 But I'm rookie new hold Ravi Kumar director of education at the museum and I'm going to be the moderator I have the joy and honor of being the moderator of this conversation with Tobias Fair Jones the winner of our communication design award and Susan care winner of the lifetime achievement award Since we have only 20 minutes. I'm gonna jump right in But we're gonna focus on points hikers pixels and other details of their work So jumping in when you meet a stranger. How do you explain what you do? I'll start with you Susan We'll have you hold up your I usually say that I'm a user interface graphic designer because I Think about being a designer as Solving a problem that someone else creates as opposed to when you're an artist you can think up your own problem and solve it And I would never say that I'm a user interface designer because I think that's collaborative with Engineers and product designers, so it's kind of long but that Qualifies it Well these days these days I tell people that I make fonts and And just ask Assume if you know that menu in your Microsoft Word like those things. Yeah, I make those and try to connect this to As closely as possible to something that they know so that this isn't some this doesn't sound like some abstract distant thing Could you each recall a project that you worked on where the details make all the difference? I'll start with you again Susan. I Think I would be hard-pressed to think of a project where the details didn't make all the difference It's kind of a all of the above just Because when I started out where I lived was a 16 by 16, you know, what can you make in 16 by 16 squares where? Here's a little puzzle to solve and Sometimes I make little portraits that are 32 by 32 and it's amazing. I mean you have a thousand dots, so Choices to make black or white, but It's amazing how just when you're trying to do resemblance or a mouth just one or versus two pixels Up or down one pixel Sometimes you're trying to get it and the spark of resemblance happens with the tiniest adjustment But in almost everything it's like a little curve or a color or Just the nuance of something when you're working small makes a big difference probably Just like you Yes, I was Would say that details are pretty much everything that I do Though the one I think good example of that Would be retina that I made for the Wall Street Journal to be used in their In their stock listings at about I think it was five and a quarter point on Newsprint as is there's a very small size in this very difficult environment and in that In that sort of situation, you know, whether the You know the jaws of the sea were a little bit more open or a little bit more closed It could be the difference between that character, you know filling in and turning into Appearing to be in oh or a three blurring into being an eight so it that was those are especially high stakes for Very small moves with with each one of these shapes You know what struck me with both of your work is beyond that great attention to detail that you both hate You take a lot of research a lot of information and you seem to distill it down into In your case who's in a simple mark or with you a simple expression And I'm thinking about the work that you did for the Grand Central typeface Will you tell us a little bit about what all of that background was that you looked at? sure the the the brief for the the typeface that I differed Grand Central Terminal was to Make a typeface that not really emulated but emulated and summed up the hand-painted lettering from the original state of the station from 1913 and The sign painters had a style, but that style would be adapted to each Location Throughout the building whether it was this long panel over the ticket windows or the side of a column on the way to one of the platforms So this there wasn't any fixed form that I could go refer to it was the sort of cloud of Things that were looked sort of similar and it's sort of hard to say what the center of that Cloud was It was also made more difficult by the fact that a lot of it was gone and I had to Look up archive photos and hope that they're that a bit of lettering happened to show up in one of the pictures Because no one was taking pictures of the lettering no one thought that was important enough But To fill in all of these gaps I had to Research what what sign painters were doing at that time sort of what else would be in their repertoire that resembled this And and try to extrapolate from that How did you take all of that and get it to one typeface? It was a lot of a lot of trial and error, but it was also Sort of living inside this for long enough that I could do a sort of Sort of sort of character acting to imagine What this design would? Behave like and try to Imagine you know what this time painter would do with this kind of shape or that kind of shape and you know, there's no Didn't find any ampersand or a dollar sign or any of these other Quote marks or question marks anything any of these other things that a typeface needs but after having lived inside it for long enough feel confident to Make my extrapolation of what that would be and what would fit there and be in character Susan I'm thinking about some of your projects that you did with Apple Where they look really simple, but when you were talking about it It looked like there was a ton of research and information behind it. Will you share some of your? Examples and stories with us Thanks for asking. I Mean I worked at Apple in the early 80s shortly after the earth cooled and it It it I think for me it was one of the situations where you don't know what you don't know so it was like It was like make a typeface. That's nine dots high and five dots wide so I Looked at Existing examples and I could see I mean a big leap forward with the Mac was having type That wasn't confined to the same width for every character. So you had those really skinny m's and We had the luxury of variable width. So I didn't even realize how Freeing that was so a lot of the stuff I did. I just kind of sat down and did it With the icons the engineers that I worked with because I was a member of the software group And it's funny when you said what did you call yourself? My business cards had Macintosh artist, which I loved and They would build a working version of the System software Constantly so I was able to try out different different things sort of informal qualitative research and Things just stuck so I would I I think it was a good project because it's always possible to design You don't have to be a user of it To be if you understand all the information but since this was a computer Intended for people to be friendly and for people that didn't really know about computers. I was a perfect Subject because that was me. So it was Easy to try to think about how to communicate more arcane concepts and technical things with metaphors that people would get You know you said something a couple of days ago when we were chatting about your work that completely blew my mind and you said Actually going simple is in some ways inclusive Will you explain that a little bit more for our audience here? I know that sounds a little bit counter to some trends now to have very a huge range of very specific things that you can choose but It's just like a pencil if you just Outline a little tool for writing. It's pretty recognizable and I like to think that the lack of detail makes things more universal because with resolution in the same Pixel density you could draw a chrome pen that has a reflection in it But maybe that tool that that detail makes it very recognizable to someone but Such a specific thing that someone else might never have encountered that thing. So Actually, there's a book understanding comics that talks about Scott McLeod Fantastic book about UI even though it's meant for comics But he shows the a kind of a progression of a man's face from Like an ink drawing very detailed looks like somebody specific down to just a circle with a smile and two dots and He explains how Everyone can project themselves onto the smile with two dots. You don't have to think about gender or any other specifics. So I think With the Mac where it was pretty low res and black and white That was sort of what you had to do by default, but I still think now there's great value in that for in an attempt to make things that cross Cultures and barriers. Yeah, I think we just don't think about that these days We somehow think more detail is needed to help everyone feel included and you made me think about The other way says just how is changing and advances and technology affected both your worlds and the kind of work you do I think in my case, it's the advances of the font formats or the Tools that we use to make type have I've made a lot of this much easier and You know the things that I had wanted to do for Quite a long time are much easier than than they had been for a long time like to To add in support for More languages or it's a real larger character set small caps old cell figures fractions all these other things that were kind of awkward in in old postcript faces, you know that from the Davids in 90s But it's also raised the expectations of users So So we can do more, but we're also expected to do more So in in some ways it kind of nets out to being the same amount of work and in payoff, but In the end, it's a good thing that you know, it's It's not as It's a bit harder to keep to keep the typefaces simple now because there's so many things can be added that It's we have to Often have to think of ways to simplify this and focus the the idea down because it could get so Overwrought and over complicated give us an example. So when you say more things can be added With this, you know, I could make a time phase with you know, 15 alternates for every letter I could do that. It would be kind of nuts And You know, maybe someone would really enjoy that but it would There's sort of temptations everywhere to to go off in all these different directions because now there's space for it a Lot of restraint on your part. I think Susan would really like you to make a typeface with 50 and different alternatives Okay, all right. Okay, sure All right What about you, Susan? I think it's a very good question because with the Just as Tobias said with the advent of if you're thinking about a symbol Let's say the tools and the Bandwidth enable color and animation and sound and I Think sometimes there's a tendency to if you have a million colors You don't need to use them all in every project and have every icon jump up and down just because you can I think sometimes there's some gratuitous Not quite show off, but just this expectation that oh modern things Incorporate all every technological advance, but I think about like an example might be There's a street sign for school crossing and it's kind of shaped like a house And it's yellow and it has a silhouette a lot of them with a boy and girl holding hands And there's no real technological reason that thing couldn't be 3d and the kids could have plaid lunch boxes And if you went close to it, you could hear them talking about their homework and but but like why It would it would it would impede. I think your quick recognition at a glance. So I think restraint Is a really good thing that being said having like 20 levels of undo You know makes life easier in the creation of things So you Susan have been credited with giving them the Macintosh its smile The more I looked at your work it was really less about pixels and technology and more about people and emotion and meaning and You made me think about Why do we use the magnifying glass to search for things? Will you tell us about that a little bit more? I mean in the work I do or I think if you want to be an icon designer. It's good to think about craft and it's good to think about metaphor because There it's not an exact science, but you really want to think about what is the symbol? So sometimes I kind of wonder about the magnifying glass there was a magnifying glass in Macintosh and it meant enlarge It's in Mac paint Because when you search with that sense of Looking for something. I just don't think you go out on Madison Avenue and see a bunch of people with magnifying glasses When they're looking for shoes it just There's some I usually think well, it's maybe when you're looking for bugs and you want to So sometimes some of these things I think it's always worth keeping Your mind open that there might be a better metaphor for things like Maybe an eye with a slash through it isn't the best thing for hide. I always think ouch when I see that but It's funny how some things get adopted and then they just keep going and you wonder why So in terms of wondering why Tobias have you designed for in non Latin typefaces and What would that experience be like or have you always done Latin based typefaces? I've I've done a few typefaces in in Greek and Cyrillic Which are the close cousins to Latin and share some history and a number of the forms When a project goes beyond that in whether it's for Arabic or the Tindi or Japanese Chinese something I Work with colleagues to you know find you know either work with them to draw that part of That part of the characters have to be sure that These these forms are going through the hands of a native speaker So I won't presume to You know know exactly what these should be like and I've I Feel comfortable doing Greek and Cyrillic on my own only because I've I've done it Many times over and spent a lot of time consulting with native speakers that have managed to Absorb all the things that I've heard from them but you know I haven't You know done enough projects in Hindi or Korean or anything else to be able to do that on my own, and I think it's important to You know be aware of you know what I know and what I don't know and and not You know presume to walk in and know what this should be That's really well said to be aware of what we know and don't know It's been fascinating to spend some time with your work and get to know the details behind what you do I hope you've all enjoyed hearing a little bit more about how they approach their work How they look at the world and what they're thinking about Congratulations again to the two of you for your awards and thank you all for coming And we hope you gain a deeper appreciation of the work that they do and enjoy the rest of the programs today Thank you again. Thank you