On Celebrating an Important Professional Milestone
Thirty years ago this week I took a deep breath and left a full-time job and a steady paycheck with benefits. It was August, 1990. The Soviet Union still existed, “Cheers” was the top rated show on television, and the Oakland Athletics were the reigning World Series champions.
I was in my mid-twenties, working in-house at a major New York book publisher, in a department full of talented and lovely people. We were a mighty team, designing book covers by the truckload. The work wasn’t always easy and corporate drama was always lurking in the background, but I still hold the people, the memories, and the work dear to my heart all these years later.
At some point along the way, however, things went sideways with my boss. I’d come to work and ask what I should be doing that day. “I’ll come and get you,” was usually the reply. I’d retreat to my little office and wait for work assignments that never came, and then, one day, I opened the door to my little office and all of the furniture had been removed. Seriously. This was a clear sign that it was time to move on.
I come from a family of working artists, a direct line that reaches back to the late nineteenth century. Armed with this potent DNA—along with an independent, stubborn, entrepreneurial spirit and a decent roster of potential clients—I took the plunge. I rented a desk from design legend Paula Scher for a couple of hundred bucks a month, at 156 Fifth Avenue, just south of the Flatiron Building. These were the waning days of traditional design, just before our world became digital. I kicked ass right from Day One, designing, illustrating, and creating actual hand lettering for a range of clients that included big New York ad agencies, apparel firms, and book publishers—including the former boss that took my desk away. (A word of advice—only burn your professional bridges as a last resort. And remember to use lots of gasoline.)
The Gulf War (which began the first week I went solo) and a subsequent recession took a chunk out of a lot of creative businesses, but I powered forward. Paula folded her business and moved over to Pentagram in 1991—leaving me homeless—but I wound up renting space nearby, at 132 West 22nd Street. I bought a photostat camera (imagine an appliance the size of a compact car plopped in the middle of a 250 square foot space) and expanded my client list, into the nascent, niche field of sports design. Licensing was beginning to explode right around this time, a serendipitous moment for me—a designer who had been a keen observer of the aesthetics of sports since I was a little kid.
I made the transition to digital, purchasing a tricked-out Macintosh Quadra 700, along with a flatbed scanner and a black and white laser printer, all for a massive investment of something like $15,000. I supplemented this with a 14400 baud dial-up modem in 1993 (my first email address was on Compuserve—I defected to AOL later that decade.)
So here I am, still here, thirty years later. If I included everything that came after the above, this post would need to expand into a lengthy book. The work I’ve done has been solid, visible, and rewarding, and I can honestly say that the vast, vast majority of my collaborations have been positive and treasured. I’m still a designer, illustrator, and typographer, but I’m also a branding and marketing consultant, researcher, visual historian, media personality, and writer, with a new book coming out this November. Finally, I’m proud to have attained “Toddfather” status for a generation of young designers, something that I value beyond words.
Thirty years seems to have gone by in the blink of an eye—it’s trite but true. I’m extremely fortunate. Over the course of three decades my career has withstood technological change, wars, economic headwinds, and yes, a pandemic—but my best day imaginable still starts with a fresh set of creative challenges.
Each of us travels our own path. May your path be as verdant has mine has been. And bring a canister of gasoline, because you never know…