The San Francisco Sessions

SF Sessions 2012

It’s three in the morning of our final day in San Francisco. We have an early flight tomorrow and need to be at the airport in just over an hour, but I’m sitting in the hotel lobby; excited, tired, and wired after three days of collecting interviews for my book and for UnmatchedStyle.

I’ve never been to San Francisco, so Gene and I have covered a lot of ground in between interviews. We hiked through Big Basin Redwood Park and saw redwoods that soar over 300 feet into the air. We drove sixty miles down the coast to walk on frigid beaches and to peer over beautifully broken cliffs at tiny wind surfers skating across the vast blue-green expanse of the Pacific. We visited most of downtown San Francisco to photograph the arcs of houses, like so many multicolored slashes across the hills and to drive across the Golden Gate bridge. I finally understand Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings of the Golden City.

San Francisco City Scape

The Interviews

Visiting the city has been a wonderful experience, but our trip had a definite purpose. We came to San Francisco to collect content and to talk to some amazing people. In between all of our explorations, Gene and I managed to do quite a bit!

Over the last six months, I’ve been collecting interviews for the book that I’m writing for SitePoint. It’s due for release in the next few months, so I’ve been trying to get my last few interviews. Since I needed to fly out to California to get the last bit of video, Gene came with me to help handle cameras and to get additional material for UnmatchedStyle.

Overall, We’ve managed to collect over three hours of interview footage with three amazing industry leaders and we couldn’t be happier with the content. This is a little recap of what we have recorded and our initial impressions of the interviews.

Daniel Burka

Daniel Burka

We’ve known Daniel (@dburka) for a couple years now, and I wanted to talk to him about many of the projects that he’s been working on for the last few years. He’s a creative director for Google’s mobile team, so I was also interested in talking to him about his transition to such a massive institution.

Interviews are often fairly dry, with a major emphasis on Q and A. The interviewer asks a direct question and the interviewee tries to sound intelligent while answering the question. Yadda, yadda, yadda… They can be somewhat boring, even if the content is interesting. Thats not a problem with Daniel, because he is amazingly easy to talk to.

We had a candid discussion about a multitude of topics. We discussed gamification and problem solving. We debated critique and the role of art in design. We talked about how Daniel moves from project to project and why. I can’t wait to start publishing the footage. It’s stellar.

Don Norman

Don Norman

If you don’t know of Dr. Norman, then it’s time to learn about a legend in the fields of user-centered design and usability. Dr. Norman has written a number of seminal works on the subject of usability, the best known probably being The Design of Everyday Things. He is a prolific writer and speaker in a addition to running a consulting business with his partner, Jakob Nielsen.

Dr. Noman is a pro. He’s clearly been honing his interview skills for a long time. We spent an hour with Dr. Norman and discussed a wide range of topics including the proper understanding of affordance in design, the relationship between product designers and their customers, communication problems between corporate interests and the creatives that develop products, and the as yet unfinished new edition of The Design of Everyday Things.

We’re excited to have had such a long time with one of the greatest thought leaders of the last twenty years and have plans to cut together a number of videos for a short run series from the interview.

Jessica Hische

Jessica Hische

Jessica (@jessicahische) is a lovely person and one of the most exciting illustrators that I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing. She has worked on a number of incredible projects for clients like Target and Wes Anderson and is well known for her multiple side projects.

We spoke to Jessica about the winding path that has led to her current success. We talked about the relationship that she has with her agent and how that has been a key element of her business. We also discussed the way that she approaches illustrative type designs and the relationship that she has with art directors.

Finally, we talked at length about the typeface that she created for the new Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom. Jessica was gracious enough to show us some of the finer points of the typeface’s design.

Jessica was wonderful to talk to and we really appreciate her candor and her willingness to talk about her work.

Where Do We Go From Here

We’ve got over three hours logged with these amazing people. Specific parts of the interviews will go to SitePoint. I know that they want to post that content when my book is published, but I don’t know exactly when or how. I’ll give you a heads-up when I get the final details. The rest of the content will be published here on UnmatchedStyle, so keep your eyes peeled! The interviews are really long, so we’ll probably break them into manageable bites and post them in segments. Stay tuned.

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