Walking into the Whitaker Center on a late Thursday afternoon in mid- March, one wouldn’t expect a reception resembling an indie rock concert. A group of young hipsters were tying down a snazzy welcome sign. Tables were being adorned with black and purple plastic tablecloths. And a few other volunteers were setting up a merch table. Background music was an eclectic mix of Damien Rice and what I thought was STRFKR. A mic check in Michelin Auditorium was in order as the “rock star” strolled into the foyer.
Jessica Hische, however, isn’t a maestro of music. She’s a designer—a letterer, an illustrator and a cyberspace all-star boasting 60,000 Twitter fans, originally hailing from near Hazleton and now a resident of the bulging and artisan-saturated city of San Francisco. Her celeb status in the design world is due to sleepless nights, landing a gig with Louise Fili, a world-renowned graphic designer and probably the perfect mentor for Hische, and a keen sense of how to attract Internet followers through side projects like “Daily Drop Cap,” “Mom This Is How Twitter Works”and“Should I Work for Free (flowchart)?” All combine her love of witty copy, lettering and website design.
Society of Design (SOD), a charitable non- profit based in the Harrisburg area, is credited with nabbing Hische for the evening. SOD was formed to expand discourse, pedagogy and overall community among design professionals and students in central Pennsylvania. They accomplish this primarily through their annual speaker series, bringing in world-caliber creatives like Kit Hinrichs, Stefan Sagmeister and Jim Sherraden. When the line-up is announced, it spreads a fever pitch among local artists.
A lot of SOD’s administrative execution is still managed by the founders, Craig Welsh and Curt Rohrer, who thought they could provide a more approachable platform than the local chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).
Rohrer recognized Welsh’s vast network and thought they could bring in world-class speakers to central Pennsylvania while also encouraging public spirit. The proceeds they receive from memberships and events are allocated to humanity organizations.
“This year, we’ve given back $10,000 to charities. Each speaker gives to their charity of choice, and we give some back in addition to their contribution,” said Rohrer. Alder Health Services and Bethesda Mission have been two local beneficiaries.
While Welsh’s community is extensive and SOD’s mission is honest, it is not without ambitious, creative ideas to convince overextended artists to present in Harrisburg.
Rohrer believes that what put SOD on the map was the inception of cleverly designed invitations, the first one sent to Bill Strickland, who wrote the book “Making the Impossible, Possible.”
The idea, conceived by Welsh, was to carefully print this message, one letter at a time across all 244 pages of the aforementioned book in order to convince Strickland to speak at SOD.
“We never got him but the project, ‘Dear Bill,’ [ironically] won all kinds of awards,” said Rohrer, including Best of Show at One Show Design, one of the most prestigious competitions in the country.
For Hische, they had to persuade 35 people to change their license plates to create a slick invitation, which received some airplay in design world. They even set up a side site under the URL, invitinghische.com. Take a look sometime.
Rohrer did his own inviting in asking me to interview Hische, Tyler School of Art graduate. It didn’t take much persuading. After her mic check, we sat down in Michelin Auditorium, where later that evening she spoke humorously and transparently to a sold-out crowd about a mélange of things under the umbrella “procrastiworking”: her career arc, cats, life-advice and dorky lettering processes.
TB: What Is your Dream collaboratIon?
JH: I think a dream collaboration is something that you sort of don’t know until it happens. Even with the Wes Anderson job [for Moonrise Kingdom], I could never imagine that being on my horizon. I don’t have low expectations, but I feel I have no expectations. If I could get to the point where every job felt like a partnership, that would be a dream. Because, right now, I still have a lot of freelance/client jobs.
TB: For the lay audience out there, What Is It that you do?
JH: I am a letterer by trade. It’s kind of a weird subset between illustration and graphic design. So, a lot of people who don’t know graphic design know what calligraphy is. But calligraphy is different than lettering. Calligraphy is writing; lettering is drawing. The main difference for that is calligraphers practice a couple of methods of creation. They are always analog, never digital. And they practice over and over again in the same style, so that they can replicate it quickly and perfectly.
Letterers work in a ton of styles and what unites their work is the medium in which you are working with. They are calligraphers without constraints, and all of our work is considered one-offs.
TB: Maureen Dowd had a great column in The New York Times decryIng the printed word’s priorities. she said, “It’s not pixel vs. print. It’s not how you’re readIng. It’s what you’re reading.” Designers have Found a happy existence in both Worlds.
JH: People are so concerned about adapting text to people’s attention spans. They are letting terrible stories be terrible stories. They are sound byte-y and at the right paragraph length that supposedly people can absorb it. That’s super lazy journalism to assume to write in snippets. Writing is a tough industry to have success in because it’s very competitive. Design is competitive, but there’s so many subsets of it. And so much unsexy work to be done—there’s plenty of room for everyone to make a living in it.
Where I think with writing it can be really tough because a lot of the unsexy works ends up going to complete amateurs that don’t want to be professional writers: “I know how to write and I can do this for free” kind-of-attitude.
TB: Have you ever been to Harrisburg Before?
JH: Yes, my husband is really pissed about me traveling so much, but when SOD put together the invitation, it was hard to refuse. The biggest thing is when you talk to smaller markets, it’s hard to know how it will turn out. I’ve definitely traveled great distances to talk to 30 people.
TB: What is the farthest distance you’ve traveled to talk to 30 people?
JH: I spoke at a conference in Honolulu that had a good turnout, but they also organized an AIGA event while I was there and that had a pretty low turnout. I don’t think it was 30 people but it definitely wasn’t more than 50.
TB: Have you been noticing a trend in renaissance of design in smaller cities and will it contInue to evolve?
JH: I think the biggest trend is a lot of people are doing more self-authored work. It makes special sense to do it in small cities. As an illustrator or a letterer, you can live anywhere, because your clients live in the cities. As a graphic designer, it’s having those face-to-face interactions with people, about having clients around you, so it gets tough in smaller cities because the market isn’t as big. You just really have to be a rock star in that town to have intense success or you have to be willing to go to New York or Philly now and again. At the same time, in the past five to seven years, there’s been this designer-as-author super trend, and the smaller markets stand to benefit the most. You can be anywhere and you have way cheaper rents.
TB: Live Journal or Xanga?
JH: Neither actually. I was an MIRC person. My whole town, Hazelton, was on MIRC. We had a chat room called the Dungeon. Basically all the popular kids used it to torment all the other kids. I was never really cool enough to be the popular kid, but I got invited occasionally to their things.
TB: What’s one rite of design passage you thInk other budding creatives should go through?
JH: I think the “rite of passage” question can be a tricky one—there are plenty of people out there that struggled to get to where they are in their career and think that young folks should go through the same struggles along the way before they can have success. This is essentially a less aggressive form of hazing. I don’t really think you need to be dragged through the mud for a few years before you should be “allowed” to be successful, but I do think that getting a little muddy helps you keep perspective when you do become successful. If you have a good amount of self-awareness, have a good attitude and are nice/helpful to those still struggling to have success, going through any rite of passage is unnecessary.
Society of Design is slowly beginning to release its 2013-14 series of speakers. So, if you’re a local creative or just curious about the world, these events are must see non-TV to watch and digest.
For more information visit societyofdesign.org.
