Hello and welcome to another episode of the AIGA Design
Podcast. My name is Lee Sean Huang, Co
Executive Director of Learning and Programs here at AIGA, the
professional association for design.
This season we are exploring the theme of design and performance
and all the different nuances and facets of what those words
mean. And now for my Co host.
I'm Julia Donatello, design competitions and event manager
at AIG. And our guest this episode is
George A. He is the Co founder and Co
executive director of Greater Good Studio based in Chicago.
George, it's so great to have you here on the show.
Thanks so much for having me, Le, Sean and Julia.
It's great to meet, you know, get a chance to be able to work
with you on this podcast. Thanks.
Totally. So let's just jump into things
to get to know you a little bit more beyond your job title and
your affiliation. You also describe yourself as a
pissed off optimist that's on your LinkedIn right now.
Can you elaborate what that means to be a pissed off
optimist so our listeners and our viewers, if you're watching
this on YouTube, can understand a little bit more of your
journey and how you got to your particular point of view on
design? Sure, sure.
Thanks so much for that question this term.
I swear Sarah my Co founder coined it and I just recently
hearing from her that she thinks I did this so I can't.
Now nobody seems to remember who first came up with this term,
but I think the two of us would identify as that very early on.
And the idea of wanting to be a balance of recognizing how
broken and sort of screwed up the world seems to be.
And suddenly since January that feels to be even more
heightened. But the idea that we might also
want to maintain a level of optimism or hope that things
could be better might seem as though they are in Congress or
mutually exclusive. And I think the idea that
actually we could be both at the same time and that we might need
to be both might be a way to help navigate how crazy things
feel right now. And actually, it's more like a
perpetual state of, of, of being.
Because if we can't do both, you might overcome with too much
anger, will be overcome with too much naivety and maybe miss
something. So we thought it was important
that we kind of name this, this feeling of being an pissed off
optimist for ourselves. And we've actually found that
it's been quite a helpful way of identifying our clients.
It's been a helpful way of identifying people we've hired
at the studio. And then it turns out, I think
after somewhere thinking about a little more, we started naming
it a little more frequently at everywhere.
And we think there's a bunch of pistol optimists all over the
place. Yeah, that's great.
For me that that motto, that tagline, pissed off optimist, it
kind of reminds me philosophically of what it's
like to be a designer in general.
Because in on one hand, like the pissed off part is like being a
constant malcontent or we're unhappy with the status quo,
right? It's like the world could be
more beautiful, more just whatever.
That's why we make new things or redesign existing things.
And then the optimism part is like, you have to believe that
things can be better or else there's kind of no point in
doing your work, right? So like, it's this kind of
constant tension of like not being so naive, but also like
not being angry all the time and finding that in between spaces.
Like I think the drive for a lot of designers and other creative
folks. Yeah, I think that that is very
much tied to an attitude of design.
And I do think that the creative act of making new things or
stewing on something and then generating something, a
response, it's a self perform for resistance.
And it's a form of of not letting the status quo become
the only reality we have. I think designers are uniquely
suited to create whole new worlds when given the chance.
And we wouldn't want to do that if we didn't think that there's
something perhaps could be maybe improved upon or better or more
just. And I think when I was early on
in my career, I think I just wanted things to be cooler.
I think it was really as basic as that, like this is not as
cool as it could be. And I think I've just started to
realize that perhaps the brokenness or the way things are
right now might not just be because of a temporary moment in
time, but rather because the systems have been set up that
way. So that kind of awareness I
think is it's a very sobering realization and I think it's
part of my journey as a designer in working in the social sector.
Totally. And you're kind of taking this
on the road, right? You're doing a tour.
We were talking about this before we started rolling, but
you're currently on an angry hour for pissed off optimist
tour on multiple cities. So can you tell us more about
that? What inspired you to create
that? How has it been going so far?
Yeah, I think it's an interesting chance right now
where Sarah and the team and I have been thinking about how to
be more in person with so many other pissed off optimist that
we might know or perhaps haven't yet met.
And the idea of being able to do that in person with very little
programming, very little sort of like formal structure.
There's not really a run of show.
It is literally meat for drinks after work.
And we realize if we could, if we could name it and then have
the idea that going there will let you meet with other people
who are like minded, might take care of a big chunk of the
programming and the facilitation.
Because perhaps when you go to those events, there's a lot more
structure when people are misaligned.
And I think being attitudinally aligned takes actually does a
little heavy lifting. So being attitudinal alignment
is that you could show up at a place for drinks and kind of go,
Oh my God, this, Can you believe this just happened all.
Have you seen this latest headline?
All this nuttiness doesn't seem real.
Are you seeing what I'm seeing? And I think in some of the
spaces that might not always be true.
So meeting up for drinks, being able to vent a little, but then
also note that you're in community with other like minded
people. We thought there might be value
in that. So we have now done it in
Chicago and we sold out 100 tickets.
We did it in Brooklyn. We sold out 400 tickets there or
so sorry, 60 tickets. And we had some really great
assistance from Stacey who runs the AIG in New York chapter.
And yeah, so we have Philadelphia and Austin on the
books with Sarah going to be handling the Austin one and
others are to be D to be announced and hopefully we'll do
a couple more. Wonderful.
Yeah. That sounds like a great way to
like send a different kind of bat signal out there.
So it's not necessarily just a profession based or demographic
based thing. It really is like as you were
saying, attitudinal. So you're trying to get like
minded people in a room together, right?
Especially after being a part during the pandemic or just
feeling isolated because of what's going on in politics and
and world events and and things like that.
I wanted to jump back in time a little bit and then we'll come
back to asking you more questions about your work and
your background and stuff like that.
But this goes back to 2020, which is when we were all apart
at home, isolated during the pandemic.
And you wrote an article that you published on Medium that was
addressed to AIGA leadership at the time, which Julia didn't
work here yet. And I was here, but I was not in
a leadership position. But you were basically calling
out that the American in AIGA, American Institute of Graphic
Arts, not just that AIGA, but in the United States in general,
has been treated as synonymous with white American, European,
American, particularly though within professional design
organizations and just the history of design and the
history of design pedagogy for sure.
So looking back on this article, I know five years of past
leadership has changed and and all of that and and we're in it
in another Trump presidency. But, you know, so, yeah, looking
back on this, you know, how do you think about this sort of
thinking back on this article, it's really just an open-ended
way to set this up and have you refund this since it's been five
years. Yeah, Thanks so much, Lisa, for
bringing this question up. I think I was genuinely
surprised when I got the invite to come speak on your podcast
because I remember thinking like, wait, you know, you know,
I, like, pissed off everybody at AIGA when I wrote that thing,
right? Like, I just wanted to make sure
that you knew that I knew that you knew, Yeah.
That I wasn't getting mistaken for like somebody else.
Yeah, the other one. The other one, and I think I
remember thinking like, Are you sure you want me on?
Because I, you know, I'm, I don't do a lot of these
necessarily and I don't want to make anybody feel, uh,
unnecessarily uncomfortable. And I just want to make sure
that you feel like, OK, look, as long as I were to come on that
we could make a, a good faith effort of, of wanting to discuss
this and not pretend that I hadn't written the piece.
Certainly in my eye at the national ball at the time, I
think was quite poignant because I was feeling a lot of pressure
around that moment of almost being seen as some sort of race
expert when I definitely am not. I think I suddenly have my own
relationship, my own racial identity that I'm still working
through. But I was suddenly to notice
that perhaps I was starting to become handy like some sort of
like go to. But I'd also appreciate that in
this more recent effort, they seem to be a genuine effort on
your part of wanting to have a discussion.
And I also appreciate the fact that they were, you know, to PSC
presenting interviews on the podcast that seemed to be
running this. And I felt like, OK, well,
maybe, maybe there's a shot that we could we could talk about
this and not not skirt around too much.
I also know that, you know what, when I first wrote that piece
that I was pretty sure I was only going to end up damaging a
number of relationships where they had built up over time at
AIGA. But I think what I was seeing is
this pattern of being called to help soothe these predominantly
white groups of people with my advice or my thoughts on race.
And to a degree I was thinking, oh, that must be, that's
actually kind of not like I, I think I was, I was benefiting in
a way that felt quite stroked by ego to think that oh, I might,
maybe I had to have something to say.
But then I said to the notice that perhaps am I being used in
some way? And is there a risk of being
used as a potential wedge? This is something that's I think
a little newer to me in recognizing that perhaps my own
racial identity might have a longer story than just me right
now. I mean, there's an aspect of me
showing up as an Asian male with a British accent that I think
I've certainly seen in America can be disarming perhaps.
But I noticed that more and more I've I've seen this with other
groups I've been an advisor to that my racial identity might
play into a larger model minority myth that's been around
for a long time. And that Asian Americans being
used in a way that actually acts as a a wedge towards anti
blackness has not been something that I was really aware of.
I think that's newer language for me.
And I think maybe at the time when I first wrote that letter,
I was sort of just having lots of feelings, but not a lot
necessarily a lot of scholarship around it.
So I don't know necessarily kind of how things have changed, but
I was appreciative of wanting to talk about it with with with the
two of you for sure. I think that there's still a lot
of hesitancy across design leadership across multiple
organizations. AIGA is certainly not that
unique in having that phenomena, but I also think that we can't
progress until we have more of this conversation out loud.
And it's my hope that perhaps in my understanding, my growing
understanding of my racial identity, I could be more of a
useful ally as opposed to like a, a person you, you have on
speed dial when you want to feel better.
Like I, I don't want to be someone's conscience.
I actually want to be helpful. And I think be helpful, I think
is a cool part of wanting to be a designer.
Right. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing
that. I think, you know, I have some
immediate responses and then love to hear if Julie has
anything as like a more, a newer person, a newer staff member at
AIGA. But yeah, I do remember your
article coming in at the time, like I said, I was not in a, in
a leadership position per SE. I was kind of publicly facing in
terms of content, but not in terms of like being in charge of
our our strategy at that level. And, and now I am.
So it has been helpful to kind of reflect on that a bit.
And then also thinking about our current political moment where
like things like DEI are like explicitly under attack from the
highest levels of government. And just maybe like thinking
about my own role at AIGA as like a curator essentially who
books guest for this podcast also help select guest speakers
at our conference coming up in LA this October.
One of the principles has just been opening things up more.
You know, we've been doing more open calls.
We're starting something new this year where we have
community based voting on some of the things we're doing for
our conference, in addition to having a IGA members who are
experts in their their domains in the industry and academia
also form a committee. But just having more input,
right? Because I feel like there has
been a history of AIGA being criticized for being kind of
elitist in this way or not being transparent in this way.
And then the second thing I'll say is that in addition to that,
we've also found that that's not enough, right?
That there's a, we don't have like official DEI policy or or
quotas or anything for our guests, but we just noticed
anecdotally that the folks who have agents or staff members who
actively pitch us tend to skew male and tend to skew white,
right? Which is just, it's also a a
result, I think of just demographics of leadership in
our industry. But it in terms of like, yeah,
it's like just if the number of people who like apply or pitch
to speak is already skewed in one way.
I think that's also kind of highlights the need for us to
like go out of our way and like actively either invite people to
pitch or just invite people to kind of compliment the views
that we're already getting because they're not necessarily
applying or pitching for these things.
So yeah, those are a couple of my immediate thoughts.
Just as a curator in my current position.
I don't know if Julia has anything to add to that.
Yeah. I, no, I think first I want to
thank George for the openness to come back and and participate in
this conversation. And I also want to acknowledge
that every time I have read or I have seen George in, in
conferences, I have always felt very inspired by your courage to
speak up your mind. And I think this letter that I
later on found out that you wrote also is very much in line
with your with, with everything that I know of you so far
publicly, right? So I think it's very much in
line. So I admire how you're able to
keep your principles and make sure that you speak up, even
though that might be, that might be there might be some negative
impacts for your work or your for social circles and so on.
So I do think that also the angry hour for optimists are
also a moment like this for us to talk about all this and learn
with each other and vent in a safe space.
So I appreciate also that a conversation like this is also
being expanded to different locations and invited other
folks to join. So yeah, I think that's, that's
my point. I appreciate you coming and
sharing your your point of view and perspective of that time,
but also of anything that has changed until now.
Well, thanks, Julia. Thanks for speaking to that.
And I also think maybe, Lee, Sean, to your point about the
role that you might be playing, I'm hopeful that the openness
that you're just that you're describing is felt across the
National board sending across all the different chapters.
And my sense is that all of the chapters were already there.
And perhaps we're waiting for National to catch up.
But also I wonder if maybe impressed that the the kind of
scrutiny that so much of people of color have experienced in
their professional careers, especially in design, can be
equally applied to the white male candidates who often apply.
Not because we're trying to be anti white, but rather I want to
make sure that they are really good.
I've seen unfortunately a number of examples of like less than
amazing speakers who perhaps one wonder like, why are you on this
stage? Why have we been conditioned to
hold you above all others? I just want to make sure that we
have some parity in that kind of like evaluation and scrutiny
that I know for a lot of people of color who've worked in design
for a long time often feel. So let's hope that's hope that
that's what we can start to see. And maybe to give a, maybe make
a little finer point, we've often used the phrase of a
studio that we're looking to be more porous as in allow more
ideas, more thought, more people to come in and out of the studio
more freely. And I'm hopeful that perhaps
AIG, becoming a little more porous, will benefit from that
level of idea exchange and and purple people exchange and
culture exchange. I really like that idea of more
porous. And I've also been thinking
about like the ways that leadership like, not in terms of
like leadership as an individual people, but leadership as like
a, you know, a quality of how like how somebody performs being
a leader is often gendered and racialized in different ways,
right? And like, you know, the, the
classic example is like, you know, when the male leader is
assertive, but when it's a woman, it like she's, you know,
she's the the B word And it's just like things like that.
And like that kind of porous leadership or more like kind of
democratic leadership just from some of the feedback that we
received from other people, Like it's not always legible what
that means, right? Or sometimes it's seen as like a
lack of leadership or a kind of abdication of leadership rather
than like a more maybe decentralized model or moving
away from that kind of charismatic single figure kind
of model. But it's just, it's just
different and you know, can be made legible in other ways or
requires effort to be made legible.
All right, so as we move forward, George, I know you,
you've built a solid career as a designer, educator and also Co
founder and Co executive director of Greater Good Studio
for almost 15 years now. I think I've seen many designers
thrive in their in their careers, but many of them have a
hard time transitioning from a designer to a business owner.
And I want to I wanted to hear from you, from a person that now
owns a business itself and also did this transition.
How was that process for you and what has been the the biggest
challenge so? Far thanks Julie for the
question. I think if I were to just answer
straight, it would appear as though I'm the only founder or
I'm the only one that helped do this.
That's completely not true. I'm certainly one of the two Co
founders, 2 Co owners and I'd say the vast majority of those
strategic decisions that my Co founder made early on have set
us up to be able to be in a place where there is stability.
And the the sort of sageness that you're asking me to look
back upon, I benefit from the decision she made and set up.
So Sarah Cantor, my Co founder, it's probably her question to be
answering, but I'd say certainly I can answer maybe like what has
been hard managing people has been impossibly hard because I
still think that I still have a hard time managing myself.
There is a massive gap in my leadership, I think in terms of
how to be an excellent manager, growing from my career primarily
as an individual contributor, there were a number of steps
that I skipped. And it's very difficult to make
up for that time without having actual experience as a manager
of people, of teams. And maybe that's the privilege
of being a Co founder, but I do, I do know that I stress my team
out and not having those skills. And it could be true that if you
are a designer working in a company where there was a
founder or owner that had a excellent track record as an
individual contributor and now suddenly you're in this position
of co-owner. It is interesting to maybe ask
what training have they had in the mechanics of running the
studio, in the mechanics of being a manager?
I think that may be true of other fields, but I know design
has this intoxicating narrative around expertise that perhaps
doesn't translate to leadership, even leadership Lashon, the one
that we was talking about earlier that perhaps just by
default you might people might be ascribing qualities that I
don't really have or I'm still struggling to work out.
So I'd say learning to manage the actual staff and the
employees that we have and give them career pathways, that's
really hard. Even just the idea of trying to
like design policies, holy cow. I think I've gotten pretty good
at maybe developing practices or even just say norms, but a
policy I, I had a had a very powerful conversation with my
director of operations who had to literally explain the
definition for policy. And I'm realizing how, how
little I knew about what that meant and realizing I don't know
what I'm talking about and that perhaps I need to give them a
lot more leeway about defining that because that's their role
and that's their expertise. So there's a lot of maturing
happening at the studio. I, I hope, hope to say.
And that we're probably in the, in like a big phase for the next
5 years as we kind of go from the first zero to 10 and then 10
to 20. This is like the teenage years,
as it were, because we're year 14 this summer of trying to work
out how to be a place that one can thrive in and not simply be
a like an interesting notable outlier as a studio very.
Cool. I remember attending a
conference sometimes some years back where you were the keynote
speaker. And one thing that stood out to
me and I got very inspired by it was the way you shared the
working principles of greater good studio.
And, and by that was how you had a principal saying no, just some
types of projects or some, some types of, of clients.
So I wanted to hear more from you.
How is that principle applied and how does it play in
practice? Thanks.
Thanks for the question. Yeah.
So mechanically speaking, every week we have something that we
call technically inside, we call it the BD charrette as in a
conversation and expensive conversation around business
development. And in order to prepare for that
meeting, Sarah I, one of the two Co founders, share back our gut
check like rundown of what the latest business development
might be. Answering a series of questions
that prompts that we've developed over many years around
what is the nature of this request?
And what's the nature of the project that that this nonprofit
client is asking of us? And is there anything kind of
funky or weird or perhaps inappropriate?
And we kind of put those questions in in addition to
maybe regular questions like what's the budget?
What's the timeline? Because I think it can sometimes
get confusing to work out what are we really here to do?
It's not to say by default that we're suspicious of anyone.
I think we go in with good faith, but rather it's so easy,
especially for Sarah and I to be somewhat manipulated by people
who are dangling a project or budget or the opportunity,
particularly in the social sector, that we might not catch
all of the red flags that might be there.
So as a way of accounting for a team and kind of asking them,
hey, can you give us your, your, your minds and strategic
thinking? Can you check this with us?
Your can you do your gut check without gut check and make sure
we don't end up inadvertently doing something erroneous or
worse harmful. So we're on I think version 5
now. I think it may be the 5th
edition of our gut check is probably overdue.
Another one we've done, we do about 35 a year.
So with our track record of what, almost 14 years, we've
done hundreds of them now. It's something I think that's
quite unique to our studio. I think we're quite serious
about it. I had a chat, this is funny.
I had a chat with this other leader of a design studio who I
don't think realized that this we were for real.
And I think they were bringing to what's an opportunity around.
I think it was around maybe energy, some sort of like energy
company. And once I realized, oh, this is
a you need design help with a partner from us, like us.
But really this is a business problem, not a social problem.
I had to explain like, that's not what we do.
I'm really sorry. Like I love you and I love this
opportunity, but that's just not something we do.
And I had to remind them like, you know, like the stuff you see
on the website, that's for real. Like there isn't like another,
like another Bank of portfolio. That's like a back of house,
front of house. That's all we do.
It's pretty, there's no, it's pretty shallow in that regard.
There isn't like two different, two different types of books
that we're trying to maintain. And I had to dawn on them as
like, oh, wait, that's it. As a yeah, that's all we do.
So, oh, we shouldn't be having this conversation.
And he, you know, he was, he was gracious about it, but I think
it can still be a surprise to other Co owners, sort of other
owners of businesses that we might not have another secret
stash of, of commercial clients somehow funding all our work at
this I'm. Not a fraud for a corporate
studio that's doing. There isn't like a we're not
confused, although again, This is why we bring this up.
Is that the risk of manipulation or I would even push it further,
say self deception is ever present.
I went through one of the hardest realizations last
probably about a year ago with this some lovely folks who have
an autonomous vehicle company. And I got so knotted in my head
around what our goals were. And because we were feeling
enormous amount of financial pressure at the studio at the
time. And I started realizing how much
I was convincing myself that there was merit beyond it being
a, a business problem. And after a lot of realizations
and thankfully some, some students that I was working
with, I kind of had a bit of a moment of, of realization and
realized, oh shit, I, I got to get out of this.
So I then sent the breakup e-mail, one of my one of my
finest and have felt better ever since.
Pivot the. Conversation to the theme of
this year's programming at AIG, both on the podcast and in our
upcoming conference in LA this October.
But we're exploring this intersection of design and
performance. And performance can take many
forms. And doing a podcast interview or
speaking on an AIG a conference stage as a form of performance.
But as designers, we're also performing when we're pitching a
client for a new project or facilitating a workshop on, you
know, a kick off workshop or a Co design workshop.
And we know that in your studio you do these collaborative
democratic activations and workshops and other ways of
working that are maybe different from what we were saying before,
the kind of like, you know, singular auteur kinds of
designing. And so, yeah.
Can you tell us more about this culture that you've been
cultivating a greater good studio, and then any sort of
open-ended reflections you might have on how you think about what
it is to perform as a designer, as a leader that's such a
difficult. And expensive question, Lee,
Sean, thank you for that. Yeah.
So I think the word performance can have so many different
connotations from high performance or things to have
like a horsepower. Yeah, sports analogy or things
that to do with excellence, things that feel like if you're
in the National League, I don't know, whatever National League
you might want to pick. I'm not a sports person.
Yeah, neither am I. So I have.
No idea. Like you and I maybe?
Not the right people to ask this question, but but if you want
like top performer, yeah. There's such.
AI ended up with. A lot of images.
Of aggressiveness and crushing goals and dominance that I I
don't have a lot to relate to. Yeah, unfortunately, I also have
a another connotation. Suddenly, because we worked in
the social sector for so long, that performance can feel like
it's insincere or that it's somehow fake.
Or with a lot of folks who have expressed allyship to groups who
have been marginalized, there could be a performative aspect
of I'm your ally as long as it doesn't really have to cost me
to change anything while it cost me in any way.
So I wonder if if if in this context what?
We're talking about here is. How does 1 be consistent?
How does one think about leadership in a way that is
maybe alternative to what we've been addition to think about?
And how does performance mean? How?
Why am I going to show up in a way that feels as though outside
of this moment in time? Will it stand up to become some
kind of scrutiny many years later?
So I think for our studio, one of the one of the tough parts is
balancing wanting to be a for profit business, which we've
always been, but also do in a way that doesn't corrupt
ourselves or our social mission, which we have as a as a studio.
There are many ways that we could have designed a studio to
make more money to have nothing to do with the work that we do
at all. And I think in doing so, we will
simply have a business that justifies its own existence that
occasionally does social sector work.
And I think if that was the case, maybe more akin to what
my, my, the colleague I was talking to, my my, the Pi was
talking to, maybe what they were suspecting we did, I think we
would. Qualify this.
As a as a performance, we would be maintaining this sort of like
image of what we do. But I think what's interesting
is to say, can we be clear minded about what the purpose of
this business is for? And for us, it is about being
affordable to a group of people who don't typically have access
to design studios or services, all in the purpose of all social
change. So if there is a performance,
I'd be just asking what are we doing with this performance for?
Is it to get to this top of some type of leaderboard?
OK. I don't know why is that to be
the best at something. I mean there is merit in that I
guess, but is that it like? You know, like it.
Could be that if there's a trophy or something that you
hold aloft that has meaning maybe.
But I wonder if perhaps there are larger goals or larger
remits that the design studio could have.
That is a beyond winning awards or winning recognition.
And it makes me wonder, who were we really serving?
For us, our clients are a means to get to impact.
We love our clients. Which is why we have to be so
selective. About them.
So if we get, if we end up working for a client whose goals
are so completely different than what we had originally set out,
I think it would have, we'd be really annoying to work with and
it'd be really obvious that we were sort of like the wrong
people. So I think it's clear for us to
be able to think about like our clients being a good match or
that we might be a good match for some and we'd be a terrible
match for others. So I want to be suddenly less
judgy around good studios, bad studios, good clients, bad
clients and about how well of a well suited the compatibility
might be. So we, we want to be the people
you call when you have a social mission.
That's it. And if that's our performance
that we get rated on, so be it. But I want to be clear that
that's kind of what we're trying to judge ourselves about maybe
and don't get confused by being quoted with the number one
design studio in the world. I I don't know what you're
judging that against. I've worked in places who have
said that, and I have wondered thinking who who made the
ranking? Was it you?
Yeah, it's like those college. Rankings, right?
It's like, what are the best universities, you know, besides
Harvard, right? At Stanford, it's like it's kind
of the same every year, but they just kind of like switch chairs
and yeah, yeah, and, and I can't tell.
Who it's it for? So who are we serving?
Who is our clients or does it expose perhaps that what the
designs to do really is is it's a profit center that happens to
use design if that's it, can we just say that out loud right
versus we we're trying to have impact and the reality is that
Sarah and I don't have personal. Wealth we.
Don't have access to wealth. We don't.
We weren't born into into the
means that might have us have impact through foundation work
or other types of like philanthropy.
We also weren't trained in medicine.
So that's out of the picture. All we have is designed just the
two of us. We're like limited by that.
So we want to take what we have been trained in and like arm
wrestle it into into shape into the direction we want because
that's all we know. That's probably why we've had
this false profit studio because we didn't know how to start a
non profit. Like all we did was just take
what we've had that we knew about and that let's redirect it
to a different purpose. And I think that that has meant
that we now have certain baggage that comes with it.
And also, I think there's an opportunity because we're trying
to do something new. But I think you have to be
really clear minded. Like, what is this really for?
And I think it's not. It's not.
I don't mind if you just say it's just to make a shit ton of
money. I just want you to say that out
loud and stop pretending it's about something else.
Yeah. And I think that connects to a.
Previous answer you had where you were talking about like you
didn't have a separate front stage and backstage kind of
game, right? And it's like just as you were
saying, like what's on your website for greater good studio
is actually what you do or like trying to match get the right
fit with your clients also avoids the thing that I've seen,
you know, with other design studios where it's like you put
on the dog and pony show for your clients and then as soon as
they leave the room, right, you're talking shit about them.
And there's this whole kind of like, you know, doing it for
money, but you kind of secretly hate your clients kind of thing,
which like you're kind of saying that like the real authenticity
here of this is like, yeah, trying to make that front stage
backstage like as aligned as possible, right?
Yeah, I think that that actually.
The amount of workarounds you have as a as a studio owner to
make every all the self deception level out could all be
replaced if you just figured out what are you doing this for.
That alignment internally has all these downstream benefits
because you no longer pretend to find the kinds you want.
You just have the clients that only want to work with you.
You have great clarity over what the work is for, which then has
resonance around who you attract.
And actually going back to the very beginning, the idea of the
pissed off optimist and wanting to.
Say that loud. Versus sort of like cryptically
on our website was to say, I think those people exist and
there's enough of them not only to, you know, work with as a
design studio, but there's enough of us to actually cause
real social change in the world. So we wanted to be explicit and
not opaque about who we're looking for because we think the
more clear we can be, the less time we waste for them or for us
around misregistering what the work is about.
I'm curious to hear from. You, if there is any type of
design rule or principle that you love to break or that you
clearly disagree with, well, that's so hard for me, Julia.
Because I I feel like I spent so much of my time coming up
desperately. Hoping no one will.
Notice that I'm not I'm not good at this or real at this.
That activates so much of my imposter syndrome pretty
hardcore. So the safety and the comfort
that comes from adhering to those rules is hard to break.
And then and yet what has been going alongside my professional
journey is this journey around my racial identity and how much
that understanding, what was conditioned in me to mean, what
excellent was, what the rules were, what professional looks
like meant that perhaps in my own understanding of who I am, I
might not be able to ever perform those adhere to those
rules. And I think my, my sense for a
long time was, well, then I'm never going to be quite good
enough. And I'm, I'm kind of trying to
let go of some of the stringentness around those rules
and realize, yes. There is merit.
To a degree. And yet how much of that rule
acted as an inadvertent gatekeeper?
Was it about perhaps maintaining the status quo of a very elite,
narrow small group as opposed to truly understanding what
excellence might be, which might be in truth in expression, truth
in who people are, and then having that expressed visually,
tangibly in some way so? I'm realizing that I'm.
Now, in a place where underneath those rules of what excellence
might be, there might be other rules that we don't hear as much
about, which is just try to be as true to yourself as possible.
And other people would will recognize that that feels very
different than how how tightly you can your type or how on.
Trend your typeface. Might be or how much your color
gradients are of the moment. It's been really hard to not get
too distracted by trend and the trends that I grew up on.
I have a certain kind of nostalgia for which makes them
very important to me. You know, the, the camp coming
up in the 90s meant that there was a lot of particular ways of
doing things for, you know, modernist views that I've, I'm
not quite at the point where I'm now making everything in, in
Comic Sans, but I'm getting there.
I'm getting there where I don't know if I give a shit anymore
about half the things that I used to think were that
important. So, OK, so maybe try to give you
a real example. I I am no longer concerned about
typos in a cover letter. Or in an application or in in
people who apply. I I would love to see your work.
I'd love to see your thinking, but some of the things I used to
worry about I've I've tried to let go of.
That's great. That's a good.
Example. I'm going to make sure we asked.
You a question about your teaching.
You had alluded to this before about like how some students
helped you rethink some of the professional work you were
doing. Can you reflect as an educator
on how you think design programs should focus on, Yeah, how, how
do they prepare students to tackle the kind of social
challenges and kind of social good design that you do now?
Thanks so much, Lisa. For for asking that I've been
very lucky in that I found a new education institution at
Northwestern. I used to teach at the school at
the Art Institute of Chicago, who I continue to owe a big debt
to because they took a risk on me because I never got a
master's degree. And it's not easy to get a
teaching job without that. So I know that they, they, they
stuck the neck out. But at Northwestern, what's
interesting is that they were still trying to what wonder,
like what is the future of their master's program going to look
like? And with new leadership at at
the Engineering design Innovation program, they invited
me to create a new class called Ethics and Identity in Design.
And that class has been really transformative for me in that I
didn't know if anybody cared about these topics.
And I don't know if I knew I had enough to teach about this
topic. So that that was that's a whole
other thing. But in teaching it and actually
more recently working with with Amy who runs a program, placing
that class in a cornerstone moment during the first quarter
of the two year program means that you can no longer avoid it.
It used to be this thing where the class was an elective was
Now it is a foundational part It isn't.
I don't know what the opposite. It's a required yet required
class. And that just means that we had
to make some choices about what can no longer be in that place
when something is now required. So I took it as a real
commitment to center an ethical stance and to center humans and
to center working with a real critical view as to how and why
we do the work. Not just that we can.
And we do it with a certain level of execution or of
fidelity. Those other those other reasons
seem to be pretty often forgotten or added as a bonus
with primacy around execution and resolution.
Whereas now we might be able to say how and why we do things
might be just as important as the outcomes themselves.
And balancing those two, I think is always going to be hard.
But in a program like this, I feel like they've they've taken
a stance to say we think it's important enough that we that we
place it front and center. Very cool.
Yeah. Thanks, Nishan.
Yeah. I was going to maybe say one
more thing. In that maybe about a couple of
years after the AIJ letter, I came to a real crossroads about
whether or not I should do something that I thought was
going to be kind of politically sort of like risky for my
career. And that was specifically around
the letter called surviving IDEO.
And I don't know how much of the students who I was working with
at the time even realize how I was very, very stuck between two
parts of whether to pursue the letter or not.
And this is like, I'm like sitting over there looking at
these, this first batch of students final grades, reading
their essays and realizing that I've been hopping on about how
you have to try to make a you'll, you'll find yourself
often a fork in the road and have to decide which way you
want to go. And I'm realizing I can never
teach this class again if I don't take the quote UN quote
right choice or right for me, even if the right one might be
the scariest or the hardest. So that class so clearly
impacted whether or not I should do something that I feel like I
owe it in in a very metal way, owe that Class A lot because I
think it's shaped actually where my career is now practicing some
of the things that we've talked about all this, this, this whole
interview. Yeah.
Yeah, there's that sort of like teaching by example, right?
There's like the things that you do that are in your syllabus.
And then there's the things that you do, like in your the way
that you show up in your professional life and in your
kind of personal political commitments in that sense.
And like how that is an example for students?
Yeah, I mean, I think what's so hard?
About it is that it's so much easier to simply tell people
what to do and then walk away, because who's going to call me
out on this? Like.
It's not that often that I'm going to get checked, so I could
get away with that for a long time.
It's just it think it becomes very it will gnaw on you.
When you don't, maybe. Follow through and it's yeah, I,
I remember thinking through several moments in my career
that that sense of gnoring self doubt or the creepingness of
self deception is a feeling I'm trying to not lose touch with.
But I'm. I'm older than I was, obviously.
I'm like almost 50 now and I'm just trying to still keep in
touch with that feeling of am I lying to myself about this?
I sometimes can't tell. And I worry that it will be a
long time before I, I I can't tell I've lost it because it
would have happened some time ago.
And I've, you know, already moved on.
Totally. Yeah.
I feel like we could do a whole episode on the the surviving IDO
letter that you bravely signed on to.
But but just in general, like about labor conditions in, you
know, design studios and agencies, not even like singling
out a, you know, idea or, or that, you know, but these are
things that are unfortunately pervasive in our industry and
things that maybe I think needs to be talked about more
certainly with students and with some other folks in terms of,
yeah, just what to expect on on the job, right.
And how you you deal with it. And like, not like denormalizing
some of these toxic workplace things as well.
George, do you have? Any type of book or a movie or
show or any type of media that you would recommend to our
listeners? Something that has inspired you
lately? Yeah, so I.
Listened on on book on tapers where I listened on my audio
book of a book called Poverty by America by Desmond.
Shoot, I have to remember his last name.
Yeah, I forgot his last name now.
It was amazing. It does such a thorough job of
untangling the harmful narratives of what about what
makes people poor and keeps them poor and what helps people who
are not temporarily poor less likely to slip and forward down.
That that that slippery slope towards poverty and the ways in
which language to describe a government handout is exclusive
to one group and not the other. And that tax breaks are seen as
a while you all must be smart enough to figure that out versus
hey, that is another government handout.
So the the the general premises, can we please tax those who need
to be taxed? And for those who need to be
taxed, can you please do your part and actually pay your
share? And your avoidance shouldn't be
seen and viewed as a a neat way of of an.
Indication. How smart.
You are but actually get relabeled as your avoidance of
your social responsibility. So that book is has nothing to
do with design in any formal sense.
But if you think about how rules tend to indicate behavior and
that designing systems through seizure rules to me sounds a lot
like design. So if we're designing societies
and designing sense anyhow, the most wealthy in this country act
and behave. To me, that feels like it's
something that is open for design because people have
already applied a lot of intent behind those rules and it's
working exactly as planned. So yeah, I definitely think it's
been designed that way. But you have to, you have to
kind of like wrap your head around it and go, oh, right.
Well, we've designed this system to work very efficiently towards
growing the wealth of a very small number and to extract this
much value out of everybody else.
Shoot, I, I really wish maybe Lee, Sean, you can help me
figure out the name of that. We'll look this up and we'll.
Put it in the show notes of folks.
But yeah, like, yeah, this point too, right.
Like on systems, I think designers, it behooves us to
understand like the larger economic and political systems
we're doing work in, even if, like a book that you're
suggesting, George, is not like directly related to the craft of
design. Maybe.
But yeah, it's like, what are we doing it?
It reminds me of that meme that was going around of like things
that are classy if you're rich, but like trashy if you're poor.
And one of them is like getting money from the government or
like speaking multiple languages, right?
All of these things where it's like it's literally the same
thing, but it's just coded in such different ways based on
somebody's socio economic status.
Yeah. And I think that.
Conditioning that comes with that coding means that we view
in very stark terms who should be given the benefit of the
doubt or who should be deemed unworthy.
You know, similarly along those lines, I feel like I've been
doing a little volunteering with this group called the Chicago
Community Jail Support that's here in Chicago that does a lot
of work with folks who are leaving, who get put back out on
the street from Cook County Jail.
And the number of stories I think that people make up about
people being detained and then put back out, I think it's not
helping anyone. And the utterly, like, inhumane
way in which Cook County does that right now makes you start
to question, why is it happening this way?
Is it because you don't think they're of them as real humans?
Probably. So, yeah, there's a lot of
powerful narratives, both mostly harmful actually, that I think
dictate a lot of how we see the world.
And I think our job as a designers could be to reshape
what those narratives are. Thank you for that suggestion.
Again, we'll post those links and we'll post links to your
site, Greater Good Studio site as well, but we'd like to just
as a final thing so folks can hear it and see you say that.
Could you just do a call to action to wrap us up in terms of
where folks can find you and your work if they want to follow
up with this episode? Thanks very much.
Yeah, please. Take a look at
greatergoodstudio.com Our website has a lot of our latest
work and a lot of reasons as to why we exist.
We have some social channels that you can also track US on
from LinkedIn to some others. And yeah, I would say, you know,
Sunny, while I think we're great, there's a lot of local
nonprofits that are in your area that I think really deserve your
design attention, whether it's from just volunteering through
to thinking about them as a strategic partner.
I think all those organizations would really benefit from having
a design thinker or someone who thinks about design give them an
ask and say, hey, have we thought about our programs a
little differently? So yeah, let's, let's try to
work locally as much as we can. Wonderful.
Yeah, thanks for. That advice and for those
resources, George A thank you for joining us thank you the
audience for listening and or watching if you're seeing this
on YouTube and we'll see you in another episode of the AIG
Design podcast thanks so much for having.
Me folks.