Design director for President Obama’s 2008 election campaign, Scott Thomas is speaking at Northwestern on Tuesday at the invitation of the Segal Design Institute. North by Northwestern gave him a call to talk about the definition of art, designing for the iPad and whether he would design for an Obama reelection campaign.
I read that your nickname, SimpleScott, harkens back to your college days and a fascination with Zen. Would you say your designs are simple?
I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of making things simpler, easier to use — just better overall. I’ve realized recently is that ultimate simplicity can never really happen. Only in nature can it occur. So in the creation process it’s kind of a challenge for me. I don’t necessarily think my designs are simple. It’s what I reach for.
How did the push toward a simple user experience conflict with adding design elements to set a tone for the Obama campaign?
There was a conversation John [Slabyk, co-Design/Creative Director] and I had about making things like a passport, where just due to the amount of layers and intricacy of it, you tell the original from a knockoff. We thought if we could achieve that we could maintain an authoritative voice as well. You want to be approachable but you want to be the authority on certain things.
Are there any artists or photographers you admire who come close to capturing that ultimate simplicity?
I don’t know if “artists” is the right term, but designers are usually the people who I’m looking toward. I think there’s a gigantic distinction between the design world and the art world.
I think Mies van der Rohe’s whole philosophy of less is more and saying that it was perfectly fine just to show the steel structure has been a huge influence on me. Frank Lloyd Wright has also been a huge influence on me. Wright I think looks to nature more than anybody else. That was his religion, that what’s his sort of soul was.
What is the difference you described between art and design?
Art, in society, is simply a free spot in society to do whatever the hell you want to do. The second that an artist takes his illustration and applies it as a way to communicate an issue, a theory, an idea or a concept is the moment he’s taken his art form and turned it into design. Art, on the other hand, is a moment in which you have no desire to communicate to anyone in the world. It’s when you pick up a brush or you draw something because your hand has connected with something inside of you, something spiritual. I think the term is constantly misused and misapplied.
The distinction between artists and designers seems like something you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. Why is it important to you?
Way too often, as designers, we hear clients and people who misapply what we do as a career. They think that we are stylists.
Sure, we can make things look appealing, but at the end of the day what we’re really doing is using strategic thought processes to communicate very, very directly with other people, and that’s what designers do really well. And that’s far different from a stylist.
Then if a designer’s not looking at market research or analytics, then they’re not doing as good of a job as they should?
I would agree with that.
What was it like porting your book Designing Obama onto the iPad?
It was interesting. There was some guy that wrote a comment in iTunes that was basically like, “you know, this is just a direct correlation of the book, this is not what an e-book is about.”
I kind of wish iTunes would allow me to respond, being the author of that app, because I disagree with that. All I want is to be able to read the book, and to zoom into pictures and I don’t want Flash, and I don’t want glitzy video. I just want information, and I wish more books would do that.
Were the president to run again in 2012, would you want to design for the reelection campaign?
No.
No?
It was a full-time, beyond full-time, life-changing, life-altering, stressful situation. I have absolutely no desire to do a lot of political work. My desire was in changing the direction of the country.
I don’t think I’d be working with the same like-minded individuals that I was in 2008. I think it’s going to be a different campaign and I think it’s going to be a different election. I would be more than happy to give them my ideas, but I don’t think I would be able to execute with the same heart and the same amount of passion as I did in 2008.
So what’s next?
I want to remain thinking about making experiences simpler, being incredibly honest about the kind of work that I’m doing, do work that’s for good agendas and enrich peoples’ lives.
Scott Thomas will speak Tuesday in Tech, LR2 from 4-5 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Segal Design Institute.