Interview with Norm
Published in Fab06 - Turning Point
Graphic design by Matthew High - get the pdf
The beginning was Chaos? Forget that.
Dimitri Bruni and Manuel Krebs are Norm. Swiss, from the class of 1970, with a name like that they can only look like they do: perfectly ironed clothing and short hair parted to one side.
If you ask them why they have the same hairstyle as bourgeois children, they say they go to the same barber and that once, when they were at graphic design school together, a communication expert told them that the first thing to do, when you enter the work force, is to fix your hair. If you try to ask about the holes in their ears they justify them as errors of their now distant youth.
Norm take any questions you ask them very seriously and only give guarded answers.
The two graphic designers, famous for their work on typeface, came to Fabrica for a workshop; a “three-day” searching for order entitled “Emptiness is ugly”. The steps for participating in the work were simple and straightforward: 1. Choose a space of any kind. 2. Empty it. 3. Pile up the objects that were in it; put in them back in the space according to pre-etablished rules. 4. Document all steps.
Swiss austerity. That goes without saying.
Norm is a name that draws on concepts like control and austerity. How do you think it is possible to bring together creativity and respect for rules?
Creativity is not connected to chaos. Being creative doesn’t mean just inventing something strange, new or explosive. You need to know how to focus on the objectives required for the work you are doing. Those who have real talent are those who know how to play with the rules they have been given. The stricter they are, the more that personal ability must be refined.
How do you work?
It’s all in the name: Norm. Before beginning a project we define it with precise rules, objectives, context, client requests. At graphic design school they teach to work through saturation, making dozens of versions of the same visual in the hope that the client will select one. We believe the opposite: that it is better to work out what you are looking for before starting. When you know what you want you don’t need multiple attempts to get the result you are looking for. We firmly believe that personal style is the effect of a meticulously codified method.
Does the title you gave to the workshop, “Emptiness is ugly” mean to be provocative?
Not really. Dimitri chose the title and it is simply a quote with a funny story behind it. This summer we found ourselves on vacation in a little village in Italy where there was a local festival. All the women of the town were busy decorating the streets with banners and colored flags. We offered to help and we were assigned a small lane to decorate. When we had finished an old lady came to check our work. With a visibly dissatisfied expression she said to us: “Excuse me but I really must add some more decorations: Emptiness is ugly”.
According to you a graphic designer’s main objective is order. Could you expand on that?
We believe that you can only see order by contrast because it is only highlighted in direct contrast with disorder.
Our office for example is made up of one big, clean, quiet room and a small one, a chaotic closet where very different things, from books to a coffee machine share a space. These two spaces are an example of the tension that must exist between order and disorder.
As Norm you have published two books with a third on the way. How much of what is in your books is pure speculation and how much do you think has a practical application?
We think of our books as “visual essays”. The contents are pushed to the extreme and in a sense we made them mainly for ourselves.
In Introduction, which we published in 1999 and consider a sort of manifesto, we developed both the graphic part and the text at the same time.
In The things, which came out three years later, we separated the two aspects, concentrating on graphic research. Our publications have also helped us on a professional level. We never meant them as a “promotional tour”, but we are aware of the fact that they were an efficient form of advertising for our work.
Why has your graphic research concentrated on the characters of the alphabet?
Just after Introduction came out we took part in a conference on the Latin alphabet in which we proposed the same evaluations that we later developed in The things. The sign generator was created on that occasion: is it a program that is able to come up with all the possible combinations of signs that compose the letters of the Latin alphabet. It is an almost exclusively formal study: we haven’t made, as many have mistakenly thought, the crazy claim of evaluating the efficiency of our alphabet or even proposing modifications that would make it more efficient.
The reason we got so deeply into the subject is simple: one of our main activities is designing typeface and it is important to study the characteristics of the alphabet characters in depth in order to be able to reproduce them in the most appropriate way.
Do you work with external collaborators or do you prefer to work by yourselves?
Apart from rare exceptions, like working on typeface, we prefer to work alone. We like to have total control over our projects. But one thing that does help us is taking young people on as interns as soon as they come out of design school because the “new generation” is always up to date on technology in the field. In this way we establish a relationship of reciprocal learning with the interns: they learn from our experience and we learn all about the most recent programs, like ichat!
What advice would you give to a young person who wants to their make way in the world of design?
We believe that a young designer must first try to understand exactly what they want to work on. It’s best to make a definitive choice and establish as soon as possible what they want to concentrate on. You can’t work generically on all the aspects of design and expect to do it well. You must specialize.
What are your artistic influences?
Our work is a contribution to a sector that has already had leading figures. Before us artists from Bauhaus, Herbert Bayer, Paul Renner and Wim Crouwel all worked on typeface. As far as our own personal tastes go, Cornell Windling has been and still is an inspiration to us. His approach, based on the continuous change of iconic languages, has always fascinated us.
Are you particularly interested in certain types of music, literature or film?
Are you looking for interesting answers? Well here they are: we studied classical dance, we breed Pit bulls for combat and we like Britney Spears. Justin Timberlake isn’t bad either. Honestly we don’t have any particular interests in these fields, we follow the mainstream
What do you mean by mainstream?
We mean mainstream. We like Hollywood action films, things like that. If you’re hoping that we’ll let you look at our itunes or our bookshelves you’re way off track. They don’t have anything to do with our work and they shouldn’t interest you. Manuel grows bonsai that I can tell you. He is very much in sync with our work. There really isn’t anything else. We are very “Norm-al” people.