1
00:00:03,941 --> 00:00:06,472
Blah blah blah blah blah.

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00:00:06,472 --> 00:00:08,399
Blah blah blah blah,

3
00:00:08,399 --> 00:00:10,994
blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah.

4
00:00:10,994 --> 00:00:13,741
Blah blah blah, blah.

5
00:00:14,997 --> 00:00:17,170
So what the hell was that?

6
00:00:17,170 --> 00:00:20,689
Well, you don't know
because you couldn't understand it.

7
00:00:21,320 --> 00:00:23,620
It wasn't clear.

8
00:00:24,530 --> 00:00:27,768
But hopefully, it was said
with enough conviction

9
00:00:27,768 --> 00:00:31,467
that it was at least
alluringly mysterious.

10
00:00:32,792 --> 00:00:35,973
Clarity or mystery?

11
00:00:35,973 --> 00:00:40,199
I'm balancing these two things
in my daily work as a graphic designer,

12
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as well as my daily life as a New Yorker

13
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every day,

14
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and there are two elements
that absolutely fascinate me.

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Here's an example.

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Now, how many people know what this is?

17
00:00:59,703 --> 00:01:04,727
Okay. Now how many people
know what this is?

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Okay. Thanks to two more deft strokes
by the genius Charles M. Schulz,

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we now have seven deft strokes
that in and of themselves

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create an entire emotional life,

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one that has enthralled
hundreds of millions of fans

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for over 50 years.

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This is actually a cover of a book

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that I designed about the work
of Schulz and his art,

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which will be coming out this fall,

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and that is the entire cover.

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There is no other typographic information
or visual information on the front,

28
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and the name of the book
is "Only What's Necessary."

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So this is sort of symbolic about
the decisions I have to make every day

30
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about the design that I'm perceiving,

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and the design I'm creating.

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So clarity.

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Clarity gets to the point.

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It's blunt. It's honest. It's sincere.

35
00:02:03,748 --> 00:02:07,370
We ask ourselves this.
["When should you be clear?"]

36
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Now, something like this,
whether we can read it or not,

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needs to be really, really clear.

38
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Is it?

39
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This is a rather recent example
of urban clarity that I just love,

40
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mainly because I'm always late
and I am always in a hurry.

41
00:02:32,742 --> 00:02:39,288
So when these meters started showing up
a couple of years ago on street corners,

42
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I was thrilled, because now I finally knew

43
00:02:42,748 --> 00:02:45,673
how many seconds I had
to get across the street

44
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before I got run over by a car.

45
00:02:48,553 --> 00:02:53,475
Six? I can do that. (Laughter)

46
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So let's look at the yin
to the clarity yang,

47
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and that is mystery.

48
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Mystery is a lot more complicated
by its very definition.

49
00:03:06,176 --> 00:03:09,659
Mystery demands to be decoded,

50
00:03:09,659 --> 00:03:12,643
and when it's done right,
we really, really want to.

51
00:03:12,643 --> 00:03:14,303
["When should you be mysterious?"]

52
00:03:14,303 --> 00:03:20,107
In World War II, the Germans
really, really wanted to decode this,

53
00:03:20,107 --> 00:03:22,731
and they couldn't.

54
00:03:22,731 --> 00:03:25,912
Here's an example of a design
that I've done recently

55
00:03:25,912 --> 00:03:28,234
for a novel by Haruki Murakami,

56
00:03:28,234 --> 00:03:31,438
who I've done design work for
for over 20 years now,

57
00:03:31,438 --> 00:03:37,150
and this is a novel about a young man
who has four dear friends

58
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who all of a sudden,
after their freshman year of college,

59
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completely cut him off
with no explanation,

60
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and he is devastated.

61
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And the friends' names each have
a connotation in Japanese to a color.

62
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So there's Mr. Red, there's Mr. Blue,
there's Ms. White, and Ms. Black.

63
00:03:56,770 --> 00:04:00,160
Tsukuru Tazaki, his name
does not correspond to a color,

64
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so his nickname is Colorless, and
as he's looking back on their friendship,

65
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he recalls that they were like
five fingers on a hand.

66
00:04:07,776 --> 00:04:12,257
So I created this sort of abstract
representation of this,

67
00:04:12,257 --> 00:04:16,437
but there's a lot more going on
underneath the surface of the story,

68
00:04:16,437 --> 00:04:21,110
and there's more going on underneath
the surface of the jacket.

69
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The four fingers are now four train lines

70
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in the Tokyo subway system,

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00:04:27,582 --> 00:04:29,973
which has significance within the story.

72
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And then you have
the colorless subway line

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intersecting with each
of the other colors,

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which basically he does
later on in the story.

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He catches up with each of these people

76
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to find out why they treated him
the way they did.

77
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And so this is the three-dimensional
finished product

78
00:04:48,558 --> 00:04:50,879
sitting on my desk in my office,

79
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and what I was hoping for here
is that you'll simply be allured

80
00:04:55,546 --> 00:04:59,401
by the mystery of what this looks like,

81
00:04:59,401 --> 00:05:02,196
and will want to read it

82
00:05:02,196 --> 00:05:07,345
to decode and find out and make more clear
why it looks the way it does.

83
00:05:08,163 --> 00:05:09,858
["The Visual Vernacular."]

84
00:05:09,858 --> 00:05:14,177
This is a way to use a more
familiar kind of mystery.

85
00:05:14,177 --> 00:05:15,938
What does this mean?

86
00:05:15,938 --> 00:05:18,772
This is what it means.
["Make it look like something else."]

87
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The visual vernacular is the way
we are used to seeing a certain thing

88
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applied to something else so that
we see it in a different way.

89
00:05:27,691 --> 00:05:31,840
This is an approach I wanted to take
to a book of essays by David Sedaris

90
00:05:31,840 --> 00:05:35,211
that had this title at the time.
["All the Beauty You Will Ever Need"]

91
00:05:35,211 --> 00:05:39,402
Now, the challenge here was that
this title actually means nothing.

92
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It's not connected to any
of the essays in the book.

93
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It came to the author's boyfriend
in a dream.

94
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Thank you very much, so -- (Laughter) --
so usually, I am creating a design

95
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that is in some way based on the text,
but this is all the text there is.

96
00:05:57,722 --> 00:06:02,111
So you've got this mysterious title
that really doesn't mean anything,

97
00:06:02,111 --> 00:06:04,610
so I was trying to think:

98
00:06:04,610 --> 00:06:10,848
Where might I see a bit of mysterious text
that seems to mean something but doesn't?

99
00:06:10,848 --> 00:06:13,255
And sure enough, not long after,

100
00:06:13,255 --> 00:06:16,570
one evening after a Chinese meal,

101
00:06:16,570 --> 00:06:23,062
this arrived, and I thought,
"Ah, bing, ideagasm!" (Laughter)

102
00:06:23,472 --> 00:06:28,673
I've always loved the hilariously
mysterious tropes of fortune cookies

103
00:06:28,673 --> 00:06:31,575
that seem to mean something extremely deep

104
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but when you think about them -- if you
think about them -- they really don't.

105
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This says, "Hardly anyone knows how much
is gained by ignoring the future."

106
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Thank you. (Laughter)

107
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But we can take this visual vernacular
and apply it to Mr. Sedaris,

108
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and we are so familiar
with how fortune cookie fortunes look

109
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that we don't even need
the bits of the cookie anymore.

110
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We're just seeing this strange thing

111
00:07:02,419 --> 00:07:04,416
and we know we love David Sedaris,

112
00:07:04,416 --> 00:07:07,300
and so we're hoping that
we're in for a good time.

113
00:07:07,760 --> 00:07:11,048
["'Fraud' Essays by David Rakoff"]
David Rakoff was a wonderful writer

114
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and he called his first book "Fraud"

115
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because he was getting sent
on assignments by magazines

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to do things that he
was not equipped to do.

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So he was this skinny little urban guy

118
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and GQ magazine would send him
down the Colorado River

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whitewater rafting to see
if he would survive.

120
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And then he would write about it,
and he felt that he was a fraud

121
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and that he was misrepresenting himself.

122
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And so I wanted the cover of this book
to also misrepresent itself

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and then somehow show
a reader reacting to it.

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This led me to graffiti.

125
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I'm fascinated by graffiti.

126
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I think anybody who lives
in an urban environment

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encounters graffiti all the time,
and there's all different sorts of it.

128
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This is a picture I took
on the Lower East Side

129
00:08:02,550 --> 00:08:05,398
of just a transformer box on the sidewalk

130
00:08:05,398 --> 00:08:07,372
and it's been tagged like crazy.

131
00:08:07,372 --> 00:08:12,991
Now whether you look at this and think,
"Oh, that's a charming urban affectation,"

132
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or you look at it and say,
"That's illegal abuse of property,"

133
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the one thing I think we can all agree on

134
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is that you cannot read it.

135
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Right? There is no clear message here.

136
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There is another kind of graffiti
that I find far more interesting,

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which I call editorial graffiti.

138
00:08:34,538 --> 00:08:38,744
This is a picture I took recently
in the subway,

139
00:08:38,744 --> 00:08:42,610
and sometimes you see
lots of prurient, stupid stuff,

140
00:08:42,610 --> 00:08:47,517
but I thought this was interesting,
and this is a poster that is saying

141
00:08:47,517 --> 00:08:49,747
rah-rah Airbnb,

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00:08:49,747 --> 00:08:52,510
and someone has taken a Magic Marker

143
00:08:52,510 --> 00:08:56,434
and has editorialized about
what they think about it.

144
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And it got my attention.

145
00:08:59,266 --> 00:09:02,692
So I was thinking, how do we
apply this to this book?

146
00:09:02,692 --> 00:09:08,405
So I get the book by this person,
and I start reading it, and I'm thinking,

147
00:09:08,405 --> 00:09:13,079
this guy is not who he says 
he is; he's a fraud.

148
00:09:13,079 --> 00:09:16,540
And I get out a red Magic Marker,

149
00:09:16,540 --> 00:09:21,151
and out of frustration just
scribble this across the front.

150
00:09:21,151 --> 00:09:25,259
Design done. (Laughter)

151
00:09:25,815 --> 00:09:30,190
And they went for it! (Laughter)

152
00:09:30,190 --> 00:09:32,107
Author liked it, publisher liked it,

153
00:09:32,107 --> 00:09:34,824
and that is how the book
went out into the world,

154
00:09:34,824 --> 00:09:39,723
and it was really fun to see
people reading this on the subway

155
00:09:39,723 --> 00:09:41,859
and walking around with it
and what have you,

156
00:09:41,859 --> 00:09:45,760
and they all sort of looked
like they were crazy.

157
00:09:45,760 --> 00:09:48,120
(Laughter)

158
00:09:48,590 --> 00:09:52,633
["'Perfidia' a novel by James Ellroy"]
Okay, James Ellroy, amazing crime writer,

159
00:09:52,633 --> 00:09:55,117
a good friend, I've worked
with him for many years.

160
00:09:55,117 --> 00:09:57,325
He is probably best known as the author

161
00:09:57,325 --> 00:10:00,295
of "The Black Dahlia"
and "L.A. Confidential."

162
00:10:00,295 --> 00:10:05,150
His most recent novel was called this,
which is a very mysterious name

163
00:10:05,150 --> 00:10:08,756
that I'm sure a lot of people know
what it means, but a lot of people don't.

164
00:10:08,756 --> 00:10:15,814
And it's a story about a Japanese-American
detective in Los Angeles in 1941

165
00:10:15,814 --> 00:10:17,834
investigating a murder.

166
00:10:17,834 --> 00:10:20,247
And then Pearl Harbor happens,

167
00:10:20,247 --> 00:10:23,357
and as if his life
wasn't difficult enough,

168
00:10:23,357 --> 00:10:28,200
now the race relations
have really ratcheted up,

169
00:10:28,200 --> 00:10:32,718
and then the Japanese-American
internment camps are quickly created,

170
00:10:32,718 --> 00:10:34,738
and there's lots of tension

171
00:10:34,738 --> 00:10:38,824
and horrible stuff as he's still
trying to solve this murder.

172
00:10:38,824 --> 00:10:44,656
And so I did at first think
very literally about this in terms of

173
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all right, we'll take Pearl Harbor
and we'll add it to Los Angeles

174
00:10:48,539 --> 00:10:55,736
and we'll make this apocalyptic dawn
on the horizon of the city.

175
00:10:56,146 --> 00:10:58,561
And so that's a picture from Pearl Harbor

176
00:10:58,561 --> 00:11:01,625
just grafted onto Los Angeles.

177
00:11:01,625 --> 00:11:04,899
My editor in chief said,
"You know, it's interesting

178
00:11:04,899 --> 00:11:10,286
but I think you can do better
and I think you can make it simpler."

179
00:11:10,286 --> 00:11:14,506
And so I went back
to the drawing board, as I often do.

180
00:11:14,506 --> 00:11:19,197
But also, being alive to my surroundings,

181
00:11:19,197 --> 00:11:22,830
I work in a high-rise in Midtown,

182
00:11:22,830 --> 00:11:26,500
and every night,
before I leave the office,

183
00:11:26,500 --> 00:11:28,745
I have to push this button to get out,

184
00:11:28,745 --> 00:11:32,483
and the big heavy glass doors open
and I can get onto the elevator.

185
00:11:32,483 --> 00:11:35,979
And one night, all of a sudden,

186
00:11:35,979 --> 00:11:41,750
I looked at this and I saw it in a way
that I hadn't really noticed it before.

187
00:11:41,750 --> 00:11:44,279
Big red circle, danger.

188
00:11:44,279 --> 00:11:47,158
And I thought this was so obvious

189
00:11:47,158 --> 00:11:49,875
that it had to have been
done a zillion times,

190
00:11:49,875 --> 00:11:54,449
and so I did a Google image search,
and I couldn't find another book cover

191
00:11:54,449 --> 00:11:56,608
that looked quite like this,

192
00:11:56,608 --> 00:11:59,232
and so this is really
what solved the problem,

193
00:11:59,232 --> 00:12:01,763
and graphically it's more interesting

194
00:12:01,763 --> 00:12:05,989
and creates a bigger tension
between the idea

195
00:12:05,989 --> 00:12:11,096
of a certain kind of sunrise
coming up over L.A. and America.

196
00:12:11,506 --> 00:12:14,492
["Gulp." A tour of the human
digestive system by Mary Roach.]

197
00:12:14,492 --> 00:12:16,530
Mary Roach is an amazing writer

198
00:12:16,530 --> 00:12:20,152
who takes potentially mundane
scientific subjects

199
00:12:20,152 --> 00:12:23,540
and makes them not mundane at all.
She makes them really fun.

200
00:12:23,540 --> 00:12:25,167
So in this particular case,

201
00:12:25,167 --> 00:12:28,279
it's about the human digestive system.

202
00:12:28,279 --> 00:12:33,201
So I'm trying to figure out what
is the cover of this book going to be.

203
00:12:34,141 --> 00:12:37,845
This is a self-portrait. (Laughter)

204
00:12:37,845 --> 00:12:43,905
Every morning I look at myself
in the medicine cabinet mirror

205
00:12:43,905 --> 00:12:46,622
to see if my tongue is black.

206
00:12:46,622 --> 00:12:50,170
And if it's not, I'm good to go.

207
00:12:50,170 --> 00:12:53,279
(Laughter)

208
00:12:55,185 --> 00:12:58,296
I recommend you all do this.

209
00:12:58,296 --> 00:13:02,243
But I also started thinking, you know,
here's our introduction.

210
00:13:02,243 --> 00:13:05,122
Right? Into the human digestive system.

211
00:13:05,962 --> 00:13:08,210
But I think what we can all agree on

212
00:13:08,210 --> 00:13:12,460
is that actual photographs
of human mouths, at least based on this,

213
00:13:12,460 --> 00:13:16,244
are off-putting. (Laughter)

214
00:13:16,244 --> 00:13:20,145
So for the cover, then,
I had this illustration done

215
00:13:20,145 --> 00:13:22,374
which is literally more palatable

216
00:13:22,374 --> 00:13:26,902
and reminds us that it's best
to approach the digestive system

217
00:13:26,902 --> 00:13:29,200
from this end.

218
00:13:29,200 --> 00:13:31,847
(Laughter)

219
00:13:31,847 --> 00:13:34,793
I don't even have to complete
the sentence. All right.

220
00:13:35,533 --> 00:13:37,079
[Unuseful mystery]

221
00:13:37,079 --> 00:13:41,156
What happens when clarity
and mystery get mixed up?

222
00:13:41,516 --> 00:13:43,489
And we see this all the time.

223
00:13:43,489 --> 00:13:45,997
This is what I call unuseful mystery.

224
00:13:45,997 --> 00:13:48,946
I go down into the subway,
take the subway a lot,

225
00:13:48,946 --> 00:13:53,450
and this piece of paper
is taped to a girder.

226
00:13:54,590 --> 00:13:58,243
Right? And now I'm thinking, uh oh,

227
00:13:58,243 --> 00:14:02,120
and the train's about to come and I'm
trying to figure out what this means,

228
00:14:02,120 --> 00:14:04,914
and thanks a lot.

229
00:14:04,914 --> 00:14:08,914
Part of the problem here is that
they've compartmentalized the information

230
00:14:08,914 --> 00:14:12,420
in a way they think is helpful,
and frankly, I don't think it is at all.

231
00:14:12,420 --> 00:14:15,694
So this is mystery we do not need.

232
00:14:15,694 --> 00:14:23,780
What we need is useful clarity,
so just for fun, I redesigned this.

233
00:14:23,780 --> 00:14:26,259
This is using all the same elements.

234
00:14:26,259 --> 00:14:29,182
(Applause)

235
00:14:29,532 --> 00:14:33,837
Thank you. I am still waiting
for a call from the MTA. (Laughter)

236
00:14:34,447 --> 00:14:37,506
You know, I'm actually not even
using more colors than they use.

237
00:14:37,506 --> 00:14:40,803
They just didn't even bother
to make the 4 and the 5 green,

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those idiots. (Laughter)

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So the first thing that we see
is that there is a service change,

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and then, in two complete sentences
with a beginning, a middle, and an end,

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it tells us what the change is
and what's going to be happening.

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Call me crazy! (Laughter)

243
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[Useful mystery]
All right.

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00:15:04,161 --> 00:15:09,841
Now, here is a piece
of mystery that I love:

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packaging.

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00:15:11,498 --> 00:15:14,772
This redesign of the Diet Coke can

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by Turner Duckworth
is to me truly a piece of art.

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00:15:20,200 --> 00:15:23,716
It's a work of art. It's beautiful.

249
00:15:23,716 --> 00:15:26,893
But what part of what makes it
so enheartening to me as a designer

250
00:15:26,893 --> 00:15:31,351
is that he's taken the visual
vernacular of Diet Coke

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-- the typefaces, the colors,
the silver background --

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00:15:34,889 --> 00:15:39,974
and he's reduced them
to their most essential parts,

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00:15:39,974 --> 00:15:42,714
so it's like going back
to the Charlie Brown face.

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00:15:42,714 --> 00:15:46,661
It's like, how can you give them just
enough information so they know what it is

255
00:15:46,661 --> 00:15:50,539
but giving them the credit
for the knowledge that they already have

256
00:15:50,539 --> 00:15:52,396
about this thing?

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00:15:52,396 --> 00:15:56,181
It looks great, and you would go
into a delicatessen

258
00:15:56,181 --> 00:16:00,631
and all of a sudden see that on the shelf,
and it's wonderful.

259
00:16:00,631 --> 00:16:04,330
All right, which makes the next thing

260
00:16:04,330 --> 00:16:06,862
-- [Unuseful clarity] --
all the more disheartening,

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at least to me.

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00:16:08,510 --> 00:16:12,350
So okay, again, going back
down into the subway,

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00:16:12,350 --> 00:16:14,440
after this came out,

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these are pictures that I took.

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Times Square subway station:

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Coca-Cola has bought out
the entire thing for advertising. Okay?

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00:16:23,681 --> 00:16:27,990
And maybe some of you
know where this is going.

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00:16:28,660 --> 00:16:30,438
Ahem.

269
00:16:30,438 --> 00:16:33,056
"You moved to New York
with the clothes on your back,

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00:16:33,056 --> 00:16:35,640
the cash in your pocket,
and you're eyes on the prize.

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00:16:35,640 --> 00:16:39,147
You're on Coke." (Laughter)

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00:16:45,298 --> 00:16:48,251
"You moved to New York
with an MBA, one clean suit,

273
00:16:48,251 --> 00:16:50,341
and an extremely firm handshake.

274
00:16:50,341 --> 00:16:53,138
You're on Coke." (Laughter)

275
00:16:53,638 --> 00:16:58,142
These are real! (Laughter)

276
00:16:58,142 --> 00:17:01,973
Not even the support beams were spared,

277
00:17:01,973 --> 00:17:04,569
except they switched into Yoda mode.

278
00:17:04,569 --> 00:17:07,569
[Excuse me, I'm on WHAT??]

279
00:17:07,569 --> 00:17:11,270
"Coke you're on." (Laughter)

280
00:17:13,838 --> 00:17:17,623
This campaign was a huge misstep.

281
00:17:17,623 --> 00:17:22,310
It was pulled almost instantly
due to consumer backlash

282
00:17:22,310 --> 00:17:26,850
and all sorts of unflattering
parodies on the web

283
00:17:26,850 --> 00:17:28,731
-- (Laughter) --

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00:17:28,731 --> 00:17:35,441
and also that dot next to "You're on,"
that's not a period, that's a trademark.

285
00:17:35,441 --> 00:17:40,433
So thanks a lot. So to me,
this was just so bizarre

286
00:17:40,433 --> 00:17:46,447
about how they could get the packaging
so mysteriously beautiful and perfect

287
00:17:46,447 --> 00:17:50,905
and the message so unbearably,
clearly wrong.

288
00:17:50,905 --> 00:17:54,365
It was just incredible to me.

289
00:17:54,365 --> 00:17:59,891
So I just hope that I've been able
to share with you some of my insights

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00:17:59,891 --> 00:18:03,699
on the uses of clarity
and mystery in my work,

291
00:18:03,699 --> 00:18:09,005
and maybe how you might decide
to be more clear in your life

292
00:18:09,005 --> 00:18:15,273
or maybe to be a bit more mysterious
and not so over-sharing.

293
00:18:15,273 --> 00:18:18,110
(Laughter)

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00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:23,806
And if there's just one thing
that I leave you with from this talk,

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00:18:23,806 --> 00:18:25,757
I hope it's this:

296
00:18:25,757 --> 00:18:28,822
Blih blih blih blah.
Blah blah blih blih.

297
00:18:28,822 --> 00:18:31,956
Blih blih blah blah blah.
Blah blah blah.

298
00:18:31,956 --> 00:18:33,883
Blah blah.

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00:18:33,883 --> 00:18:37,883
(Applause)