Stephen Doyle is principal and creative director at Doyle Partners, a New York–based studio known for its eloquence in all things graphic design. Previously an art director for Tibor Kalman at M&Co, as well as a member of the art departments at Rolling Stone and Esquire, Stephen is comfortable working in numerous media for a stunning variety of clients. To wit: He was the founding creative director of the irreverent Spy magazine and also developed the brand identity for K-Mart’s line of Martha Stewart Everyday products. He often cites fine art as an inspiration for infusing his design with a sense of humanity and personal engagement.
For our conversation, Stephen gave me the option of interviewing him either in his office or at the home he shares with his wife, Gael Towey, the chief creative officer of Martha Stewart Living. I chose to meet him at his Greenwich Village townhouse, and though I was both excited and intimidated by the idea of being in the home of such a power couple, my worries were unfounded. A warm and engaging family greeted me; they laughed as they prepared their dinner, and they were genuinely down-to-earth.
Over a bottle of marvelous wine, Stephen and I talked about why he feels his design work is reductive, why he doesn’t believe in perfect, and the notion of art as a “fearless perch.”
What was your first creative memory?
It was in French class in grade school, when it occurred to me that I wanted to be an architect. One of our projects was to design a house as a way of getting kids to learn the words for house, door, window, and other architectural elements. The house I drew was different from everybody else’s. It was a big, modern house, with glass all around and a big, leaning ceiling. I remember experiencing a feeling of elation at the idea of being able to make something different from what everybody else made.
Really?
It distinguished me in some way, in a different currency. I wasn’t the tallest kid, I wasn’t the smallest kid, but even at a really early age, I realized imagination could differentiate me.
How did people react to this piece of art you created that was so different from everybody else’s? Were you given a lot of compliments? Did people think you were weird?
Well, I got an “A” in French! No, nobody thought it was weird. That is my earliest memory, so I don’t remember many of the social dynamics of the time. Michael Bierut may remember his fourth-grade French class better than I.
I remember around about eighth grade—or when you get into that phase of puberty when you are very awkward and very unsure of yourself—I was allowed to have a special place in class by being the kid who could draw or the kid who was creative. I wasn’t athletic, so I wasn’t distinguishing myself in that way. But even the athletic kids respected me because I had this special talent. And it was nice to have something that was respected, something different from everyone else’s abilities. Because the usual talents in high school are sports and brains.
Now do you still feel that the talent you have is special?
Absolutely. We were just at a big family party, and I was sitting next to one of my sisters-in-law, and she said, “You know, Mike [my brother-in-law] thinks you’re really cool.” Mike’s a banker, but he thinks I’m cool because I get to work with David Byrne, and the strangeness of the things I’m exposed to earn me a special place in his heart.
When you had that experience in your French class, did you know from that moment on that you wanted to utilize that special power as your vocation? Or was this something that came later?
I didn’t know much about “vocation” then, but I did dream about being an architect. I realized at a very early age that I was willing to sell my soul to the devil to be creative.
Really?
Yes. Once I felt what that felt like, I knew that was where I wanted to go. I didn’t know how to go about it, I didn’t know anything about careers in the arts at that time.
Did you think you wanted to be a painter?
I did want to be a painter. I took art classes, but I wasn’t a very good painter. Though I did work hard at it. When I was in high school, I read Julius Caesar, and my copy of the book had a beautiful drawing of Julius Caesar on the cover. It featured a big splotch of red where Caesar was stabbed. I looked on the back of the book and it said: “Cover design by Milton Glaser.” At that moment, I felt that Milton Glaser was a on par with William Shakespeare and Julius Caesar, and it was all because of this cover. I think I knew then that there was a way to access this world, but at the time I still didn’t know what that was.
So when did you know that you wanted to be a “designer”?
When I came to New York to go to school at Cooper Union, I enrolled in all of the painting classes, but I kept getting kicked out because the teachers were abstract expressionists, and they wanted their way of painting to be honored. And it didn’t make any sense to me to be painting that way in the ’70s. I was pursuing a very different kind of narrative art. And they didn’t get it. One by one, I got kicked out of the classes there. It’s a small school, so I was running out of classes to take and finally decided I would have a go at design.
I started doing work in my design class that was humorous—which is what I was doing in the painting classes that didn’t go over well—and the teachers were amused by it. They encouraged me, because they saw it as a particular design voice. And as soon as that happened, I knew this was the world for me, because teachers weren’t threatened by the design that I was making just because it wasn’t serious. It was taking itself seriously, but it had a kind of a humanism and a humanity and wit about it that didn’t threaten them.
What do you love most about design?
I love that design is a way to translate a language for an audience. It’s a way to interpret words and messages and stories and narratives and ideas, and put them in front of people in a way that makes it easier for them to understand. It’s a language and it’s a currency. That sounds so serious!
I also love that design gives you an opportunity to be constantly learning. I feel like my entire career is graduate school for me, because I learn about all different kinds of businesses. And I get to understand it to the degree that I can translate it for other people. I think that learning keeps you young and vital and engaged. I can’t wait to get to work every day. I could take another 20 minutes with the newspaper, but I love to go there and do what I do with the people with whom I’m doing it. I have a small studio—we’re just 10 or 11 people—so we get to choose who we work with very carefully.
Do you turn down a lot of work?
We do. And that’s the best part. Because by turning down work, I can work with people who I want to work with and do the work that I think needs to be done.
What kind of work do you turn down?
Our policy is to try to turn down everything unless we’re the only people who could do the job really well. If it’s a graphic design job and somebody else could do it, there’s no point in us getting involved. There’s a trajectory in our office that’s about literacy and literateness and humanity and social responsibility, and a lot of that work nobody else can do. That’s why we do it.
When you say that nobody else can do it, what do you mean? What is it about your studio that makes you specifically so appropriate to do that kind of work?
There’s a kind of academic literacy about us and our approach. We have a very language-oriented approach to most problems, so it’s about honing language and presenting visuals that reinforce that. It’s about projects that need humanity. We’re not imagers; we don’t do work in the world of fashion. We do a lot of retail work that’s about positioning, like the Barnes & Noble logo, and environmental work that determines the typographic vocabulary in a store. The packaging we’ve done for Martha Stewart is all about engaging the reader and instilling a type of magnetism to the package that helps explain what’s in it. It explains the mystique. It’s a very literal mystique, but it’s also very friendly and tasteful.
How do you know when something you’ve created is well-designed?
I know that something’s well-designed when it makes my mouth water.
You have an actual, physical reaction?
A physical, visceral, Pavlovian reaction to this thing. There’s some connection between seeing and tasting for me.
So your mouth waters, and then you know it’s good.
Yes, I can feel it, and I can taste it. It’s physical.
Does that happen with all the jobs that you do? Do you wait for the moment when that happens, so you know a project is complete?
No, they don’t all make me salivate. There’s a moment when I’m working on something with my team, and I feel the work transcend. Sometimes the hair stands up on your arm. Then I make copies, and I bring it home to show Gael and the kids, and I go, “Hey, check this out!” And they’re like, “Yeah, you’re right.” We all know something’s going on that wasn’t there before. We feel it. And there’s usually not a whole lot of disagreement.
Everything we do is not excellent, certainly. I don’t know that there are many people who can continually produce excellence. The fun is trying to do it. When you’re a kid, it’s the making of the tree house that’s the delight; it’s not having the tree house at the end. Once something is produced, I’m so uninterested in it.
Really?
I can’t stand it. It’s old. The project that I’m currently working on, the problem that I haven’t yet cracked—that really entertains me.
Do you see the end result of your work as producing a solution to a problem?
No, it’s a process of finding a solution, and that is what’s exciting. Very often you start out with an idea, then you chase it, and you push it, and you go all the way around the world, and you come right back next door to where you started. But it’s only by proving that circle that you know what’s vital. And as you get old like me, sometimes you can do that loop quicker and quicker.
Do you find that you often have instant solutions for design problems?
Yes.
How often are they instant and how often are they labored?
When The New York Times calls and asks if I can do an Op-Ed piece, I try to do it on the phone with the art director right then and there. If I’ve begun to crack it, then I know I can spend the time on it. But if I can’t find a wedge, or a place to put a wedge in, or a crack in the problem, then I’ll pass. I don’t have the time to chase. I find that I’ve become a “meeting thinker.” I can generate all kinds of ideas in a meeting when there’s an audience. I find that I can really think on my feet, and it’s easier than thinking alone.
What do you think gives you that ability?
Foolhardiness, fearlessness, humor. I could never make myself that vulnerable if I wasn’t able to mess around with the client and get out of all kinds of scrapes with a sense of humor.
What do you think gives you your sense of fearlessness? What does that come from?
Experience and a measure of craftsmanship. I know how to make things with my hands. I had a really good education and learned how to make things.
As a result, I’m unafraid of solving problems with my hands. And I’m not afraid of getting in over my head with the execution. I know that anything can be done.
Where do you think your sense of verbal fearlessness comes from?
I have no idea. But I can tell you that when I begin to talk this way, even the kids in my studio pull back and start to look at me funny.
Who would you say has most influenced you in your design career?
I’ve had a lot of mentors. I guess the first biggest influence was an art teacher in high school. I went to a Jesuit high school outside of Baltimore, and he helped me to think of art as a fearless perch.
Really? How did he do that?
By not being a perfectionist. I try to make things really good, and then I try to make something else. I don’t ever try to make anything perfect. In fact, I don’t believe in perfect. I believe in really good. I believe in a handmade object that retains evidence of its handmade-ness. And that, by nature, is never perfect. As designers, we don’t make “just one thing.” One project is not the end of the world, and it’s not the only thing to be made. A painting is just a painting, and there are more paintings. And you have to make many to begin to make good ones, even though I never accomplished that.
The work that I do, some people think it’s precious, some think it’s not so precious. I recently read on Armin Vit’s Web site Brand New a discussion about the Martha Stewart logo that we just redesigned. The last time I checked, there were 48 entries with comments such as, “The weights of the stems are a little bit uneven. . . .” And so forth. I could not believe how much time people have on their hands to make comments like these!
The purpose of doing the logo the way we did was to create a logo that was a bit imperfect. That is what Martha Stewart is all about, the handmade effect.
Tell me about some of your influences.
In college, George Sadek was the dean of the art school and a design teacher at the time. He was a huge influence on me, because he delighted in a sense of lunacy and pushing things to their illogical extreme, and that was right up my alley.
Do you think that you push things to their “illogical extreme”?
Yes. Logic—you know where logic will get you:
Logic will get you nowhere. But imagination has the opportunity to rescue you from the quicksand of logic.
You could be a banker with logic. To be a designer, you have to find a new language. You’ve got to find new colors. You have to surprise people. You’ve got to make things that are magnetic to humans who don’t like design.
Does anything scare you in the area of graphic design or creativity?
No.
Are you insecure about anything in your practice?
Yes, I’m insecure about whether I’m good enough or hip enough or up-to-date enough, or whether my ideas are old-fashioned—all that sort of stuff at any given time.
What do you do in response to that?
I go for a bike ride or swim and then I get back to work. There’s nothing to do about it. As a creative person, you have to constantly question whether you’re pushing hard and far enough to be creative.
I keep wondering—since I already sold my soul to the devil—whether he’s actually coming through for me. I wonder if my work is crazy enough.
How do you think you’ve sold your soul to the devil?
The deal was that he could have my soul when I died if I could be creative for my lifetime.
What did the devil look like?
[Laughter.]
He wasn’t there in person. It was conceptual.
Who else influenced you at Cooper Union?
At Cooper—after George Sadek—I studied with Milton Glaser, which was astonishing. He taught editorial design with Henry Wolf. And the greatest thing about that class was that they never agreed on a single thing. It was so validating for me. I was always the intellectual troublemaker in the design classes, and it was incredibly validating to learn that there is no right and wrong. Even Milton Glaser and Henry Wolf couldn’t agree on certain principles. So their disagreement was incredibly freeing to me. It was a profound delight. This is why I’m not a scientist. In science, there is a right and a wrong. In design there isn’t. It’s all quicksand. It’s just a different quicksand.
When you’re commissioned for a project, how do you begin?
I interview the clients. I’ve got to understand what the problem is from their point of view. And then you have to not believe them.
Why?
They are the client, and they see it through their own filter. And I always imagine myself as their audience. And luckily, in much of the work that we’ve done, I usually am. I’m saying “I,” but it’s the whole studio. I’m not a sole operator, and I would never want to be. When we did Spy magazine, we were the kids who would want to read a magazine like that. And now that I’m a 50-year-old guy at the head of a company, I believe that there is an appropriateness about the type of work that we feel suited to do. Again, I also ask: Can we do what nobody else can? Can we associate at least with the audience? Are we the audience?
What happens after the interviews?
I think we’re better at hearing than we are at designing.
Really? What do you mean by that?
This is where creativity comes from: being able to deconstruct what people say and find the words in it and blow it back up again. We take paragraphs and slogans and presentations and chip away at them. And then we bring it all back to life. Our design work is reductive. We’re more like stone carvers. A big block of stone comes in, and we start chipping away at it until we find the sculpture inside. Some designers are additive. They’ll add and layer things on. To me, this is decorative rather than reductive. I would rather uncover the essence of what is already there. All we ever do with the material our clients give us is take things away. We take things away until we can see what is in front of us.