photograph by www.toddvachon.com

Frank Baseman

Frank Baseman is the principal of Baseman Design Associates, an award-winning graphic design firm providing visual communication services to a variety of corporations and institutions. Baseman is also an associate professor in the Graphic Design Communication program at Philadelphia University, where he has taught since 1998. He earned a B.A. in graphic design from Penn State University and an M.F.A. in graphic design from Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Baseman currently serves on the AIGA National Board of Directors and as chair of the Steering Committee for the AIGA Design Education Community of Interest. He is a co-curator of "The Graphic Imperative: International Posters for Peace, Social Justice and The Environment," an exhibition of 40 years of socio-political posters that will travel to Philadelphia in Spring 2006 and New York in Summer 2006 (see: www.thegraphicimperative.org). He was co-chair of Revolution: Philadelphia, a national AIGA Design Education Conference (2005) and the author/curator of The Tolerance Project, a student poster design competition and exhibition (2002). Baseman has written articles for Voice: AIGA Journal of Design and The Education of a Graphic Designer, 2nd ed. In all, he has been working in the graphic design industry for more than 20 years, and his work has received recognition from many national and international communication organizations, design competitions, exhibitions and publications.

Was graphic design your first career path?

I didn't know what graphic design was when I went to college. I just figured that, as a liberal arts major, I would find something that I liked. I lucked out in that Penn State happened to have a strong graphic design program. I stumbled upon it during a break in a drawing class. Down the hall from my class, I saw a silkscreened gorilla on the hall wall with the words "graphic design" in bold sans serif, all lowercase, running vertically up the wall. Music was blaring and students were silkscreening posters. I thought this was way beyond cool and went to visit the program and talked to the director. The next fall. I took the intro class and have never looked back. Graphic design opened up all of my senses and appealed to so many of my interests. I felt that I had truly found something that I really liked, something that I could do.

Where were you raised, and has it shaped your work?

Born in Philadelphia PA, but raised in suburban Philadelphia and many places throughout the Midwest, for example, the suburbs of Chicago, Detroit and Cincinnati. I was an "Encyclopaedia Britannica brat" — my Dad worked in sales for Encyclopaedia Britannica, and whenever he got promoted, we had to move.

What's on the top of your professional to-do list?

Take a drawing class. Get back in the darkroom to print pictures. Get a letterpress and print manifestos.

What is the most important thing you've learned from a bad job?

The most important thing I have learned is to invoice for part of the project fee upfront, in case the project goes south. When was the last time a contractor came to your house to do work without requiring some payment upfront? Designers need to start doing the same kind of thing. As an employee in a bad job, I learned to get out quickly!

What is your workday like?

My workdays are crazy, as I really have two jobs: one running my own design studio and the other one teaching. I relish when I can have complete days in the studio. Depending on the day, I split my time between marketing and writing proposals, administrative tasks like invoicing and bill collecting, and designing and writing. When I am at school teaching, the days are more predictable, and then the interest comes in what the students bring.

What are you currently listening to?

Bob Dylan, David Bromberg, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, Neil Young, Joan Osborne, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett and Jonny Hartman, among many others.

Has Katrina and other recent natural disasters altered your view of the role designers should play in society?

I've always felt that designers have a certain responsibility to use their own power of design in productive ways. As designers, we have certain skills and a responsibility to use our voice to express ourselves and our opinions. One may not always be able to do this on "client work," but it can still be done in many other ways.

photograph: bryony gomez-palacio

Armin Vit

Armin Vit is originally from Mexico City, where he received a degree in graphic design from Anáhuac University. After moving to Atlanta to follow his then-girlfriend, a student at Portfolio Center, he worked for the internet consulting giant marchFIRST and taught typeface design at the Portfolio Center. He then went to Chicago, where he worked at a four-person design firm, Norman Design, which "designed anything that came our way." It was in Chicago in 2002 that Speak Up, an online forum for graphic designers, was born. Believing that the best place for Speak Up and his professional life to grow was in New York, Vit recently moved to the Big Apple, where, after a brief stint at Decker Design, he is currently a senior designer at Pentagram working with partner Michael Bierut "on nice clients like United Airlines, NYU and Mohawk, to name a few." On the side, Vit and his wife, Bryony Gomez-Palacio, are co-founders of UnderConsideration, the "parent company of everything that we do," including Speak Up and now The Design Encyclopedia. Vit notes that in Chicago he and Gomez-Palacio also organized small events called seriouSeries, where invited speakers and around 15-30 designers gathered for informal chats; guests included Rick Valicenti, Jim Coudal, Steve Heller and more. He hopes to do more of that, as well as seeking to transform the spirit of Speak Up and UnderConsideration into some sort of publishable format. Vit has written for many magazines, had his work and writing published in a number of books and lectured widely and on a broad range of subjects. He is a board member of the New York chapter of the AIGA.

Was graphic design your first career path?

Yes. I wanted to study something at college that didn't require extensive testing — the written kind; I don't like that. My dad, a mathematician by education and a businessman by circumstance, started studying design in his late 40s, and I thought, "That looks cool; I like to doodle. I'll do that."

Where were you raised, and has it shaped your work?

I was born and raised in Mexico City. But other than my ever-evolving sarcasm, I don't see any influences of it on my work.

What is the most important thing you've learned from a bad job?

When to give up. Seriously, you can keep fighting and fighting a client, but every now and then you are better off just saying "fine," finishing the job quickly, licking your wounds and moving on to the next thing.

What is your workday like?

Workday? I've stopped dividing what I have to do by days. I prefer to think of "workmonths." I get more done that way.

What are you currently listening to, watching and reading?

As weird as it sounds, I am not much of a music fan. Because I end up writing a lot during the day, I get too distracted by music. I haven't bought a CD or iTune in a year. I read the newspaper and all the design books I have to review for Speak Up. And I watch — to my wife's horror — "The Simpsons."

If you could have be born in a different era, which would it be?

A different era? You mean one without internet and email? Ha! No, thank you. This era is quite fine.

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