Elana Schlenker

Sorry, I have to hide behind the podium a little bit, but I'll try to flail so you can see me. But yeah, my name is Elana Schlenker. I wrote that down in case I forgot. I'm a graphic designer and art director. I work independently in my own studio. This talk is not really about that, but just very quickly I'll kind of rip through some of the stuff I do so you know who it is that's standing up here. I do book design sometimes directly for artists, sometimes with independent publishers, also with medium to larger size publishers like Princeton Architectural Press and FIDIN. I create visual identities. I create lots of interactive projects. I also make products and stationery and printed matter. I like to do lots and lots of different things. And just to tell you kind of a couple things that I think are notable about my practice real quick before I jump into the meat of this talk. My least favorite thing to do is a logo, like just a logo. I like to have my hands on everything and I like to think about how things can live across a much broader system. So I like when I get to do things like books, even though they're self-contained, you kind of get to take this visual language and reimagine it in all these different contexts. I just like spaced out and kept going. I love production details. So wherever I can, especially with print, obviously I try to think about how production can support the concept of my project. I love collaborating probably because I spend so much time working on my own wherever I can. I love to work with type designers, developers, writers, photographers, illustrators. I think that's really fun. It's important to me, like I said, to maintain a diverse practice, do lots of different things. So not just within one project, but I like to work across a lot of different industries, like I said, doing different kinds of things. And finally, I like to do my own thing. This is one of those things that's called gratuitous type. And personal work has been a really huge part of my practice since before I think I could even have called it a practice. It's where I continue to find fulfillment and new opportunities. I think it's why I'm standing here on the stage today. Like I said, this is gratuitous type. It's a design magazine I've been publishing for going on six years. I also recently started this traveling pop-up shop called Less Than 100, which we'll get to in a little bit. So like I said, I'm going to first focus on this self-initiated work and kind of share some of the truths that I've learned along the way. So my talk, The Truth About Self-Directed Work, is the truth about self-directed work because I have six of them and I have numbered them for you. So the first one is it's doable. And that seems pretty obvious, but I think it's one of the best lessons that I've ever learned over the course of my career. I started out at the University of Pittsburgh, which you've never heard of its design program because it doesn't have one. So I kind of left to my own devices. I did independent studies. I did internships, but I also decided I wanted to start my own magazine because I love making magazines and also because I wanted to have this experience, which I wasn't getting in school. That magazine was called The Original. It took me about a year to put together. I gathered the staff of like 40 students and I fundraised and I found a printer and I designed it. And I did all these things that I had never done before. This is the back cover. And I did it. And it was this crazy moment that I always think about, which was the moment where I thought I want to do something and then I did it. And it's so simple, but it's been so powerful throughout the course of my career. When I was doing work that I wasn't really proud of or work that I wasn't, the work that my work wasn't as good as maybe I thought it could be. I remember at every kind of decision point, there was a time where I wanted to do something and I did. And that is so, so powerful. And that was pre-Kickstarter, like early days of Facebook when you still had to have like a university emailed again on Facebook. So I didn't even have all the tools that we have now to realize a project, to find an audience, to find distribution for it. So you can do the things you want to do. It has never been easier. And that's really like the first thing that you need. The second truth that kind of came out of this project is only you know what you're capable of. And a funny thing happened when the magazine was released. I went to one of my advisors who had really been one of the most supportive people over the course of this project. She helped me find money. She helped me just like morally supported me. And I gave her a copy of the magazine and she looked at it and said, wow, this is like a real magazine. Like, it's so cool that I just I didn't think that it would look like a magazine. And you know, on the surface, I was like, yes, cool. Yeah. And inside I was like, of course it's a fucking magazine. I've been telling you this for like a year that I was going to make a magazine. And I mean, she meant, she really meant well. But I realized that even the people that support you and believe in you, they don't see what you see. They they don't. You're the one with the vision. And at some point, you need to make the sleep alone. You know how capable you are. Nobody else does. After I did this first issue, I graduated. I moved to New York. I didn't know anyone had a really bad design portfolio. You saw the magazine. Not good. And I tried to find work. And I struggled. And I kept working on my magazine. I started doing a second issue. I, you know, it wasn't quite what I wanted to be. I knew I could do better. I wasn't doing better yet. But I knew that I could. And that brings me to my third truth. Once you do it, you might need to do it over. And that's okay. The second issue that I did really wasn't that much better. But it was good enough that I got hired at a publisher called Rodale. They very unglamorously do things like little zines about ab workouts and recipes for housewives and things like that. But I was working in magazines. I had a really amazing boss who's maybe one of the most talented people I've ever worked with. And she was basically gave me my design education. And while I was there kind of figuring out how I'm going to get to the next thing, I kept working on the original and trying to make it better. I really like this quote by Tibor Ackalman. He says, you maybe heard it. Do everything twice. First time you don't know what you're doing. The second time you do. The third time is boring. I don't know that I agree that the third time is boring. But I definitely believe that you're not going to know what you're doing the first time. And that's okay. And it's okay to do it over. In my case, I did it over four times. I did four copies for issues of the original. It's still not aesthetically notable. But I was happier with it. I was ready to move on from it. And it helped me get to sort of the next place in my career, which was I moved over to Conde Nast in their corporate branding department. So I did branding for the company. I did some advertorial work, which is not super fun. Trying to make tampons look good is hard. But again, I think there's always something to learn, even somewhere that you don't love. And there I got to work with, again, great people. I learned a lot about putting a shoe together. It paid well, so I was able to set aside money to invest in my own personal work. And that's when I kind of had the idea to do a new thing, which was this magazine called Gratuitous Type. So that brings me to my fourth truth, which is like my field of dreams truth. If you make it, they will come. I don't know if I feel as strongly about anything as I do about this, which is if someone's not hiring you to do the work you're doing, you need to take matters into your own hands. If they're not asking you to make what you want to make, then hire yourself. Invest in yourself. In part, people are literal, and if they haven't seen that thing in your portfolio, they might not want to take a chance. Or maybe in my case, your work's just not good enough yet, and you need that experience to improve and get to the level that you want to be. So having the interest to kind of make something that I cared about, something that was creatively fulfilling, that let me play with some ideas I had about editorial design, I started working on Gratuitous Type. And having done the original, I learned a lot of things again about what I didn't want to do. So that was kind of by the end, there were like 50 people on the staff, and that was just crazy. So I realized I wanted to do this project, that was just me, that I wanted to write it and publish it and design it and really be in total control. So like I said, I started to save me money. I didn't want to sell ads. And I put together this project that's basically, let's see, there we go. It's basically conversations and projects from mostly graphic designers, but really creatives from all over. And I sort of quietly launched this first issue. I didn't know if I was crazy, but I did start to get it in a couple bookshops that I really loved, and I just had this continued itch to keep making it. So very quickly I sort of started on the second issue. But I should mention going back, sort of the little joke of the magazine is this idea that as designers, we find large typography so stimulating that we kind of have to censor it. It's titillating that we have to cover up this letter A. So I sort of use sort of some of the language and conventions of pornography to sort of play around with the structure of this issue that is centerfold, that kind of thing. But it's actually like the most innocuous thing you could ever find. And on a side note, I use XXX a lot and I get a lot of traffic. Like most of my traffic is people looking for porn, I think. So they're probably really confused when they see this kind of thing. But just like with the magazine I did in college, I didn't feel like I nailed it on the first try. I was proud of myself, but like that. I wanted it to grow and be better, and I really quickly decided if I'm going to keep doing this, I'll probably always feel that way. So I want to have the flexibility to change what I'm doing, change the design, the format in terms of the size and the fact that it's saddle stitch is the same, but otherwise everything changes. And for similar reasons, I want to keep it fun for myself. For similar reasons, I also am not committal about the frequency that I publish. I say I publish it infrequently, and that can be a year or two between issues. In the beginning, I was really worried about if I'm not on this set schedule, will people not take me seriously or people forget about me or whatever. But I realized really quickly that everyone is so concerned with what they're doing or all the other things out there. No one misses this project when it's not around. And it's much more important to me that I wait rather than rush, that I put something into the world that's worth putting out there rather than putting something out there just to publish. So sometimes a long time passes, but it's really important to me to take my time and make sure that I get it right. And then from a purely selfish standpoint, it's easier. All my client work is often a race against the clock, so I don't want that in the work that I do for fun. But back to this truth, which is if you make it, they'll come. I saw a posting for a position at Princeton Architectural Press, which is an arts and culture publisher in New York. And it was sort of at the time my dream job in the sense of I really wanted to be in books. I really wanted to do that kind of more independent stuff. And I applied thinking that I had no chance in hell of even being called in for an interview. But they did call me in and I shared this project with them. I actually brought in, I think this is issue two. Issue two wasn't even finished yet, so I printed it out and taped it together and brought them the sad Domi. But I got hired. And I know for a fact that it was entirely from this work that I was doing on the side for fun and sort of personal fulfillment. So that happened. I started working at Princeton as a book designer. I was there for two years. And what's really cool was that not only did I get this job, but then this magazine started to bring me client work. People were finding it and saying, this is some of the stuff we did at Princeton, saying can you do this for us? So this third issue came out towards the end of my time at PA Press. And by this issue, people were finding this in bookshops, calling me up and saying do this for us. And it's led to some really great ongoing collaborations with all kinds of people. So I've done some fun stuff with nonprofits. I started working with this publisher called Conveyor. They do this magazine also called Conveyor. And they really, even though it's a photography magazine, wanted to bring a stronger typographic element to it. So it's sort of very directly out of doing this work has led to all of these amazing opportunities. Not even just client work. This is the latest issue. But also things like exhibiting the magazine. I got to go to London last year and show this at KK outlet, show the work from the issue and have a launch. Like I said, I get to do talks like this. So great things just kind of keep coming in from investing in myself and my personal projects. So that brings me to my fifth truth. It's worth it. And something I always say about gratuitous type that I really like is I get to talk to people and steal their secrets sort of. And one of those people or peoples, I don't know, it's raw color. Do you guys know them? They're not too far away in the Netherlands. I interviewed them for the last issue. They do a lot of personal work. And we talked quite a bit about it. And they kind of framed the investment of personal work in I think the best way I've ever heard it. They talk about how extensive it is. They say self-initiated work always costs a lot of money, but somehow it gets paid back. We throw our money out the window, but it comes back through the door. And I just love this idea because I think it illustrates also the leap of faith when you kind of put out a personal project. You really do kind of throw it out there. And it's amazing how it kind of, once it goes out into the world, is transformed into new opportunities that come right back to you. So having these, oh, sorry, surprise. Having all these new opportunities, I came to sort of a fork in the road where I realized I was doing all this client work on the side while I was at Princeton. I was doing this magazine. And at some point, I needed to choose one or the other so I could do that one thing better. So I chose myself. I left Princeton. I started working for my own clients. I got a dog. That was what I was going to show you. So basically, if I wasn't living the dream, I was living my dream for sure. And then a crazy thing happened. I was kind of ready to be doing my thing in New York. And then my boyfriend got the opportunity to teach in Pittsburgh. And that was really a wrench in my plans. And as I was sort of struggling to make this decision, I kind of came across, well, I kind of came to a realization, which is my last truth for you. It's embrace chaos. I was reading this essay by Wendell Berry. I don't know if you guys know him, but he's an American writer and conservationist. And he wrote this essay called Poetry and Marriage, which talks about it sort of equates the forms of marriage and the kind of things we decide to adhere to with the constraints of poetry. But I found this passage just sort of by chance when I was making this decision that felt like it applied to me. He says, fidelity to form has driven us beyond expectation. The world, the truth, is more abounding, more delightful, more demanding than we thought. What appeared for a time perhaps to be mere dutifulness, that dried skull, suddenly breaks open in sweetness. And we are not where we thought we were, nor that we could have expected to be. It was expectation that would have kept us where we were. And so thinking of this in the context of my expectation for myself was being in New York for a long time. But the reality of this, and I think what Berry is kind of getting at is that as individuals, we are limited by what we can imagine as one person. And when you add more people to the mix, and I think this also talks about to sharing your ideas with other people. When you add another person to the mix, or even when just an outside force sort of acts on you, and you don't stick to your own narrow expectations of what you imagine, it can lead to some really exciting and beautiful things. So I moved to Pittsburgh, which is just outside of Pittsburgh, but it's kind of like this. These are my neighbors. They're all named Howard. I don't know why. And we also have goats, but they go through the Arby's drive-through. So suck it, New Zealand. Sorry. No. I'm just kidding. But also I have this great quality of life. My dog is super jazzed. I maintain my studio in Brooklyn, and I go back sort of monthly. And all the clients I thought I would lose are still my clients, and I have great new clients. And I have embarked on a new project that, had I been in New York, I would have had a passing thought, and I would have moved on. And that project is called Lesson 100, which is sort of what I'll wrap up with today. It's a traveling pop-up shop for gender wage equity. Everything in the shop is made by women, and it follows a pay-what-you're-paid pricing model. So what that means is that men pay full price and women pay percent of the price that reflects what they earn compared to men. So in Pennsylvania, women earn 76 percent of what men earn, and in this shop, in Pittsburgh, the first shop, which opened last April, they pay 76 percent of the price. And I was able to do that in Pittsburgh because there are great resources there. There are not a lot of people fighting for those resources. There is available space, and it's cheap. And it's turned into this really cool project that has again sort of led to all these new opportunities for me. So these are a few photos from the shop. In addition to just having this physical space, I had a lot of events aimed at connecting and empowering women. We had a negotiation workshop. We had kids come in and work with some of the artists in the shop and kind of talk about the shop, which was really fun. We had a local artist organize this bus trip where she took all these women around Pittsburgh to meet other local artists. They hopped on the bus, and then we went back to the shop and kind of had a party. And we also tried to be really kid-friendly because child care is sort of part of this issue around the wage gap. And actually, the bartender at that event didn't have anyone to watch her daughter, so she asked if her daughter could sell lemonade, and she made the most legit lemonade stand ever. It was really awesome. So just like a lot of sort of cool special things happened by getting all these people together. And then sort of it opened kind of quietly. We also made a newspaper with more information. It opened kind of quietly, and then it sort of blew up. And I had a brief moment where it was covered all over the world, and people were asking to open a pop-up shop near them. And it was really cool. It led to 66 is Less Than 100, which is a shop that opened in New Orleans in November. That was run by an artist, Tammy Mercure, and another woman, Rebecca Diaz. And it was really neat to kind of work on this with them, but see other people kind of reimagine it themselves. And I think the project was bigger, more exciting, more successful than even the first version. And it continues to kind of there's lots of chances sort of taking other places, so I'm really excited about that. So that's where I am now, figuring out how to grow my studio, occasionally running these pop-ups, working on gratuitous type, have a new issue, and kind of a supplemental issue in progress right now. And actually, so you guys are sort of like the first to know, in October I'm going to go to San Francisco and spend three months at Facebook as the designer in residence in their analog lab. So I'm really excited about that. And again, that's something that I think they saw this personal work I was doing and hollered at me, and now that's happening. So, you know, all this stuff really came out of one thing I did in college that I think kind of sucked. But the thing is that whatever you want to do, if you do it and get it out there, and maybe it won't be perfect, but just putting it out in the world will lead to so many things you never expected. And when those unexpected things come into your life, you need to embrace them. And then I guess I'll leave you on, I kind of gave it away, but a bonus truth from my dad. My dad is really good at accidentally keeping it super real. And I was headed to a conference last year and kind of explaining to my dad that they were flying me there to talk about my work. And my dad was struggling to wrap his head around why someone would want me to talk and what I would talk about. And I'm trying to kind of get the message across, and he interrupts me and says, honey, let me make one thing clear. I don't understand anything that you do for a living. And I really love this, and I'm not saying this to be a bummer, but I'm saying this because when you do personal work, you really put your heart and your soul into it, and that is the great pleasure of personal work and the great luxury of personal work. But when you do this kind of stuff, like anything in life, things go wrong. You know, you find a typo or your Kickstarter doesn't get funded or you can't ship stuff out on time. And when you put your heart and soul into it, then your heart and soul gets ripped out a little bit when that happens. And I like to remember my dad and people like my dad who don't know what I'm doing because the reality is I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for myself, and I'm doing it because it's fun. And I think it's really that simple. So I'll leave you on that. Thank you.