I’ve been a fan of Alex Charchar’s work for a long time. He is a designer whose essays on Retinart have always inspired me a great deal. Yet none of his previous work could have prepared me for his essay The Colors of Grief, which was published in Issue #2 of The Manual earlier this year.
In this gut-wrenching piece of work Alex describes, in honest and heartbreaking detail, the ongoing healing process he and his wife are going through after their daughter passed away less than 12 hours after her birth. He explains the role that design and creative work are playing to slowly bring color back into their lives, and in doing so, he teaches us about the power of Design as a force for good in the world. It is, simply put, one of the most impactful essays I have ever read.
A while later I quoted a paragraph from The Colors of Grief in an article for Smashing Magazine entitled Designer Myopia:
I now know that it is through love and passion and happiness that anything of worth is brought into being. A fulfilled and accomplished life of good relationships and craftsmanship is how I will earn my keep.
Alex contacted me after reading the article, and thus began an ongoing email conversation that I have enjoyed immensely. Such is the way of the Internet — random connections can turn into lasting friendships if we just pay attention. But that’s a post for a different day.
I asked Alex if he’d be interested in answering some questions about his work and his writing process, and he generously agreed. What follows is more of a conversation than an interview as we discuss his thoughts on design, typography, corporate politics, and the process of writing his essay for The Manual. I hope you enjoy it.
What is your current role — how do you spend your days?
I’m a senior graphic designer at an in-house studio within a university, doing a lot of promotional materials for both internal and external audiences. For the last five years my focus has mostly been print based, but as the uni is currently looking at how we’re going to deliver content to students via smart phones and tablets, there’s been a lot more exploration, experimentation and research being done in terms of what’s worth pursuing. Luckily some people have realised that design will play quite a role in it all, so I’ve been in an increasing number of conversations and projects because of it.
It’s a good place to work and I work with great people, but there are often times when the usual drudge of being part of an in-house comes to the surface, mostly in the form of politics, overhead and repetitive basket-weaving kind of work in which we have to stick very tightly to established designs. It’s amazing how much gets in the way of actually being able to do the work.
Having worked at a university for a while as well, I’m all too aware of some of these challenges. Have you found ways to overcome some of the significant political obstacles you encounter in your day-to-day work? Have you been able to use design to solve some of the issues?
Ah! We share a pain and so I’d imagine we probably shared a similar approach to dealing with it! I first tried to keep up, which failed miserably. I just want to get to my work and not learn another half dozen acronyms and keep up with who is in which department this week, and what project is being explored by what committee who reports to which managerial group. Just too messy for me. So now I listen when it directly influences our group or work, play the game a little when it’s fun (and can get me onto good projects), and ignore everything else I can.
You have a strong interest in typography as well. Has this always been the case, or is it a recent passion? What draws you to typography?
It’s been something I’ve loved almost since the beginning. When I first began playing around with graphic design, I hated having to spend so much time sourcing good photos to play with (this was mostly for graphic art, not graphic design, but that’s where I started), and so I tried to focus on making type work well. It was more convenience than anything else ““ when you use stock photography or illustration the design often suffers, but there’s nothing that suffers when you use a classic typeface. Nothing is lost by it having been used a million times before. This introduced new challenges ““ establishing how to communicate emotion and generate interest using only type? Fun!
I had always respected typography a great deal ““ Bringhurst’s classic has been used more than any other book and was one of the first I ever purchased and poured myself into. But when I started to look at design history and stumbled over European modernism I was hooked. A quick flirt with Tschichold turned into a passion that I still have today. It helps that using a good typeface can feel like cheating ““ so much of the work has already been done by the type designer. The role of graphic designer is often to shut up and get out of the way so the typeface can shine.
I’d love to know a bit more detail around The Colors of Grief — the writing process, the editing, and as much as you’re comfortable sharing about all the emotions that went along with that.
It was rough and moved very slowly.
At first I knew I had to write just to move some emotions and ideas around. I came to realise that the only chance I had of being able to move in any direction was if I explored what was going on internally by stringing together some words and hoping some light would shine through. It ended up being quite an emotional purge as I wished to pour as much of myself onto the page as possible.
On occasion I found myself stuck in every sense of the word. I couldn’t move, nor think outside of a restrained sentence, staring painfully at the cursor, knowing what I had to tap out, what had to be said. It was important to me to be completely honest. I felt to hide any part of what I was going through, to pretend I wasn’t as hurt as I was (and continue to be) would be a small crime against what I was feeling and against anyone who might end up reading the story of my daughter. I would often use the pain as a guide, knowing that the more an idea mentioned would hurt, the more important it was for me to show it to people.
In writing this essay I was asking people to come along a very personal journey with me, and to then hide things from them felt horribly dishonest ““ if they were willing to have me guide them through this painful story, they deserved everything I could give.
It sounds like even early on, you had a sense that sharing your story will somehow become part of the healing process. Is that an accurate assumption? Did you spend a lot of time wondering how people will react, and did it influence your process in any way?
Yeah, that’s spot on. As alluded to above, I’m increasingly feeling that for anything creative to be memorable it needs to be brutally honest ““ and I wanted this story to be memorable for both those who read it and myself. I wanted to know that I did the best I possibly could to heal what had been broken, no matter how small a step it might have been. I freaked out quite a bit about how people would react. There were a few moments where I thought it was getting too heavy and people might feel that I was exploiting their emotions and the story of my daughter for the sake of an article. Carolyn (my editor) talked me off that ledge a couple of times, normally saying something along the lines of “the people who would think that way aren’t the people you’re writing for.” In the end I think we cut out anything that got in the way of the raw elements of the story.
So how did it get from words on a page to being an essay in The Manual?
In the end I had a ‘draft’ that was several thousand words long and so I started the process of editing, occasionally complaining on Twitter, and I think I posted a photo or two of our kitchen table covered in print outs with red scribbles all over them. This is when something amazing happened ““ Carolyn Wood, who I might have spoken to briefly once or twice before, asked if there was anything she could help with. I had only shown a couple of people very close to me what I was doing. Being that this was Carolyn Wood, I thought “why not?” This was perhaps one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.
She looked at it as a personal favor, with no thought of The Manual on either of our minds (especially mine). It was one of the sweetest and most generous things anyone has ever done for me. What followed was many, many chats over Skype as we worked through the article line by line, sentence by sentence. She showed an amazing gift for getting the best out of my writing in an amazingly delicate way. The patience she showed me was unparalleled as she would guide me through the rough patches, and a great comfort was found in knowing that a laugh was only a moment away if we needed to reach for it. There were some days when we would work on only a single phrase, as we would laugh hysterically through stories and jokes, she would make fun of my Australian accent or my ability to use about a thousand words when three would do. There were a few moments, especially towards the end, where both our voices would crack and one of us would go quiet, most often myself, but I always felt very safe in the company of a trusted friend. I had never known what it was like to trust another person with your work so completely, but I knew that my words and ideas were perfectly safe and well kept. It was a very unique experience and one I still think about when I think of how generous and wonderful people can be.
When we were getting closer to finishing our work, she raised the idea of the article being in The Manual. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget that feeling. The authors who had been in the first one were amongst my favorites and the idea of having my words about my daughter printed in something so beautiful took my breath away. From there things moved quickly and before I knew it I was holding in my hands one of the biggest highlights of my career.
What kind of reactions did you get to the essay?
It was incredible. I got the kindest words from people who I had never met, old friends, writers and designers I admired, some shared very personal stories with me, others told me they cried, spent time with their family and friends because of what I had written. It was an experience like no other. All so incredibly positive. To know that, in a way, people cried with me and exposed themselves in such a personal way… that’s an amazing gift, one so generously given to me by Carolyn, Andy and their amazing audience.
It’s been quite a while since The Manual Issue #2 came out, so I’m assuming reactions to the essay have become a bit less frequent. Can I ask: how are you doing now?
One or two people have recently picked up a copy when I’ve told them I was lucky enough to be included and have come back with more words of support. Sometimes I get nothing, which I think is natural. It’s a topic that’s rich with awkwardness. The wave of feedback has long since passed.
These days my wife and I are doing ok. Things aren’t nearly as dark for us as they were, but we miss our daughter everyday. We talk about her so frequently ““ about the little buds of personality that were coming through even when she was in the womb, about what she would be doing now, who she would have turned into. But we’re doing ok ““ many couples breakdown through such an experience, and we consider ourselves lucky to have gone the other way and gotten much closer and stronger as a unit. We tend to laugh and joke around a lot more than we use to (though we were always playful), while also spending more time together.
What are your thoughts on the relationship between writing and design? Do you feel writing makes you a better designer, and vice versa? Is there anything in particular that draws you to wanting to get your thoughts on paper?
This is an awesome question — it’s something I think about fairly often as the parallels come to light the more I practice either.
Personally, writing has made me a better designer because it’s forced me to do more research and make sure of any ideas before I published them. It also, and I’m stealing this from someone (I think Zeldman tweeted it, but I might be wrong), helps organise your thoughts so you know what you think. Writing isn’t necessarily solely about expression as much as it is about giving shape to your ideas so that you can easily mold them. In this regard it’s made me a far better designer.
In terms of writing, I think the process I’ve learned to produce a piece of design have adapted well to any writing I do ““ collecting scraps early on, thinking about the problem at hand and what a solution might look like, sketching out a rough, filling in the gaps and then refining, refining, refining, while always trying to have something pretty come out of it all. And the last steps for either design or writing seem to be the same for me ““ I go over what’s in front of me looking to find any pockets where a bit of spice can be added and what rough edges can be removed.
Writing tends to make most other elements of my life better. I’ve gotten amazing opportunities from it, have met great people and been challenged, almost always for the better. It makes the rest of my day feel better, too. When I wake up at 5am and write for a couple hours, no matter how the rest of the day unfolds, I feel as if I have already done what I need to in order to earn my breath. I begin to look at situations and people differently ““ objectively looking at them and myself from the point of view of someone trying to understand what’s going on and what the reason is behind things said and done. Trying to find little pieces of wisdom in every experience started to come naturally after spending hours editing my writing to find the same.
Do you have any other writing plans in the pipeline?
Yes! I’m trying, anyway. I’m wanting to relaunch my blog and focus on writing in a very serious way, but discipline is a huge issue for me at the moment. I just haven’t found that perfect rhythm of reading and writing every single day. It’s that frustrating moment where you know what to do, you can see it and feel it and smell it and taste it, it’s right there, barely an inch from reach. But you just can’t quite get to it. That’s where I am. I’m hoping as long as I keep stretching my fingers out, I’ll stop tickling the edges and finally grab ahold of the writing habit and be able to keep it safely in my pocket.
You should follow Alex on Twitter, spend some time on Retinart, and of course, read The Colors of Grief.