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Andrew Blauvelt: I am pleased to welcome Eddie Opara of Map Office to the Walker Cinema.
Eddie was born in Britain, where he received his bachelor degree in graphic design from
the London College of Printing.
A multidisciplinary designer, Eddie's work encompasses a wide range of media and a diverse
range of applications. His projects include large-scale electronic motion-graphic installations,
innovative intranets and software interfaces, print packaging and interior graphics for
clients such as Disney Imagineering, Morgan Stanley, Prada, Studio Museum Harlem, the
Brooklyn Museum, and the furniture company Vitra. Eddie has worked for such companies
as Art Technology Group, Imaginary Forces, 2x4, and, of course, his recently formed Map
Office.
His work has appeared in publications such as "Archis," "ID Magazine," "Graphis," "Surface,"
and "Elle," among others, and has won numerous awards, such as the Art Directors Club gold
medal, the AIG 365 show, and, of course, "ID Magazine" awards. He has taught at the School
of Architecture, Columbia University, and is a critic at the Yale University School
of Art, where he received his MFA.
Please help me welcome Eddie Opara of Map Office.
[applause]
Eddie Opara: Thanks. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Andrew, and everybody in Minneapolis
and Minnesota.
Well, where do I begin? This glorious flag that we have here. As you well know, I'm born
and bred in Great Britain, and I'm a Londoner, but I now live in New York City. And I'm just
going to talk to you a little bit about where I'm from, how my work has evolved, and where
we're sort of going from there.
I was brought up in Wandsworth, London. And as you can tell, I'm not white.
[laughter]
Eddie: But, I was an English schoolboy, and I actually did look like that, but not in
the white sense. Shorts and cap and a little bag that I always would lose, and my mom would
get upset and everything.
I grew up in Wandsworth, and I went to school in Wimbledon, which is well-known for its
tennis. And I was sort of taught by Jesuit priests, which is always a handful. The Jesuit
priests, that is. But, they instilled in me an opportunity to think not as an individual
but to help people as a whole, to understand people in many different ways. And they were
amazing teachers.
And one person that really sort of affected me at the time I was growing up in Britain,
and it was a pretty harsh time, was the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. One day, I go to
school, and my teacher says, "Boys, we have taken away your milk. You have no milk to
drink today." And I was really upset because every kid in Britain had a glass of milk or
a bottle of milk at lunchtime, for their health. And at this time, she came into power and
she took it away from me. And I was really upset. I was like, "What am I going to do?"
So I went home, and I talked to my mom, and she said, "I'm sorry about this, but this
is what's happening." And they called her Maggie, Maggie, the milk snatcher. Margaret
Thatcher, the milk snatcher. It was really demoralizing to me. And so my mother started
talking to me about the Labour Party. I'm not saying when I'm six years old that I'm
going to join the Labour Party, but it made sense in regards to the idea of sharing information,
sharing what you do as a person, collaborating with people, and not being an individual that
is just all out to get money for money's sake.
And that's what we were living in, in this particular time, in Great Britain. We were
living in a time where money was rife. They wanted to take away the Health Service, which
is still around today, and it still works pretty damn well, take away education, everything
from you. We were pretty well-off, but my mother believed in this particular system,
and so do I. I'm not saying this is an advert. [laughs] I'm just saying this is where I come
from.
And so that sort of idea of sharing and the idea of collaboration, and the idea that you
don't really own anything, everybody owns what you do, is really important, is a pertinent
part of who I am. And so the idea of Map came about in that particular regard. How does
one understand, to share to collaborate, to amalgamate a group of people that can work
well and develop many different things in many different ways.
So, I'm going to go through some of the people at Map. Actually, all the people at Map Office.
There are only five of us. And this is BK, Brankica. This is Raed, or we call him Ray-Ray.
This is Frances, or Frank. And this is Salvador, Sal.
We are the Map Office, and we believe in the aspect of everybody does everything. You're
not just a book designer. You're not just an engineer. You're not just a writer. We
sort of come together as one and we sort of work the system out. We work the particular
problems out.
And I'm going to explain what we do over the course of this particular lecture. But, right
now, I'm going to tell you a little bit about where I actually come from, from the point
of view of design.
So, in?I think it was, yes, in 1999, I worked for a design company called Art Technology
Group. And that is in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's still around, but it doesn't work the
same it used to. Right out of school, I joined them, and we started building amazing, different
applications, like internal apps or social-media apps that people use today, similar to like
Facebook. And people didn't really understand what I was doing. And I was all about the
idea of collaboration, and how to connect people together, how you can get more information
out of groupings, out of a community. And nobody really understood that.
And in around about 1999, I started to wane. I wanted to go to the big city, New York City.
And I had a great opportunity. A friend of mine, Mikon van Gastel, who was one of the
creative directors at Imaginary Forces, called me up at two o'clock in the morning one night
and said, "Would you like to join us?" And I was like, "Sure, but what for?" He was like,
"Well, we're doing this project. And I can't really tell you about the instances about
it, but do you know anything about variables?" [laughs]
And I sort of got on the phone and I said, "Yes." Variables in regards to computer-science
terminology. I said, "Yes, I know a lot about variables, and I can actually help you in
that particular regard."
He says, "Oh, great. Do you want to join Imaginary Forces?" I'm like, "I'm not going to LA."
He says, "Oh, don't worry. We're going to move to New York, and we're going to do this
project, and you can do other projects as well." And I was like, "Yeah, let me think
about it." And over the course of that particular year, I decided to move.
And the project that we built was for Morgan Stanley. And if anybody's been to Times Square,
it's really not the Morgan Stanley building anymore. It was the Lehman Brothers building.
[laughs] Now it's the Barclays Bank building.
So, not many people know this, that it's the largest screen in the country. It's a block
and a half long, and five to six stories high. And the mission of Imaginary Forces was to
design and build a very intelligent interactive system?well, actually, a motion-graphic interactive
system?that would work to brand Morgan Stanley within this part of Times Square, which is
not the main part. It's just a little bit up the road, but it's within the zonal area
where New York basically states, "If you want to build a new building, you must put up a
screen."
[laughter]
Eddie: It's by law. It's a law. [laughs] It's quite incredible. You have to put a screen
up.
So, that was the mission. And so we developed different pieces that would actually work
for this particular screen. Well, I think Mikon was working over two years. I was working
over a year and a little bit. It kind of grew on us. It's actually still one of my favorite
pieces that I've ever done.
And what makes it really interesting is that it's not just only motion graphics. It's the
whole idea that it had a sense of intelligence. It understood when to change itself. It understood
to push more content to the screen at different, particular times. And that's the essence of
Times Square. It's not just about ads anymore. It's about the intelligence to really attract
people to the information at large, to share content with it.
And so this particular scene is actually called X-Ray, and it's basically sharing the content
of the building to the people on the street. And that's what I call interesting.
OK. The next project, and I'm going to sort of jump over this, is that within that time
frame of Imaginary Forces, that project was only up for two months, because of 9/11. It
was very unfortunate. That was the cause to say, "OK, I think my time is done here. Let
me move on."
So, I moved on to a company that's pretty well-known, to 2x4, to my professor, Michael
Rock. I actually quit my job at Imaginary Forces in the toilet. [laughs] I got a call,
and I had to sit in the bathrooms and say, "OK, yeah, I'll take the job." [laughs]
And one of the projects that Michael put me on, at first, was Vitra. I don't think I have
anything to show for Vitra today. But, I also did Prada as well. And it's a great opportunity
that, one, you're just dropped into this particular realm to do Prada. Oh, my God! That's crazy!
And so, one of my first projects was this project that I'm going to show you. And I
was asked, I think it was about, I would say, four o'clock in the afternoon, to design a
one-ratio for Prada, the wallpaper. And I'm like, "Oh, my God. What am I going to do?"
And they said, "You must do it by 11 o'clock tomorrow morning." [laughs] And it's like,
"Oh, God, New York City is really a bad place for me."
[laughter]
Eddie: And so, what I did is I really thought about typography. I said, "Typography is the
quickest way to do this!" Just putting type on this wall for the runway. And it was really
for the men's show for Prada.
And then what I did is I said, "Screw this. I need to do something a little bit more about
me, my identity, who I want to be." And so I said, "Let me do myself." Well, it doesn't
really look like me. Well, depending on what part you look at...
[laughter]
Eddie: It sort of depends on what part.
Anyway. So, I developed this piece. And it was actually at Christmastime, and I actually
had to go on holiday. And Michael said, "OK, what have you got?" So I showed what I had.
And he's like, "Oh, this is interesting. Can you make this six-feet high?" Six-foot-two,
my height. And I'm like, "Sure." So I printed out this piece that was six-feet high. He's
like, "OK, great." And then I just left to go on holiday. I came back, and they did this.
[laughs]
[laughter]
Eddie: They took my body, [laughs] and they put it in the runway show. They took out particular
bits, of course.
[laughter]
Eddie: It was interesting. It's sort of like this aspect of I didn't really care what Michael
was going to do with it because I believed in what he was going to do. And it was like
the idea not only of sharing your content but knowing that that person's going to take
it, even if he's your boss, or he's not your boss, he's going to take it and he's going
to do something good with it. I don't care. Whoever takes my stuff is going to generate
something out of it, and I'm always intrigued of what the result is going to be.
And [laughs] so I was very, very, very happy about that. So, was Miuccia Prada. She said
that she really loved the modeling, and she wanted it in the store in New York City. And
so we started to produce another set of pieces for the Epicenter. Michael said the same thing,
"Can you produce different modeling structures for that particular store?" And I said, "Yes."
With help from one of my great friends, Fabian Tejada, we produced pieces like this for the
store. Usually, what would happen is handbag or watches or shoes would be stuck on there.
And we just wanted to make sort of a world that Michael actually called "The Futurama."
And this is downstairs. Have you ever gone to this store? You've got to go. It is really
amazing. And the opportunity to do something like that is fantastic. They have this sort
of mirrored back of the staircase. The idea of reflecting off that was really intriguing.
I'll show you another piece that I did as well in this particular store.
And actually, this is me, crouching on the 2x4 floor, while Fabian is actually trying
to sculpt me, [laughs] and then I colored that from there.
So, these are particular alcoves, downstairs, in the bottom half of the store, and this
is how we sort of generated this whole world of the models. And it's more like the multiplicity
of Eddie has come about and created this.
And so, also within the Prada store, you have screens ubiquitously placed, serendipitously,
around the store. And you have the time frame that you have to produce this; it's usually
about six weeks, to do everything. And this is just downstairs. And there was about 20
to 22 videos that we produced out of this whole piece. You work very fast. [laughs]
We work very fast. It was just myself and Fabian and, I think, Glen Cummings and Anisa
Suthayalai.
One of the things about the pieces that you have just seen that's sort of intriguing?and
you'll see some other video pieces in a second?is that the work has been utilized in different
places. They loved it in the store in New York. They loved it in Hong Kong. But, then
I got an email, and this is after I spent my time at 2x4, from Michael. It's like, "Check
this out. Your stuff is still being used, two years after the fact, in Taipei." [laughs]
And it's OMA-AMO, introducing the Taipei Tower. They were having a party in the Taipei Tower
about this. And I don't know whether it was a Prada party or not. And it was quite interesting
how they're using these video pieces that we had created in that particular time frame.
It's like, again, I don't mind people, I don't care about sharing and utilizing. And it's
always amazing what they do with it. [laughs] So I'm really quite happy about that.
This is video from the Prada store itself that we created. And do you recall the three
screens in that particular Bay Area? These are the particular videos that we created
from that. So, it was like a shuffling system. We didn't have that much time to produce them,
so we started to create a sort of jukebox-y system to actually keep changing over the
videos from time to time to time. And it was a good structure to utilize.
And throughout the whole store, you have all these different models doing different things.
So, it's really the extrapolation of the work that came out of me modeling myself, and it's
now generated this.
Again, here is another video, running in the store itself. If I fast-forward this, I think
I can get a different video here.
So, we did different models from different angles. They had mannequins sitting on different
modeling sets. So, they have these all pitted around the actual store. So, it was really
an interesting, intriguing project to deal with.
This is also downstairs in the alcove area. And these are sort of title screens with the
models walking around, up and down these particular screens.
My last project at 2x4 was quite interesting. Michael received a call from Rem Koolhaas,
stating that the next theme should be a multinational company invading the Prada store, in this
very Rem Koolhaas-y kind of manner. So, Michael explains this to me, and he gives me full
reign of doing whatever I needed to do.
And so I was kind of interested in the idea of the word "Guilt," actually without a "U"
to guilt something, to frame it in a particular manner, as it were. And Michael told me to
change it to a "U" because he really wanted it to stand out, and no New Yorker's going
to understand G-I-L-T. And so we did that. And the funny thing. This is pretty much where
I'm standing. This is the entrance to the store. So, let's say you have $5000 to burn,
and you open the door and you see that.
[laughter]
Eddie: It was just like, "Wow, these guys have full reign on doing these things."
And so the whole idea of this sort of false multinational company was?and this wallpaper
is actually also a block long?to create wallpaper that showed you the brand identity of "Guilt,"
and the dos and don'ts of the system. Also, it's quite fun and sort of intriguing to do
that, because how many people, in their lifetime, actually see [laughs] brand structuring? Not
many at all. So, these are the particular items that have been created, from this imaginary
brand.
Also, benches that people sit on, and how modular they are. Also, downstairs. So, the
idea, the mirror actually shows you the word "Guilt." So, when it's printed on the floor,
it's actually the other way. It's reverse. So, when you're sort of looking up, saying,
"Oh, I love this bag!" and you look around and turn and see "Guilt." It's like, great.
[laughter]
Eddie: Also in Thai. This is from Denise. She did this.
And sort of brings me to an identity that 2x4 is getting pretty well-known for that
I designed when I was there. And it also sort of embodies what I'm thinking of in regards
to the flexibility of a brand identity, the idea of it not always changing, but ever-growing
into something else, or the idea that it has different values in different manners, depending
on the way you use it.
This is all the Brooklyn Museum logos put together as one. You'll never see it like
this, which is a really sad situation. But, the whole point of this particular mock was
to reflect what Brooklyn was?actually, is, sorry?that around it, it's diverse. It is
so diverse, you don't know what it is and you don't know what it's going to do next.
And inside, it is solid as a rock, like everybody's a Brooklynite. And that's what it means. That's
what it does. And you can do anything to it over the course of time.
So, the idea of sharing is really out of the picture. The idea of transformation is now
coming full-tilt. And I feel as though this is occurring a lot more within brands now
than it has been 10, 15, 20, 30 years before.
Brooklynites see this particular identity, and they say, "Wow, that's an intriguing concept."
Some of them just like it for its aesthetic structure, which is fine, and that's all well
and true. But, I feel as though, for me, it's a starting point for the idea of getting into
a brand and understanding that brands can never stay still, that they need to adjusted
over the course of time, by the community at large, if so. So, you are, in a sense,
not in control anymore.
This is another one of the mocks. And then these are the eight that they actually utilize
in the museum itself.
So, that was one of my last pieces, and Guilt was actually my last piece out of 2x4.
Yes, this gentleman is a wonderful man, as we all know. And this is sort of introducing,
now, some of the work that I've done at the Map Office. And the Map Office was actually
started in 1995, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a bus going to a friend's wedding. [laughs]
My best friend, George Plesko, and I were a little bit, not bored, but pissed-off with
what we were doing. I was more pissed-off at my life than his. He had a kid and a wife
and so on and so forth at that particular time.
And we started the Map Office, and it was based on George's thesis at Yale on mapping.
The whole idea of mapping is that you can map pretty much anything you want, and it's
all about the interpretation of the user. And we were like, "That's a pretty nice name?MAP.
Let's go and check it up on the Internet. MAP.com. No. No "effing" way that's going
to happen."
So, we went through a whole structure of trying to define a name and the Map Office, kind
of stuck. We still use that particular mark that you saw earlier?MAP?and that's what people
call us.
The reason why this gentleman is up here is that within two years of?actually three years
of working with MAP, we were invited by the Wolfsonian Museum in Florida to create posters
for their "Thoughts of Democracy" theme. We were like, "Democracy? What does democracy
mean to us?"
I was really curious because democracy means to me?very different. I don't really know.
I'm not a citizen of this country and so I opened it up to the office. I wanted to see
what my guys could achieve. We watched and we read a lot of content about democracy and
we came to this particular point of view that we actually don't know what it is.
It's so many different things and we weren't being cynical at any point in time. The visual
pieces that we came out with were because of this bloke. The idea that he has turned
my employees into bitter people.
The idea that they don't know what democracy really means because he has really consumed
people in a structure that is not making any sense anymore and so these are the projects
that?these are the posters that we came up with.
"Democracy is the Helvetica of Politics"?this is from Salvador. At first glance when you
see it, even as a designer, you are like, "Yeah. All right. I know of Helvetica. That's
a typeface that I've got on my machine, right? I use that all the time. Oh! I see. Yes. That's
pretty much a standard. That's just a standard of politics."
Then, Dave McKinnon developed it. We didn't know that?we were thinking that they were
going to pick one of them, that sort of thing.
Also this is another one from James?"Kiss the Fist of Democracy." This is, I would say,
the most impressive one of them all, where the idea of democracy is "shoving it down
somebody's throat." Is it the correct way to explain freedom?
What it seems to us as the right thing to do, to others, people are questioning "What
is democracy? Does it actually work for us. Is it the right way to go." You cannot stop
somebody thinking that or even doing that. You can't do it.
One of the things is that we have to understand our particular actions. When we go in somewhere
and we start to preach the way we are, we don't understand the cultures or the structures
of that particular country. We have to be very, very careful. I think this poster really,
really explains that?from my point of view, anyway.
Moving on. Let's go through some marks that actually have a lot of meaning of where we're
going for the future. I talked earlier about the whole idea of the flexibility and the
transformation of a particular mark.
It depends upon the client. We always try and sell this point of view that "your mark
can be transformative and adjusted and flexible." Not all clients buy that and at this particular
stage, it's always quite hard to get them into that particular flow.
I just wanted to show people some other designs that we have actually created. This is for
Sorg Architects in Washington DC and they're well-known for building embassies around the
world.
One of the great things about Sorg is that they're female-owned. It's mother and daughter.
They're pretty damn big and they've really cut themselves a really nice chunk out of
politics?a political building, as you could say.
One of the things that they didn't want to be is they didn't want to be female-looking
at all. We were like, "Ooh! This is going to be tough for us. This is going to be very,
very difficult. So, you want to be masculine-looking?" They were like, "No. We don't. We want to
be taken for who?what we believe in."
That was super-key. "We believe in construction. We believe in organization. Modularity." That
needs to be in effect. They also believed in the idea of transformation, so we developed
this particular mark. I'm only showing the mark and we have different structures of how
the mark actually works.
It's quite an interesting system where it does look very constructive and it looks like
you can move the blocks around. It's very playful. We enjoy that. We always like to
have that opportunity to expand upon those types of particular projects.
Others are not like that. One is The Baffler. I don't know if anybody knows what The Baffler
is. It's a literary magazine that died twice. It died in 1996, came back, and died again
in 2004, and came back again this year. It's a really amazing literary magazine.
One of the things that the publisher, Conor O'Neil, wanted from us is to make sure that?of
course, like a lot of literary magazines?make sure that the writing is not crowded by the brand itself. That was
pretty difficult. It was a very left wing orientated book come magazine.
We tried our best to turn it into something which was partly nostalgic but yet contemporary
as well. We wanted to make sure that the mark showed that. This typeface was actually designed
in 2010?I'm sorry?2009; the Leitura.
We basically re-adjusted it slightly with the "B" to re-affirm that. Sometimes, I do
talk about being contemporary enough, but we also want to go back and make sure the
client is really happy about the ongoing process of being nostalgic and contemporary at the
same time.
We need to create that type of balance in our work and this is one of the marks. The
actual book is actually in the bookstore outside and you can also buy these online at TheBaffler.com.
Another mark here is North8. So, I'm going to switch back and forth. I like to do that
a lot in regards to what I am looking at. North8 was actually a luxury condominium in
New York City. I said I wasn't going to talk about this, but I am. Part and parcel of some
of the work that we do is luxury condominiums and I don't like to show too much of that,
but this was an interesting one.
Does anybody know who the Toll Brothers are? The largest developer in the country and to
us, actually the world, and this is one of their pieces, and we were really ***-scared
in regards to building for them. We had seen their McMansion types of things, and we were
like, "What are they going to build in New York City? This is going to be interesting."
And so they just left us to do what they needed to do to sell this particular piece. This
is a building in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and we needed to sell it to a very young crowd
of buyer. And one of the things that I wanted to do is not only design this particular mark,
like this, but also educate the client about the mark. So, I don't know if anybody knows
what I'm using here, but it's used Johnston from the London Underground.
And I don't think I'm supposed to?I can't use this in Britain. I'd get arrested. So,
I used it in America. I was like, "This is a beautiful typeface. I'm going to use it.
I don't care." And they really liked it because it's really bold, very pronounced. And one
of the things is at meetings I would actually educate them about typefaces, and they would
always be like, "Oh, oh, he's going to do his quiz. Let's get ready!" [laughs]
So, I started doing quizzes for the clients, because they were not introduced to things
that I know, and that's an important factor. If we can all actually do a pop quiz for a
client, I think that things would go a lot smoother in regards to developing for them.
Again, this is another mark that we developed for Della Valle Bernheimer. It's a very long-winded
name of a company. LLC, sorry. Just had to add that to the end. And they are a wonderful
group of architects that we worked for, and one of the things that we wanted to develop
here was something so simple, but yet it wasn't solidified. It was never?you know, you're
always reading the outline. You're not reading into it. And this is one of the marks that
we generated for them. Actually, this is the final mark that we built for them.
Here is another one, for JET. This is for Jury Ethics and Trust. This is for UCLA's
Rumble. And we are sort of getting back to our comical use here, and this is a mark that
also changes, it adjusts over the course of time slightly but surely. And talking about
UCLA, this is a mark that we really, really loved?and I say "loved" because they don't?they
can't use this anymore.
This is for the architecture school, this is the one I'm talking about, the architecture
and urban design school. We developed this because I was asked to redesign pretty much
all their collateral for them. They wanted to become one of the top?the top architecture
school in the country. They wanted to beat out Harvard. They wanted to beat out Yale
and Princeton.
They have an amazing faculty for a public school, and they have an amazing director
in Hitoshi Abe who wanted to pronounce them as the best. So, they have Thom Mayne, Greg
Lynn, Neil Denari, some of the really top names. And one of the things that they didn't
ask me for was an identity. And I was like, "This can't happen. You mean?well, what are
you using now?" And they were like, "Well, we use this, and we use this, and we use this,
and we can use this sometimes." I was like, "Yeah, what about that one?" "Yeah, yeah,
that's right."
And so it was like, no. To solidify this structure, this message, you need something that's going
to work throughout, it's going to resonate. And with Neil Denari's help, we actually developed
this particular mark. It was used for about a year, and we looked at analytics from?of
website, from different brochures, from the students and other faculty from different
schools, from parents. And their intake, the amount of students they wanted, they had to
increase, I think, by 60%. I mean, it was like enormous amounts of people who wanted
to go to this particular school.
And I'm not saying it's only because of this mark, because of the message that was occurring.
Now, the university came in, they stepped in, and they spent, I think, hundreds of thousands
of dollars developing what they have now. And it's a bit unfair to say that it's?you
know, you could have done it in about 50 minutes. But, somebody really got paid on that job.
I mean holy crap, it's Optima Slanted.
And the whole university uses it. You know, I looked at it. I was like, "That's Optima,"
and then, "Oh, that's Optima. OK, right."
[laughter]
Eddie: And the University came in and said, "You cannot use this mark. You must use this
instead." And the school fought very hard for us, tooth and nail, and unfortunately
lost. And so we were a little mortified, and so were they, a lot more mortified than we
are.
And so what we did [laughs] is we created a different mark for them, one that transforms
each and every time. So, we took the mark that they have now and we started to create
different configurations out of it. So, the university couldn't really say what it was.
It doesn't say "UCLA," does it, eh? It doesn't say anything. And this is actually one of
them.
And so if you go to the website, you'll actually see it, like, transform itself. And we've
also used this in different places, but we'll also now, actually, have just normal typography
that they use now and again. And so we were really intrigued by this. We were really intrigued
at the whole idea of creating a transformative mark. And I think if we get any chance, we're
going to try to do this again and again and again. It's very important to us.
I'm just going to show you an animation of the previous mark that we used to have.
[telephone rings with computer tones]
Eddie: Goodbye.
[laughter]
Eddie: OK. Mum. OK. This is my mum. Hi, mum. That's my?one of my aunts. I'm Nigerian. And
when I was a kid, my mother always said to me, "You know, Eddie, you've got to finish
the things that you start." Like clean your room, you start cleaning your room, and you're
like, "Hmm, maybe that table needs to go there." You know? As a designer you're just like,
"Eh," and you're like a little eight-year-old, like, "I think that should go there. Oh, you
know, this is not going to work. I need to go out and play."
[laughter]
Eddie: And then I'd never finish anything I'd do. And my mother said, "You've got to
finish things that you start." And so I'm actually?you know, I've tried very hard to
do that, and then I came to this decision that it doesn't work. You should never finish
what you start, especially in this century. It's not about that. You never will. Sorry,
mum, but you were wrong.
[laughter]
Eddie: And I'm going to show you some pieces that we started, but I doubt we're ever going
to finish them. And one of them is a wall piece, and we kind of call?nicknamed "Stealth."
It doesn't really have a name, but we call it "Stealth." And it kind of came out of these
projects that we were doing for Studio Museum in Harlem, where there's one of our clients.
I love this.
If you ever get the chance to go to New York, go to that museum. It's not really a museum,
it's like a gallery. And it's really beautifully done.
We had the opportunity to do all their literature for them. And I also worked, when I was at
2x4, on their particular logo mark, their identity.
And one of the things that they had at the Studio Museum, they had this rocking parties.
They still do every summer. So, in the summer, go to New York City, and go to Studio Museum
in Harlem, and go to one of those great parties they have in the back. I wanted to celebrate
one of the parties in the summer with a piece for them.
I remember reading Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, when I was younger, and the aspects of
identity, especially being black. And also, the idea of being African American in America.
The majority of the actual piece, of the book, is set in Harlem that Ralph Ellison is actually
writing. One of the sections that affected me a lot, and what I wanted to do was recreate
that in a printed piece.
Can everybody read this? This is "I am invisible. Understand simply because people refuse to
see me." If you go up to it, you cannot see it. This is just an optical play. It's very
intriguing.
This part of the text from Ralph Ellison. It really resonated to us. But, it's not going
to work as it is just flat. It can work as flat. But, as I said, we got to keep moving.
Transformative. Let's change it into something else.
And so, we started to fold it. Fold it even more. And it came out like this. And it looks
like a Stealth bomber, doesn't it?
And actually that was one of our reasons, that we wanted it to look something like a
Stealth bomber. The whole idea of the Stealth is that, it's not really invisible, is it?
Visually it's not invisible.
I mean, everybody knows what a Stealth bomber looks like, but yet, it's supposed to be invisible.
And it is the same sort of thing that Ralph Ellison was trying to portray. I'm a black
man and a very visible person, but in this society, I am seen as invisible.
And so, we were like, OK, we've gone this far. So, what are we going to do with it?
So, we gave them to Studio Museum, and we did something.
We started to put them up on the wall in the studio. This Salvador, and this James. And
this wall, is 13 feet high. It's really long, actually. This is just part of the wall. And
we started to create this sort of message, or wallpaper of the particular piece.
When people came into the studio, they would see this enormous gigantic piece. And they
were like, "How the hell did you do that?" And, "What the hell is it?"
We were like, well, it's like a wallpaper, now to us, or a wall sculpture.
They said, "Can I have one."
I said, "Yeah sure."
So, we fold them, and put them in a plastic bag?we have thousands of them?put them in
a plastic bag, and they come with little pins, and the instructions to pin them to your wall.
And so that's just like, it sort of moved, it sort of graduated from this flat piece,
to a folded piece, to a large wallpaper piece. And we don't know what it will do next. Maybe
it will create a room out of it. So, it's always changing. It's ever adjusting itself.
We really love that whole appeal.
So, I am going to go into identity a little bit more, and sort of like settle down with
the idea of transformation.
This is a book called "Figure," that we designed a year ago. And Glenn, he's an artist, African
American. Gay artist. He came into our offices and he said, "I had these sort of Warholian
prints that I created years ago, sitting around, and they are going to do a show in Paris for
me. Can you produce it?"
And we were like, yeah, we can produce this book for you.
And the great thing about it was that, it was all about identity. At the time, we had
just done Stealth. We were really into this aspect. And we designed this very simple piece
of his work. This is Glenn. Each print, like, very Warholian, is very different from the
next.
And we rarely get the chance to just take something, and make it as interesting, and
inspirational as possible.
I mean, it's really an inspiration to see these pieces, and very calming to me, to look
at this type of work. And it's just about him. Every piece is just about him. And they
are very, very tiny. They are 9x6 inches. Each piece. It's a very delicate sort of type
of book.
So, go back to the Stealth. And this is another marker of what the Stealth is. OK. Transformative,
transformative, transformative. It's an interesting word to use.
This is Tic Toc. And this is really very interesting. We were asked by J. Walter Thompson, JWT,
the New York office, to create a book for them, an annual book, that showcased their
work over that year. And they were going to take the book and not sell it, but give them
out for free.
I mean like, advertising agencies?wow!
Give them out free, it's like a 300 page book for free at Cannes, at the Cannes Advertising
Festival.
And we were like, yes. Nice one. Yes, let's do this.
And the creative director there, Graham Wood, who used to be at Tomato, on one of the partners
Tomato, had this idea about visualization of what JWT is globally. And that sort of
interested me, and what we could do with that within the matter of time of five weeks.
And so we developed Tic Toc. And it's really about what I just said. It sort of visualizes
the company globally over the course of that particular year, and what their interest are,
what they dealt with in those particular campaigns. And so this is the design.
Actually this is printed in Minnesota. In Minneapolis. I can't remember the printer.
And we really, truly, really love it. The exposed spine. And this is part of the interior.
We sort of created these interiors where we are sort of creating these sort of pie charts
that sort of explode out and actually explain what campaigns are where, the introduction?all
that kind of stuff.
And we are sort of calculating information. And over there, we have things like dominant
colors that are used in the campaign for crafts, whether it was on TV or the Internet.
It was well loved by people on the radio, in a location of like Asia. It's in English.
The typography is sans-serif. And the client is Kraft, those types of things. Pulling out
and identifying what is going on. So, that was just a little indicator.
But then we also, within the transitional pages, created systems for JWT, where we looked
at their global score. They have this system where they mark each campaign out of ten,
and as you can see, Africa is non-existent. They don't care?well, it is not that they
don't care about Africa. It is that they don't really sell there at all.
More importantly as you can see, Asia is blowing up real big. So, we started to measure things.
Edward Tufte would have my head for this type of thing. The idea that it sort of indicates
what is going on within the world, at the particular quarters, I think of 2008 and 2009.
Again, here we are looking at the full spectrum. The full spectrum is looking at the visual
aggregates of the principle colors that are used within advertising through the different
regions. You can just say, "JWT, use a little bit more green, please." So, it is really
like the analysis of them, and they really liked it. It was a very sort of truthful,
sort of aspect of things. They use a lot of black and white?oh, my gosh! [laughs]
Again, here we have this on a transitional page called "Fruits of Labor." These are all
the campaigns that we showed. This is a test one, because they have Nestle twice here.
This is actually in the book as well.
The interesting thing about the book, and how the book is inviting to people is not
just through the words inside, but it is actually the cover. The cover is an intraocular. So,
it is changing. It is transforming. So, it is looking at the dominant colors, and it
Tic Toc, Tic Toc. This is Frank holding the book. It is about this thick, and it is about
this thick. So, thank you, Frank.
I will go back to some JWT work later on. Yes. We didn't decide this. This is courtesy
of St. Regis Hotel. This is actually one of our first projects that we did with a company
called "Potion," Potion Design. We shared studio space with Potion Design. They are
my friends, Phillip and Jared, Phillip Tiongson and Jared Schiffman. They are both MIT Media
Lab grads, and they are geniuses, just to let them know. They are absolutely amazing.
They were nominated for a National Design Award last year, and they create touch tables.
I mean, you have one here at the Walker, but these guys, I think at the War Museum in Kansas,
this thing is like 30 feet long, and it is interactive. It is multi-touch. I remember,
we used to have a really tiny space that we used to work in. I mean, I used to be here.
I think Salvador was behind me, and then Phillip is over there, and Jared is over there. How
the hell did they build a 30 foot?it is just an amazing thing what they are doing.
So, this is the St. Regis Hotel in New York City. One of the pieces that we developed,
was this particular?yes, we didn't design the table. Rockwell designed this insane gold
table. It is a multi-touch table for sommelier. Well, really not for sommeliers, for people
to learn more about wine, and the sommelier is really the instructor.
One of the great things about this particular system is that?we developed the user interface,
but the great thing is that you can share information from one user to the next. I am
going to show you some video, because of time. So, you select from the menu, what would you
like? Whether it is red wine, white wine or champagne, sparkling, all that kind of stuff.
Then it sort of tells you about the wine that you are tasting through these little like
petals, that you basically touch whatever it is, the varietal, the tasting, the origins,
the region that it is in, it is very sort of important. This again is another area.
We have gone into this restaurant, it is called "Adour," in the St. Regis. The thing is, if
you ever want to go in and you want to sit down, the wine starts at, well actually a
glass starts at $15, which is not so bad, but that is the only one you can get. Everything
else is like $50 to $80, to $100, to $1, 000. So, you have to just ask for a particular
prosecco for $15, and you can sit down. So, just to let you know, but it is a really great
experience.
So, this is the piece that I wanted to show you. This is actually at working. This is
Jared's fingers. So, we sort of meddle with different user interfaces. We have to understand
what the engineer wants us to do, such as Jared in this particular case. It is all projected
down. It is quite interesting to revolve out, and start touching it. There is a larger dining
table that does exactly the same thing, in the particular course. The idea of scrolling
is there.
So, I wanted to show this, because I wanted to show you?this is an introduction into sort
of interactive software area. In this particular case, we developed the UI, but we also are
developers ourselves. I am going to show you a couple of pieces that we built.
Thank you, Jack.
One of the pieces is this piece for the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York City. The Orchestra
of St. Luke's, every Christmas, has a wonderful educational program. They bring together a
lot of the public schools in New York City at the Apollo Theater in Harlem to learn about
music. We thought that this is a great piece, it is like a pro bono piece, that we would
do something. But, yet again, it is always like, "Oh. You've got like three weeks. Can
you build something interactive please, that we can utilize." It's like, "Oh, my gosh!
You don't understand. This takes time. Why can't you come to us earlier."
So, it is always this sort of like, smash something together, and make sure and pray
to God that it is going to work. So, this is our first time. We've only really done
it twice, because the program director actually left after awhile. This is a lot of public
school audience, and they have four of these a day. The place is packed full of kids and
their teachers, to teach them about Beethoven, and Mozart, and Offenbach, and it was a great
opportunity.
We were like, "How are we going to teach these kids about rhythm?" It is all about rhythm.
The idea of building rhythm and understanding to keep it and maintaining it. We developed
this little thing. It is a drum, with a USB hookup in it, with a bunch of phone-core,
that's right. It is a drum hooked up to a computer. That is one of the best ways to
learn for a child is they start tapping. It's like da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da.
So, we did all of these tests, and we found out that was the optimal way to actually allow
these kids to know what to do. As you can see, this is the prototype, and then this
is the final piece. So, we went out to like Toys"R"Us and actually got a drum, stuffed
it in, hooked it up, and make it work. I was going to say we designed this, modeled it;
it looks like...
[laughter]
Eddie: And what happened?this was a really weird thing?what happened was we didn't know
the setup of the orchestra at the time, and so we thought that the kid was going to be
at the front, but they were at the back. And we were like, "What the hell, they're at the
back. They should be with the conductor. This is all about the kids." So the kids had to
go up the side of the stage, sit at the back, and wait for their turn.
And we had this little laptop, and the drum, and they were tapping on the drum, da-da-da-da,
and somebody was like, "Shut up, shut up." And what would happen is it would project
these types of designs?abstract designs for you. Every time you tried to tap one, it would
create these great graphics, and these are the projections that they created.
And they're all about rhythm, and they would be moving at the same time. The problem with
the Apollo is that it's really hard to film in, so all our video is black. [laughs] But,
these are the screens that we captured with. And the kids were having so much fun. They
thought it was a game. And it's totally transformative. Every kid had?it was an entirely different
sort of construct, every kid that came up. It was quite beautiful. This is Mozart.
The second year we're like, "We're going to do a better one, damn it!" And it's like,
"Oh, you've got two weeks." "Oh, crap!" So, we thought about it, thought about introducing
the drum again, advancing upon it. You know, what are we going to do? So, we decided on
creating something with the Wii, and we wanted the kid to be at the front with the conductor.
It's the best way, you know, to be conducting at the same time as the conductor is doing
it.
And we thought the Wii is the perfect device to do that type of thing. And I have?again,
the video that I have is very, very dark, and we were doing tests in the studio at the
time, so when I show this...
[music on video starts]
Eddie: This is Salvador, yes. And so he actually has the Wii in his hand. And so what is happening
at this particular time?it's all about jazz. It's like, the kid is actually building these
collages at the same time, waving the hand and then clicking it on the Wii at this particular
time.
So, it's a little bit chaotic, and you can only see little parts of it, but it sort of
did the job. We were like, "Wow," totally astounded. And we had different, sort of,
thematic structures. So, this is Salvador again in the studio just trying to work his
interesting magic. No kid is actually going to do that, so... But, that being the case,
OK. That brings me to another area that we are trying to develop in. Knowing that we
create UIs and we've started to slowly program particular things into the Wii and making
our own little devices, we wanted to do something for more, other people. We wanted to develop
a piece of software that anybody could utilize. And we were sort of scratching our heads,
I was scratching my head. It was like, "What could that be? We've only five of us." Well,
at the time we used to be eight, now we're five.
And I was like, "Mm, interesting. Let me think about that. Let me go back in time." And what
we used to develop at our technological group was content management systems, you know,
for the social networks. And you really?it's one of the underlying, hidden systems that
people don't know what they look like, don't give a crap that they do all look alike.
And we said to ourselves, "We can be able to build one of these. It would actually take
our clients off our backs." Like, "How do I do this, and how do I do that, and I don't
understand XML, and I don't..." You know? And this is like, "Oh, my God." We need to
build a piece of software that will allow us to avoid the client. [laughs] And it doesn't
exist, but?and anyway, so, we started building something called the MiG, and this is pretty
much it.
[synthesized music begins]
Eddie: It is a RIA, Rich Internet Application. It's built in Flex. This is the interface,
and it's very, very fast. It's working on a browser. One of the things is that you can
sort the containers. And containers hold all your information, so it's pretty much like
your desktop. And the music, by the way, is actually created by Salvador Orara at the
studio. So, his own original music.
So, this
is the idea of publishing containers. So, if you've ever used Drupal before, you always
have one screen, one screen, one screen, one screen, one screen, one?you know, all these
systems are always one screen. We wanted it to be a little bit more like using a desktop
app. So, the idea here is I've published these, but?and now I've published them. I've grabbed
them, and now I've actually published it, I've taken it out.
And this is how it works. Here is a pending container. And containers are?let me extrapolate
a little bit?they hold media, text, they hold tags and categories. They can be searched
in. They can be filtered. You name it, they can basically do it. So, here is a very simple
manner of un-publishing information and then publishing it again.
Here is adding images. One of the things about the Web is, like, how do I add images to my
website, and why is it so laborious? Why is it so slow and so laborious? Can I speed it
up? So, we made a system where you can upload multiple files from your desktop or your server.
Pull that over a little bit?here we go?and I'm going to go and find some of my images.
Drag the whole photo, boom. I'm in.
Now, I need to publish these. Can I publish them? Sure. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Totally
published, done. You know, those types of elements?oh, these are tags, so should I tag
these? Yeah, they're all tags, and way to go. So, they're totally searchable, now, online,
instantaneously.
Now, I've uploaded them using an XMP system. I don't want to go too technical, but that's
what Adobe uses in Bridge and Extensis and Lightroom, and you can hook it up with the
metadata. I can take three images if I needed to and publish those and add the tags into
those if I needed to, or not.
So, every site that we built since, I think, a year and a half or two years has this on
the back end. And it's now, you could say, agnostic. It doesn't have to be a Flex Flash
on the front end, it could be an HTML front end, and it could be a C++ front end. It doesn't
really care what the front end is. That's the whole point. I mean, that is one of the
major problems of the Internet. I mean, we care too much about the front ends and the
working stuff.
And here's the sorting structure. So, there you go. So, clients like Arrow, JWT uses this.
They actually don't know they have this on the back end of the websites. There's a site
that we just generated called shotbyfans.com, and I'll show you what that is in a moment.
But, that's just deleting, and?so it's like dragging to trash, right? And selecting and
dragging to trash, right? And selecting, and dragging to trash, oh, gone, updated, finished.
One of the things that we want to do with the system is when people see it they go "Holy
crap, this is really cool, this is great." Oh, this is one of my favorite pieces actually.
The idea was actually, how the hell do you link information? Can I link something, can
I find it? Yes, sure I can find it. But, then can I link that information to another container?
Oh yes, sure. Let me go open whatever I want, and then link it. So, on the front end, it
links to another part of the site. Instead of type it again, you don't need that.
So, one of the things that we want to generate, and I might show you the MiG running live
in a minute on one of our sites, is that we want it to be open standard. You can't say
open source because Adobe is not open source. Open standard. We want developers, developers,
developers to come on board, build any type of module they want, and hook it up to the
MiG. Make any kind of manager. They feel like we have tag managers, time managers, media
managers, user managers. If you think of anything else, if you have friends that want to get
into this, we want to make this open so that other people can use it. The whole design
community can have it, use it, any which way they want, but the visual interface structure
stays the same. The functionality stays the same. It feels like the desktop, it's easier
to use.
This is what we call next generation, and we are really serious about it. If we can
be a little bit more like Drupal. Drupal is growing like sky high with all the things
they're doing, but have you ever seen Drupal, have you ever looked at it? Oh my God. They
have books on Drupal, how to use it. And it's too complicated. Engineers know how to use
it, but designers and clients? It's really, really difficult.
We believe that, a whole bunch of other designers who believe it, there's a couple of guys that
actually are Yale grads as well that have their own CMSs. Dan Michaelson is one and
David Reinfurt is another and they have their own. And they started developing because they
were sick and tired of using the same standard stuff. And we are sick and tired of it. And
we want this system to grow and be helpful to the community at large. It's not a MiG.
These are the sites that it's built so far, well some of them actually. This is the kitchen.
This is a second version of the kitchen. The first one was Flash, this one is HTML. Because
they were like "We're sick and tired of Flash, we're sick and tired of Flash." So, I said,
"OK well, I'll build HTML for you and it's actually better." But, it uses the MiG on
the backend, The Baffler. It's a blog actually. It's more of a blog system, and the MiG is
utilized on the backend.
UCLA is Flex. This is one of my favorite sites actually, it has multiple windows that are
translucent. You can actually change the background. You can turn a lot of things off. It's very
interesting. Works similar to like a Windows interface. This is Flex, but it has the MiG
on the background, as a CMS.
This is the latest piece that we did for JWT called "Shot by Fans." They came to us, and
they said, it's always the five week thing, what's up with that, and they said "Can you
make," and this is JWT in London so I'm going to just be a Londoner for a second, "Can you
make us a system that edits video in five weeks?" We're like, "We'll do a test in two
weeks, how about that?" "Yes, sure, no problem."
So, we did a test. And the test didn't really work that well. Then they saw it and said
"Oh this is smashing." And I'm like it doesn't really work that well, what are we going to
do. And they said "Well, we'll give you five weeks to actually sort that out." And so we
did. We created a video editing system using the MiG platform. The underlying infrastructure
that Raed Atoui at Map Office had built out with also Ryan Lauer, Salvador and Frank LaRocca
helped to build out this system. And it's quite interesting. It has 165 configurations
of the same video.
And does anybody know who the Noisettes are? Yes, hands up, a couple of hands. They're
a British band getting really big, and they have this song called "Saturday Night." The budget couldn't give us a media server,
so we had to use a little bit more of an expanded server structure. Media servers cost a little
bit more money, but this system works quite well.
And so what happens is 165 videos are stored on the MiG, and you can select them, any time,
and what you do is a standard sort of drag and drop, you can create your own video version.
You can drag and drop your videos into the particular area. And then you can take the
in and out?I'll use this little button here because I haven't used this, you can take
this little out, and this out in, and you can basically cut, splice the video to precisely
what you want. Once you had that, you can actually run a preview, it would load up.
We used to have on the fly video previewing, and then it started corrupting a lot when
more people started using it, so we had to actually create a loader. Once the Internet
is free of loaders, oh my god, it's going to be so good.
So, you can basically preview what you've created. You can only have three minutes and
18 seconds of video to produce. Once you produce that, you submit it, it generates the video,
sends you an email, or your friends, to check out the video that you've created. It's fun.
There's some crazy, crazy videos that you can actually create.
So these are just other screens that talk about the video. So, here's another slide
about that, editing and submitting, that information. Another thing is once you've created the video,
it's stored on the MiG, and they can go back, find out who's used it, and what the video
is. So, it stores it and runs the videos for you.
It's not just for sites. The MiG is not just for sites. As I was saying, it's agnostic,
it doesn't care; it's not evil, it just doesn't really need to care.
This is a mark that we made for a project, another five week project. And I'm not kidding
you, five weeks, called "The View," JWT View. They seem to like us, or they liked us last
year. We got another call from London early on in the summer asking us to develop a visualization
engine after Tic Toc that visualized any content that they put into it.
And I went "Oh my God. How are we going to do that?" I thought it was going to be just
a conceptual piece. And we built it out. We used Adobe AIR to do it. We used the MiG platform
to run it. And I will be actually running this program live for you, hopefully, in a
couple of minutes.
But, one of the things that we had to figure out was well what does the information look
like? So I started to figure out what kinds of objects could be displayed on the screen
in what types of ways. And again here this is not a very Tufte-esque sort of diagram,
but it's showing you from unit objects to relationships to mean average target structures
what kinds of systems we could actually generate on this particular platform.
And this is another interface Frank LaRocca was creating in regards to showing the hierarchical
structure of information. Again, here is more of a brand orientative thing because they're
an advertising agency. They need to know where the brands are, where they exist, is that
possible. I mean we were looking for all possibilities. But, we only had five weeks, so we had to
cut it all the way down.
These are some other sketches. Targeting structure. Information. Oh! So I'm going to cut that
out. Oh, here we go. Hello! Yeah, we're waiting. So, this is The View, and it's a desktop application?interapp.
And so if I type in "blah" or something, it's going to ask me, "I'm sorry. That client is
not in the database. Redo the search."
So, I'm going to redo the search, and I'm going to type in JWT. And the reason why we're
going to type in JWT is we left this for them to use for six months, and they started putting
content in. We didn't. We weren't allowed. And one day, I had checked the system. We
hadn't checked it for a long time. And we saw this one called JWT, and we're like "What
the hell is this?"
Hopefully, it will load. It doesn't look like it's going to load, does it? Oh, dear. That's
a bloody pity. You know what? That's a really annoying thing. Hold on one second. It always
happens, doesn't it? OK, I'm going to quit that and I'm going to run it again. [sings]
Do, do, do. Come on, mate. Do it for Eddie. Gee, it doesn't look like it's going to come
up. This is very unfortunate. Oh, dear.
It's not going to work. Oh, dear. Sorry about this, ladies and gentlemen, but it was going
to work before. So, I'm just going to slowly explain it on the last slide. You can go to
our site and I think we have a video of it. What it does is that you can put your information
in similar to an Excel sheet, and you can also do it over the course of time.
So, let's say from 1972 to 2005. What it would do is change the information right in front
of you. It will actually readjust what's going on visually. It's very hard to determine because
I was going to show you live and I don't have any of the slides to show you what it actually
looks like, which is very, very unfortunate. Shall I try again?
Audience: Yeah.
Eddie: Yeah? All right. Sorry about this. I really don't know. I don't think it's coming
up because it would tell me that it's?let me shut down the Internet and turn it on again.
Is that OK? It may be like Raed said, "He's probably finished and he'll just shut it down
or something like that." [laughs]
Oh, that's why. I think your Internet's down. Oh, no. It looks like it's coming up. No,
it doesn't look like it's coming up at all. Oh, yeah. It does but it's not running.
I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen. I'm sorry about that. Anyway, I'll try and show you
the MiG in a second. But, I'm going to show you my last slide, and [laughs] this is a
funny one. My first employee was Salvador Orara, and I used to work from home. And one
day he was wearing this t-shirt. I didn't know who Francesca Rinaldi is. Like it's some
tomato sauce thing, right? Some spaghetti thing?
[laughter]
Eddie: I didn't know. "Was that like a philosopher? Interesting!" Because it was always like "As
I got older, I got better." So, I changed it to "As we get older, we get better."
And I think it's like a motto for The Map Office that we started four and a half years
ago, and we've come this far with a very small crew of people. We do a variety of different
types of designs.
And I think this is not just for us, but everybody else. It's like as a designer I think we should
believe in ourselves that as we [laughs] get older we get better with our designs. It's
not like the young guys are going to come in and take over. It's like a great wine,
you know? It gets better over the course of time.
And I know that I may have done some flashy things at 2x4 and Imaginary Forces, but the
worth of the work that we're doing right now is way more important for the future?that
you're always changing, you're never staying the same, you're always getting better.
As a consolation, I'm going to try and run the MiG for you online of the view. I was
really sort of disappointed in that. Sorry about that. But, let me just quit out of my
keynote and run one of the MiGs. So, this is The Baffler. Let's see if it runs. Yeah,
there is something wrong with the Internet. Hold on. One second. I don't know. Yup, there
is something wrong with the Internet.
Audience Member: Accept.
Eddie: Accept it? Oh! ***? All right. I'm sorry.
[laughter]
Eddie: Saw that. Very quick-witted. Sorry about that.
[laughter]
Eddie: Maybe that was what the problem was?
Audience Member: Yeah.
Eddie: Ah! [laughs] Hey, hey!
[laughter]
Eddie: All right. Here we go!
[laughter]
Eddie: Come on, mate! [sings] De day! Do Daddy's special! All right. Here we...
[laughter]
Eddie: Here you go. Here we go, lad! Yay! All right. Thank you. [makes clicking sound]
Thank you.
[laughter]
Eddie: So here we have it. These are only three visual features that we could actually
provide at the time that they [laughs] asked us. They know. They were like, "Can you do
20?" and we're like "No."
[laughter]
Eddie: You know you can't even do one! So, Clusters is the most important system, and
this is JWT. And we're like, "What the hell is this?" Somebody's inputted all this content.
We're like, "Holy Crap! That's enormous amounts of content." All right. If anybody is on the
videocast, JWT can you tell me what WCC percentage five plus all time by regions is?
I'm not joking. It's sounds really impressive, and I just want to know what it is. This is
the great thing about it. What one should be building now is our shells, our vessels,
that clients can put anything into and readjust to transform what is going on. That you are
not in control as a designer anymore?you should lose control. And that is the purpose here.
So I'm like, "What the hell is this?" I'm was like "Whoa! What's going on?" So this
is one of the things that you can do with the MiG. It actually changes right mid-flow
there. I don't know what?United States is at the eight and Great Britain is at two and
stuff like that, but I can run it by perception.
OK. Ooh, that's interesting. You can also find out more information?no data on that
one. No data on that one, either. So, they haven't put any data in it. Volume group?
I really don't know what volume group is. And they you can also go back and run it by
MiG?you know,?oh, what's this one? WD category. Very, very interested. Improve star review?
They're probably going to fire my *** for showing this stuff.
[laughter]
Eddie: Somebody is taking, like, notes. And canned 2008 points. So, you know, it's doing
all these things, and you're like, "Well, is this the world that I'm looking at?" And
it's like, "Oh, yeah," you know, "Show map." So you can show the map. You can actually
see?Africa is actually very, very specific. So, if any of these African countries?and
one of these is bloody Nigeria anyway. Hey, there you go. And yes, Nigeria is right in
there. And if Nigeria had any information, it would be bigger.
You know, it's a very standard sort of approach. And this is the data editor that they use.
This is what was built by Frank LaRocca, myself, and Raed within the five-week gap. And this
is?you have 11,000 employees, which is actually correct, and this is how they've sort of built
it. So, if I add a data set?which I'm not, I'm just going to cancel it before I actually
do it. So, I'm going to go blah, and they say "next." Is there a data set over a period
of time? Yes. And then it tells me and it's like, "Well, maybe not."
[laughter]
Eddie: And say "No." And then I say, "By numbers or words?" "Words." And then?oh, crap, I think
I created it. Oh...
[laughter]
Eddie: Oh, OK. Anyway, I did create that, didn't I. Anyway, cancel that, shall we? [laughs]
So, you can also add countries, delete countries, all those kinds of things. The idea over the
course of time is you can create?as I stated, you can create, like, from whenever to whenever.
And you can actually scrub across it and actually see the system change in front of you. And
it doesn't have to be just in clusters. It can be in pie charts, viewing, all that kind
of stuff.
So, that brings up a lot of ideas. Like, what can you do with the visualizing systems over
the course of time? A lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. And you know, that's partly what
we tried to do within those particular five weeks.
So, then they were supposedly looking for some money, but we will see what actually
happens. This is a test, and it's always good to have tests. I think that sometimes tests
are better than the final piece. Anyway, there's no such thing as a final piece anymore.
In regards to The Baffler, this is The Baffler front end. So, this is HTML. Oh, my. I'm not
a big fan of HTML, I'm not a big fan of Flash, but I don't care. And we just made it as simple
as possible for people to utilize. And then this is basically the MiG. It's the mark.
It will come up in a second.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a little change to something on the front
end. Just a duplication of information that will tell you how fast this thing is. So,
I'm going to log in. There you go, I've logged in. And whilst the ticker is going, I can
actually go into the information.
So, let's go in and just like?ooh, oh, this is my?I was going to run this presentation
in the MiG, because it actually has a slideshow view, and I copped out. Sorry. Is it going
to come up? Yeah, there you are. [laughs] There we are. There are all of the files.
[laughter]
Eddie: But, I should actually delete this, shouldn't I? It shouldn't be on my client's?their
system. So, I'm going to say good bye-bye, and then drop it in and say "yes." I'm telling?it's
telling it goodbye. OK. So, let's say I wanted to add some information to, let's say, a blog.
So, I'm going to say, "My dad went to San Quentin and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."
I'm going to duplicate this blog. And so somebody online?I'm going to do this live?so somebody
online is going to be like, "There's an error. There's a duplicate of this particular thing."
I can duplicate that item instantaneously.
Go back to the front end. Let's just go back and do this. Actually, yes, let's just look
at this. The Baffler, come on. And then run The Baffler. And The Baffler should, I think,
show me more of that information. There, see that? Twice. Right there and right there.
Instantaneously duplicating content.
It's kind of idiotic, but imagine that you needed to?you had a template that needed to
be duplicated thousands of times or, like, twice. And then you just needed to change
that information really quickly. I just did it instantaneously. That's what RIAs give
you. And a lot of people might hate Flash because it's all about animation. No, no.
Flex is really hardcore coding, and it's really great to utilize. I'm not kidding around.
JavaScript is really brilliant as well.
But, this has allowed us, as designers and engineers, to get into this particular realm,
and we want to push it real hard. And so we have done so many different things with this.
We've done The View. We've done the Shot By Fans. We've done UCLA. We've done this blog's
structure. We've done multiple things, and we keep on building with this. And we want
to go into installations, all types of stuff.
So, I just want to end there, and?actually, wait one second. I should delete this, shouldn't
I? Delete the item, please. Yes. OK, it should go away. Thank you. And say, thank you very
much for your time and effort, for coming here today in such wonderful weather. [laughs]
Thank you so much.
[applause]
Woman 1: Time for a couple questions.
[pause]
Eddie: [hums] Oh, there's a question.
Audience Member: So, I was really encouraged to...
Woman 1: One second, sir.
Eddie: [laughs]
Andrew: Here's the microphone. OK, good.
Audience Member: OK. I was just going to say that I was really encouraged to see that it
seems like the interface here is based on the same sort of platforms that Adobe is using?
Eddie: Yes, it's similar. Yeah.
Audience Member: And do you really think that the?I mean, I predicted this, but that's only
in rants?that the future of the Web is a graphical interface? That, in the same way that one
time you had to write code to be able to write PostScript, that HTML will just be in the
back end behind a graphical interface?
Eddie: Not necessarily. I know there are... It's all about ease of use, and it depends
upon how many features that you have. So, one of the problems that we have is that if
you have a system that starts off really, really simply?like you click here, you click
here, next, next, next?what happens to more features? What happens when you add more features,
and how do they behave? Do they behave in the same manner?
Not necessarily. If you ever used WordPress for the first time, like years ago, it doesn't
look like WordPress before. So, they have adapted to that process of like, "We have
got to make it easy as possible for people to utilize." They have tried really hard,
and actually it does work very, very well.
We came into this particular policy saying to ourselves, "We have got do this from the
beginning. We have got to make sure that we have a system that is intuitive enough, and
flexible enough, scalable, to take in a lot of content and a lot of features, and behave
the way that somebody wants it over the course of time of its use, of its existence."
So, for instance, from the
right work tree to the left tree is very different. You start on this side, and you work over
to this side, and then you start back over. So, it is a sweeping structure, similar to
how Adobe actually utilizes its UI.
Another thing that we wanted to introduce is Contextual Windows. Unlike Adobe, whenever
you are in the staging area and you are clicking on something, this particular window changes
to whatever you need. So, it is contextually adjusting to what your needs are.
That is a very hard thing to deal with. You can gain open another thing, but it depends
upon what you have. So, we're trying to sort of like build-out those particular bugs that
we will have, and those types of issue, but we are getting there slowly. We've been working
on this for nearly two years now, very quietly. So, we'll see what happens, if it will go
anywhere or not.
Audience Member: How do you reconcile ideologically doing work for Prada, or J. Walter Thompson
with "The Baffler" for example?
Eddie: [laughs] That is a good one. It's called 'money.' Well, with Prada, I didn't have a
choice. I worked at 2X4 at the time. With JWT, it wasn't all about money. A lot of our
clients in 2009, just totally disappeared off the radar. They are slowly coming back
now. It's not really because they hated us, but we truly needed to cut employees down,
which is very unfortunate, but we had to do it.
I had to just go, and say, "Screw it. I have to go to the ad agency to see if they have
got anything," because nobody else had anything out there. I just went there to see if I could
get some just like print stuff going on. But then, Graham actually saw what I was doing,
although we were doing it in the Map Office, and what I had done in the past. He had the
knowledge to understand, "You know what? This guy actually can do a lot more than I think
he can. Let us get him on board to doing more and more, slowly build him up into other areas."
So, that was really the reason. I mean ethically, I felt like I needed to put food on the table,
and that is what really came first unfortunately. I mean if I had another chance, I probably
wouldn't have done that. I would have stayed away from the ad agency model, but I am happy
that I didn't in this particular case.
Audience Member: Hi. Thanks for sharing with us tonight.
Eddie: You are welcome.
Audience Member: I have two questions. First, I was curious about your process, and the
background of your team, and how your team came together?
Eddie: OK, process. The process does depend upon the project, but we have this?we call
it as going to a meeting. We have this process of the five Ds, and then I said it in a meeting,
and the guy is like, "Dodgeball? They have five Ds in dodgeball ." I am like, "No. No,"
so I changed it to like six in the end.
[laughter]
Eddie: The idea of defining, discovering, designing, developing, from development you
have debugging, and then you have also have documentation. So, it is like this whole process
of dealing with particular clients, and it works quite well for us.
We try and take on jobs that are, I can't say holistic, but it is not just developing
a mark. It is a whole sort of package. I can't say it is a brand. It is a package of things
that we are doing for this particular person, and then we try and aid that client to extrapolate
that. It's like, "Have you ever thought of doing this?" Not because we want to, and it
is fun. It is because they kind of need to.
I mean, a lot of designers and creative directors and owners of design studios know about this.
You're sort of like thinking about this particular client, that you can make it bigger and better
if they actually just listen to you. You've listened to them. They listen to you now,
and you can extrapolate there. It is a little bit like marketing. You are trying to sell
other areas to them to make them better, and so that is part of the process as well.
The other part of the question was the backgrounds of my studio. Well, there is me. There is
Salvador Orara, who actually came to me after a lecture like this in the University of Arts
in Philadelphia in 2005, I gave with George. He said, "Can I join you?" I'm like, "I'm
working out of my bedroom. No." So, he didn't hound me. He just said, "Come on, you need
an intern. Do you need an intern? Do you need an intern?" "Oh, yeah. OK. I need an intern."
So, he wanted to learn more. He was doing a little bit of coding at the time. He was
a graphic designer. He knew a little bit of coding. I like somebody who can code as well
as design, and also who doesn't have to code that well. You learn over the course of time.
You've got me. You've got others that will help you. You shouldn't be scared. He is not
scared to try new things. That is the type of person that we have.
So, we have Brankica, who is like the amazing queen of books, environments, and stuff. She
is super great. There is Frank LaRocca, who actually is also of the University of Arts.
I have actually taken a lot of students from the University of Arts of Philadelphia. He
was actually?if he hears this recording, he is going to be like, "Whoa." He was seen as
very special to his professors. It was like, "He is a special one." It is like he could
code better than I could, like out of the books, and he was 22, and he can design?not
better than me, but... [laughs]
He is quiet. He is resourceful. He is really clay. He is going to be really great. This
guy is going to be really something. He was an intern for me, as well.
Raed Atoui. Raed is interesting. He is only 24 or 25, and he has a masters in Engineering,
in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, and also deals with like music and DJ-ing,
and all kinds of things. He does a lot of art insulation, structures and stuff.
So, it is a mixed bag. It is a small mixed bag. It kind of works. I know that Jared and
Phillip also, at Potion, have a mixed bag of guys as well. That is why they do so many
inventive pieces. I think that is really, like don't be scared of taking on something
new. It will totally help you out. I am trying to learn German right now. My girlfriend is
German, and
it is fun. But, you shouldn't be scared of doing these types of things.
I've got to go to the bathroom.
[applause]