A shout out to Em Dash

After interviewing a number of design firms to find just the right team to help us pull together elements to express everything from our logo to our swag to our mission to our excitement at building LaunchPad Coworking, we had the great fortune to connect with Erin Mayes of Em Dash LLC. I caught up with Erin to ask her about the curious world of design.

Before she answered my set of specific questions, Erin offered a little bit of preface to help me understand why it’s tricky trying to capture in words what happens in the world of design.

Erin’s Preface

Whoever said “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” was dead on, and that totally applies to talking about design and art. You can’t really ever TALK about things that happen visually. You can only talk AROUND them. In metaphors. Hence the quote. There’s not a verbal language for what you see. Or for the emotional response that goes directly to your brain from something you just saw.

Take the for-instance of the McDonald’s logo. You see it, but you don’t read it. It doesn’t tell you “M.” Yet it signifies all kinds of associations for the person looking at it. If you’re 2 years old and can’t read, it’s the symbol that THAT’s the place you go for treats — sugar-filled yummy lunch, a Playscape and a toy. If you’re me, it’s the symbol of everything that’s wrong with American corporations, the American workforce, yet my stomach is making that “Put a quarter pounder here NOW” feeling that just makes me more conflicted. See what I mean?

So as a designer, you’re dealing with a whole lot of minutiae of perception. And all that minutiae interacts too closely to change the overall perception that there’s no way to make standards — no way to quantify it. Like — you can’t really say blue is a calming color. Because if blue is combined with the big fuzzy monster that is slapping you in the face, the experience is not calming. That’s a pretty bad analogy, but when you start to deal in things like letterforms (which most people don’t think that they notice), that create quick associations in your head subconsciously to you feel one way versus another way — like letterforms that carry a particular cultural baggage in a particular time span (like Papyrus, which is used as the font for every yoga studio and DIY hippie-venture in the last 5 years) — it becomes even harder to quantify how design happens. The only way I can really quantify any success is if the design works. Did people pick up the magazine or product on the shelf? Did they have some sort of emotional connection and read it? Did they want to save it and not throw it away? Was the consumer’s first reaction “Oh cool!”. That’s they only way to really quantify design. And because there are so many factors that make good design, it should not be left to amateurs. HA!

The Interview

Spike Gillespie: Tell me about your business.
Erin Mayes: I started Em Dash LLC a couple of years ago. My recent co-worker is Kate Iltis. We work together very well because we have such a similar view of design — make similar choices, like similar things, have similar backgrounds. Yet, when I’m dumb, she’s smart. And when she’s dumb, I’m smart. It’s a good relationship. Simon Renwick is our designer. His background is in fine art - painting - but he’s spent his career in construction as a contractor. He was looking for a career change, so we did a trial internship to see if he liked it and if he had any potential. Funny thing — his background in construction makes him really good at building complicated designs like magazines, or identity systems.

Spike: What will you be doing for LaunchPad Coworking?
Erin: We’ll be in charge of the space’s graphic system. Their identity system. That means that we are refining the logo that they made at the beginning so it addresses the totality of the space and its personality. The graphic system will work with the architecture to create a really interesting and comfortable space for great ideas to be born.

Spike: What the heck is a graphic system?
Erin: The graphic system for a space is really a big problem to solve. It’s not just coming up with a logo that looks good on a business card. All the bits that come out of or are housed in LaunchPad Coworking need to have a consistent graphic voice, and a consistent personality and hopefully some playfulness. Since it’s not just a business, it’s a cafe, and sort of a social working network, all the different pieces have to play well together, yet be fun and individual on their own. We can’t just slap a logo on cups, on the wall, on the door, and on t-shirts and be done. That’s a missed opportunity where we should be creating an experience.

Spike: How did you get into design?
Erin: My background is in magazine design. I started out as a photojournalism major at UT and took the only design class offered. I really liked it, and started doing it on the side in school to make money. Back then, it was still mostly a paste-up based field, but the Mac had arrived a few years before that class and people were starting to figure out how to use it. I got my first job in design specifically because I knew how to operate a Mac, not for any design skills — I hadn’t even been in that class yet.

I went to Dallas after graduating to work at the Dallas Observer, then off to NYC where I freelanced in the Bloomingdale’s Special Projects department doing packaging and poster, the Village Voice, and briefly at Entertainment Weekly. Then I landed a full-time job at a weekly TV magazine called Total TV and a monthly called the Cable Guide. I left there for Premiere magazine, then Men’s Journal, then to work on redesigning consumer and trade magazines. That firm went through several transitions. At that point, I’d had enough of NY and started thinking about somewhere else to live. That’s when the job at Pentagram in Austin came up, and I moved back to Austin in July 2001. I worked with DJ Stout there and started designing books for the first time, more identity, and plenty of magazines.

Spike: What’s your process?
Erin: I’m always stumped at the beginning of a project. Once I do a lot of research and clean up the office, then I just start putting down things on paper — sketching, playing, whatever. Some dumb thing I do always gets the idea ball rolling if I do enough of it. Then you just have to put in the work (play, actually) and see what works, and what doesn’t. The answers always emerge in that process.