Patrick Coyne on Visual Communication

Patrick Coyne is the editor and designer of Communication Arts, the world's largest journal of visual communication. The recipient of numerous awards for his design and art direction (including a silver medal from the Society of Illustrators), Coyne received the 2004 AIGA Design Leadership Award and was named a 2012 AIGA/San Francisco Fellow. As a drummer, he still enjoys rocking out with his bandmates in Zru Vogue—much to the embarrassment of his children. And as a mature snowboarder, he resents now being called a "gray-on-a-tray."

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Transcript

Roy Sharples: 0:06

Hello, I'm Roy Sharples, welcome to the unknown origins podcast. Why are you listening to this podcast? Are you seeking inspiration? an industry expert, looking for insights or growing your career? I created the unknown origins podcast to provide access to insights and content from creators worldwide with inspirational conversations on storytelling, about art, architecture, design, entrepreneurship, fashion, film, music, and pop culture. Patrick Coyne was the editor and designer of Communication Arts, the world's largest Journal of visual communication. The recipient of numerous awards for his design and art direction, including a silver medal from the Society of Illustrators. Coin received the 2004 aiga design Leadership Award, and was named a 2012 aiga San Francisco fellow. As a drummer, he still enjoys rocking out with his bandmates and zero vote, much to the embarrassment of his children and as a mature snowboarder. he resents no being called a grey authentically Hello and welcome Patrick Patrick, what inspired and attracted you to visual communications in the first place,

Patrick Coyne: 1:29

Nepotism! My father was a graphic designer and advertising art director. And so growing up in that household of visual communications was was always there. He and his partner had a design firm slash agency in what became Silicon Valley in the 50s. But really wanted to develop a color separation litho scripting facility to provide better service for their clients, but they simply didn't have enough business to justify buying that equipment. So they came up with this idea of launching a commercial art magazine to pick up the slack. So that's really how the magazine got started. And, you know, family business, child labor, I was involved working at the magazine, as soon as I could pick up a pencil, basically. So it's, I think I was the only third grader who knew what graphic design was!

Roy Sharples: 2:36

Popular culture reflects and expresses society shared experiences, and as a function of what society consumes through entertainment, fashion, politics, and technology. Graphic Design serves as a manifestation and expression of contemporary culture and society. At a given moment in time, the communication arts magazine has been an influential source for inspiration for visual communicators and creators, as it is the most prominent international trade journal of visual communications. Founded in 1959. It publishes six issues a year, and hosts six creative competitions in graphic design, advertising, photography, illustration, typography, and interactive media, and two websites, comm arts.com and creative hotlist.com. Patrick, you're a lucky chap, having been exposed to those experiences at such a young age and having that education must have been such an isolating experience for you.

Patrick Coyne: 3:45

Oh, it was absolutely. And the best part was, we host jury competitions each year and the least in the past, judges were flown out here and we got to meet them and interact with them and observe the judges interacting with each other. And in the early days, the juries were quite varied. So for one competition, you would have an advertising art director may be a copywriter, graphic designer and illustrator photographer. So it was just fascinating seeing that cross pollination happen just in the discussions amongst the juries.

Roy Sharples: 4:24

Patrick, what is your creative process in terms of how do you make the invisible visible by dreaming up ideas, developing them into concepts, and then bringing them to actualization?

Patrick Coyne: 4:36

My background was in graphic design and that was, at the time running my own business was a very different process than what I have now with the magazine. So it's for us creating an issue is a fairly complex process, starting with deciding who to profile what projects we think are are worthy of publication. And then it's all the production issues of how do we make it happen. So we're dealing with different kinds of reproduction materials, the challenge of trying to produce something that is printed on a web press, which has very different limitations than a sheetfed. Press. So it's a lot of different technical issues. And then there's all the proofreading. And it's takes a lot of time. And we keep finding mistakes on every round and just trying to refine, refine, refine until we're confident that we've got a a good looking issue and then getting into the printer on time,

Roy Sharples: 5:42

Where do your ideas come from? to determine how you prioritize and select your features, design and storytelling themes? I mean, obviously, you're keeping a close eye on industry developments and, and culture.

Patrick Coyne: 5:55

Well honestly we keep long spreadsheets of different firms and individuals whose work we admire. And a lot of that comes out of seeing what projects and firms are selected for our creative competitions. And we do I really rely on those outside juries to help us direct our editorial content. Because it's, I think, if we were just left to our own devices, we may have moved on from one direction, but we constantly get recalibrated by having different juries telling us what they think is, it's valuable work. Anyway, we'd go through those spreadsheets for each issue, we look at what we've done in the previous issues and say, what what can we do that's different. So if we did an ad agency from San Francisco, we're going to try to come up with a design firm from Barcelona or something like that. So it's always trying to do something a little bit different. In terms of the exhibit section, where we're showing individual projects, we're reviewing work on a continuous basis, and calling from that the pieces that we think are most significant and, and will be most inspirational to our audience. And again, we're always looking at which projects are different from other projects. So not trying to do anything that's too formulaic,

Roy Sharples: 7:22

Graphic design has been heavily disrupted by technology advancement throughout the decades, especially the move away from print to digital, and the emergence of artificial intelligence, robots, virtual and augmented reality, what has been the experience for you pre digital revolution, and then throughout the digital age,

Patrick Coyne: 7:43

it's changed a lot. There are parts that haven't changed the the creative urge, the desire to create the desire to communicate. I mean, some of those things are are unchanging. The mediums have changed, the tools have changed the platforms, that certainly has changed dramatically. I, it's hard for me to imagine how we even got the magazine done before we had desktop publishing, it's just changed so much. And we're able to do so much more quickly. But it's also we can repeat mistakes quickly. Yeah, so we always need to have human eyes looking things over and looking for errors. In terms of the industry, in, say, in the design and advertising cycle, even in photography, and illustration, there used to be a lot more mentorship available, where apprentices would come into a firm and, and be taught by, you know, more seasoned creative practitioners. And then, when computers first came on the scene, it was the apprentices that actually knew how to use the computers and ended up teaching their mentors, if you will, to get through that process. So and that's something that does concern me recently is just the pushed to to become more and more efficient, more cost effective, has really cut back on mentorship opportunities that that used to be very common practice. So I think that's been a challenge is for the next generation to get the benefit of working with a seasoned professional for any length of time. I think it's becoming more and more challenging

Roy Sharples: 9:38

What critical skills are needed to survive and thrive as a visual communicator?

Patrick Coyne: 9:44

Well, in all the fields of visual communications, you're expected to be creative on demand, you got to continuously produce on a regular basis and try to, you know, keep up with what's going on in the rest of the world. You have to have good communication skills, I mean interpersonal skills, more and more people are needing to work on a team, and especially now working remotely, it's even more challenging to have a really good interactive experience. It's keeping up with the tools which are constantly changing, it's keeping up with the platforms, to understanding the medium, and mediums, the different mediums that that one's working with, and the ability to adapt, I think that's probably one of the most important things is to look around and see where things are going and make sure that your skill set is an appropriate fit.

Roy Sharples: 10:39

Patrick, as you look back upon your career to date, what are your lessons learned in terms of pitfalls to avoid, and keys to success that you can share with existing and aspiring graphic designers, visual communicators?

Patrick Coyne: 10:55

Well, I've got a little bit of advice here and there. And I would say it's always being a cultural cultural sponge. So it's just critical for any creative person to keep up on what is going on in society, technology visually, audio, you know, music, whatever, all those things are important to become a well rounded, creative communicator. I mean, if you don't know what's going on in the world, you're missing out on some real opportunities to make connections. And I think that's also part of being an effective communicator is connecting what might seem to be totally disparate ideas, and then making those connections and communicating that effectively to an audience. I know there's always a sense of trying to keep up on what the visual trends are. But I think that's always kind of been a short term solution. And rather, I'd love to see more people finding their own creative voice and being aware of what's going on. But instead of trying to imitate or emulate somebody else, trying to find that unique voice that will connect with other people. So I think it's notic experienced with anyone technology, but experience dealing with complexity, the ability to adapt, integrate new ideas quickly, economically and with imagination. What won't change is that continual need for creative people to have creative ideas, original thinkers who connect people with memorable messages,

Roy Sharples: 12:46

Creativity, is the ability to make the invisible visible by taking what is not to create, what is it manifest what is inside you and around you by transcending the obvious ordinary and routine, by connecting past the present. By putting things together in new ways. Creativity, is seeing things that others don't, it's the belief in yourself and your ideas, and always moving forward and never giving up by embracing originality fearlessly leading and creating without fear, Patrick, navigating forward, what's your vision for the future of visual communications and the role of creativity?

Patrick Coyne: 13:27

Well, obviously, we're going to be dealing more with technology as a, you know, as artificial intelligence becomes more and more part of part of our job. So I think in a lot of cases, it will be utilizing AI to come up with parameters to develop a massive number of prototypes, in such a way that you can quickly iterate an idea and see how it might be applied, or what the variations of an idea would be. So I think that's going to be very different approach to what we typically do now, which is sketch out a few ideas and go with refinement or whatever. So I really see that as being a different methodology that that creative people will use to produce content in the future. I'm a little concerned about some of that. I mean, I certainly like the idea of, of keeping the human hand involved. And I think that will still be the case, in terms of human being making decisions about creative directions. But again, I think we're going to be relying more and more on technical tools to help us come up with that great idea in the future.

Roy Sharples: 14:48

Creativity continues to be the difference humans make now and in the future, when applied responsibly and ethically intelligent technologies can increasingly expedite most rules a human can. The future workplace as for humans will work in unison with artificial intelligence, or the technological equivalent. Robots have multiplied productivity and replaced humans in many work lanes, just as the automobile replaced horses, dramatically impacting life and society, they are freeing people to perform more creative and self fulfilling roles that have yet to be defined. Vatel said, the application of technology needs to be done in a way that is socially responsible by putting ethics at the center of the creative intent that makes people's lives better. And progress is life and society for a greater purpose. And good,

Patrick Coyne: 15:44

that brings up a really interesting point. And this is something you were asking me earlier about how things have changed. And I would have to say, it's just the the viewpoint of ethics that I identified, this is something I'm really pleased to see is so many creative people now are starting to question why they should do something where it used to be in the past where you get an assignment, you did it, you know, without question, yeah. And didn't concern oneself what the what the ramifications would be, or the impact of this creative work would have. And now a lot of people are starting to, to, you know, look at what they're doing and saying, what impact is this having on society, culture, the planet. And I think that's terrific that we're starting to ask those kinds of kinds of questions.

Roy Sharples: 16:31

Technology has helped enable the creative process in multiple ways. And this blending of technology and creativity, has helped innovate creative expression, and also helped eradicate the more mundane work that the human needs to do that ultimately frees them up to do more creative work and applying that creative horsepower. more productively.

Patrick Coyne: 16:56

Absolutely. And so I mean, I for 1am, not interested in doing any more masking of images, or, you know, dropping out backgrounds or what have you, I mean, that that's not creative work. So this is something that I think we do need to look at is that creativity is still going to be very necessary, and it's very human centric. And I just don't think we're in a position where we're going to see that automated Sure, you can throw a bunch of parameters into a program and, and say, show me a bunch of iterations of this. But somebody is going to have to decide what the direction is to go, or what the parameters are even. So I'm not too worried about creative people losing their jobs. So again, I think the challenge is the impact that it's going to have on the people trying to enter the field, and again, not having access to the mentors, because the mentors are basically using their AI tools to do all that grunt work, right. So I think we're gonna have to look at a different approach to how to how we mentor the next generation,

Roy Sharples: 18:15

mentorship has been such a strong theme through your perspectives, Patrick, and mentorship, it's about engaging and soliciting input from experts, and immersing yourself in the domain and, and to stand on the shoulders of giants by seeking wise counsel from people you trust, respect and admire, and finding those positive role models who can share their skills, insights and expertise, to help nurture your ideas and to accelerate you on your path. And also, that combined with understanding and respecting history, and infusing best practices and to finding the future to truly innovate and not to reinvent the wheel, and also the importance of collaboration, and the cross pollination across multiple domains and knowledge bases, to seek inspiration and expertise to force multiply innovative outcomes,

Patrick Coyne: 19:14

I think it's great for say, graphic designers to pay attention to what other graphic designers are doing. But there's so much inspiration in advertising, art direction, illustration, photography, web design, and then even beyond that, architecture, fine art, music. That's where I think a lot of it inspiration exists and out in nature as well. I mean, looking for things that are outside your own direct discipline is probably where you're gonna find a lot more inspiration than just looking at what your competitors are doing in a particular field. So I think it's very important to to broaden one's sources of inspiration and information An important thing to me is for visual people to embrace the written word. And that means reading books, magazines, blogs, whatever, just trying to again to take in as much information as possible, but also understanding that writing is also another creative form. And the fact that visual communicators are going to have to verbalize and defend their work, explain their work to people who were are not visual communicators. I think any experience one has with writing, and speaking in order to communicate ideas is is going to be critical. Something else I really feel strongly about. I mean, certainly people talk about doing side projects, and exploring, you know, other forms of creativity outside their chosen profession. And I think that's all very important. But something else, I think, is equally important as volunteering for projects and causes that one believes in. So I think that's the best way to balance concerns about if, if your work is is strictly for commercial purposes, but why not do some volunteer work for an organization that desperately needs help by a visual communicator and you know, do something that you believe in, as well. And I think what everyone needs to balance their career between work for the public and public good,

Roy Sharples: 21:35

Exactly, building a better future through creative action! Do you want to learn more about how to create Without Frontiers by unleashing the power of creativity and consider getting CREATIVITY WITHOUT FRONTIERS? How to make the invisible visible by lighting the way into the future? It's available in print, digital and audio on all relevant book platforms. You have been listening to the Unknown Origins podcast, please follow subscribe, rate and review us. For more information go to unknownorigins.com. Thank you for listening!