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And every successful person I know comes to really love and appreciate and do with tender, loving care every aspect of the business they're involved with.
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Um, you know, you know, filing taxes, you know, if you don't do those things with care and love and attention to detail, you're not gonna succeed.
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Michael Harry, welcome to the Oxford Talks Podcast.
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How are you doing?
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How are you guys doing today?
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Very good.
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Just great.
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Thank you.
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That's amazing.
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Um, for the folks that, of course, you don't need any introduction whatsoever, uh, but the people who don't come from the world that we uh, you know, from the design and everything, uh, how would you introduce yourself to them?
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Uh, starting with you, let's say, Michael.
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Um, my name is Michael Beirut.
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I'm a graphic designer.
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I've uh been practicing graphic design for 45 plus years in various capacities.
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If people don't know what graphic designers do, we were the people that back in the day used to do things like books, design books and magazines and movie posters and logos.
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And many of us still do things like that, but we also now do things in the digital realm, in the uh um the world of uh data, motion, animation, film, interactive design as well.
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So all of it is graphic design.
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And I'm a partner uh in the design firm Pentagram.
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I work in the New York office there.
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Amazing.
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Harry?
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Um like Michael, I'm also a graphic designer.
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Um I've uh I've been in saying office in Pentagram in the London office for 20 years, so I'm one of the younger partners.
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I'm one of the just earning my stripes.
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But uh like Michael, my whole career has been graphic design.
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I've worked in many different uh types of businesses from cultural to institutional to you name it since the kind of mid eighties when I started.
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Uh so I joined Pentagram 20 years ago, this month actually.
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Um, and uh yeah, on the on the on the same kind of course.
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20 years this month.
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Isn't that a remarkable journey, isn't it?
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It's phenomenal.
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It's phenomenal, and it's uh it's like being in a great family, you know, a r a really wonderful, supportive, open, brilliant family.
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A family that's actually kind of constantly changing, which is a strange thing to say, but it is it's in it's in momentum and moving, and we we are at the moment twenty-three or four of us, uh twenty-four of many different you know, cultural backgrounds, work types, you name it, but we share, and uh that's uh wonderful kind of supportive tolerance and and you know.
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Yeah, and and one of the things that stood out, um so we thank you so much again for recently inviting me to the Pentagram Studios.
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Um, I believe we are one of the first people who have been let in with the camera and we had unprecedented access, so that was really amazing looking at the workshops.
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And I think the most striking thing was for me, number one, I think I just felt so lucky yesterday that the Pentagram partner meeting was happening, which we have heard about.
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Like this is, you know, you meet every sort of quarter or so.
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Well, this last two days actually is a pre-meet.
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Pre-meet, okay.
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So it's a little gathering of a representative group who will gather the gathering in London this time, next time, which will be in May, will be in New York.
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And then they would follow up with a um a three or four-day gathering of everybody, either in the west or the east, in different places every time.
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Yes, and the the main ones yet to come, but you saw a little bit of a couple of things.
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That's the week after that'll be the week after next, actually.
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Yeah, okay.
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Um, striking thing for me was uh the colleague that you've been working with for almost 20, 25 years, Dom.
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Oh gosh, no, four, thirty, thirty-five, thirty about thirty-eight years, actually.
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Thirty-eight years.
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Yeah.
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And Michael Harry was just telling me that uh when they moved over to the new offices, they specifically made sure that they're sitting there the teams are sitting next to each other.
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It's a it's a brotherhood that you describe it to me.
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How how amazing is that?
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It is.
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We met we we met in my first job um uh back in the mid-80s um in London.
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This is Dominic Lipper I'm talking about.
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And then he and I both worked in two agencies together, and then in 1990 set up our own studio, which we had for 16 years, and then we just moved Lockstock and Barrel into Pentagram, brought the whole thing and just dropped into the into Pentagram studios when we we got asked, and it was it's been fantastic.
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And he and I, as I was saying, we have never had a crossword, which is extraordinary, isn't it, in all those years.
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And uh we've been there for each other.
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And we have we were, but I think we were kind of held apart when we first came in because we thought it might we might have been a bit of trouble.
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I think we proved with them being out.
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So we've been allowed back together again, and we just yeah, share a thing.
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Michael, I was gonna ask you actually, how so was it the case that Harry, you got interviewed by Michael when you were joining in, or how did that work?
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That didn't happen that way.
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What yeah, I mean, but I know Harry already.
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Yeah, we we we we actually quite a lot of us know each other before anyone joins, probably.
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You're all in this we're all in this industry, we're all watching each other, we're all kind of clocking what's going on in terms of the things you are affected by and love.
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What happens is, and I I mean, this is the way it happened to me, is two of the London partners, one specifically approached me to see if I'd be interested, and then the second one, and then we were, you know, then you kind of um you're brought in, you talk to, and you get kind of interviewed by everybody, including Michael and everyone, to see if we're fair gang.
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Michael, I want to go back to that time when you were interviewing Harry.
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How was that?
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How was that?
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How was meeting Harry for the first time, if you can remember?
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I remember being struck by how tall and nans and charming it was, how short and roughly.
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That's what happened to me yesterday.
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Oddly I was.
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Uh and um uh and also like um you it's a very interesting partnership.
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And we we have clients who have partners, have professional services partnerships.
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There are they could be architects, they could be lawyers.
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And I'm always struck by how we're similar in many ways to any typical professional partnership, but this underlying commitment to the idea that we are at our base friends and friends as well as colleagues with this sense of mutual trust, mutual responsibility, um, and you know, mutual admiration, I would say.
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Um, I knew Harry's work before I met Harry.
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I met Harry and um um, you know, he's he just um had to this day, but even then, uh no less, exuded this sense of optimism and energy and curiosity about the world.
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And it's very interesting because we've tried a couple of times.
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I don't know if you you you I mean, you may have been party to this as well in London, but we've tried a couple of times to, you know, we're there there have probably been more than 50 partners who have kind of passed through uh Pentagram, the five founding partners back in 1972.
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And then successive generations of partners have joined the firm, um, you know, withdrawn uh as they uh, you know, either aged out of it, or in some cases, um a few rare cases actually passed away at their desktop, literally so.
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Um but um uh but so there have been these successive waves of people when I joined as when you joined, we were relatively young.
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I was 33 years old when I joined in 1990.
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What are you talking about?
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And now I'm 68.
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And so I I have it was 36 years ago that I joined.
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And I but I remember other firms will ask, will say, hire a consultant who is a headhunter in effect.
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Find people that meet this profile.
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They'll give you some names and you'll even go ahead and do some blind dates.
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And it just has this um transactional check the boxes quality.
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Whereas um, you know, I I think I probably met you a good, you know, eight years before you joined, so you know, five, six, seven, eight years, you know, and just and and and knew Harry's work.
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And like and so many of us were friends before we became business partners.
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Uh Paula Cher, who along with me is one of the most long-serving partners in the New York Oysters, I probably met her in 1983, you know, when she was um, you know, when she was still, they had just come out of CBS Records and set up her own little scrappy design firm.
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And she was a little bit older than me.
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So I looked up to her as a big sister, as someone whose name I knew from record jackets I looked at, you know, in my lonely bedroom in Ohio.
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And it would say uh cover designed by Paula Cher.
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And I was like, this woman seems impossibly glamorous.
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And uh, you know, and here we are four decades on uh as business partners.
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And so um, you know, if you know lawyers, they don't say they're friends and colleagues, but I think at the end of the day, um, the business association is the one is the with many such partnerships, becomes the framing element that dictates the rules of engagement that all the partners have.
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Here I would say it's flipped on its head.
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You know, I don't think we would, I've never had a discussion where we brought in a partner where we thought this guy will make us a lot of money, or this guy is filling a hole in our offer that we really need to succeed commercially.
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It's just, you know, and you are a proven commodity, but I think we often will just identify someone who seems really talented and who seems like if they were given a bigger platform, which Pentagram does provide, they could do some extraordinary things.
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And we don't even know what those things are.
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And sometimes we guess wrong.
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And uh, and often um someone will join, it just doesn't quite click and work out.
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And then those people become alumni who will show up at um, you know, at reunion parties and kind of social gatherings, and they're embraced as if they had served 30 years, even if they only passed through for three years and said, um, that was fun, but I'm on to the next thing.
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You know, it's it's an it's an amazing structure for it's amazing, it's sort of like uh probably to any proper management consultant, a a stupid, uh not not fully profitable and kind of very wild, woolly, and inefficient structure, but it's the one that's been prevailing, you know, since uh 1972 and still kind of seems to deliver a kind of uh there's a bravery to it.
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Yeah, yeah.
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It has to it's it's a brave institution because it it takes risks every time.
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With you know, you you think someone's a shoreshoe in and they don't prove right.
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And some people are kind of a real outlier and they come in and they're extraordinary, you know, it's extraordinary kind of mix.
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So it's it's we it's a it's a little kind of gamble all the time, and but but based on you know, there are a few criteria.
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What one is undoubtedly the quality of people's work, the ability to self-sustain themselves.
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Um, but one of the biggest criteria are they people that you want to spend your days and actually weekends and weeks with.
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You know, we all go away together on these things, and um it's you're investing in deeply in a person, not just in a business.
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I'm gonna ask you, starting with you, Michael, because um we've had this discussion in previous uh uh series with you, Harry, that Pentagram does have a very unique structure.
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But for the kind of a new design studios which are being set up in last three, five years, what are the things that you're gonna say that are perhaps maybe a bit of a miss signal out there that is going out there that it's very hard, and again, we talked about this very hard to replicate this.
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What are the things that you're gonna say to those kind of a new studio popping up all around the world that yes, we have been set up like this, but these are the key ingredients, which some of them you mentioned, but you will just say, okay, I would highly suggest not to set up like this, because again, Harry, you've mentioned that it's very easy to take advantage of this structure, super easy.
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Uh, and that's something you don't want to do when you're setting up kind of a new structure.
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So, what are the things that you would say?
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Mike, sorry, starting with you.
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Well, I mean, it's it's interesting because we the we don't make a secret about what the structure is, and it's based on a couple of seemingly um contradictory factors to a certain degree.
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Um there is no hierarchy within the partnership.
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Yeah, the first day you're a partner um when you join, you have um the same authority to kind of make decisions about your you're responsible for your own business and you have full authority over those, the choices you make about that business.
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Um, you don't have to, there's no kind of um uh partnership within the partnership to whom you have to go for approval to kind of like, should I take this client?
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Uh can I hire this person?
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Can I do this?
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Can I do that?
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You're given this astonishingly broad latitude to uh conduct your business whatever way you want.
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Um, there is no president of Pentagram.
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There's a rotating chairmanship that kind of uh um was established again a long time ago and kind of has this um orderly uh line of succession where it's traded off every two years between one of the partners.
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But that person has no more authority, they just sort of are the beleaguered person who collate all the different sort of issues that are arising and sort of try to uh dispose of them in one way or another.
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So that idea of independence is key, the idea of inequality is key.
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And then um the thing that sort of seems to contradict that is that uh um each of those partners runs a what amounts to on paper, an independent business with its own responsibility to um track overhead and to track income based on client work.
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And so each of us, Harry and uh each one of the other partners will have uh you know a profit and loss statement, you know, every month and at the end of the year.
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And so, and and lawyers do this too, I guess.
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And what then what lawyers have is something called the compensation committee, who work out really complicated formulas about how much of this work do you originate, how many hours did your team bill, uh, how many, how, how profitable were you on the billing job, what was your, you know, how you know, all these things, and then you add them all together.
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So everything gets everything sort of gets paid each according to how much work they did and how profitable they were.
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A pentagram, crazily, they decided way back at the pounding that they weren't gonna do any of that.
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They just were gonna divide it up equally.
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So one guy's crazy to like one person maybe has a dollar in profit, another person has a hundred dollars in profit, they each get$50 at the end of the year.
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Um, and what's interesting is that it's sort of as you kind of implied, of course, that there's a potential for abuse of the system there.
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But what we've discovered because I think we've hired, well, we bring in partners very carefully.
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As you said, well, each one is like interviewed by the full partnership.
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And it could take quite a long time.
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Yeah, and yeah, it's a it's a long intake process over probably 18 months or so in in truth.
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And I think the the trust that, you know, everyone has to have like absolute trust that this new person is someone who will come in with a as a colleague who will respect the system.
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And often, you know, someone who when when I was brand new there, I obviously wasn't uh, I didn't have the capacity to command the fees that the older partners who I was now supposedly equal with did.
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But I felt, you know, there was a self-impro imposed pressure to kind of be responsible for my part of the business.
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And I think the clarity about that and the transparency about that um is actually really, really healthy.
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It can put pressure on people.
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If you're having a bad year, no one wants to have a bad year.
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And no one is, no one ever says, you know, um, you know, I, you know, I'm a talented person and I deserve to be uh I deserve you, my partners to serve as my patrons to just give me money to let me go off and do fun things while you guys actually do the hard work.
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It's like so different from the ethos.
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It's like, and and I I swear over the years, I've talked to different ones of my partners who will might be having a bad year, and I'll just say, don't worry about it.
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It'll be fine, it'll be fine.
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Just do good work and the money sorts itself out.
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And by and large, that is absolutely the case.
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So what's funny is that I think every partnership functions that way.
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And designers who, unlike lawyers, are not necessarily enthusiastic about mathematics and um and sheets and yeah, yeah.
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You know, I think compensation committee, if there was such a thing at Pentagram, can you imagine what a debacle that would be?
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Just horrible.
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And I always said, you know, I said, at first I thought it was some principle about, I thought it was some idealistic, you know, collectivist principle that was, you know, about this socialist uh each according to his ability, uh, to from each according to his ability to each according to his need.
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Now I sort of think it's because there's a bunch of people who went to art school and kind of got discouraged by higher arithmetic and didn't want to work out.
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Let's just let's divide it equally.
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That'll be that'll be easier and we'll figure it out.
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I love that.
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Harry, I want to uh I want you to follow off to that, but given with the lens of, you know, ego is a thing that can easily Yeah, yeah.
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I I mean I thought how would you Well I think some of the reasons why other people either have not managed this or don't actually try and do this, and other people appear to do this, but they don't actually do it to the to the the the you know the the truth of the way we do it, is you have to realize that you matter less than the greater ideal of the group.
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You have to give up to that completely.
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And um and it is about a a a constant state of giving, you know.
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And I think when you're a a designer driven into your work and everything, that's quite a hard thing to get used to.
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That you just have to let go to the greater group.
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And there are issues that come up where the group means more than your single opinion.
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And uh we don't vote, but we have you know, around the table it everything is uh, you know, to a painful degree sometimes is is debated, chewed over.
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This is a lot what happens when we go away, and it's not always comfortable, but we find a collective way uh through things.
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Now that is a way of life, uh you know, you know, and it's probably not what you're thinking about when you're deeply into your beautiful artistic work, I think, is what you have to commit to um as a constant thing.
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So it's it's so um you know, that's a that's a a lot of stuff that goes on beyond just you know running your business, and and being part of that is not easy.
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It's it's boy does it bring benefits.
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And um, I mean, there's a lot of us have been in this for a very long time, and you know, it's it really pays back, but that's not an easy thing to take on.
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So I think that's interesting.
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As far as I know, there is no there is no other agency or or company that's exactly has has done what we have.
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There are a couple, there are some rock bands I think that sort of have models that are like that where even they know they go off the new solo albums and then they'll sort of everything goes into account and thing.
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But I think what's the what everything Harry's saying is absolutely true.
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And what makes it actually such a complex and carefully managed um organization in many ways is that the people we seek to participate in it are not temp necessarily temperamentally predisposed to be you know, give themselves over to collect.
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That's what I was asking.
00:19:42.319 --> 00:19:47.680
Um I think I I didn't I asked Michael, I think you the the difference between design and decoration.
00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:48.319
Yeah, yeah.
00:19:48.559 --> 00:19:49.039
Yesterday, yeah.
00:19:49.359 --> 00:19:57.039
Yesterday like it it it feels very kind of like this can be just like I designed it and this needs to be used this way.
00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:01.359
Well, it's just oh I didn't have time and I just asked like an interior to go to this thing.
00:20:01.519 --> 00:20:12.960
Yeah, but I mean um um I think it's just the difference between um functional, is it anything that's sort of like functional efficiency and pleasure?
00:20:13.119 --> 00:20:20.720
It's like you know, if it you know, I mean there's we know now exactly how nutrition works.
00:20:21.279 --> 00:20:23.839
You know, um there's no mystery to it.
00:20:24.160 --> 00:20:38.720
And someone could manufacture a some substances that you could consume every day that would completely and efficiently satisfy everything you needed to live in an extraordinarily healthy way.
00:20:39.200 --> 00:20:52.400
Just kind of here are three, you know, here are three um uh containers, you know, consume this one in the morning, this one at lunchtime, this one at dinner time, and you won't want for anything that looks to be 120.
00:20:52.799 --> 00:21:19.279
Um but is that every that that alone that's a what I describe as a dystopic view of the world because what happens is the cuisine of individual cultures, of individual regions, of individual chefs, of your mom, of that favorite cheap thing you can buy at that store on the corner that reminds you of when you were a kid.
00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:22.880
You know, all those things which are doing exactly the same functional thing.
00:21:22.960 --> 00:21:34.960
They're all in some way kind of um sustaining life in a human organism, you, and yet they're also freighted with all this other information, which you are imposing on it.
00:21:35.039 --> 00:21:59.759
I mean, sometimes it's you know, you can, you know, you can, you know, it's stimulating your taste buds in different ways, but basically, all the associations of walking into a favorite restaurant, meeting someone you haven't seen in a long time at in a pub, you know, um going home for a holiday and being with your family, and you know, that dish that is coming.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:02.720
Out every year, the same.
00:22:02.880 --> 00:22:08.799
And everyone now, they don't even know whether they like it or not, but it's so emblematic of this gathering.
00:22:08.880 --> 00:22:10.559
It has this totemic power.
00:22:10.720 --> 00:22:17.119
These are, I mean, these are all um all of us are making sort of in effect design decisions that that are these things.
00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:22.480
And they're all individual and they all have the capacity to communicate at larger scales.
00:22:22.559 --> 00:22:29.440
And I think if you're a big, you know, snack company or food company, you're trying to do it at a global scale.
00:22:29.680 --> 00:22:40.640
If you're, you know, um the head of a family who's responsible for putting dinner on the table on at Christmas time or whatever holiday you want, um, you know, you do it another way.
00:22:40.799 --> 00:22:43.039
But I think, and you're making all these choices.
00:22:43.119 --> 00:22:51.920
You know, this is the time of year we use these plates, you know, auntie, auntie, someone has got to bring that salad, you know, or else everyone's gonna be mad.
00:22:52.079 --> 00:22:55.599
I mean, though it's ritual, it's choice, it's about everything.
00:22:55.759 --> 00:23:29.839
So I think it's some uh, you know, designers have to really be conscious of what gives people joy, what gives people pleasure, and understand that it, you know, I think a lot of times um consumer culture, the corrosive quality that it has is sort of alienating people from their own sense of what gives them pleasure and joy, and kind of, you know, by using media sort of confusing people about using those things as, you know, signals to other people that, hey, I'm wealthy or hey, I'm like, I'm like these people I admire.
00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:30.720
You know, it's complicated.
00:23:38.400 --> 00:23:40.720
You wouldn't you'd go nuts, I think.
00:23:40.799 --> 00:23:49.440
You know, if if if you if you came, you know, came to Christmas and you could choose four different plates, but actually there's you just want to return to the thing that makes it makes it real.
00:23:50.079 --> 00:23:56.720
I find the same thing with um uh mixes of music or four album covers for the same album.
00:23:56.880 --> 00:23:57.200
Yeah.
00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:21.680
And you know, there I wanna I want to have the I want the singular thing, the thing that I can uh you know, there may be other uh occasions where you that that that's that that variety actually is for a different reason, but I kind of want to settle on an interpretation and a feeling that will stay with me and and and you know, and it's um it's an interesting thing that so suddenly broaden it all out kind of can do the opposite.
00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:22.799
And and and it's interesting.
00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:36.559
I'm thinking about uh of one of your projects, particularly, Harry, but I think designers, when we're educated, a lot of the thing the premium is placed on is the capacity to create something completely new, which is exciting.
00:24:36.640 --> 00:24:39.279
And it's something that again moves the world forward.
00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:50.640
But um, you know, I mean, when I got into this business, you know, when I was a kid, I thought if I could just like design album covers when I grew up like Paul Sher, I'd be a dream country.
00:24:50.720 --> 00:24:52.400
I've never designed an album cover ever.
00:24:52.880 --> 00:25:01.119
Um, and um uh you would think if you were a young designer, like designing for the music industry, that's like really what could be more fun than that.
00:25:01.279 --> 00:25:03.519
And I'm thinking about the work you did for Pink Floyd.
00:25:03.839 --> 00:25:05.039
Well, for Dark's that to me.
00:25:05.200 --> 00:25:05.759
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:28.880
And it was in a way, what made that work so powerful was you conducted this process of distillation about the I mean, that's one of the most for me personally, what that Dark Southern Mood is the most evocative single, two-sided albums that I've ever had in my life.
00:25:29.039 --> 00:25:36.319
I mean, I can remember like exactly where I was in different points of my um adolescence hearing that.
00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:44.160
You know, I know side one, side two, I know how it goes you know, and I can hear and a snippet of it, you know.
00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:50.160
Um, you know, if I, you know, if it just kind of pops up in my life, I'll hear it and it'll send me right back to a moment.
00:25:50.400 --> 00:25:54.960
And and the cover of it, that hypnosis cover with the prism on right, hypnosis, right?
00:25:55.039 --> 00:25:55.839
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:59.759
I mean, it sort of is um, so you think, Pink Floyd, how cool.
00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:01.759
I have carte blanche, I can do whatever I want.
00:26:01.839 --> 00:26:02.960
You can't do whatever you want.
00:26:03.119 --> 00:26:11.440
There's this responsibility you have to people you've never met who already have a sense of ownership over that visual language.
00:26:11.759 --> 00:26:27.200
And you have to, your responsibility is to them to kind of make sure that the work you're doing is honor that connection that they have and to kind of figure out a way to deepen, broaden, extend, amplify that connection.
00:26:27.519 --> 00:26:32.799
And what's there already is giving you so many clues about what you can do.
00:26:33.039 --> 00:26:40.720
But I think it's, you know, when when Harry was talking before about, you know, you're putting things out of the world, you have to do it in a responsible sort of way.
00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:51.839
There's the obvious things that have to do with um, you know, uh, you know, ecological sustainability and things like that, that have to do with truth versus lying, that have to do with a lot of different things.
00:26:51.920 --> 00:27:00.160
But a lot of times it has to do with, you know, um, you know, you're not entering into a world that's a giant blank slate.
00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:16.799
You're entering into a world where everyone is already flying, has, has grown up making, you know, making marks on it and trying to figure out, you know, what kind of, you know, what kind of how they navigate it based on their own sense of what the visual language that they've encountered over their years has been.
00:27:16.960 --> 00:27:24.079
And I think if you sort of are sensitive to that, it helps you really figure out how you can contribute to it in a way that really does add meaning.
00:27:24.480 --> 00:27:30.799
Michael, what do you feel is the most at this stage in your life, and Harry, I'm gonna ask you the same question.
00:27:31.920 --> 00:27:37.920
What do you feel like the most risk, what's the biggest responsibility do you have at the moment now?
00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:44.480
As designers, as I've heard yesterday that, Michael, that you're slightly stepping away from the rules as well.
00:27:44.960 --> 00:27:52.400
Famously, I've heard from you saying that um the the difference that you spent between 9 till 2 a.m.
00:27:53.039 --> 00:27:54.559
was the difference in your career.
00:27:54.799 --> 00:27:58.640
And you famously said afterwards, I don't recommend anyone should do that anymore.
00:27:58.880 --> 00:27:59.119
Yeah.
00:27:59.359 --> 00:28:02.880
What do you feel like what what's the thing that you want to pass on now?
00:28:03.200 --> 00:28:11.839
Um Well, I think, you know, I mean, it's a cliche to say this, but I have not only children but grandchildren at this point in my life.
00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:16.240
And, you know, you worry about the world that you're turning, that they're you're giving them.
00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:27.039
And sometimes I, you know, I worry that the kind of conversation we're having is, you know, will look be looked back as an artifact where people have the luxury just to muse about things like this.
00:28:27.119 --> 00:28:38.400
And uh the world is, you know, there's existential threats in the world that uh, you know, that the very things that have brought us prosperity are also kind of jeopardizing our survival, right?
00:28:38.559 --> 00:28:40.720
Uh for all kinds of different reasons.
00:28:40.960 --> 00:29:07.440
So I think um, you know, the you know, the what I think of now is I see, I I mean, you come into it and you're sort of like the youngest person in the room, and you're, you know, you're just there to kind of like soak things in and come up with an idea and hope that someone will notice that you have a voice and something to say.
00:29:07.599 --> 00:29:10.160
And you know, Harry started that way, all our partners started that way.
00:29:10.400 --> 00:29:15.119
Millions of people in creative and other professions sort of like start that way too.
00:29:15.279 --> 00:29:30.880
At the other end, you sort of realize that what you have instead is sort of a certain amount of um of wisdom sounds pretentious, but you have some experience, which is putting you in a position where you can kind of assess things differently.
00:29:31.039 --> 00:29:32.480
Change your mind about things, even.
00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:53.359
You know, go from kind of being like a leading proponent of, you know, hustle culture in the grind, which I was for years, to thinking, you know, wouldn't you uh my lovely wife Dorothy just sent me an interview with someone who said the biggest mistake some people make is um mistaking being busy for being alive.
00:29:53.519 --> 00:29:53.759
Yeah.
00:29:53.920 --> 00:29:56.880
Uh and I made that mistake a million times.
00:29:57.119 --> 00:30:04.079
And two, sort of my own personal advantage, it led to my success and sort of contributed to a lot of things in the world.
00:30:04.160 --> 00:30:25.039
But it's different, you know, you sort of realize, and I think Harry's a great, I've learned a lot from Harry because I think he sort of is someone who has this capacity to really be present in the moment and to actually be more contemplative about the work that he's doing, as opposed to just sort of this relentless drive to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing.
00:30:25.200 --> 00:30:37.359
So one of the things that I think um, you know, I've encouraged my own children to do, and when my grandsons um see are interested in hearing my point of view about these things, I would tell them the same thing too.
00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:41.920
It's like, you know, the moment you're in now is only gonna, it'll never happen again.
00:30:42.160 --> 00:30:45.759
And, you know, you have to sort of like try to be always in those moments.
00:30:45.839 --> 00:31:00.319
It'll make you a smarter person, connect with the people in your life that you um, you know, that you love and you're close to, but connect, you know, you're gonna be ordering coffee from someone or a near miss on the sidewalk.
00:31:00.400 --> 00:31:06.079
And each one of those people is another human being on earth that you're sharing this moment with too.
00:31:06.240 --> 00:31:14.319
And I think being conscious of all those things, you know, I do think it makes you, you know, to the degree we want to instrumentalize it, it makes you a better designer.
00:31:14.400 --> 00:31:18.000
Yes, it makes you a better person, a better citizen, in a way.
00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:28.319
And I think it's um very easy to kind of um, you know, in a way, I feel very fortunate that I was born when I was born.
00:31:29.440 --> 00:31:37.039
And people usually say that because they think, oh, I would not like to have been born in the 17th century and die of dysentery at the age of 28.
00:31:37.200 --> 00:31:47.039
You know, but I also am glad in a way that I wasn't born later because I don't really know what social media would have done to my brain at the age of 14.
00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:48.720
Really frightening.
00:31:49.119 --> 00:32:02.160
You know, I had, you know, um the limits of communications technology in the 1960s and 1970s meant that I could get, I was omnivorous and voracious for stuff.
00:32:02.720 --> 00:32:11.200
I was like a I could live in a library, I could go to a record store and literally spend three hours standing and going through the bins.
00:32:11.359 --> 00:32:15.599
Like literally records I would never buy, records I couldn't afford to buy.
00:32:15.759 --> 00:32:18.559
You know, um, you know, they cost like$5,$6.
00:32:19.039 --> 00:32:20.000
Who has that kind of money?
00:32:20.079 --> 00:32:22.240
Um, but like, you know, but I I was like that.
00:32:22.319 --> 00:32:31.440
And I can't imagine what would have happened to my, you know, what kind of person I would have been had I been able to like stay up all night just clicking, clicking, scrolling, scrolling.
00:32:31.759 --> 00:32:32.640
It would have been terrible.
00:32:32.880 --> 00:32:47.599
And so I think, you know, it's it's actually hard to give advice to people to whom that world isn't some, you know, novelty that was introduced uh midway through their lives, but something that they've never known otherwise, right?
00:32:47.839 --> 00:33:01.759
And um, and I think um I actually have trouble getting my mind around that and trying to figure out, you know, what relevant kind of advice you can, what relevant kind of way of living you can model for someone who's kind of been brought up in a way that I think is radically different, actually.
00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:23.440
So, you know, my my responsibility when I'm talking to um like even I've two restless grandsons, and I've noticed that there's a real trick to making them seemingly making them behave, and it's simply giving them your attention and responding to what they're doing in real time.
00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:39.200
And, you know, they'll settle down and they'll sort of like start listening and better still start talking or asking questions or giving you the answers to questions or telling you about something uh that they heard or that they saw or showing you something they did.
00:33:40.240 --> 00:33:46.880
Yeah, and you you learn so much from that, and um, you know, you end up become away from that better.
00:33:46.960 --> 00:33:53.440
And, you know, I think it it would help someone who's five or seven, or 15 or 17, or 25, or 27.
00:33:53.839 --> 00:34:11.760
I think, you know, that that sort of thing is really easy to lose, or really easy to mistake for something else that people are doing all the time, getting a lot of response to an Instagram post or putting out a TikTok that does something or whatever the hell it's people are doing with or managing their individual brands.
00:34:11.920 --> 00:34:18.320
That's something that I, you know, I don't think that should be against the law, and I don't just I wouldn't discourage anyone from doing it.
00:34:18.480 --> 00:34:25.519
But I wouldn't, I'd also, it's the kind of busyness that you can mistake for a living and two different things.
00:34:25.920 --> 00:34:29.440
But uh busyness means taking it as as aliveness.
00:34:29.760 --> 00:34:32.480
I think that that I'm gonna live with that for a very long time.
00:34:32.719 --> 00:34:34.239
Harry, what would you say about yourself?
00:34:34.800 --> 00:34:47.119
For me, if I uh if I think about why I've done what I've done in in terms of my life and my career, is there was a there was a point when uh I realized things were really moving me.
00:34:47.840 --> 00:34:50.800
Whether that be music, be art, literature or whatever.
00:34:51.199 --> 00:34:58.800
And I had this longing to make things so that I could move other people in the same way that I had been moved.
00:34:59.280 --> 00:35:09.199
And I and I and I had that simple little thought, and I would love to have been a singer, I'd love to have been a I'd love to have been a writer, and I'd love to have been a painter, because I wanted to just move things.
00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:18.800
And and what I've tried to do really sincerely in my work is to is to use design to create feelings and move people, how I've been moved by design.
00:35:18.880 --> 00:35:41.119
That's my if I boil it all down to the simplicity of that is because I know what it what my life, you know, how my life is changed out by things that have moved me, you know, whether that's a piece of music, even something simple that someone said that just made clarity when I had none, you know, like a simple kindness and in a way a bad piece of design can be a simple kindness that brings clarity and change out when there is none.
00:35:41.199 --> 00:35:53.840
And I so I that is I know it's profoundly simplistic, but it's a for me it was so much about feeling that I I wanted to just chase that feeling and make things that would you know, create feelings that a way of move move people.
00:35:54.480 --> 00:36:10.960
And I think we both mentioned several times is about this this sense of responsibility, that how what we make and how we make, whether that's in the environment, whether it's on people's minds, whatever, that I hope I can look back and people can look back at what I've made and said that I did it with sincerity and and honesty.
00:36:11.039 --> 00:36:19.199
And in some way, that can be some kind of I don't know, guys, you know, people can see that and and perhaps chase that down a little bit themselves.
00:36:19.440 --> 00:36:26.559
But and and I, as you know, uh I was uh seriously ill six months ago and I had a major operation.
00:36:26.639 --> 00:36:32.480
I actually had six months out of pentagram and sort of viewing it from the and I had to be very still for a very long time.
00:36:32.880 --> 00:36:46.159
And I think I chime completely with Michael's thing about this the busyness and and and the and the and and appearing to move forward when actually you're probably treading water in a very like the roadrunner, in a very over the mountain.
00:36:47.039 --> 00:36:58.480
Um but uh it I I I can see now, and I know I'm three years behind Michael, and I've got four grand grandkids too, so my life's changed immeasurably in the last four years.
00:36:58.559 --> 00:37:08.719
Uh, but I can see now that um uh there has been so much energy that I could have I could have not spent uh in unnecessary ways.
00:37:08.880 --> 00:37:23.840
It's the same, exactly the same sentiment that Michael is it's about don't sweat the small things, it's the big things that really count, and it's so much about kindness and it's so much about attention to other folk, um, whether that's family or people in your own business or people on the street.
00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:42.400
I caught a bus home late last night from an event that Michael was running at our studio with a with a couple of the other partners, and uh um I was sitting next to this old lady who who couldn't reach the button to stop the and I can see her panic getting panicky because she couldn't press the button to stop the bus in time to get onto a stop.
00:37:42.880 --> 00:37:50.719
And it was so lovely to just reassure her and then be a little, you know, I've got log up so I can I could make that was one of the highlights of my day.
00:37:50.800 --> 00:37:52.800
Yeah, getting her off the bus.
00:37:52.880 --> 00:37:54.800
And uh I know simple stuff like that.
00:37:54.880 --> 00:37:57.440
But I'm gonna selfishly ask for an advice.
00:37:57.599 --> 00:38:07.119
Um, as someone who is a designer at heart, and but just tense happens to be that I have to run businesses and uh we do these Auxor talks, they're all about kind of a designing.
00:38:07.199 --> 00:38:11.440
People come with their 20 years of life and then you have to compress it into a 10-minute talk.
00:38:11.599 --> 00:38:11.760
Yeah.
00:38:12.000 --> 00:38:15.360
Takes a takes takes a lot of mental effort and to just do all of that.
00:38:15.599 --> 00:38:18.159
But I see that is that is one way of designing things as well.
00:38:18.239 --> 00:38:20.639
And someone who's working with payments and all kinds of stuff.
00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:26.239
Uh, with my partner, we recently started um small kind of a design work as well with 3D printing.
00:38:26.480 --> 00:38:28.079
That's something we're gonna be working on.
00:38:28.400 --> 00:38:41.599
What advice would you be giving me that yes, you have to do all the business operations, everything, but to to be true designer throughout the life, what should I learn and what should I just take an advice from you today?
00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:57.840
I think you have to take it has to come from your heart, you know, but from your deepest, you know, make it because it's part of you and and and and I think you'll be happy then because it's it's it's it's driven from that place.
00:38:58.239 --> 00:39:02.159
It's not a fictitious thing that you were chasing because you thought it's a cool thing to do.
00:39:02.400 --> 00:39:07.519
Do it from here, and uh and good things will come out of that.
00:39:07.599 --> 00:39:22.800
So I I you know, no matter whether you know the the the hustle of running the business, the getting the next job, or you know, have that moment where you're making something that is sincerely genuine and I would you know, because because the rest is all going to be changing around you, right?
00:39:22.880 --> 00:39:26.000
We if we'd talked about AI, whatever we'd said today would be different.
00:39:26.079 --> 00:39:27.679
We'd need to say something different next week.
00:39:28.159 --> 00:39:30.400
All this stuff is shifting and moving like crazy.
00:39:30.800 --> 00:39:36.480
Find that thing that that is the thing that is the constant and is sincerely part of you.
00:39:36.880 --> 00:39:38.559
I would try and do that.
00:39:38.800 --> 00:39:39.760
Thank you, Michael.
00:39:39.840 --> 00:39:40.400
Something from you.
00:39:40.719 --> 00:39:45.679
I would say um um, you know, make sure you love all of it.
00:39:46.400 --> 00:39:56.559
I think a lot of times people that are starting businesses um they go into it because they're interested in one aspect of it and they actually don't like the other aspects of it.
00:39:56.800 --> 00:40:08.480
And every successful person I know comes to really love and appreciate and do with tender loving care every aspect of the business they're involved with.
00:40:08.639 --> 00:40:17.599
Um, you know, tedious things like invoicing, collecting on overdue payments, you know, filing taxes.
00:40:17.760 --> 00:40:24.960
You know, if you don't do those things with care and love and attention to detail, you're not gonna succeed.
00:40:25.199 --> 00:40:39.280
And, you know, if you just look at the restaurant business, there's so many people that open restaurants because they love to cook and they love to eat, and that's great, but that isn't running a restaurant, you know.
00:40:39.440 --> 00:40:45.199
That's like that's the that's like the moment the plate lands on the table, that that's that part.
00:40:45.440 --> 00:40:47.599
But there's all that other stuff you have to do.
00:40:47.760 --> 00:40:57.760
And if you actually think, well, I don't really want to bother about that, you know, but then be uh, you know, invite people to your house or you know, go as far as being a sous chef, but no further, you know, whatever you want to do.
00:40:57.840 --> 00:41:06.079
But like it's sort of um, everyone I know who's successful is sort of really ends up being um again, and we're interesting.
00:41:06.239 --> 00:41:09.039
I think a lot of what we talked about today are these funny contradictions.
00:41:09.119 --> 00:41:25.599
Yeah, you have to be both very focused and single-minded, but you also have to be expansive and have almost 360-degree vision around everything else and make sure that you're you're aware and being inspired by and conscious of your effect on all those other things.
00:41:25.760 --> 00:41:29.840
And I think the people I've known who are successful kind of approach the world that way.
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:36.400
The people who kind of come in thinking I've got this one thing I want to do, and why won't the world let me do that one thing I want to do?
00:41:36.639 --> 00:41:44.880
I think they're sometimes they're geniuses and often they just set themselves up for a lifetime of frustration and disappointment.
00:41:45.039 --> 00:41:48.639
Um, because that's not why the world is here to let you do that one thing you want to do.
00:41:48.719 --> 00:41:55.360
The world's here to inspire you and to let you have an effect on it and let it have an effect on you.
00:41:55.440 --> 00:42:02.159
And you have to, as Harry said, be kind and generous and kind of be ready to meet that world on its own terms.
00:42:02.320 --> 00:42:22.639
And I think no matter what business you're in, whether it's opening a restaurant, being a designer, um, you know, being an accountancy, I think all of those things come into play in terms of, you know, at the end of the day, whether you live a happy life every day of the week and whether or not you leave a legacy behind that makes the world you were in a better place.
00:42:22.880 --> 00:42:23.119
Thank you.
00:42:23.599 --> 00:42:28.239
I think you can pull that back to the when Pentagram works well, all those things.
00:42:28.639 --> 00:42:29.280
Oh, exactly.
00:42:30.159 --> 00:42:37.039
You know, you can't come in and be just a designer, you're coming in and running a business with a certain and and and taking care of everything.
00:42:37.280 --> 00:42:41.599
Coming in, you know, uh Michael's that's the I mean it just write back to Pentagram Pince.
00:42:41.840 --> 00:42:43.679
Um, gents my last question to both of you.
00:42:43.760 --> 00:42:44.559
So we have this tradition.
00:42:44.719 --> 00:42:46.800
Harry, Harry knows about it uh before.
00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:52.800
So you do have to recommend a piece of literature, ideally a book, uh that you will love.
00:42:52.880 --> 00:42:54.559
Uh Harry, you can't do the same choice again.
00:42:55.360 --> 00:42:57.360
Can I give you a new and I give you another book, a different book?
00:42:57.599 --> 00:42:57.760
Yes.
00:42:57.840 --> 00:43:05.599
Um, so just to Michael, so what we do is um we uh we ask each and every guest at the end of the episode, like what's the kind of piece of literature they would recommend.
00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:10.639
We actually buy the book and we send it to one of the random persons who comments or likes or whatever.
00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:14.079
And then if possible, we try to connect that person back to you.
00:43:14.320 --> 00:43:16.000
Uh we did that with Harry last year.
00:43:16.079 --> 00:43:17.280
Uh exciting, that's correct.
00:43:17.599 --> 00:43:31.840
It was just a wonderful, and again, because and that's really piqued my interest because that person literally said to us that there's just nothing, not a lot, at least online, about Harry, about Pentagram's that partner, like how he approaches his life, how he approaches design.
00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:35.519
I was like, oh, that if that can be a medium to connect people, that would be wonderful.
00:43:35.599 --> 00:43:41.920
So, Michael, I'm gonna start with you and Harry, then I'm gonna come to you uh about so what would be that piece of literature?
00:43:42.239 --> 00:43:48.079
My favorite book about creativity is an old book that was published um in the late 1950s.
00:43:48.159 --> 00:43:50.400
And it's not about design, it's not about art.
00:43:50.480 --> 00:43:53.280
It's well, it's about art to the degree it's about the theater.
00:43:53.440 --> 00:44:04.960
And it's a um uh um an um enhanced memoir, I would call it, by a Director and playwright named Moss Hart, M-O-S-S-H-A-R-T.
00:44:05.519 --> 00:44:07.199
And it's called Act One.
00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:16.079
And he called it Act One because his pu he had either been talked into or his or he talked his publisher into publishing a memoir when he was still in mid-career.
00:44:16.320 --> 00:44:24.559
And um he at that point had on Broadway just uh he was the director of My Fair Lady when he took it to Broadway.
00:44:24.719 --> 00:44:29.360
He was an extraordinarily successful playwright who had had this long string of hits.
00:44:29.599 --> 00:44:37.280
And the book, interestingly enough, is not about his glorious career, but it's only about the first half of that career.
00:44:37.440 --> 00:44:50.159
And it ends with him opening the first Broadway show that was a success for him, which was uh um uh you know, which which came aboard in the 1930s, uh called uh Once in a Lifetime.
00:44:50.559 --> 00:44:56.880
And um he gives his minute account of growing up, it's a New York story.
00:44:57.039 --> 00:45:13.920
Uh so it's he grew up in Brooklyn and um had just loved the theater, worked at the lowest rungs of it with a bunch of other scrappy young people, and insinuated his way into things and always wanted to like be a playwright, never thought he had it in him.
00:45:14.079 --> 00:45:23.360
The first half of the book ends with him sitting down to write his first play, and then the second half of the book is how he brought that play to um to fruition on Broadway.
00:45:23.440 --> 00:45:26.639
He's paired with a collaborator, um, a guy named George S.
00:45:26.800 --> 00:45:30.400
Kaufman, who was a successful playwright who was his mentor.
00:45:30.639 --> 00:45:54.639
And you sort of like, I mean, I can't imagine a more boring book where it's basically two guys write a play, and you know, but he describes it so vividly and in a way that I would offer would be extremely familiar to any creative person because the play, the play they're working on is unsuccessful.
00:45:54.800 --> 00:46:03.840
And just like a designer, he's doing something that it's just not a matter of him doing it alone in a room, then he he's satisfied with it and he unveils with the world and they all collapse.
00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:14.960
You know, he needs actors, he needs producers, he needs funders, he needs collaborators, he needs all these people, these people to kind of audiences, all these people to show up to make this thing work, and it just isn't working.
00:46:15.039 --> 00:46:35.360
And he keeps fiddling with it and fiddling with it until finally, at the um uh, you know, finally he hits on the thing that actually makes this successful and the passage where he realizes what he's been doing wrong in the plot, and he sort of thinks, oh, I can fix it, what I do at the end of this moment if I just twist it around.
00:46:35.440 --> 00:46:41.039
I think and he throws out everything they've done and goes in and says, I've got this is crazy.
00:46:41.199 --> 00:46:44.000
We've only got like we to do, but we can fix this thing and make it work.
00:46:44.079 --> 00:46:44.480
It ends up.
00:46:44.639 --> 00:46:46.480
It's so in, I just I can't tell you.
00:46:46.639 --> 00:46:52.719
I've reread it so many times, and I've never, you know, I'm not a never acted or directed a play or anything.
00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:58.719
I'm just I sit in the audience, I sit in his audiences, I've seen his plays, but it's as an account of the creative process.
00:46:58.800 --> 00:47:01.039
It's extraordinary and timeless, I would offer.
00:47:01.119 --> 00:47:03.519
So it's called Act One, Moss Heart.
00:47:03.599 --> 00:47:06.559
Uh it's still in print, and uh I bet you've never read it.
00:47:06.639 --> 00:47:09.280
It's very American, very New York story, but it's amazing.
00:47:09.440 --> 00:47:10.400
I just love it so much.
00:47:10.880 --> 00:47:12.559
We'll we'll make a note of that, definitely.
00:47:12.719 --> 00:47:13.199
Thank you.
00:47:13.360 --> 00:47:14.960
Uh Harry Richmond was going to be yours.
00:47:15.280 --> 00:47:20.719
Um now the thing is I remember I remember the book, but I don't remember the author, which is a really we'll find it online.
00:47:21.679 --> 00:47:24.000
Okay, well, it's called Black Elk Speaks.
00:47:24.239 --> 00:47:24.559
Okay.
00:47:24.800 --> 00:47:32.880
And it's um it was actually a transcription of a series of interviews with a, I think, a Sioux Indian in the late 1800s.
00:47:37.280 --> 00:47:40.000
Who um uh was a visionary.
00:47:40.079 --> 00:47:49.599
Um extraordinary and it's and it's probably one of the first times that um a white man was allowed to sit down with a with an with an Indian, and this Indian transcribed his life to him.
00:47:50.079 --> 00:48:00.000
He was a very old man when it happened, but he he just told his whole life from extraordinary experiences as a child in the in the in the in the in the villages and uh everything he went went through.
00:48:00.320 --> 00:48:06.800
And uh he um he was he was incredibly ill as a child, I mean to the point of dying.
00:48:07.039 --> 00:48:23.199
Uh but in in in that illness, he suddenly got this ability to almost have second sight, and he became deeply intuitive, and he could literally uh walk with the with the with the with the others and say, three hills over, there is a big herd of buffalo.
00:48:23.440 --> 00:48:26.320
If you just keep following this, we'll see them in two hours, we'll be with them.
00:48:26.400 --> 00:48:27.679
And that exactly that would happen.
00:48:28.159 --> 00:48:35.039
And many other things, and um but what came of that, and it isn't just that, what came of that is as a profound wisdom.
00:48:35.519 --> 00:48:40.639
And this story is the story of his life growing towards this wisdom.
00:48:40.800 --> 00:48:46.559
Uh, it's called Blackout Speaks, and I think it's the life of a Sioux Indian, and um it's it's phenomenal.
00:48:46.639 --> 00:48:51.920
So it's very it's 1800s it was written, but it's it's an inspirational book for me, and uh yeah.
00:48:52.159 --> 00:48:52.639
Perfect.
00:48:52.719 --> 00:48:55.760
Um, Harry, Michael, absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast.
00:48:56.239 --> 00:48:57.280
Thank you, it's our pleasure.
00:48:57.440 --> 00:48:57.840
Thank you so much.
00:48:58.320 --> 00:48:59.920
This has been a legendary conversation.
00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:11.360
Uh, as I've been asked saying again and again that uh, you know, if someone asks me, I don't know if anyone ever will, but we are designing a Mount Rushmore for designers who are you gonna do the Michael with my name.
00:49:11.440 --> 00:49:12.719
But guys, thank you so much for being here.
00:49:13.039 --> 00:49:14.320
My pleasure with Michael.
00:49:14.400 --> 00:49:15.440
Yeah, love talking here.
00:49:17.519 --> 00:49:18.239
Thank you.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:11.519
And every successful person I know comes to really love and appreciate and do with tender, loving care every aspect of the business they're involved with.
00:00:11.679 --> 00:00:22.480
Um, you know, you know, filing taxes, you know, if you don't do those things with care and love and attention to detail, you're not gonna succeed.
00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:29.039
Michael Harry, welcome to the Oxford Talks Podcast.
00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:29.519
How are you doing?
00:00:29.679 --> 00:00:30.480
How are you guys doing today?
00:00:30.719 --> 00:00:31.039
Very good.
00:00:31.199 --> 00:00:31.600
Just great.
00:00:31.839 --> 00:00:32.079
Thank you.
00:00:32.399 --> 00:00:33.359
That's amazing.
00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:45.359
Um, for the folks that, of course, you don't need any introduction whatsoever, uh, but the people who don't come from the world that we uh, you know, from the design and everything, uh, how would you introduce yourself to them?
00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:47.200
Uh, starting with you, let's say, Michael.
00:00:47.520 --> 00:00:48.960
Um, my name is Michael Beirut.
00:00:49.280 --> 00:00:50.880
I'm a graphic designer.
00:00:51.039 --> 00:00:57.520
I've uh been practicing graphic design for 45 plus years in various capacities.
00:00:57.759 --> 00:01:09.040
If people don't know what graphic designers do, we were the people that back in the day used to do things like books, design books and magazines and movie posters and logos.
00:01:09.200 --> 00:01:22.319
And many of us still do things like that, but we also now do things in the digital realm, in the uh um the world of uh data, motion, animation, film, interactive design as well.
00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:24.719
So all of it is graphic design.
00:01:24.799 --> 00:01:29.120
And I'm a partner uh in the design firm Pentagram.
00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:31.040
I work in the New York office there.
00:01:31.519 --> 00:01:32.079
Amazing.
00:01:32.239 --> 00:01:32.879
Harry?
00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:35.760
Um like Michael, I'm also a graphic designer.
00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:43.120
Um I've uh I've been in saying office in Pentagram in the London office for 20 years, so I'm one of the younger partners.
00:01:43.280 --> 00:01:45.840
I'm one of the just earning my stripes.
00:01:46.400 --> 00:01:49.920
But uh like Michael, my whole career has been graphic design.
00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:59.040
I've worked in many different uh types of businesses from cultural to institutional to you name it since the kind of mid eighties when I started.
00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:02.640
Uh so I joined Pentagram 20 years ago, this month actually.
00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:07.200
Um, and uh yeah, on the on the on the same kind of course.
00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:08.960
20 years this month.
00:02:09.439 --> 00:02:11.199
Isn't that a remarkable journey, isn't it?
00:02:11.520 --> 00:02:12.159
It's phenomenal.
00:02:12.400 --> 00:02:21.360
It's phenomenal, and it's uh it's like being in a great family, you know, a r a really wonderful, supportive, open, brilliant family.
00:02:21.840 --> 00:02:44.800
A family that's actually kind of constantly changing, which is a strange thing to say, but it is it's in it's in momentum and moving, and we we are at the moment twenty-three or four of us, uh twenty-four of many different you know, cultural backgrounds, work types, you name it, but we share, and uh that's uh wonderful kind of supportive tolerance and and you know.
00:02:45.280 --> 00:02:52.240
Yeah, and and one of the things that stood out, um so we thank you so much again for recently inviting me to the Pentagram Studios.
00:02:52.400 --> 00:03:00.319
Um, I believe we are one of the first people who have been let in with the camera and we had unprecedented access, so that was really amazing looking at the workshops.
00:03:00.479 --> 00:03:09.280
And I think the most striking thing was for me, number one, I think I just felt so lucky yesterday that the Pentagram partner meeting was happening, which we have heard about.
00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:12.479
Like this is, you know, you meet every sort of quarter or so.
00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:15.520
Well, this last two days actually is a pre-meet.
00:03:15.680 --> 00:03:16.240
Pre-meet, okay.
00:03:16.479 --> 00:03:24.879
So it's a little gathering of a representative group who will gather the gathering in London this time, next time, which will be in May, will be in New York.
00:03:25.120 --> 00:03:34.000
And then they would follow up with a um a three or four-day gathering of everybody, either in the west or the east, in different places every time.
00:03:34.319 --> 00:03:37.280
Yes, and the the main ones yet to come, but you saw a little bit of a couple of things.
00:03:37.680 --> 00:03:39.520
That's the week after that'll be the week after next, actually.
00:03:39.759 --> 00:03:40.479
Yeah, okay.
00:03:40.639 --> 00:03:47.280
Um, striking thing for me was uh the colleague that you've been working with for almost 20, 25 years, Dom.
00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:53.039
Oh gosh, no, four, thirty, thirty-five, thirty about thirty-eight years, actually.
00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:54.080
Thirty-eight years.
00:03:54.159 --> 00:03:54.400
Yeah.
00:03:54.560 --> 00:04:03.599
And Michael Harry was just telling me that uh when they moved over to the new offices, they specifically made sure that they're sitting there the teams are sitting next to each other.
00:04:03.840 --> 00:04:06.000
It's a it's a brotherhood that you describe it to me.
00:04:06.159 --> 00:04:07.520
How how amazing is that?
00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:08.240
It is.
00:04:08.400 --> 00:04:16.639
We met we we met in my first job um uh back in the mid-80s um in London.
00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:18.319
This is Dominic Lipper I'm talking about.
00:04:18.399 --> 00:04:36.480
And then he and I both worked in two agencies together, and then in 1990 set up our own studio, which we had for 16 years, and then we just moved Lockstock and Barrel into Pentagram, brought the whole thing and just dropped into the into Pentagram studios when we we got asked, and it was it's been fantastic.
00:04:36.639 --> 00:04:42.160
And he and I, as I was saying, we have never had a crossword, which is extraordinary, isn't it, in all those years.
00:04:42.319 --> 00:04:44.000
And uh we've been there for each other.
00:04:44.160 --> 00:04:49.439
And we have we were, but I think we were kind of held apart when we first came in because we thought it might we might have been a bit of trouble.
00:04:49.600 --> 00:04:52.160
I think we proved with them being out.
00:04:52.879 --> 00:04:56.240
So we've been allowed back together again, and we just yeah, share a thing.
00:04:56.560 --> 00:05:03.519
Michael, I was gonna ask you actually, how so was it the case that Harry, you got interviewed by Michael when you were joining in, or how did that work?
00:05:03.839 --> 00:05:04.800
That didn't happen that way.
00:05:04.959 --> 00:05:07.120
What yeah, I mean, but I know Harry already.
00:05:07.839 --> 00:05:11.600
Yeah, we we we we actually quite a lot of us know each other before anyone joins, probably.
00:05:11.759 --> 00:05:20.480
You're all in this we're all in this industry, we're all watching each other, we're all kind of clocking what's going on in terms of the things you are affected by and love.
00:05:20.800 --> 00:05:40.959
What happens is, and I I mean, this is the way it happened to me, is two of the London partners, one specifically approached me to see if I'd be interested, and then the second one, and then we were, you know, then you kind of um you're brought in, you talk to, and you get kind of interviewed by everybody, including Michael and everyone, to see if we're fair gang.
00:05:41.279 --> 00:05:44.800
Michael, I want to go back to that time when you were interviewing Harry.
00:05:44.879 --> 00:05:45.360
How was that?
00:05:45.439 --> 00:05:45.839
How was that?
00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:47.920
How was meeting Harry for the first time, if you can remember?
00:05:48.160 --> 00:05:51.920
I remember being struck by how tall and nans and charming it was, how short and roughly.
00:05:52.079 --> 00:05:52.959
That's what happened to me yesterday.
00:05:53.279 --> 00:05:54.000
Oddly I was.
00:05:54.160 --> 00:05:59.759
Uh and um uh and also like um you it's a very interesting partnership.
00:05:59.839 --> 00:06:04.160
And we we have clients who have partners, have professional services partnerships.
00:06:04.240 --> 00:06:06.560
There are they could be architects, they could be lawyers.
00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:31.680
And I'm always struck by how we're similar in many ways to any typical professional partnership, but this underlying commitment to the idea that we are at our base friends and friends as well as colleagues with this sense of mutual trust, mutual responsibility, um, and you know, mutual admiration, I would say.
00:06:31.759 --> 00:06:34.079
Um, I knew Harry's work before I met Harry.
00:06:34.160 --> 00:06:48.959
I met Harry and um um, you know, he's he just um had to this day, but even then, uh no less, exuded this sense of optimism and energy and curiosity about the world.
00:06:49.120 --> 00:06:54.480
And it's very interesting because we've tried a couple of times.
00:06:54.560 --> 00:07:09.920
I don't know if you you you I mean, you may have been party to this as well in London, but we've tried a couple of times to, you know, we're there there have probably been more than 50 partners who have kind of passed through uh Pentagram, the five founding partners back in 1972.
00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:24.240
And then successive generations of partners have joined the firm, um, you know, withdrawn uh as they uh, you know, either aged out of it, or in some cases, um a few rare cases actually passed away at their desktop, literally so.
00:07:24.399 --> 00:07:29.600
Um but um uh but so there have been these successive waves of people when I joined as when you joined, we were relatively young.
00:07:29.759 --> 00:07:31.920
I was 33 years old when I joined in 1990.
00:07:32.240 --> 00:07:32.879
What are you talking about?
00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:34.560
And now I'm 68.
00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:38.000
And so I I have it was 36 years ago that I joined.
00:07:38.160 --> 00:07:47.279
And I but I remember other firms will ask, will say, hire a consultant who is a headhunter in effect.
00:07:47.439 --> 00:07:49.439
Find people that meet this profile.
00:07:50.160 --> 00:07:54.399
They'll give you some names and you'll even go ahead and do some blind dates.
00:07:54.560 --> 00:08:00.319
And it just has this um transactional check the boxes quality.
00:08:00.639 --> 00:08:11.600
Whereas um, you know, I I think I probably met you a good, you know, eight years before you joined, so you know, five, six, seven, eight years, you know, and just and and and knew Harry's work.
00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:16.720
And like and so many of us were friends before we became business partners.
00:08:16.879 --> 00:08:33.759
Uh Paula Cher, who along with me is one of the most long-serving partners in the New York Oysters, I probably met her in 1983, you know, when she was um, you know, when she was still, they had just come out of CBS Records and set up her own little scrappy design firm.
00:08:33.919 --> 00:08:35.519
And she was a little bit older than me.
00:08:35.600 --> 00:08:43.759
So I looked up to her as a big sister, as someone whose name I knew from record jackets I looked at, you know, in my lonely bedroom in Ohio.
00:08:44.159 --> 00:08:46.639
And it would say uh cover designed by Paula Cher.
00:08:46.799 --> 00:08:49.440
And I was like, this woman seems impossibly glamorous.
00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:54.080
And uh, you know, and here we are four decades on uh as business partners.
00:08:54.240 --> 00:09:13.039
And so um, you know, if you know lawyers, they don't say they're friends and colleagues, but I think at the end of the day, um, the business association is the one is the with many such partnerships, becomes the framing element that dictates the rules of engagement that all the partners have.
00:09:13.200 --> 00:09:15.200
Here I would say it's flipped on its head.
00:09:15.279 --> 00:09:28.159
You know, I don't think we would, I've never had a discussion where we brought in a partner where we thought this guy will make us a lot of money, or this guy is filling a hole in our offer that we really need to succeed commercially.
00:09:28.399 --> 00:09:43.440
It's just, you know, and you are a proven commodity, but I think we often will just identify someone who seems really talented and who seems like if they were given a bigger platform, which Pentagram does provide, they could do some extraordinary things.
00:09:43.519 --> 00:09:44.879
And we don't even know what those things are.
00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:46.159
And sometimes we guess wrong.
00:09:46.799 --> 00:09:52.080
And uh, and often um someone will join, it just doesn't quite click and work out.
00:09:52.240 --> 00:10:08.080
And then those people become alumni who will show up at um, you know, at reunion parties and kind of social gatherings, and they're embraced as if they had served 30 years, even if they only passed through for three years and said, um, that was fun, but I'm on to the next thing.
00:10:08.159 --> 00:10:32.080
You know, it's it's an it's an amazing structure for it's amazing, it's sort of like uh probably to any proper management consultant, a a stupid, uh not not fully profitable and kind of very wild, woolly, and inefficient structure, but it's the one that's been prevailing, you know, since uh 1972 and still kind of seems to deliver a kind of uh there's a bravery to it.
00:10:32.240 --> 00:10:32.559
Yeah, yeah.
00:10:32.879 --> 00:10:36.799
It has to it's it's a brave institution because it it takes risks every time.
00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:40.480
With you know, you you think someone's a shoreshoe in and they don't prove right.
00:10:40.559 --> 00:10:45.919
And some people are kind of a real outlier and they come in and they're extraordinary, you know, it's extraordinary kind of mix.
00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:53.759
So it's it's we it's a it's a little kind of gamble all the time, and but but based on you know, there are a few criteria.
00:10:53.919 --> 00:10:58.320
What one is undoubtedly the quality of people's work, the ability to self-sustain themselves.
00:10:58.480 --> 00:11:05.360
Um, but one of the biggest criteria are they people that you want to spend your days and actually weekends and weeks with.
00:11:05.759 --> 00:11:12.960
You know, we all go away together on these things, and um it's you're investing in deeply in a person, not just in a business.
00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:23.200
I'm gonna ask you, starting with you, Michael, because um we've had this discussion in previous uh uh series with you, Harry, that Pentagram does have a very unique structure.
00:11:23.440 --> 00:11:41.679
But for the kind of a new design studios which are being set up in last three, five years, what are the things that you're gonna say that are perhaps maybe a bit of a miss signal out there that is going out there that it's very hard, and again, we talked about this very hard to replicate this.
00:11:41.840 --> 00:12:02.399
What are the things that you're gonna say to those kind of a new studio popping up all around the world that yes, we have been set up like this, but these are the key ingredients, which some of them you mentioned, but you will just say, okay, I would highly suggest not to set up like this, because again, Harry, you've mentioned that it's very easy to take advantage of this structure, super easy.
00:12:02.559 --> 00:12:06.159
Uh, and that's something you don't want to do when you're setting up kind of a new structure.
00:12:06.240 --> 00:12:07.360
So, what are the things that you would say?
00:12:07.519 --> 00:12:08.639
Mike, sorry, starting with you.
00:12:08.960 --> 00:12:22.399
Well, I mean, it's it's interesting because we the we don't make a secret about what the structure is, and it's based on a couple of seemingly um contradictory factors to a certain degree.
00:12:22.559 --> 00:12:27.440
Um there is no hierarchy within the partnership.
00:12:27.679 --> 00:12:43.519
Yeah, the first day you're a partner um when you join, you have um the same authority to kind of make decisions about your you're responsible for your own business and you have full authority over those, the choices you make about that business.
00:12:43.679 --> 00:12:52.480
Um, you don't have to, there's no kind of um uh partnership within the partnership to whom you have to go for approval to kind of like, should I take this client?
00:12:52.639 --> 00:12:53.759
Uh can I hire this person?
00:12:53.919 --> 00:12:54.480
Can I do this?
00:12:54.559 --> 00:12:54.960
Can I do that?
00:12:55.039 --> 00:13:01.360
You're given this astonishingly broad latitude to uh conduct your business whatever way you want.
00:13:01.519 --> 00:13:04.320
Um, there is no president of Pentagram.
00:13:04.559 --> 00:13:17.919
There's a rotating chairmanship that kind of uh um was established again a long time ago and kind of has this um orderly uh line of succession where it's traded off every two years between one of the partners.
00:13:18.080 --> 00:13:29.519
But that person has no more authority, they just sort of are the beleaguered person who collate all the different sort of issues that are arising and sort of try to uh dispose of them in one way or another.
00:13:29.679 --> 00:13:34.320
So that idea of independence is key, the idea of inequality is key.
00:13:34.559 --> 00:13:52.559
And then um the thing that sort of seems to contradict that is that uh um each of those partners runs a what amounts to on paper, an independent business with its own responsibility to um track overhead and to track income based on client work.
00:13:52.720 --> 00:14:01.440
And so each of us, Harry and uh each one of the other partners will have uh you know a profit and loss statement, you know, every month and at the end of the year.
00:14:01.600 --> 00:14:04.240
And so, and and lawyers do this too, I guess.
00:14:04.480 --> 00:14:22.240
And what then what lawyers have is something called the compensation committee, who work out really complicated formulas about how much of this work do you originate, how many hours did your team bill, uh, how many, how, how profitable were you on the billing job, what was your, you know, how you know, all these things, and then you add them all together.
00:14:22.320 --> 00:14:29.919
So everything gets everything sort of gets paid each according to how much work they did and how profitable they were.
00:14:30.159 --> 00:14:35.200
A pentagram, crazily, they decided way back at the pounding that they weren't gonna do any of that.
00:14:35.279 --> 00:14:36.879
They just were gonna divide it up equally.
00:14:37.120 --> 00:14:46.720
So one guy's crazy to like one person maybe has a dollar in profit, another person has a hundred dollars in profit, they each get$50 at the end of the year.
00:14:46.879 --> 00:14:55.279
Um, and what's interesting is that it's sort of as you kind of implied, of course, that there's a potential for abuse of the system there.
00:14:55.679 --> 00:15:01.360
But what we've discovered because I think we've hired, well, we bring in partners very carefully.
00:15:01.600 --> 00:15:04.799
As you said, well, each one is like interviewed by the full partnership.
00:15:04.960 --> 00:15:06.159
And it could take quite a long time.
00:15:06.320 --> 00:15:12.320
Yeah, and yeah, it's a it's a long intake process over probably 18 months or so in in truth.
00:15:12.559 --> 00:15:22.799
And I think the the trust that, you know, everyone has to have like absolute trust that this new person is someone who will come in with a as a colleague who will respect the system.
00:15:23.039 --> 00:15:36.799
And often, you know, someone who when when I was brand new there, I obviously wasn't uh, I didn't have the capacity to command the fees that the older partners who I was now supposedly equal with did.
00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:45.279
But I felt, you know, there was a self-impro imposed pressure to kind of be responsible for my part of the business.
00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:51.840
And I think the clarity about that and the transparency about that um is actually really, really healthy.
00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:53.120
It can put pressure on people.
00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:55.840
If you're having a bad year, no one wants to have a bad year.
00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:14.399
And no one is, no one ever says, you know, um, you know, I, you know, I'm a talented person and I deserve to be uh I deserve you, my partners to serve as my patrons to just give me money to let me go off and do fun things while you guys actually do the hard work.
00:16:14.559 --> 00:16:16.399
It's like so different from the ethos.
00:16:16.559 --> 00:16:25.440
It's like, and and I I swear over the years, I've talked to different ones of my partners who will might be having a bad year, and I'll just say, don't worry about it.
00:16:25.600 --> 00:16:26.480
It'll be fine, it'll be fine.
00:16:26.559 --> 00:16:28.799
Just do good work and the money sorts itself out.
00:16:28.879 --> 00:16:31.360
And by and large, that is absolutely the case.
00:16:31.840 --> 00:16:35.759
So what's funny is that I think every partnership functions that way.
00:16:35.919 --> 00:16:45.279
And designers who, unlike lawyers, are not necessarily enthusiastic about mathematics and um and sheets and yeah, yeah.
00:16:45.679 --> 00:16:52.159
You know, I think compensation committee, if there was such a thing at Pentagram, can you imagine what a debacle that would be?
00:16:52.399 --> 00:16:52.879
Just horrible.
00:16:53.120 --> 00:17:07.680
And I always said, you know, I said, at first I thought it was some principle about, I thought it was some idealistic, you know, collectivist principle that was, you know, about this socialist uh each according to his ability, uh, to from each according to his ability to each according to his need.
00:17:08.079 --> 00:17:16.799
Now I sort of think it's because there's a bunch of people who went to art school and kind of got discouraged by higher arithmetic and didn't want to work out.
00:17:17.519 --> 00:17:18.640
Let's just let's divide it equally.
00:17:18.720 --> 00:17:20.480
That'll be that'll be easier and we'll figure it out.
00:17:20.640 --> 00:17:21.119
I love that.
00:17:21.279 --> 00:17:29.119
Harry, I want to uh I want you to follow off to that, but given with the lens of, you know, ego is a thing that can easily Yeah, yeah.
00:17:29.200 --> 00:17:48.160
I I mean I thought how would you Well I think some of the reasons why other people either have not managed this or don't actually try and do this, and other people appear to do this, but they don't actually do it to the to the the the you know the the truth of the way we do it, is you have to realize that you matter less than the greater ideal of the group.
00:17:48.720 --> 00:17:50.079
You have to give up to that completely.
00:17:50.799 --> 00:17:54.559
And um and it is about a a a constant state of giving, you know.
00:17:54.720 --> 00:17:59.759
And I think when you're a a designer driven into your work and everything, that's quite a hard thing to get used to.
00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:02.720
That you just have to let go to the greater group.
00:18:02.799 --> 00:18:07.279
And there are issues that come up where the group means more than your single opinion.
00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:16.720
And uh we don't vote, but we have you know, around the table it everything is uh, you know, to a painful degree sometimes is is debated, chewed over.
00:18:17.279 --> 00:18:24.079
This is a lot what happens when we go away, and it's not always comfortable, but we find a collective way uh through things.
00:18:24.880 --> 00:18:34.880
Now that is a way of life, uh you know, you know, and it's probably not what you're thinking about when you're deeply into your beautiful artistic work, I think, is what you have to commit to um as a constant thing.
00:18:35.039 --> 00:18:45.440
So it's it's so um you know, that's a that's a a lot of stuff that goes on beyond just you know running your business, and and being part of that is not easy.
00:18:45.759 --> 00:18:48.000
It's it's boy does it bring benefits.
00:18:48.160 --> 00:18:56.799
And um, I mean, there's a lot of us have been in this for a very long time, and you know, it's it really pays back, but that's not an easy thing to take on.
00:18:56.880 --> 00:18:58.319
So I think that's interesting.
00:18:58.480 --> 00:19:06.160
As far as I know, there is no there is no other agency or or company that's exactly has has done what we have.
00:19:06.640 --> 00:19:15.200
There are a couple, there are some rock bands I think that sort of have models that are like that where even they know they go off the new solo albums and then they'll sort of everything goes into account and thing.
00:19:15.279 --> 00:19:19.279
But I think what's the what everything Harry's saying is absolutely true.
00:19:19.440 --> 00:19:40.640
And what makes it actually such a complex and carefully managed um organization in many ways is that the people we seek to participate in it are not temp necessarily temperamentally predisposed to be you know, give themselves over to collect.
00:19:41.200 --> 00:19:42.240
That's what I was asking.
00:19:42.319 --> 00:19:47.680
Um I think I I didn't I asked Michael, I think you the the difference between design and decoration.
00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:48.319
Yeah, yeah.
00:19:48.559 --> 00:19:49.039
Yesterday, yeah.
00:19:49.359 --> 00:19:57.039
Yesterday like it it it feels very kind of like this can be just like I designed it and this needs to be used this way.
00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:01.359
Well, it's just oh I didn't have time and I just asked like an interior to go to this thing.
00:20:01.519 --> 00:20:12.960
Yeah, but I mean um um I think it's just the difference between um functional, is it anything that's sort of like functional efficiency and pleasure?
00:20:13.119 --> 00:20:20.720
It's like you know, if it you know, I mean there's we know now exactly how nutrition works.
00:20:21.279 --> 00:20:23.839
You know, um there's no mystery to it.
00:20:24.160 --> 00:20:38.720
And someone could manufacture a some substances that you could consume every day that would completely and efficiently satisfy everything you needed to live in an extraordinarily healthy way.
00:20:39.200 --> 00:20:52.400
Just kind of here are three, you know, here are three um uh containers, you know, consume this one in the morning, this one at lunchtime, this one at dinner time, and you won't want for anything that looks to be 120.
00:20:52.799 --> 00:21:19.279
Um but is that every that that alone that's a what I describe as a dystopic view of the world because what happens is the cuisine of individual cultures, of individual regions, of individual chefs, of your mom, of that favorite cheap thing you can buy at that store on the corner that reminds you of when you were a kid.
00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:22.880
You know, all those things which are doing exactly the same functional thing.
00:21:22.960 --> 00:21:34.960
They're all in some way kind of um sustaining life in a human organism, you, and yet they're also freighted with all this other information, which you are imposing on it.
00:21:35.039 --> 00:21:59.759
I mean, sometimes it's you know, you can, you know, you can, you know, it's stimulating your taste buds in different ways, but basically, all the associations of walking into a favorite restaurant, meeting someone you haven't seen in a long time at in a pub, you know, um going home for a holiday and being with your family, and you know, that dish that is coming.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:02.720
Out every year, the same.
00:22:02.880 --> 00:22:08.799
And everyone now, they don't even know whether they like it or not, but it's so emblematic of this gathering.
00:22:08.880 --> 00:22:10.559
It has this totemic power.
00:22:10.720 --> 00:22:17.119
These are, I mean, these are all um all of us are making sort of in effect design decisions that that are these things.
00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:22.480
And they're all individual and they all have the capacity to communicate at larger scales.
00:22:22.559 --> 00:22:29.440
And I think if you're a big, you know, snack company or food company, you're trying to do it at a global scale.
00:22:29.680 --> 00:22:40.640
If you're, you know, um the head of a family who's responsible for putting dinner on the table on at Christmas time or whatever holiday you want, um, you know, you do it another way.
00:22:40.799 --> 00:22:43.039
But I think, and you're making all these choices.
00:22:43.119 --> 00:22:51.920
You know, this is the time of year we use these plates, you know, auntie, auntie, someone has got to bring that salad, you know, or else everyone's gonna be mad.
00:22:52.079 --> 00:22:55.599
I mean, though it's ritual, it's choice, it's about everything.
00:22:55.759 --> 00:23:29.839
So I think it's some uh, you know, designers have to really be conscious of what gives people joy, what gives people pleasure, and understand that it, you know, I think a lot of times um consumer culture, the corrosive quality that it has is sort of alienating people from their own sense of what gives them pleasure and joy, and kind of, you know, by using media sort of confusing people about using those things as, you know, signals to other people that, hey, I'm wealthy or hey, I'm like, I'm like these people I admire.
00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:30.720
You know, it's complicated.
00:23:38.400 --> 00:23:40.720
You wouldn't you'd go nuts, I think.
00:23:40.799 --> 00:23:49.440
You know, if if if you if you came, you know, came to Christmas and you could choose four different plates, but actually there's you just want to return to the thing that makes it makes it real.
00:23:50.079 --> 00:23:56.720
I find the same thing with um uh mixes of music or four album covers for the same album.
00:23:56.880 --> 00:23:57.200
Yeah.
00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:21.680
And you know, there I wanna I want to have the I want the singular thing, the thing that I can uh you know, there may be other uh occasions where you that that that's that that variety actually is for a different reason, but I kind of want to settle on an interpretation and a feeling that will stay with me and and and you know, and it's um it's an interesting thing that so suddenly broaden it all out kind of can do the opposite.
00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:22.799
And and and it's interesting.
00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:36.559
I'm thinking about uh of one of your projects, particularly, Harry, but I think designers, when we're educated, a lot of the thing the premium is placed on is the capacity to create something completely new, which is exciting.
00:24:36.640 --> 00:24:39.279
And it's something that again moves the world forward.
00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:50.640
But um, you know, I mean, when I got into this business, you know, when I was a kid, I thought if I could just like design album covers when I grew up like Paul Sher, I'd be a dream country.
00:24:50.720 --> 00:24:52.400
I've never designed an album cover ever.
00:24:52.880 --> 00:25:01.119
Um, and um uh you would think if you were a young designer, like designing for the music industry, that's like really what could be more fun than that.
00:25:01.279 --> 00:25:03.519
And I'm thinking about the work you did for Pink Floyd.
00:25:03.839 --> 00:25:05.039
Well, for Dark's that to me.
00:25:05.200 --> 00:25:05.759
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:28.880
And it was in a way, what made that work so powerful was you conducted this process of distillation about the I mean, that's one of the most for me personally, what that Dark Southern Mood is the most evocative single, two-sided albums that I've ever had in my life.
00:25:29.039 --> 00:25:36.319
I mean, I can remember like exactly where I was in different points of my um adolescence hearing that.
00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:44.160
You know, I know side one, side two, I know how it goes you know, and I can hear and a snippet of it, you know.
00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:50.160
Um, you know, if I, you know, if it just kind of pops up in my life, I'll hear it and it'll send me right back to a moment.
00:25:50.400 --> 00:25:54.960
And and the cover of it, that hypnosis cover with the prism on right, hypnosis, right?
00:25:55.039 --> 00:25:55.839
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:59.759
I mean, it sort of is um, so you think, Pink Floyd, how cool.
00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:01.759
I have carte blanche, I can do whatever I want.
00:26:01.839 --> 00:26:02.960
You can't do whatever you want.
00:26:03.119 --> 00:26:11.440
There's this responsibility you have to people you've never met who already have a sense of ownership over that visual language.
00:26:11.759 --> 00:26:27.200
And you have to, your responsibility is to them to kind of make sure that the work you're doing is honor that connection that they have and to kind of figure out a way to deepen, broaden, extend, amplify that connection.
00:26:27.519 --> 00:26:32.799
And what's there already is giving you so many clues about what you can do.
00:26:33.039 --> 00:26:40.720
But I think it's, you know, when when Harry was talking before about, you know, you're putting things out of the world, you have to do it in a responsible sort of way.
00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:51.839
There's the obvious things that have to do with um, you know, uh, you know, ecological sustainability and things like that, that have to do with truth versus lying, that have to do with a lot of different things.
00:26:51.920 --> 00:27:00.160
But a lot of times it has to do with, you know, um, you know, you're not entering into a world that's a giant blank slate.
00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:16.799
You're entering into a world where everyone is already flying, has, has grown up making, you know, making marks on it and trying to figure out, you know, what kind of, you know, what kind of how they navigate it based on their own sense of what the visual language that they've encountered over their years has been.
00:27:16.960 --> 00:27:24.079
And I think if you sort of are sensitive to that, it helps you really figure out how you can contribute to it in a way that really does add meaning.
00:27:24.480 --> 00:27:30.799
Michael, what do you feel is the most at this stage in your life, and Harry, I'm gonna ask you the same question.
00:27:31.920 --> 00:27:37.920
What do you feel like the most risk, what's the biggest responsibility do you have at the moment now?
00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:44.480
As designers, as I've heard yesterday that, Michael, that you're slightly stepping away from the rules as well.
00:27:44.960 --> 00:27:52.400
Famously, I've heard from you saying that um the the difference that you spent between 9 till 2 a.m.
00:27:53.039 --> 00:27:54.559
was the difference in your career.
00:27:54.799 --> 00:27:58.640
And you famously said afterwards, I don't recommend anyone should do that anymore.
00:27:58.880 --> 00:27:59.119
Yeah.
00:27:59.359 --> 00:28:02.880
What do you feel like what what's the thing that you want to pass on now?
00:28:03.200 --> 00:28:11.839
Um Well, I think, you know, I mean, it's a cliche to say this, but I have not only children but grandchildren at this point in my life.
00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:16.240
And, you know, you worry about the world that you're turning, that they're you're giving them.
00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:27.039
And sometimes I, you know, I worry that the kind of conversation we're having is, you know, will look be looked back as an artifact where people have the luxury just to muse about things like this.
00:28:27.119 --> 00:28:38.400
And uh the world is, you know, there's existential threats in the world that uh, you know, that the very things that have brought us prosperity are also kind of jeopardizing our survival, right?
00:28:38.559 --> 00:28:40.720
Uh for all kinds of different reasons.
00:28:40.960 --> 00:29:07.440
So I think um, you know, the you know, the what I think of now is I see, I I mean, you come into it and you're sort of like the youngest person in the room, and you're, you know, you're just there to kind of like soak things in and come up with an idea and hope that someone will notice that you have a voice and something to say.
00:29:07.599 --> 00:29:10.160
And you know, Harry started that way, all our partners started that way.
00:29:10.400 --> 00:29:15.119
Millions of people in creative and other professions sort of like start that way too.
00:29:15.279 --> 00:29:30.880
At the other end, you sort of realize that what you have instead is sort of a certain amount of um of wisdom sounds pretentious, but you have some experience, which is putting you in a position where you can kind of assess things differently.
00:29:31.039 --> 00:29:32.480
Change your mind about things, even.
00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:53.359
You know, go from kind of being like a leading proponent of, you know, hustle culture in the grind, which I was for years, to thinking, you know, wouldn't you uh my lovely wife Dorothy just sent me an interview with someone who said the biggest mistake some people make is um mistaking being busy for being alive.
00:29:53.519 --> 00:29:53.759
Yeah.
00:29:53.920 --> 00:29:56.880
Uh and I made that mistake a million times.
00:29:57.119 --> 00:30:04.079
And two, sort of my own personal advantage, it led to my success and sort of contributed to a lot of things in the world.
00:30:04.160 --> 00:30:25.039
But it's different, you know, you sort of realize, and I think Harry's a great, I've learned a lot from Harry because I think he sort of is someone who has this capacity to really be present in the moment and to actually be more contemplative about the work that he's doing, as opposed to just sort of this relentless drive to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing.
00:30:25.200 --> 00:30:37.359
So one of the things that I think um, you know, I've encouraged my own children to do, and when my grandsons um see are interested in hearing my point of view about these things, I would tell them the same thing too.
00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:41.920
It's like, you know, the moment you're in now is only gonna, it'll never happen again.
00:30:42.160 --> 00:30:45.759
And, you know, you have to sort of like try to be always in those moments.
00:30:45.839 --> 00:31:00.319
It'll make you a smarter person, connect with the people in your life that you um, you know, that you love and you're close to, but connect, you know, you're gonna be ordering coffee from someone or a near miss on the sidewalk.
00:31:00.400 --> 00:31:06.079
And each one of those people is another human being on earth that you're sharing this moment with too.
00:31:06.240 --> 00:31:14.319
And I think being conscious of all those things, you know, I do think it makes you, you know, to the degree we want to instrumentalize it, it makes you a better designer.
00:31:14.400 --> 00:31:18.000
Yes, it makes you a better person, a better citizen, in a way.
00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:28.319
And I think it's um very easy to kind of um, you know, in a way, I feel very fortunate that I was born when I was born.
00:31:29.440 --> 00:31:37.039
And people usually say that because they think, oh, I would not like to have been born in the 17th century and die of dysentery at the age of 28.
00:31:37.200 --> 00:31:47.039
You know, but I also am glad in a way that I wasn't born later because I don't really know what social media would have done to my brain at the age of 14.
00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:48.720
Really frightening.
00:31:49.119 --> 00:32:02.160
You know, I had, you know, um the limits of communications technology in the 1960s and 1970s meant that I could get, I was omnivorous and voracious for stuff.
00:32:02.720 --> 00:32:11.200
I was like a I could live in a library, I could go to a record store and literally spend three hours standing and going through the bins.
00:32:11.359 --> 00:32:15.599
Like literally records I would never buy, records I couldn't afford to buy.
00:32:15.759 --> 00:32:18.559
You know, um, you know, they cost like$5,$6.
00:32:19.039 --> 00:32:20.000
Who has that kind of money?
00:32:20.079 --> 00:32:22.240
Um, but like, you know, but I I was like that.
00:32:22.319 --> 00:32:31.440
And I can't imagine what would have happened to my, you know, what kind of person I would have been had I been able to like stay up all night just clicking, clicking, scrolling, scrolling.
00:32:31.759 --> 00:32:32.640
It would have been terrible.
00:32:32.880 --> 00:32:47.599
And so I think, you know, it's it's actually hard to give advice to people to whom that world isn't some, you know, novelty that was introduced uh midway through their lives, but something that they've never known otherwise, right?
00:32:47.839 --> 00:33:01.759
And um, and I think um I actually have trouble getting my mind around that and trying to figure out, you know, what relevant kind of advice you can, what relevant kind of way of living you can model for someone who's kind of been brought up in a way that I think is radically different, actually.
00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:23.440
So, you know, my my responsibility when I'm talking to um like even I've two restless grandsons, and I've noticed that there's a real trick to making them seemingly making them behave, and it's simply giving them your attention and responding to what they're doing in real time.
00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:39.200
And, you know, they'll settle down and they'll sort of like start listening and better still start talking or asking questions or giving you the answers to questions or telling you about something uh that they heard or that they saw or showing you something they did.
00:33:40.240 --> 00:33:46.880
Yeah, and you you learn so much from that, and um, you know, you end up become away from that better.
00:33:46.960 --> 00:33:53.440
And, you know, I think it it would help someone who's five or seven, or 15 or 17, or 25, or 27.
00:33:53.839 --> 00:34:11.760
I think, you know, that that sort of thing is really easy to lose, or really easy to mistake for something else that people are doing all the time, getting a lot of response to an Instagram post or putting out a TikTok that does something or whatever the hell it's people are doing with or managing their individual brands.
00:34:11.920 --> 00:34:18.320
That's something that I, you know, I don't think that should be against the law, and I don't just I wouldn't discourage anyone from doing it.
00:34:18.480 --> 00:34:25.519
But I wouldn't, I'd also, it's the kind of busyness that you can mistake for a living and two different things.
00:34:25.920 --> 00:34:29.440
But uh busyness means taking it as as aliveness.
00:34:29.760 --> 00:34:32.480
I think that that I'm gonna live with that for a very long time.
00:34:32.719 --> 00:34:34.239
Harry, what would you say about yourself?
00:34:34.800 --> 00:34:47.119
For me, if I uh if I think about why I've done what I've done in in terms of my life and my career, is there was a there was a point when uh I realized things were really moving me.
00:34:47.840 --> 00:34:50.800
Whether that be music, be art, literature or whatever.
00:34:51.199 --> 00:34:58.800
And I had this longing to make things so that I could move other people in the same way that I had been moved.
00:34:59.280 --> 00:35:09.199
And I and I and I had that simple little thought, and I would love to have been a singer, I'd love to have been a I'd love to have been a writer, and I'd love to have been a painter, because I wanted to just move things.
00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:18.800
And and what I've tried to do really sincerely in my work is to is to use design to create feelings and move people, how I've been moved by design.
00:35:18.880 --> 00:35:41.119
That's my if I boil it all down to the simplicity of that is because I know what it what my life, you know, how my life is changed out by things that have moved me, you know, whether that's a piece of music, even something simple that someone said that just made clarity when I had none, you know, like a simple kindness and in a way a bad piece of design can be a simple kindness that brings clarity and change out when there is none.
00:35:41.199 --> 00:35:53.840
And I so I that is I know it's profoundly simplistic, but it's a for me it was so much about feeling that I I wanted to just chase that feeling and make things that would you know, create feelings that a way of move move people.
00:35:54.480 --> 00:36:10.960
And I think we both mentioned several times is about this this sense of responsibility, that how what we make and how we make, whether that's in the environment, whether it's on people's minds, whatever, that I hope I can look back and people can look back at what I've made and said that I did it with sincerity and and honesty.
00:36:11.039 --> 00:36:19.199
And in some way, that can be some kind of I don't know, guys, you know, people can see that and and perhaps chase that down a little bit themselves.
00:36:19.440 --> 00:36:26.559
But and and I, as you know, uh I was uh seriously ill six months ago and I had a major operation.
00:36:26.639 --> 00:36:32.480
I actually had six months out of pentagram and sort of viewing it from the and I had to be very still for a very long time.
00:36:32.880 --> 00:36:46.159
And I think I chime completely with Michael's thing about this the busyness and and and the and the and and appearing to move forward when actually you're probably treading water in a very like the roadrunner, in a very over the mountain.
00:36:47.039 --> 00:36:58.480
Um but uh it I I I can see now, and I know I'm three years behind Michael, and I've got four grand grandkids too, so my life's changed immeasurably in the last four years.
00:36:58.559 --> 00:37:08.719
Uh, but I can see now that um uh there has been so much energy that I could have I could have not spent uh in unnecessary ways.
00:37:08.880 --> 00:37:23.840
It's the same, exactly the same sentiment that Michael is it's about don't sweat the small things, it's the big things that really count, and it's so much about kindness and it's so much about attention to other folk, um, whether that's family or people in your own business or people on the street.
00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:42.400
I caught a bus home late last night from an event that Michael was running at our studio with a with a couple of the other partners, and uh um I was sitting next to this old lady who who couldn't reach the button to stop the and I can see her panic getting panicky because she couldn't press the button to stop the bus in time to get onto a stop.
00:37:42.880 --> 00:37:50.719
And it was so lovely to just reassure her and then be a little, you know, I've got log up so I can I could make that was one of the highlights of my day.
00:37:50.800 --> 00:37:52.800
Yeah, getting her off the bus.
00:37:52.880 --> 00:37:54.800
And uh I know simple stuff like that.
00:37:54.880 --> 00:37:57.440
But I'm gonna selfishly ask for an advice.
00:37:57.599 --> 00:38:07.119
Um, as someone who is a designer at heart, and but just tense happens to be that I have to run businesses and uh we do these Auxor talks, they're all about kind of a designing.
00:38:07.199 --> 00:38:11.440
People come with their 20 years of life and then you have to compress it into a 10-minute talk.
00:38:11.599 --> 00:38:11.760
Yeah.
00:38:12.000 --> 00:38:15.360
Takes a takes takes a lot of mental effort and to just do all of that.
00:38:15.599 --> 00:38:18.159
But I see that is that is one way of designing things as well.
00:38:18.239 --> 00:38:20.639
And someone who's working with payments and all kinds of stuff.
00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:26.239
Uh, with my partner, we recently started um small kind of a design work as well with 3D printing.
00:38:26.480 --> 00:38:28.079
That's something we're gonna be working on.
00:38:28.400 --> 00:38:41.599
What advice would you be giving me that yes, you have to do all the business operations, everything, but to to be true designer throughout the life, what should I learn and what should I just take an advice from you today?
00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:57.840
I think you have to take it has to come from your heart, you know, but from your deepest, you know, make it because it's part of you and and and and I think you'll be happy then because it's it's it's it's driven from that place.
00:38:58.239 --> 00:39:02.159
It's not a fictitious thing that you were chasing because you thought it's a cool thing to do.
00:39:02.400 --> 00:39:07.519
Do it from here, and uh and good things will come out of that.
00:39:07.599 --> 00:39:22.800
So I I you know, no matter whether you know the the the hustle of running the business, the getting the next job, or you know, have that moment where you're making something that is sincerely genuine and I would you know, because because the rest is all going to be changing around you, right?
00:39:22.880 --> 00:39:26.000
We if we'd talked about AI, whatever we'd said today would be different.
00:39:26.079 --> 00:39:27.679
We'd need to say something different next week.
00:39:28.159 --> 00:39:30.400
All this stuff is shifting and moving like crazy.
00:39:30.800 --> 00:39:36.480
Find that thing that that is the thing that is the constant and is sincerely part of you.
00:39:36.880 --> 00:39:38.559
I would try and do that.
00:39:38.800 --> 00:39:39.760
Thank you, Michael.
00:39:39.840 --> 00:39:40.400
Something from you.
00:39:40.719 --> 00:39:45.679
I would say um um, you know, make sure you love all of it.
00:39:46.400 --> 00:39:56.559
I think a lot of times people that are starting businesses um they go into it because they're interested in one aspect of it and they actually don't like the other aspects of it.
00:39:56.800 --> 00:40:08.480
And every successful person I know comes to really love and appreciate and do with tender loving care every aspect of the business they're involved with.
00:40:08.639 --> 00:40:17.599
Um, you know, tedious things like invoicing, collecting on overdue payments, you know, filing taxes.
00:40:17.760 --> 00:40:24.960
You know, if you don't do those things with care and love and attention to detail, you're not gonna succeed.
00:40:25.199 --> 00:40:39.280
And, you know, if you just look at the restaurant business, there's so many people that open restaurants because they love to cook and they love to eat, and that's great, but that isn't running a restaurant, you know.
00:40:39.440 --> 00:40:45.199
That's like that's the that's like the moment the plate lands on the table, that that's that part.
00:40:45.440 --> 00:40:47.599
But there's all that other stuff you have to do.
00:40:47.760 --> 00:40:57.760
And if you actually think, well, I don't really want to bother about that, you know, but then be uh, you know, invite people to your house or you know, go as far as being a sous chef, but no further, you know, whatever you want to do.
00:40:57.840 --> 00:41:06.079
But like it's sort of um, everyone I know who's successful is sort of really ends up being um again, and we're interesting.
00:41:06.239 --> 00:41:09.039
I think a lot of what we talked about today are these funny contradictions.
00:41:09.119 --> 00:41:25.599
Yeah, you have to be both very focused and single-minded, but you also have to be expansive and have almost 360-degree vision around everything else and make sure that you're you're aware and being inspired by and conscious of your effect on all those other things.
00:41:25.760 --> 00:41:29.840
And I think the people I've known who are successful kind of approach the world that way.
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:36.400
The people who kind of come in thinking I've got this one thing I want to do, and why won't the world let me do that one thing I want to do?
00:41:36.639 --> 00:41:44.880
I think they're sometimes they're geniuses and often they just set themselves up for a lifetime of frustration and disappointment.
00:41:45.039 --> 00:41:48.639
Um, because that's not why the world is here to let you do that one thing you want to do.
00:41:48.719 --> 00:41:55.360
The world's here to inspire you and to let you have an effect on it and let it have an effect on you.
00:41:55.440 --> 00:42:02.159
And you have to, as Harry said, be kind and generous and kind of be ready to meet that world on its own terms.
00:42:02.320 --> 00:42:22.639
And I think no matter what business you're in, whether it's opening a restaurant, being a designer, um, you know, being an accountancy, I think all of those things come into play in terms of, you know, at the end of the day, whether you live a happy life every day of the week and whether or not you leave a legacy behind that makes the world you were in a better place.
00:42:22.880 --> 00:42:23.119
Thank you.
00:42:23.599 --> 00:42:28.239
I think you can pull that back to the when Pentagram works well, all those things.
00:42:28.639 --> 00:42:29.280
Oh, exactly.
00:42:30.159 --> 00:42:37.039
You know, you can't come in and be just a designer, you're coming in and running a business with a certain and and and taking care of everything.
00:42:37.280 --> 00:42:41.599
Coming in, you know, uh Michael's that's the I mean it just write back to Pentagram Pince.
00:42:41.840 --> 00:42:43.679
Um, gents my last question to both of you.
00:42:43.760 --> 00:42:44.559
So we have this tradition.
00:42:44.719 --> 00:42:46.800
Harry, Harry knows about it uh before.
00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:52.800
So you do have to recommend a piece of literature, ideally a book, uh that you will love.
00:42:52.880 --> 00:42:54.559
Uh Harry, you can't do the same choice again.
00:42:55.360 --> 00:42:57.360
Can I give you a new and I give you another book, a different book?
00:42:57.599 --> 00:42:57.760
Yes.
00:42:57.840 --> 00:43:05.599
Um, so just to Michael, so what we do is um we uh we ask each and every guest at the end of the episode, like what's the kind of piece of literature they would recommend.
00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:10.639
We actually buy the book and we send it to one of the random persons who comments or likes or whatever.
00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:14.079
And then if possible, we try to connect that person back to you.
00:43:14.320 --> 00:43:16.000
Uh we did that with Harry last year.
00:43:16.079 --> 00:43:17.280
Uh exciting, that's correct.
00:43:17.599 --> 00:43:31.840
It was just a wonderful, and again, because and that's really piqued my interest because that person literally said to us that there's just nothing, not a lot, at least online, about Harry, about Pentagram's that partner, like how he approaches his life, how he approaches design.
00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:35.519
I was like, oh, that if that can be a medium to connect people, that would be wonderful.
00:43:35.599 --> 00:43:41.920
So, Michael, I'm gonna start with you and Harry, then I'm gonna come to you uh about so what would be that piece of literature?
00:43:42.239 --> 00:43:48.079
My favorite book about creativity is an old book that was published um in the late 1950s.
00:43:48.159 --> 00:43:50.400
And it's not about design, it's not about art.
00:43:50.480 --> 00:43:53.280
It's well, it's about art to the degree it's about the theater.
00:43:53.440 --> 00:44:04.960
And it's a um uh um an um enhanced memoir, I would call it, by a Director and playwright named Moss Hart, M-O-S-S-H-A-R-T.
00:44:05.519 --> 00:44:07.199
And it's called Act One.
00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:16.079
And he called it Act One because his pu he had either been talked into or his or he talked his publisher into publishing a memoir when he was still in mid-career.
00:44:16.320 --> 00:44:24.559
And um he at that point had on Broadway just uh he was the director of My Fair Lady when he took it to Broadway.
00:44:24.719 --> 00:44:29.360
He was an extraordinarily successful playwright who had had this long string of hits.
00:44:29.599 --> 00:44:37.280
And the book, interestingly enough, is not about his glorious career, but it's only about the first half of that career.
00:44:37.440 --> 00:44:50.159
And it ends with him opening the first Broadway show that was a success for him, which was uh um uh you know, which which came aboard in the 1930s, uh called uh Once in a Lifetime.
00:44:50.559 --> 00:44:56.880
And um he gives his minute account of growing up, it's a New York story.
00:44:57.039 --> 00:45:13.920
Uh so it's he grew up in Brooklyn and um had just loved the theater, worked at the lowest rungs of it with a bunch of other scrappy young people, and insinuated his way into things and always wanted to like be a playwright, never thought he had it in him.
00:45:14.079 --> 00:45:23.360
The first half of the book ends with him sitting down to write his first play, and then the second half of the book is how he brought that play to um to fruition on Broadway.
00:45:23.440 --> 00:45:26.639
He's paired with a collaborator, um, a guy named George S.
00:45:26.800 --> 00:45:30.400
Kaufman, who was a successful playwright who was his mentor.
00:45:30.639 --> 00:45:54.639
And you sort of like, I mean, I can't imagine a more boring book where it's basically two guys write a play, and you know, but he describes it so vividly and in a way that I would offer would be extremely familiar to any creative person because the play, the play they're working on is unsuccessful.
00:45:54.800 --> 00:46:03.840
And just like a designer, he's doing something that it's just not a matter of him doing it alone in a room, then he he's satisfied with it and he unveils with the world and they all collapse.
00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:14.960
You know, he needs actors, he needs producers, he needs funders, he needs collaborators, he needs all these people, these people to kind of audiences, all these people to show up to make this thing work, and it just isn't working.
00:46:15.039 --> 00:46:35.360
And he keeps fiddling with it and fiddling with it until finally, at the um uh, you know, finally he hits on the thing that actually makes this successful and the passage where he realizes what he's been doing wrong in the plot, and he sort of thinks, oh, I can fix it, what I do at the end of this moment if I just twist it around.
00:46:35.440 --> 00:46:41.039
I think and he throws out everything they've done and goes in and says, I've got this is crazy.
00:46:41.199 --> 00:46:44.000
We've only got like we to do, but we can fix this thing and make it work.
00:46:44.079 --> 00:46:44.480
It ends up.
00:46:44.639 --> 00:46:46.480
It's so in, I just I can't tell you.
00:46:46.639 --> 00:46:52.719
I've reread it so many times, and I've never, you know, I'm not a never acted or directed a play or anything.
00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:58.719
I'm just I sit in the audience, I sit in his audiences, I've seen his plays, but it's as an account of the creative process.
00:46:58.800 --> 00:47:01.039
It's extraordinary and timeless, I would offer.
00:47:01.119 --> 00:47:03.519
So it's called Act One, Moss Heart.
00:47:03.599 --> 00:47:06.559
Uh it's still in print, and uh I bet you've never read it.
00:47:06.639 --> 00:47:09.280
It's very American, very New York story, but it's amazing.
00:47:09.440 --> 00:47:10.400
I just love it so much.
00:47:10.880 --> 00:47:12.559
We'll we'll make a note of that, definitely.
00:47:12.719 --> 00:47:13.199
Thank you.
00:47:13.360 --> 00:47:14.960
Uh Harry Richmond was going to be yours.
00:47:15.280 --> 00:47:20.719
Um now the thing is I remember I remember the book, but I don't remember the author, which is a really we'll find it online.
00:47:21.679 --> 00:47:24.000
Okay, well, it's called Black Elk Speaks.
00:47:24.239 --> 00:47:24.559
Okay.
00:47:24.800 --> 00:47:32.880
And it's um it was actually a transcription of a series of interviews with a, I think, a Sioux Indian in the late 1800s.
00:47:37.280 --> 00:47:40.000
Who um uh was a visionary.
00:47:40.079 --> 00:47:49.599
Um extraordinary and it's and it's probably one of the first times that um a white man was allowed to sit down with a with an with an Indian, and this Indian transcribed his life to him.
00:47:50.079 --> 00:48:00.000
He was a very old man when it happened, but he he just told his whole life from extraordinary experiences as a child in the in the in the in the in the villages and uh everything he went went through.
00:48:00.320 --> 00:48:06.800
And uh he um he was he was incredibly ill as a child, I mean to the point of dying.
00:48:07.039 --> 00:48:23.199
Uh but in in in that illness, he suddenly got this ability to almost have second sight, and he became deeply intuitive, and he could literally uh walk with the with the with the with the others and say, three hills over, there is a big herd of buffalo.
00:48:23.440 --> 00:48:26.320
If you just keep following this, we'll see them in two hours, we'll be with them.
00:48:26.400 --> 00:48:27.679
And that exactly that would happen.
00:48:28.159 --> 00:48:35.039
And many other things, and um but what came of that, and it isn't just that, what came of that is as a profound wisdom.
00:48:35.519 --> 00:48:40.639
And this story is the story of his life growing towards this wisdom.
00:48:40.800 --> 00:48:46.559
Uh, it's called Blackout Speaks, and I think it's the life of a Sioux Indian, and um it's it's phenomenal.
00:48:46.639 --> 00:48:51.920
So it's very it's 1800s it was written, but it's it's an inspirational book for me, and uh yeah.
00:48:52.159 --> 00:48:52.639
Perfect.
00:48:52.719 --> 00:48:55.760
Um, Harry, Michael, absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast.
00:48:56.239 --> 00:48:57.280
Thank you, it's our pleasure.
00:48:57.440 --> 00:48:57.840
Thank you so much.
00:48:58.320 --> 00:48:59.920
This has been a legendary conversation.
00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:11.360
Uh, as I've been asked saying again and again that uh, you know, if someone asks me, I don't know if anyone ever will, but we are designing a Mount Rushmore for designers who are you gonna do the Michael with my name.
00:49:11.440 --> 00:49:12.719
But guys, thank you so much for being here.
00:49:13.039 --> 00:49:14.320
My pleasure with Michael.
00:49:14.400 --> 00:49:15.440
Yeah, love talking here.
00:49:17.519 --> 00:49:18.239
Thank you.
