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The Ideal of the Game

Sam Potts

@sampotts

AIGA National Design Conference

New Orleans

October 13, 2015

Sam Potts — AIGA New Orleans — October 10, 2015

Exactly 6 years and 5 days ago1 I got on a plane

to Beijing with no return ticket. All of my worldly

possessions, minus what clothes and books I

could fit into two large suitcases, were packed into

a storage space in Boston. This included all the

apparatus of my one-man design office2 — files,

backup drives, a giant laser printer.

From Beijing I flew to Yantai, a city on the Shandong peninsula,3 and from there I was driven the next

day to Haungcheng.4 Not too long ago Huangcheng was a village.5 This is Huangcheng in 2009.6

When I got there there were two places where you could get coffee: both were KFC.7

I went in Huangcheng as a volunteer English teacher at the Nanshan Bilingual School.8 I spent four

months there, nine months total in China. When I arrived, I did not know what lessons I’d give, how

many classes I’d have, or even what grade my students would be. No matter that I was a graphic

designer who did not speak Chinese.9

This is not the story of how to build an airplane, or the design work I’ve done, or perhaps even a

graphic design story at all. This is mainly the story of how a moderately promising graphic designer

found himself in a tiny foreign city, and what it means to wander far afield of one’s path, and how

one might find a way forward from a place as literally or figuratively far away as China.

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By the way it turned out I taught first graders10 11 — they’re in 7th grade now — and sixth graders12 —

they’re in college now.

I moved to China for a few reasons. Fundamentally I was looking for a way out.13

Out of New York,14 for one. After 20 years, after college and jobs in publishing and design, after

small apartments and September 11th and the Brooklynization15 of everything, I was exhausted.

Everything was making me angry, especially small meaningless things and especially on the

subway.

I was also trying to get over a broken heart, after a romance that I’d wanted to be life-changing

turned out to be life-changing in none of the good ways. I was beginning to feel like there would

never be any love for me in New York.16

And then, more to the point — something had happened to me as a designer. I had been working

independently for seven years, just me by myself. I had been very very fortunate. I’d done some

projects that were reasonably visible17 18 on the street and reasonably well-known thanks to certain

famous deranged millionaires,19 and reasonably well-circulated thanks to the fact that the New York

Times is our local hometown newspaper.20

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Then somewhere over the course of 2007 or so, I started to struggle. There was the heartbreak

and the Brooklynization and everything else but truthfully I started to feel just, unsatisfied. Some

bottom of design dropped out for me. I lost that internal pull that I’d felt. The feeling of gratification

that had come from designing and even from sketching was definitely not coming from inside

anymore.

I started getting sick of my own ideas — not good when you work solo — then I started hating

them, and as a result I stopped having any good ideas.21 22 What I was losing was my connection to

doing the work, the pleasure of the work itself, the labor and discipline of it. That’s the bottom that

dropped out. I still worked hard but I felt no impetus behind it. The up-down cycle became a daily

slog.

And I started to consider whether it was necessary for me to be a graphic designer — that is

necessary to my sense of self and my place in the world. This went on for about a year, because I am

also quite slow about making changes.

So, as I’ve since told the joke, I decided to get out of town — ALL the way out of town.23 Back then I

would also say that I was trying to “jump the tracks” of my career, which was meant to describe my

feeling of being confined to one path. I didn’t know what I was jumping into but the whole metaphor

doesn’t exactly conjure up a very good image.24

Now, this kind of crisis, if I can call it that, is alarming to contemplate, and all the more so given the

cultural moment we’re in right now,25 in which we’re all exhorted to follow our passion, and passion

is held out as its own motivation and reward. But it’s a real and serious question: what do you do if

your passion leaves you? I’d been very much connected to design. I’d been on the board of the AIGA

NY chapter. How could I have gotten sick of it?

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By way of background,26 I’ll give you a brief account of the basic route that led me to this point. Like

most of you I’m sure, I originally wanted to be an English professor. I studied comparative literature

in college. I took pretentious photos of my book shelf.27 After college I got a job as an editorial

assistant in the textbook division at St. Martin’s Press.

[ Anecdote about Writing Nature in China 28 29 ]

And then I got laid off from my job and had to fall back on freelance proofreading for book

publishers. One day after about nine months, I went in to Simon & Schuster and asked if there was

anyone in the design department I could talk to about learning how to design books. They said, Oh

you should talk to Amy Hill, she needs an assistant. Pure lucky timing.

Based pretty much on a zine30 I had been making since college, I got the job. I kept the printers full

of paper, processed freelancer invoices, sent specs to our typesetters. Eventually Amy gave me a

book to design. I went home and read The Anatomy of Type over the weekend and ended up mixing

Bembo with Centaur italic for display.31

Through processing invoices, I became vaguely aware of something called a design studio and

realized they were designing all the good books.

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I called one of the studios, Eric Baker Design Associates, and managed to get Eric to look at some

things I’d made.32 33 Eric told me I had “no idea what I was doing.” He said I should go to school,

maybe check out this school in Atlanta called Portfolio Center. Thank you for that, Eric.

I went to Atlanta.34 Checked it out. Was blown away. So at age 28, I loaded up a moving van and

went to Portfolio Center.35

This was a golden age for me. My hobbies had turned out to be an actual profession. I liked making

things with an x-acto knife.36 I liked that design was about ideas. I felt engaged with designing in

a way I never had when editing. Time flew by when I worked, which as we all know is a sign you’re

doing what you should be doing.

After Portfolio Center, Eric Baker hired me, the same guy who’d told me I had no idea what I was

doing. I went to work at Eric’s studio for 3 years and then I figured why not. It was $200 to become

incorporated in New York state. Another $300 for business cards.37 I started telling people I was

available for jobs.

I was lucky. One of my first projects was a restaurant38 39 which led to several other similar jobs,

and another was a foundation that became a client for 6 years.40 As the years went by, projects got

bigger and also more fun and maybe a little more Brooklynized.41

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[ Goggles and Never gonna make it anecdotes ]

In those years I was typical.42 I did the things we all do: small jobs for the promise of bigger jobs,

largo pro-bono projects for free, undervaluing my services and overdelivering on work, sending out

homemade promo pieces. It was a good time to be a graphic designer.

So the issue for me was not that the professional landscape changed. It’s that I changed, slowly as

they say and then all at once. Which was how I ended up with this feeling of having to get out and

how I ended up at the Nanshan Bilingual School. In a way, moving to China43 was perhaps a test of

how much I wanted to be a graphic designer after all.

Now perhaps you are hoping to hear a story about how this all came back around to design, and how

design is a vocation and therefore something that never leaves you. When I came back from China

it would not have been that difficult to print new business cards, let everyone know I was back in

business, and crank up the old apparatus again.

I could have done it but44 I couldn’t do it.

That feeling of wanting out is very strong. The reason I decided to talk about this here is that I

suspect I’m not the only one though granted my course of action might have been a little extreme.

What I can tell you, and what might be good news if you’re experiencing any of this career antsiness

yourself, are two things:

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1. It’s okay. You might hit a patch. It might not be design. You might have arrived at this conference

feeling anxious and confused instead of inspired. That’s okay. I say this to you as someone who’s

been anxious and confused about his design self since 2007. It might not be design. At least for a

while.

And 2. You can try something else. You’re free. You have our permission. It’s great to have passion

for what you do but don’t let any of the loud voices in the design community bully you into thinking

you’re required to maintain some impossible level of fervor for your vocation when you really don’t.

It’s all an Instagram illusion anyway. You’re free.

In the wide scope of human history, we are so fortunate, and so able to follow new paths and try

other things. I was 38 years old and had to admit to myself and my family that I wanted out. It’s

not supposed to work that way. It looks bad to your peers. It confuses them. But still it might be

necessary.

This is the part of the talk where I introduce an historical figure — the older and more obscure the

better — who provides a perfect model or metaphor for what I’m trying to say. So let’s take a look at

this man.45

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This man’s name is Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld was one of the biggest TV stars of the 1990s.

He was the star of a sitcom on NBC called “Seinfeld.” They named it after him. The show revolves

around Jerry, the character, who bears a strong resemblance to Jerry the real person, and Jerry’s

friends George, Elaine, and Kramer. The show ran for 9 seasons and it’s one of the best sitcoms

ever. I need only mention The Contest.

You probably know that Jerry Seinfeld the real person had been a comedian for more than 10 years

before creating the show. And you might also know that in 1998 after Seinfeld the show went off the

air, Seinfeld the comedian went back to standup.

If you saw the movie “Comedian” you will know all this. You know therefore that in 1998 Seinfeld

retired all his earlier standup material, 20 years of jokes, and built a new act. What we see in the

movie is him working on new material.

And he bombs pretty badly.46 We see him struggling at something he knows he’s good at —

something we all think he’s great at. He is fully aware of the difficulty of creating a new act, of how

slow and painful a process it is, but he’s committed to doing the work, even though this means

performing on Long Island.

It’s an act of reinvention. It’s almost as if, by putting aside his polished act, he’s trying to unlearn his

own expertise. As if his expertise might work against his making progress toward something new.

This is a profound thing to witness, from someone who’d reached the top of his game.

The lesson of Jerry Seinfeld is: under certain circumstances, when trying to force a change and

possibly growth, you may need to throw out the old material. You may need to force a state of

unlearning in order to be free. This isn’t a form of false innocence. Seinfeld doesn’t pretend that he

has no idea what’s funny, after all.

The important thing is that even though the outcome is unknown, even though the beginning is

small, he does the work, starting from zero. He submits to the labor and the discipline of it.

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In ninth grade47 I had a soccer coach named Dean Conway who told us,48 you always play against

three opponents: one, the other team; two, yourself; and three, the ideal of the game.

What is the ideal of the game in design? I don’t think it’s found in any one project or any specific

execution or artifact. But for all of us, I imagine that the ideal embodies some form of exploration

and discovery,49 some pursuit of the new.

New projects, new platforms, new conditions and constraints — it’s through these things that we

pursue new forms of expression, even when they’re just new for us. There is inevitably some degree

of ongoing dissatisfaction mixed into this, perhaps even driving it. This is just how it is for designers,

for creative people, for people who create.

But the the lucky by-product, for all creative work, is that something of ourselves exists outside of

us, out in the world through the things we make. Our work is who we are in the world — perhaps a

little more so those of us without children. Our work is our expression of self.

And there is no shedding the creative self. You can’t give it up any more than Jerry Seinfeld can give

up comedy. Some among us might have to go all the way to China to figure out that those tracks

can’t be jumped.

But . . . those tracks go all over the place. They’re going to more and more new places all the time.

And so the questions that arise are:

How do you keep exploring well after you’ve gotten comfortable in your expertise? How do you feed

your dissatisfaction? How far from home do you have to go? When is it time to buy a plane ticket?

Maybe it’s best to let those questions hang there.

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For my part,50 I’ve started buying tools. Very specific specialized tools that do very specific

things. Tools like this.51 And this,52 which looks pretty similar to the other one but is for something

completely different.

This tool is a bottom bracket facing tool. It weighs about 4 pounds. A little more than half a gallon

of milk. The weight is important because you feel it when you pick it up. The weight is its presence

in your hand. Is it cold? Slightly oily? Well balanced? Unlike all of the digital tools we now quote

unquote build with, the experience of this tool is physical. It commands you to be present.

A bottom bracket facing tool does one thing. It faces a bottom bracket. To face something is to

square off its opposing sides so that the surfaces are perfectly flat and perfectly parallel. This is a

bottom bracket.53 And this is how you might be more familiar with it.54

It’s the part of a bicycle frame where the crank axle runs through the frame. The bottom bracket

holds the axle stable so that you can pedal in smooth circles. If the bottom bracket is not correctly

faced, you’ll end up pedalling crosswise to the vertical plane of the bike. If this happens, you’ll know

it because you just crashed.

This bottom bracket is on a bicycle55 that I made last year at the Yamaguchi Framebuilding School

in Rifle Colorado. Here’s a little more of it.56

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This is my framebuilding teacher, Koichi Yamaguchi.57

Koichi has been building bicycle frames by hand all his life. He has built bikes that have set world

records, won world championships, been ridden by the US Olympic team.

Koichi is a master craftsman. More precisely, he is a physical genius. His hands are geniuses.

My hands have a lot to learn about building bike frames. For example — this is me58 working on

mitering a tube. Mitering is one of the most important steps in building a frame. This59 is what a

mitered tube looks like — it’s kind of a fish mouth shape. The fish mouth fits around an abutting

tube like this60 to form a snug joint.

You can do a miter on a drill press or a lathe in one minute, 99% of which is set up time. In Koichi’s

class, we did all the mitering by hand. With a file.

Doing it by hand, when you’re a novice, takes about 15 minutes and 80% of that time is getting

the last couple millimeters to be properly shaped all the way around. 100% of the time is spent

expecting to screw up.

To begin,61 you set your tube in the vise at the angle it will be on the bicycle. You stand square to the

workbench and with your file level you push it across the end of the tube. Stroke by stroke.

After a few minutes of filing, the mitre shape starts to form. At first it’s shallow62 and as you file it

takes on a deeper curve.

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You’ll have drawn a line63 with a Sharpie to guide you. This line is important because your tube has

to be the exact right length for everything to fit together.

You work slowly and deliberately, paying attention to each file stroke. Pretty soon, maybe sooner

than you expected, you start getting close to the Sharpie line, so you put a short piece of tube64 into

the joint to check the angles. Then you go back and file off a bit more.

Once you think you’ve got it, you take the tube out of the vise and clean it off with some sandpaper

and show it to Koichi.

The edges gleam silver and are very sharp. Koichi peers over his glasses at your work. “This part,”

he says, pointing to an edge. “This part is a little bit struggling.”

It isn’t right. You knew this. You didn’t want to admit it but you did. You’ve been doing this for only

a few days but you’ve already picked up what a proper mitre should be. You know you need to

be patient and keep trying but you don’t actually have any experience with this particular form

of patience. After years of working on the computer, you’re unused to asking your hands to do

something they can’t do. You’re unused seeing your hands produce a result that doesn’t equal the

image in your mind. Basically, you suck at this.

“Yes, Koichi,” you say and go put the tube back in the vise for like the 18th time. You know you have

to be careful about filing off too much.

Your hands,65 by the way, will be blackened and rough and smell like steel.

You take a deep breath. You focus on the tube,66 clearing your head of all other thoughts. You take

the file in your hand and try again.

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Three strokes. Four. As level and straight as you can. A fifth stroke. Okay clean it off. Test it again.

Koichi comes over.

“I don’t know,” you say, trying to convey that you know it’s still not right and you’re not a quitter but

also you might be just about to whack this fucking tube with your file.

“Okay,” Koichi says and takes the file from you. He takes a look, peering over his glasses. He lays

the file down against the tube in the vise and — stroke — stroke — stroke — and I swear to god it’s

perfect. It’s wonderful. Gratitude washes over you, a gratitude out of all proportion to this small

detail among so many on the bike you’re building. A detail that will in fact be unseen, hidden inside

the frame, when the bike is finished.

The subtlety of his skill is nearly incomprehensible to you, except that he just did it right there in

front of you. It’s a profound thing to witness this. To see a difficult job done with what called only be

called grace.

You think, he’s not just good at this. He’s great at this. And that, too, is the ideal of the game.

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