Todd St. John:
I mean, most of what we do is to create meaning for ourselves just in life in general. A lot of times you’ll see from technology companies like, “Here’s a way to make it. This is easier. Get inspiration. It’s easier. This is easier, this is easier.” And I don’t think easier is usually the answer to creating meaning. It’s something different.
Curtis Fox:
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, designer Todd St. John talks about why easy isn’t always best.
Todd St. John:
When you’re working with a difficult medium, you end up in more interesting places.
Debbie Millman:
Todd St. John works in a lot of different media. Illustration, animation, sculpture, graphic design, photography, furniture, and industrial design. But no matter the medium, there’s always something Todd St. John-ish about his work. His designs tend to be both playfully conceptual and seriously sculptural. Even when he’s working within two dimensions, his images feel like they’re made of something you want to hold in your hand. Todd’s the founder and creative director of HunterGatherer, whose clients include Nike, Google, and the city of New York. His illustration work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, WIRED Magazine, and many more. Todd St. John, welcome to Design Matters.
Todd St. John:
Thank you so much, Debbie. Very glad to be here.
Debbie Millman:
Todd, I understand that one of your design heroes is Jim Henson. Tell us about that.
Todd St. John:
Yeah. I mean, I think the fact that Jim Henson came along when he did and Sesame Workshop came along when it did, I think what I like and I was always drawn to about him is obviously I’m very in the middle of Gen X for people of our generation that was super formative. We literally grew up with that stuff. And I actually think that a lot of things that Jim Henson did cast a generational shadow to people our age, both through The Muppets and The Muppet Show and the movies that came after that, and the people that worked with him, Frank Oz, and any number of people that came after that.
But I think that he’s an idealist in a way. He felt like somebody who’s always pursuing something that was just out of reach for him. He really respected the intelligence of his audience, whether they be children or the parents that were watching with the children. It was a moment in time where I think people were really looking at the world and saying, “How can we make this better? How can we take this medium that’s a relatively new medium,” and had the best of intentions in mind and created something really artful, and really fun, and really funny, and amazing, and pushed really hard to make it happen and left this legacy that I think will last a very, very long time.
Debbie Millman:
I know you worked with Sesame Workshop. What was that like for you after being a fan of Jim’s?
Todd St. John:
Oh, it was exciting. I mean, we did a handful of things with them. We did these series of shorts, some of them were about remembering to brush your teeth or little animations like that designed for very young kids. But, yeah, it exists in a different space now than it does then. Back when it first started, there was four or five TV channels, whatever it is-
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Todd St. John:
… a different ecosystem, but it was great and a lot of fun, and I still do stuff with them from time to time.
Debbie Millman:
You grew up in Hawaii, and I understand that when you were little, you lived across the street from sugar cane fields, and you’ve said it’s one of those places that you realize after the fact just how great it was. You had no idea at the time how special it was to have that environment?
Todd St. John:
Yes, in a sense, but it’s also what you knew. So it’s just the thing that you’re familiar with. Like a lot of places, you’re always looking out at like, “Well, what else is there on the other… Yeah, I think it was one of those things that you do really appreciate it after the fact, but it was a very special place. It is a very special place. It always has been. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
I know you have a special relationship with water. I’m wondering how you satisfy that living in Brooklyn.
Todd St. John:
We get to the beach a fair amount, even for living in Brooklyn, and I get back to Hawaii a fair amount also.
Debbie Millman:
You said that you were interested in too many things as a kid. What were those things?
Todd St. John:
I was really interested in music… I’m still really interested in music. I still play music all the time.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, what do you play?
Todd St. John:
Piano, mainly guitar. A little bit of everything, actually. Drawing, film stuff. Even as a kid, I took some stop-motion classes when I was maybe 10 years old, something like that. But I was interested in a lot of things, and I think that design… I didn’t really know what design was, probably like a lot of people. You had a sense of it, and then when somebody explained what it was, you were like, “Oh, that’s that, and that, and that,” and the other thing. When I found design, it was one of those things that I was like, “Oh, it can maybe…
Debbie Millman:
Encompass it all?
Todd St. John:
Encompass it all. Yeah. Yeah. But I didn’t know what it was. And I think, for a long time, I probably thought I was going to be a director or a composer or a musician or something like that.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I read that you often had a crayon or an X-Acto blade in your hands, and if you had a book review to do in school, you’d likely illustrate it instead of writing it. And is it true for a report on the Mayflower, you actually built a model of the ship?
Todd St. John:
That is true. You’re going way back.
Debbie Millman:
I try.
Todd St. John:
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we had to do some report and my dad always had a workshop, so I knew how to do that stuff a little bit, but it was also I was just avoiding doing the report. But I think I found out early on that that actually was one of the things that got me into design was I was an uneven student, I would say maybe. But, yeah, I would often focus on the visual side of something if it was at all possible.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I always felt visually drawn to making things as opposed to writing things. Even when I was working in college at the student newspaper, I was much more interested in designing the words than editing the words, but editing was really my first job. You mentioned your dad, and I know that he was an engineer as well as a woodworker, and I know that, initially, I read that you actually dreaded going into the wood shop, that you weren’t as excited about woodworking as it would seem given your work now.
Todd St. John:
I mean, I think it was more like I would get roped in on his projects, which were more chores. I would’ve rather been out whatever, riding bikes with my friends or that kind of thing. And so it was a little bit of that. You’re like, “Oh, great, I’m going to get stuck doing this for the whole day when I’d rather do something.” But, of course, you just absorb it. You end up learning all that stuff. So, yeah, I mean, it’s one of those things that you realize later just how much you knew and you picked up organically. But, yeah, at the time, it was maybe he was trying to teach it to me, but most kids, you don’t really want to be taught at that moment.
Debbie Millman:
So sugar canes and woodworking didn’t realize till much later how valuable it was?
Todd St. John:
Kind of. Yeah, and I think it’s also sometimes when you end up doing design work or whatever you’re doing later, you end up mining what you do know. You look back and bring some of that stuff in. When opportunities came along where I was like, “Oh, you know what? I could actually… Especially when I got into animation and those kinds of things, all of a sudden, it became, “Actually, I know how to do some of this stuff,” or there’s a way of doing it that might bring in some skills that feel outside of graphic design or design or… In a way that could make it more interesting for me.
Debbie Millman:
What kinds of things were you making with your dad?
Todd St. John:
A lot of furniture, stuff around the house. He would-
Debbie Millman:
Well, I don’t know that furniture would be considered basic woodworking.
Todd St. John:
Well, shelves… I mean, shelves, lamps, beds.
Debbie Millman:
Basic.
Todd St. John:
Yeah. Well, I mean, it was funny. Because he’s an engineer, he would teach me all this basic structural stuff, like cross bracing or how that works, how joints work, and all his stuff was very angular because it was strictly form follows function. And anytime I would get a sander and try to round a corner or something like that, he just thought that… He was like, “Oh, come on, that doesn’t do anything.” He was almost anti-aesthetic in a certain way, or just the core functionality of something was what mattered.
Debbie Millman:
Given how so much of your work undulates, I wonder how he views that evolution of your work.
Todd St. John:
Oh, I mean, I think he likes it. He used to have this thing he said in probably… I don’t know where it came from, but there’s one point when my mom was… They didn’t quite know what to do with me sometimes I feel, and so she was pushing me, she’s like, “Oh, maybe you could be an architect. Maybe that could be your job.” And my dad had this… He used to say that architects don’t design buildings, engineers do. Architects decide whether the lines on the outside go up and down or left and right.
Debbie Millman:
Awesome.
Todd St. John:
Which I guess comes out of some age-old beef between engineers and architects. I don’t endorse that point of view, but I think he had almost this there’s a certain way to build something and you use as few materials as possible and as smart a way as possible and don’t let aesthetics come into it.
Debbie Millman:
Well, my father-in-law’s an engineer and has worked on tunnels and bridges, and I think he would agree with your dad about what engineers do and what architects do.
Todd St. John:
I never realized there was a riff, but I guess there is. So, yeah.
Debbie Millman:
You got your first design internship while you were still in high school. You were working for a small agency. I understand you were doing local ice cream shop, and coffee packaging, and things like that. At that point, had you decided that you wanted to pursue design or was it just more serendipity that you happened to get that job at that time?
Todd St. John:
That actually came, I think, I was already in school. I was in college at that point. But I stumbled into design. There was a friend of mine whose dad had a small agency in Hawaii, and that was the first time where I was like, “Oh, maybe that’s what that is.” He was really an artist, but in order to survive, he had this small advertising agency. And so at that point, I was like, “Oh, well, design is advertising. I guess that’s what that is.” And so then when I was in school, I started out with this thing with a few minors. I had sociology, creative writing, and I think marketing, because I just didn’t know.
And then, eventually, I landed in design classes. And right away, I was like, “Oh, this is great. I didn’t know this existed.” And it was one of those things too where… I mean, probably a lot of people when they get into design, if you don’t know what it is, all of a sudden, you see it everywhere, this secret language that’s in the ether that you could never put a name to, and it was everywhere you looked and seemingly encompassed whatever you wanted it to be. It could be visual, it could be writing, it could be in video, it could be all kinds of things. And so when I stumbled on that, it was really like, “Oh, wow, this could be… Seemingly to me at least at that moment, whatever you wanted to make it.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I agree. I think the laws of physics govern the universe, but the laws of design really govern every creative endeavor, because you’re constantly making very deliberate decisions about where you want to take things and how you want to communicate. So you graduated from the University of Arizona in 1993 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in graphic design, and then went to a firm in San Diego. Talk about how you ended up in San Diego working in the firm that you did.
Todd St. John:
At the time, my grandparents were living there then, so I’d known San Diego pretty well. I would spend summers out there and that sort of thing. And then I had a good friend of mine from school, Gary Benzel, who I ended up collaborating on a bunch of things with-
Debbie Millman:
Oh, we’re going to talk about that soon.
Todd St. John:
Okay. No, he moved out there a couple of weeks before I did, and it was one of those things that I didn’t want to go straight back to Hawaii, and so it was a little bit of like, “Okay, I’ll do this, get my stuff together.” I thought I’d probably end up in LA or New York, but I ended up working there and he was working for David Carson at the time briefly. And then I was bouncing around and he ended up getting a job at the small design firm in San Diego. And then shortly thereafter, they needed somebody else, and so I ended up there as well for a couple of years.
Debbie Millman:
Well, in 1994, you and Gary Benzel simultaneously began an experimental side project you named Green Lady. I knew quite a lot about you before I started researching just because of your reputation and the work you’ve been doing for decades now, but I did not know about Green Lady. Tell us about that name and what inspired you to start that initiative.
Todd St. John:
Well, it was easy to miss. I don’t think many people know that at this point, but-
Debbie Millman:
And I ordered the anniversary book, but it hasn’t come yet. I was so disappointed.
Todd St. John:
Oh, you should have just… Oh, my God. Well, it would probably be me putting it in the envelope, so you should have-
Debbie Millman:
No, I got it on eBay from someone.
Todd St. John:
Are you serious? Okay.
Debbie Millman:
But in any case, tell us all about Green Lady.
Todd St. John:
We were working a regular design job, and this was just, I think, a side project. And Gary had worked in more retail than I had growing up. He’d worked in skate shops and things like that. And so I think it was probably more his impetus than mine, but we started this little line together. One of the things that I think attracted me to design, and probably him too, was just you can just make stuff right away. I was talking about being an architect earlier, and I remember somebody, at some point, saying to me like, “Well, you’ll be drawing windows and doors until you’re 40 before you actually design… And I was like, “Oh, God, that doesn’t…
Debbie Millman:
Oh, wow. Fun.
Todd St. John:
And that’s probably not true at all. But I think, with design, you have the means of production to make stuff. And so that came out of that. We’re just like, “Well, let’s just make something.” And we were interested in some brands in that space, but also wanted to make something for our friends that we could sell. And it was just a project we could do on our own. When you’re working a job and you’re working for clients and you’re doing all that, that’s great, but I think especially at that age, you wanted to make a little bit of a mark for yourself, and it was a very quick way to just put out products. And it was also basically pre-internet at that point, so you just end up meeting people in stores and having an excuse to go around and talk to people, and that was the genesis of it.
Debbie Millman:
Well, Architip printed a 10-year anniversary book. This is the one that I looked for desperately, and it came out in 2005, so a good 11 years after your launch. And they stated this in the book, “Green Lady embraced the medium of T-shirts and silk screens as decidedly non-art, democratic, and accessible approach to image-making in a time before independent T-shirt labels were ubiquitous, introducing visuals through an assumed name that played on the anonymity of design. It was a nod to the labels, bands, flyers, and brands that were primary forms of visual influence for Benzel and St. John as teenagers.” And that just sounds like a dream job. It just sounds like the reason that somebody goes into design is to do something like this.
Todd St. John:
Yeah. It was very fun, and we kept doing it for a while. And I do think there’s a thing about design that’s always appealed to me that it’s invisible. I was saying earlier, when you find out about it, it’s this thing that’s in the ether, and it’s for a lot of people, and maybe less so now with the internet, but I think, growing up, if you’re in a record store or something like that, you couldn’t always hear what it was.
So you’re looking at the visuals, trying to dissect like, “Is this good? Is this bad? What does it mean? Why are certain graphics like these all appearing at the same time where there’s certain fashion things happening all at the same time?” And so it was this secret language and also very democratic language, and that always appealed to me, I think, to Gary as well. And so having something anonymous, well, for some people I think might’ve been a bad thing, was also the appeal. You’re contributing to this secret language without really anybody knowing where it’s coming from. And it’s not wrapped up in somebody’s personality or that kind of thing, it’s whatever you project onto it.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I miss that browsing in record stores. That’s how I actually discovered quite a lot of the music that I was listening to in the ’80s and ’90s. Just things that spoke to me visually that then provoked me to want to hear the music too. I’ll never forget walking around the city in 1984 and seeing posters of Suzanne Vega and being so intrigued by how she looked, that that was the reason I bought the album, and then listened to it 400 times in a row.
Todd St. John:
Sometimes it works out great. Sometimes you’d see the album, and you’d buy it, and you’d be like, “Oh, this is just terrible.” It can lead you either way, but you learn something in both cases.
Debbie Millman:
After living in California for a few years, you moved to New York City and began working as a senior designer at Frankfurt Balkind. And we just missed each other.
Todd St. John:
Oh, really?
Debbie Millman:
Yes. You were there for… I think, in 1995?
Todd St. John:
Yep.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, and I left just a year or so before.
Todd St. John:
Oh, my gosh.
Debbie Millman:
I know. I know. That little tidbit I found on your LinkedIn page, and when I saw it, I was just like, “What?”
Todd St. John:
Oh, funny. I didn’t know that. Wow.
Debbie Millman:
I just missed you. You worked at MTV for a little while after Frankfurt Balkind, but then in 2000, you started HunterGatherer, your own firm. So that means it’s 25 years, Todd.
Todd St. John:
Who’s counting?
Debbie Millman:
That’s amazing. It’s an amazing feat to have your own agency for 25 years. Congratulations.
Todd St. John:
Oh, well, thank you. It goes fast. It’s fast and slow at the same time. But, yeah, I was at MTV for maybe a little bit more than two years, and I think when I was at Frankfurt Balkind, I was looking around for… I was thinking of maybe going to graduate school, maybe going back to film school or something like that. And then the MTV job came along and it seemed like a way to get a little bit more back into video. What was going on with the design department then was there was this off-air side and there was an on-air side, I was technically on the off-air side, but they were merging basically, and I was doing everything I could to get on the on-air projects.
Debbie Millman:
That was the apex of their design excellence, and what they were putting out in the world was really quite groundbreaking.
Todd St. John:
Yeah, there was a lot of talented people there then, and the technology was changing a lot, especially design, and video, and some of those things. So there’s a lot of really good people that were there at that moment. I learned a ton. They would just let you do things, whether you knew what you were doing or not, and you would just have to figure it out, which was great. So it was this boot camp situation where you’re just like, “Well, I’ll figure it out somehow.” The first thing I ever directed was literally we had our helicopter with a camera on it and a charter plane, and it was way too much that I had… I didn’t know what to do with all this, size of the crew and everything, but they’re just like, “Yeah, go do this,” and you would do it. So it was great. It was great in that way. And then when I left, they remained a client, which was very nice to start a firm and actually retain your prior employer as a client when you started it.
Debbie Millman:
At the time, you said you wanted to create HunterGatherer as a place where all your pursuits could exist together, which included client work, video and product design. And I noticed you have two websites. You have toddstjohn.com and huntergatherer.net. Talk about why you separate them in that way.
Todd St. John:
Huntergatherer.net is basically the small agency. I mean, very small design firm. And generally speaking, the projects that appear there are team projects, where the other designers are working collaboratively on a project. Toddstjohn.com is mostly just for work that I put my own name on, so if I’m working as an illustrator for The Times or The New Yorker or whoever, that would go there, or if I’m doing experimental projects or furniture or pieces of artwork, that’s just the stuff that I do completely on my own basically.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve described your illustration and animation work as narrative by design. Do you still consider it that and can you talk a little bit about what that means to you?
Todd St. John:
I’m not quite sure the context of what I said that, but I do think that I do more, I would say, with narrative type of projects than I do with interactive type of projects, for instance. I think I’m probably just a little bit better in that way. For me, I’ve always thought of design, its closest analog, probably being writing. Design can be many things to many different people. Obviously, some people do it in a way that’s much more about interaction or about system building or things like that.
But the design that I tend to enjoy the most and I think I’m the best at is a little bit more about taking and explaining an idea. So it falls more into a narrative. And I think illustration obviously does that because if you’re working with an art director and a writer on a story, you’re trying to essentially explain something about that story or add aside or counterpoint to that story, a visual counterpoint, that helps to explain it. So I think generally speaking, I’m more drawn to the narrative side of it just because it fits better with my view on how I think of design for myself.
Debbie Millman:
You just mentioned The New York Times and The New Yorker, you’ve also worked with companies like Netflix and Google, as we’d mentioned, Sesame Street. I’m wondering, because your work is so narrative and because there’s so many different elements that you might be building or painting or drawing, when you start a project, do you begin with sketches or physical models or digital tools? How do you begin one of your initiatives?
Todd St. John:
It all depends, but almost always with sketches, I would say. I had a boss, when I was still in school, he would always say when I finished a project, you usually… Your sketches are usually way better than your final product. It didn’t turn out as good as [inaudible 00:24:32] your sketch-
Debbie Millman:
Actually, that’s not a terrible thing at the very beginning of a career, because it shows you have so much potential.
Todd St. John:
Maybe. Yeah. But I think also there’s something to it where sketches don’t lie. If the idea is good, it’ll work.
Debbie Millman:
That’s what I love about sketches.
Todd St. John:
Right. Whereas you get too into overworking something and sometimes you can lose your way. It mediates things in a way that’s sometimes good, sometimes not so good. It gives you infinite choices and sometimes infinite choices aren’t the best thing for creativity. So I do think that, yeah, it always generally starts with a sketch, or sometimes writing ideas down, trying to… Especially if there is a narrative aspect to it, trying to get your thoughts together with that, what am I trying to say. But then a lot of times for myself… I mean, if you’re building something, there’s the measure twice, cut once. You do have to know what you’re doing. You can’t just jump in and make stuff. So there is a bit of planning involved.
And then with bigger projects, a lot of the work I do is sometimes built, and hand-built, and modeled, and photographed, and that kind of thing, which is not the easiest thing to revise sometimes, if a client comes back and they say like, “Oh, we need to make that a different color,” or change the size of it was shot. And so when you get in situations like that, you often do have to pre-visualize so that everything is locked. And sometimes you can do that with drawings, but a lot of times, I’ll also work in CG, which surprises people sometimes because they think a lot of what I do and what we do is actually pretty analog, but I’ve been working with CG for probably the last 20-something years. Not always in the foreground, but because it’s a visualization tool that can get you there and be like, “Okay, it’s going to look something like this.” So it’s a combination of things.
Debbie Millman:
I was really curious, as I was looking through all of your projects that are on your websites and wondering what would happen if clients said, “Oh, can you make that pink instead?” I’ve done, over the years, quite a lot of work in felt, and clients don’t understand anymore that it’s hand-cut and handmade. And so when they’d say, “Can you revise that… I did a lot of lettering, “Revise those letters,” I’m like, “No, I can’t. Not in the timeframe that you need,” and that’s tough to say no to somebody and expect to ever get more work.
I generally don’t like to talk about specific projects on Design Matters because it’s a show that people are listening to as opposed to seeing, but I really want to ask you about a couple of projects because they’re so beautiful, and so interesting, and so pioneering. I do want to encourage our listeners, toddstjohn.com, huntergatherer.net, to see some of these really remarkable… It’s not even design, it’s just this extraordinary collection of different disciplines that come together to create a Todd St. John piece. But in the commission for The New York Times and artificial intelligence, you utilized hand-cut painted wood for the illustrations. And I’m wondering what inspired you to choose this really difficult medium for a topic that’s inherently digital?
Todd St. John:
I think part of the choice was the art director picking me in the first place. That is a way I work a lot of the time, working in wood, working in something that’s difficult. When you’re working with a difficult medium, you end up in more interesting places, and it really limits your options in some ways that I think also take you to places you might not otherwise end up. And there’s that quote, I’m sure I’m going to bastardize it, but it’s something about most of the beauty in art comes from an artist, I think, struggling against their medium, basically. Is the basic Matisse? Maybe, I’m not sure. But I think that’s true. I think I often will try to set up things that are a little bit oppositional to work against. And so with something like that, I think it’s a little bit funny maybe to… Yeah, it’s about artificial intelligence, but we’re going to make it in the most low-tech way possible. It’s a little bit counterintuitive, and that’s usually a space that I like.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I think there’s a good tension in the way in which you approach topics. And you said this about design, “I think the idea behind design is the promise of simplicity and people are drawn to design because of that. But a level of complexity behind the simplicity is always interesting to me, especially when there’s two things going on at once, and I found that really, really fascinating. And in looking at a lot of your work felt that I could feel where you might’ve considered doing that. But you also declared that the most widespread understanding about design is probably the word design itself, and go on to say that everybody says design, but no two people think it means the same thing. What does it mean to you?
Todd St. John:
When I talked a little bit about explaining things, I think that’s a big part of it. I think design can elevate underserved ideas, and I think that is its superpower in a lot of cases. I think there’s a lot out there that is just hard to get your head around. And design can be something that really points your attention at it, makes you understand what it’s about, shows it from a different angle, explains it in a way that is more interesting than it might be if it’s just words on a page. That, for me, is what I’m drawn to about design. I do think that design is this phrase, and I think if any of us that work in design have this thing that happens where people are like, “Oh, what do you do?” And you say, “I’m a designer,” and they’re like, “A clothing designer or-
Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah. Always. Clothing first and interior design-
Todd St. John:
Yeah. And so it’s almost like we need a new word. And it’s a trade-off. Earlier, we were talking about, when I stumbled into design, that was a positive. It was, “Well, design can be literally anything.” It can be filmmaking, it can be writing, it can be building, it can be all these things. And so that’s what’s great about it. But it is also one of those things that elicits a bit of confusion because nobody really knows exactly what you’re talking about when you say it. So it’s this word that goes back and forth and everybody’s got their own idea of what it is.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. And sometimes I love that and sometimes I hate it.
Todd St. John:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Your animated illustration titled The Optimists for The New Yorker delves into the collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI. How did you approach visualizing the dynamics of that partnership?
Todd St. John:
So I think with something like that, you try to pick out certain parts of it. The idea with that, what the story is and what the image is is this little figure that’s made out of keys from a keyboard. And the gist of it was that they’re just figuring the form of this thing out while people are still making it. So it’s building the plane while it’s flying.
Debbie Millman:
That’s dangerous.
Todd St. John:
Yeah. Which is what’s going on with that. Obviously, they don’t know how it works in some cases and all that. So it was capturing that. So the keys being the prompts, and then they were scattered about, it wasn’t fully formed and that kind of thing. So you put a bunch of ideas forward and hopefully one resonates. And in that case, that’s how we got at that.
Debbie Millman:
Speaking of OpenAI, how are you feeling about the possibilities of AI in the discipline of design?
Todd St. John:
It’s such a huge topic that we could talk for a whole other podcast about it, I think. And I think there’s so many… It’s hard to get your head around. I don’t think I’m smart enough to totally get my head around what it’s going to mean. And it’s huge. I mess around with it, I use it here and there for certain things, even just-
Debbie Millman:
Like what?
Todd St. John:
I mean, some of it’s just really practical stuff, like if I’m signing a lease and I need it to translate it into English from LegalEASE or whatever, that kind of thing, but-
Debbie Millman:
Oh, I didn’t even know you could do that. That’s a great idea.
Todd St. John:
Yeah, just simplify. But also things with Dall-E, and look, I’ve definitely messed around with it and just see what it does. See what it kicks out. And it’s interesting. I think you come back sometimes with this feeling a little bit of an emptiness to it. I guess what it is that when it comes to images, at least, maybe I’ll just talk about that, I think there’s this thing where images are… I think of them… It’s not a novel thought, but as vessels. They’re carriers of meaning. And, obviously, that meaning can be a concept, it can be a feeling, it can be a record of an event, it can be just a proof of life in some ways. And the meaning can be put into the image, the meaning can be added onto the image later. But I think that a lot of times when talking about it, at least image-making with AI, that’s something that’s left out a little bit.
You don’t just necessarily make an image. You have something that needs to become an image and that’s a slightly different thing. So I don’t know, I come back to that a little bit. There is this feeling, maybe more so in the creative community, of wanting to be open to this new thing, not wanting to ask too many questions about it or that kind of thing. But I do think the idea that, “Oh, it’s a new tool like any other thing,” and I do think it’s much bigger than that. And I do think that we’re at a point where some of the relationship between technology and creativity or just the world in general feels a little bit less like it’s helping us and more like we’re there to help it. So to the point of being a tool, I think if you’re putting information in to some of these companies that are literally training their models and users work and you’re even paying them half the time, a bit of a question of who is the tool in that instance.
And I think that stuff does feel maybe a little bit backwards in some ways where it’s less responding to us and often it’s us responding to the technology. I think a lot of it goes for social media, I think it goes for… There’s a lot of instances where I do wish there was more conversation around how do we want things to be versus companies telling us, “This is the way to get the most engagement. It’s playing by our rules versus… I don’t know, as you’re going to a restaurant and having them tell you like, “These are the conversations that work best, do this and here’s who you can sit next to.” It just feels a little bit upside down that they’re making the rules for how we’re supposed to interact with each other versus the other way around.
Debbie Millman:
I think that my favorite type of graphic design is much more conceptual. So work like you do, Paul Sayre, Christoph Niemann and his illustrations where you have to figure something out, and that figuring out gives you a moment of real glee, of real joy and being able to understand something maybe in a new way or seeing something in a new perspective. And I have yet to see that with AI-generated design, it feels almost soulless. Same with the writing. I mean, I can tell now my students use it so much in their writing. And I often joke now that nobody under 30 uses the word moreover or the word hence in their writing. So as soon as you see those words, you know this is AI-generated, and there is a real soullessness to it.
Todd St. John:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
But I’m wondering, especially since I’m 10 years older than you, but we did come to design in a similar generation. And I remember very distinctly the uproar that people had about moving from a drafting table to a computer. And quite a lot of the older designers at that time felt that this was the reason that the discipline of design was doomed and that a lot of jobs would be lost and people would be making the soulless design on computers. And that didn’t happen. I mean, a lot of jobs were generated. I think a lot of really interesting design happens quite a lot with film, and animation, and video that’s all generated on computers. How are you feeling about the future? Do you feel more hopeful or less hopeful with these technologies?
Todd St. John:
For me, it has less to do with the technologies and more to do with who’s driving it in for what reason? I do think it’s materially different than some of those prior things, and just that it almost feels like an evolutionary step rather than the next tool that comes along. But, I mean, most of what we do is to create meaning for ourselves just in life in general. A lot of times, you’ll see from technology companies, like, “Here’s a way to make it. This is easier, get inspiration, it’s easier, this is easier, this is easier.” And I don’t think easier is usually the answer to creating meaning. It’s something different. So in most of those things, I think probably we’re not asking the question on a lot of levels, politically, art-wise, anything else, “Is this making life more meaningful or not?” And I think if that question were asked more, I would hope would get better results.
Debbie Millman:
Your illustration, Truckin’, showcases a departure from your typical medium. You used watercolor. What motivated you to explore this medium for that piece and how did it influence the outcome compared to your wood-based work?
Todd St. John:
I mean, I work in watercolor a fair amount on my own, I would say. Not as much for clients. And that was a piece that these characters that are 3D, but made out of totally flat planes basically. And I drew some of those with watercolors, but then there was one that I also built out of wood. And I think sometimes if you can figure a way to take an idea and make it work across a couple of different mediums, that’s interesting. And sometimes I have them both in mind like, “How can this fit here? How can this fit there?”
Debbie Millman:
Initially, you used your woodworking skills for animation and stop-motion projects. And designing and making furniture was more of a hobby, which you’ve described as mostly done for yourself. How has that changed over the 25 years?
Todd St. John:
It’s still mostly a hobby. Around 2014, I’d been working really hard for a long time. We’d had three kids by that time, and I think I was a little bit at a moment of not quite getting burnt out, but maybe had been doing what felt like the same thing for a long time. And so I didn’t quite take a mini sabbatical, but had set a little bit of money aside and was like, “I’m going to just release a line of furniture,” just made this target. And going back to some of the stuff with T-shirts earlier on, and that idea of just making a product was a big motivator, and just setting a deadline, and just coming up with this thing. So made this deadline that, “Okay, I’ve never done this as this before, but I’m just going to make a line of furniture.” So I made a lamp, and folding chairs, and this credenza, and a few other things, and bought a booth at ICFF.
And I think a little bit, part of me was probably like, “Well, maybe this will be just a new thing. Maybe this will go great and I’ll just do this.” Once I got done with it, it was well-received, sold some stuff, and I was happy with how it turned out. But it also made me realize how much I enjoy making work about things and what I was saying earlier about talking about stuff and explaining how things work, explaining complex ideas, but work that is about something. And not that furniture’s not, there’s people that imbue their furniture with all kinds of conceptual undercurrents, but just in the world of journalism even, how can this be part of that? And so I really miss that. So I still do the furniture. People will call up, and I’ll do stuff, and I’ll still do it on my own. But I think just doing that, which I maybe thought about for a second, I realized that that in and of itself wasn’t quite enough.
Debbie Millman:
You talked about your dad before and the functional approach that he took to his furniture making, and it seems like your furniture contains a little bit of both. Some of the pieces have a very strong structural quality. How do you view the functional aspect? Certainly your lamp is very functional, the folding chairs are very functional, the credenza is much sexier. So do you see them as functional objects first or do you approach them more like pieces of art?
Todd St. John:
They are functional and I think it’s one of those… I mean, even going back to making T-shirts and that kind of thing, I think we could make art, but I don’t have the audacity sometimes, or at least didn’t at that point, to be like, “Oh, this is just my idea. This is just art for… At least you could say, “Well, you can at least wear. It’ll cover your body.” And I think with furniture, there’s a little bit of that also, which is it does both things. And so that utilitarian aspect, I do like. And then in terms of… You mentioned my dad and this purely functional thing, there are things that I’m drawn to, there are forms I’m drawn to that I think are beautiful in just their simple functionality. I tend to really like stripped down things. Even that idea of the… You mentioned this credenza, which is just credenza, but the front of it’s got this grid pattern and wood sliced up in all these different-
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, it’s called the Relief Credenza for our listeners.
Todd St. John:
But it’s basically the under structure of something. So it’s overlaying a grid onto something natural. And I come back to grids again and again, obviously with design, that’s a huge… Everything’s based on a grid. And I think there’s a beauty in that. It’s like the skeleton of the building before the facade goes on it. There’s a beauty in what does the cross bracing look like? What is-
Debbie Millman:
The bones.
Todd St. John:
The bones. Yeah. And I do come back to that quite a bit. What can you do with the least amount of material? What can you do in the simplest way? What can you do when you let the working parts show? I don’t always know why, but I think I am drawn to that. So that shows up in a lot of different things.
Debbie Millman:
How much of the Relief carving is done by hand?
Todd St. John:
It’s sliced up. And so, yeah, the front of this credenza that we’re talking about is a whole bunch of different pieces sliced up in a puzzle way that has this grid structure underneath it. So, yeah, it’s wood that is sliced up in those shapes, and then shaped a bit as well, and then reassembled back together.
Debbie Millman:
In looking at a lot of your work, Todd, I noticed, and I don’t know if this is something intentional, but there’s a lot of wave shapes. So your tape dispenser is a wave, there’s waves on the credenza, even the room divider has these undulating shapes. I’m wondering if that’s a specific conscious shape that intrigues you.
Todd St. John:
I mean, there’s certain things I do with certain radius corners that come back up again and again. And then I think with something like the tape dispenser, and there’s been a few other things like that too, I think growing up in Hawaii was… I remember when we were little kids, people would draw whatever, Star Wars X-wing fighters and that stuff. But then I think in Hawaii or probably Southern California, so people would draw waves, pipeline waves Rick Griffin style. It became that thing you doodle while you’re on the phone and not thinking about anything. So that’s what it was. And then I think I’d done a few of those for a project here or there, and then I did some things with Gary for a surfing magazine. Yeah, anyway, it became a little just shorthand doodle, but it is actually one of those things that sometimes when I just sit down to warm up and you’re not doing anything, you’ll just draw that. It’s a mindless whatever.
Debbie Millman:
It felt like it was really connecting your trajectory all together like this through line, this threaded line of your early years in Hawaii and that love of the water.
Todd St. John:
Yeah. And I think there’s things about the shape that are fun, but it really is just this doodle that became a little mini quasi logo in some ways, I guess. It comes up repeatedly. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Todd, I have two last questions for you. The first is you’ve said that the most important quality in a designer is open-mindedness and never assuming you’re right. How successful are you at that? Because that’s something I really struggle with when I’m presenting. I’m feeling like this is the right thing to do and take it or leave it. It doesn’t always work out, well, but I’ve gotten a lot more pigheaded as I’ve gotten older.
Todd St. John:
One of the things that I really like about design is that it’s collaborative and that whether you’re working with a company or working with a person, you get to go into their world and learn about their world, and you come up with something together that’s halfway between the both of you. And so, I mean, I think in general, it’s always good to be open-minded in this day and age-
Debbie Millman:
That come easy for you?
Todd St. John:
I think so. I mean, obviously, we’re all sure we’re right most of the time. And you could ask my wife, Stella, if I’m as open-minded as I’m [inaudible 00:46:52].
Debbie Millman:
Okay.
Todd St. John:
But I do think that there’s a lot of curiosity in design. And I think to be curious, you have to be open-minded if you’re still looking, searching for things. And I do think sometimes in school and that kind of thing, I can remember people talking about like, “It’s your job to educate the client.” And I think there’s some truth to that, but there’s also a chance to educate yourself. And a lot of times when you’re dealing with clients, they’ve been doing this thing they’re doing for a long time and they do know a lot of stuff. And that’s not to say you take a backseat or something like that, but it is a collaboration and you have to really love that collaboration. I think if you’re good at it, and if you’re going to get a good result, you have to really, really like that. So that’s probably what I was talking about when I said that.
Debbie Millman:
So my last question is this. 10 years ago, in an interview with Core77, you were asked this question, “What do you hope to be doing in 10 years?” It’s now 10 years. You responded, “Hopefully hitting my stride.” Do you think you’re close?
Todd St. John:
I think it’s a weird thing when you get a little bit older as a designer, you think you will. And in many ways, I have. But then life also gets very complicated when you’re my age, and kids are growing up, and parents are getting old, and all of a sudden, things are… You think there’s going to be free time that isn’t there. And I know a lot of people my age are dealing with similar things like that. So it’s a funny mix. You have this feeling of everything you can do and everything you want to be doing right now, but then you’re also dealing with a lot of other stuff.
There’s a feeling in the world right now, and I remember when COVID happened, I had this feeling that like, “Well, maybe this will trigger this era of problem-solving.” It would expose, “Here are the problems,” and maybe we’ll all become more focused on solving them. I don’t know if that’s… In this week, which is the middle of February in 2025, we’re recording this, I don’t know if that’s the feeling I have at this moment, maybe the opposite. But I do think that my feeling would be wanting to do things that actually help solve some of these problems. And I mentioned earlier, I think the design can elevate underserved ideas. I think there’s a lot of underserved ideas and causes that could use elevating, and promoting, and explaining. So at this point, I think that’s where my feelings are on that.
Debbie Millman:
I hope, in 10 years, I can ask you that question and we can look back at this time and think that it was a defining moment where we did make some good decisions.
Todd St. John:
I very much hope so too.
Debbie Millman:
Todd St. John, thank you, thank you so much for making so much work that matters. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Todd St. John:
Thank you, Debbie.
Debbie Millman:
To read more about Todd St. John, you can go to huntergatherer.net or toddstjohn.com. I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.
Curtis Fox:
Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world. The editor in chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.
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