For We Know We Need Each Other So! – Nov/Dec 1999

I work at a job that calls upon some of my design skills. Half of my time is spent doing office managerial type stuff – accounting, etc., and the other half of the time I do the graphics for the corporation. Some of my artist friends think this is quite a coup and actually seem a little envious. They obviously believe that if you work with people who have been known to say repeatedly – “we know nothing about, nor do we care about art” that you’ll have creative freedom. This only again proves that artists really are crazy.

Those of you who know where I work are asking yourselves, what the hell kind of art could she really need to produce? You see, I work for an environmental firm that cleans dirt. Yes, we vacuum dirt – we’re actually quite good at it. People and businesses tend to spill lots of nasty things: gasoline, cleaning solvents, and lots of substances ending in “ene”. Someone’s got to clean the stuff up or the same people can’t sell the property and move to another site to sully. So you may be wondering, with a business that deals in dirt (in the trade it’s called “soil”) what art needs creating?

Marketing material for one. There are several ways to clean soil, so we have to convince people to use our way, which requires marketing. When your unofficial motto is “You *&*& it up – we’ll suck it up” you have to be pretty dam creative to find a suitable way to get the message across.

Marketing soil cleanup isn’t the easiest thing in the world. You may feel the obvious approach would be to send two “before” and “after” baggies of dirt to a potential client and mark “toxic” on one and “go wallow your heart out” on the other. This either having been done to no effect, or being too visionary for our time, I am left with making boring data and basically ugly machinery into pretty presentation materials that will engage the potential client. (“We’ll make your dirt so clean you’ll want to be buried alive in it” didn’t go over well either.)

So what’s the big deal, you say? I work with young males – engineers, a chemist, a geologist, a biologist, plus a female marketing person. First, let me say that all of these people are very special to me. Second, let me say that they are the ones who told me that graphic design was not a real job. I knew how much trouble I was in from the reaction I received after I told them I was a stone sculptor. The female exclaimed “how nice to have such a cute little hobby”. The males reacted like one might expect had I announced that I was experiencing menstrual cramps.

So one would assume they would leave me alone to do my graphic stuff. Wrong – they all feel this huge need to be overly involved in every aspect of creative endeavor I am assigned. This is not a comfortable position to be in, not only because of their aforementioned attitudes, but also because of the ttaits each possess that drew them to their professions in the first place.

My not-interested-in-art engineers require only blue, micro “somethingorother” pens and .5, 2B lead in theironly-get-the-lead-downby-clicking-the-side-not-the-top pencils or they cannot do their engineering. (God forbid only #2 pencils and black ink survive Y2K.) So, needless to say, nothing is ever quite realistic or detailed enough for them. My chemist is a chemist (what more can I say) and likes only black ink, and any font other than Times New Roman is too trendy. The hiologist, who gets a thrill out of high “ene” levels in soil and water, is always way too busy to care, he claims, but I catch him changing the font and colors on drawings I’ve finished.

The age factor (all under 35) is apparent when I’m producing a business card or designing a logo for a campaign. They are there, every mouse click of the way, critiquing, suggesting and using the words “looks”, “stupid”, and “dumb” repeatedly. With many suggestions on what would be the most cool.

Thank God the geologist is too busy to get involved in my art – he’s creating his own. I have learned that there is another side to geologists than the one seen in NWSSA – they are tfustrated romance novelists trapped in the narrow vernacular of geology. My job for them is to recreate on the computer drilling records tliat are affectionately called bore logs. These are drawings and notes written up by the geologist in the field at the time of the drilling. They descrihe the substance being drilled through by adding y or ey to almost any noun, then they describe the conditions by color. The words yellow, brown, red and gray with “ish” added where apphcable makes up the geology color wheel. Once this surface is penetrated the narrative continues as you go deeper. Slowly it starts with descriptions of suhstances yellowish-hrown, loose, and damp, no product odor. Deeper now, brownish-yellow, slight plasticity, medium dense and moist, faint product odor. Almost to the end of our drilling now – hrownish-red, stiff plasticity, dense moist, moderate product odor. Until finally the hole is hored – red, rigid plasticity, hard and wet, strong product odor. One can almost hear the abhh.

But worst of all is the marketing person who does want to be involved (involved being a generous term). She may know much more about marketing than I, but her knowledge of design, color theory, etc., is totally born of her shopping experiences. She thinks the Martha Stewart and Revlon web sites are great art and we constantly argue over whether my colors are “90’s” enough. To prove her point she either brings in her latest J. Crew catalog or directs me to the Cartier web site for guidance. Any attempts on my part to remind her that we aren’t selling diamonds, we’re sucking soil, always fail, which leaves me no choice but to make up “90’s” kinds of names to put on colors that have existed since time began. (Food stuffs are really big, by the way sage, cantaloupe, guava, brussel sprout.)

So don’t envy me or anyone else that’s designing for others. It’s tough out there. The only thing worse is designing for a group of artists.