The Opposite of the Royal We

The Opposite of the Royal We What Solo Designers Know RGD Creative Directions 2020

I’m going to open with some quotes from solo designer and incredible design writer, Frank Chimero. In his piece Everything Easy is Hard Again, he says: “I run a boutique design studio, which is a pretentious way of saying that it’s tiny with a capital-T.”

“The studio began in 2002 as a man (that’s me) with a laptop and a stack of paper at a desk in the corner of his apartment.” “…Everything is different now, but I am still at my desk.”

When RGD contacted me about this talk with the topic “what solo designers know”, I immediately thought of a bunch of special and unique things that we and we alone have experienced….

You know, these things.

I guess we’re not so special anymore. So let’s not talk about that—let’s take a trip back to 2008.

I had just decided I was going to be a graphic designer. Problem was, I didn’t know the first thing about graphic design. So I turned to the internet. The design web back was an interesting place, full of inspiring studios churning out amazing work and writing about it—this was before “content marketing” when design blogs existed for the love of it.

There I found my new heroes, studios with names like Brand Nu (Radim Malinic)

NoPattern (Chuck Anderson)

Silence Television (Gianmarco Magani)

Signalnoise (James White)

ISO 50 (Scott Hansen, later Tycho)

Beyond their weird and wonderful names (I miss those days), these studios had something in common; they were just one person. Perhaps back then, there was a feeling that hiding behind the facade of a larger company brought “legitimacy” in the eyes of potential clients. And so I followed suit. I adopted a pseudonym that masked my head count. Which happens to be equal to the head count of my physical body.

In recent years, there has been something of a coming out by solo designers. We have embraced our oneness, often times to our benefit. All of which has me wondering: what is the opposite of the Royal We?

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned in my time working solo.

(How about “the Common I”?)

First and foremost, relationships are crucial. This is true for everybody but especially true when you and your company are one and the same. There is no biz dev. No sales team. Account management. Nothing. In addition to a source of joy and health, your relationships are your meal ticket.

I’m going to tell you about a friend of mine, Zev. We met via a mutual friend with whom I tagged along for dinner with Zev’s flatmate at the time. Zev had recently quit his job in urban planning and was figuring out what to do next. I should mention, his dad is a rabbi.

Being a rabbi’s son with an interest in urban planning, Zev was curious about particular buildings in his neighbourhood that looked like they had once been synagogues. He started documenting them on Google Maps, which turned into a project he called the Interactive Museum of Jewish Montreal.

Fast forward a few years and the museum is running walking tours, pop-up exhibits and special projects including food programming. With a full-time team and student fellowships, the museum was starting to outgrow the logo Zev had designed himself. Zev felt it was time to drop the word “interactive”—the museum was becoming as physical as it was virtual. With no permanent space at this point, the city streets themselves were the museum.

We hunkered down in a meeting room and discussed all the things the museum had done to this point, and where they wanted to go. We talked about the museum’s ethos, values, audiences. Symbolism, metaphor, aesthetics. We pretty much designed the logo there and then.

From there, my job was fairly straightforward. Finish the mark, build out the system, done.

This project set them on their way to bigger success, rallying the team and guiding their communications moving forward. They felt energised for future curation, fundraising and outreach. Two years later, MJM would secure a physical location.

The project was a game-changer for my career too. Suddenly I had “branded a museum”. The work got picked up by a few design blogs and landed me a finalist spot in Openbrand’s Rising Stars competition. After an emotionally turbulent (and financially dismal) first year as a freelancer, I was onto something. This leads me to my second lesson:

Do Good Small Work. I mean, do good big work too, but make the smaller gigs count. Not everybody can afford Pentagram. But everybody should have access to good design. Equally, indie designers don’t get a pass on quality because we don’t have five offices or 17 interns.

In his talk Tall Tales from a Large Man, Aaron Draplin talks about balancing jobs for Nike with jobs for his friend’s hot dog stand. He mentions the power we all have to help the little guy.

As my career has progressed, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some very large companies, but two strange things tend to happen on those projects:

1. I usually can’t show the work
2. We usually don’t get to take many risks

Often, the smaller clients—just one person trying to bring an idea into the world—are the more fun projects. They can facilitate really ambitious work and provide a chance to grow with your client and help them become that dream name you can put on your list.

Even within something larger, the magic tends to happen in small groups. For example, I was part of a team of 5 that worked on the TEDxToronto visual identity in 2018. We were able to create a great dynamic as a scrappy unit within the larger conference, which itself sits inside of the TEDx family.

This is what the talk is really about, let’s face it. Just an excuse to ramble about houseplants.

There’s a kind of scaffolding that exists within organisations: “we need someone to play this particular role in this particular way, so we will hire and train for that outcome.” I feel like as solo designers, we build our own scaffolding as we climb it.

The thing is, your career is like a growing vine. Sure, it’ll climb up whatever structure is there to support it but ultimately, it needs to find its own shape. I don’t know how many of you have plants—when you first bring one home, there’s an adjustment period. It might lose a bunch of leaves or lean in one direction, it’s just getting comfy in its new environment.

I put this in in every talk, but it illustrates what I’m getting at.

There’s a tension in navigating where you want to go vs where you’ve been. Since setting up shop, I’ve been able to shape my practice to suit exactly how weird I am.

In the last 3 years this has meant expanding into mural work…

Making weird art…

And weirder art.

Whether you work within a larger structure or you create your own, you will eventually start to understand your own shape as a designer.

Some of you will end up super broad like me, conducting research and facilitating strategy sessions and animating and painting and programming and editing video. Some of you will find one true love —hand lettering or magazines or augmented reality.

We all grow new leaves, put down others and hopefully, lean towards the sun.

Thanks for your time, I’ll be glad to answer any questions about life as a solo designer.