Welcome to Room557

80% of Success Is Showing Up*

In November 2003, the culmination of 18-months of work on a new signage system was about to be unveiled to our Executive Leadership Team at Banana Republic, including then-CEO Paul Pressler. That meeting was scheduled for 8AM on Friday morning. We were staging it at the Embarcadero store which was to open for business at 10AM. We had to be quick.

Thursday night, I stopped by an ATM in our old neighborhood to grab some cash for the next day. I should mention that I used to live in a really bad neighborhood.

[A stolen runaway van full of porno that crashed into my house on Christmas night. As I mentioned, we used to live in a really bad neighborhood, but this one is part of another story...]

On Looking Like You're In Control

One of my most unusual and memorable jobs came after a year of studying overseas. I was in my Program Director's office going over transfer credits when his phone rang. A film production company was looking for production interns for an upcoming film being shot in the area — The Vernon Johns Story (starring James Earl Jones).

This is also a story about being in the right place at the right time as he handed the phone to me — and by week's end I was on-set... but not as a production intern. At the time, I had a passion for vintage cars (and drove a 60s Ford) and they asked me to be the Picture Car Coordinator (I was also a stunt driver in one scene and a patrol cop in another (0:34)). The movie was set in the early 50s and my job was to find and secure period cards for filming in the pre-internet era and have them ready when the Director called "Action!". It was a hell of a lot of fun finding — and driving — these old cars. However, it was not easy.

One afternoon, while moving the cars hurriedly around the set, the Director sternly pulled me aside. He said, "I've been watching you all day and I have one thing to say: Slow down."... I replied, "I'm sorry, sir, but there's so much to do and I'm the only one here to do it". His response: "This is my set. When you look stressed and hurried, other folks pick up on that vibe. They become stressed and hurried. Others become stressed. Then folks make mistakes and people get hurt. It's not worth it. Get your stuff done. You'll be stressed — but act like you're in control. Don't let folks see you sweat. It's a perception thing."...

Nature of Identity SP12

One of my favorite classes to teach at the Academy is called "The Nature of Identity". Not only do the student have a few more classes under their belts, but it's a hell of a lot more fun to talk about branding for three hours than, say, grid-systems. The focus of the class, however, isn't your typical "logo design" class. Instead, we ask the students to manifest a renewed "soul" for their chosen company — to question what the brand is truly about. We even dip into a bit of Plato's Theory of Forms to reflect on what it means to know a thing (and who knows it best — and why).

For instance, National Geographic isn't simply selling a magazine, are they? They're really selling the idea of adventure and education. Or Victoria's Secret isn't just peddling underwear, but they're purveyors of sensuality. And when you boil it down to these basic elements, the new directions for a brand can be amazing. This class is often more about storytelling than the creation of an identifying mark... and it's certainly more than slapping said mark on a coffee cup, baseball hat and delivery van.

We ask the students, to choose a "dead, dying or defunct" brand, so Victoria's Secret really isn't on the table, but the options are still pretty wide and it's always a treat to see... And this term, the projects were some of the best yet — mainly because they were /all/ good. As an instructor, we take for grated that one or two projects will be at the top end of the curve — and likewise some at the bottom, but this crew delivered an unusually high caliber of work and I wanted to share it.

The main deliverable for the class is a book. Many of these were wonderfully covetable and I hope to have some photos to share soon. In the meantime, below are links to each of the student's projects — a simple website to give the project a virtual presence and a link to an issuu.com file which lets a reader page through the book in 2D, digital format. Take a look — there's some really great stuff.

[Kristen Libero's integration of the identity and graphic system for Sega]

What's it Worth?

One of the things I've been hoping to compile is a Point-of-View on internships. We have many great firms that look to our students as interns — and when the balance of time-commitment, compensation and expectations are in line, this is a fantastic opportunity for both student and mentor. Hopefully, as a department, we'll get some consensus on this and be able to post it soon.

In the meantime, as a personal take: an unpaid internship is neither good for the student nor the long-term health of any industry and simply devalues efforts across the board, especially at entry-level. Here's an interesting turn in the saga of "Unpaid Internships" worth reading:

"In August 2011, when Diana Wang began her seventh unpaid internship, this time at Harper’s Bazaar, the legendary high-end fashion magazine, she figured that her previous six internships – at a modeling agency, a PR firm, a jewelry designer, a magazine, an art gallery and a state governor’s office – had prepared her for the demands of New York’s fashion world..."

Read more...