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 on today's episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Rick Valicenti, and we are both going to be talking about the production of the latest publication by the Chicago Graphic Design Club faculty, which came out a few weeks ago and which is available for purchase through our website at www.chicagographicdesign.shop.

And we're going to be telling stories of our favorite moments of the production, which started in late 2024. We're really going to get into depth in regards to the typography, the layouts, the grid, some of our favorite pieces, some of the most memorable moments, and just highlights from the collaboration that spanned over half a year. And we're going to be sharing some of those works. We're going to be flipping through some of the pages and hearing the inspiration that sparked a lot of the ideas.

And Faculty is a publication that is dedicated to celebrating design, visual communication, culture, and meaning-making specifically focused on Chicago. And it's just a great, a really great issue that we're really proud of. We feature over 30 designers, and it spans, across things such as interviews, project highlights, essays, really personal moments that capture today's visual communication landscape. So really cool issue. Thank you to everyone that's been purchasing a copy. It means the world to us. And every purchase goes through funding.

It goes to funding what we do. It funds our programming, and it just serves as encouragement to continue to produce more and more amazing things here with our community. So thank you all so much. Thank you to Rick, and thank you to you for listening. And as always, if you enjoy conversations like this, Please leave us a rating wherever you listen. It means a lot to us and it helps us expand our reach. So thank you and enjoy the conversation. Hey, Rick how's it going?

Rick Valicenti [02:32]

Fine, Christian. Nice to see you.

Christian Solorzano [02:35]

So this episode, we are both the subject matter of today's episode, but also I like to think that every single person that contributed to this publication is also a guest on this episode. And although they're not here with us, I do feel like they're here through these pages.

So I want to spend the day with you, or like the next hour or so, talking with you about the production of this project and give people an insight to some of the behind-the-scenes stories that originated in late 2024 when you and I started working on this together. And it's July now. Today's July 1st.

Rick Valicenti [03:24]

Yes. Did we start in 2024?

Christian Solorzano [03:27]

We did. I think we started before, around the holidays. You came to Chicago. Yeah, it was, it was in 2024.

Rick Valicenti [03:37]

That's right. And we met in a coffee shop, right?

Christian Solorzano [03:40]

Yeah, we met at a coffee shop, Brew, called Brew in Wicker Park. And I remember you had, I think, matcha, or I forgot what you had to drink. And then I drove you to your car afterwards.

Rick Valicenti [03:56]

Yes. And at that point, did we decide to Collaborate on this publication, or?

Christian Solorzano [04:05]

We did. You— we sat in the back and on a couch, and you— I had my computer with me, and we set up the grid, the grid system, and we combed through all the contents, and we determined the structure that most suited the type of content that we received.

Rick Valicenti [04:30]

I remember that. We were looking at the different kinds of page typologies that were going to be in there, right? From the editorial to the singular portfolio entry to the double spread to— and at that point, we also decided to do those small pages that could jog to the bottom, right? Those occasional half pages, those little inserts.

Christian Solorzano [04:51]

Yeah. And we spent— I think we spent about 3 hours, and I'm pretty sure we could have spent more time, but it was getting late.

Rick Valicenti [05:00]

It was getting late. And I think from there, then we decided we would do things on Zoom. And that would be me in Toronto, you in Chicago. And we, I think for the most part, were we not doing it like 1 day every 2 weeks or 1 day a week?

Christian Solorzano [05:18]

Yeah, there are some times where we would do once a week and other times every other week. And we would mostly meet on Sundays, sometimes Fridays, and we would just spend a few hours. And I remember the objective was always, let's get through a handful of spreads.

Rick Valicenti [05:37]

I think a handful was actually smaller. It was like 2 to 3 spreads. Yeah. Sometimes we'd surprise ourselves and go fast because it'd be just one thing that would, jump the gutter and we'd be done with it. But even the most simple designs, for instance, it was the piece that Jason Pickleman worked on for the Chicago Design Museum, or the Design Museum of Chicago that seemingly was a no-brainer.

But we really did spend a lot of time sort of getting that minimal touch of the pieces of type on the left and the right side of that spread. Yeah, to be just right. And here it is right here. I love this spread. That's Jason's kind of wacky piece, but there was the center axis on the right side and the flush left axis on the left side. And I think here we were using a point size that was about 6-point in Jackson's Euchre.

Christian Solorzano [06:43]

Yep. And I remember—

Rick Valicenti [06:45]

Just 2-color.

Christian Solorzano [06:46]

And I remember the eyes in that artwork, that adjacent piece, that was a happy accident because originally the submission was— it was cropped. All of those eyes were not on the page. And when I cut— when we copied and pasted from Illustrator over to InDesign, that's— the layout just happened on its own.

Rick Valicenti [07:12]

Yeah, that was the placement. I remember that. You had drawn the whole thing. And then you place it in the center and those eyeballs that had gone beyond the, yeah, the verticals were this there. I was like, oh, and that's—

Christian Solorzano [07:26]

I remember I told you that I think I asked you, is it okay if we keep it as is? Because this is not how it would submit, how it was submitted to us. And your response was that Jason was your friend and this is how he would have liked it laid out. And I think that was a nice little, a nice little backstory to that piece.

Rick Valicenti [07:50]

I think so. And I think his son Willem and his wife Leslie would also be delighted in how much respect we gave this, because at some point Jason saw those eyeballs beyond just the frame that the museum poster size demanded. Yep, it's really nice. And I think the use of Jackson's new typeface here really got a run around the block, because while we have the— I think it's the boldface— we have the regular, we have the regular italic, and then we use the old style figures.

Yes, for the date. It seems like, of course you did that. But it's just the right touch. We decreased the justification settings from the standard to be 80. And I think the texture of his type certainly benefited from it and looks great.

Christian Solorzano [08:50]

Yep, I agree.

Rick Valicenti [08:52]

At one point when we were doing the, our type styles, we thought, well, we're just going to do a kind of simple thing. What did we end up with? Like 6, 8, 10, 12 or something. It was kind of basic like that. And it was auto-leading. Is that how we set that up? Yeah. But after the piece was published, I remember your first comment to me was, oh, the leading's too much.

Yeah, we let the leading be too much. And here's Jackson's own submission of his font, and it is a little bit tighter. What he's done, and maybe what we should have done to sort of heighten the respect, was to go to Jax and say, can you help us with our style sheets relative to your typeface?

Christian Solorzano [09:43]

Yeah, I did talk to him about that. I, when I saw him a few days ago in person, I told him that the type could have been a little bit smaller and it could have been a little bit more influenced by his specimen. On that.

Rick Valicenti [10:01]

Yeah. So I think that's the lesson, in the future when there's another typeface that's picked, assuming that it is a typeface that's in and of itself being introduced and created by a living designer, then we go to that designer and say, do your thing.

Christian Solorzano [10:20]

Yeah. Jackson did say that he is working on a serif Oh, really? Yep.

Rick Valicenti [10:28]

We'll be ready for the next issue.

Christian Solorzano [10:31]

Well, if he's listening to this Jackson, get on it right now.

Rick Valicenti [10:37]

Let's go. Come on, come on, Jackson. Yes. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [10:45]

So I want to spend some time talking about your Inserts, because one, it's really beautiful, and also it feels so, like you say, of the moment, but at the same time it feels so Rick. I, even though the image, the imagery was AI generated, I do see your fingerprints across every single spread layout. And I would love to hear you speak a little bit about just the inserts and meaning behind it and just give us a little preview into your mind when you were producing this.

Rick Valicenti [11:34]

I will be happy to do that. Let me first acknowledge that the 24 pages is a collaboration, at least in formal sense, between myself on the left— or I'm sorry, on the right with the imagery— and then Paul Sitch, a friend of mine who is in Toronto, as the typographer. He would respond to the drawings and the illustrations and use the title of that character that I gave him. So he would make these pieces of type. So for instance, when he did Blade, right?

There was this image right here of her earring. It becomes the foundation for that type. So what I did, the— like lots of things that were layered before this 24-page book happened. One thing was I was curious about AI, and you saw that in your first yeah. Faculty where I did the 6 pages.

Christian Solorzano [12:34]

This—

Rick Valicenti [12:34]

And I was getting better at it, and I was able to create some characters, and I was having a great deal of fun with the characters. But it wasn't until the opportunity to do this publication came to life and the working title, which was Wonderland, happened. And it was about the same time that the administration in Washington was changing and just the sort of desire for graphic design to become part of the conversation.

For designers to no longer just be complicit in either silence or in messaging creation that belonged to the wrong side of history, but to actually inspire them to know that they could become their own superhero.

So I took these superheroes and what did I do? I just like imagined their role in the world. Here's Stardust, right? And Stardust As a whole desire to just like add twinkle everywhere. Yeah, right. Well, that's a really good thing, but at the same time, we need somebody like Blade who's gonna cut through all the naysaying.

And realize that there's a lot of lies being told, and she/he is just gonna make certain that doesn't happen anymore. So I went into ChatGPT, asked them for a 150-word description, gave a little bit of backstory on who I thought that character should be and where they came from. Never did ChatGPT see the images, but I think this particular spread here where Paul is responding to this portrait— I gave Paul lots of variations of this abstracto character at different ages.

But this beautiful piece of typography here to me is just magic. But here's the essence of it. We know that a lot of superheroes Are at their roundtable. And it says here in each one of these, they're all color coded. It says resistance. And there is a little arrow underneath each character and it points down to the dotted perimeter of the gray form. And the gray form here is Mega Thing. And Mega Thing is just sort of a bad spelling of mega.

Right. For those who wanna know. And of course, greed and corruption sort of oozes out of a gilded mouth. And here we are. The siren calls. And that's his siren. And the superheroes, they come until at the end of the book. I'm just giving away all the ciphering that one needs to do. Mega-thing is gone. It's empty. Resistance has now turned to Wonderland, the theme of this issue. Arrows have turned to hearts, and we're still bound together in a circle.

That's the story. I thought this message needed to be put forth so that we could all find a little bit of ourselves in the Resistance. And it was my pleasure to put it out there. But did I also use it as a sort of learning curve? Certainly. Did I also have fun with some of these motifs? Like this motif, this little chamfered thing reminds me of like an old cassette player.

Right, where you'd have that identification. So I thought that was good. And then you can see here the staples are black. That was just a little design detail. I'm not a fan of using white paper and then having silver staples. I wanted red staples, but the black staple is pretty cool. And Paul Sitch did such a fabulous job just working with me here. There's one of my favorite, Ballisticat.

Look at that type. It's both mod and hip, and it works just Great with this little character. But my favorite one is this one, this character here, Hackpot. And Paul's calligraphy. So good. So good. So that's a keepsake.

Christian Solorzano [16:56]

Yeah, I really like it. And I've been and let me share my screen really quick because I have been playing around and I've shared some of this with you. But I have been— can you see my screen?

Rick Valicenti [17:12]

Yes.

Christian Solorzano [17:13]

I have been animating some of these.

Rick Valicenti [17:16]

Oh my God.

Christian Solorzano [17:17]

And it's just really cool.

Rick Valicenti [17:19]

You bring them to life.

Christian Solorzano [17:21]

Yeah. To see them come to life because they— They feel like they're just waiting to be activated. Like they're like those wind-up dolls that you just need to wind up and they like, they do something.

Rick Valicenti [17:38]

So yeah, in the Pierre Poudel, who you just animated there, I have done his whole history, like what were his ancestors like?

Christian Solorzano [17:51]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [17:51]

And then what is the pack that he runs with?

Christian Solorzano [17:54]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [17:55]

Who are those folks? So maybe at some point we can introduce them on social media so that people can collect the whole set.

Christian Solorzano [18:03]

That would be cool.

Rick Valicenti [18:05]

But it's just a kind of fun moment to explore new technology in service of a message that's relevant. And to just see if they can double dutch with one another. That's what I like playing with. I'm not very good at any of this technology. I mean, really, I haven't backed up my machine in 1,900 days or some bullshit like that. So I'm just waiting for the whole thing to come crashing down.

Christian Solorzano [18:33]

Yeah. And can you paint for us a picture of when did you work on these, on these images? Was it early in the morning? Was it in the evening? Was it— did you have long sprints where you were just spending a few hours just, working on this stuff, or kind of just like if someone were to walk in on you mid you working, what would, what would they see? Are you in the dark?

Rick Valicenti [19:03]

I was in the basement, however, so I keep my studio on the lower level, perhaps. But no, I like to work in the morning and sometimes it's very early in the morning.

Like right away. I do get lost in the process, however. And I look for times where nobody's around. There's no responsibilities of walking the dogs or anything. And then I can indulge. And it might be 2 or 3 hours of just putzing around. I'm not good at going to YouTube and learning how to write a prompt.

And so I find myself bumbling through that process on my own. Along the way, I've found some hacks, and both of those hacks were evident on the center spread. Where the resistance does come to life. I'm going to see if I can get to it here. Midjourney won't let you show Donald Trump, but the hack in the prompt was leader of the free world.

Show me the leader of the free world, being coddled by young little sycophants or by tradwives going, oh, Daddy. Yeah, that's what I was doing. I think like, oh my God, I found a hack and I found a kind of editorial, political editorial format that when outlined with the stripes of the American flag, yeah, I could put the insert right there, or you could, in that center spread and have the red and white stripe around make a thing.

Relate to. So anybody who's thinking about the ciphering of this messaging, it's right there.

Christian Solorzano [20:50]

I remember when you shared that Trump piece with me, I got nervous.

Rick Valicenti [20:57]

And rightly so. I mean, you'll never be able to leave the country again. Or get back in if you do.

Christian Solorzano [21:05]

I got, I got nervous because the Chicago Graphic Design Club we've never— we've always strayed from any kind of political anything. And I take great pride in the fact that we're just not vocal about those things. Although I would say a lot of what we do is a political act of resistance against Business as usual.

Rick Valicenti [21:38]

Yeah, that's what I want to point to. I— you keep talking and I'm going to find the 2 pages that counter exactly what you're talking about.

Christian Solorzano [21:46]

Okay. So yeah, so I've never wanted to— and frankly, anytime I see an organization or institution parade their political ideologies or whatever, to me it comes across as like a type of virtue signaling, which I don't like at all. So when you share that piece with me, it made me nervous because I, it just made me nervous. And I remember that I slept on, I, the day it ended and I went to sleep and all that stuff.

And then I think it was in the middle of the night that I woke up. And I realized that the piece was actually really brilliant. And it's a magnificent timestamp of this year. And I think 20 years from now, looking back at that, I think it's going to be a nice marker of what things were like.

Rick Valicenti [22:52]

I think so. First of all, I'm very grateful that you let it be printed. And I think you're audience ought to know that while you fund the publication itself, you did not fund the insert. I did that. And you gave me a platform to distribute it, those 300 copies. But just to challenge you on your apolitical position, I would say this spread, and I have to just keep my finger in here, this spread.

That you designed and you wrote, and I think together we sort of resolved the typography on the strikethrough until we get to the end. What you're doing here is you're making a very sharp comment on the profession of design and the kind of vocabulary or lexicon that it often hides behind or pumps itself up with. I call that blunk. A friend of mine, Rob Wittig, who's now in Minnea— in what is that town in Minnesota? It's very cold. Whatever. It's way up there.

He coined blunk, and you just erased all the blunk here. It's so good. But I love this image. This image, I don't know what it's of, but you created it. And we do know that the midtones on most of the pictures that were printed are just a little bit thick. But here, the thickness of the midtones really strengthens that picture. What is that image of? What's the source of that?

Christian Solorzano [24:27]

So that image, I went to the printer to collect our— I went to the printer to talk about paper, and I had my phone on the table, and my camera was on, and I accidentally snapped a photo of the edge of the table. So the dark piece of that is the surface of the table, and the green is the carpets. And it just looked like such a dystopian landscape. And immediately I wanted to take a jab at those buzzwords, the blunk. I wrote that word down.

Rick Valicenti [25:08]

It's a good word. I know it looks good in all caps or initial cap B or even lowercase italic. It looks good.

Christian Solorzano [25:15]

And I just, and I operate in that world. The— in the world of those buzzwords. And I just, I don't like it. It's so icky. So—

Rick Valicenti [25:27]

It is. But I think that's a bit of a political jab that you made into a really important profession, graphic design, what we call ourselves, like communication designers. The whole world we live in now is all about communication and narratives and manipulating perception. We are so complicit in this. So complicit. And yeah, it's good. But here's another one here. This is a very powerful piece of political design.

Right. And this woman, Grace is her name, I think. Yes, Grace Hamilton. It takes like really intense jabs at the profession, but shrouds them in beautiful design and typography. Yeah, this is such a powerful 4 pages. Yeah, with 8 posters.

Christian Solorzano [26:20]

I think the other political piece was the Duh piece. And that was another that was more commentary on my views on designers showing their grids.

Rick Valicenti [26:40]

I know. I remember you were doing that big rant to me, how much you hated that when every time there would be a designer showing off their new logo and they animate the grid. And yeah, of course they have those things under the hood, but it doesn't matter, right? And so you— there it is right there. And what's so sweet about this is the grid for the publication, I think, is revealed.

Christian Solorzano [27:07]

It is. Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [27:08]

Yeah, this is the publication. And then this piece of type that I have done here, hand drew a long time ago, just says duh in a kind of Bodoni-esque font. But in the background is your dog. And up in the corner, it's like G asterisk D plus D asterisk G. And then down here in the corner is the cutest little postage stamp of 2 Muppet-like characters of you and me. In the Ryerson Library at the Art Institute.

Christian Solorzano [27:45]

Yeah. I think of that spread as someone walking in on you and you have your pants down and they see your grid. Okay.

Rick Valicenti [28:01]

And to all your listeners out there, there's some sweet moments in this publication that I think we should, we should celebrate. Okay, let's celebrate a couple of them. I want to celebrate that page. Not only is that a fine piece of typography, it says 5 PM. The designer here, Johnny— how do you say his last name? Johnny M-E-I. How do you say that?

Christian Solorzano [28:32]

May.

Rick Valicenti [28:32]

Johnny Mei. It's a special moment, 5 PM, when work ends and play begins. It's the time when emails pause and meetings fade. Whether you're heading out for an evening adventure, gathering with loved ones, or simply unwinding, 5 PM marks the beginning of freedom, an open invitation to enjoy the rest of the day on your own terms. Johnny's right, but it sure would be nice if there was never a an alarm that went off at 5. We were always in that state of being.

Christian Solorzano [29:00]

I agree.

Rick Valicenti [29:01]

And it could happen all the time. Sadly, we're in the world of commerce. Yeah, I mean, some of these things are great. This Creativity at Work, this was not only a fine piece of typography here, but there were 4 illustrations. Yeah, that are quite handsome. And this fella, what's his name, Aaron Sutherland, yeah. He talks about these as being his finest works. I know. That's really a great thing to have published. Both for him and for your audience.

Christian Solorzano [29:34]

And I got a chance to meet Aaron at her party, at her party this past this past Saturday. And he was just, he was such a sweet young designer. And to me, and I've said this in the past, but to me, the success metrics of the club are when people come up to me to express their gratitude for having the space to share their work. And to me, that's like, when I think of highlights, I think of stuff like that, like those comments coming from people.

Rick Valicenti [30:13]

I think that's true. I know I feel that way. Yep. And for us to spend time with the submission of his words and to give some structure typographically to what he had to say, that's a bit of a privilege.

Christian Solorzano [30:32]

Yeah, and it's very poetic. I think the way that the typography was laid out there's a cadence to it. It could have just been, typeset very, generic, but I think the exercise of putting this together to me was really fun to do.

Rick Valicenti [30:54]

Yeah. There were some end of line decisions that we focused on. Like we focused on making certain we weren't ending a, any given line with a 1 or a 3-character beginning of a sentence. We weren't ending a line in most cases with a small preposition.

So we'd have those forced returns. This, however, shows some exceptions to that. And the reason we have exceptions is because there's a boldface in what you just mentioned with the cadence, boldface in what he has to say that we want to bring attention to. And in order for that to sort of slippy slidey through the page and also be kind of keen and legible is we needed to keep a preposition at the end. It's okay to create for the sake of wanting to.

Well, that little T-O at the end of that line needed to be there. It needed to be in boldface. I think that works good. Occasionally when the preposition would be at the end of the line, like the word and in column 2 in paragraph 3, we're just changing the weight of it.

Christian Solorzano [32:05]

Yeah. And can you talk a little bit more about the end-of-line decisions? Because working with you was the first time that I was ever introduced to the notion of end-of-line decisions even being a thing. And now I cannot unsee the end of lines when I'm, when I'm reading something.

Rick Valicenti [32:26]

Well, I'm not certain every typographer or a designer cares about the end of line decision. Some designers, in using a flush left ragged right situation, will look for what I've heard called the zipper rag, where it's like short line, long line, short line, long line, and you can feel the zigzag back and forth. For me, the most important thing is how do I read that line and where do I take the breath, the visual breath, before I return to the next line?

And how does it end? So if I'm dangling some beginning of a new sentence out there? Why can't I just do a hard return after the period, leave the IA or the AS, cut it down to the next line? That makes the reading for me easier. And then the same thing's true with the prepositions. I want to feel a preposition or phrase begin on the left as opposed to just like.

Christian Solorzano [33:22]

Yeah. And where'd you learn that, or how did that become something that you—

Rick Valicenti [33:29]

I don't think I was ever taught that, but because I'm dyslexic and reading is already hard for me to do, it just evolved. Like I told you, when this publication arrived, the first thing I did was I read it. I hadn't read this publication before. Even when we were typesetting it was a formal exercise. But having had a chance to read it was kind of a pleasure.

So reading is not an easy thing for me to do. And those end-of-line decisions just became a device that I could use to make it easier. And I think it looks better.

Yeah, I think, I think it really does look better. We didn't adhere to it all the time. Like I can see here on what this spread, which I think is a fabulous collection of work. There's a dangling little a there at the end of line 2 in the, in the copy. It's like, oh geez. But it's okay. It's okay. We also— I remember— Yeah, these are so cool here. I think this is quite interesting. This piece here says, take time.

And then we didn't know it when the sequencing was done that Tanner's work on the next page is also called Take Time. So that was both a happy accident or a weird little coincidence. I love Tanner's work when he can do these ribbons of typography that just extend. It's completely original and his voice. But what we did do across the bottom when we listed everybody's name, we changed the typeface that he had given us to be Jackson's Euchre.

And I think this comes in at what point size? This is like 10 or 12 point.

Christian Solorzano [35:22]

Yeah, something like that. Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [35:24]

Yeah. It's very nice. Very nice. Oh yeah. Remember this day when we were doing that page?

Christian Solorzano [35:35]

Yeah. That was another, that was another moment where it was you Being Rick.

Rick Valicenti [35:45]

Uh-oh.

Christian Solorzano [35:46]

And I remember you texted me a sketch of that idea of like the drip going through the text, the Liquify. And I've never used the Liquify tool ever in my life. I think I used it when I was learning Photoshop when I was like a teenager, and I would like liquefy people's faces.

But it was cool. I really liked it. And it was another one of those things where I came, I came with a layout and you complimented it and you said nice things about it. And then you said, what if? And I, and I just trusted you and we arrived at that. And I—

Rick Valicenti [36:31]

Yeah. But the first thing I remember that layout, it didn't have this little glyph that they had done as a page by itself. I think I challenged you. You had it small with the text. And some other headline here. And I just said, what if we just took this?

Christian Solorzano [36:49]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [36:50]

And you said, oh, the resolution's not so good, right? So we ran it through a blur filter, right? This is like old Photoshop tricks. And it made for a really fine editorial piece of art. And I love the eyebrow, or the eyes turning into a smile. It's really quite sweet. And then we came over and looked at the photograph that we had been given.

And said, well, that ought to sort of relate to the drip in the type that's going to come right down to this image under the clip. And it seemed all natural in hindsight.

Christian Solorzano [37:28]

Yeah. And I remember for that image in particular, we did take it into Photoshop and we worked on the color a little bit to bring in some more like vibrancy to that red, which—

Rick Valicenti [37:42]

That's right. That's right. Yeah, that's right. I think that helped us too with the yellow and the lemon. Yeah. Yep.

Christian Solorzano [37:54]

I'm trying to share something really quick. Oh yeah, go ahead.

Rick Valicenti [38:02]

I'm just looking at David Sieren's family portrait in the books. This is such a touching story that he's done, and 3 generations of Serens, all sort of dealing with their favorite book covers and these cute Myrick Hallman-like renderings of book covers by, I think, his daughter or his son.

Christian Solorzano [38:32]

Yeah, his daughter Ava.

Rick Valicenti [38:34]

Ava. It's so sweet. And then of course we did have— I think this was a difficult layout to do, right? Yeah, very difficult. And we had like so much text on the page and the kind of rhythm of it. And then we were faced with these 2 puddles of copy. Yeah, down here that we made 6-point type. Or is it smaller? Maybe 4-point type.

Christian Solorzano [39:01]

I think it was 6.

Rick Valicenti [39:03]

It was small.

Christian Solorzano [39:04]

Yeah, it was, it was small.

Rick Valicenti [39:06]

Yeah, I think that was your critique at the end. Yeah. But I think we were testing. Oh, I see a little thing that we should have caught.

Christian Solorzano [39:18]

Uh-oh.

Rick Valicenti [39:19]

We should have caught and removed the period after Henry Dreyfus, column 2 on the left side of the spread, entry number 07. There's a period there. Not like we should point out all the mistakes for everybody to zero in on, but I want to talk about another mistake that I think Resolved itself so beautifully. Remember when we were doing the COVID The idea on the COVID you had, which was you wanted to do a coloring book. What if it was just a white cover?

Christian Solorzano [39:51]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [39:52]

And we would encourage people to color. Yeah. But how would they know? So we somehow ended up at the eyeball and we ended up at the steel rule die that was going to give us a nice deep kiss on the blind deboss. We were going to have that same deboss pressure up here in our description of faculty and wherever faculty— oh, there's faculty up here in the corner, but we're printing on the spine one color.

And sure enough, when the book is all done, you say to me, I checked my file, but John the printer has inadvertently left off yeah, the date, the issue number. And I went, oh, it's too late. We can't have them reprint and rebind. That would be a shame. Why don't you just handwrite it in a silver or black pen? And you did that. And I think this touch of having it be issue number 2, 2025 is just the right human touch.

Christian Solorzano [40:55]

Yeah. And that was done— the handwriting was done by Cheryl. And we spent an afternoon together in my house. I think it was like a Saturday morning, and we just put all the stacks on my table, and she just went down every single issue and wrote down issue number and the year. That was fun.

Rick Valicenti [41:19]

Yeah, so she was writing these horizontally to— oh yeah, I see it right there. Yeah, so the 2 is a little difficult. That's great.

Christian Solorzano [41:28]

And then, and then with the COVID I do want to share my screen really quick. And Cass, who is Cass Pokora, who, if you're listening to this, Cass I've already told you how much I like this.

Rick Valicenti [41:43]

Yeah, it's mind-blowing. It's so cool.

Christian Solorzano [41:45]

She came to our release party on Saturday and she brought her copy in her purse. And when she pulled it out, I think she like apologized. She's like, I'm sorry if this was not what I was supposed to do, but here's my copy. And this was what she did to it. She painted on it. And she said that one of the reasons why she did it is because the COVID the paper of the COVID Just like it was like an invitation to be drawn on.

And I feel like the visual that I get is that story of someone pulling a sword from like a stone and it's like she cracked the code, like she figured it out.

Rick Valicenti [42:38]

Right away. Yeah. It would be fabulous if the people who own this publication enhanced it, not violated it, enhanced it their own way and sent you pictures of it. It would be the collection that you wanted from the very beginning. Can you tell us about the paper? And is this the paper that Andrew Dembitz helped you source?

Christian Solorzano [43:00]

So this was the paper. The paper is the Ames Painting Vellum Solar White. And it's not the paper that Andrew helped us source. It's originally we wanted to do the canvas.

Rick Valicenti [43:16]

That's right. That's right. You and I have talked about Eames Canvas by Nina.

Christian Solorzano [43:21]

Yeah, but that paper was— we would have had to wait more weeks. Like everything would have been delayed if we wanted to go with that paper. So this was the alternative, which I still like. It feels very nice. It feels like drywall.

Rick Valicenti [43:37]

Like it feels like that's high praise for paper. That feels just like drywall. I'm sure they're mortified at Neenah paper thinking like, oh my God, we made a paper that feels like drywall. But what's interesting here, you print so few of these. This is a limited edition of 300 copies, and in the future, the merchants and the mills who manufacture and distribute paper should be looking at their text and cover libraries saying, we have some broken cartons here.

Yeah, we might want to send access to those broken cartons to Christian because his audience is going to be specifying these papers in the future.

And they just don't know, right, that it exists. So this was a cool thing. And I think it aligns itself with the principles of the club itself, theory, craft, and practice. This publication is doing all of those things and in a very generous way. Yep, I agree. I want to point to a couple of entries in here that are quite meaningful to me at least. And even though I love this Milo alphabet, yeah. Story, and it's placed just perfect at the beginning of the book.

It's like, boom, here we go. But it follows this one here. It's called it Doesn't Stop Here. And this young designer, let's see what his name is. Allie Walsh. Is Allie a she? Sorry, Allie. What's so sweet is she tells us that she's gone home and discovered that the software that she uses at work to do logos and whatever client-requested things can also be the medium in which she can express herself outside of the workplace.

That is a— for someone my age, it's like, duh, of course, right? But the discovery of that and the fact that it's in your publication is so charming and so kind of heartfelt that we have to have it. And it's quite an interesting image of, pollution. Right. The Earth is not feeling so healthy with black drips coming in. So I think that's quite cool. And then we contrast that with the upscale learning that's in the Colossal story. And the Colossal story is about the website development.

And its strategy and its process. I mean, here, even on the blue page is this strategic outline, which I'm going to come back to in just a second from a typesetting point of view. But, we're using the Faculty 2 as a teaching tool. So any young designer going through here is going to go, oh, what happens in the Firebelly world?

Christian Solorzano [46:46]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [46:47]

What happens when they're led by, those designers who've been around for a while? How are they thinking? How do they unfold it? And oh, by the way, it looks super cool, right?

Christian Solorzano [46:57]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [46:58]

What we did here, there was a— when they wrote the copy, I don't know which one of the members of Fire Dolly did submit this copy. However, there were 2 instances of bulleted text. And we arrived at a different kind of solution for bulleted text, if you remember, where we would line break, em dash, flush left, next bullet item, line break, em dash. And that just, to me, cleaned it up a little bit instead of those unsightly indents.

That a bullet has. Though I think that the contrast between this and Ali's entry are quite extreme. And when we talk about theory and we talk about craft and practice, we're also talking about generosity.

Christian Solorzano [47:47]

Yeah, I agree. And I think the other prideful moment for me for the publication is that stories like the Colossal piece are— I really value that the club does not gatekeep. And that we're open about the behind-the-scenes moments of what goes into the work. So the fact that someone can flip through these pages and hear from the team that produced this work, it's amazing.

I just, I mean, even this conversation that we're having, I don't think I've ever heard a podcast or a conversation where it's 2 people talking about bullets.

Rick Valicenti [48:36]

Well, I guess they don't know. Yeah, but there's some mind-blowing things too that are sort of like just before you get to the Jackson Cavanaugh thing and the colossal redesign. There's this from Guy and Sieren, their garage flyers. Yeah, all seen those flyers posted in Chicago. But their ability to take those, collect them, recontextualize them, collage them, and deliver just those 2 things. Harkens back to futurist work, Dadaist work.

Right. But they're doing it in a way that's— I don't know whether they're making a pointed comment about this kind of graphic design that's ubiquitous and out in the public space, or whether they're just using that design as formal fodder. But whatever, it's a statement, I think, just about turning waste, turning the ubiquitous graphic messaging into something that's compositionally rugged and cool and engaging. And again, of the moment.

These are just stunning things. And when we were doing this layout, I remember we got to the point like, do we just center these things? Do we give them both full pages? What do we do? And we came to the conclusion that we're going to run one of them into the gutter. And then we'll do a surround of color. And the surrounding color was an easy color to pick. It was just let's pick red.

And I think that was 100% magenta, 100%, maybe 80% yellow or something.

Christian Solorzano [50:32]

And they feel like tipp-ins. The—

Rick Valicenti [50:35]

They do. Yeah. Tipp-ins that are different than the yellow tipp-ins. Yeah. Which are jogged to the bottom. Right. Those are just for structure. You have to do that. Otherwise they go all over the place.

Christian Solorzano [50:47]

I love the little detail when we got to this page here where I said, what do we put up here? And we just put more collages, ellipses.

Rick Valicenti [50:57]

Yeah. Because there are no more collages after that. We have to like call Guy and Sieren. It's like, hey, show me more. No, this is fantastic work. And it's coming off of this work by— what is her name here? Mikhail?

Christian Solorzano [51:15]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [51:16]

Mikhaila? That work is so fine. Yeah, there's so many interesting stories where people are indulging themselves in their passion in and around typography as it relates. Sometimes they can make a pointed cultural statement, sometimes it's just decorative, but it's always Indulgent.

Christian Solorzano [51:40]

Yeah. And then, and that was a nice throwback to Thirst Hype because we dug through the archives and bridged the past with the present by using one of those.

Rick Valicenti [51:56]

Yeah, by Chester Jenkins. This one was, I think, on the little insert that we posted on Instagram. I refer to this as rheostatic, but I think it's just— it's either rheostat or rheostatic, whatever. But it's the opposite of the rock band that Chester Jenkins was playing. And this was a Canadian rock band back in the '90s called the Rheostats. Could they be called the Rheostats or rheostatic? Whatever. It's just the opposite.

But he did a great job. He made a very legible font. Just out of dots. And Mikhail's doing the same thing. Very cool. Very cool. This is the secret cipher page, isn't it?

Christian Solorzano [52:43]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [52:43]

You have anything you want to say about this page?

Christian Solorzano [52:45]

Well, that photograph, that photograph was taken at Sputnik Press a few months ago, and that was one of the drawers that they had there, and it says CGDC. And Cooper Black.

Rick Valicenti [52:59]

I know, and you credit Oswald Bruce Cooper. Do you know what year that was done in Chicago?

Christian Solorzano [53:06]

I don't know the exact year.

Rick Valicenti [53:08]

I think it's around 1919. This is like a little over 100 years old, this typeface. It's still relevant and squishy and commerce-oriented.

Christian Solorzano [53:19]

And it's just such a cool spread. I just love that it really yeah, it's dirty.

Rick Valicenti [53:24]

It's cool. Feels like it's been carrying a lot of ink. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [53:29]

Very nice. Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [53:37]

Yeah. That's very nice. Oh, should we give away the secret? There's some secret typesetting. Of course, there's this juicy piece of type. Can you tell us how you made that?

Christian Solorzano [53:55]

I made that in Adobe Illustrator by just playing with the 3D. There's a 3D thing in it, and that's what I did. There, it was just me experimenting, and it feels like bubble gum. It feels playful. And I love the sheen to the type.

Rick Valicenti [54:20]

I like— I know.

Christian Solorzano [54:20]

It feels very—

Rick Valicenti [54:22]

Yeah, it's about ready to burst. Yeah. And then this little thought balloon here, I helped sculpt, but the magic part of this whole 4 pages is the hidden— I'm giving it away now— the hidden fund. So we see here that the type is set in the F.

And this was when Christian blew my mind. He came back and said, oh, look at this. And there's the U and there's the N. Yep. It's like, dude, come on. That was like, right. And of course, on the right side of the end page, the first line says, you hit it right. You hit right. It's like, that's exactly what happened.

Christian Solorzano [55:07]

And the way that I created those text blocks was I just traced— I converted Jackson's Euchre into outlines, and then I just put the type in there and I did 2 columns and it just, it was, it just flowed perfectly.

Rick Valicenti [55:22]

That's the applause from the dog section. You've woken my dogs up over here. So here's the lesson that we need to have some help on. I was talking to you about the midtones. In these photos, when we print on this particular press, I think this is the Fuji Jet Press. It's a digital press that what's our printer, M&G?

Christian Solorzano [55:48]

Yeah, M&G Graphics.

Rick Valicenti [55:50]

Yeah, John is really great and he's always there. He's like on it. What we need to do a better job of on the next issues is getting those midtones under control and have a profile that either he can give to us or we can ask him to do before he rips the stuff so that those midtones just open up a little bit because it gets a little bit clogged.

Christian Solorzano [56:15]

Yeah, I agree.

Rick Valicenti [56:17]

A little bit clogged.

Christian Solorzano [56:20]

I do want to mention the eyeballs that we have where we—

Rick Valicenti [56:26]

The eyeballs. Here we go. I know that first one. That's you, isn't it?

Christian Solorzano [56:30]

And then we end with this.

Rick Valicenti [56:32]

I know that's an SX-70 of a TV screen that I did.

Christian Solorzano [56:36]

Yeah. And it's, to me, it communicates that everything that is in between those eyes is a plethora of like ideas and vision. Yep, exactly.

Rick Valicenti [56:52]

Yeah, that's really good. Good. So as we come towards the we may or may not be towards the end, but I do want to just talk a little bit about a role that I had the privilege of playing.

And I think I mentioned it to you a number of times, but it's worth sharing. You were clearly the designer of this publication. You would initiate every spread, and you would put them forth, and All I could imagine for myself was to be your Quincy Jones to Michael Jackson. And I use that reference because I once heard— it was either like Thriller or Beat it or whatever hit song Michael had.

I heard a demo tape that he sent to Quincy, and the whole thing was completely formed. What was instrumental, he was just singing. What was percussive, he was making it with his mouth. Those kinds of sounds. And he was singing. It was like Quincy didn't have anything to do other than to sort of like give it the right instrumentation. And I felt on so many occasions like I was your Quincy Jones behind the glass.

All right. That's real privilege for someone who's, been in on the other side of the glass, on your side of the glass, to do with a designer who wants to put out real content that other designers have submitted. And you're paying for this to happen. You're taking that risk. I took the risk on the insert. You take the risk on the publication. This is a bold move.

Bold move. It is out of the tradition of zines, certainly. It's out of the tradition of Emigre magazine, but it's also in a bigger tradition of publishers. I think it's to be commended. And I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to be that Quincy.

Christian Solorzano [58:51]

Likewise, I feel lucky that I worked with you. And I think I've told you this, but after every one of our sessions, I would run to people and I would say, you can't believe what I just learned today.

Rick Valicenti [59:11]

It was— yeah, we were running class sometimes, weren't we?

Christian Solorzano [59:17]

And I felt, and a part of me felt like I was holding, like I hit, like I found this treasure and like there was some, and this could be the Catholic guilt coming in, but I felt a part of me felt like not guilty. No, guilty is not the right word, but I just felt like I wanted other people to experience what I experienced working with you because it was such a masterclass at craft, storytelling, and your attention to detail.

Even though we were on Zoom, you were seeing things that I was not seeing, and I was the one sharing my screen. So I feel so I just felt so lucky and it was really cool. And I think you, not once did you ever make me feel nervous or like I was never afraid to share things with you. Like you were very kind and supportive, which I really like.

Rick Valicenti [60:27]

I do too. Yeah, I do too. Yeah, it was a privilege. So let's remember that this is not the best we can do.

Yeah. And so while we took a big leap from what had been initiated in Faculty 1, should we do this again for Faculty 3, we have the opportunity to not only build on everything that we've learned here as just resident knowledge, but to begin holistically looking at that content as it comes in to say, now, how can we frame that before we're on deadline?

Christian Solorzano [61:03]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [61:04]

Right? Because being on deadline, we pushed the deadline back a couple times because we just weren't ready. But it would be really great to have a holistic look to this, though there is some real pleasure in not knowing what's coming next. Right? So I think we have to find that right balance. And then we're also looking at what will the Typeface that we want to use.

And what typographer do we want to turn to? Yeah. And maybe after they see this, there'll be a few of them submitting their typeface. Yeah. As people will be submitting their content. Do you want to tell them what the next word is?

Christian Solorzano [61:45]

Well, the next word that—

Rick Valicenti [61:47]

What was the first issue? And then what was the second one? And now what's going to be the third one?

Christian Solorzano [61:52]

So the first one was Genesis. Second one was Wonderland. And for this third one, I mentioned pulse as being the word.

Rick Valicenti [62:02]

I was going to give you a drum roll, but you're too fast.

Christian Solorzano [62:05]

Yeah, something about pulse, because I— there's this pulse in the city and this pulse that's happening right now that's running through everyone's veins. And I really want to capture that as if it was like a lightning bug and like just put it in a jar and have it illuminate something. So—

Rick Valicenti [62:33]

I like that you saw it as a lightning bug. I saw it more as a lightning bolt. I want to capture lightning in a bigger jar of 2 sizes. Yes, you're right. I think it is also aligned with the, huge amount of discourse around AI and the tremor of job replacement and the joy of the things that it can do that we could never imagine, or the threat of it wiping out civilization. At what point does humanity need to check its own pulse?

Christian Solorzano [63:07]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [63:07]

How do we make certain that we're still alive?

Christian Solorzano [63:12]

Yeah.

Rick Valicenti [63:12]

And I think this publication, if we really put that out there, the people who will be submitting their entries will be conscious in a way that they may not have been during Genesis. They may not have been during Wonderland, but they will be now for Pulse. Yeah, I think it's a great frame of reference.

Christian Solorzano [63:34]

And I really want to— I really want to encourage people to go beyond their defaults, their comfort zone, their comfort zone, because I think, we can all, to a degree, we can all probably design with our eyes closed and like create something that we're satisfied with.

Rick Valicenti [63:56]

And the templates exist for everything. Not even us designing.

Christian Solorzano [64:02]

Yeah. So I would really, I really want to shake things up somehow.

Rick Valicenti [64:09]

And I think that's the invitation. You just did that.

Christian Solorzano [64:11]

Yeah. And I want that to be like the prerequisite is really get out of your comfort zone.

Rick Valicenti [64:18]

When people submit, let's just use this moment in this podcast to sort of set the stage for the next issue. When you put out the call and you assign the word, are people giving completed projects for review or are they describing the project that they would like to do for the publication?

Christian Solorzano [64:40]

Sometimes they— sometimes the work's already done and they want to submit something. For example, the Colossal, that was done regardless of whether faculty existed or not. So sometimes they do send the work done. Other times it's just an idea.

Rick Valicenti [64:58]

So for instance, give me an example in Faculty 2 where it was just an idea that they Built it.

Christian Solorzano [65:07]

Yeah, for his—

Rick Valicenti [65:08]

For the publication.

Christian Solorzano [65:09]

So for the Ashley piece, the Evolution of Fun, Ashley and I spoke on the phone and she mentioned— because she was also in issue 1— and she said, what do you think if we were to do a continuation, or if we were to continue something in the spirit of the first issue, which was her having a conversation with some of her peers? So I said, that's cool.

And then we bounced a few ideas around about what her and Connor, the gentleman who she spoke with, could talk about. And fun seemed like a topic to discuss. So—

Rick Valicenti [65:48]

And that fit under the umbrella of Wonderland.

Christian Solorzano [65:50]

Exactly. Yep.

Rick Valicenti [65:53]

And if she was to participate in Faculty 3, Under Pulse, it would not just be a continuation of the evolution of fun. It would be something else. Correct.

Christian Solorzano [66:04]

Great. And I do want to share— let me share this really quick. Let me share my screen because she did post an image on her Instagram the other day that was probably the coolest image I've seen. And it was a photo of the magazine in Peru. It looks so cool. It looks like it's being held in front of a painting.

Rick Valicenti [66:30]

Amazing. That takes me to the next question. Thank you, Ashley, for doing that. That is fabulous. My next question I have for you is, how many countries were represented in this Faculty 2 in terms of submission?

Christian Solorzano [66:51]

Well, the magazine is Chicago-based. However, there's people that submitted that aren't from Chicago but have a strong tie to Chicago. But I would say the majority was all Chicago.

Rick Valicenti [67:10]

Isn't there a spread in there? By a woman from Basel or Zurich or somewhere?

Christian Solorzano [67:17]

There is. Let me— and let me pull that up. There is a piece by a woman named Gina, and Gina was here in Chicago for a few months. She's from Switzerland, and her work— I mean, her work, in my opinion, is really great. And I think it's really great because it Doesn't feel commercial and it doesn't feel American.

And I met her earlier this year at the Garfield Park Conservatory, and she came through Jamie Gannon brought her, brought her to the social hour to introduce her to the community. And I, and I, and I also met with her at Brew Chicago in Wicker Park to discuss the possibility of having her. Be involved somehow in the publication. And I said, it would be really interesting if you created something that felt like we were looking into your diary during your time in Chicago.

Rick Valicenti [68:23]

I was going to say, it has a scrapbook quality, but clearly a digital scrapbook. Yeah, without some template that belongs to whatever, Squarespace or Canva or something. Yeah. Beautiful.

Christian Solorzano [68:36]

Right here, you see her boarding pass, you see some US Post stamps, you see some of her work.

Rick Valicenti [68:42]

I know, I know. It's really rich.

Christian Solorzano [68:44]

The Typeforce notebooks, a button that we gave her. So yeah, so this was our first international submission.

Rick Valicenti [68:56]

And what is the youngest person in the publication? Is it the previous story on typography?

Christian Solorzano [69:07]

So I would say this one here, this is Milo, who is Sean's son, and they worked on this type together.

Rick Valicenti [69:18]

Who's Sean?

Christian Solorzano [69:19]

Sean from OIL. He's one of our club team members. So they created this typeface based on his handwriting. So I would say he's like our youngest Contributor.

Rick Valicenti [69:32]

Yeah, it's so good, isn't it?

Christian Solorzano [69:34]

And then also Ava, David's daughter. Oh yeah, illustrated these drawings. So yeah.

Rick Valicenti [69:44]

Was in Ava's piece— I have to go back to it— is there a Herbert Vire rendering of a cover? Let's just see here, see if I can find it. It is. It's drawing number 4. It's the Bauhaus cover. I think that was originally drawn by Herbert Bayer. There it is. Yeah, re-rendered. See, a reverberation.

Christian Solorzano [70:10]

And it feels very Bauhaus too. Just—

Rick Valicenti [70:12]

Sure it does. I know it's next to Josef Müller-Brockmann's book. Yeah, Graphic Artist and His Design Problems. That's great.

Christian Solorzano [70:22]

Very awesome.

Rick Valicenti [70:24]

Very awesome indeed. Okay. Anything else you want to say before we close?

Christian Solorzano [70:29]

Nothing. I just want to say to everyone that's listening, thank you so much for, all of this stuff wouldn't exist if there wasn't an audience. If there wasn't an audience, it would be just me talking to the wall. So.

Rick Valicenti [70:43]

Or me. You can talk to me.

Christian Solorzano [70:48]

So thank you everyone for the support and for contributing and for just being involved in everything that we do. And thank you, Rick, for your enthusiasm.

Rick Valicenti [71:02]

No, you're welcome. It is a thrill to watch what's happening within the Chicago design community all over again. Yes. And this period of design is gonna get its Kick in the pants. It's got to step up. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [71:20]

Cool. All right. Thank you, Rick.

Rick Valicenti [71:23]

Thank you, Christian. Later.

Christian Solorzano [71:25]

Bye.