the things we think but do not say

A new book by Annie Leibovitz is out (at a very reasonable price of $27 on Amazon).

I’m not all that familiar with her work but I believe she’s right up there with Richard Avedon for world renowned portraits. She’s at the top of her game and regular shoots covers for Vanity Fair and Vogue.

A charming interview with her is now up on NPR where she come across very accessible and quite at ease with the level of credibility she’s forged. She even speaks about the criticism that’s been leveled at her work for not really getting to the soul of her subjects. She says that she’s found plenty of interest at the surface. “I don’t think it’s possible [to get the soul] all the time. God, can you imagine you can get the soul every day?”

Thanks for Rob Galbraith’s site for the tip off.

I’ve finally returned to Chicago after several weeks of travel taking photographs for two upcoming book for London and New York.

Each city’s schedule included 50 locations in a week. Invaluable to me during each shoot was my project manager Shane Parton, who magically arranged everything to line up, coincide, and be in place at the right time for all the shots.

The photo here is one of the last shots I took before leaving New York. It was at very discreet Japanese restaurant in Murray Hill called Tsukushi. At another table I noticed that one of their party was practically sleeping at the table. When I saw that one of his mates thought it funny to take a snapshot of it, I reached for my camera. I love shots of people taking photographs themselves. To see what another photographer is visualising is revealing.

So, some stats from my trip

2 cities covered
50 locations in each city
8-10 days in each city
non-stop, grueling, 12-15 hour days
3000 exposures in London
4000 exposures in New York
100+ cab rides
25lbs of equipment lugged all over town
35gb of images
20+ portraits of artists, bakers, restaurateurs, designers, and entrepreneurs.

During the trip I would go through all sorts of pressure, excitement, tiredness and disappointment. But there was simply nothing more invigorating or inspiring than finishing the shoot of a space or interior and then taking a portrait of the creator of that environment.

The proprietors’ taste, personality, even their demeanor, came through in everything that we saw or touched in that space. It seems so obvious now, but taking these portraits connected me so personally to the space in which it was being taken.

As a growing photographer, I think that taking portraits of the inspiring individuals who have created these unique businesses was the most rewarding part of my trip.

When I was a young ‘un wondering what I was going to do at college, I had a fairly naive understanding of what design was all about. I was sure that product design (as it’s more commonly called in England) was all about sketching swoopy crap kettles, irons and hair dryers. At the time, design to me equaled horrible cheap injection molded plastic. And to be brutally honest, after I finished my degree in Engineering Design, I still held that opinion.

It was only when I moved to London and started working in design, did someone that was the most design focused person I’d met to that point. He showed me a book that changed everything. AppleDesign, probably taught me more about design than my four years at college ever did. Thank you James.

Written by Paul Kunkel, with photographs by Rick English, it showed me how a group of designers can pay such meticulous attention to the use, the form and the overall logic of a product. It blew my mind back then and it’s still a serves as reference for me today.

The book is structured into two parts, one text based the other pictorial, with hundreds of photographs of models, sketches and finished products. My favourite concept was called Jonathan by Hartmut Esslinger (in 1985) that created an architecture for a computer that allowed you to build the computer you needed ‘brick’ by ‘brick’. A recent Microsoft/IDSA (student) winner for a multi media centre called ‘Bookshelf’ looks heavily inspired by it . I wonder if any of the IDSA judges noticed the blatant reference.

From the writing and the photos, you can see just how damn good those guys were back then. And this is the thing, the design team members at Apple have somehow managed to be so consistently good that they have the most enviable reputation out there.

But the team members over the years have changed with different stars at different times. Just looking at the list of people who have worked for Apple as consultant or in house designer is like reading a list of the most influential designers in the whole business.

Hartmut Essingler (founder of frog design) was hired as a consultant by Apple in 1982 to create a design language known as “Snow White” which has classics like the Macintosh II and theMac SE. He was the corporate design manager until around 1989. He later went on to work on the Next Computer for Steve Jobs. He continues to run frog design, which is now co-owned by Flextronics.

Bob Brunner ran the design team at Apple in 1990 and assembled a world class design team, hiring Daniele DeIuliis, Tim Parsey and Jonathan Ives. He is now a partner at Pentagram in SF.

Tim Parsey, worked as studio manager for Apple in 1991 to the mid 1990s. He went on to become the VP of design at Acco, then VP of design at Motorola, and is now VP of design at Mattel.

Ray Riley, worked with Bob Brunner from 1989 and left Apple in 1995. He now runs the Explore group at Nike.

Jonathan Ive, founded Tangerine in London in 1990. Was hired by Apple in 1992 (when he was 25!), designing the Twentieth Anniversary Mac in 1996. He took over after Brunner’s departure, and is now Senior VP of design at Apple. Has led the design group at Apple to become one of the most important teams in design history.

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple. Credited with Jerry Manock (probably the least known designer in the world) for designing the first Macintosh computer. Hired Hartmut Esslinger in 1982. Left Apple in 1985 going on to found Next Computer Inc (which is the inspiration behind a lot of OS X) and Pixar in 1996. Returned to Apple in 1997 as interim CEO. Lead Apple into the status of cultural icon.

Printed in 1997, before Ive’s influence was really felt publicly, the book is unfortunately now out of print. It can be found used for $125-$185 at places like Amazon or Abe books.

As a side note, Paul Kunkel went on to write a similar book called Digital Dreams : The Work of the Sony Design Center.

After finishing “The Know It All” this morning, by A.J. Jacobs, I felt a small, shared, portion of his satisfaction at finally reading in it’s entirety, The Encyclopedia Britannica.

But let me back up a second.

Do you all remember seeing adverts for the Encyclopedia Britannica in crapazines like “The Reader’s Digest” way back? They were the ultimate reference books; they were always leather bound, always impenetrably thick and always left on people’s shelf gathering dust. I think that there was an edition that came with a small bag of genuine house dust (now with 100% dead human skin cells!) that you could sprinkle liberally on your tomes, so it looked like you’ve had them there for years.

But my point being is this: not many people had/have the EB on their shelves, and even fewer casually refer to them. So when I heard that a guy announced to all his friends that he was going to read the entire Britannica, all 33,000 pages of it, I was more than slightly intrigued.

The book is structured, chronologically, alphabetically and more than a little ironically, just like it’s inspiration. Rather than a dry journal about a pretty dry subject, he made it a letter by letter, volume by volume, fact upon fact filled journey that we take together. Remarkably, through this tidal wave of “fun facts”, “hilarity” actually “ensued”.

Jacobs is genuinely charming, self effacing, vulnerable and at all times, honest. And it’s a refreshingly self assured man that can make the funniest stories in the book about his own misfortune. And I do love it when people write about feelings that we think but don’t often say. Through years of envy about his dad’s achievements, through his many attempts to make his wife pregnant, and through many attempts to find out how to measure intelligence, Jacobs’ quest to be the ’smartest person in the world’ finds us with a man that just wants to improve his self worth, through the only means he knows how. Reading.

A thoroughly enjoyable book, written by a former Entertainment weekly staff writer and the current Esquire magazine editor, that takes a good look at the EB and stares it dead in the face.

So before I finish here are a few fun facts to take away:

Lightening travels upwards. There’s an initial strike, but the actual bolt of ‘light’ actually goes from the ground to the sky.

The opposite feeling to ‘deja vu’ (where you feel that situation that you’ve never been through is strangely familiar), is known as jamais vu, (where a familiar situation is now feels like it’s happening for the first time).

*Newly added by request, because three is so much better than two.
The Estrucans (a pre roman Italian civilization) wrote in boustrophedon style which meant that each line flowed from left to right then right to left, alternating from line to line, so the eye never travels needlessly across the page like an old type writer.