Christian Solorzano [00:05]

Hello, you're listening to Underscore, a podcast by the Chicago Graphic Design Club dedicated to bringing you conversations with Chicago's creative leaders. On this podcast, we'll explore the craft, theory, and practice of graphic design, plus discuss bold ideas that push the boundaries of what's possible and ways in which we can create a more thoughtful and inclusive community. To learn more about us, visit our website at www.chicagographicdesign.club or find us on social media. Special thanks to the Chicago band Eighties Slang for our theme music.

Bob Zeni [00:44]

Hello, everyone.

Christian Solorzano [00:56]

I am today's host, Christian Solorzano, and I'm delighted to be speaking with Bob Zeni, a Chicago icon. Whenever I bring his name up to people, I hear nothing but good things about him. In 1974, Bob graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in journalism. In 1988, he founded Bob Zeni and Associates, where for years he focused on print and digital communication, publication design, branding, and more.

Today he's a writer and contributor for Belt Magazine, an educator at the School of the Art Institute, and in Chicago he's also known as the Tomato Man. Bob Zeni and I, we first crossed paths almost 10 years ago through the Society of Typographic Arts archive events, and since then he's just been someone that I continue to look up to and someone that yeah, that I admire.

And I actually, I don't know if I ever told you this, but you're one of those people that really early in my career, you really had a really big impact when it came to some of the people that you introduced me to and like just some of the things that you exposed me to. So I just wanted to mention that. So I'm just delighted that we're finally taking this time to record this. So thank you for being here.

Bob Zeni [02:17]

Well, I'm honored and I'm delighted that you say all those nice things about me, but, I'm also kind of shocked. I spent my career just kind of stumbling forward and, hopefully good things have happened along the way. So, it's very nice for you to say those nice things. Appreciate it. For sure.

Christian Solorzano [02:44]

So the first question that I want to ask you is, what was your upbringing like, and how did you get involved with journalism and design?

Bob Zeni [02:53]

I grew up downstate in Decatur, and it was an agricultural industrial town where, you had to respect tradition. And it was— my dad, like most of the dads in my neighborhood, had served in World War II, and life was very hierarchical. There was— I report— us kids reported to my mom, my mom reported to my dad, he reported to his boss, etc. And I've always enjoyed writing.

I also always enjoyed design, and when I went to the University of Illinois, I was really focused on journalism and the writing part, but I found 2 things. One, I hated to report. I hated to call people up and, pry into their private lives. And I hated going to like park district meetings and listening to these people drone on about stuff that I didn't care about. And I really liked the design and production of newspapers.

So kind of on the side, I took classes in the— I think it was called Fine and Applied Arts School at the U of I. I took maybe a half dozen courses when I could. And since I graduated, I've been kind of veering back and forth somewhat into the writing side and more into the design side. And even through— my career, it was when I did design work, it was a component of that was editing my clients' text.

Christian Solorzano [04:54]

Got it. And so before you founded Bob Zeni and Associates, which was in 1988, what were some of the things that led you to wanting to do that, wanting to become a principal at your own company? Because before then you worked at a wide range of place— wide range of places. You worked at the Chicago Sun-Times for some time. You also worked for Crane Communications. But what were some of those key moments that led you to start your own business?

Bob Zeni [05:28]

Well, probably the key moment was that I was fired from the Sun-Times. And it was probably the happiest day of my professional career.

Christian Solorzano [05:39]

Okay, and why is that?

Bob Zeni [05:40]

Newspapers are rough business. I mean, they are, they're perfect for when you're young and it's exciting and you do all kinds of crazy things. But by my mid-30s, I had a house and I had 2 kids, and journalism takes up a ton of time. And I was I was in charge of both the designers and the photographers at the Sun-Times, and it was very demanding. And it wasn't a good fit.

I when I worked at Crane, I was on the team that started Crane Chicago business, and there was a lot of freedom. There was a lot of let's try this, and if it doesn't work, we'll just try something else. And it was the management there that enabled me to design pages that, they were wacky but some of them were great. Because they gave me the freedom to just experiment.

And then when I went over to the Sun-Times, it was a different environment, far more traditional, far more straight-laced. When you're putting out a daily paper, you have to follow very strict design modes because you just don't have time to do things differently.

And they had gone through a lot of ownership problems, so they'd gone through several managing editors, and finally there's an editor who went through and fired pretty much everybody that his predecessor had hired, and I was one of the ones that got it which was okay because my kids again were very young and I'd heard from some friends that corporations had newsletters, which I'd never known before.

And this was just about the time when the Mac was coming out. And another friend showed me a Mac. And he said, look, you can write on this thing and you can lay out on this thing and, you can like put your invoices in this thing. And I, it was— it truly was one of those light bulb moments.

When I'm like, now wait a minute, maybe I could do all this stuff myself. And I think the first job I had was Laying out Pizza Hut coupons, those inserts in the newspaper. That, that's the first job I— and they were paying me like $40 an hour, and I'm thinking, this is more money than I will ever see in my entire life. Because the agency was just doing these things by the hundreds.

And so I started doing those, and then a friend of mine Hooked me up with a big corporation that was doing these, lots of newsletters and a magazine. And then it just kind of took off from there, doing the same thing, laying out, laying out publications.

Christian Solorzano [09:03]

Awesome. And what was that— what, yeah, what was that moment like once you— once technology, some of that technology came along? What were some of the— did you notice any big culture shifts in the kind of work that was, that was happening? Once the computer became more of a mainstream, tool for design, did you see a shift in the kind of work that was being produced?

Bob Zeni [09:28]

Well, it was less— well, yes, there was a significant cultural shift because up until that point, designers were inextricably linked with typesetting houses. Because at that point you would take the typewriter-written text, and they would spec up the type, and they would send it off to typehouses. And what they did, they would set the type on these big machines, and you would get these galleys, which were long. Just imagine a column of type on a piece of paper slightly wider.

And they were on these rolls, and Regular service was like 3 days and rush service was next day, and then extra rush service was overnight. So, and most of these were located near the ad agencies along Michigan Avenue, so many of the design firms were located near there because, instead of they had delivery services where you'd hire somebody to drive his car, go pick it up, and bring it back to your office. And if you wanted it same day, you were paying triple.

And this was one of the, one of the realizations that this friend of mine helped spur, was by saying, you don't have to send this stuff. Out to typehouses.

And, it took me like 3 months to figure out, oh, I can set it and then put it into this page in the same machine. What a concept! And so I— and I think that I bought a Mac Plus and it had 1K of RAM And had an external hard drive, which was like 30 megabytes. And I believe it cost me $2,200.

And the screen was about the size of your hand, and that's the size of the screen. It was a— it was miraculous. I mean, it truly was. I'm like, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. Yeah. And so when I was competing with other people, other designers, to do work on the newsletter, I could undercut their price by at least 50%. And because I'm working out of my house, still make significant money.

Christian Solorzano [12:19]

Wow, that's awesome. So then in 1988, that's when you started Bob Zeni and Associates. What was some of that early work like? Because I noticed that you've had— you have a wide range of clients going from Accenture to ComEd, Walgreens, Motorola. What was the kind of work that they were asking you to do, and what was that like? Was it just you that was primarily executing the work, or did you have a team with you that was helping?

Bob Zeni [12:49]

The newsletters I did all by myself. The, the— with a degree in journalism, I had a background in editing stories and writing headlines, and the client would send me the stories and, using at that point what was called— what was QuarkXPress or Adobe PageMaker. I could do those by myself, but a friend of mine had me work with— was the editor of a magazine for Ameritech.

And they had another designer, somebody on Michigan Avenue, but they needed somebody to do mostly the art direction, which was hiring photographers, editing the shots, kind of art directing, going out to the sites. They were on site. It was all over the Midwest. I've seen— I saw some really small towns in the Midwest.

And I did that about 4 years, and I was a dedicated consultant. They had another person that was— that worked production who was also a dedicated consultant. And they gave us an office there, and I had access to their computers and I was meeting designers who were doing the actual layout, and they bought illustrations. And by watching them, I could see how a professional designer worked because I'd never worked in a— Studio before. It was, it was a great learning experience.

Christian Solorzano [14:41]

Yeah, awesome. And you're, and you're still doing some work today, I believe. Is that correct? Or are you— are you still working with clients today?

Bob Zeni [14:50]

Oh yeah I design a quarterly magazine for a hospital in Florida and a newsletter for a bank that comes out every couple months, and I do projects with a consulting group they do a lot of employee communications, which is kind of what I ended up doing a lot of as well. And it's kind of on an as-needed basis. I designed some websites, I designed some newsletters, mostly visual consulting, a broad umbrella of that term.

Christian Solorzano [15:34]

And you've been— so since I've known you, you've always been pretty active in the Chicago design community. Like I said, I met you through STA, and I believe you've also done quite a handful of things for AIGA. So could you tell me a little bit about your involvement with the Chicago design community and sort of like what have been some of the things that you've, that you've collaborated on? I know you've, you were really involved with the ST— or with Archive design competition.

But what has that— what has that been like for you, just working in, being part of the design community throughout the years? Have you noticed an evolution or again, like a shift happen over the years? I started—

Bob Zeni [16:29]

Let's I'll start at the end and then go back to the beginning. About 10 years ago, I decided to kind of step away from being active in the design community.

Christian Solorzano [16:43]

The—

Bob Zeni [16:46]

I felt it was time to have people younger than myself become leaders, because I found myself thinking, oh, we've always done it, we can't do that, we've always done it this other way, and I— that's the time you have to quit, when you're looking at new ideas and just rejecting them out of hand because they're, they're— they don't agree with the way I used to think. And I had some dealings with people older than myself, and they refused to let go.

They refused to give way to new ideas and I was terrified that I was going to end up like them. And I'm like, if I'm like that, shoot me, man. I don't want to be, one of those guys that people are talking about behind your back and say, hey, retire already. So I just kind of stepped away. Now to back up, if I can.

Christian Solorzano [17:51]

Yeah, go ahead.

Bob Zeni [17:53]

By my— the mid-'90s late '90s, my children were growing up, and one of the reasons I worked out of my house was to help raise them. And they were teenagers. They didn't need my— they didn't need as much of my time. And, I've been working for about 10 years all by myself, and it gets weird, when you're by yourself for that significant amount of time.

So I got involved in the AIGA and was on the board at AIGA locally. And in 2000, the election of 2000, I helped initiate what I think is now called Design for Democracy from AIGA. And that was a good project. It was— It was a political football within AIGA National. Because other cities were trying to do things, and we'd had a pretty good organization going. But one thing I learned from my Sun-Times experience is that I'm not a good manager. In fact, I'm a terrible manager.

And they— I think AIGA wanted to make this a little bit more rational in the way it was being operated. And it led through, and there were some political things. There was a local designer here who wanted to use it for her career benefit, which I never saw. I kind of thought, it was— it wasn't for my career at all.

And I resisted, and I'm proud to say that I was actually thrown out of the AIGA. I mean, it's kind of tough to get thrown out of a volunteer organization.

But the executive director sent me a very polite note saying it's better if I'm not a member, which I'm kind of proud of. And some people at SDA had heard that had happened. They knew the story because the community is not that big. They asked me to work with them, and it was a great experience. I was working with them for about 10 years.

And the archive project came up when they wanted to start recognizing people, so I was able to take that over. And because SGA was local, there was no— there wasn't as much political behind-the-scenes backstabbing and all the other stuff I had experienced previously. And, I got to meet everybody. I got to meet people. I got to meet you. I got to meet a lot of really great talented people and see them on a personal basis. And, yeah, that was very satisfying.

Christian Solorzano [20:37]

Yeah. Yeah, I still remember as I was researching for this episode, I was looking through just the past emails. And yeah, I just remember like you did such— you would do such a great job at just orchestrating all the backend of the archive events and just getting everything— yeah, just making sure that everything was running smoothly.

I remember, I remember there— I remember when we used to get when people would actually submit physical— their physical work, and we would have to go through the mail together and sort of categorize everything. And yeah, I remember those. And I would say like, those are some of the highlights of my career, just because at that time I was still in college. So just having the exposure to, look through all this amazing work was always something that I think really fondly of.

Bob Zeni [21:36]

Well, I'm glad you feel that way because one of the things I tried to do, we tried to do, was get people involved who were young. Because when you come into contact with, say, the judges, and you see the work that designers have submitted, it's pretty clear what quality is.

You— if there's, if there's 300 pieces, you, you— if you go through them, there's, let's say there's 300, like 100 you can just— you look at them and go, yeah, these people need this is uninteresting, or it's well-executed, but there's no ideas.

So, like 100, you can just, right away get rid of them. And then from that 100, you kind of step up in your aesthetic standards and saying, well, out of this 200, these have, quality execution but how are the ideas? And the judging process I found Fascinating.

Absolutely fascinating, because we had, we had great judges come in, and just their conversations and to hear what they said, and even when they talked about afterwards at the events we had where we unveiled which ones were the winners, were fascinating to me.

Christian Solorzano [23:19]

Yeah, and I think for As a student, because yeah, around that time I was a freshman in college, so I remember just getting that exposure just meant so much, so much to me. And I would see— and I would always take those learnings and I would always try to find ways to like apply them to, the classes that I was taking. So yeah, those things for me like just set the bar really high.

And I still remember I think it was the STA, like the '13, the identity that Matt Wazinski and Nick Adam created. And I remember just like being blown away by those posters and like the catalog. I really remember the catalogs. You used to get an actual physical catalog and there were these beautiful design objects that you could just keep with you forever. And I really miss that. And it's not— I don't, I don't think STA has done anything like that since.

But I vividly remember those catalogs, and I still have a few of them in my house.

Bob Zeni [24:24]

Well, since you're bringing up this topic, one of the things that I found fascinating was how the reputation of a designer affected the judges' selections. And I mean, kind of a sidebar to that is, if you want to do— if you want to make your reputation the— let me put it a different way. Reputation helps determine what people believe is quality. Because we ran the I ran, I ran the archive competition for 5 years, and the same people tended to get selected repeatedly.

And I just thought it was unfair somehow. So like year 4, I took all the names off all of the entries. So when the judges walked in, they only saw the entry, not who designed it. And at first they're like, well, who designed it? I'm like, can't tell you have to judge it on the— on what you're seeing in front of you. And these were some of the best designers in the country. And they were confused initially, but then kind of relieved almost.

And the upshot was that a designer whose work had been repeatedly selected had none of their entries selected. And, you know that's just the way it was. But after it was over, I received a call from that designer.

They— none of my things were selected. And, by this time, because I'd been around for 20 years being active in the design community, I didn't know everybody, but I was acquainted with almost everybody who's about my age, at least acquainted. Yeah, we were not necessarily close. So this designer called and said, what happened? And I said, well, your work was not selected. That's what happened.

And then it was, well, are you sure? Yes, I'm sure your work was not selected. And that designer was I— my myth was hurt. And yeah, but the work was judged on the work itself. Not on the reputation of who did it.

Christian Solorzano [27:40]

Yeah. No, that's— yeah, that's interesting. And then do you know— so Archive, my understanding is Archive, because now it's the STA 100 and that's sort of the competition that I, that I see STA put out. Once a year. Do you know any— anything about that story between like the— why? Because I know STA 100 like dates back to like the '70s, and then it took some— it took a break, and then there was STA Archive. But then like, what happened there?

Do you, do you know the story of that transition, or why that happened?

Bob Zeni [28:21]

The broader context is that and this goes back 100 years, STA and AIGA really competed for decades. And in through the '60s and '70s, they were friendly competitors. And then somebody at the STA, they wanted to go big, so they hired full-time people. And by— and they were— and they were, again, AIGA wanted to go big. And so there was— the competition went from friendly competitors to not so friendly competitors.

And AIGA had a larger pool out of New York. That's where they were based. And I think AIGA had a better long-term plan on how they were going to expand. The SDA had a good direction and had good people. And I don't know exactly what happened. The 1980s, it had imploded and they ran out of money and they shut it down.

Christian Solorzano [29:26]

It closed.

Bob Zeni [29:26]

And I'm not sure when it was, like mid-late '80s, early '90s, something like that. And throughout the '70s and '80s, the STA 100 generated a lot of interest. They had hundreds and hundreds of entries. It was one of the premier design competitions in the world.

And then the SDA was dormant for the mid-'90s, and it started up again, and they wanted to do something like that, but— and I wasn't part of this decision— they wanted it to be a recognition of the people whose— recognition of work. And then they let me see, I can't remember. Andrew Rogers ran it for about the first 3 years, which was, I want to say, 2005 through 2008, something like that. And he got burned out, and I took over.

And then in 2014, I got burned out. And by this time we had recruited Bud Ruttiger what's now Spann, to be a vice president, and he gradually took it over. Now, the connection was that his boss at Thirst, Rick Valicenti, had been a— I believe the president of STA in the '80s and the early '90s, and he was the one who was kind of the driver between the STA— the driver behind the STA 100 in the '80s and '90s, I believe.

So when Bud came back to the STA, or when Bud began with the STA, he wanted to revive it and wanted to make it the STA 100, and I totally respected that. I mean, the STA board was very patient with me because I said, if I'm going to do the archive, I'm going to run the archive, I want to do it my way. And they're fine. They said fine.

So I think the same thought was with Bud, you want to run the competition, you want to call it the STA 100, go ahead, as long as you do it.

Christian Solorzano [31:56]

And they've—

Bob Zeni [31:58]

And Bud wrote it, ran it for— I don't want to say 2 or 3 years. I lose track because I don't watch that closely, but that's why the STA 100 has returned and Archive has kind of been relegated to history, which is fine.

Christian Solorzano [32:18]

That's—

Bob Zeni [32:18]

Yeah, it was fun while it lasted.

Christian Solorzano [32:20]

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it was really fun. And then, so one of the questions that I always like to ask our guests is when we think about Chicago, Chicago's design community, as the founder of the Chicago Graphic Design Club, one of the things that we're always trying to do is find those gaps and see how we could fill them through programming. Like this podcast, for example, is one way that we're hoping to document conversations with—

Chicago designers, with Chicago creatives, so that there's an archive and that there's a collection of people that contribute to the city. So off the top of your mind, is there anything that you, that you've noticed, or anything that you feel like Chicago's design community could benefit from, or any suggestions that you have, for us or anyone that's listening? What could we do to just enhance the way that, yeah, Chicago's design community exists? It's a big question.

Bob Zeni [33:37]

Yeah, it is. I, I'm a— on social media, I'm connected to a lot of designers, and I think rightfully designers are concentrating on the aesthetics of design, and that's the way it should be. But in my lengthy experience in the working world, the aesthetics are, I hate to say secondary, but really secondary.

It's secondary to success. Let's put it that way. Secondary to career longevity. You know we all, we all need to make money. And that's just a fact. If you want to stay in the business, if like I'm self-employed and to stay self-employed, I need to make money.

And I learned early in my career that dealing with clients is really primary. And I don't see a lot of people talking about that. I mean, I see people saying 2 things. One, our clients are idiots, which, it doesn't help anything. Or we need to educate our clients, which I find insane.

Because why do we want them to know what we no, I don't want them to know anything that I know because then they'll know it and they won't hire me. I want them to hire me to tell— to help them. For what I know. And neither of those things are I believe, beneficial to someone who wants to make a career out of this. And if I can I continue on along this path?

Christian Solorzano [36:00]

Yeah, yes, please.

Bob Zeni [36:01]

Because you can edit out my greetings anyway. Clients and designers don't speak the same language. Their clients, when you say, I want, we're gonna use warm colors, the designer says that we're gonna use warm colors, and the clients nod their head and then say, oh yeah, we should use blue. They just, it's not that they're idiots, it's that they're not designers.

In most cases, they're business people. And, or even if they're nonprofits or something, they know their business. They know what they are doing, but they don't know what designers know. So, I think that there's a tremendous need for helping designers learning to listen to what clients are trying to say, but not the words, because they— clients just don't have the words to communicate with designers. And designers just I've got this great idea, listen to me.

And clients are like, no, that's a great idea, but it's not going to fulfill our needs.

Christian Solorzano [37:30]

Oh yeah, that's a good point. And I do, and I do agree. I think because of social media, the emphasis is definitely more on the aesthetics. And I think it's because those are the things that get the most engagements. So they're the things that get the most likes. They're the things that, surround a person's reputation, I think.

And it's— yeah, it's interesting you say that because I'm definitely I find myself at times saying clients are idiots, and it's in those moments where you're just frustrated and stuff. But I think a big part of it is, yes, just finding ways to translate the value of design to someone that isn't a designer. And I think it's not— it's something that comes with experience, and it's something that's taken me some years to figure out.

Bob Zeni [38:22]

It's not easy. Absolutely. The competitions tend to reward the aesthetics of design. And the clients are impressed by a list of awards. But, the standing joke is clients hire you to do— to do your work and then tell you what to do. And that's— they're the designers that I have seen who are very successful, again, from a longevity of career, which of course means money.

Is they do work that's either pro bono or for themselves, that allows them to fulfill their need for something aesthetically beautiful and communicative. And they enter those in contests and they get the awards, but they make money from the commodity stuff.

The aesthetics are very secondary and that are very Projects that repeat themselves, and I was fortunate, even though I didn't plan this at all, was that I did magazines and newsletters, and they keep coming up year after year after year, month after month, and some of them had a very high level of aesthetics that I was proud of. Some of them were shit. And that's okay, they paid me.

Christian Solorzano [40:13]

I—

Bob Zeni [40:13]

And, being paid to do this shitty stuff enabled me to have the time to do things that were much more beautiful. And I'm not ashamed of it, but, and I, and I have students at the School of the Art Institute and I'll say that to them and they're shocked. They're like, how could you say that? I'm like, because I got to pay the mortgage, that's why. But as students, they, they're intent on doing great things in their career. And they should be.

I felt I've done some great work, but I've also done, again, some crapola that I'm not proud of. And I, and I wanted to ask you about this.

Christian Solorzano [41:08]

So you're an educator and you've been teaching for about 10 years, is that correct? You started at DePaul University and now you're at the School of the Art Institute, is that okay? And yeah, so what do you teach and what's teaching been like for you throughout, your teaching experience?

Bob Zeni [41:26]

I teach InDesign. I teach students to use the program. And it's the only thing I teach.

I mean, there's 2 sections, 1 course, come in every week and I've really enjoyed the environment there because there are people that are fantastic designers there. Robert Petric teaches there and George Bakos and Stephen Farrell, Dan McManus and Sofya Karash. These are people that I have an enormous respect for, and others. And coming from the business world where, dealing with the clients and their very specific ideas, at the School of the Art Institute, they are very open to new ideas.

They said, teach it the way you would like to teach it, as long as, they come out with the skills that they need. And because my background isn't in— my degree isn't in art, it is an opportunity for me to help many of the students realize that art and design are 2 different things.

Which some of them, because most of them, it's a freshman sophomore class. And many of them are coming to the school, the Art Institute, and most of them were probably the best artist or the best designer in their high schools. And I try not to be— I don't want to use the word brutal, but I try not to be too mean-spirited in saying, there's— you got to compromise at some point.

There are, and I think most students understand it because I've developed a language to say it in ways that actually gets through to them. But, and most people get it, but there's some students who, they start not understanding the difference between art and design and they leave not understanding the difference between art and design, so— The program helps them because— but students are students, what can you say?

Christian Solorzano [44:08]

Yeah, so what sort of projects, or what's that curriculum like? What do you have students do in an InDesign class?

Bob Zeni [44:16]

They do— there's essentially 2 projects. The entire semester. The first one is redoing a 6-page issue of Crain's Chicago Business. I mean, okay, I'm still close with the people over there at Crain's, and they gave me all the background files and everything, and we— I cut it down to a 6-page issue, and they set up the frames, they learned paragraph styles and character styles, and, hyphenation and justification and just all the mechanical stuff.

And that's the first half of the course. The second half of the course is applying those skills to a portfolio of their personal work so that, they've endured this text-heavy thing that they can't, they end up hating, which I sympathize because after all these years I hate it too.

But the second half, they're, they have to gather up their art, they have to do some research, they have to create an identity by specifying colors and selecting typefaces. And, I kind of guide what has to be in a portfolio and I believe nearly all of them by the end of the semester realize the value of having a something that they can send to apply for internships.

And that's the real value. But the other thing is it allows them to make aesthetic judgments because the first half of Cranes, there's no aesthetic judgment. This is the way it's got to be.

Christian Solorzano [46:14]

Tough. Yeah.

Bob Zeni [46:14]

The second half, it— I don't make judgments because that's not my job in that course. They get to do what they want, and I've seen some things that are truly beautiful. I mean, I, I've looked at it and seen freshmen, and I've thought, this person is bound for glory. There's just— there's no doubt about it. Others, it depends on how much time and effort and interest they have in it.

If they're not burned out by the grades in the middle of the semester, there's quite a few that really put the effort in to make it look great. And reflect their own way of thinking.

Christian Solorzano [46:56]

Yeah. So do you have them print, what they design and sort of hang it up on the wall and kind of Look at it, or what's the— how do the students present their work ultimately?

Bob Zeni [47:09]

I do teach them the print production, but frankly, there's such a low— a lower percentage of the work that people are doing now. I, show them what crop marks and color bars and all those kinds of things are. And, the resolution for print is so much higher than the resolution for screen. So we go through all that, but that's really only one class.

It is really meant for a PDF that they can use to entice potential employers to Look at a website that they would also create, which is totally separate. I have nothing to do with that. I just say, create your own website, doesn't matter what it looks like. But, the PDF is a— it's the first step in getting a potential employer to become interested in their work. Yeah, okay.

Christian Solorzano [48:17]

And so moving beyond design, you also write for Belt Magazine, and you have some, you have some short stories that you've published with them. Could you talk a little bit about that? Just your fiction writing. Is the— is your writing fiction or nonfiction?

Bob Zeni [48:39]

I'm sorry, that last question?

Christian Solorzano [48:41]

Is the writing that you do, is it fiction or nonfiction?

Bob Zeni [48:44]

It's nonfiction. I mostly write for my children. Now, I my dad was a he was a good guy, but I never knew much about him because he, by the time, he worked in factory and he came home and fell asleep. Like a lot of the dads did in my day. And they as time went on and I became a father, it became— I became very interested in my parents' lives.

And I— my— at near the end of my mother's life, I coerced her into writing a story of her early years. And it was, it was absolutely eye-opening. This was during the Depression, and what they did was just shocking. I mean, it is— it's unfathomable, the kind of poverty they experienced in the United States and what they had to do to eat and live.

And I, I'd always liked writing, but when I just got busy and one thing led to another, and by the time my children were adults, I thought that I wanted to write something that was, for them, or at least something about my own past.

So that they could pass it on. And that was kind of the initial thought, but when I ran across Belt Magazine, because I've read some of their work, and they're a very progressive online magazine out of Cleveland, a lot of it was for— and by belt, it's Rust Belt, the Midwest. Most of it was for urban— an urban audience, people that lived in the cities.

And I had a nice discussion with the editor there saying, there's whole vast amounts of the audience or the area that you claim to cover that's outside the cities. So, I talked to him and, I talked about the importance of the public library in Decatur, how once it closed, the city was decimated. I did a story on working with my father one summer in the steel factory. Which was certainly eye-opening.

I did one about a family cemetery that was lost for generations, and it took me decades to find it. Not that I was working on it all the time, but the story was there's all these small cemeteries that pioneers created when they were moving into the Midwest. And, I knew there were a few of them, but I mean, for example, there's a cemetery in Yorktown parking lot. The Yorktown Mall has a cemetery in the parking lot.

And they're all over the place. As it turns out, there's 14,000 cemeteries in the state of Illinois. And those are the ones that are lost. And again, most of them are like an acre or 2 acres, and everybody that's buried in there is from 150 years ago.

And my mother's family had one of these things and it was just that story. But it's these kinds of things that I write about which helps me discover things and discover things about myself and things that, my children, they read them and they go, wow, that's good. I'm like, are you kidding? I spent the last 4 months working on this thing, 3 hours a day every day, and that's what I get? That's good? And I know they mean more than that.

But I'm at a point where I can see the end of the road. I'm not sure when it's going to happen, but the road's going to end. And I mean, it's already ended for some of my friends. And that's a wake-up call. It's like enjoy your time because you ain't got a lot of it left, bro.

Christian Solorzano [53:33]

Have you ever, have you ever thought about record— like doing audio recordings of your books or some of your stories?

Bob Zeni [53:43]

But yeah, I'd love to do it, but I don't know anything about it. I mean, something like this is something that I'm fascinated with because I'm almost afraid to listen to podcasts because I'm so jealous. I'm so envious. I want to do that, but then I gotta get a microphone, and then I gotta learn to edit this stuff, and— I can't— it's one of those things where not that I'm opposed to learning new things, but I want to learn more about what I already know.

Than a wide variety of things on a very superficial level. And if I do a podcast, I wanted— I want it to be great. I don't want it to be me stammering around. I hate that.

Christian Solorzano [54:41]

Yeah. So let's talk about tomatoes. You are known as the Chicago Tomato Man, and I recently saw you on the front page of a newspaper. And yeah, tell us, how do you— yeah, just what got you into tomatoes. And yeah, what's that world like?

Bob Zeni [55:06]

I've always been a gardener, and I've always enjoyed gardening. And if I would have known landscape design was a career when I was in college, I would have been there. And I think, and, in my fantasy life I'm a world— I'm a world-renowned landscape designer making zillions of dollars a year. Because I've always— I mean, where other guys were working as lifeguards or park counselors or caddies, I was a gardener on my summer job. This—

Guy who had this big house and this big lot of land.

I enjoyed it. So when I was working for myself I mean, when the kids were small, we had a small vegetable garden. And as I started working for myself, During the winter, again, it's kind of weird, all day by yourself in your house. So my wife suggested that, because she knew I loved to garden, to start plants. So I made a little area in our basement, set up some lights and hot pads, and I did this every year.

And every year I tried to grow more tomatoes and figure out what was wrong with them and why it was not working and why they died. Did I overwater or underwater? Too much light? Too much heat? And this— so I've been, from this point, I've been growing tomatoes for at least 25 years.

And then around 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 I started becoming successful. And by that I mean I could grow 10 plants or 15 plants or 20 plants without them dying. I could get them to survive to May. And I became curious about how could I grow more. So I ended up with like 50 plants, and we could only plant maybe 10, 15, 20 in my— in our backyard.

So I started giving them away to neighbors and Every year around the winter, they'd say, oh, you start your tomatoes yet? I've got a friend who really wants these tomatoes. And I learned that there's heirloom tomatoes, which are the flavorful ones, as opposed to hybrid tomatoes, which is those tasteless travesties you— the tasteless travesties you get in the grocery store. Those are red water balloons that, Frankenstein of fruit. They're terrible. I— they're a crime against nature.

So I would grow these plants that in the, in the late summer yielded these things that would explode in your mouth with flavor.

And other people became intrigued by that. So through the years, I— by 2014 I had like 200 plants, so we decided to sell. I had a sell— sale in had a sale in my driveway, and I sold out. I mean, just word of mouth, people stopping by buying these plants. And I became infatuated with the idea that I could grow more. So it was 200, then 400, then 500, then 1,000 plants. And then I had like 2018, I had about 1,500 plants.

And 2019, I had 2,000 plants. And so I had all these plants and that was the year COVID hit, correct?

Christian Solorzano [59:05]

Yeah.

Bob Zeni [59:05]

Okay, 3 weeks before the sale, the village said you can't have a sale. So I have— I had orders because I, I'd set up my daughter had set up a website where you could order, and they paid me. So I had all these orders and I had all their money but I had no sale.

So we delivered, we delivered to 210, 230 locations all around the Chicago area. It was, it was insane. Yeah, my wife's driving one place and I'm driving another place and my daughter's driving a third place because you got to deliver them all within like the first 2 weeks of May.

So that's all I was doing, like day in and day out, Monday through Friday, for about 3 weeks, as it turns out. And then last year we decided to have like remote pickup locations, and we had again 2,000 plants sold out. I worked with a group called the Gardeners in the city, they set up gardens in schools, near schools in neighborhoods that don't have access to fresh food.

Neighborhoods without grocery stores or stores that just don't have much of a selection. And so this year they have an actual greenhouse, a large greenhouse, and they have people that are very knowledgeable about gardening. So we grew 4,000 plants. And word got out that we were working with— and oh, and we work together and they get most of the money.

They get 60% of all of the profits. And it's a great story. I knew some people in newspapers. In fact, one of my, one of my first customers lives on the other side of town, and turns out he was promoted to the position of significance at the Tribune. And I kind of called him and said, hey, you think this is interesting? And he turned out it was interesting.

So he ran that story, and then in the media ecosystem, you get a story in the newspaper and TV picks it up and then radio picks it up. So I was interviewed for radio, which was fun. I was on TV for a small excerpt. And, it's just, it's wacky. It's fun. It's wacky. I enjoy it. We make a lot of money for the gardeners and People end up having tomatoes that taste sensational.

Christian Solorzano [62:23]

Yeah, I'll have to try one of those tomatoes one day because I'm definitely— the tomatoes I eat are the red water balloons that you call travesties.

Bob Zeni [62:33]

Are you still in Brookfield or are you downtown?

Christian Solorzano [62:37]

No, so I was in Riverside, but I'm in Riverside. I'm in Oak Park now, in Oak Park.

Bob Zeni [62:42]

Give me your address and I'll drop by because I have more.

Christian Solorzano [62:48]

If—

Bob Zeni [62:48]

This has been a great year because I actually— every year I learn something new about tomatoes. And I correspond with some of the foremost tomato breeders and growers from around the world.

And all of them say, I learned something new every year. They— you would think these people would know everything, but every time I talk to them, they're like, yeah, just guess what I just learned. And I'm thinking, wow, they are just learning new things. So this year has been a really good year. If I can keep the squirrels away from them, I'm going to have an abundance of tomatoes and I have no problem dropping them off.

Or if you want to come by, you can pick them up. You just won't believe them when you eat them. It's different. It is different and better. Far better. Awesome.

Christian Solorzano [63:39]

All right, well, this has been great. It was such a pleasure speaking with you and just learning so much more about you. If anyone wants to reach out to you to learn more about tomatoes or to just chat with you, where could they find you? How could people get in touch with you?

Bob Zeni [63:56]

Well, it's been an honor to be here. It truly is. I see some of the people you've interviewed in the past and to be among them is truly an honor. So thank you for that. Because the tomato thing is a is a separate business. If anyone has any questions, it's bob at chicago tomato man dot com. Awesome. But otherwise, if anybody has any questions about some of the crazy shit that I've done, it's bob at bobzini dot com. B O B Z E N I Awesome.

Christian Solorzano [64:38]

Cool. Well, thank you so much, Bob. This was great. I really appreciate you taking the time today to talk. And yes, let's keep in touch. And I'm gonna hold you up on that, and I will reach out to you to get some tomatoes from you.

Bob Zeni [64:52]

So Christian, it's been wonderful. Thank you for calling me. I great talking to you. You're a great interviewer which from my brief time dealing with those people in radio who actually do this professionally you are as good as many of them.

Christian Solorzano [65:13]

Awesome. All right, well, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Bob. You gave—

Bob Zeni [65:18]

You give your interviewer— you give the person you're interviewing an opportunity to speak, which I appreciate. Awesome. Cool.

Christian Solorzano [65:26]

Well, thank you so much. And yes, we'll keep in touch.

Bob Zeni [65:28]

Take care.

Christian Solorzano [65:29]

We will.