POSTED February 22, 2021

Ryan Polich LinkedIn Headshot.jpeg

About our guest

Ryan Polich is a Design Director at Lucia | Marquand, design agency in Seattle that develops, designs, and produces books for museums and other cultural institutions.

He spoke with Tim Yeadon, Principal & Creative Director of Clyde Golden.

Ryan Polich on Instagram: @rpolich

 

Ryan and Tim talked about

  • What Ryan does at Lucia | Marquand [0:31]

  • The process of designing a book [3:33]

  • What a physical book can be [7:26]

  • Solving your client’s problems [9:35]

  • Favorite books Ryan has worked on [10:16]

  • Interpreting a collection into a book [12:30]

  • Crediting designers for work in different mediums [14:38]

  • How Ryan became a book designer [16:23]

  • How to choose typography for a project [20:03]

  • Designing for the present vs. designing for the future [23:10]

  • Favorite books Ryan didn’t work on [25:44]

  • Ryan’s favorite typefaces, and ones he considers most overused [27:45]

 

References

 

Podcast Transcript

Tim (00:13):

Ryan Polich is a design director at Lucia | Marquand here in Seattle, which develops designs and produces books for museums and other cultural institutions. Thanks for coming on Input Doc today, Ryan.

Ryan (00:25):

I am happy to be here.

Tim (00:26):

So you've been at Lucia | Marquand for nearly 10 years.

Ryan (00:30):

Yeah. Yeah. Just about.

Tim (00:31):

Tell me about your role there.

Ryan (00:34):

The bulk of my work is design, which is what I love to do. And it's designing books, which is... For me when I was in school, that's like this pinnacle of graphic design, like that's where type and images meet and live together forever is on the pages of a book. And so finding a way to do that, and then on top of that, do that in a world where I'm looking at art and working with curators who are talking about art history and that sort of thing. I know it's cliche, but it's totally a dream job.

Tim (01:02):

Where else would you do a job like this?

Ryan (01:05):

You know, that's a really good question. Not many places. So we occasionally work with other designers. A designer might come attached to a project or a curator has a good relationship with one. I would say nine times out of ten they're freelance, or they own their own very small studio. Yeah. It's definitely a small industry to have found a place in.

Tim (01:29):

You're listed under a design agency. Lucia | Marquand is a design agency, but the channel is books or the output is books. And the audience is primarily museums I think. I looked at the site, it said, museums, artists, creative professionals, publishers, and collectors. And so that's a fairly wide range, actually. There's all sorts of projects that would come in.

Ryan (01:54):

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And that's what the company was kind of built on was the museum publishing vein. And that's definitely the bulk of our work still. Every now and then we work directly with an artist or if there's an artist and a gallerist working together that's common too, and collectors as well. Those are some of the more odd books sometimes where there'll be someone that just has a collection of something that they want to make a book about and we'll work with them to make it happen. But it offers a really wide range of material and a lot of ways of looking at art through books, differently. Some of the artists' books are really great that we get to work with. Ed Marquand the founder of the company has a letterpress studio and bindery at Central Washington. So we get to do special projects out there that are letterpress printed and hand bound and interesting materials and custom everything. And those are really great, kind of creative outlets.

Tim (02:58):

What is the name of that town he's in?

Ryan (03:00):

Tieton.

Tim (03:00):

Tieton. That's right, because right out front, you are downtown and Paper Hammer is right out front of your office. Some people may know you that way. Which, it's a slightly separate business, but still, I mean, it feels like you have been creating a few things for them as well.

Ryan (03:18):

Yeah there is definitely a link there. You know, when Paper Hammer was kind of earlier on, we were doing a lot more design work for the store and Ed, since then, that's been his world in the last few years and designing products.

Tim (03:33):

Well, tell me about the process of designing a book. I mean, you know, a request comes in. On average, how do you work through what this book might look like and what are the parts of the journey of, even, pre-production?

Ryan (03:46):

Sure. Well, maybe one of my favorite parts of the process is actually that kind of initial conversation. Because most of the time, like I said, since we're working with museums it's usually a curator that has come up with an exhibition that the book is linked to. That's almost always driving it. We'll do collection books for museums and handbooks and stuff, but most of the time they're tied to an exhibition. You know, this curator has done potentially years of research and work shaping this exhibition, focusing on the themes of the works that they're gathering. So talking to them, it's actually kind of invigorating for both parties, I think. Because it gives them a chance to explain the thesis of their exhibition to someone who's totally new to it since, you know, I'm just walking in. And it also gives me a way to kind of tap into their excitement for the material.

The best projects are those where there's kind of just an immediate click where everyone is excited about what the work holds and what that means for the design of the book. So I usually start thinking in kind of really broad terms about what the book should feel like, who it's for, what it should be as an object and how it should exist in the world. And getting those, kind of, broader ideas on the table then kind of helps me focus as I'm making more specific choices about materials and paper and typefaces and how images sit on a page. So that's kind of how things start.

Then there's a pretty, intense period where I'm just working through options, finding ways to kind of hold the material in the best way possible in terms of the design. Then the book gets laid out and we have an insulated conversation between myself as a designer and the curator. And sometimes if there's a publications manager or something who's invested at the beginning.

Tim (05:38):

I think that's interesting where you're thinking about what the book feels like. Is there a tactical conversation as far as weight of a book or even how the book is used and therefore what materials should be used in creating it?

Ryan (05:58):

Yeah. And I think this was one of the things that when I started at the company was definitely a conversation that was always in the air, was justifying the existence of books. Because there are all these articles about, "Oh, is this the death of the book?" And the Kindle was happening and everything was moving to digital formats. And people were really worried about that with art books, that that would just dry up and not exist anymore. And what we found over time is that kind of the opposite has happened. And I think people have realized that you get a sensory experience from reading a physical book, that's impossible to replicate through a screen. So we always felt that way. And then it kind of seemed like the general consensus started tipping that way after a while, after also realizing how difficult it is to make something like an art book useful in any way in a digital format.

I mean, it might be useful, but it might not be nice to look at. So this conversation kept growing and now I've found a lot of times the curators will come to us with ideas in mind already about what this book should be as an object Which is really nice because it means you're thinking about it as this physical thing that's going to live in the world, for quite a long time hopefully. And you kind of invest some importance in all of those decisions that way. Yeah. That's one of the things that really makes me excited about the design work that I do is you get this thing you can hold at the end of it and you can flip the pages and smell the ink.

Tim (07:26):

You're talking about the actual nature of the object itself that's being made. I hadn't thought about that so much because I think when you and I have talked in the past, you're a designer. And I think of composition on a page versus the idea of creation of an object of a tactile thing that has weight. It's almost, there's a touch of industrial design to it.

Ryan (07:48):

You could say that. Yeah. There are definitely book designers - there's AIGA does the, there's like the 50 books, 50 covers competition every year. There are definitely some that I would definitely qualify as industrial designing that come in crazy extruded plastic slip cases, or, you know, do things above and beyond what you'd even expect a book to be. But I think that's also fascinating because what we define as a book is pretty malleable. And I think keeping that in mind is really interesting. We don't necessarily have the room in the work that we do to go that wild, but knowing that you can.

Tim (08:29):

Let's talk about that for a second. What is the spectrum of a book? I've never thought about this.

Ryan (08:34):

Yeah. I mean, so you could break it down to the simplest definition of a bound set of pages with content. How it's bound, what the pages are made of, how big they are, and as a result, how they fold or roll. I think that's what's really interesting too is there are so many things you can do to each of the independent materials of a book, you know, paper can be folded, it can be cut, it can be perforated. And then you add printing and then there's all the physical components of binding a book, the thread, the boards on front and back, if it's a hard cover, the paper or cloth used to wrap those. So they're kind of just layer upon layer of materials that are on their own are very simple, but that also offer so many possibilities because of their simplicity. And that's a really interesting challenge to find ways to combine those in a way that successfully supports the content of the book itself. And that's always the goal.

Tim (09:35):

Because at your core, you're an agency. And a business problem is brought to you and you need to solve it in a way that solves their problem.

Ryan (09:46):

Right. And there's always that balance between, you know, on the practical financial level, what are the things that we can do that there's a budget for? And a lot of times, you know, we're working with institutions that don't have scads of money to put into a publishing program. So there are times when that becomes the design challenge, which is how do I make this object interesting in a unique and supportive way, but do it within the confines of a budget. And you come up with some really interesting solutions that way

Tim (10:16):

I would love to hear of several books that you really felt turned out well

Ryan (10:22):

Yeah. Where to start...

Tim (10:24):

They're all magic.

Ryan (10:25):

They're all amazing. No.

Tim (10:28):

Well, we all, always on all of our projects do the best that we can. And in the end we solve the problem and some of them you're really proud of.

Ryan (10:36):

Yeah, absolutely. So a recent one... There's a book that I designed for the John Michael Kohler Arts Center on a woman named Lenore Tawney, who was a fiber artist and was really kind of this key figure in redefining what fiber art meant in terms of being perceived as an art form and not just a craft. And so there was always kind of this dismissive stance. One because of the material. Two, because it was work that was primarily done by women. So it was kind of relegated to this, "that's not real artwork." And she was one of the people like Anni Albers, who kind of tried to reclaim that and put a spotlight on it. And she invented weaving techniques that hadn't been done before. And so the work is really fantastic.

There's this sort of intersection of content that's good, and interesting, because if it's something that people aren't interested in or that I'm not interested in, or the curator's not interested in like that spark isn't there, so that's critical. But then all of the people involved, you know, caring equally about it is what really kind of elevates it. And so the team at the Kohler was just fantastic. And they were really invested. And the conversations about the work and the book were intermingled. And so the book itself responded to that work and the typography and the paper textures and the color palette and all of that kind of grew out of that conversation and really became something really fantastic. So that's one that I'm particularly proud of.

Tim (12:28):

A question for you on this.

Ryan (12:29):

Yeah.

Tim (12:30):

They bring you a collection. They bring you curated information that's already been settled upon in essence. How much say do you have in interpreting that into a book?

Ryan (12:43):

That's a good question. It varies. I feel like in the course of my years at the company, there's been a little more openness for interpretation than maybe there used to be. And this is an industry term...

Tim (12:57):

Within the industry there's more openness or just within your own agency there's more openness?

Ryan (13:02):

I would have to say within our agency. Because I think we used to kind of call ourselves - there's an industry term called the packager where you basically, you get a folder with all the material in it. You make it look pretty and you turn it into a book. And there are times when there are projects where that's the extent of what you need to and are able to do for something. Certainly that term applies.

But there's definitely been, I feel like, a movement toward interacting with the curator who is frequently the author at least of, kind of, the main essay in the book. And the more engagement you have, and the longer you have a relationship with someone, you know, multiple projects over time, you get a chance to kind of work on those ideas earlier before they're settled and presented. And it is, "Oh, here, this is, this is how this will work. This is how this will work. Let's go ahead and design it." So that's really rewarding too. And that I think is just kind of, yeah. That comes with time and investing in those relationships.

Tim (14:03):

I think that anybody who works at an agency with clients works through this as well. Sometimes you are a packager. But then sometimes you're truly re-interpreting to a channel or you're helping them interpret what they have into some sort of expression or communication. Both are honorable and useful to your clients. But one of them, you tend to remember a little bit more.

Ryan (14:26):

Right.

Tim (14:27):

One keeps the lights on...

Ryan (14:31):

Yeah.

Tim (14:31):

It's validating to hear that, that your life is like that too.

Ryan (14:38):

Yeah it is. I mean, it's interesting because in books, particularly - I talk about this with my wife a lot, because she's a landscape designer. One of the things that I never really thought about and often take for granted is books make an effort, especially art books, to kind of collect the information about some of the key players on the copyright page. And so there's a credit for the editor. There's a credit for the typesetter. There's a credit for the designer. And those names exist on a copyright page. I remember the first book I designed. You look at that and you're like, "Oh my God, my name is in a book!" And, you know, there's this kind of magic from that.

But it's interesting because that frequently is not the case in almost any other design realm. If it's something digital, maybe you find out the firm that created it, but the individual designer wouldn't necessarily get a credit unless you're reading about it in an award or something. And so, like I said, I talked to my wife about it because she designs these gardens, these amazing gardens, and you could drive by and really appreciate it and have absolutely no idea who is responsible for it and why. And so there are definitely books where you get to that point where the book is going to the printer and you quietly take that name off. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

Tim (16:00):

Yeah, sure. Fair enough. On we go. There's the great phrase I’ll mutter sometimes, which is "well that stuck to the internet, didn't it?" And it was interesting to do, but you're like on we go, what's our next gig. What's happening? What do we got? What's at two o'clock, let's keep moving here. Before designing books, how did you get into design?

Ryan (16:23):

Yeah, I mean, I just absolutely loved the books growing up. My parents had a ton of books. My dad had - I still remember these - the Time-Life series of notable artists and Caravaggio and Leonardo. I remember just soaking those up when I was a kid. And I never thought at that point about how those came to be. They were just these things that you could enjoy. And then fast forward, I went to school, I studied photography and graphic design. I went to school thinking about photography. And that's where a lot of my creative energy went, but as I spent more time in the design world, I realized how much typography means to me and how fascinated I am with it as a tool and as a medium. And so that was kind of knocking around.

And then what's really funny is all through college I avoided printmaking. Like deliberately avoided it. Mainly because there was an experience I had when I was in like third or fourth grade where we had to make these prints in art class. And the thing I made and what I thought I was going to get were so different, I was so just frustrated and disappointed, that I was just in my head from that point on, I was like, printmaking is bad. I will never do it again. And after I got out of school I ended up getting a graphic design job at a screen printing shop and they needed a production designer and mostly you needed to know how to use the software and make print separations and that sort of thing.

So the work really interested me. And then when I got there and I saw the process of screen printing, I was just like, "Why? Why have I not been doing this, this whole time?" So that really kind of got me really into print in all its forms. And so I learned how to screen print, I got my own screen printing set up. So this was all in Colorado, that's where I'm originally from. Then we moved to Seattle and I got a job doing production design at a sign company, doing large signage and vinyl graphics and all that sort of stuff. But screen-printed on my own time. And then eventually learned letterpress printing on my own time as well, which that further kind of pushed me towards the history of books and print and how those evolved.



Meghan O’Neill - Ad (18:46):

Hi everyone. This is Megan O'Neill, I'm the producer of Input Doc. The inaugural season of Input Doc is now complete. And we would love to hear your feedback from season one, suggestions for future episodes, or if you know someone who'd be a great guest on the podcast. Hey, maybe that person is you! My email is meghan@clydegolden.com. I hope to hear from you.



Tim (19:13):

So your garage is taken up by a large letterpress, correct?

Ryan (19:16):

It is. Yes.

Tim (19:17):

Good for you, first off. Like don't put a car in your garage, put something cool there. Like a letterpress or a bandsaw, or whatever.

Ryan (19:28):

Yeah, yeah. It's just got to be heavy. That's all that's really required.

Tim (19:32):

It needs to be immovable so that nobody thinks a car should go into that garage. Yeah.

Ryan (19:38):

So, so yeah, so that. And then it kind of just the merger of print and design really kind of crystallized for me as what I wanted to be doing. And when I started at Lucia | Marquand, it was, it was a part-time job and we were kind of nervous about it because I was leaving a full-time job to do it. And I'm so glad I did because it's the world that I want to be in.

Tim (20:03):

Tell me a little bit about what you find interesting about typography?

Ryan (20:07):

Type has always fascinated me because there's nothing else quite like it in that it's this series of just completely abstract shapes that we use to communicate basically everything. So much of our civilization rests on the ability to communicate without speaking to another person and typography is what allows that to happen. That core idea is really fascinating to me.

Tim (20:37):

Color theory, I have a fairly solid handle on, in that a color can evoke a mood or there's certain usages based on clients and audiences. I feel less well-versed in type and choosing type. Whether I choose a serif or a sans. Always I have a design director or a visual designer who realistically, I'm going to allow to make that call. But I would imagine that a lot of your life is based around that. What's the methodology you have or process you have for choosing type for a project?

Ryan (21:14):

Sure. Yeah, that's probably one of my favorite parts. I can really kind of dig into making those decisions. Well, so one of the things that I think is also unique to designing art books, is that they get to exist a little bit outside of the other trends in design that happen. And so I read a lot about typography and, you know, there's been this probably 5-10 year wave now of like clean geometric sans serif faces and, "Oh, here's another new clean geometric sans serif face." And companies rebranding and going with something in that vein.

And those spaces certainly have their merits, but what's nice about the work that we do is because it's not something that you see for a three months long campaign or whatever you get to kind of step outside of that energy a little bit and focus on really just kind of honoring the material in the book so that the design solution is really about what's in that book you're making and less about if someone's going to see this in 2020 or 2030 or whatever.

For me, what really informs typographic decisions is the material itself and how the type can either respond and activate that work, or sometimes step aside and let the work do the talking and each project calls for a different combination of those things. But I do a lot of reading about typographical history and the history of type in print over time, because a lot of the work we're talking about comes from early in the 20th century or in the 19th century, even older. And so looking back at what type was doing in those areas and how that could influence the design of the book is something that's really interesting to do. But yeah, it's all about finding a link between the letter forms you're seeing on the page and the work that they're talking about.

Tim (23:10):

We're in the middle of a cultural shift right now, we're sitting here in a pandemic and I would suppose that will impact choices like that in the future. I mean, you're probably going to see shifts in color, typography, I think tone is going to change a bit, from uh, humor or, I think humor is always great. But I think we're moving basically from a meme economy to something that perhaps is a little more factual and just quiet at the moment because emotionally, that's probably all we can handle. And I suppose there's a moment where we're going to come out of it and it's going to be just this big post-prohibition celebration that occurs at some point. Is that something that you think about when you're designing a book as far as capturing a moment of now versus long-term?

Ryan (24:06):

That's a really interesting question. And I don't know that I've ever thought about it in those terms. I think I tend to think about “now” last in terms of the books I'm designing.

Tim (24:20):

What's the project length of a book? Or, how long does it take?

Ryan (24:26):

Yeah, it's about nine months from when we get the material to printed books being delivered. Prior to that it could be years.

Tim (24:36):

A website can take that long easily.

Ryan (24:39):

Sure. I think the way that our books kind of intersect that kind of "now" design is when there is an exhibition, and frequently the exhibitions being designed by someone on staff at the museum. If there's a push to link the book to the exhibition, so strongly that like this has happened where they'll say, Oh, could you use the exhibition graphics for the title?

And that's something we try to avoid whenever we can. And largely for that reason, because the exhibition is about being there. It's about that moment in history. And if you want to use a, you know, Trinity typeface to plaster the walls of the museum with to get people in there because that's something fresh for them to be seeing, that's a marketing strategy. That totally makes sense. But when you think about a book, like the whole point of a book is for it to outlive the moment of that exhibition. And so we always try and think about the design doing that same thing.

Tim (25:38):

Because the book is going to be here for a long, long time, but that moment at the time of the exhibition will go.

Ryan (25:44):

Yeah.

Tim (25:44):

Do you have two or three favorite designed books that you didn't work on, that you would point us to go take a look at? As in, you know, we all have stuff that makes us jealous.

Ryan (25:55):

Oh, sure. Yeah. I'll try and reduce it to just a couple. There's one that immediately comes to mind cause I was thinking about it the other day. It's called “Experience” and it was published by the MIT press probably four or five years ago now. And it's not an art book per se. It's pretty academic. And it talks a lot about human sensory experience. And there are a number of essays that kind of center on that theme, but the design and the production of the book itself focus on exactly what we've been talking about. Like really making it a sensory experience. And so when you see the book on the shelf, it's all black with black foil stamped for the title on the front cover. And when you pick it up and hold it, the ink they've used on the cover is heat sensitive. So after you've held it for a couple minutes, you take your hand away and all of a sudden you see pink and green underneath as the black has faded because your hand just warmed it. And then they printed the end papers with pheromones actually to like, I can't remember exactly what the pheromones are, but the idea is that they are like human pheromones that make you like stuff. And so they printed the end papers. Maybe this is why I was thinking about this book, because it's just cemented it.

Tim (27:18):

The title “Experience” suggests that's what's in there. It’s best to be experienced. And this was a way of expressing that.

Ryan (27:27):

Yeah, absolutely.

Tim (27:29):

Is there any scratch and sniff?

Ryan (27:30):

There's no scratch and sniff.

Tim (27:34):

Yeah I'm sorry. Sorry for asking that, everybody. Nonetheless, you never do know. Cause you could be like, "yeah, actually!"

Ryan (27:42):

Yeah. That's the collector's edition that has that.

Tim (27:45):

And then a couple of trivia questions about typography. I don't usually do this, but like what are your favorite typefaces? And then what are currently the most overrated typefaces that you're seeing everywhere? Like in my world stock photography, there is a guy who looks just like Stanley Tucci that I see everywhere. And every time we see him, we're like, "there he is!" And you know, we had put him on something about a year ago, and I would imagine that you're seeing specific types chosen over and over. And you think, "come on," like, "let's think this through a little bit better."

Ryan (28:15):

Yeah. There's kind of a running joke internally about Bembow because I think it...

Tim (28:22):

Is it a serif or a sans?

Ryan (28:22):

It's a serif, and it's a very kind of Renaissance looking serif. And so I think there's this idea that, Oh, it's classical typography and it must be in my book. And it's funny because I am definitely in the camp that there are no bad typefaces, you’ve just got to find the right way to use them. So it's not inherently bad. The problem is the things that people think it's capable of doing that it's not. And the fact on a practical level, there's no digital version of it that looks good. So there's this idea of what it should look like, that it never lives up to. And so it's yeah, disappointing.

In terms of favorites, that changes often. But a current favorite, there's a type family called Founders Grotesk by Klim, a type designer out in New Zealand who just all his work is amazing. And it's based on a turn of the 20th century kind of scrappy grotesque wood type. And it's got a lot of character, but it also is really sturdy and useful. I don't know if you talk about this in your design work, but we talk about workhorse typefaces. A typeface that can do whatever you throw at it. And this is definitely one of those. It's just like, it looks great as a title, but it can also work as tiny, you know, seven point caption type or something if you need it to. And those things are always in the back of my head as I'm looking at the typefaces.

Tim (29:52):

Really interesting. Well, thank you very much for coming Input Doc today.

Ryan (29:56):

Yeah thanks for having me.

Tim (29:56):

This was a really educational conversation for me because I have questions about typography and many other things that you do. And I'm probably not done drilling with questions in your lifetime about this.

Ryan (30:09):

Anytime you have more, just let me know.

Tim (30:11):

Are there places online where people could learn more about you, that you'd want to tell them about?

Ryan (30:18):

I post stuff to my Instagram every now and then.

Tim (30:20):

What's your handle there?

Ryan (30:22):

@rpolich and I've got a website that is collecting dust because I never touch it. Which is just ryanpolich.com.

Tim (30:33):

And then where can they see your professional work? Where's the Lucia | Marquand website?

Ryan (30:36):

That is LuciaMarquand.com and we're actually, well, I don't know if I have clearance to announce this but we're revamping the site. We're going to unveil it soon. It looks really great.

Tim (30:49):

Everybody should always be thinking about revamping their site and that's totally healthy.

Ryan (30:55):

It's good, it's an improvement for sure. It looks really great.

Tim (30:58):

Oh yeah. I mean the life expectancy of a website far exceeds our love for our specific websites. Let's put it that way.

Ryan (31:05):

Yeah.

Tim (31:05):

We're always mildly embarrassed by what we have online.

Ryan (31:10):

Yeah, that's true. That's a really good way to put it.

Tim (31:13):

Yeah and it's okay. Either you don't have a site, I deal with this all the time, either they don't have a site and they're irritated with themself or they have a site and they're irritated with the site. And there's only like a brief moment in time where right after you launch and they look at you, like," this is great. This is so much better than it was before." And a month later, there's 37 fixes. Like, "we gotta do this and this and this and this."

Ryan (31:33):

Yeah. And it's funny. Cause for me anyway, it is so opposite to where my design brain sits, like designing for something that is so ephemeral and so intangible and you know, all the principles are the same, but it's hard for me to think about because I want to make something on paper.

Tim (31:55):

Yeah. But this was a good test for you as a person, to make something online.

Ryan (32:00):

(laughs)

Tim (32:00):

Okay, Ryan. Well, thanks very much.

Ryan (32:01):

Yeah. Thanks.

Tim (32:02):

Absolutely. Have a great day.