Sara Schneider

Sara Schneider is a content junkie. Whether a book focuses on art, photography, music, pop culture or the latest culinary craze, it opens doors to new ideas and inspiration. That is what has intrigued Schneider during her career as design director at Chronicle Books in San Francisco. "It's the diversity of the books that Chronicle publishes, and knowing that we are making something that will inform and delight readers, that keeps things interesting. That, and working with fantastic people who make me laugh." Schneider leads an inhouse team of nine that is responsible for art directing and designing about 160 books a year. Titles range from small and quirky, to complex collaborations with Pixar and Lucas Films. Prior to joining Chronicle in 1999, Schneider worked at Morla Design, collaborating on projects for the San Francisco Airport, Levis, Williams Sonoma, California College of Arts and Crafts and the Massachusetts College of Art. She attended CCAC in San Francisco after earning her first degree in marketing communication, and her work has garnered accolades from various design publications.

Was graphic design your first career path?

If my childhood book reports count, then yes. I worked so hard on them, spending hours creating unassigned collages to accompany the required one-page written summaries. During college however, I didn't know a career in "graphic design" even existed, and since my painting or drawing attempts were less than spectacular, I seemed ill-equipped for art school. I declared marketing as my life's work, earned a degree and went on to a brief career building corporate campaigns. By this point, I had come to learn about graphic design, and was informed by my gut that working with type, color, image and composition was more my thing than spinning news stories to the media. I pursued some foundation courses during my spare time, dabbled in web design on the side, and eventually moved to San Francisco to attend art school fulltime.

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

An astrologer once told me I was a unmarried male German architect in a past life. Sounds intense and lonely. So, since that's covered, I'd opt for something more decadent...maybe, a 1920s Parisian socialite with many lovers.

What was the most important thing you have learned from a bad job?

Find smart people and work with them. Appreciate and cultivate perspectives other than your own. Create a team of people who care about finding the right solution, more so than claiming sole ownership for that solution. In some jobs, that team might just be you and the client. In others, it might consist of various designers, photographers, and/or illustrators. Whatever the size of the group, however, it must operate as a team. Don't micromanage. Let people's strengths bubble up. Play fair. Do all this while pushing for excellence.

What are you currently listening to, watching or reading?

Listening to: Anything I can get my hands on. Neko Case, Thievery Corporation, Baaba Mal, Beth Orton, Cesaria Evora, Johnny Cash, Air, Le Tigre, American Analog Set, Aimee Mann, Ben Watt, Franz Ferdinand, Seu Jorge, White Stripes, Velvet Underground, Patti Smith. Watching: The entire "Six Feet Under" DVD library in an embarrassingly short amount of time. It's been a fantastic and dark television marathon. Reading: Out by Natsuo Kirino, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, Cooking Secrets for Real World Cooks, the NYT, the Onion, various mail-order catalogs for fantasy shopping sprees.

Jens Gehlhaar

Jens Gehlhaar is creative director at Brand New School, a bicoastal collective of film and image makers. He has been responsible for the on-air identities of VH1 Classic, Fuel TV and IMF, and the look for MTV's Sunday Stew's first four seasons. His directing credits include a music video for Muse, a commercial campaign for the VW Beetle and 25 shorts for the VW Passat. Before joining Brand New School, Gehlhaar worked as an art director for Wieden+Kennedy, ReVerb, Imaginary Forces and Dreamworks. He has taught typography at both CalArts and Art Center College of Design. He has received an Emmy for television graphics, an ADC Gold award for directing, a TDC award for type design and an MVPA award for Best Effects.

Was graphic design your first career path?

I wanted to be a type designer and typographer from when I was 15. Before that, I was designing cars or houses, but when my Dad got me a Letraset catalog, I realized that I had more fun lettering the captions than drawing the actual illustrations. Later, type was what I focussed on in college, and type was also what I taught after grad school. These days, however, I am involved more with image- and film-making than with typography. So much so, in fact, that I stopped referring to myself as a graphic designer.

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

I grew up in a small town south of Cologne, and I went to college and worked for four years in the same region. The relative isolation enabled me to focus on typography, but also made me envious about exciting things going on in the UK and the Netherlands. Coming from a smallish town inspired me to take the leap to go to grad school in California — had I been from Berlin, I probably would have stayed in Germany. Going through the graduate program at CalArts was the most important career decision I have made so far, and has made me the artist I am today. During the time I had no challenging working life, I also spent an obsessive amount of time writing, recording and performing music — an expertise which helps me now that I work almost exclusively in time-based media.

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

At Brand New School, we have achieved everything we could dream of within the field commonly referred to as "motion graphics." We and a few of our competitors are now in a position where we compete against commercial directors and traditional large animation houses on full service projects. The step after this would be to generate films that the audience would pay money for, not commercials that pay for the broadcasts they interrupt.

What is your workday like?

Thankfully, my boss lets me stroll into the office as late as noon and doesn't say a thing about it. Once I'm there, it's critiques, meetings and conference calls for the rest of the day time. After 7pm, I get around to writing, drawing or designing. After 10pm, most of the 25 people in our office are gone and I crank up the music. Living in Los Angeles, I also spend at least an hour every day in the car.

What are you currently listening to, watching or reading?

I recently realized that a lot of my favorite albums were released in the years 1965 and 1980: "Rubber Soul," "Pet Sounds," "Scary Monsters," "Remain in Light," "Melt." This year, I am very excited about bands from German label Morr Music and music by Jon Brion. Most of my reading time is spent with The New York Times and salon.com, and the only things I watch on TV are "The Daily Show" and music videos. The last movie I went to see was "Syriana," and it rocked.

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

Ever since I started college, I've heard discussions about how design is bad when it serves advertising, and how it is good when it helps communicating good causes. The problem, of course, is that there is not enough work and, just as importantly, not enough money to support all designers with jobs for good causes. I've made peace with the fact that advertisers are as necessary in a free market society as doctors, truck drivers, accountants and, for that matter, fine artists. We're all one.

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