Best of MTC: Michael Bierut, Partner at Pentagram

Speaker A: Welcome back to the season premiere, season eight of Meet the Creatives. And I cannot think of anybody I would rather start this off with. He's one of my idols. He's one of my friends, a guy I really look up to, and it's been forever since we've had the chance to talk. Ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only, the prolific Mr. Michael Beirut. Michael, welcome back to Meet the Creatives.

Speaker B: Delighted to be here, Rob. Um, thank you.

Speaker A: When I started this podcast, you were my fourth guest, and you were actually, like, the North Star. You know, like, that was the plan. If I can get Michael Beirut on the show, I'll just retire and I'll be a millionaire. Uh, spoiler alert. Not a millionaire. But I did get you on the show, and I had to sort of realign my North Star for the show. But people always ask, like, what was the kind of the early momentum? How did you get all these great guests? I think they saw Michael Beirut and that you had given me a chance. You and Debbie and Sean Adams. So, uh, I owe you guys a lot. But with that. Michael Beirut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, graduating summa cum laude in 1980. He worked for the first 10 years at Bendelia Associates, a word I always say wrong, and then joined Pentagram as a partner in 1990. The client list here is absolutely insane. Working with Pentagram and obviously Vignelli and Associates, the New York Times, Saks Fifth. Ah, Ave. The Robin Hood Foundation, MIT Media Lab, MasterCard, Bobby Flay, Princeton University, the New York jets, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Playwrights and Horizons. I know Verizon, obviously, and one of my personal favorites that you worked on, and I had the chance to talk with you at the time when that kind of campaign was rolling out was the Hillary Clinton campaign. Such an iconic visual identity there. So lots of good stuff. And he's got two books. How to. This is a book that fundamentally changed my life. And if anyone starting out in the design field ever wants a book, I always recommend this book. This is a new and expanded version, which is cool and black, which I love, and now you see it, and other essays on design. Michael, um, Beirut, also really great, but let's get into it. I have a whole bunch of questions here. We also have people that have submitted their questions as well. One of my longer introductions, but, you know, you got to do it sometimes. So let's talk about Michael Beirut before all this, before Verizon, before all different stuff. Can you recount a specific moment in Your childhood when you realize the power of graphic design in everyday life.

Speaker B: There's stories that I've told over and over again so many times about my childhood and my kind of lonely kind of encounters with the world that I came to understand as graphic design. And I've tried to think about why they were so powerful to me. My dad pointed out a logo to me for Clark forklift trucks when I was like really young. That I sort of thought was, that he thought was clever. And I remember understanding why he thought it was clever and being really affected by that when I realized that I could participate in the social life of my high school by doing things like posters for the school plays and uh, illustrations for the covers for the recognition banquets that they'd have for the school athletes. You know, I'm neither an actor nor an athlete, but I got to, you know, I got to get some profile with the drama club and with the sports teams just because I knew how to draw. And, and that idea that artistic talent and artistic expressiveness could be both put at the service of someone else's goal, which I think a lot of artists and even some designers kind of resent. Um, you know, they want to feel like, you know, their dream is to work without clients and to sort of do stuff that they generate themselves for their own, um, interests, I think, whatever, for whatever reason, like way before I'd taken a single formal class in graphic design or knew the name of a typeface. I sort of understood that doing art was a way to, to be with, uh, to be in the world and to be with other people in a way. It wasn't about isolation, it wasn't about some sort of like, dominant, you know, one way idea of personal expression, but as a way of being in a conversation with someone else. And probably, you know, just as much as anything else. I probably remember looking at, you know, the COVID of the, of the Beatles record Revolver and seeing that, uh, you know, the COVID which is beautiful if you can picture it, uh, was designed by a guy named Klaus Borman and sort of thinking, well, there's like five names on this cover, on this package. You know, there's John, Paul, George, Ringo and this guy Klaus. And I have it over there, but

Speaker A: for the sake of time I'll leave it over there.

Speaker B: So I, I'm not John, Paul, George or Ringo, but, but every one of these bands needs someone to be the Klaus Vorman and maybe I could be that. And so I think those things. It's interesting because I think I've never, you Know, it took me a long time to figure out, oh, there's actually a profession of, uh. There's a bunch of people whose job it is to do this sort of thing. And it just seemed like I couldn't. It was one of these things where I sort of, like, dimly sensed that I wanted to do something with the rest of my life. And then to find out that that thing actually had a name and you could study it in school and you could. You know, there was a pantheon of people that had done it before, you know, some of whom had passed, some of whom were still practicing, and you could partake with that world. Just. It was so exciting to me. It was really thrilling, for sure.

Speaker A: I know that you had mentioned about going to the. You were enrolled in these classes, and your mom would take you to the art museum.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And you would try and replicate that, but nothing really struck you more than when you were able to see in high school that poster be replicated and on every door. I'm curious, now, all these years later, do you get that same feeling? Say, you know, you go to a Jet game or something, and you see the Verizon logo or something like that, and you see, like, these applications. And I. I know obviously, it takes a village. There's so many people that work on your team, but do you still get that feeling or change?

Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, and our Slack channel is filled with me and people on my team, um, and even me and my, uh, you know, chats that I have with people who used to work for me. They'll spot a tote bag of something we designed a dozen years ago, and someone will be sitting on the subway with a dirty old tote bag with graphics that we designed that are on the tote bag, and they'll take a surreptitious picture, text it to me, or one of us will sort of see something out in the wild. It's just as thrilling, and it's sort of like, you know, it. It. It's funny because, again, you know, and you alluded to this a little bit, Rob. Um, you know, I don't. I can't look at something like the MasterCard logo and immediately think, you know, that I am the sole author of the MasterCard logo. I don't think anyone can claim to be the author of two overlapping circles, each one a different color. There's something just, you know, that was there already, that we just figured out a way for them to kind of, I think, do it more effectively. And I was part of a team uh, with my partner Luke Heyman, and really talented people working on each of our teams. But still you sort of see something like that and it just sort of like, yeah, you know, when it's, particularly if it's done well and it's done well by people who are carrying on who you've never met, it's really exciting just to think, oh, that's some work that actually is still kind of performing out there in the world and doing what it's meant to do. And there's uh, you know, I wouldn't deny there's real satisfaction. And uh, I'd also point out that there's a whole segment of the population that would have trouble. Like, you know, uh, my late mother in law was famous for. My wife would say, you know, Mike designed those Saks Fifth Avenue bags. And you can tell she, she would look at those bags and just not be able to understand exactly what, what, what, what role I could have played in making them be the way they are. You know, they didn't, they don't have like a drawing of a, of a woman wearing a dress on the front. It just was like this abstract manipulation of shapes based on the logo. And that seemed, I don't think that seemed like art or anything to her. It just was sort of like shopping bags that were, came out of a factory where they make shopping bags. So totally. You have to be sort of content with um, anonymity to a certain degree. And I think I am. It's sort of um, you can of power if you're not eager to get the credit for it all the time.

Speaker A: Absolutely. How do you convey to your clients or how do you get it to look so simple and easy? I'm sure that it's not. Sure it takes a lot of time to get there. But how do you convey to your clients this simple solution is plenty good for your Fortune 500 company or whatever.

Speaker B: You know, there's a whole book to be written that I, that I kind of allude to in some of my books about how to work with clients and collaborators, how to work with the people that enable your ideas to reach a larger public. And it really does take a lot of skill and it took me a long time to master that skill and to uh, not just master that skill, but also to do it in a way that suited both the way that I thought and you know, my, the personality I bring to a room, which is really different say from the personality that my first boss and mentor, Massimo Vignelli, would bring to a room. He Would come into a room very glamorous and kind of magnetic and charismatic and Italian accent, had every kind of thing, you know, working for him as someone who just really exuded design authority and even design genius. And he was just unveil the, his recommendation as if he was doing a magic trick and people just would clap. You know, it was amazing. And I've never had that ability. It's like never been kind of like my, I just don't have that much self confidence. Like every time I come up with an I like every single thing you could name, there's another way of doing it that someone else could have come up with that would be just as good. You know, it's like there's. I think that every problem has multiple solutions and that uh, my goal is, my job is to come up with the one that seems to fit the brief and the occasion at that moment. But it's not necessarily the only way it could be. And I think, um, you know, there's a certain kind of either humility or insecurity that comes with that position, which means you have to discuss it in a different way with, with a room full of clients. And if I'm coming in with a simple solution, often I try to demystify the process. I don't make any claims about mystical properties that colors and shapes have. I'll really try to make the argument just in terms of, you know, what's likely to be the most enduring way to get to the essence of the problem and the solution. What's likely to be something that's sustainable and implementable and ultimately flexible. One thing that I think I didn't really sense at the beginning, certainly when I was in school and in my early years as a designer, when I think about the first time you and I talked and as you said you were still in school. When I was in that situation, I sort of thought my goal was to do a great design. And having done that great design, that great design would sort of be fixed in place and never changed. And I've become a real uh. I got really interested in watching how. I mean with a book design or a poster, there are iconic objects where they do lock in a moment in time and never change. But I think like with, you know, logos and brands and some of the other things we're talking about, they acquire meaning that accrues over time and that different people can contribute to. And you sort of want to create something that's open ended that, that enable that sort of contribution from different parties over time. That Actually help it continue to kind of be alive and thrive as a means of expression out in the world. And so, um, a lot of times, and I, I don't make that kind of speech in a room full of clients often, but I do say, you know, what I'm showing you is like not necessarily the last and only way it could be, but I sort of will do some things to help them. Imagine it could be this or it could be that. You might not want to do this right away. I mean, with the MasterCard logo, for instance, one of our goals that we had set for ourselves was could we figure out a way to stage it so that eventually the two circles could stand on their own and not have the word MasterCard with them. And they got there much faster than I thought they were going to get there. Like I thought it might take five years. And they were there in uh, a year and a half, two years basically. But when we launched it, it had the support of the full name and the customized typeface that supported and everything else. And it's still there, you know, and they still use that as part of their visual language. Right. And I think again with Saks Fifth Avenue, where I sort of reduced the brief to uh, this fairly simple to me at least, idea of reconciling opposite impulses that they had expressed to me. They wanted to feel timeless yet contemporary. They wanted to feel feminine and masculine. They wanted to feel like a North Star, to use your term in terms of fashion and retail, but also something that would change all the time. And so we took this classic logo that had been around at that point for 25 plus years and said, let's start with this, but then let's do these operations with that uh, logo where we break it into parts, zoom in on details, kind of reconfigure it and reconfigure it so it can be nearly an infinite number of different ways depending on how you reshuffle these. This kit of parts. It was one of those few cases where in a presentation it just, they understood it so immediately. And it was because it wasn't like I was showing them this genius thing that needed my special handling to achieve the operating instructions and the ingredients and, and the serving suggestions, if you will, were so clear and inviting and, and open ended that everyone kind of wanted to play along. And I remember being in our studio before we had shown to them and I sort of like saying, I can't believe it. I don't think there's a way to do this wrong. I spent so Much of my early career creating these. These perfect things where any one change would completely mess it up and have it fail. And that's why people like you and me end up being asked to write these really long guidelines documents of all the things you can't do. Never do this, never do that, never do this other thing. And then. But the world is designed to do all those things, either on purpose or unintentionally. And if you're sending out something that's so fragile, it's not going to make it, uh, three minutes out the door without getting compromised, I think at the end of the day, you're kind of failing. So one of the things that I really love to do and one of the cases that I'll make when I'm talking to clients is this isn't my design that I'm giving you, that you then have to execute according to the rules that I'm going to now dictate. But rather, these are a bunch of ingredients that you can use to express what you need to express today and, and what you need to express a week from now or a year from now or five years from now. And those may be different things, but we think within this DNA, we have the codes that will let you kind of shift it up and do it different ways as you go along.

Speaker A: Absolutely. That's just phenomenal. That pragmatic approach can probably help guide you through some of the. The egos that I would imagine that you deal with. To go into someone's living room and say, we're going to. We're going to redo everything here. And this is, you know, here's how we're going to do it. And this is what you can do, and this is what you can. I would imagine that that product has to be pretty rock solid.

Speaker B: Your metaphor right there was really useful to kind of comment on. You know, we do get invited into someone's house and we're asked to redecorate their living room, say. But I, you know, most of us, I mean, I've never kind of just been walking down the street, peaked in someone's picture window and thought, I need to go in there. And I've only done it really once in my whole life, actually, where I thought, I need to redecorate your living room. Stand back and let me do thing. You're always invited at the outset to do it. Someone brings you in because they perceive that you have some sort of specific expertise that can help them. And I think it's very easy to kind of like you mentioned the word ego. It's very easy to sort of like, lock in on that part of the. Of the process as a ironclad acknowledgment that you're the boss in this arena of design, aesthetics, things like that, and that you should just assume, or if not assume, demand that people just follow what your recommendations are, or else why would you have asked me instead so many times? It's just like anything else. They use their living room in a specific thing. Do they watch TV there? They gather on the fire. Is it just a romantic couple or is it a big boisterous family? And, uh, do they bring food in there? Do they have parties? You know, And I think once you start asking those questions, you are slowly taking on their authority, their expertise, their needs about what the thing is. Open up a magazine. You can tell there's a lot of people who, you know, the brief may be, come in my living room, redecorate it. And the goal is to get a photograph. So it's in the magazine that. So it's. So it's in a magazine, and you can, you know, I look at things and I think, I can't imagine people eating a bologna sandwich in this room. I can't imagine, um, someone coming in there and taking off their coat and hanging it up somewhere. You know, this thing seems to exist for one purpose, one purpose only. Be photographed and show up in the pages of Architectural Digest or wherever. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: For some people, that's what, you know, if you're really wealthy, you know, and you've. You've kind of decided that's your life's goal, to be photographed and show up in a magazine. You know, that's what your living room is for. It's not for living in. It's for being. Photographing. That's legitimate. I can sort of see. I mean. I mean. And there's probably a class of architects and interior designers whose, uh, one way or another, their clientele are all people who, whether they're going to come out and say at that, brazenly, that's what it is, too. But I think for the most part, you know, most of us. And that's not why, you know, I don't. I'm not good at that part. I'm good at kind of, uh, how big is your family? Do you need to eat on this couch? Do you want to have these things all face the. The fireplace? Or do you want to face the tv where people are going to hang up their coats? I find those questions really interesting. Partly because, you know, I'm a guest in someone else's house and I'm interested in how they live.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Such a good metaphor there. That was phenomenal.

Speaker B: Your metaphor, baby.

Speaker A: Oh, uh, it's perfect. I, uh, love it. Well, thank you for sharing that amazing metaphor with me. That was, uh, that was so good. And I might use that on my next pitch, uh, that I do for people here.

Speaker B: Go for it. Go for it.

Speaker A: Fun fact. I had a little deviation where I got solely into photography, but now I'm coming back into graphic design, and everyone's, like, kind of thoroughly confused. So I was like, you know what? Let me get Michael Bayreut in here, and we'll get a little nostalgic and take a trip down memory lane. So these questions actually were sent in from some of the students at Ramapo College of New Jersey, a, uh, design school that I went to. And I remember kind of feeling disconnected. And the whole purpose of this podcast was for me, honestly, at first, it was kind of selfish. I want to make sure that I'm being very honest here. It was selfish because I wanted to meet people like yourself and I wanted to just, you know, get in the New York design scene. And there is no way that at, uh, my little small college, similar to your college in Cincinnati, there, there was a little bit of a disconnect as the years have kind of ticked on by. I take a great pride in being able to facilitate these sort of relationships. So this is from my college in New Jersey, Ramapo College. We are officially on the map here with Sir Michael Beirut. So when prepping a design portfolio, what type of formats are most desirable? Digital print, personal website, a presence on sites like Dribbble or physical portfolio. Very common question I get here. What's your take on all that in this ever evolving landscape of design?

Speaker B: One of the tasks that I have at Pentagram is I am the editor of our monthly In House newsletter. And one of the things we have in the newsletter is, um, uh, kind of greeting any new employees that have joined in the past month. And so I'll always send them a note and say, because usually I work on other teams and I may not even know who they are. They may not have started yet. But it's like Natasha Jen or Abbott Miller or Paula Share has hired someone. I'll send them a note and I'll say, can you send me some links to your work and everything? And I have to admit, I always find that the most, you know, if someone has a personal website where they have a statement about who they are as a designer. A, you know, somewhere on the website is a way to click through to something that looks like a resume, I guess, but then it's just a showing of work organized in whatever way they think is characteristic and compelling. I think that sort of is the new portfolio portfolio in a way. My least favorite version of that digitally is Click here to download the PDF version of my portfolio.

Speaker A: Don't do that.

Speaker B: Um, you know, because then I'm downloading things and I'm like. Then months later I find this. Like, if I, if I ever needed to find that file, I'd never be able to find it. I'd have to just download it again or, or give up completely. And then I've got this downloaded file that usually I can't remember why I downloaded downloaded or what it is or anything else. And whereas a link is just like, so easy. Pentagram has a website. You have a website. You know, now any student graduating could have a website too. And we're all kind of competing on the same plane in a way. I don't think it's so much a demonstration of prowess in programming. It can be a fairly straightforward thing, but I just think it's a convenient way to kind of like, show work and, uh, give a sense of what someone's personality is like. I find it very effective.

Speaker A: Totally. I have a confession to make. I used to actually go and I wonder. I invited him on the podcast and I wonder if this is why. But I used to go. This is like years and years down the road now. But, uh, I used to go on Brick Cobb's website and I would. And I would like take. I would love, like the signage that he would make. I know that. Is he on your team still or.

Speaker B: Yeah, he still was. Yeah. Yep.

Speaker A: So this is my public apology to Brit Cobb. I used to go on his website when I was in school and I would take like all the little wayfinding things and I would kind of just content aware them out and then I would just type things out in Helvetica over them. And I always wonder if he found out. Brit, if you see this, let me know. But, uh, I used to like, go and recreate people's website. I would like download. I would like go into the HTML and take off their. Their stuff and then like, try and do my version of it. And I remember I did the same thing also too with when you guys did the Governor's Island. I would like content aware of that off and like, write my own things on there. So, uh, yeah, no, I mean the

Speaker B: fine tradition of writers, um, you know, there's, there's, there's many accounts, competing legendary accounts of writers who supposedly spend a whole summer kind of like typing out, transcribing a book like the Great Gatsby or something, just to get a sense of what it was like to be scalp Fitzgerald writing that book. Uh, yes. Um, it's, it's always, it's always different writers that are supposedly had done that and I'm not sure anyone has ever done that, but it's sort of the same thing.

Speaker A: I feel better that I got that, got that out there publicly. I was always kind of embarrassed. He just went to my website and was like, what the.

Speaker B: Good for you.

Speaker A: Okay. Uh, this is part of my Making Amends tour. Uh, my sponsor will be happy. Uh, what emerging skills should recent grads and students cultivate for now and for the future?

Speaker B: What I've noticed among my designers, including ones that are just entering the workforce, is that the kinds of skills they have will really vary quite a bit. The assumption is that everyone has basic design typography skills. But even like the platform that you're used to working in, whether it's traditional, you know, Adobe based layout programs or something like Figma can be radically different. And I have designers who will do these Figma based presentations that are really different in character from a designer that'll do one sort of using design software and then translating to a click through PDF. You know, there's just like a lot of different sort of things and I don't think a new standard. You know, as these new standards emerge, they sort of, uh, often at the same time turn a little bit into cliches that people kind of can smile to buy away. So for instance, I think animation is like really something that people increasingly just know how to do. And some people are better at it than other people or have more experience than other people, but it's as a way to kind of like do even design exploration. Using animation as a tool to bring that to life is like really a useful thing I found. And for me, I think I've always traditionally continue to look for designers who actually engage with the subject matter that they're working on. We sort of are genuinely curious about what the subject matter is as opposed to stand back and let me just apply typefaces, colors, software effects instead. Like, what is this thing? Who's the audience? What does this text mean? How can I make this come to life in a way that feels interesting and original? You know, that's always a great gift if someone can kind of bring that to it.

Speaker A: This is not one of the questions that's on there, but just a little quick follow up question. I know that you love working in black and white and uh, you know, if there's going to be an alternate color, it's most likely going to be red. Do you ever feel that, sorry, give away some of that, uh, it's on all your books. So that's, it's, uh, it's there. Do you ever feel sometimes when you're looking at people's work, like maybe people are pandering to you or do you look for something that's kind of different? Are you looking for somebody who has similar styles to you, or do you look at this and go like, they're kind of trying to do the pentagram thing. I want to see something completely different because, like, we already have that.

Speaker B: Oh, I, um, yeah, Rob, that's a good question. I think it probably is a question that anyone in my position could have an answer to. Not just a pentagram, but anywhere. But I think what I look for people, it's a little bit in between. I've looked at portfolios that I thought were fantastic and I would look at them and think, you know, I can really see what you're interested in. I can really see what you're good at. And, uh, you're not going to have that many opportunities on my team to kind of exercise, to play out these interests and to exercise these skills. And I could recommend them to all our Emily Oberman or Natasha Jen or Eddie Opara or Matt Willey or any of my partners. Right.

Speaker A: Um, um.

Speaker B: On the other hand, I, you know, someone who did exactly what I like. I don't see that much pandering, to tell you the truth. Uh, I think I'm pretty easy to pander to. But people don't seem to take the bait.

Speaker A: What are your thoughts about using AI generated images, videos and ideas? In other words, is it frowned upon or considered a useful research tool for designers? Michael, I want your honest answer here. What do you think?

Speaker B: I can't say that that's really taken off big time as a practice on my team at least, and I'm not even sure it has in our office that much. There's two aspects of it that I think are potentially kind of, um, interesting. One, as a way to explore things. It's just a tool that lets you kind of uncover things you wouldn't have uncovered otherwise. So that's sort of a cliched Answer. It's just a tool, you know, and sort of ignores what people find threatening and weird about it. One of the things that people find threatening about is that it's sort of, it's going to come for all our jobs and throw us all out of work. And I do think there's a part of, of creative activity that, um, you know, that in a way is maybe AI is best equipped to actually deal. You know, it's like there's, um, you know, there's coming up with a big idea about a, you know, a campaign to launch a product. Then there's the need to kind of tailor that campaign to all these different specific formats, you know, have it play out over time, kind of keep strict to the, to the parameters of what the campaign look and feel is, but be able to kind of change up the product, the view, the size, the aspect ratio, the. All that other stuff. And, you know, to the degree that that was a job for some person, um, to keep track of all that stuff and to generate all that material, I'm not sure that that's a job that any would want to have for a really long time. And what gets dismissed as background or boilerplate or baseline activity and, you know, that sort of, um, that makes the world go round and if it can be done well with the help of, you know, machine learning, um, I think it would free up people to do things that are more original and more creative in a way, you know. So to the degree I have an opinion about all this, that's about as far as my opinion has gotten at this point.

Speaker A: You've kind of touched on this a little bit. But when you and your colleagues are hiring, uh, junior designers, interns, uh, junior designer at Pentagram, I think, is a relative term. Uh, what kinds of skills, personalities and characteristics are you looking for? I think that's referring more to the interpersonal side of things, if you will.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I like people that seem genuinely curious about the world, curious about the work they're doing. Sometimes it helps if they have a lot of education and learning that they bring to the mix. And I'm kind of in awe of people like that because I remember my entry level, who I was in June 1980 when I started vignetting associates. And I was dumb. I didn't know anything. I hadn't, you know, I didn't have a passport. I had never been out of the country. I'd barely been anywhere. And I kind of just threw a series of lucky breaks, had landed this great job in this internationally renowned Design firm. And, you know, every day there'd be a reference I can remember so clearly that summer in 1980, where every day something would land on my desk where I could simultaneously. I was simultaneously aware of the fact that I was supposed to know what this was and that I didn't know what that was. And this was pre Internet, so it was, like, hard to figure out what anything was. I don't know. I don't know anyone knew anything back then, actually. You know, but, like, uh, you know, I remember, um, you know, you would know just a little bit, and then you'd have to kind of just figure out a way into letting your curiosity lead you into figuring out what is. I remember getting. I think the very first thing I did working for Vignelli was a, um, a price list for some products from the company Heller. And I knew that Massimo had done these plastic cups and plates for Heller. I, um, think this was a different range. That was glass bakeware that he and Leila Vignelli had also designed. But I remember. So, you know, if you did that today, you. You sort of, you know, Heller maintains, um, an Instagram feed, and, like, you can go online and kind of learn what the whole product ranges with the history of the company was. I just knew it as a name, and I just had, like, the flimsiest amount of information. And you could say, what the hell did I have to know to lay out a price list? You know, that was more about just making sure that everything lined up. And there was, you know, you know, coherence in terms of the way the typography was being deployed, which was hard enough for me in those days as well, too. But I think, um, uh, you know, everything was sort of like, you know, I just felt like I was, like, learning a new language. And you almost had to just learn it from cues you were getting from the people speaking around you. You had no dictionary and no duolingo or babble to kind of, like, do in your spare time. You just sort of had to figure it out based on what people were mumbling in conversations around the room. And, um. And so I look for people, I think, who have that capacity for curiosity and for kind of not necessarily knowing everything, but just really interested in learning about things and being excited about what they're learning about, too. I'm lucky that I think most of the clients and projects that I have are interesting in one way or another. And, uh, not everything is interesting to everyone. But I've always said the more things you can be interested in the better designer you'll be. And so I look for people that seem to have that as their ambition.

Speaker A: That's awesome. I love that Sean Adams has been on the show, I guess twice now. He told me about this drawing inspiration from all these different places. And we had this very heady all over the place talk about, like, I talked about my love of Three's company and about how that it weirdly informs my design work. And he told me to ask you about this and we can leave this in or we could leave this out. It's up to you. He told me that you love Showgirls. How you think that, like in a non ironic way that you think that Showgirls was. Was great. You could talk about that if you want to. But I'm just curious, what are some of the sort of outside the box things that we would never. You're kind of like a wild car. I never know what's going on in there. You could talk about Showgirls if you want to, but also, what are some of the other places where you find inspiration that people may not think? Michael Bay rude?

Speaker B: That's a good question. I, you know, I think Sean may be projecting a little bit. Um, I mean, I, I actually, I like Showgirls a little bit, um, more

Speaker A: years ago now though, so.

Speaker B: Yeah, years ago. Um, uh, are you talking about the movie Showgirls? You know, written by Joe Esterhaus, who was actually a Cleveland guy like me, and so I sort of might have identified with his ambitions for that movie. Just as a fellow Clevelander, I love junkie movies. Um, movies that are considered, um, that aren't considered like, important, but actually just kind of resonate with people despite their importance. I mean, uh, for my birthday, my team arranged to get a special screening of what they promised would be my favorite movie. And they called up my son and asked him what my favorite movie was. And he said it was American Graffiti and a movie that I think a lot of my younger designers had never seen. And you may. People may know it as the movie that George Lucas made just before Star Wars.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: It's basically just about his teenage years growing up in Modesto, California and cruising in cars all night long with rock and roll on the radio. It's this great kind of coming of age movie. It again, I think, is just beautiful and profound and really great in a way, in many ways a more a better movie than any, uh, that he would be destined to make up to, including Raiders and Star wars and all those other ones. And so I can really kind of, like go deep in pop culture. I think that what we do as designers is pop culture and has to connect with people on those terms. I think every once in a while, you get a chance to do something that feels like high art or that's connecting with the world of culture on a higher level. But I think those distinctions between high and low, we're getting obliterated really fast all the time. Everyone lives in the same world. And I think your ability to kind of appreciate, you know, what you can learn from every aspect of that world is what makes a good designer.

Speaker A: I love it. Yeah, I did a, uh, a shoot recently for photography. It was one of the most. One of my favorite shoots I've ever done to recreate with sort of our own spin on it. But, uh, Breakfast at Tiffany's. And I'd always loved, you know, that, like, we're talking about that nostalgic New York and these lofty notions about that area of New York and that time. And it really started off as being something that, like, oh, this will be a little bit, like, campy and fun, and, you know, we'll just go a lot, uh, we'll get the croissant. And it ended up being this very beautiful, meaningful work. And in many ways, some of the best work that I think that I've been able to create. And it was kind of based on this seemingly tacky movie. And then after making that, I went back and watched that movie again. I was like, this is actually a pretty profound. This movie. This is, dare I say, art. This is, you know, at the very least, it's Audrey Hepburn. So, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it has. It has some parts that people I think wouldn't, you know, that are regrettable today. Yeah. But it also has an amazing score. It. But more than anything else, it captures an idea about a moment in time. Um, that it's always. I mean, one thing that I'm always fascinated by is I'll hear a song, you know, like, I'll. You know, I'll hear, like, I'll be listening. You could listen to jazz and hear some Charlie Parker song that it recorded in the 40s. And you'll sort of think, these are a bunch of guys who sat down the studio and said, okay, let's take that one more time. One, two, three. And they start playing. And the idea that I'm listening to it, you know, streaming on a audio platform, walking around in the science fiction year of 2024, and the power of a series of choices that those musicians made in the Moment, just once is still resonating decades and decades and decades and decades later. And how trivial that was at the moment that they were doing it. You know, they didn't sit down and say, let's record Chasing the Bird. And watch out, guys, we're doing this for the ages. People a century from now will be listening to this. So they just, you know, they just said, what key is it? What are the changes?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Who's going to take the lead?

Speaker A: They probably argued the whole time.

Speaker B: Solos in this order. Wait, you'll take it again. You blew the, you know, the drum pickup and, you know, then finally they got it down, put it out there, and then it's. You don't know what's going to be consequential as you're working on these things. And it can be the most important thing in the world or can be something that you just sort of, like, did impulsively in the moment, and you just happen to land something that's going to endure. So that's what makes making art exciting, design exciting. That's what makes creating exciting.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And that's kind of the conclusion that I had come to because I remember I met with a client, my dear friend Faith Consiglio. We did the shoot. It was great. The collaboration was awesome. And then I'm in Central Park. I'm listening to Henry Mancini, by the way, was the, uh, score there? Uh, and I'm listening to, like, Moon M River or whatever in Central park, and I'm thinking, like, this feels so stupid, but you identify with that person in the movie. And here I am. What's the difference between me and Audrey Hepburn standing on a street corner, stretching the notions of, like, who you could be? It's perfect.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Michael Beirut, I know you're tight on time here. Uh, where can people find you? What's the best place to get in touch? And I'll let you get on with your day. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's been so fun catching up.

Speaker B: Um, you're welcome. I'm@pentagram.com you see work that I do every once in a while there, and we've got an active social stream. I also have my own Instagram and threads. I got off of, uh, what used to be called Twitter and kind of converted to threads. And I got fairly. Yeah, I've got a fairly. Um, I'm having fun there. It's, uh, M Beirut. B I E R M B I E R U T at M B I and same thing at Instagram. And you can follow me there as well. And, uh, all my partners are good follows, too. And there's just so much to see out there. I don't know how people navigate it, but I welcome anyone's attention.

Speaker A: Yes. Michael, thank you so much.

Speaker B: Thank you.