One of the most telling details about Paul Sahre is the acronym of his studio’s name, Office of Paul Sahre, which is featured in a neon sign overlooking a section of New York’s Sixth Avenue. Ironic, humorous, and clever, the O.O.P.S. abbreviation embodies the spirit and witty sensibility of this incredibly talented graphic designer.
Paul does a wide range of both commercial and personal projects. His office is an eclectic workspace that incorporates elements of a design studio, a foosball arena, and a silk-screen shop. Like this space, Sahre’s design sensibility can’t be pinned down to one category. Silk-screening may be one dimension of his aesthetic panoply, but Sahre is equally expressive with illustration and photography, as evidenced in projects such as a book cover for Rick Moody, visual commentaries for The New York Times’ Op-Ed page, and his sublime illustrations for the jazz label Smalls Records.
Paul and I met in his studio, located above a Dunkin’ Donuts. We sat and drank coffee while Paul talked about his early wish to be a professional baseball player, his desire to draw like Charles Schulz, and the insight he gained from watching designer Alexander Gelman perch a hot cup of coffee at the edge of a desk. After our interview, he taught me how to play foosball under the neon halo of the O.O.P.S. sign in his third-floor window.
What was your first creative memory, or when do you first remember being creative in your life?
I always drew. From my earliest memories, I was the artist in the family, constantly drawing.
Do you remember your first drawing?
I made a Christmas ornament, shaped as the head of a baseball player, that is still on my mom’s tree.
When did you decide to go into graphic design?
I didn’t. I thought it was commercial art—my father had to go out and encourage his lazy son to do something with his future. So he went out and bought a book about design and told me I should go to an accredited college. It’s funny; my dad, the aerospace engineer, was the one who pushed me into graphic design.
What was it about commercial art that interested you?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I wanted to be Charles Schulz, so I had invented this lame character called Wentworth, a baboon. I have a couple of comics still left over to this day. I thought I was going to make my fortune being like Charles Schulz. I remember reading that he owned an ice rink. That was so cool. I was like, “I want an ice rink.”
What was it about Peanuts or Charles Schulz that intrigued you? Do you have a sense of what it was that you admired?
I grew up in a very blue-collar town in upstate New York. There wasn’t a lot of creativity happening there in general. I think the thing about comics is that they are everywhere. They’re in all the daily papers and in books. They’re a part of popular culture. Becoming a cartoonist is an ambition that’s more of a mass aspiration; it wasn’t deciding I was going to do something because I love to do it. It was more like, “Oh look. Everyone will love me if I do this funny thing!” The reason I drew wasn’t necessarily because I love drawing.
So what happened when you were in college?
I’m not really sure. But I think my going to school was less a choice and more of a “this is what I have to do.” I played a lot of sports as a kid, and my first choice for a career would have been to become a professional baseball player. That is probably where my passion was as a kid. When I realized that this wasn’t going to happen, I decided to see if I could transform this other thing I do well into a career.
And you chose Kent State?
I chose Kent State for a couple of different reasons. One, because of my Wonder Bread kind of upbringing. It was very Brady Bunch, with more arguments. It was a fucked-up version of The Brady Bunch. I just wanted to get the fuck out of there. I wanted to go far enough away so I could at least get away and be away, but I still felt a pull to be fairly close. Ohio was about a ten-hour drive. When I told my parents I wanted to go to Kent State, their response was, “Kent State? Isn’t that where they shoot students?” And to be honest, that was part of the draw. It felt like a radical place to go to school.
Did Kent State have a good design department?
The Kent State design program was run by Charles Walker; he had attended the University of Cincinnati program as a graduate student. Kent State was a Swiss-based international school, a great program that was very rigorous. I couldn’t tell you the actual numbers, but I know there were more than 100 people who started in my freshman class, and eight of us staggered across the finish line as seniors.
Charles was crazy. He was very militant about design. He felt very strongly that it was irresponsible to send people through a revolving door and then release them into the profession without being prepared.
I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into. And I’ll tell you what: The thing that got me through initially was my drawing skills.
Looking back on it now, is there anything else you might have wanted to be?
No. I love what I’m doing now. I believe that I’m doing the very thing I was meant to do. I know it sounds cheesy. But I think it worked out perfectly, even though I didn’t have much of a plan. At some point during college, I got it. I found I could not satisfy my thirst for information. I pulled all-nighters; I found myself reading all the time, bugging professors, and getting in people’s faces. I became a whirlwind of absorbing knowledge. That’s when something new started happening. And I came out from college a different person than when I went in.
Can you identify what it is about design that you love so much?
It’s complex. Part of it is this: You have an idea, and you can make that idea real. I think it’s much more complex than that, but I think you can make your ideas happen without a filter. You wouldn’t think that would describe graphic design necessarily. Usually if you’re doing graphic design, it’s “applied art,” so there’s normally a client involved or some external concern that you’re addressing.
I think what I love most is that I can use graphic design as a vehicle for expressing myself. This represents for me a dichotomy inherent in graphic design, though it doesn’t really jibe with what graphic design actually is. It’s a very selfish way of approaching it. Graphic design is, at its core, more of an altruistic activity. You’re helping someone else express a message in an appropriate way, or in a way that’s memorable. But I strongly believe that design is a dichotomy.
Design is supposed to be about something else, and not about you; but I think the only way it’s actually any good—and to get people to care about it—is if it’s also about you at the same time.
Really? You believe that it needs to be about you and the client at the same time?
I think it does. Designers have to feel it’s theirs. They have to have a sense of authorship and ownership. And I think designers who aren’t selfish do really awful work.
Really? Why is that?
I think that there needs to be a motivation at the core of the work. There needs to be a motivation for the designer to go beyond the point where most people would stop. I think we do this because we are going to somehow benefit from it. There are some designers who do it because they’re benefiting from money. Or they’re benefiting by finding a forum where they can express themselves. But I actually think that the dichotomy is what makes it interesting. It makes it harder.
If you’re doing something for a client, but it has to be something that you bring yourself into, and it’s also about something that you need to do—those two motivations do not meet. They’re total opposites. Like oil and vinegar; you’ve got to mix it up, and maybe that’s the reason why most designers have a very difficult time keeping clients for a long period of time.
Why is that?
If it’s mine and yours, then wait a minute: It’s mine. Maybe there’s something to that. I think that’s what makes it difficult, and in many ways, it is impossible to satisfy both sides. There is always a tension there. But I think the tension is what makes it interesting.
Would you say that this “selfishness” is apparent in the work? Or is it something perhaps only you could identify?
I hope it’s something only I can identify. Because it’s filtered through this way of thinking that’s altruistic on the face of it.
But there are many times when I get my greatest joy from being totally invisible in terms of the viewer. They don’t know someone designed what they are looking at! Nevertheless, it’s still something that I needed to express a certain way.
If you don’t feel that you’re emotionally involved with the work you’re doing, do you feel it’s possible to do something that is creatively successful?
Yes. But I think “successful” and “someone who’s really caring about it and changing someone’s mind about it” are two different things.
How do you know when something you’ve designed is successful?
It’s a little thing, a little spark that makes something memorable or beautiful or unforgettable. It’s very hard to describe and people have very different ways of describing it. [Alexander] Gelman once came into my class at the School of Visual Arts, and he was trying to describe this very thing in my two-dimensional design theory class. He said that the thing we’re shooting for is to create a dynamic design. He always comes to the class with a hot cup of coffee—because he knows he’s going to do this—and says, “What you want your work to do is, you want your work to do this—…”
And he spends five minutes trying to get the hot cup of coffee on the edge of the desk so it’s just right at that very point where it might go. No one can take their eyes off of it. And that’s what I try to do with my work.
How do you know when you’ve achieved that?
I don’t know. I don’t know if I can answer that. That gets to a larger question about what your process is and how you arrive at things. But I’m a firm believer in logic and creative thinking and being able to think your way through the process and arrive at a solution that makes sense and is going to be effective. It’s applied design. I think that’s crucial; I don’t think you can be a graphic designer without it. But I also don’t believe that you can be a graphic designer without the intuitive side, the side that just goes, “Aha!” You can’t describe it. If you try, you’re probably going to fail. And I think you have to operate with both of those things working—if not simultaneously, at least one letting the other play for a while.
How confident are you in your own judgment?
I feel as time has progressed, I’ve gotten much more confident about making a decision and just living with it. An architect would probably laugh at this; but as a graphic designer, you’re responsible for large quantities being produced from this thing that you made, and there’s a certain pressure there. It’s like, “Oh shit! There it goes out into the world.” You can’t fix it after it’s printed. And I remember feeling a really strong sense of pressure with that when I was younger. I think it’s natural that you would.
Several years ago, I saw a lecture by the photographer Jayme Odgers. And he was describing the zone that he likes to get into when he’s making something. That’s the time wherein you don’t even notice that time’s passing. Maybe you’ve got a headache or your knuckles are bleeding. But you’re so focused on what you’re doing that nothing else matters. Odgers said that from the time he gets up in the morning to the time he goes to bed at night, he strives to be in the zone as much as he possibly can. I totally understand what he’s talking about.
I don’t know if it necessarily makes for an ordered life. If you live like this, there are probably a lot of things that go by the wayside.
For example?
Well, if you were in that zone, you are not calling your family, you are probably eating fast food. I missed my nephew’s birthday recently. I was on the phone with him apologizing. He’s eleven, and missing his birthday was not cool.
Whenever I talk about things humans get obsessed with, I realize it’s all the same. Whether it’s surfing, or graphic design, or ballroom dancing, or Scrabble. It’s all the same shit, you know? It’s all the same core need, but I don’t know how to describe it any better. Perhaps it’s because we think we’re all going to die and nobody’s going to know we were here. But there’s something in doing something you love that’s very similar, no matter what it is. Perhaps it’s the obsession—the wonderful obsession.
Graphic design is my obsession. Deep in my love of graphic design is proof that I can leave for my children. They’ll know.
How would you like to be remembered?
I guess I’d like to be remembered as somebody who cared about and believed in what he did. I’d like to think that I’m leaving a trail behind me. I know that there are certain designers who are no longer with us, and you can almost crawl inside their heads and spend some time with them, even though they’re not around anymore. I’m thinking about people like John Heartfield. You look at some of the work he was doing, and even the way he would credit his work: I feel an incredible connection with him, even though I never met the man.
I feel the same way about Jack Kirby. I can see some of the things that he was doing, and see where he was struggling, or where he had to rush, or where he had to make a concession that he didn’t want to. I can even see a situation where he had too much control and fucked something up. I can totally see that.
I think leaving good work behind is the most important thing for me. I’m in my early forties now, so I don’t think about this very much. But I would be very upset if all my work just vanished. It’s certainly not the only reason to do things, but it’s definitely a part of it. You make this thing and can put it over there. And then you can go and make some more! And these things are going to be around in certain forms—even the stuff that you’re embarrassed by—long after you’re gone. I never want to take the easy way.