Christian Solorzano [00:00]

Hello, you are listening to Underscore, a show by the Chicago Graphic Design Club. I am your host, Christian Solorzano, and today I share my conversation with Dana Arnett, co-founder and chairman of BSA Partners. Together we trace a career that began in the cornfields of Morton, Illinois, where a library book full of Helmut Krone advertisements lit a fire and grew into 4 decades of design work for some of the world's most iconic brands.

Dana talks about the sophomore portfolio rejection that could have ended everything and instead redirected him towards a multidisciplinary path, and 3 serendipitous mentors who each gave him something different: a philosophy, a permission to take risks, and the editorial clarity to know which work was worth fighting for.

He opens up about building VSA from a storefront on South Dearborn into a firm of nearly 400 people, the Chicago Board of Trade and Harley-Davidson as the relationships that put them on the map, and what it actually means to lead without getting in the way. The conversation turns to Chicago's design legacy, the fragmentation happening in the industry right now, and a genuine reckoning with what AI is doing. Not just to our tools, but to the craft itself.

As always, if you enjoy conversations like these, we really appreciate your support when you leave us a rating wherever you listen. It helps us expand our reach. Thank you so much for tuning in and enjoy the conversation. Good afternoon, Dana.

Dana Arnett [01:41]

Hello, Christian. How are you?

Christian Solorzano [01:45]

Good. We're recording this on June 30th. It's a very hot day in Chicago. How are you spending the day?

Dana Arnett [01:52]

Inside with air conditioning. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [01:58]

Wouldn't you, would you prefer extreme cold or extreme heat?

Dana Arnett [02:02]

I would say cold. In fact, I'm one of these weird people who actually camps in the winter. I've had this annual tradition of going up to the boundary waters of Canada. With Ted Stoick, who I started VSA with, and we do sort of winter camping up there in like February. But I guess you would call it expedition camping. But yeah, so cold, definitely cold.

Christian Solorzano [02:34]

I prefer the cold too, especially on days like this.

Dana Arnett [02:36]

Yeah, there's no such thing as spring in Chicago. It just goes from winter to summer. Boom.

Christian Solorzano [02:45]

So I always like to start these conversations with talking about the origin and sort of the backstory behind everything that you've been up to. And you grew up in Morton, Illinois.

Dana Arnett [03:02]

M-O-R-T-O-N. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [03:06]

What was your childhood like? What were you surrounded by?

Dana Arnett [03:10]

Well, so I was born in 1960, so it was this aspirational time where JFK came into the scene. There was the rise of rock and roll music and civil rights movement. And but where I grew up, which is central Illinois, it was mostly farming. The industry was Caterpillar tractor, and one side of my fam—well, both sides of my family have farming in their background. So it's beautiful tillable ground, as they say. And it was very simple life.

A town with a couple stoplights, very good sort of boring middle class upbringing. We didn't think of it as that, but. Kind of a simple time and Christian family values, but surrounded with a family that really cared about who I was, what I wanted to do, and always encouraged me to be creative from an early age. But you had to make your own fun sometimes down there. It wasn't like you're living in a city and you were indulged by all kinds of interesting distractions.

But in many ways, that's the only life I knew. So once I got out of there, it's when I really started to discover and evolve my— I guess you would say the creative life I live now.

Christian Solorzano [04:47]

And what were some of the things that were drawing your attention at a young age? What were you making?

Dana Arnett [04:53]

There's a couple. You try to make these little genetic connections or but, my mother's side of the family were Mennonite farmers, and my grandmother was a quilter. So pattern and color were probably well they were part of things I remembered from visually remembered from my childhood. My father was helped start the savings alone in my town. It's kind of like a it's a Wonderful Life, the Bailey look back.

So I had sort of this farming and commerce set of parents, but they always encouraged me to follow my interests, and in particular art. I could draw from an early age, and I loved to draw. And I loved to play music. My mom was a piano teacher, so there was always music in the house. But they were, if I think back, it's sort of what could have been a generative connection to design or creativity. They were always giving me sketchbooks.

I would sign up for art classes, and that was just feeding my interest, and that was my creative outlet. And my mother kept everything. She had these scrapbooks. So I have these scrapbooks of, logos I would do for school, for school organizations or the COVID for the school play or— but, it's only— it was only till later in my life that I kind of looked back and sort of pieced together what might have been sort of an evolution of what brought me to design.

And one thing in particular, I think it was 1970, I forget, early, middle '70s, I went into the library in my high school and, there was an art book section and, I was constantly looking at sources of inspiration, and I found this book called the Best of Advertising, and it was full of beautiful advertisements from Helmut Krone, Doyle Dana Bernbach, logos, things that in that time we called commercial art.

And it sort of lit a light bulb that, wow, I can actually do this on a certain kind of stage. I can perform what I like. It's not that I couldn't have been a painter, probably, or probably a failed one at that. But I began to see this, I guess you would call commercial application of what I like to do. And at the time, at that time, you'd go into the high school counselor's office and, what kind of career do you want to do?

And you take your vocational tests and they sort of figure out, figure out what you're good at or what you like. And so that was kind of the beginning of again, this consciousness that I could take what I like and, convert it into sort of what I might call an applied art. That's a long-winded answer, but—

Christian Solorzano [08:38]

And were you developing confidence in your own set of skills as you were sort of playing and exploring and researching design?

Dana Arnett [08:46]

I was really lucky because we had an exceptional high school, and I had an art teacher and I had a music teacher that they were all kind of coming out of the University of Illinois or Illinois State University. A lot of them either grad students that would come and student teach or teachers that came out of that academic environment. And there were a couple in particular. One was an architecture teacher. We had drafting, so you had industrial art classes. So I took printing.

So we had plant and presses and we printed things for the high school. And then, you had welding class and you— and then there was— and then you could kind of have an elective. So I took drafting and then we had an architecture teacher that then you could take drafting and apply to architecture. And so I came out of high school with painting, drawing, printing, drafting, architecture. And I put all that stuff together in a portfolio and submitted it to Northern Illinois University.

And lo and behold, they gave me a partial scholarship, a merit scholarship they called it. And that's when the fun started to begin and the lessons started to be learned. But in a nutshell, again, I think I was fortunate to be in an environment at the right place in the right time with the right kind of people—not just teachers, but you know a really loving set of parents that weren't forcing me to. You need to be a lawyer, or you need.

Yeah, they were always very much, very much engaged in what made me tick, and. Happy to be there and to support that. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [10:56]

And then I read that in your sophomore year at university, your portfolio gets rejected because you had contrarian views. How did that make you feel?

Dana Arnett [11:09]

Now I look back on it and I think failure and continue to believe failure is one of the most important elements of success because you have to get back up and you learn from it. Get back up, dust yourself off, start all over again, as the saying goes. But it's what you learn from it. It's not just what you learn what you did wrong, but you learn how to interact with people. You learn how to take criticism.

You learn how to improve or actually fight what you believe Fight for what you believe in. But when I got to college, it was a time where Swiss design was still sort of ruling the design academic world. Swiss style, very much the postmodern way of adopting Armin Hoffman type of philosophies, whether it's the grid or Helvetica type or. And, that was— that's foundationally speaking, that was really important.

But I was— I was— I had this insatiable curiosity to go beyond these sort of strict, stringent confines of Swiss style. And, we'd be given an assignment and I would veer off into different worlds of typography and color and composition and it's not that I couldn't do the stuff that was quote unquote required or expected, but I felt the only safe thing for me was to take chances.

And that didn't bode very well in what at the time was a very strict protocol for how you advanced within an art curriculum. Well, a design curriculum, visual communications. So in other words, you'd spend 2 years doing your fundamentals and then you'd submit a portfolio and then the faculty would all gather and evaluate who's in or out, who could continue to move on or not. And my portfolio was rejected. And going back to failure being important, it's actually—

That event shaped everything for me going forward. Yeah, because there was an immediate recognition that, okay, I can quit or I can swim upstream in a different direction.

Christian Solorzano [14:03]

Yeah. And then just shortly thereafter, at a campus lecture, that's where you meet Bob Vogele, correct?

Dana Arnett [14:11]

Yeah, there's kind of— there was kind of 3 or 4 very serendipitous things that happened. One, when my portfolio was rejected, there was a major on the books. You could major in something called comprehensive design. So I had to pivot from viscom and comprehensive design was essentially an at-large major that required so many credit hours across multiple disciplines— product design, interior design, visual design, computer-aided design, as it was called.

So that's where I pivoted, and it was this moment where I could have this— I was going back to what I really loved in high school. And it also opened my eyes up to what multidisciplinary design was all about, which essentially was very much a tenet of the American postmodern movement. The Eameses didn't care if they were designing 3-dimensionally, 2-dimensionally, film. I was starting to— well, I was now in a major where I could adopt and embrace and progress across mediums.

And at that time, I had sort of 3 chance encounters. One, Bob Vogele came to lecture. Robert Vogele, and which, his whole thinking was steeped in that bigger idea of design. He used to call it Big D. And I was captivated by it. He was very much about what— how is design a function of management? Yeah.

And how is design a very it was a design in the philosophical space of where Jay Doblin had been and the Aspen Design Conference had been, all of which he took part in. But he was actually kind enough and cool enough to not only talk to me after the lecture, but. Gave me his business card and said, come see me anytime. You seem like you're really interested, and I'm interested in young people.

And that kind of lit a match that we can get into a little bit about GSA because I didn't immediately go work for him. But I also, at the same time, was looking at the work of Rick Valicenti. He had left the design partnership in Chicago and was working out of a little space in the STA offices, and I was starting a group at— helping start a group at Northern Illinois called NICA, Northern Illinois Communicating Artists, and very much was a design club.

And I called the STA offices and I said, I'm looking for speakers to come out to NIU. Rick got in the car, came out and spoke, met me spent a day with me. I think I was like 21 years old. And that began another friendship and also a mentorship that— and an encouraging mentorship that, Dana, you don't have to— you can be a square peg in a round hole if you want to be.

And he looked at my portfolio and we— to this, that as well started a conversation that lasted a long time. But the other person that came and spoke was April Greiman. She came to NIU and I was assigned to her as her sort of docent, if you will, to take her around school, pick her up at the airport. And I had the guts to say, can you look at my portfolio?

And she looked at my portfolio and she goes, get rid of this, and that, and spend a lot of time on this. And the thing she told me to spend a lot of time on was, again, the safe space of taking chances, the pieces that I believed could define, make me happy and define a style and satisfy a sense of curiosity. But those 3, it's weird and wild to think that meeting those 3 people in the cornfields of DeKalb.

Were just another, again, just another serendipitous set of events that really got me not only excited about design, but sort of made connections that I could continue to deep well I could draw from. And so I was lucky and continue to be very grateful. That people in my life take an interest in me.

Christian Solorzano [19:48]

What about you do you think they took interest in?

Dana Arnett [19:51]

I would say my curiosity and I guess my optimism. Yeah, all 3 are different, certainly. Vogele was very much driven by— at that time in his life, he had shut down RVI and sold it and was really earnest and antsy about what he was going to do next. And so the conversations with Vogele were all around building a new kind of a design firm. The conversations with Rick Valicenti were all about, tell me about what you're doing. Let me see that.

Let me— let's talk about typography. Wow, that's cool. Where did that come from? So he was really this stylistic guru, but Vogele— so I got out of school, worked a little bit, started a design firm called Bischoff Lincoln, which was a perfect stepping-off place from NIU because it was an interior design and graphic design firm.

It was an integrated design firm, and the first assignment they gave me was doing bank interiors and a rebranding of a savings and loan out of New York called Empire Savings and Loans. And they basically gave me plane tickets, and they'd just redesigned their logo. And okay, Dana, I mean, literally fresh off the boat, 2 months out of college, they said you're going to go and talk to bank branch bank managers about redesigning their interiors, redesigning their rack brochures.

So they threw me right into the right into the water, and it was just it kind of worked for me because I'd been designing interiors and designing graphic design and computer aided design in college, and. It didn't take me long to feel like that kind of corporate environment wasn't right. I worked briefly for Steve Liska, and then I went out on my own.

And that's when Bob Vogele called me, and he said, "Well, you can have Dana Arnett design, or you can be part of something bigger." And he had—he was working on us in a storefront on South Dearborn in Printer's Row. And I came down there.

I was doing some freelance work out of that same office space for Ron Kovach, and that's where Bob Vogele, Ted Stoick, and Bruce Vogele were sharing a space, and they kept looking at the work I was doing and I wasn't doing it for them. I was doing it for Ron Kovach, but they were really engaged. So Bob took me then upstairs to his loft and said, okay, we'd like you to be part of what we're trying to build.

And at the time it was called Communication Design Firm— Communication Design Group, which was probably the worst name you could ever dream of.

For a design, but it was very much Bob trying to re-establish some kind of new design agency. And I said, so what exactly do you want to build? And this is— I kid you not, this is what he said— I want to build a design firm of the future. It's right out of the Jetsons. So I said, okay, what does that mean? He goes, I want to do kind of what I've always believed in, but I want to do it with younger people.

I want to look at all forms of design that are in service of business or arts or culture, but I want us to think about problem solving, and I want the firm to be multidisciplinary and again, it just fit right into what I believed in. But what Bob was just extraordinary at— he's not an easy guy to work for, but he was extraordinary at running an office, understanding how to scale an office, and empowering the people he hired.

And he wanted to do it in a new way. So shortly thereafter, we changed the name. We and started to add disciplines and really talented people to the mix. Jamie Koval and Kurt Schriver and Emery Rosser and all these people that brought a different skill set to bear and. People are like, God, how did you get so big? Well, I never thought of it that way. We were just—we were successful at winning business.

We had the right mindset to service big corporate clients, and Bob Vogele was helping us build the scaffolding and structure to scale. Now we had to, and it's—it's evolved greatly over the 41 years I've been. Been here, but it was really about building strong teams that could navigate and grow and weather the complexity, but still deliver something beautiful and special. So as my partner Kurt Schreiber once said, design is at the center of everything we do.

It just takes many shapes and forms, and the teams are highly collaborative and they're multidisciplinary. So it— the boutique— we started as a boutique, I mean, but we were adding pieces like writing and technology and strategy. And again, this came right out of Bob's background of working for Latham Tyler Jensen, which was an offshoot of the Raymond Loewy office where they were doing just that.

They were shaping the way corporate brands and companies looked, feel, and operated through design, and they were getting a seat in the boardroom. And so we just started to swim upstream. Yeah, from there.

Christian Solorzano [26:43]

And as all this stuff was happening, you're still in this period in your life, you're still you're relatively fresh out of college, like you're still young and you're getting sort of the mentorship from these big voices. Was there I'm guessing like that helped build your confidence, but did you have any self-doubt or what was going through your mind as you were sort of being presented with these opportunities?

Dana Arnett [27:11]

I always, what was going through my mind was I got most excited about selling, and I don't say that in the pejorative sense. I, if I could find a crack to walk through, whether it was a small logo assignment for the American Medical Association's such-and-such practice, or it was a meeting I got at the Chicago Board of Trade, and I could find a crack to walk through and apply design and get them excited and get them to give us a chance.

That was what was going through my mind because I had a level of confidence in my work and the work of the firm, and I had the backing of Vogele too. Help us manage the P&L and apply for office space. And, but, I was given a runway and that was going— that's what was going through my head. I had enough support around me. Bob used to say people support what they help create, and we were doing just that.

Christian Solorzano [28:40]

My—

Dana Arnett [28:40]

I guess what concerned me was I hadn't really found a stylistic, a signature style in my work at that time. But it just took a critical mass of client assignments to find that voice. And I would say a person that helped me shape that voice and elevate it was Kurt Schreiber, who's still with me today, or still with us today. But we were like, Simon and Garfunkel. We could just put something together and it just looked great.

And but, so the human connections I was making, the ability to trust myself and still have some of that rebel in me that I had in college, it started to get tested in the corporate environment. But I didn't. I wasn't afraid. It was a matter of skinning my knees a few times, winning a few assignments, and putting this bigger idea of the design firm of the future and putting it on the tracks and rolling it down the road.

Christian Solorzano [29:53]

And at that point that you felt like you were finally growing into your own voice, what was that turning point, or what was the, what was the moment that you felt like you were growing into yourself?

Dana Arnett [30:04]

Probably 2 client opportunities. One was the Chicago Board of Trade where I had sort of this— we had this opportunity to pitch annual reports. So I guess categorically speaking, annual report design at the time was still one of the most fertile and opportunistic spaces to practice design and put design, craft, strategy on a stage. So the Chicago Board of Trade was, I guess it launched 1,000 ships for VSA.

We got their annual report and we were able to approach, because they were not a publicly traded company, so there was a little bit of room to play, but it was really a basic idea of, can we, through an annual report, which is basically a shareholder document that documents the year in review, can we express the dynamic nature of the world's largest futures and options exchange?

Christian Solorzano [31:23]

Yeah.

Dana Arnett [31:26]

What does it feel like to be in a trading pit and leading and being a market maker? And it, in my opinion, it happened to be a good bet. It was not doing a traditional and convent— and what at the time was a very conventional style of Swiss. There you go again, Swiss style. Strict grid and your report design. It was blowing up that model and getting people to understand the essence and energy of that institution and quote-unquote brand. Same.

And we had a client that used to say, I'll give you enough rope that you won't hang yourself. So he allowed us to, and he gave us air cover to make some of the, what I selfishly would say, are some of the greatest annual reports of the era that really began to give visibility to VSA. And not selfishly speaking, but people were taking, bigger corporations started taking a look at that work and saying, wow, that's somebody, that's a firm to take a look at.

And then Harley, I had read in the Wall Street Journal where they were— the management team was buying the company back from AMF and taking it public. And I just picked up the phone and called the person that was in the byline of the news release. And it was a guy named Ken Schmidt who said, sure, well, come talk to us. We're looking for some help. And it was the big turnaround at Harley.

And that became, a 3-decade-long experience that again went— fell right into the sweet spot of VSA. We can, we can bring emotion, energy, and identity to a brand that's basically tailor-made for that. And we can do it across mediums. We could do dealership design. We can do a logo for your rider education. We can do your annual report. We can work on your museum.

And so again, this model, whether it was prescriptive or just evolving of VSA and our attitude and the energy we brought through ass-kicking design, good writing, started to translate and put some wins in the column for us. And once you start to get into that corporate echelon where CMOs and chief communication officers are talking about who they worked for and referring. It became this giant snowball of referrals.

And whether it was IBM or Coca-Cola or Nortel or Ameritech or Harley or GE, they're looking for innovators, but they're also looking for firms that can deliver because you can't screw up. With these companies. So they needed the scale of VSA, they demanded the rigor and strategic thinking we brought, and they also needed great project management, and they needed, they needed a firm that could elevate their brand.

So what was different about VSA, and I would argue it's true of other firms like Pentagram and Collins and you name it. How can design continue, or how can design be the primary differentiator and driver in doing corporate work? And so we were kind of the group in Chicago that did that and ultimately became more internationally recognized for it and just opened a lot of doors.

Christian Solorzano [35:52]

And for you, what were the personal benchmarks of success? How did you measure your own sense of growth?

Dana Arnett [36:01]

I would just say I'm one piece of this bigger puzzle or this beautiful patchwork quilt called VSA. So for me, it's a privilege to have been part of being on the ground floor, building a place where I could learn and grow every day. So that's the trick. To scaling a partnership, and then how do you make a partnership work? And granted, there's as many defeats as there are wins, and people have come and gone from VSA.

And so for me, it's about not getting in the way of people, but. Also, how do you balance leading without being too obtrusive? We got up to 375 people at one point, and that was a matter of— well, it wasn't a matter of— the only way to do that is to delegate and distribute authority and ownership.

So a lot of lessons over the years, but, the one thing that still remains true is Giving people a place where they're— where they feel like you care about what you're doing. You don't win through intimidation, and you constantly have a high bar of what you expect from a creative output or a strategic output. I do not by any means take credit, sole credit, for the success of VSA.

I feel like I've been part of a, of just an extraordinary team, and I've helped lead that success. But when you get to the scale we've gotten to and you serve this, the scale of clients we serve, everybody's gotta, everybody's gotta work in harmony, sing in harmony.

Christian Solorzano [38:06]

Yeah, when I, when I think about Chicago design, VSA is obviously right there. It's been cemented in its history. And from a, from someone that was not there while all that stuff was happening, I do feel a sense of like the '90s or like, for example, like the '90s Chicago design was a very special time period. The names that come to mind are, Thirst, Segura, VSA. And I wonder if you feel like they're still— what do you make of the current Chicago design scene?

What do you feel like it's doing great at, and what do you think it could be doing a little bit differently?

Dana Arnett [38:56]

Well, the names that you bring up, including VSA, have always paid it forward. In your case, you've been insatiable in your desire to chart the history and make sure it's well recorded, but also to make personal connections with people like Rick Valicenti, for instance. And I could— I would say that's true of many Chicago designers. They open their doors for you. They Provide spaces for shared learning. They, and I would say that's true of New York too.

I know there's generations of designers that continue to be just supported by the big names in that market. What I would say what is different, and this is more at a industry. As an industry comment, there is sort of currently— what's currently happening is there's somewhat of a fragmentation in design. It's spinning out into smaller pieces, so to speak.

There aren't as many large design firms because the function of design and corporate marketing is changing and so if I look at, to answer your question, I think there's a ton of really cool smaller firms in Chicago in particular that are sort of making the same kind of mark that we made in the '90s. They're exploring territories. They're sort of putting their stamp on a different kind of look and feel, but it's far more diverse. It was very categorical in the '90s.

You were either a large, medium, or small design firm. You were either an annual report shop, or you were a boutique that did museum work. So now we're with the utilities of technology and with our ability to publish instantly and in our and the fidelity of creating work differently, whether it's through AI platforms or just pro tools that help us do motion graphics. You're able to I see Chicago full of those kind of firms that are dancing across mediums, but still doing really great work.

I don't think there's a signature style to the city of Chicago. There certainly was. In the '80s and '90s, it was kind of coming out of that RVI, Unimark, and that's where firms like Thirst sort of broke that mold. They all worked at the bigger firms like the Design Partnership or RVI, but they sort of branched off and started their these new boutiques that were exploring non-traditional ways of expressing design. And I think you'd see that you see the same thing now. It's just.

Different tools, different people. So, I mean, that's a very long-winded way of saying folks like you. And I'm a big fan of Span because they're sort of doing multidisciplinary work at a smaller scale, but they're swimming upstream and doing big branding assignments now too. It's just at a smaller scale. And I, I'd argue that VSA is Doing the same things. We're smaller than we were 5 years ago, but, we're working cross-media and brand systems campaigns, evolving the next, the next stylistic signature of Chicago design.

Christian Solorzano [42:52]

Yeah, I asked this question because as leading the Chicago Graphic Design Club for the last 6 years, one of my one of the responsibilities that I take very seriously is to always be that bridge across generations. And, Chicago has such a strong legacy and global impact when it comes to design. And I find that sometimes it's a little bit difficult to come by, certain stories.

So I think that's a big motivating factor behind, this show here is how do we how do we become an oral history of the people that make this city? As emerging designers today, what's the call to action for continuing to push the craft forward and continue to build upon everything that's been, that's been done in the past?

Dana Arnett [43:50]

I, it first comes down to the individual. In your case, we need more people like you who are was it Churchill that said something like, we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give? So we need people like you that are hosting events and sharing information and passing along lessons and showcasing design.

COVID took a that was a big right hook at that and knocked down sort of some of the, what I would call the avenues of intimacy that AIGA provided or shared workspaces provided versus hybrid working. So now we're sort of, a lot of us are sitting at home designing.

We're not there's not as many— there's design openings, but there's not as much critical mass around the communal spirit of design as there were when I was growing up, where you'd go to an AIGA conference and there was 5,000 people. Or back in the early days, there was always a monthly show at the Ryder Gallery. So I think what you're doing— Yeah. And what needs to be done is this next generation needs to take it upon themselves to cultivate and share and tell those stories.

And if it's in smaller places, but it's— but it can be disseminated easier, like podcasts or Instagram, just to name a few platforms. It that you know that needs to happen, and will it? I guess the trick will be: Will that in and of itself? Will that in and of itself create the sort of catalytic? Forces that happened when I grew up in the field, that's yet to be seen.

But, if you're running a design firm now, whether it's a boutique, which I have a great deal of admiration for one and two-person design offices as much as I do for larger ones, it's just one of the things that I think might be missing is we used to see a lot more of our work being showcased in competitions and awards. And now it's probably getting lost in the shuffle.

It's just being posted here and there, or it's being— or something new and different is being posted every 13 seconds. So I don't know how to answer your question about the identity of what is the new identity of promoting design. But I do know there are great design— there's great design happening in Chicago, and there's a committed and caring group of people that are taking the torch, or passing the baton, as you will.

Christian Solorzano [47:23]

From this conversation that we're having right now, my takeaway is that you tend to be optimistic and hopeful. Is that a correct assessment?

Dana Arnett [47:34]

Yeah, I, you know a number of years ago, we were— when we were really growing like leaps and bounds, we were moving into spaces like advertising and media and data science. And we were looking at all those new disciplines through the lens of design and how can that be aggregated and delivered to corporate clients. But I'll never forget Joe Neo, one of our strategists, and Pat Palmer, our head of strategy, were taking a look back and they were taking a look forward.

They were taking a look back at the origins of VSA, and we were having conversations on a daily basis, and they were looking forward at the evolving and shaping landscape of technology and, the sort of crumbling down of walls between advertising and marketing and design. And they were— we were trying to boil it into what is our philosophy and approach. And what we decided was what we were delivering at VSA, our definition of design was empathy, Optimism and intent.

Empathy being always willing to listen and understand what the challenge was or what the, what the customer or the market wanted. The ability to listen. Optimism was about how design can bring to life an idea, a very exciting, powerful idea. That speaks to those consumer needs. And intent was really about what is the outcome going to be about. And so, yeah, optimism to me, it's at the center of those 3 words.

But, was it Harry Bertoia said the urge for great design is much like the urge to go on living? The assumption is there's something better hidden underneath. Believe that's probably slightly butchered. It's really about the hope and optimism of design, making things better, whether it's a better mousetrap or it's a better design solution for a corporate problem that just wasn't communicated or visually expressed the right way. So yeah, optimism is a huge driver.

And you really need it these days because the very essence of creativity is being challenged by automation. So how do we get— how do we keep optimism when the tools are changing and creativity is being automated or co-opted?

Christian Solorzano [50:38]

I went to the Obama Library over the weekend. And to me, it feels like it's just this massive fountain of optimism. There, there's just so much there was so much beauty there and optimism, and I felt like there was this shared sense of hope. There was children, there was older people, different races, and I find these times that might be perceived as quite troubling to also be full of immense enthusiasm for what's to come.

And I think design is like a— has such a great capacity to be a driver of all of that.

Dana Arnett [51:25]

Yeah. And I think in the case of the Obama Library, that it's a direct reflection of his leadership, what he believed in and how does that translate across an experience, whether it's a piece of legislation or it's a beautiful tower in a park that was put into a community that needed certain resources.

So, and I guess zooming out a little further back to Chicago, it's just exciting that his origins came from here as a community organizer, and in that, I guess I'll just go back to it. It's as simple as one person and a great idea and a coalescent team behind them to create optimism at scale like he did. In many ways, we're charged with— not nearly on a world stage like that, but we're charged with the same thing as design leaders.

How do we continue to grow the respect, the importance, the magic of design at a time where coalescing audiences could be easier? But at the same time, what is the idea that galvanizes us all? And, I guess I don't have an answer for what on the design side that would be about Chicago, but I bet, I would bet it has a lot to do with what you see at the Obama Center is that this is a city that embraces ideas, humanity, architecture, design.

And these are hardworking everyday people. We don't put design on a pedestal in this city. We make it work. And, we ask the right questions and we have enough of a heritage to draw that deep well to bring those, that unique essence of Chicago design to life. What does that translate into a stylistic signature? I guess that's in the eye of the beholder, right?

Christian Solorzano [53:55]

Yeah. And in regards to asking questions, what would have been some questions or a question that you've been asking for most of your life? What's the truth that you've been searching for?

Dana Arnett [54:10]

What have— what haven't I done yet? And what hasn't been seen before? Every time that you pick up a pencil, that's— I pick up a pencil, that's the first thing I say. How can, how can I create something so unique and so special that people are inspired by it enough to let me do it again? Yeah, I do, I do I do ask myself, what is the future of and we talked a little bit about this, you and I, a couple weeks ago.

What, how is automation and AI and generative AI changing what we do? And there's no simple answer for that, but there are sort of categorical business concerns I have about what AI is doing to our industry. And it's not just about technology automation. And I'm not saying the only way to— the only way to answer that is to embrace it and really work with it.

But there has to be walls or there has to be ethics that guide us just as would guide any sort of business or life decision. What concerns me most, though, is and again, I'm just drawing from my own experience and that of having thousands of employees over 40 years. The things I learned in the first 3 to 5 years of evolving as a designer, and those are things like hand skills and craft and having to research something on my own.

Which often led to a different avenue by virtue of the sort of manual way of researching, or the conversations that you had to have that you wouldn't be asking Claude. Those sort of human factors so essential for shaping— again, I'm speaking personally— shaping my career, shaping the way I operated, functioned with other people, shaping my craft skills.

And couple that with jobs being replaced at the lower rungs of the ladder, where those 2 factors to me are what keep me up at night is what is the future of design if we're kind of not there in the same room hand-specing type or having the conversations or allowing automation to write something or design something? What is it going to do to our industry? Is it going to stagnate its growth?

Is it going to— certainly it'll help us, achieve certain goals, but what is it going to do to the future evolution of how we practice and how we develop talent? It's a big question mark.

Christian Solorzano [57:42]

How have your conversations with clients shifted over the last, let's say, 3 years in regards to sort of this expectation of things being optimized?

Dana Arnett [57:57]

Yeah, for better or for worse, our clients think more about optimizing corporate functions, whether it's accounting or operations or— but on the marketing side, there are things that need to be automated. But the generation of ideas we're just beginning to see our clients opt to look at AI versus engaging us on certain areas of problem solving. And what that's doing at the higher level is it's carving up, it's slashing marketing budgets.

So the investment in advertising, marketing, the design is shifting because automation is forcing that financial shift of their CMO's P&L. And again, I'll be the first to say certain things need to be optimized. The big question here is what are the investments and what are the future implications of investments on human capital thinking? Paying a design firm or an ad agency a fair rate to create, to create in non-automated ways.

I don't know if I'm putting it that the right way, but again, I think there's going to be labor implications. There's going to be based on dollar shifting in corporations. Marketing and design is a cost center for corporations. The ones that do it well see a return on that cost. But I do think there's going to be an impact on, and, it's too early to tell, and it is going to be different than, the big shift I remember for us was when we went from.

Handwork to desktop publishing, as it was called. And I'll never forget hearing— I think it was Mort Goldshaw talking to— might have been Wayne Webb— at a Ryder Gallery opening about how the Macintosh was going to destroy the design industry because the PostScript fonts at the time sucked. And I remember I was with Valicenti at the time, and afterwards I said, Gosh, I hope I never turn into an angry old man like that.

And, I have to adopt that same mindset because I know that the tools and the methods are always going to change. What, again, what I'm most concerned now is those were tool shifts, but we were still manually creating with the aid of automation, but we were not automating intellectual creativity like we are now. So that story will continue to write its own, write its own outcome over the next few years.

And far be it for me to weigh in too philosophically or strategically on what's going to happen. But I do think there's going to be labor implications in our industry.

Christian Solorzano [61:35]

I've been observing that within my own, my own 9-to-5 job. And so that's why I try to encourage designers to learn the tools rather than have someone else learn to use the tools and then tell them how to use them.

Dana Arnett [61:54]

So, yeah, everybody— and I go back to what I said, it's different for every person, but to some degree, you have an obligation to ask to ask yourself every day: How am I going to grow in a professional field where I want to grow and I want to see it continue to be special? You know the not that I'm out of the leadership equation, but it I'm no longer you know on the AIGA board as I will. But I hope those conversations are happening.

At the larger association or professional level, because, we can and have proven we've had a voice in business. And, what is that voice going to be and how are we going to stand on an important set of laurels to make sure that design doesn't become a commodity? I don't think it will. I do think there are always going to be bright and brilliant young minds out there creating bright and brilliant solutions, but it's just different in terms of how that is going to evolve.

Christian Solorzano [63:07]

It's been great chatting with you, and I want to thank you so much for your time. And I hope that at some point in the future, maybe there could be a way to have you involved with the Chicago Graphic Design Club somehow.

Whenever your name comes up in any situation or context, I think there's a great admiration for everything that you've done for Chicago. So I think it'd be nice to hear your perspective more often and have you share your observations with us and have us sort of use your experience as a way to continue to keep growing.

Dana Arnett [63:44]

Well, thank you. I consider myself lucky and grateful. A nice intersection of the two being today's conversation. So thank you.

Christian Solorzano [63:56]

Beautiful. Do you have any plans this summer? Anything? Anything?

Dana Arnett [64:02]

I take a usually a 15 to 20 day motorcycle ride every year cross-country. So I'm going up into Colorado and down into New Mexico and I believe it or not, I do a lot of fishing. I have a cabin in Michigan, and I try to get away from the computer whenever possible. And then we have a little family vacation tucked in there.

But yeah, just I'm not going in— I'm not going to Europe or Asia, something crazy or cool like that, but just kind of chilling out and doing the things I love. How about you?

Christian Solorzano [64:49]

I don't have any immediate plans. I think right now I'm just really hyper-focused on some of the things that I'm working on. So I have the tendency to just work a lot.

Dana Arnett [65:02]

So yeah, no, I know that.

Christian Solorzano [65:05]

I have the energy, so I'm gonna— good.

Dana Arnett [65:08]

Good. Well, I wish you the best. It's been a pleasure. And as you said a few minutes ago, if there's ways I can help the club, let me know. I am— there's something I can offer, I happy to consider it. Glad we had this conversation. I hope I did okay for you.

Christian Solorzano [65:29]

You did. It was amazing.

Dana Arnett [65:30]

Okay, good. All right, well, thank you. All right, brother. Good luck to you.

Christian Solorzano [65:34]

Thank you so much for sticking around till the end. As always, if you enjoy conversations like these, give us a follow and leave us a rating wherever you listen. And to learn more about us, visit www.chicagographicdesign.club. Thank you.