Why a Book?

Today's the official publication date of my first book, Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design.

Here are some warnings up front. It is a 272-page book about design that contains no pictures. Each essay, as you may have heard, is published in a different typeface, and you may not find every typeface equally easy to read. And 68 of the pieces in the book were previously published on Design Observer, in one form or another, which means you can read most of them for free here.

So, then, why a book?

Good question. Here's another one: why write about design at all? I still remember the first time I tried. More than twenty years ago, I was asked to write something for Statements, the magazine of the late, great American Center for Design. It was a special issue on design education, and I was probably the youngest contributor. The others were educators, professors with advanced degrees, people who had published a lot of things. I was a relatively recent design school graduate staring at a blank piece of paper. And staring, and staring.

Many tortured hours later, I finally had written something. I read it over. My favorite high school English teacher, Ms. Wagy, might have approved. It was grammatically impeccable, balanced, neutral. It was also self-important and boring. It sounded exactly like...well, Writing. What it didn't sound like was me.

I decided to try something else. I wasn't an expert on design education, but God knows that had never stopped me from offering strong opinions about it in conversation. I decided to see what would happen to just write down the kind of thing I would say out loud. It was vivid, intemperate and unfair. What it wasn't was boring. This was the version I submitted to the ACD, and this was the version they printed. Later, I got two letters: a mildly angry three-page one from one of my favorite design teachers, Gordon Salchow, who felt the piece was superficial and simplistic, and a one-sentence note from a hero of mine I had never met, Ralph Caplan, who said he liked it. I was thrilled that two people had each read something I wrote and reacted so strongly to it that they had to write and mail me — yes, back then with a stamp and everything — a letter.

That piece, "Why Designers Can't Think," is the second essay in the book. In my desperation I had discovered a trick I thought was my own invention. Later, reading books about how to write like On Writing Well by Bill Zinsser and Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott, I found out my discovery was the oldest, and most obvious, trick in the book: make sure you have something to say, and say it in as straightforward a way as possible. It's that first part that's difficult, of course.

I wrote more over the years, and it's never gotten easier. I had really great editors: Steve Heller at AIGA Journal, Chee Pearlman at ID, Rick Poynor at Eye. But while I took great satisfaction in sending off a finished piece, three things always frustrated me: the agony of the looming deadline, the endless wait for publication, and the lack of evidence that anyone had actually read it. All three of these complaints evaporated when I was asked almost four years ago by Rick, Bill Drenttel and Jessica Helfand to join them here at Design Observer. Smart people can disagree about whether blogs are equal to print as a medium for design writing. All I know is — over 100 posts later — this format, with its ready accommodation of impulse, feedback and gratification, works for me.

When I was younger, there was always plenty of time to think about design, to talk about design, to actually do design. With experience comes facileness, and the thinking, talking and doing come and go in a blur. I've found that writing is a way to slow things down again, to question my own premises, to force myself to pay attention to things I might otherwise file away after the quick glance. Often, when I finish a piece and publish it on this site, I'm afraid that it's too personal. Every response I get surprises me as much as those two letters I got for my first little piece so long ago.

So why a book? No matter how much I write, I'm still a working designer. Designers make things. Sometimes the ingredients are colors and shapes and typefaces; sometimes the ingredients are ideas and words. And every designer knows that the final form matters. I discovered that putting the words on paper changes the claim those words make on your attention. Is it better? Is it worse? The answer may be different for every reader. As a designer, I am very grateful I've been given the opportunity to let you see for yourself.