saville discusses his views on the evolution of the graphic design industry, while also questioning the role of truth in branding. This interview was featured in Open Manifesto #4, which focused on the theme ‘Propaganda’.

Kevin Finn: While you were at Art College you came to the conclusion that graphic design was a service to other disciplines. Do you still see this as being the case?

Peter Saville: Yes. [Pause] I got steered towards graphic design when I was a young person, when I was a teenager, because I liked the aesthetic of the graphic art. I think this is probably a condition common to many young people. The graphic arts are very much a (sort of) entry-level course for someone who is visually interested. Because it is pretty simple stuff, isn’t it?

It’s accessible?

Yes. It’s like Pop Art. You don’t need to know much. Many of us, from average middle class backgrounds, are not highly culturally aware in either music, or literature, or theatre, or cinema, or art, or whatever. You know, the arts are attracting many, many people whose parents were in the more mundane activities of life; shopkeepers, factory workers, accountants, bookkeepers, business people, whatever.

Actually, when we meet individuals who have grown up in a more highly attuned arts background, they’re usually a lot more focused about what they want to do. The Arts are attracting increasing number of people who don’t really have any high art background when they arrive at art college age, at 18. And pretty much, the things they know most about are the popular arts and the arts associated with youth culture. As a result, they know quite a lot about fashion and pop music and graphics.

Now, this was exactly my condition 30 years ago when I went to art school. I liked Pop Art. I knew a little bit about Modernism, because I studied architecture at Art School, rather than art history. And I think I liked graphics, or was drawn to graphics. And the work I was doing at high school looked like a graphic aesthetic because it was what I knew and liked.

Of course, I liked record covers. I liked pop culture posters. I liked Andy Warhol and Allen Jones and the Pop Artists. I liked that stuff. I could identify with it. It was accessible for me—I knew about it. So I expressed myself in that kind of language and in the world of graphic art, I found myself in a universe of this kind of—aesthetic.

Now, I think it would be fair to say that an awful lot of young people are drawn to something like graphics because they ‘get it’. It features strongly in their universe. They are the audience. They see so much of it in its groovier formats.

And I would say, increasingly we are seeing people drawn to fashion, and photography—and fashion photography [laughing]—and motion image, and they know about music video. You get drawn into the stuff you know and understand.

I don’t think they have any real idea what the discipline of communication design is really about. So, the fact that there is service component is something that, I believe, a lot of them don’t even think about. And I didn’t.

Was it surprising for you to come to this conclusion?

I think I avoided it. I avoided the reality of graphic design until I was about 30. Where I found myself was in this particular position (and this was my state of mind when I went to art college): I was interested in what was setting the cultural agenda, as seemed important to me at that time.

We’re looking at the mid seventies here. I was very interested in music and fashion. And if you think about the great movements in music at that time, which is the relationship between image and identity and music—David Bowie is this time, and Roxy Music is this time—so they’re my, kind of, artistic role models in music and they are playing with issues of image and identity through the form of pop music. And there is obviously a very strong link with fashion at work there, too.

So what you‘ve got is music, which is like the common denominator of youth culture—music is the glue, whatever it is, particularly if you’ve got this youth avant-garde mentality—the music is the glue. And this leads you to the role of identity and fashion. Fashion is very important, and what’s going on in fashion is important. Obviously what’s going on in photography, and it’s role in fashion and identity, is important. At my time there was Helmut Newton and his contemporaries. They were like the avant-garde fashion image-makers.

And then there was this kind of graphic branding—or a branding role—in it all. I wanted to be a pop star, but accepted I wasn’t musically inclined so I couldn’t be a pop star. And I didn’t even dream of being a fashion designer. Later I would have done, but I didn’t at that time. I was a bit intimidated by photography because it seemed rather technical and hard work. But the graphic element, there was definitely a graphic element in all of this and it seemed to me that I could do that.

Interestingly, the graphic component was another kind of multilateral glue—music involved graphics and photography. And fashion? Well that also involved graphics. And other aspects of design had it. So I thought, this graphic thing is common to everything.

If you are looking for a convergent practice that can, in a way, link you to all of these different spheres of activity, from fashion design, to being a pop singer, to making movies or being a photographer—well hang on a minute, this graphics thing, this is common to all of these activities. That’s interesting. This ticket gets me into everything.

I figured, ‘I can do this’. I like the graphic art look and it’s an access all areas ticket. But it wasn’t setting the pace. Image-makers and the music, they were the pace setters. I realised very quickly that graphics is not the pace setter; it is subordinate to a message written in one of these other disciplines. But I thought, ‘yeah, I’m here now—doing it—so I’d better make the most of it.’

So that was my position. I spent no time at all in the graphics department because, with the exception of my friend Malcolm Garrett, they were all pretty boring. And I spent all of my time with the photography people and in the fashion department, because it was there that I saw, in a way, the trends and the directions being set.

Then I would go away and ask, what does this mean to the graphic language? What’s the graphic language for this direction in fashion? What’s the graphic language for this direction in pop music? What is the graphic equivalent for this progressive photographic image making? What’s its graphic equivalent? This was my mission.

You also say graphic design is—‘for others, to others’. Can you expand on this?

Well, the ‘for others, to others’ is a very good way to bring oneself down to earth, vis-à-vis, the role of communication in design. What I actually ended up doing, as I graduated from college, was different, courtesy of the autonomous playpen that was Factory Records—a place where no one set the agenda and the groups were free to do what they did—there was no commercial agenda.

There was no commercial agenda because there was no money at stake. Tony Wilson [founder of Factory Records] put five thousand pounds in at the beginning and it was a bit like one of those accumulated debts. So, seven turns into 20, 20 turns into 50, 50 turns into 250. When Ian Curtis [lead singer of Joy Division] died, there was a windfall of cash. Because, remember, we had no contracts, we had no advances, there was no advertising, there was no promotion. All there was was the cost of a group going in to a studio and recording a track quickly. I mean I know ‘Unknown Pleasures’ [Joy Division] was made for six thousand pounds.

There were no advances. Nobody took a salary. There was no office. There was nothing. There was just the cost of making the product. And in the case of Joy Division, the cost and the income [laughing] became disproportionate.

Of course the catalyst for that was Ian [Curtis] dying. Suddenly Tony Wilson’s five thousand pounds stake turned into… I don’t know, 250 thousand pounds. That was in turn able to fund the Hacienda [Factory Records nightclub and venue], as well as further releases and whatnot.

And it’s really important to remember that Factory Records never got commercially orientated throughout the entire Eighties. In fact, it ended because it was never financially controlled.

This is quite important. It created an autonomous operating zone for everybody that was acting within it. What did it do for me? It gave me an opportunity to do graphic art, communications art, whatever you want to call it, as a kind of free-form medium of self-expression. Nobody gave me a message. Nobody really declared whom the work was for. Certainly not Tony Wilson.

And the groups were too shy, and insecure, and disparate among themselves to say what they wanted, with the exception of Joy Division on the first album. They gave me something and said “we would like this on our record cover”. So I put it on their record cover.

They didn’t say how. They didn’t even have an approval process in place. They just said ‘we would like this on the cover of ‘Unknown Pleasures’’. It was wonderful, what they gave me, and I looked and it and said, great! And the then I asked, what else do you want on the front? Their answer: “Well, dunno really.” “Do you want it to say Joy Division? And they said, “not really. It’s a bit obvious isn’t it?” [Laughing] Would you like it to say ‘Unknown Pleasures’? “Not really”. And that was the biggest brief I ever got from them [laughing].

They were shy and they wanted to be anonymous. They wanted to be enigmatic. They didn’t want to enter into the clichés of the music industry because this is the period immediately post punk where everybody had burned the house down.

So it was cool to be detached and enigmatic, because there was no brief, and there were no business people, and there was no marketing person, and there was nobody in control, and there was nobody who knew what they were doing. So—do what you want. And for the next 10 years, I was able to use the medium of communication to express whatever I felt like expressing.

Unencumbered by…

Unencumbered by anything! By the time Ian [Curtis] died and Joy Division became New Order. But they couldn’t even agree on what to eat for lunch, or whether they would go on tour or not. I mean, they couldn’t agree on anything.

How does that now fit with your definition of graphic design?

Well, the point I am mentioning here is that I did all that work, which I am known for, and it was completely outside the normal practice of graphic design. Graphic design isn’t like that—it’s completely not like that. And in my entire fucking career—30 years on—nothing else has ever been like that.

And of course, half way through the Eighties when I had to do something other than record covers, because you grow out of it, then I began to hit the real meaning of communication design. And I didn’t like it. I hated it. It was astonishingly boring.

Brett Wickens (who was my top colleague by this time) and I painfully buckled down to the reality of communication design as a profession and began to operate in the normal practice of—client, audience—and shaping the message from the client to the audience. And I didn’t like it.

The message was obviously someone else’s.

Of course—it was ‘for someone else to someone else.’ It was not for me, and it was not to me. I mean, luckily, in the early years we had some very liberal and open-minded clients.

Our first client was Nick Serota, who is now Sir Nick Serota—he’s the Director of The Tate [Art Gallery/Museum, London]. At that time [1976] he was the Director of The Whitechapel Gallery [London]. He was our first client outside of music.

He asked us to do an identity and house design program for the The Whitechapel Gallery. He asked because he was beginning to work with a younger generation of artists who knew my work through music. He felt [the artists] would have confidence in me.

I assume it was a segue for you as well because it was still based in culture, or it was still coming from your previous experiences, but in the world of reality in graphic design.

Yes. And Nick was very wise and very patient. He had a year for us to do a letterhead. And he needed it because Brett and I realised that we didn’t know what we were doing.

I mean, we studied enough, and we read enough, and we knew enough about the discipline of design, and we knew what the benchmarks were. But it took a while to get there. But Nick was patient and open-minded and we did an interesting piece of work with The Whitechapel Gallery identity.

[Nick] was tough, and he’s very scary, but he was still a very user-friendly client if you’ve got principles. If you don’t have any principles, if you don’t have any style, if you don’t have any craft, if you don’t have anything [of that nature] then Nick Serota doesn’t have any time for you. He was a great mentor for our… [Pause]…amateur idealism [laughing].

And very soon after that we started to work, through Paris, with [fashion designer] Yohji Yamamoto in Tokyo. Similarly, Yohji was an idealist. He was very interested in doing something very different. There was no commercial agenda. There were no marketing people. There was just: “Show me a fresh way to make a fashion book.” And we did. We brought a lot of graphic art standards and skills to it, which were not prevalent in fashion at that time.

This still reflected the freedom you had at Factory Records and with The Whitechapel Gallery. It was almost like a soft introduction for you.

It was really soft. That’s the perfect way to put it, Kevin. Nick Serota and Yohji Yamamoto were a soft introduction for us.

I mean, [laughing] they’re both a couple of scary demi-gods but where we needed the softness they had it. They were interested in what we were doing, not in its commerciality. And Nick was quite a champion for us with what we were attempting to do—and we were attempting to do something very new. For example, Brett created a Serif Sans Serif typeface for The Whitechapel Gallery. We were looking for a conceptual solution in our work. Nick saw that and appreciated it. Yohji saw it and appreciated it. So it was a soft introduction.

And Pentagram, in 1990, became the finishing school of the relationship between the idealist designer and commercial practice—business practice…

I get the impression you don’t believe these two characteristics can really go hand in hand.

No, the skill is learning ‘how’ these go hand in hand. That’s the skill. And of course, for two years at Pentagram I had a dozen partners to teach me, some of whom had written the book on the relationship between business and graphic design—Colin Forbes being a great example. Alan Fletcher being another great example. And John McConnell is just an amazing navigator of business and is just brilliant at articulating the value of design in the context of business. He was just brilliant…

Was that daunting?

No. It was pretty damn impressive. Brett and I had five years on our own, of seeing the enormity of the problem. And suddenly, there I am with all these older guys who were 20 years older than me and who had figured it out.

The problem was, that in figuring it out they had parted company with aesthetic innovation. And this is where there is a fundamental difference.

Of course, they were probably under the impression that—with 15 years of practice behind you—you also understood the relationship between business and design…

All they thought was that I was a reasonable exponent of the new aesthetic but only in as far as they liked some of the early work. They liked where I had gotten to a few years earlier because it could trickle down to their level of sensibility.

But what we were doing in 1990—they didn’t like. It was not graphic design. Even Alan Fletcher said to me about the Republic cover for New Order: “Peter, that isn’t graphic design.” They didn’t really see the value of this work with fashion because the luxury goods business had not really happened the way we understand it now.

It was pre-Prada, pre-Gucci, pre-Louis Vuitton, pre-Dior. The massive business that fashion was going to blend into hadn’t really happened yet and it was still a bit of an avant-garde activity. They didn’t really see the point in it. And they had never heard of Yohji Yamamoto. They’d heard of Issey Miyake, but this guy Yohji—[they thought] “it’s a bit weird isn’t it?”

My friend Nick Knight, whom I was working with at the time, wasn’t regarded as a proper photographer then, either. The graphic language aesthetic we were exploring when we were at Pentagram, their taste hadn’t arrived at it yet. But they liked the early work. They wouldn’t have liked the early work five years earlier. I mean, this is what happens with old people…

It’s retrospective?

Yes. But they thought: “[Saville and Wickens] are trendy, but they’ve got longevity. They’re not just trendy for the last 12 months. Peter has been trendy for the past fucking 10 years so he must have something.” And there was a certain kind of elegance to the work, which they liked. Once they were able to visually decode the work—when they got to like things—they could see there was an idea there. But they believed: “these boys have no idea about business. But now they’re here, perhaps they’ll learn.”

Well, we didn’t [laughing]. The two years I was at Pentagram, it was too much. And at the same time, it wasn’t long enough. Also, I didn’t really want to work the way they worked. I didn’t really want to do that. Kevin, here’s a perfect anecdote to explain it: one evening around eight o’clock, Brett and I and an assistant were all sitting around a [Apple] Macintosh; the fact that we had Macintosh’s was deeply, deeply unpopular at Pentagram. They did not want us to use a Mackintosh. In 1991, 1992, they kept on begging us—“please get rid of those fucking computers!” This is how out of sink I was with Pentagram.

Anyway, three of us were sitting around a Mac at eight o’clock at night and John McConnell was the last partner to leave the building. He called to me and I went down the stairs with him and the first thing he said to me was: “Peter, that looks expensive.”

He’d see my hourly rate, Brett’s hourly rate, and someone else’s hourly rate all sitting around one job. John didn’t like to see that, quickly calculating six hundred pounds an hour sitting on one job. And his final words were: “you’ve got to stop trying to reinvent the wheel.”

Ironic since, as you said, the fashion industry was about to explode and the Apple Mac was about to revolutionise graphic design. So, in a way, you were staring into the future and they weren’t…

Well, we were always trying to reinvent the wheel. That’s what we were doing. That’s what I wanted to do. At that time I wanted to follow the evolution of the discipline, of the art. In fact, it’s what you have to do now if you want to stay out there.

And also to avoid the problem of what we spoke about originally, that graphic design wasn’t the agenda setter.

Exactly.

To counter this you were exploring areas of innovation and experimentation—areas that were challenging—otherwise you’d end up on the treadmill?

Exactly. But what you can’t do is work in an innovative way commercially. What I ended up realising; the first thing was to re-understand the word professional. What I learned at Pentagram was: you have a ten thousand pound budget for this job. That means you do it with this number of people in this number of days. That’s professional. You have two days to do whatever it is—you do it in two days.

And John McConnell would say: “what’s wrong with a day and a half. There is nothing wrong with a profit.” And if we look at the way those design companies developed their aesthetic, that’s how they worked. They stopped reinventing their aesthetic. They learned how to do it, to some extent, on autopilot…

Within parameters…

Yeah. And if you wish to work professionally, and successfully within communications design, that is what you have to do. And I didn’t really want to do that. I realised that I didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t interesting for me to do that. I didn’t really think it was a very good way to navigate the times. I saw fashion and trend starting to set the agenda in graphics and this was a bit of a problem.

I think how I see it now, Kevin, the entire culture has changed, the climate has changed, the audience has changed, everything sitting in communications design is now positioned via fashionable codes. That’s the deal.

The position you can get to, and to some extent this is where [John] McConnell ended up and where I live half my life, is no longer as a ‘doer’ of anything graphically, but as a consultant strategist on ‘what to do’.

As a Sheppard?

As a ‘route-finder’. A guide. And I mean this in a professional capacity. At Pentagram, I was twelve hundred pounds a day. We can equate that now as like, two thousand pounds a day. There is only one thing that clients, companies, or corporations pay two thousand pounds a day for and that is strategic thinking. Who the fuck does [the implementation of the design work] doesn’t matter. It’s about ‘what to do’ for that client to that audience. This is a boardroom level activity.

Your definition of graphic design ‘for others, to others’ seems to be…

Totally. It is that in its purest sense. ‘For others, to others’ in its purest sense. You have no hands on involvement because the decision on what to do has to be entirely impartial. It may be something you can do, but actually, is anyone going to pay you two thousand pounds a fucking day to do it? No, not really!

The laying out of type, the positioning of images… blah, blah, blah. The clever things to do with Helvetica—whatever! I mean, no-one is going to pay fucking two hundred and fifty pounds an hour for that! You don’t need to, because there are loads of talented young people who are desperate to stay up all night looking to do something different with Helvetica.

So, the value you’re talking about is increasingly in knowledge, and in awareness, and in opinion?

Yes. Positioning. How to employ the universe of visual codes, which are constantly changing in meaning as a result of pluralism, popularism and fashion; how the visual codes position the clients service offer, vis-à-vis, the given audience.

Do you find the boardroom level is seeing value in this?

Depending on the nature of the business you are dealing with—yes. Yes, they see the value in this. In the luxury goods industry they understand it totally. They are very much interested in graphics now, just as much as they used to be in fashion and the art direction of [fashion].

It’s positioning. It’s positioning and branding. How do we brand ourselves? What is our brand? And this is understood to be the realm of communications design.

Of course, that whole notion of branding, from what you’re saying, has matured. Over the last decade the buzzword has been ‘brand’ but I don’t think designers even understood that it was more than a big corporate identity. But now, since the business world understands it, designers understand it and culture understands it, we see it has matured.

Yes it’s much more than a corporate identity. But it’s interesting, Kevin, there is still a lot of mixed opinion and confusion as to what is really meant by a brand. It’s not necessarily about branding.

For example, in the two years [I have been] a branding consultant to the City of Manchester, branding has really got nothing to do with it at all. Instead, it’s: ‘what is the understanding of the city?’ The brand is Manchester. That’s the brand. The question is what do people understand when they hear the word Manchester? Pretty simple. What do people understand when they hear the letters BMW? That’s the brand. I mean the graphic symbol of BMW is just a little part of it.

If you go to a city, what’s the graphic symbol of a city? We never fucking see it. You and I are talking about Manchester; you haven’t seen the logo, but you know what I mean when I say Manchester—a city in the north of England. Does Sydney have a logo? I have no idea, but I can tell you about my impressions of Sydney because that’s the brand. So the work with Manchester has been entirely about: what do people think when they hear or see the word Manchester?—in any typeface; in any tone of voice.

I guess the critical thing there is, it’s purely experiential and it is purely individual so it’s a very difficult thing to wrap up in one particular mark or…

It is. It relates to what is said about the place and where it is said. This is where the brand of a place is brokered. I see a brand now as a ‘news generator’ that lives in an information net that circles the world. And a key thing for a brand is that it must be a regular frequent ‘news generator’. If it’s not generating news, it is clipped out of our awareness. And the news it generates must be on message.

Take the brand BMW. If we hear BMW is working on a new range of high fuel, high emission, power vehicles, we begin to get the negative connotations about BMW. If we hear that BMW is working on hybrid vehicles, that they have ideas of a non emissions or a super hybrid—whatever—then that is keeping BMW in the ‘on message’ version of brand positioning now…

As dictated by popular culture, and the people.

Exactly!—a constantly moving target. You know, if we heard them talking about green vehicles ten or twelve years ago we’d think: “Oh, they’ve gone really fucking hippy on us—really boring.” So the message is constantly a moving target. To be a communications consultant, the more manoeuvrable you are the less tied down to any baggage or given aesthetic, the better.

So, the communications design business is now about ‘doers’ and ‘thinkers’. You would have to give the career longevity to the ‘thinkers’ because the ‘doers’ have a fashion season-like lifespan.

Of course, this is not unique to graphic design—and it’s not rocket science to figure out—but it seems to have taken quite a long time for us all, and the industry, to catch up with that idea; that the ‘thinkers’ are the ones who will withstand the shifting trends and the ‘doers’ will be the ones who interpret it…

It’s mainly because there is very little writing of any significance or consequence in design, right across the board, but particularly in graphics. The level of writing is banal.

Why is that? Is it something that is still maturing?

I don’t know. [Pause] I think it’s because of the enormity of the media culture issue. We haven’t really come to terms with it yet. There are an awful lot of dots that still haven’t been joined up.

Think about the diversity of things written in business, in psychology, in media studies, in graphic art, in typography, in branding issues (you know the famous ‘No Logo’ book [by Naomi Klein])—if you join it all up you’ve got a really big issue. But I don’t think it has really been seen yet.

For example, we go and get one or two graphics magazines out now—what the fuck do we see? We see Creative Review and Grafik magazine. What do we see? We see a bunch of ‘doing’ stuff. We don’t see a highly informed, articulate, intelligent essay about the meaning of media culture; the relationship of business to media culture. It’s really dumbed down.

Perhaps it is still catching up with itself?

Yeah! You need a Marshall McLuhan writing in fucking Creative Review. You need a Peter York writing in Grafik magazine—there are people out there and they are writing about these things in other areas, but no one is really joining it up. There isn’t a publication that embraces psychology, philosophy and media. People are still taking about what they did with Photoshop, and it’s all intuitive. None of it has had any intellectual discipline brought to bear on it.

The argument, which is always presented, is: designers won’t read the material. Perhaps this is due to the fact that, at the moment, the industry seems to be populated by what you refer to as ‘doers’ and not ‘thinkers’…

Yes. There are a bunch of ‘thinkers’ and manipulators who just use the ‘doers’ like they harvest them. We don’t get marketing people or business people writing. It’s presented as though all of these activities are in there own separate little capsules. But if you are working at the highest professional level, you need to be articulate in these different skills.

You need to talk to business people; you need to understand the psychology of an audience; you need to understand the routes of influence via media and how much the world is changing as a result of being a media culture.

Within the academic system, you get too many people who are out of the loop so the academic system doesn’t adjust quickly. Graduates come out and they’re at the foot of the mountain—they’re not even at base camp one.

And the industry isn’t really supporting the intellectual side of things. So whatever academic rigour students have gained at university it isn’t accepted in industry; and so they become ‘doers’?

Yeah. Over the past decade we are only just beginning to see proper partnerships between business minds and designers within the context of design companies. They are beginning to get together and starting to think: “Hmmmn, maybe we can help each other.”

Now, I’ve seen how to do it, and if needs must, I can do it, but I don’t wish to do it. I don’t actually wish to practice design to manipulate audiences. But of course that’s the job now. There is no ideology in business except profitability. That is businesses ideology. That is businesses raison d’étre —to make money. It’s not the business world’s raison d’étre to change the world or make it better…

Unless it’s profitable to do so [laughing]…

Unless it is profitable. [Pause] So, therefore, the job is to steer and engineer people’s perceptions of things towards a profitable outcome for your clients—that’s the job! And that hasn’t sat comfortably with me as a role to play.

It seems shallow?

It’s a misleading conspiracy, you know. It’s smoke and mirrors. The brief is: make it look like we believe in something; make us or our product look believable; look like we mean something. That’s the job.

Image Credit:

Peter Saville portrait provided by Peter Saville

Album cover images from personal collection

Legendary and influential American designer Milton Glaser discusses the circumstances which dictate the power and potency of dissent in democracy. This interview was featured in Open Manifesto #4, which focused on the theme ‘Propaganda’. (Sadly, Milton passed away in 2020 on his 91st birthday.)

Note: This interview took place in 2007 and refers to specifics of that time.

Kevin Finn: With the proliferation of new media, is the poster, not to mention the poster of dissent, still a relevant medium today?

Milton Glaser: It depends what you mean by relevant. It is certainly not the major form of communication today. Designers love posters because of their physical size—that it’s close to a painting, rather than an 8.5″ x 11″ scrap of paper.

But if you are talking about posters being relevant in communicating to a large audience, certainly not. It’s relevant to the people who make it because it’s a way of expressing ideas to a small segment of the population, those involved in professional practice. It is a meaningful way of discovering things. In certain kinds of conditions, to certain kinds of audiences, for instance posters in the subway where a couple of million people might see it in the course of a day, it probably has some relevance. But it would be very hard to justify the poster as a major means of communicating, certainly in industrialized countries at this moment.

You once stated (in an interview with Macworld in 2001) “culture is defined as much by what is prohibited as by what is accepted.” The Internet prohibits nothing. How has this affected dissent today?

I think you need a really smart sociology professor to answer questions like that. But by and large what we know about the Internet today is hearsay because we have not attempted to quantify the information in any way. The dark side of democracy—the idea that everyone has become a source of information—is troubling because there is no vetting process to determine whether the information is coming from an idiot or someone with intelligence. This is problematic. I don’t think the consequences of this new adventure in communication is in any way understandable at this moment.

On a different note, after the tragedy of 9/11 there was a plethora of graphic reactions. Designers seemed compelled to respond to the event. But with the passing of time the general political awareness of the graphic design industry has waned somewhat. Do we need these horrendous acts to instigate political expression from the mainstream?

Well, it’s hard to tell. Again, these are not quantifiable questions unless someone has done a study to ascertain how much design activity there is relating to social causes at the moment, as compared to what they were five or ten years ago. When you ask those cosmic questions about the interpretation of what is going on, and all I have is anecdotal information, I don’t know how to respond.

I would say that there is a kind of current for social reform, concern about ecology and to some degree political activism within the design community. But how much is going on I couldn’t say.

I think 9/11 was a trauma for many people. I don’t actually think that, in terms of alerting the design community for the need to communicate about social issues, that it was very profound. It was an event that made people certainly feel upset about life as we now live it but I don’t think there was a direct correlation between that kind of response and a turning towards political activism.

When Ken Garland’s First Things First Manifesto (1964) was published and the subsequent FTF 2000 they both caused a stir at the time. But the intentions of those manifestos don’t seem to have been sustained in practical terms. Do you think there is a way we might ensure these themes to remain current?

I don’t know how we ensure anything in a changing culture. I think the only issue is how individuals respond and whether their sense of activity embraces social commentary. But that is unique to the design community. Modernism was, after all, a social movement as well as an aesthetic one. And so, there have been a lot of examples of concern for social issues in the history of graphic art but it sort of waxes and wanes. I would say that in the United States it has been less visible than it was in Europe, in terms of the activity of graphic designers.

However, I think now there has been a kind of an upswing and like all things—it’s sad but true—when they become trendy they become visible.

Yes, it seems at the moment, from what I have seen internationally but particularly around America, the policies of the [George W] Bush Administration have solicited a far more visible reaction than perhaps previous American administrations. Is this something you are seeing?

Well, that may be true. I did a book with Mirko Ilic called ‘The Design of Dissent’ [originally published in 2005], which has a lot of reactions to Bush and many people really hate him. The real question, which I always pose to designers and other people, is how you enter into the communication stream? I mean, how do you make yourself visible? What is the mechanism by which this stuff appears in the pubic? And as you know, that is a difficult part of the communication problem. I mean, you can go on the Internet and be one voice in a million, or you can put a poster up in your neighbourhood. But in the absence of mainstream connections and enormous amounts of money it is very difficult to make a position, particularly a marginal one, visible.

On the other side of this you mention in ‘Design of Dissent’, in your interview with Steven Heller that: “education trains you to be a conformist”. Does this point towards a type of graphic conditioning?

Well I don’t think it is unique to graphic design. I mean, all education basically instils a pattern of belief in people. Very often it is unexamined. But this is the nature of socialization in any culture so it’s not special to the graphic arts business and it is not peculiar to education. Education teaches you rules and, as you know, a good rule in life is to not accept anything, in the form of received information, without scepticism.

Broadly speaking—I guess we’re touching on the topic of citizen designer—what does it take to be a citizen designer and do you think the wider industry sees it as being important?

What is important is for individuals to feel, by virtue of their interests and their conscience, that they want to effect the life of their times. It also includes a sense of responsibility to the people you communicate with. It does become very personal on that level and can only become collective when you can link into other social systems. But as I said earlier, the difficult part is how you enter the culture.

You have (quite personally) entered into the wider culture with the ‘I (heart) NY’ logo. I know you have spoken in the past about how you included the words ‘More Than Ever’ after the 9/11 event, but I was amazed to hear that the response to this from the State was negative. Have they changed their view since then?

Well, the thing just passed because there was no impetus behind it to make it continue. There were no t-shirts, there was no promotional material, there was no budget, and after a year passed it no longer seemed relevant to continue to say ‘More Than Ever’.

The State resisted basically because they thought it was an infringement on their trademark, since they had trademarked the design I did—‘I (heart) NY’—and they thought that if I was making money on ‘I (heart) NY More Than Ever’, they should get a part of it. But since I didn’t make any money on it, it quickly became irrelevant.

In a similar vein, you have designed and produced a button [badge] stating ‘Dissent Protects Democracy’. How has that been received—generally?

Oh, I think it has been received well; it has been used, it’s been worn. I did that through, what you might call a Left Wing or progressive magazine called The Nation, which I admire and which has been at the forefront of good reporting about the war for a long time. They offered it to their membership, subscribers and people who read the magazine and they sold a lot of them so I presume they are getting good reactions.

But I think at the core of what I believe is that particular idea, which is: dissent is the only way you can guarantee a democratic society.

In terms of freedom of speech?

Exactly.

Contrary to that, would you say apathy is the enemy of dissent?

I would say that is one of the great problems in any democratic political form. When the people become apathetic and do not vote the possibility for a totalitarian impulse becomes greater. And that is what is happening in the U.S.

Getting a little more specific, there is a view that the majority of advertising is more about persuasion than information. No doubt our industry would be happy to believe that graphic design is the opposite to that particular view of advertising, but do you think this is actually the case for the most part?

No I don’t think it is the case. I mean, by and large we are very often in the persuasion business. Graphic designers like to make a distinction and very often there are distinctions. But very often we are in the same position as someone trying to persuade others to do things that are not necessarily in their own good. I’ve always had some trouble working in advertising, although I do some advertising every once in a while. But, by and large, I try to deflect that issue by not working for institutions that I believe can cause harm.

Would it be fair to say that dissent is a form of persuasion?

There is a great definition of art that I use, which is in fact a quote form second Century Roman wise man. He said: The purpose of art is to inform and delight. I like that idea of a definition very much. He does not say to ‘persuade’—but to ‘inform’. So I make a distinction between an act of informing and persuading, and I try to be on the side of the informing side of things.

Of course, corporations have co-opted counter culture. Does that make voices like Adbusters more, or less, relevant today?

I don’t know the answer to that. I mean everything successful gets cop-opted at some point. Anything that succeeds in our culture is copied so if you succeed by being anti-establishment you basically create, as Nike did, the illusion that by wearing their sneakers you’re against the establishment.

There is a thesis that ‘small distortions of the truth may not be recognised as lies’—but they are still accepted, nonetheless. How far do you think these distortions can go before they become propagandistic and are we less likely to see that transition?

You have to be careful about what you mean by these words; Propaganda is their belief, information is our belief. Propaganda means we don’t agree with the information. You could say that a healthy diet is propaganda, for example.

You have to be careful of what you believe to be the truth. Hold your beliefs lightly because the worst offenders in the area of truth are those who are most ideologically certain. After all, the entire Right Wing evangelical movement in the United States totally believes that it knows the truth. So I am very wary of anybody who ‘knows’ the truth, whether it is Left, Right or Centre [politically], because I think all truths are susceptible to distortion. Frequently, I don’t find it so easy to distinguish exactly between lies and truth and that causes a lot of mischief.

I guess depending on what side of the fence you’re on, certain actions can be portrayed as one thing or another—for example, insurgency or resistance? Which brings me to language, a huge part of messaging…

No question about that. I mean a suicide bomber is either a hero or a murderer depending on your vantage point, right? So once you realise that, you become a little more cautious about these general descriptions.

In your opinion, what make dissent ineffective?

I don’t know… [Pause] What makes it ineffective is confusion on the part of the maker and how they communicate the message. Sometimes dissent exists only in theory but in practice it has no effect.

Like everything else you have to choose the form of dissent that you want to employ. My argument with dissenting opinion is that it is often full of rage that is blind and inappropriate.

When I did a proposal against the Republican convention here [in the U.S] I felt the one thing that could not be shown was dissenting people being beaten up by cops and breaking picket lines and all that kind of stuff. This would create the absolute worse atmosphere for convincing people to oppose the Republicans, and so my proposal was to do a silent and solitary individual thing that demonstrated, through the use of light, that one should oppose Republican principles—I don’t want to get into it, it’s too long-winded and complicated, but all I am saying is that when you think about what effect your dissent might have, less anger might be more effective.

I’ll finish with this: I read your 12 questions in relation to ‘The Road To Hell” [included at the end of the interview for reference], which I thought were very interesting. Do you still employ these in your classroom and in your professional practice as well?

I do. It’s interesting, I just came off my teaching intensive a couple of weeks ago and I was surprised to discover (although it shouldn’t surprise me by now) that when I asked whether [a student] would work for a manufacturer who uses child labour, three quarters of the class said they would not. One quarter said they would.

When I asked the class if they would work on something that could possibly end in the death of the user, half the class said they would. And I thought, good God what in the world do these people have in their minds? How could they arrive at that distinction?

On one hand, it is sort of trendy to be against child labour even though it may be the only job for a child and the alternative is starvation. The fact that you would be perfectly willing to help kill somebody makes me very nervous, when you realise that people can invent any way to justify their behaviour, even when you are talking to bright, young, aware people who have a social concern.

Incidentally, how far down this road (to Hell) of questions have you gone, if at all, before you decided it was too far?

I would have to say that I have participated in about half of those things. I mean I have misrepresented movies and books and I have made packages look larger on the shelf. But also I haven’t been involved in at least half of the list.

Lastly, do you think the activity of dissent is currently in a healthy state?

Well, I think in the United States—if that is what you are referring to—there has been an increase in dissent. The President’s reputation has plunged. He’s down to 30% approval rating, which is phenomenally low and more and more people are speaking out.

I think dissent in the United States has been on the increase judging from what I read in the newspapers and what I read in the polls. Dissent in this case is directly related to Bush’s approval ratings over the last four years. And his ratings have gone down in a dramatic way.

Reference:

12 Steps on the Graphic Designer’s Road to Hell.

1. Designing a package to look bigger on the shelf.

2. Designing an ad for a slow, boring film to make it seem like a lighthearted comedy.

3. Designing a crest for a new vineyard to suggest that it has been in business for a long time.

4. Designing a jacket for a book whose sexual content you find personally repellent.

5. Designing a medal using steel from the World Trade Center to be sold as a profit-making souvenir of September 11.

6. Designing an advertising campaign for a company with a history of known discrimination in minority hiring.

7. Designing a package aimed at children for a cereal whose contents you know are low in nutritional value and high in sugar.

8. Designing a line of T-shirts for a manufacturer that employs child labor.

9. Designing a promotion for a diet product that you know doesn’t work.

10. Designing an ad for a political candidate whose policies you believe would be harmful to the general public.

11. Designing a brochure for an SUV that flips over frequently in emergency conditions and is known to have killed 150 people.

12. Designing an ad for a product whose frequent use could result in the user’s death.

Image Credits:

Milton Glaser portrait provided by Milton Glaser

‘Elect a Madman. You Get Madness’ poster by Kyle Gore, 2004

‘Fuck Bush. Vote’ poster by Tibor Kalman (year unknown)

‘I ‘heart’ NY More than ever’, by Milton Glaser

‘Dissent Protects Democracy’ badge, by Milton Glaser

Christopher Scott, internationally recognised social awareness poster designer—founder of Ecuador Poster Bienal and co-founder of the United States International Poster Biennial—shares his advice on how to approach designing for social causes.

Social visual responsibility

Graphic Design is the visual language for the world. Therefore, as visual communicators, we have a responsibility to create work based on social issues in an attempt to help improve humanity. Even in a digital world, the poster still remains a potent voice of the people, reflecting our society and how we interact with each other.

Simply complicated

We’re always told that simplicity is the key to good design, and to some extent this is true. However sometimes simplicity is boring, obvious and often lacks creativity. In my work I try to convey a simple message in a complex visual—one that prompts the viewer to see, feel and then to think. Using commonly understood imagery helps connect people to certain topics and memories of situations. These are useful visual metaphors. I like to think a good social poster is like a jigsaw—something the viewer needs to solve. It encourages people to become emotionally connected with what they’re seeing. When the puzzle becomes complete the connection is deeper and more memorable.

Emotion

In 2014 I did a workshop in Ibarra, Ecuador, on the theme ‘Work Right’. At the end of the workshop we displayed the results in the University so the students and teachers from other departments could see the work. What happened next will remain with me for the rest of my life; a woman who worked in the University started to cry in response to one of the posters.

“A poster can not change the world, but it can change a person’s world.”—David Jiménez

I always try to put myself in the shoes of the person the image directly affects. This is important because the general public are more inclined to relate to human stories, something they themselves can connect with. However, to comprehend what a person is feeling, or to understand the hardships they’ve had to endure, is truly challenging—but it’s important to try; it’s vital to achieve that understanding in some way.

Good timing

A good social poster relies on good timing, because then it can have a larger impact on society. It’s a way to leverage a wider social conscious because it’s relevant and pertinent to people at that moment in time. For example, Edel Rodriquez, a Cuban-American artist, has created many powerful and controversial illustrations as critical visual commentary about Donald Trump. The 45th President of the United States is certainly relevant to many people around the world, particularly with such divided views about Trump. Ensuring Rodriquez’s work is timely provides greater impact, reach and relevance to the audience.

The creative process

Every designer’s creative process is different but for me there are two fundamental aspects that need to be highlighted; investigation and sketching. To start, I do a lot of research on the social topic I’m trying to highlight. I read books, watch videos and, most importantly, talk to people—to get their reactions and views. Young designers ‘might lift up a shovel and dig once’ (so to speak) and then say they’re done with their investigation. But this is not enough. Research needs to be deeper and wider—and this takes effort.

Sketching is something I love and hate at the same time. However, understanding its value is so important because design is a process and it can literally take me hundreds of pages full of sketches before I get the right concept. Of course it’s frustrating as hell, but it’s the most rewarding part of the creative process. Unsurprisingly, I’m often asked: “How do you know when you have a good idea for a social poster?” My answer is always the same: I sketch, sketch and sketch until I get goosebumps in my arm.

“There are three responses to a piece of design—yes, no, and wow! Wow is the one to aim for.”—Milton Glaser

Design for everyone

In design we’re often told to use a target market strategy, which involves breaking a market into segments and then focusing your proposals on one or a few key segments consisting of the customer’s needs and desires. Fuck target marketing! This narrow-mindedness is one of the main problems with design and advertising in which they limit the importance of what designers do. Some of the most impactful designs throughout history—such as the iPhone, Viva Che by Jim Fitzpatrick, and the new approach for Matchroom Boxing—all involve the general public bringing those designs to the masses. A good response to a social issue takes everyone into consideration and respects everyone—no matter their country of origin, culture, background or language. A good visual should speak to everyone.

Image credits:

Christopher Scott portrait photograph supplied by Christopher Scott