TDN: Are there specific strengths, influences, resources that you can point to that have enabled you to succeed as a contemporary designer?

BB: An absolute devotion to typography. A passionate devotion to typography. A passionate devotion to the message, to getting it right, whether that's stopping it short and saying that's good enough. Those are some of the values that form what I do. Having a goal, and knowing what your goal is. We were talking about this with several other designers recently, being able to toggle back and forth from the macro to the micro, big to little. Many young designers that I work with in my studio have no idea how to do that. But that's absolutely critical in being able to create design. What's my major goal and how does this tiny piece of what I'm doing fit into that...major, minor, major, minor. That kind of toggling is very important.

BS: I could name you a whole bunch of artists and designers that I'm influenced by, but truth be told, I think that my education at RISD is something that influences me everyday. I use everyday what I learned from there. I feel like a commercial! They taught us to be master problem solvers and the problem solving methodology we employed was very diverse and very strict. They taught us there are many ways to skin the cat, and we experimented with all of them. Today I feel that my biggest strength and the strength of my firm is in conceptual development. The exploration of various solutions to the clients' problems, not just one solution, but various ways to communicate the objectives of the problem the client gives us. And so, I can't say enough good things about my education. I will say that the type of methodology being employed can influence people in their everyday lives. I find I use that problem solving kind of methodology to solve other kinds of issues in my life. And so it's been a wonderful thing to have the process of problem solving.

TDN: What other disciplines do you find influential, what role should they have?

PT: Drawing -- it's becoming a lost art in schools. They don't draw anymore. They sit in front of the computer. If I had my way at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, all four years the students would sketch and draw; not to become famous artists but just to learn how to communicate ideas. One way is to draw thumbnails or roughs. They're not very good at it anymore. The old timers are, that's all they ever do is sketch, and then they produce. The production tools that are available today are fantastic but if you don't have an idea, they're not worth any of it.

KG: What is going to push us forward, I think, is not our increasing skills, if indeed they are increasing. Nor our greater powers, if in fact we have greater powers. What's going to push us for ward is a greater identity with other creative people. We must get closer to artists, to architects, to poets, and writers. And I serve as being as much a writer as much as I do a graphic designer. I see this much more clearly than perhaps my colleagues do. I believe we must reintegrate. It took long enough to carve a special place for us in the last century and the beginnings of this century to make a claim to be special people. Now, I think we can relax. I don't think we need to make our case quite so stridently. I was one of those who was a strident spokesman for our budding profession, and now I want to feel that we belong to a wider spectrum once again. Including the political and sociological spectrum. I don't want to be a different person, actually I want to be more closely integrated with my community. And that's the way forward for me and perhaps for younger people.

BS: Interface design, I really think that the design of our tools that we're using is going to have the biggest influence over what and how we communicate in our discipline. Other things influence us, I'm not saying architecture doesn't, or industrial design doesn't. But you asked me for the biggest influence and I think it's definitely interface design.

TDN: The introduction of the computer has been a relatively recent phenomenon, how do you find it impacts design and specifically your work? Is it helping to propel design forward?

PT: I think it's helping it, but I don't think it's doing any pushing as far as I'm concerned. I think it all comes from up here (points to head) and once you did it up here there are many ways to produce something. The computer is one of them. By the way, I don't own a computer. I have followed it for years since I started 49 years ago. I buy everything except for the idea. I don't own a printing plant, I don't make paper and I've never set type, although I've talked about it.

KG: How do I respond to current technology and the changes we are confronted with? My answer is that I respond reluctantly, under pressure, but in the end with satisfaction. I've seen the introduction of computers in graphic design over a fifty-year period, obviously, and I'm now a friendly user of a friendly machine. But it didn't come easily. I wanted to know what that machine had to offer me. And I saw what it was offering some people, which was an illusion. And it wasn't until I realized the indispensability of this sort of technology that I based it. So I'm a conservative in this respect and highly non-conservative in many others.

BS: I'm very happy to have all the technologies but in my mind it's a bottomless money-pit that I have to pour money into to keep technologically current, constantly educate myself. And I feel behind when I'm the stupidest one in the office when it comes to all the technologies and I'm more and more reliant on my staff because of technology, because I can't do everything. I can't keep the clients, run the business, figure out the pension plans, do the hiring, and get the business. So, I'm not the master of many things in the firm anymore. So as far as being in a small business, I don't know how it affects being in a large business. In a small business it's a blessing but it's also a curse.

TDN: Where do you think contemporary design is headed in the future?

BB: It's simplifying the complete self-absorption of Deconstructivism design where nobody cared if you could read anything -- that was whether it was a magazine or advertising. Designers at the time didn't care if you could read it or not. So it's six-point type that ran sideways and up and down that was common. But that's a foolish, foolish...that's not a commercial design mechanism. That's art. And a corporation shouldn't have to pay for that unless they're commissioning it as art.

KG: What do I think of where we're going? I think some statements made at this conference and at other conferences suggest to me that we have an overweening attitude towards what we do. We come to think of ourselves as more powerful than in fact we are. Graphic designers and people in the visual communication business are not powerful, they are the recorders, the entertainers, and sometimes they're part of the instruction of an operation. They are so often the servants of their masters and seeking to take mastery of what we do is only partially successful. We're only successful when we revert to being artists, poets, revert to taking a long view of the situation and step outside the immediate requirements of our clients. Bless them, they're so necessary; they do confine our imagination.

It's a reluctant decision I've come to. I presented myself as a craftsman, a humble craftsman for so long. It took me a long time to realize I really could be more than that. I want to have the same magic in work and life that our predecessors who made the wonderful cave paintings of thirty thousand years ago had.