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.

Joseph Michael Essex [00:44]

Thank you.

Christian Solorzano [00:56]

So, hello. Today I am your host, Christian Solorzano, and I'm thrilled to be speaking with Joseph Michael Essex. In 1970, he graduated with a BA in visual communication from Virginia Commonwealth University, and he started his career as an art director for the same station that produced Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Joseph has spent his career asking questions and finding meaning and reason throughout the process.

In the last 5 decades, he's led projects and teams for organizations across various industries, such as educational institutions, industrial manufacturing operations, healthcare facilities, entertainment, you name it. From 1987 to 2021, he was a principal and managing partner of what he refers to as a vertically integrated communication practice named SX2. And his work has received over 500 awards from virtually every trade group, association, and arts-oriented museum in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Today, he leads JMSX, a communication consultancy that provides advice and counsel to corporations, institutions, associations, and independent creative offices and agencies. His goal is to help others implement plans, personalize, their creative leadership goals. So it's truly a pleasure and privilege to be speaking with him today. So welcome, Joseph.

Joseph Michael Essex [02:27]

Good morning.

Christian Solorzano [02:29]

So I want to start my first question by asking you, is there any question that you wish someone asked you?

Joseph Michael Essex [02:38]

Why didn't I take the cooking job that was offered to me before I graduated college?

Christian Solorzano [02:43]

The cooking job. Could you elaborate on that?

Joseph Michael Essex [02:48]

I paid— that's okay. I paid for my junior year in college as a preparation chef at a seafood restaurant. And the summer before I went into my senior year of college, the restaurant was opening another restaurant in a different location, and they offered me the job as the sous chef for that. But I had to take it now and had to commit, and I had to quit college. Because it meant a quasi-management job within that kitchen. So I would have been there every day.

And I thought about it. I actually thought about it for a couple days. And I just— I chose to finish my college more out of a sense that I'd already started it. I paid a lot of money for it. I'd earned all the money for it. And so I figured, I'm going to do this. I'm going to see where this goes first.

Christian Solorzano [03:39]

And is cooking still— does cooking still play a role in your life today?

Joseph Michael Essex [03:43]

Only that I probably do most of it for my family when they're here. But it's not, it's not part of the job anymore.

Christian Solorzano [03:51]

So let's go back in time. I want to understand what your childhood was like and how did you get into design?

Joseph Michael Essex [04:00]

I'm going to, I'm going to say that I'm not looking for sort of sympathy, but just the sense of Try to answer your question as truthfully as possible. My mother was divorced when I was not quite 3 years old. My father was a man with many talents but very little character. So we— I was born in California, and because of the divorce, we moved back to where my mother lived in Washington, D.C.

And so I grew up on the East Coast, and that experience and being sort of a one-parent family made a, made a difference in a great many ways. But it's part of, part of the experience. All of the things that went into that sort of just the 3 of us, that's with my younger brother, we were all just sort of trying to make things get better each year.

So my mother moved almost every year or so, and every— to a better neighborhood, to a better house, to a better environment, better school systems mostly. And so it wasn't until I got to high school where I had 3 years in the same school. So it was part of the sort of moving around a lot. So except for art classes and sports. There are a lot of missed opportunities, as well as unexpected ones.

Christian Solorzano [05:30]

And looking back now, how do you think those years shaped your perspective as you moved on in life?

Joseph Michael Essex [05:37]

Well, it took me a long time to get over being angry, so maybe that's part of it too. But it was very focused, very driven. The discipline of athletics, in a sense, means that you practice, you perform, you do that on a regular basis, and you have a routine. It's the discipline. But the same thing applies to being in the creative arts. You're looking to look at the same kinds of discipline, but possibly the motivations are more forgiving.

So you're in one environment where very little is forgiven and one where every— almost everything is forgiven. So you're constantly shifting gears. That, I think, has made for a more broader perspective on asking broader questions and sometimes taking a few steps backwards before going forward. So those different and conflicting, maybe they're conflicting or paradoxical experiences and areas of interest make a big— made it, I think, have made a big difference.

Christian Solorzano [06:43]

And do you remember when, at what point did you decide that you wanted to get into design, into graphic design? What was that introduction like?

Joseph Michael Essex [06:55]

Dan Voss. Dan Voss was my first typography teacher. He— it was a night class, and the night class because he worked during the day. A very interesting man, but primarily his job was to do calligraphy on awards and certificates for the federal government. So he understood the mechanics of typography, but he also understood the aesthetic components of it.

So he would go to work early in the morning, he'd work up a rhythm of doing O's and diagonals and different kinds of script to— as signing these different awards for people throughout the federal government for different achievements. And he would work, no lunch, and he would work through the end of the day. Doing best work after— in the later afternoons because the rhythm was there. And he started expressing those things when he first started talking to it.

And then moving into typography and what the structure of typography and letterforms was extremely interesting to me. The same applies with what I spoke about earlier. There's an enormous amount of discipline about understanding typography that is drawn for mechanical application. From letterpress to digital experience. There is a discipline at a, at a minute level in order to make letterforms do what they're supposed to do, how the mechanics of what you can see at different sizes, at different distances.

At the same time, his aesthetic considerations, drawing letters. One of the things we were asked to do in his class was to basically start drawing letterforms at 12 inches high. And different letters and different experiences with that. We're using different materials. So we had a sense of how the letter forms came together. That organization and that aesthetic expression was extremely interesting to me, a lot more so than I thought it was going to be.

But that was my first sort of— I went into the visual communications, or at the time it was called commercial art. I mean, you have to remember, this is 19— oh God, was it '67 or something like that? '66? So it was a different kind of experience.

I learned about design in college, and the design that started to talk about the— started with the product component, and it moved over the years, over the decades, into the process component and how much the process of design influences the effectiveness and the final results of the product of design.

Christian Solorzano [09:38]

And outside of your education and the things that you were learning professionally and at school, what was your world like? What sort of media or content did you find yourself surrounded by or consuming?

Joseph Michael Essex [09:52]

Well, growing up in Washington, D.C. There were 3 daily newspapers. And besides the newspapers, television was a significant part of my life in the sense that I enjoyed the news. I enjoyed politics. I enjoyed keeping abreast of what was going on, not only just on the editorial pages or the sports pages, the financials, the comics, everything was about that. One of the things I found is entertainment. I'm a little embarrassed to say it quite this way.

I would love to go to newsstands and look at all of the magazines, look at all of that stuff that was there. It was news, fresh, and, some of it was weekly, some of it was monthly, but the images that were there, the experiences that were sort of everybody's life in the world. It was a lazy Susan of images that just kept moving as much as I wanted to move. So I could, I could spend an afternoon in that.

And that in later years moved from newsstands into bookstores. So that kind of component was fascinating.

Christian Solorzano [10:53]

Yeah. And do you still have— do you— what's your memory of the first thing that you, that you consciously designed that perhaps sort of just stuck with you, or what was the first milestone in your creative career that still sticks with you to this day?

Joseph Michael Essex [11:14]

Well, this may be a little longer story than you want, but it sort of explains things to me. When I was in college my junior year, the Richmond Art Museum— I'm sorry, I don't remember the formal name of it— But it was the— it was a wonderful museum. I mean, it had a Henry Moore out front that you could, you can look at, you could touch. It was outside. It was just fascinating. But that's sort of beside the point. They started the first design competition.

They brought in— they asked people from the colleges and universities, from the professional community to submit to this. And the reason they got them to submit, got people to sort of paying attention to it at all, was that the judge was Paul Rand. And it was a, it was a big deal, it was a really big deal. So people submitted, and I submitted some, something that I'd done, and I got that in the show.

But the other people in the show were my teachers, and all of a sudden I got a diff— I got paid attention to differently because I was there with 4 of my teachers and 3 of my classmates in this comp— in this show. And the college made a big deal about it, took us out, had pictures and so forth in that. But all of a sudden, I saw myself in a community of like-thinking people, and I was the youngest one in the group.

And it made me feel like I could do this. This is going to be— this is something. I'm— this is the way you don't feel these things like this in a sort of a commercial world. Certainly not at a young age unless you're in some kind of athletic thing where you get that kind of attention and you got that kind of attention for doing something you really have just scratched the surface on. And that was a big deal for me.

Christian Solorzano [13:08]

Yeah. And I know design competitions is something that has played a huge role in your life. And I know that there's, you have some stories around Chicago as it relates to design competitions and your involvement with the STA 100. Can you tell us what design competitions were like back then? What sort of work was getting submitted? Did you— do you notice that the criteria of, how things were judged has shifted over the years?

What were people looking at then as, work with value as opposed to today? What are some of those differences for you?

Joseph Michael Essex [13:49]

I think more like any enterprise, the people who are doing the best work recognize and identify with others who are doing similar work and you— to a similar standard. And you can see things that other people don't see. That's one of the things that's always fascinating about a competition of some kind. You're looking at an experience where you can see what's important and why it's important. You can see why something works and why it didn't.

And you start to develop, even at a distance, a kinship with those that can do similar work or that can do work that you're learning from. Everything has something to give you something back. And that was the fascinating part for that competition. So you didn't feel like you had a reputation, but you thought you were part of the group and you had a certain level.

It's an enormous building of confidence, of a sense of accomplishment, that you are part of these people who are doing great work, and you are with them. Even if you're on the low end of the scale, you're still on the scale. And when you do it nationally, that's one thing. You do it locally, sometimes that's even more important. One of the things that's different now is that there aren't local competitions, hardly anyplace anymore.

And so the people don't know who else is out there doing work the way they do, or doing work differently or doing it better or where they fit into that environment, what it is they have to learn from, who can they learn from. That part of it is lost because it's so expensive to do those things. Printers would print catalogs of that. Associations would produce publications. I mean, except for the Type Directors Club, who continuously have held up the standard.

AIGA has done it as well nationally, but you're looking at a situation where there aren't that many competitions, where it's not so expensive, at least getting more and more expensive to do, but where you could join, you could participate, you could send something in, and it was meaningful. The STA 100 show was something that where I had an opportunity to do something specific. The show was, started in the, in these, in the middle, I guess it's the early '70s, and I did the first one.

I was the director of that competition. So I brought in judges that I wanted to meet, people that were interesting from different parts of the country. And the idea here was 100 pieces, no matter how many people, peaceful people entered things, there were only going to be 100 pieces in the show, which added another sort of a line to be crossed. And that show was very well managed, not just because of me, but other people that did it year after year after year.

Because of that, in a sense, you were making conscious decisions. Judges, people from different environments, had a chance to talk to one another and engage face to face. That's even more difficult now. The judging process now is done mostly online and one at a time. And people don't have a sense to negotiate with one another. So that's a, that's a difficult process, but that experience with shows gives you a sense of you are part of a greater community locally, regionally, nationally, internationally.

The international component now is almost more important because you're getting information and experiences from other people, but things you haven't even considered. Influences move more quickly, the effectiveness of it. The disappointing part is that the audience is so large that by comparison, the shows are very relatively small. Good work doesn't get recognized, and new work, young people don't have a chance to get into there because they're so expensive to participate, to do, to send in one thing as opposed to sending in 4 or 5.

There's a community out there that's missing the participation of the next generation, the generation of people who are, who are seeing things from a different context, from their perspective. I think that's unfortunate.

Christian Solorzano [18:04]

Yeah. And again, yeah, because I've always thought of competitions, at least the ones I have witnessed, as an interesting snapshot of where design stands culturally. And it's always really interesting to look at the catalogs or look at the selected pieces by year. And you see an evolution of visual language throughout time. And to me, that's always really fascinating. And I do agree.

I think it's— I think there were— I wish there was also more local competitions because it would be nice to see, what were— what was Chicago thinking about in 2021, 2022, and so forth? So maybe that's something that at some point— I know STA still has their 100 competition, but it'd be nice to sort of see more maybe grassroots initiatives come forth? Because I agree, I think there's a lot of value in just seeing what other people are doing.

Joseph Michael Essex [18:58]

In the, in the early no, the early '80s, the AIGA chapter here in Chicago did a— did something called a one-shot show. And the whole idea here is that the members could enter one piece in a show, not a judged show, but a show where you, whatever it was that you wanted to do, and, the fees were just basically for logistical, for to manage stuff, to print stuff, to, for the event itself.

But it was a show where there was, it was unjudged and you could submit what you want. Some people didn't send in traditional things in the sense from their work. They sent in things they made. People designed furniture or played music, did animation, along with the print, along with the websites, along with publications. It was just, it was a sense of this was my community. And because it wasn't judged, you were judging the work that you put in. It was amazing.

And people who were, again, starting out, didn't get a job, had to start their own businesses. Nobody knew they were there. They had a following. They found out that there was a place for them. And the second generation, the people that were moving from the computer, from the small little boxes to the bigger ones, to the disciplines that were involved animation and that transitioned into film and to adding the music, all those people had an opportunity to show what they were doing.

To friends and fellows, and the community got bigger because of that, and the chapter got bigger and more successful because of that. They found a sense that there were more people who could participate, who were not just wanting to contribute, but had— that had things to offer everyone else. That was, that was amazing.

Christian Solorzano [20:56]

Yeah. And as you look at design today, are there any is there anything specifically that excites you or draws your attention? What do you— how do you look at the current state of design today based on, your decades of experience?

Joseph Michael Essex [21:16]

Well a few things.

One, I had an opportunity a couple days ago to listen to Terry Irwin from she's at Carnegie Mellon University and she's managing the particular program that deals with the second or the third generation of design as process, not design thinking, because I think that's a— that's sort of a handle that's been stepped on and needed to be because you move past it quickly, because it doesn't really focus on really what that means, which is in a sense having design as almost like a scientific method where you are analyzing what you need to do in order to achieve or accomplish things.

And you're also looking at the teams you need to put together in order to gather this information, the expertise you need to bring together in order to make things be accomplished. And the kinds of problems that can be addressed are not necessarily visual ones, but they're practical, cultural, political issues that can be addressed by people who think in the design as a process components.

The end result of it is it may not be a physical thing, but it may be something that changes people's lives or makes a difference in people's lives much more so. That's sort of one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is that you're looking at people who are making a difference at a, at a more personal day-to-day level.

The design is better Many cases when you can do face-to-face, when you can talk to your clients, when you have the experience to recognize that your abilities are not defined by the discipline, by the, by the mechanics of doing a brochure or creating a trademark or developing the iconic artifacts of a particular brand, but you in a sense go across those borders. You communicate, you write, you create other experiences, you create an expertise that's learned by participation.

That kind of engagement gives the designer not just tools, but a level, a way of approaching things that may not have been approached or considered before that. It doesn't mean that there's not depth discipline. It's like being in the medical profession. It's not about a specialty.

It's about taking the general practitioner to the level of being able to be a diagnostician, somebody who in a sense can diagnose, can triage, but at the same time carry that expertise or that interest, that energy level, that idea of a common goal, a common set of things to be accomplished, to give them a sense of being able to take something from the beginning to a resolution of some kind. Because the resolution has been defined. But those are things that are always exciting.

Christian Solorzano [24:18]

And I like that you mentioned writing because you and I have talked about this in the past, and you mentioned that writing plays a really big role in how you understand and how you communicate design, just the process of design. So could you tell us a little bit about your— that relationship between how you communicate and how you write and how you design and how the 3 of these different, how this framework of 3 things sort of intertwines and is related to one another.

Because I've been trying to do more writing as of late, and I've noticed that when I write, it sort of encourages me to know what I know or to understand what I thought I knew, and it's just a fascinating thing. And I, and unfortunately, I don't— at least in my education, writing was not really something that was encouraged as part of the, as part of the design process. And I'm always trying to advocate for that in some of the work that I do today.

So could you speak a little bit about that? What is, what does writing mean to you and how does that shape your work?

Joseph Michael Essex [25:30]

Well, for me, it's like I have a— I had an aha moment. I was fortunate at a very young age and early in my career to have experienced a mentorship at great distance with Herb Lubalin. And one of the things that I learned one day in his, in his office in New York is he had this pad of paper, this Bing Fang, I think that was the brand, but it's like tracing paper. Translucent almost.

And he would be drawing an ad or whatever it was, he'd be drawing it and he'd take the piece of paper that he drew. And with a copy there, he would indicate the copy or he would write the letterhead or the title of whatever the piece was on the piece. He'd do the drawing, so forth. And then he would take the piece on top and he would take it out and he put it under the next piece underneath it and he'd refine it.

And this wasn't just with the drawing, but with the forms of the letters, with the text that it was provided by the, by the client or by the writer. And little by little, as he would move these things from one place to another, he would be refining it. And he told me that he, in a sense, sometimes he would rewrite things.

He would write things because not only to make it better from a written perspective, simpler language or something that flowed better, but that it also broke letter line for line to make it more likely to be read. More meaningful by being able to punctuate something or being able to have subheads or things like that. So we started with the structure of the text and start and went to the language within the text. And he said, you should be able to do that.

The experiences are the same and the process is the same with designing. You are in a sense making judgments one thing after another to make it more clear, more accessible by somebody else. So it's just another application. And so all of a sudden, the writing as a as a wall to be climbed all of a sudden became a curb. And so you moved into that area. It was, it was something you'd given permission, and that was a big deal for me.

And the same thing that as it's gone throughout my career, have respect for people who really write for a living, how difficult it is to say so much in fewer and fewer words because the attention— the difficulty is getting people to pay attention to it for long enough to understand and appreciate, to accept, and then join into some kind of action or response to that text. It has to do with how it looks and how it's worded and how it's positioned.

And how— and the nature of seeing it as a film as much as it is By seeing it as a publication. It has movement, it has position, the same way that a poster— a poster is successful from 25 feet away because you're looking at a title or an image that moves the person closer to it, so much closer every step they take, there's an opportunity for more information to be absorbed. So the designer is doing that. But the writer is doing it as well.

The language and how the language is positioned, those things are intertwined. If the language is enough, you can do it in a few words. If the subject is complicated or it's broken up in different manners, then you can, again, bring the level of experience up the same way that good magazines have a title, there's a subhead, there's a deck, there's an opening sentence, there are paragraph breaks, there are callouts. They give the reader a break and they keep them moving.

It's both language from a visual point of view, but it's language from a communication point of view.

Christian Solorzano [29:23]

And I was reading through one of your posts that you have on your website. You have a series of what you refer to as views, and one that really stood out to me was one that was titled, I hate design, followed by— Followed by, I hate graphic design.

And sort of the way I understood that piece was that you sometimes think that the term itself is a little bit confining and that it sort of puts designers in a box as to like, these are the only things that you're limited to produce or think about. So as I'm hearing you talk about this, I think the way that you're approaching this is that you're looking at the designer as this multidisciplinary person that isn't just limited to their quote-unquote medium. Is that a correct assumption?

Joseph Michael Essex [30:17]

Yeah, I'm more than— my parallel, or what I think works, is an actor. He or she as an actor can play a variety of roles. They get typecast, and sometimes they typecast themselves. The same way that designers do. Part of that has to do with the educational system, and this is a bug for me. If the classes are set up, you start with basic understanding of a visual language as opposed to teaching people how to use InDesign.

You have to prepare people and students to think about communication and design and the interaction between individuals from an art— from an aesthetic perspective because it's cultural. All of these cues and all of these little tricks and tips are based on experience. This is how we learn from children to being young adults to being seniors to being really seniors. They're all— these are habits we get into and we don't let ourselves recognize that those are habits that we have to make choices about every day.

Most of the time, the human beings do things the way they've always done them, unless something happens that gives— that makes them consider a change. And those are important days, but they don't— they shouldn't be, they shouldn't take a catastrophe. Somebody shouldn't have to die. Somebody doesn't have to fail, or for those things to be recognized as, I should have done something different, or I should have considered my other choices. That is about where I think design is.

It makes you consider that things change in the world and that what you did once may not be appropriate now, or there may be other opportunities, other materials, other ways of accomplishing. Nobody now thinks about doing an identification program for a company that doesn't involve digital experience. In all of its forms, you have to have something that has a visual component in it that is excitable, application across all disciplines. And so the walls can get broken down.

But what I'd rather do is start thinking, let's break down the walls about thinking about it early on. And there's more permission. I mean, our offices and the different places that I've worked, we've done television commercials that were part of an identification program, little introductions to things. Radio commercials. How's that? Nothing visual about it at all, but they were tied in. The language was tied in with creating visuals that you could see over the radio.

Share those experiences, share those aha moments, those sort of triggers that give people a reason to pay attention. And that's part of it, but it means that you have to collectively do that across disciplines to do it well.

Christian Solorzano [33:15]

And I also understand that you're not very fond of the S after the word communication. So rather than being referred to as a communications designer, you prefer communication designer. And I guess, again, like that sort of makes sense hearing you speak about this. So could you speak a little bit more about that, like the differentiation between communications versus communication? Because I, I'm always really fascinated by those little nuances in language and, how we— the reality that we create through the words that we use.

Joseph Michael Essex [33:54]

I used to have lunch with a guy named Bob Vogele. And the interesting thing— Bob, for Chicago, is one of the— one of the developed 2 or 3 really fantastic design offices, probably one of the best judges of talent of design talent that I've ever recognized. But we would have lunch on occasion. This is after he retired. And he told me that my, I don't know, bug about the letter S is from Bob. He told me.

So I learned from him that, he said that S, and he said, of course, there are times that you put an S at the end of it. But it says it's a mistake. Because it makes you think about it in a different way. Communications is a noun. Communication is a verb. And as communication, it is a process. A process, a thing that moves from one place to the other. And that not— and it has an activity and action to it. It's not passive. It's participation.

And for me, that is a way to remember it. I'm sure there are many cases where the S would be appropriate. I'm not a grammarian, but for me, I can put my arms around it and embrace it as an activity where you can participate, where it is symbiotic back and forth. It gives people a chance to be engaged with one another, to create things that are meaningful, and teaching, learning, experiencing, sharing. That's where communication is a physical experience. So more than you wanted, I'm sure.

Christian Solorzano [35:39]

No, I love that because I tend to always think about those little nuances as well. And even the term graphic design is something that I sometimes have a little bit of a difficulty with because I think today just design has evolved to mean so many different things, especially as we, as product design, as digital design continues to evolve. So yeah, I love that. I love that you're thinking about that, and I love that you're being critical about language in that regard.

So I wanna, I wanna transition over to a question that I always like to ask our guests, and it's, and it's related to community because as the Chicago Graphic Design Club, that is our focus. Our focus is to be a community for designers to engage in various conversations around theory, craft and practice of graphic design. And I, I'm always really fascinated with people's answers to this question, so I'm going to ask you the question.

But what do you think are some of the ingredients that make a successful community?

Joseph Michael Essex [36:46]

Shared sense of participation. And it's not about, it's not about the sense of I have this and you have the same things, or we went to the same school, but we have the same or similar set of values, and that we can tolerate other people who don't share exactly— that don't fit exactly into that mold. I'd say tolerate is probably the hard edges of the extreme, and most people aren't like that. You're looking at people that come from the same place. They've made similar choices.

That's what a community is— people that are there. Sometimes they're there because they were born there. But it's about how you interact. One of the things that I learned early on when I was at Burson-Marsteller, a very large international public relations firm, I over time, I was given responsibility for the offices in the United States and the creative parts of those offices in the United States and Canada and South America. And each one of those offices, each one of those offices didn't have a creative department.

The larger offices did, but each one of them didn't. And so I had a chance to go into those communities and to those offices to sort of talk about how creativity and a design experience could help each of those offices get better, and then to prospect for business in those different communities. At the same time, I learned about all of the different designers who were in those communities, and I could see them in smaller parts of the country. And in those marketplaces, they were good people.

There were people who were doing work, not work like I was doing, different kinds of clients, different kinds of businesses. But there was an opportunity there to, in a sense, recognize that there's a lot going on that we don't see, that we don't even know really exists out there. That, and again, you take that and you take it to other continents and other countries, the whole world. There are more and more talented people out there doing things that we know absolutely nothing about.

Unless somebody has published a book, unless they won a competition, we don't know they're there. They're there, and in your marketplace in there, it's important to seek those things out and to recognize it's important to you to gain from those other people that are there. Most of the, most of the sort of accelerated moments in my career have been because I have met or experienced relationships with people that taught me things. And they weren't just people who were older.

My wife and partner, Nancy, teaches me something every day because she is so much more patient and she listens so much better than I do that I don't— I need to slow down and pay more attention on a regular basis as opposed to assuming I know what I'm doing all the time. Yeah, I'm not sure that— I'm not sure it actually gets to what you were looking for, but—

Christian Solorzano [39:52]

No, I like that answer because, yeah, I was listening to something yesterday and I think there— you mentioned that just being able to tolerate people who don't fit the same mold. I 100% agree with that. And I think over the past, over the past few years now, something that a conversation or a point of discussion that I see get talked a lot is just the power of diversity and inclusion.

And although I do think that those conversations are to be had, I think true diversity is being able to tolerate people that are different than you and being able to be around people who think differently than you. And it's not just always about certain attributes of a person's identity, but I think it goes beyond just diversity of thoughts. And I find that to be really important.

And I honestly, I wish there was more of that in our community because I do sometimes feel like I run into these echo chambers that although they do appear to be diverse, it's not always the case. So yeah, I just wanted to add that to sort of what you said right now.

Joseph Michael Essex [41:09]

I have a— I usually don't tell other people's stories, but this is the kind of thing that would make a— maybe it'll make a difference to somebody. A former boss, mentor, friend, John Massey, was teaching at UIC here in Chicago. He had this senior class and it was a branding class and he had variety of students.

You almost had to audition to get into the class because he didn't teach a lot, but he— but it was pretty intense, and the people who got out of that class learned a great deal. But he told me a story once about him. There was a young man from— I think he was from Korea— who was in the class, and he— his English was not good. It was difficult for him, but he understood it more than he could say it.

So he's making a presentation, their final presentation to the rest of the class of their semester-long project. And he's having difficulty talking about it. The work looked wonderful. Everybody recognized the quality of the things that they were looking at, and they were— but they couldn't get— his English was holding back or limiting his ability to speak. And so John told him, just say it in Korean. And so he did. He just started speaking in Korean, talking about the pieces, and everybody was getting it.

They were understanding his gestations, his language, his enthusiasm, his level of detail and attention in his language. He was, in a sense, talking about this project and everybody in the classroom was totally engaged and embracing the experience because it was beyond the language. It was about that kind of enthusiasm, that kind of experience. That's enormous.

It's totally it's the thing you only really see in sports where it crosses boundaries, where the abilities are obvious beyond the, beyond the language, beyond being able to teach about it, but to physically see those things happening and seeing that other people who shared those experiences, who shared that understanding, could appreciate the abilities. Every industry has its own vocabulary, has its own language.

George Bernard Shaw said that the medical profession— and he said the professions use their own languages to keep other people out, but maybe not, probably true in some, to some degree. But they, every discipline has its own metaphors, the way they talk about what they do to other professionals. And in a sense, you can see those things in the work. Particularly when they get them explained to you, why that means that.

I think one of the reasons why cooking shows are so fantastically booked and owned in the world today, in television and bookselling and all this other stuff with it, they are— it's because they're learning the tricks. They're learning the discipline. They're learning how to prepare food from the professionals, and they're seeing the inside stories. That's really the kind of thing that draws people to those experiences. You now understand why this is better, why this tastes better.

They're being taught, and that is— anytime you learn something, you have grown. It starts with reading and goes on with travel. You become a different person because you've been more because you participated as opposed to passively stayed in your lane.

Christian Solorzano [44:52]

Yeah, no, I love that example that you shared. That's the first time I heard that. So yeah, that's certainly so beautiful to hear that. Because yeah, there are certain— I, I've experienced certain moments that just transcend language. There's just that you just it's like this embodied experience of, seeing what's in front of you and being able to understand things that are outside of your immediate comprehension, if that makes sense. So—

Joseph Michael Essex [45:22]

Oh, fully. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [45:25]

So I, so I wanna— so you've been in Chicago for some time now, and I was reading something about how in the mid-'90s you built your home with your wife in Wicker Park. And something that I discovered is that the two of you have a fascination with exposed concrete and being able to, and being able to see, being able to like see the guts of your house.

And to me, that 100% translates to sort of what we're talking about, which is this interest in truth and this interest in reason and understanding. So could you tell us a little bit about your home? I'm really interested about, in your home because there, there's an article there about that I read about it. So you— did you design your home in Wicker Park, or tell us that story?

Joseph Michael Essex [46:21]

Well, the first, the first 6 years of our marriage and our business partnership we opened, we opened Essex 2 the same year we were married. And we had our office in on Michigan Avenue, 5,000 square feet across this Across the street from the Art Institute, and we were there for 6 years. When we decided we wanted to have a family, we restructured and changed the nature of the work we did. We got smaller.

And we got smaller and tried to focus it primarily on branding or extended or revitalizing brands because they were longer-range projects and we didn't have to travel. I didn't have to travel so much. But we could do that. So we wanted a place where we can live and work. I worked with an architect in Richmond.

I worked with other people around the world, across the country, people who had some specialty, but they lived and worked in the same place, and they could have a normal kind of family life. So we built the building to do exactly that. We worked with architects, people we'd shared clients with. Wheeler Kearns, the architects here in Chicago. They— the interesting part for us, it's sort of a little sidebar here— they got an award for designing our place back in 1995.

Okay, so 1995. 30 years later, they got another award for being the best. Again, they got another award for being— the award was for one of the being one of the better architects in the city of Chicago by the Architectural Society. But they've been doing good work that whole time. They're incredibly talented people, but they also have an affinity for materials, as we do.

So we have a crossover kind of experience in that we share the nature of being able to see what it is that's doing what it does. So our house, they didn't— I'm going to say this, but they didn't call it this, but I did. It's sort of a Japanese shaker style. There are— the materials that make the building are obvious. The ductwork is not exposed, is not hidden. It's part of the operation.

The building that— the walls and the floors and the ceilings that are held up, you see steel elements, you can see the concrete panels, you can see the texture of the floors, you can see the flaws in the manufacturing process. Everything is open. It's basically all of the weight is being carried on the outside walls so that the floors, while there are floors and so forth, they're 11 and 11 and 10.5 feet tall in each of the 2 different floors.

It's just a little under 5,000 square feet of the building on a double lot in the city of Chicago. It's set back from the road the way a house would be, but it but at the same time, it looks like some kind of a commercial building from the front. It's different, and it fits and suits us. It's very unforgiving for children. You have to prepare for that because it's all concrete and steel. So you have to recognize sort of the industrial process in that.

But our children, until they left home, they hadn't lived anyplace else. And they grew up in this environment and they sort of expected other things don't work as well. So they have a very elevated or educated or different experience having to deal with a place where the walls are the walls. The conduit that runs the electrical or initially that all the conduit is either On the attached to the side of the walls or it's running through the concrete, that part of the, part of the floors.

Christian Solorzano [50:19]

No, I really like that. I'm into automatic watches, mechanical watches, and I like them for the very same reason that there's, that there's a mechanism that's inside that's working on its own without any battery.

Joseph Michael Essex [50:34]

So, again, it's, it, yeah, there's a physical component that gives you a sense that there's an there are the post and lintel systems that, in a sense, provide structure. It's a metaphor for everything else. I mean, the stairs, the stairwells. The guys who actually did the fabrication for all these things, they all had multiple degrees. The guy had a degree from the Art Institute as a sculptor, and he designed and built the stairwell, the stairways.

And they're just— they look so much lighter than they are, and they're concrete and steel. It's just, they are pieces of art.

Christian Solorzano [51:17]

Yeah, well, I haven't had a— the article that I found, I believe it didn't have any images, so it's— I'm just— I'm using my imagination to try to understand what it looks like, but it sounds beautiful.

Joseph Michael Essex [51:30]

Go to the website. Go to the website and it's marked 2210. That's, you can see pictures there.

Christian Solorzano [51:39]

Okay, will do. So we're almost at time. But before we, before we end this, I do want to ask about, I want to ask you to, I want to understand what are some of the things that are keeping you inspired today, or perhaps places that, or places or things that you're drawing hope from?

Joseph Michael Essex [52:10]

Well, I would tell you right now, the thing I'm the most proud of, that we, that Nancy and I are both proud of, is our children, our sons. They are totally outstripping us. And they have contributed such to our lives. That it sounded like we did something right. And they, they're not copies of us in any way, but they are so— their education, their experiences, the risks they take, the things that they are passionate about.

There are fewer and fewer lines or fences in their lives than in most people's, and things that we may have had to learn the hard way, they see it as a natural experience. And so those are the things that I'm continuously proud of. I mean, as you can tell from this experience, I'm used to talking a lot.

When I'm around them, I just listen because there's so much more, just so much more that they know that they have to offer now that they're just totally unaware of. And that just is so— it just creates such a prideful moment for me.

Christian Solorzano [53:23]

Yeah, and what are they— what— how old are they, and what are they— what are— what are they up to?

Joseph Michael Essex [53:29]

Oh, I'm not gonna— oh, they are in there in there. Let me see, Graham is going to be 28 and Reed will be 26, and they are they are accomplished at multiple levels. They have an aesthetic that is always part of their— always part of their lives, but— and they're involved with professions that require both an aesthetic consideration and a practical logistical component. They have so many of their mother's refined skills of being able to appreciate music and to create music. They both do that.

But at the same time, they have other experiences and other gifts that are shaping their lives on a regular basis, whatever that is.

Christian Solorzano [54:16]

Definitely something to be proud of. I don't have any children, but I have a younger brother. So very similar to you. My parents, my parents separated when I was probably around like 3 or so. And I have a younger brother and it was always just my mom, my brother, and myself. And very similar to you, I think I grew up pretty angry and I think I'm softening up as I get older, but the anger's still there somewhere.

But I think it's just I'm able to harness it better now, I guess.

Joseph Michael Essex [54:48]

Well, part of it is I think as you get older, you recognize it more. You recognize it more and you try to manage it in different ways. Those are good things to pay attention to. But about children, I was 48 when our oldest was born. So don't, you have time.

Christian Solorzano [55:16]

So for anyone that's listening, one of the things that we always ask our guests to speak on is for the, for the design leaders that are listening to this episode, is there a call to action or anything you wish to see more design leaders do more of?

Joseph Michael Essex [55:35]

Maybe it's about one of the things that I've been wrestling with in relationship to JMSX Limited, the creative leadership job that I'm working on now, is that men and women in their late 30s, early 40s are at critical stages in their career and they double down on the things they're doing and their efforts at the same time to focusing on their business and managing expenses and managing their personal lives, their social lives. It's very complicated and it's very involved.

I'm just suggesting that if they take time to engage with the people who are their employees or their colleagues that are younger, that are in their 20s, and in a sense reach back a little bit and try to give them Pick a few people and call them up, buy them a drink, and let them talk about— let them tell you what's going on in their lives, and you can help and be mentors.

I have had so many people throughout my career who have been so incredibly generous with me. I have stories, hundreds and hundreds of people that have made a difference for me that I had to go get to extend myself to. I told you when I judged the first— when I created the first— when I managed the first STA 100 show, I got to pick the judges.

When I judged the first— I managed— when I managed the AIGA 360 show in the '80s, I got to pick the judges, and I picked people I wanted to meet. And I've done that several times. When Chicago had when Chicago did, when Lance Rudder started the Chicago International Poster Biennial, there were 11 designers, 11 poster designers that were judges in that show, and I managed the judges.

So I got to meet all of these people from all over the world, and they contributed to me in the sense of their language, their experiences, why they chose the posters they did. It's just a fascinating experience. I think if there's anything I can tell people is that don't wait until you get— until you figure you've got it all figured out, because you really never do. And if you do, then you're over.

There's always something or somebody who has something else to offer and that has talents beyond the ones that are obvious.

Christian Solorzano [58:14]

Very well said. Thank you so much, Joseph. This was this was wonderful, and I just really loved our conversation here. So I appreciate, I appreciate your time, and I appreciate everything that you said. And yeah, and I, and I hope that in the future there's, there could be some opportunities for us to collaborate on something, because I certainly would like to continue to yeah, to learn from you. I think you have a lot to teach.

Joseph Michael Essex [58:46]

You're very kind, very generous. Thank you.

Christian Solorzano [58:50]

All right, awesome. We'll talk soon.

Joseph Michael Essex [58:52]

Take care.