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March 19, 1997
The following article was originally published in the Site Builder Network Magazine.(Now MSDN Online "Voices".)
Hard to believe it May be, but not every graphic designer is diving headfirst into the cyber sea.
Some firms, including Giantstep 
in Chicago, Illinois, were created to provide services for the Web. Others, such as ReVerb in Los Angeles, California, have waded in up to their knees, but have no plans to fully immerse themselves. "We enjoy working in a variety of media," principal Somi Kim explained.
But a surprising number of established designers evince absolutely no interest in going near the waters of the Web. What others consider hot, these designers refuse to consider as a source of work. Three such artists, all with high profiles in the design industry, agreed recently to discuss what lies behind their reluctance to engage the Web.
Paula Scher
New York City-based Scher is a partner in the international mega-design firm Pentagram. A leader in the design field for the past 25 years, she has a history of projects that wake up, and shake up, everyone from fellow designers to the public.
Stephen Doyle
Doyle and William Drenttel founded Drenttel Doyle Partners in New York in 1985. Their company has established an international reputation for using the strengths of a small studio environment to serve a wide range of clients.
Lucille Tenazas
The current president of the American Institute of Graphic Design (AIGA), Tenazas is widely respected among her peers. As principal of Tenazas Design, she is known for the lyrical and poetic nature of her work. Her firm is located in San Francisco, California.
Why won't such high-profile designers throw in with the Web crowd? Start with individual reputations for starting trends, not following them. Add some finely tuned aesthetics, and three healthy client lists. Multiply by a negative three, to reflect their dislike of quantity information, at the expense of quality. Throw in a few "ease of use" issues, and you come up with absolutely zero incentive to get off their current gravy trains and onto some yet-to-be-proven Midnight Special.
Tenazas, who rarely goes online, does not feel "one bit deprived" by her detachment from the Web. Too busy with her business, she said, "I don't have time to acquaint myself with the technology-and frankly, none of my clients have asked me to. I just don't see the value." If clients wanted her to do Web work, Tenazas said she would, as a way of serving them. Right now she has plenty to do in the more traditional media.
"At DDP," said Doyle, "we're not afraid to take on the Web. We're just not interested." He has a wait-and-see attitude, with emphasis on the "wait", because he doubts that there is much to see. "There are still too many restraints," Doyle commented, referring to the narrow-bandwidth problems that plague every designer.
While Scher admits to a little Web cruising, she refers to it as "wasting time." Other designers at Pentagram do produce work for the Web. "But it's only at the end of a job, not the beginning," said Scher, and certainly not as a stand-alone project. Pentagram neither has, nor wants, a corporate Web site. "Since we can't control other people's equipment, we don't know what our work will look like at the other end," said Scher.
Doyle finds something intrinsically unsatisfying with the whole Web experience. "It changes the character of communication," he explained. To Doyle, nothing is even half as remarkable as the human voice. He would rather talk on the phone than prowl through chat rooms or surf the Web.
He also prefers the tactile experience of the printed page. "That's where my heart lies. I'm enchanted by the thickness and quality of the paper, and how the ink hits the page." Doyle feels especially spoiled by magazines. "You can flip through them, flag pages, or rip them out," he said. "You can even kill a fly with one. Try doing that with a computer!"
And try taking a computer into the bathroom. Microsoft's Slate , for example, "is a fine read on screen," Doyle said. But for a visual, tactile person, such as Doyle, reading it on screen is inconvenient and uncomfortable. "I'm not much of a screen person in the first place," he said. "I don't even like to watch TV."
Tenazas shares with Doyle a dislike of being visually confined by a screen. "It makes my peripheral vision too narrow," she said. Tenazas prefers to keep her eyes moving and keeps an eclectic collection of images and objects in her workspace to stimulate her creative thinking. Instead of working in front of a computer, Tenazas draws by hand, then has one of her staff members enter the image into a Macintosh computer.
"I'm not anti-technology. It's more a question of what I have an affinity for. I do what I feel most comfortable doing," Tenazas said. She's confident that her work doesn't suffer from this choice. "I'm totally current. The bigger issue is, how am I able to work at this level without using technology."
Scher said, "I feel totally neutral about technology. It's just a tool that I use every day." She is more concerned by the accuracy of Web information. Doyle agrees. Individually, each referred to an article that appeared in the February 3, 1997 issue of The New Yorker magazine called, "The Age of Unreason." In this article, editor Kurt Anderson explored the problems that misinformation can cause.
Anderson stated that "with a computer and a phone, anyone can become his own publisher/commentator/reporter/anchor, dispatching...credible looking opinions, facts and 'facts' via the Internet." No matter how false the information, the added graphic power of the Web lends it credibility (p.41).
While this "democratic" approach to information appeals to many Web supporters, Scher vigorously objects. "I don't want everyone's opinion," she said. To Scher, the Web is like a neighborhood library. "Someone built it, then invited everyone to bring in and store all their things, so others can take a look." There is too much useless, inaccurate, improperly categorized, and uncurated information for her.
"I think it's dangerous, " Scher stated, using herself as an example. "I looked up my name on the Web and found at least 25 entries that were inaccurate or just plain crap." In one case, a reporter tried to transform this misinformation into fact by including it in her own writing, without checking its veracity. "That makes me nervous about how things get done [out] there," Scher admitted.
Doyle thinks the Web's lack of conceptual packaging May play a part in obscuring the truth. "I'm afraid of information without this conceptual packaging," Doyle said. "I want signals about whose POV (point of view) the information is coming from." He thinks good editing would help. "Editors take information and shape it into knowledge," Doyle explained. Is this knowledge trustworthy? Are there hidden agendas? A good editor makes a publication's purpose apparent on the page. "I don't want to scrap this basic information together for myself," Doyle claimed.
Tenazas feels more uncomfortable with the concept of information outside an historical context. "Umberto Eco made this point when I heard him speak recently about his book, Island from the Day Before," she said. According to Tenazas, Eco described the process of searching online for bibliographic information, which is arranged by date. This information goes back only so far, and where the sources stop chronologically, ignorance begins. He concluded information is useless if we are robbed of the opportunity to know what preceded its development, historically.
Without even one favorite Web site among them, it May be awhile before these three designers are willing to launch their careers onto the Web.
Tenazas will begin when her clients ask. Until then, in her eyes, the Web remains just the latest trend. She is sure others will follow. For Doyle, it May take a giant technological leap to make interacting with the Web worthwhile. To date, he hasn't even heard of a Web site he wishes he had worked on. "It's a young industry. I'm waiting for it to grow up," he said.
"It's not done, yet," agrees Scher. For others, she admits, the Web May be a great opportunity. "It's natural for designers for go where the work is," Scher said. But it May be a cold day in Hades before she joins them.
At least she will be in good company.
Luanne Brown writes both fiction and non-fiction for multiple media.
Paula Scher's clients include: DDP's clients include: Lucille Tenazas's clients include: A Who's Who of Those Who Don't
Chase Manhattan, Champion International, Houghton Mifflin, New York Newsday, Öola, Queens Group, Simon and Schuster, Time/Warner, Warren Gorham & Lamont, Whittle Publications
Arrow Company, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Champion International, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Equitable Art Advisory, HarperCollins, Loews Hotels, Audubon Society, Olympia and York (The World Financial Center), Rolling Stone Magazine, Spy Magazine
The National Endowment for the Arts, The Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Champion Corporation, Chronicle Books
Photo Credit: Michael Moore/Microsoft Corporate Photographer
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