Above: Cover of Wilshire x 8 by Hilary Greenbaum.

“Watch List” is a series of interviews with interesting and engaging young designers I know. Hilary Greenbaum is the first of these interviews, and I can’t think of a better person to kick off the series. Her work is consistently challenging and conceptual, but always human. The three projects we’ve chosen to discuss are visible here. To see more of Hilary’s work, visit greenary.net.

Rob Giampietro: When do you first remember being interested in design?

Hilary Greenbaum: A long time ago, actually. A friend and I designed a magazine together in fourth grade. Just a single edition. It was just for ourselves I guess. At the time I did everything. I drew, I painted, I think I wanted to explore everything that was visual.

RG: Fair enough. What was an early piece of design that was formative for you?

HG: Some of the earliest pieces of design that were formative I think would have to be some of the most basic type exercises I started doing in college. Very simple, very Bauhaus, very stripped-down. I can’t think of any one piece, but Carnegie Mellon, where I was going to school at the time, had a large collection of Swiss posters. I found them very inspirational. I’m not sure which era their collection spans, but I remember it being fairly comprehensive. At the same time, I was also looking at a lot of artwork and painting which was much more raw.

Above: Interior spreads from Wilshire x 8 by Hilary Greenbaum.

RG: It sounds like that was influential, too. Your graduate thesis project at CalArts was called Wilshire x 8. I was very impressed with it when I first saw it. Certainly this is a mapping project, but I also see it as an acting project. Do you have any thoughts on this?

HG: Well, there’s certainly different roles we play as designers, but I think the ‘role-playing’ aspect of the project wasn’t necessarily about acting, but more about trying to understand how other people use and understand design. Wilshire is the constant, so that you, as a reader of the maps, can understand not just the street itself, but how different people could approach mapping it. It is a study of both people and place.

RG: Sometimes I think fonts are involved in this understanding as well in your project. How did you arrive at the type you chose?

HG: There’s a main typeface for all of the general content of the book, which I chose partly because of its boldness, its ability to break up the book, as well as its deco-inspired flavor, something I feel Wilshire has a lot of. Then there’s each individual map, which took on its own character. Those typefaces were chosen only with that map in mind, so when compiled, the shifts in the book become more obvious. There were some type choices where I was interested in making the text feel more automatic, as if it had been generated by the street, while there were other choices that focused more on nostalgia, for example, embodying a more personal sentiment. But it’s tricky with typefaces, because it can get really heavy-handed. Usually finding a typeface is a really intuitive process for me. I have to look at a lot of things. Finding a typeface that feels “nostalgic”, for example, without feeling insincere means digging through a whole lot of crap, and then possibly having to modify it anyway.

RG: I know the Myers-Briggs test was important to your development of this project. How did it come up, and why did you decide to follow the lead?

HG: Well, the project itself originated from an interest in showing how no piece of design is completely objective, even information design. More specifically, I was looking at how maps are merely representations of space, and how depending on who’s doing the looking, the space is inherently different. So, I thought of how different people could interpret the same space in various ways, and how people are inherently different; enter Myers-Briggs. I’ve always been inspired by people/sociology/psychology in my work, but I think this framework was used both to explore others as well as find common denominators in myself, like “What are the things that keep coming back? What are the themes that I keep focusing on? Is there a way that I’m most comfortable doing something? How can doing it the opposite way help me push out of that comfort zone?”

RG: One or two more questions about your thesis: Several rolls of tape appear on the cover of the book; obviously there’s a simple metaphor there with the idea of drawing the map of a road and variations on a theme. What makes it a compelling object for you?

HG: Well, it’s about the tape, but also the location of the tape. The background of the cover, the weird illuminated grid pattern, is the refracting film I put up on the window behind my studio desk for privacy. The tape is stuck to the outside of that window, and you’re looking through the window at me and my workspace, but refracted. I liked the tape because it felt dynamic, like they were bodies in motion, on a track, traveling. The length of each roll of tape correlates to how many pages in the atlas that map assumed, so it’s kind of a table of contents.

RG: What did you take away from doing an MFA thesis, beyond the work itself?

HG: Part of the reason I wanted to go back to grad school was to be able to teach design as well as practice it, so the process of creating your own project was great. On top of being able to assess something about design, and then use design to talk about it.

RG: Do you have an assignment you’d really like to give someday?

HG: I don’t have one in mind right now, but I think an ideal project would allow the room for different outcomes, like my thesis project did. So that each student could interpret and excel in their own right.

Above: Cover and interior spreads from Patterns of Preservation by Hilary Greenbaum.

RG: Ok, let’s talk about Patterns of Preservation. One of the major things you were dealing with in this project is the presentation of books. Do you have thoughts on this?

HG: Books are objects, and for this project, I was interested in how the appearance of the cover interacts with its contents, if the object itself felt like a cohesive whole or not. I think the presentation of the book goes far beyond the image of its cover.

RG: So you were looking at the covers, and the surprise is that even without them, the insides of the books still manage to communicate something about the content, even if it’s less directly communicated than on the cover?

HG: Yes, I think both should relate to each other, as well as the sentiment of the writing.

Above: Elsa Brooks poster by Hilary Greenbaum.

RG: The relationship of parts to the whole is also visible in your project “Elsa Brooks.” How did you feel about generating a history for a woman who is herself a kind of design historian? What drew you to her, specifically, as a character idea?

HG: She was someone who I would be interested in hearing speak at a design conference, which was the basis for the assignment. I was drawn to her as a character because she was trying to counteract the insular nature of graphic design. To bring more voices to the table.

RG: Again in this project, as in your thesis project, you are creating kind of a character and almost functioning like an actor here. I see this in your project in the way you let each of the participants use a grid to design their own lettering for Elsa.

HG: I set up a framework which allowed for multiple voices to coexist in the same setting to be sympathetic to the character that I had created.

RG: The design reminds me of the refracted image of yourself you put on Wilshire x 8: one self, many ways.

HG: It’s funny, during the process of doing the Wilshire x 8 project, I of course had to take the Myers Briggs test myself. In one of the descriptions of my own personality type it said my type are “systems builders, but based on human beings and human values, rather than information and technology.” I felt like that summed it up pretty well.

RG: The idea of authorship becomes a very sticky thing when you’re dealing with a piece as collaborative and participatory as this one. Do you view yourself as the “author” of this piece, or merely as the “author” of the system used for making it?

HG: I view myself as the designer of this piece. I initialized the concept and then facilitated it’s production. I don’t think most pieces of design today can have strict authorship. We don’t even write our own software. Much of it depends on the origination of the content, whether the idea for the project was initiated by the designer or by someone else. Mostly, it’s by someone else, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a collaboration. Different types of designers just operate in different ways, and some do more self-initiated work, while some do less. I think there’s a difference between self-initiated work and client-initiated work, but of course the starting points for both can have a lot of crossover. Obviously there are many shades of grey, but I don’t think “Self-initiated” has to strictly mean “for me.”

Above: Times DB typeface by Hilary Greenbaum.

RG: The final project you’ve chosen to share is a type design project called “Times DB.” What draws you to Times New Roman?

HG: I think until recently, it was largely ignored by many designers as being too much of a default, and then caught the attention of certain designers just for that reason. I thought it would be amusing to make a display version of it for the same reason. It just seems a little ridiculous.

RG: Sure, “default decadence.”

HG: Exactly!

RG: How very ironic of you, Hilary.

HG: I do my best…

RG: Do you see yourself doing more typefaces in the future?

HG: I think I’d like to continue creating typefaces. I really enjoyed starting these projects this year, but I think it would take me a long time to get to the point where I could actually release a face. I like the idea of designers creating their own tools, though: it’s customization at a higher level.

RG: What’s next?

HG: Well, I just got to New York a week ago, so I’m seeing what’s going on here. It’s a very inspiring place. My favorite season is autumn, and I’ve been on the west coast for a while now, and missed out…I wanted to come back to catch this year’s show. I’m coming from LA, so just riding the subway is fun for me. Being in the throng is really thrilling.