R

The Figure / Ground

Relationship
Michael Bierut
R
In an interview with
Adrian Shaunessey,
the legendary graphic
designer Peter Saville
once mentioned something
valuable he learned ten
years into his career: that
there is so much more to
design than “just designing.”

Just designing? Just

designing? As a design
student graduating nearly
thirty years ago, I would
have been stunned to
hear this. Designing was
everything to me. I hadjust
spent five years in design
school. I had entered
college as someone who
could do a nice pencil
drawing of a bowl of fruit. I
spent the next sixty months
moving shapes around on
grids, manipulating squares
of colored paper, resolving
compositions, drawing
letterforms, learning
the difference between
Helvetica and Univers and
between Herbert Bayer and
Herbert Matter, redrawing a
logo a hundred times until
it was perfect, calculating
the column lengths of
Garamond set 12/13 on
a 35 pica measure, and )
for this was the point of it
all ) learning the difference
between good design and
bad design.
there is so much
more to design than
“just designing.
When I graduated, my goal
was to work with all my
heart to create the former
and avoid (nay, obliterate
from the face of the earth)
the latter. And now I learn
that not everything’s about
designing? What else is
there? But it’s true. I spent
five years transforming myself
into a designer. But what had
I been before? That’s simple:
I had been a regular person,
like most other people in
the world. As it turns out, it’s
those people who actually
make it possible (or difficult,
or impossible, depending)
or designers to do their
work. And Saville was right:
most of that work isn’t about
designing.
RQ This is the secret of
success. If you want to be
a designer, no matter how
compelling your personal
vision or how all-consuming
your commitment, you need
other people in order to
practice your craft.

Not all projects need clients,

of course. But unless you’re
independently wealthy,
you’ll need to finance the
production of your work.
This means persuading
people to hire you, whether
it’s bosses at first, or, once
you’re on your own, clients.
And people always have a
choice. They can hire you or
they can hire someone else.
How can you get them to
hire you?
A good question, and
although it has nothing to do
with actually doing design
work, you’ll need an answer
for it if you ever intend to
actually do any design work.
Once you’re doing design
work, you’ll face another
challenge: how do you get
someone else to approve
the work you’ve created
and permit it to get out into
the world? But, you might
protest, certainly they’ll
recognize good design
work when they see it!
After all, you do, and your
classmates did, and your
teachers did. Ah, but that
was in the rarified world of
design school.
You are now back in the world
of regular people. And regular
people require patience,
diplomacy, tact, bullshit and
very occasionally brute force
to recognize good design, or,
failing that, to trust that you
can recognize it on their behalf.
Again, this is hard work, and
work that, strictly speaking, has
nothing to do with designing.

Finally, once your work is

approved, your challenge is
to get it made. This may mean
working with collaborators
like writers, illustrators,
photographers, type designers,
printers, fabricators,
manufacturers and distributors

It also means working with

people who may not care
about design, but who care
passionately about budgets
and deadlines. Then the whole
process starts again. In some
ways it gets easier each time. In
other ways it’s always the same.

I remember a lesson from my

first year of design school, a
series of exercises that we did to
learn about the figure / ground
relationship, the relationship
between the thing that’s the
subject of a visual composition
and the area that surrounds it.
For me, this is one of the most
magical things about graphic
design.

It’s the idea that the spaces

between the letterforms are
as important as the letters
themselves, that the empty space
in a layout isn’t really empty
at all but as filled with tension,
potential and excitement. I
learned you ignore the white
space at your peril.
s
R T his e ss ay has b e e n
a d a pte d from th e
for e word to G ra phic
D e sign: A Us e r ’s M anual
by Adrian S haun e ss ey,
publish e d this month by
L awr e nc e K ing .
layout: fernando padilla.
In many ways, the
lesson of success in
design is the same,
and it’s a lesson that
every great designer
has learned one way
or another. Designing
is the most important
thing, but it’s not
the only thing. All of
the other things a
designer does are
important too, and
you have to do them
with intelligence,
enthusiasm,
dedication, and love.
Together, those things
create the background
that makes the work
meaningful, and, when
you do them right, that
makes the work good.