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.

Tanner Woodford [00:45]

Hello, my name is Christian Solorzano.

Christian Solorzano [00:57]

Christian Solorzano, and I'm very pleased to be welcoming Tanner Woodford, founder and executive director of the Design Museum of Chicago, whose mission is to educate, inspire, and foster innovation through design. In addition, he's an educator, artist, muralist, and community builder. Throughout the years, he's taught, lectured, and led workshops on design issues, social change, and design history for classroom and conference audiences. He describes himself as happy to be scrappy, optimistic, and believes that design has the capacity to fundamentally improve the human condition.

So I'm very happy to have you here, Tanner. Welcome. How are you doing today?

Tanner Woodford [01:38]

Thanks, Christian. Good morning. I am doing great, or I guess good afternoon, depending on when the listener is hearing this. Doing good. How's your day so far?

Christian Solorzano [01:47]

My day's going well. It's very brisk outside. This is my favorite time of year.

Tanner Woodford [01:53]

Me too. I love fall in Chicago. It's the best.

Christian Solorzano [01:55]

Yeah. And I have a dog, so going out those mornings for walks with him is always just like such a joy. I always like to start these episodes with going back in time, and I want to hear about your introduction to graphic design.

Tanner Woodford [02:16]

So that's a great question, a great place to start. I think my first introduction to graphic design was probably through photography way back in the day when I was— before I was even 16. My mother had an old 35mm film camera, and she had— she was a collector of lenses. So she had all kinds of different lenses and bodies and bodies for cameras and parts cameras and kind of dumped them in my lap. And I used to go around town with a couple of buddies.

And take photographs inside of abandoned buildings and inside of, cultural places and in fields and cemeteries and all kinds of things. And that was the first time I really started to understand composition and lighting.

And sort of the creative process and developing film and then editing photographs after they came back. Shortly after that, I started a, with a couple of friends, a photography business called Single Frame Photography. And we would go around to concerts in the area in Chicago. I was born and raised downstate Illinois, but in St. Louis and Chicago and all across the Midwest, and take photographs of musicians and bands and get swag from them to give away on the website. Excuse me.

And use that as a method of meeting sort of creative people. After a bit, I met this amazing band from Chicago named Tub Ring. And they're sort of like Mr. Bungle, where they're kind of— in fact, I think they worked with them and collaborated with them a bit back in the day, where they sort of were a blend of all types of musical styles. And after photographing them and getting to know them, they needed some album art.

So I started to work with them on just sort of building some really basic concepts in Photoshop. And that was really the first time that I'd sort of transitioned from photography to graphic design and saw the similarities between the two and started to really explore that field.

Christian Solorzano [04:22]

Yeah. And do you still have any copies of these early designs?

Tanner Woodford [04:26]

Oh yeah, I'm a collector, Christian. I have absolutely basically everything I've ever touched. I have.

Christian Solorzano [04:33]

Yeah, we'd love to see that if it's— if it could be made available.

Tanner Woodford [04:38]

Oh, it's awful. Yeah, sure, I could share it at some point.

Christian Solorzano [04:41]

I remember. So my story is a little bit similar. I got into design like the first visual medium that I got. I was introduced to was also photography, and I remember back on MySpace, I used to connect with some bands, and there is one band that asked me to do like a poster for them, and they said just make sure that the poster communicates that we are good. And I and I took their I took their. Guidelines like so serious.

And the band's name was Heaven's Deception. And the poster just said, Heaven's Deception is good. I just took what they said so literal. And I think that was just like one of those first instances where, yeah, I started to think about client, like the kind of guidelines that clients give you. And sometimes the approach is to not take things so literal.

Tanner Woodford [05:36]

Yeah. And I, for these first few flyers I made, it was all ripped paper, printing things sort of like Art Chantry. He was a big inspiration back in the day and literally taping things together sometimes with duct tape and then scanning it and then bringing that into Photoshop and messing with it to make it sort of feel as raw as the music was.

So it was again, a lot of that like really sort of early exploration that I am embarrassed by now, but laid a foundation for a whole Career.

Christian Solorzano [06:05]

Yeah. And you went to Arizona State University and you got a bachelor's in science and design. And that was— and you, and you started studying there in 2004. So what brought you there? How do you go from, Southern Illinois to Arizona?

Tanner Woodford [06:21]

I was just ready to explore, I think. And I had super supportive parents that were kind of pushing me to push my boundaries and ended up going to Arizona State, fell in love, toured many schools. Really fell in love with the mountains and the sky, the clear skies and the desert, and was curious about really digital design. So I went to ASU with the idea that I was going to make websites.

At this point, I had transitioned with Tubring from graphics, from flyers to album covers to their website, and really sort of fell in love with the digital medium. So went out there, tried to enroll in art school, quickly learned I was in the wrong program. Long story short, spent a year just exploring all kinds of creative creativity within ASU.

So I was doing photography classes, of course, and 2D design and 3D design, and just sort of really kind of exploring as much as possible as quickly as possible. And then a year after that, met the folks at the design school and kind of fell in love with the idea of foundational graphic design. It's a really fantastic program. Again, laid a great foundation, not to use that word again for me but laid a great foundation for my career.

And one of those schools that you don't really touch a computer for the least of a time the first 2 or 3 years. So lots of painting with placa and drawing letterforms by hand and kerning by hand and doing all kinds of cut paper exercises. And it really just sort of felt freeing in a way that I didn't expect. So I sort of found it by happenstance, and then learned what a great sort of foundational program it was.

And through— not to jump ahead too far, but through that experience, learned that design is so foundational that I became interested in all different types of design. So I would say I'm a graphic designer by trade. I know nothing about architecture, but I'm absolutely in love with it, and I can see the translation from the foundations of graphic design to the foundations of architecture. Same thing for fashion, same thing for photography, same thing for all of these sort of creative design fields.

And ASU really kind of opened my eyes to that.

Christian Solorzano [08:34]

Yeah, because one of the things that I've noticed about the museum that you founded is that it's very multidisciplinary. So it's not just about graphic design, it's about everything that design touches and is about. So at what point in your life do you sort of start thinking about design as something that goes beyond just like something that's printed or on a screen. And yeah, I want to hear a little bit about that.

Tanner Woodford [09:01]

Yeah, so I think, I think it goes back to my roots living in a small town, downstate Illinois, where there's a lot less sort of infrastructure. If there's a problem, you fix the problem. You know your neighbors, and folks collaborate and work together and that sort of collaborative spirit. Has stayed with me throughout my life.

And heading into ASU and doing a really deep dive into graphic design and painting and that sort of thing, I found really a quote from Massimo Vignelli that really stuck with me. If you can design one thing, you can design anything. Something to that effect, or you can design everything, it might have been. And started thinking about that and started thinking about, he's not saying that if you're a graphic designer, you can be a practicing architect.

But if you understand the foundations of grid, line, texture, shape, form, color, that sort of thing, then you certainly have the eye to apply them to other fields as well, and to have an input in those things. I think there's all sorts of folks like Mies van der Rohe didn't just design the building. He also designed clearly the facade, but the technical infrastructure, the sort of all the pieces and parts of the entire building are a core part of how you live in that building.

And I'm sort of butchering that idea. But, so when I came back to Chicago after I left Tempe and Arizona State, we had a really deep conversation with a small group of people about what was missing in the city. And Chicago is such an amazing, culturally rich city with such a deep sort of infrastructure to support creatives, but didn't have a design museum.

We have design firms and magazines and newspapers and community groups and all kinds of things that sort of ebb and flow over the years. But there was really nothing that was bridging these silos. There are no organizations that multiple disciplines could feel that they belonged to. And we feel like that when you're contributing to a larger system and collaborating with people outside of your field, that your work goes further.

So we started building in the early days the museum to really show as many different types of disciplines as possible, and then to reach out to those communities and get all those people in a room together. And, some experiences are more successful than others. Than others, and some still are. But we— I really got excited about that idea in the early days of creating a space that multiple people, multiple different types of disciplines could collaborate in.

So when we had, for example, when we're building a museum, we didn't just have graphic designers laying out exhibitions. We had architects helping us patch walls and build walls and drop electricity and that sort of thing. We had marketing teams that were contributing. We had photography sort of volunteers that were coming through and helping us sort of frame where things go in the space and then executing the photographs at the end. And I got really excited about that sort of collaborative space.

So that's sort of followed through to today.

Christian Solorzano [12:01]

You make it sound so easy. No, but I understand. I mean, it sounds like just very, like very obvious, of course it would be this, but I'm sure like there was just so many challenges and hurdles that you had to go through. So could you, could you speak a little bit about like what were some of those like as you were starting the museum, this was back in 2012 like what would, like what headspace were you in?

Did you think that 10 years later the museum would still be around? And just what was your vision then? And how does the vision then change from the vision that you have today?

Tanner Woodford [12:36]

The vision changes every day, frankly. And it, I, it's not easy. I, I'm lucky in that I can speak with 10 years retrospective. Now, and I can look back and tell you these things very clearly, like it was all an intent. One thing that I like to say, and that is absolutely true, is that there was never a day I decided to open a design museum. That was never the big vision and the big goal. It's been a very slow evolution.

So, it started as an interest in photography, which turned into an interest in graphic design, which turned into a magazine where we interviewed our heroes, which turned into a conference where we took the folks that responded to those questions and put them up in hotels, and they spoke at this conference, which turned into do a pop-up museum outside of this conference. So it slowly evolved into something.

And then I moved back to Chicago worked private industry for a couple of years, and then really missed the idea of community and started to sort of poke at the idea of the Design Museum again. And it's been a very slow evolution every day. Our mission has changed several times. Our name has changed once, actually twice. We've really evolved the way that we think about the Design Museum.

And I keep saying we, even though I'm the only person in front of you, because it's always been a very collaborative environment. It's never been just me making these decisions. Currently, we have a board of 25 people and 2 staff. We've had 75 interns over the years, and everybody that comes through affects the museum in some way. So to get back to your question, and I'm sort of avoiding this because it's a little bit hard to talk about, though I have publicly a few times.

When I founded the Design Museum of Chicago, I was going through a wild amount of sort of personal trauma, lost my mother, lost my grandfather, lost a niece, right, in the span of just a couple of months, and was really sort of distracting myself from a lot of that with the Design Museum, working way too many hours, really kind of pouring my creative self into it.

And then because of the fact that I was pouring myself into it, but because of the fact I was going through this, there were also days that I wasn't available, which meant that other board members and volunteers would come in and make decisions. And that, in retrospect, again, in the moment, that was very difficult. But looking back 10 years later, I realized that was incredibly freeing because it made this a community effort. And it was never my baby.

I would come back some days and a decision would have been made that I might not have agreed with, but it was made. We were moving forward. Everybody was on board. And that was just the best feeling. So these days, when we have a brand new intern that starts, they might come in and have a brilliant reflection about an exhibition, and we'll change course based on that. We really try to let the community drive this thing.

And sometimes that's super successful, and sometimes it's not, frankly, but we learn from everything we do.

Christian Solorzano [15:26]

Yeah. And throughout the past 10 years, are there any moments where you've sort of, where you've almost felt like you're dreaming? What are some of those milestones or like those key moments throughout the past decade where you've been like, wow, I can't like, have you had any of those instances where you're just surprised and just so proud of something?

Tanner Woodford [15:49]

Constantly. And I'm very fortunate to be able to say that, and some are big and some are small. So, there's certainly— we did a mural in 2020 on the north side of Navy Pier that's 600 feet long and 90 feet tall. And walking out and seeing that mural after seeing it tiny on my screen, seeing it sort of at full size on the side of the building just knocked me over.

It was just such an overwhelming and powerful sort of experience to see this iconic building in Chicago change in such a major way to integrate good design and warm up the space that was otherwise a parking garage. And that was a massive project that took 25, 30 people, literally 6,000 screws, tons of vinyl material. They invented a new production method to pull it off. And just stepping back and experiencing that was really something.

There are also, on the other end of the spectrum, at a much smaller scale, there were some days early on when we were in Block 37, which is a public shopping mall on State and Randolph in Chicago on the 3rd floor. We were in this very public space for about 5 years and would constantly have people discover the Design Museum that had no idea what design was.

They might have— of course they'd seen it every day of their lives, but you just sort of assume that the coffee cup always existed, or you assume that the t-shirt was always designed. You don't imagine that somebody kind of did that intentionally. And there were some days that, because we were in such a public place, that some youth would wander in who were just trying to cause problems in the Loop, frankly.

And there was one day in particular that a group of kids ran into the gallery. Through the store back into our private office and sat on the couches, and they were being loud and noisy. And security followed them in and said, do we need to— are these kids giving you a hard time? And I said, I don't think so. I'll give you a call if I need you.

And went back and engaged with them in a conversation and learned that they were in a program where one of their— where their parents had been killed or incarcerated due to gun violence. And we ended up really sort of engaging deeply with these kids. And a few days later— by that, I mean, we talked to them about design. We did some drawing together. We made them feel comfortable. We gave them water and really just sort of tried to build a relationship of respect.

And a couple of days later, one of the kids brought back his entire group from After School Matters of 30 kids, and they had— we had given them a tour, and it was a really sort of engaging moment. And then we reconnected with this group that they were a part of that was originally called the Fair Foundation and is now called one for one Chicago, run by this amazing woman named Megan Olson.

And she runs this group where all of the kids involved have issues, similar issues with their parents. And we worked with them for years.

We still work with them actively doing workshops, and we designed some banners for State Street one time, and just sort of experiencing the world through their eyes completely changed the way I see the Design Museum and completely changed the types of audience I imagine we engage with, and has led us down some paths where even earlier this year we did a workshop series at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center here in Chicago.

We did 7 workshops with a group of about 15 kids and weaving and drawing letterforms and improv and other types of graphic design. And it's just completely changed the way that I see the Design Museum. We shouldn't have to have $40 to buy a ticket to come into a $40 million building. This Design Museum can exist in every neighborhood across Chicago and can help people who need it, frankly.

Yeah, I'm kind of, I'm kind of meandering a bit, but there have been all sorts of moments over the past 10 years that have changed the way I see it, and they're still sort of actively happening. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [19:43]

Yeah, I love that story because I do think that sometimes when I speak with people about, with non-designers about design, I think sometimes design comes off as a little bit like far too, like just something that's very far reach, like it's very elitist, like it's this upscale, thing that's in a gallery. And one thing that I've always noticed about your museum is that it's very accessible, and it's just, it's always providing just a wide range of types of content.

Like right now, could you talk a little bit about your exhibition that's currently, that you currently have installed?

Tanner Woodford [20:19]

I would love to. And before I do, I just want to make a point that we're able to explore accessible design because we already have institutions devoted to high art and high design. So I want to say that I think that stuff is incredibly important. I think we need to have Fine art. I think we need to have museums dedicated to canonical figures, and we have a plethora of that in the city. And now we get to build an organization that's the opposite of that.

So I just want to say that we're not doing this in the face of that. We're doing this accessible version of the Design Museum because other people have already built this other institution, which is super important as well.

So our current show is called the Correct Time, and it's in collaboration with Barbara Kennon, who is just this most amazing woman. She went to SAIC in 1989. She heard a speech that was, I believe, critical of Ronald Reagan, where somebody had said, even a broken clock is right twice a day. So she did some math, realized that there are 720 minutes in a 12-hour period, and decided to try to collect 720 clocks.

So she could set each clock to a different minute and then have somewhere when you walk into the gallery, the correct time is represented. It was really that simple. And that simple of an idea just took the most amazing amount of work to pull off. She wrote letters to David Letterman. She was in the Sun-Times and the Trib. She was just on— I think, believe she was on WBEZ and was just begging people to send clocks to her in Chicago.

And sure enough, she got 720 clocks. And they were gorgeous. Some were mass-produced, some were antique, some were new, which now they're antique. And at the end of the show, some were very quirky as well. At the end of her show in 1989, she put them in boxes, put them in her storage unit, and they sat there until 2022.

And we got wind of this collection through a conversation with Barb, went to her studio, unpacked the boxes, realized all the clocks were still there, and then remounted the exhibition. And through that process realized that the exhibition didn't fill the entire gallery. So we started having these other conversations about what else do we do in this gallery, and how else do we explore the idea of time? And did that by commissioning 24 contemporary designers to design clock faces, one for each hour of the day.

Worked with an amazing writer named Themal from the University of Chicago to write an essay about the history of time in Chicago. Worked with Art Paul's estate to take a poem about time that he'd written and elevate that, and built out all of these experiences around the idea of time. Pun unintended, the exhibition is very timely because of COVID in the past couple of years.

It feels like the past 2 years have been a month, and we wanted to create a space for the public and designers to reflect on time. Outside of that, though, Barb's exhibition of broken clocks is absolutely a design show in every single way. It takes a ubiquitous object that folks don't think of as designed and explores it from hundreds of angles. Looks at color and typography and shape and form and, function. And it's just this really amazing sort of collection of design.

And I've always appreciated exhibitions that are highly accessible. My favorite exhibition that I never saw was in New York in the '60s at the Museum of Art and Design. And it was a show of doors. Everybody's seen a door. Everybody's walked through 100 doors, 1,000, 10,000 doors in their lifetimes. And it takes this form of this rectangle and just shows every single way that you can imagine a door.

And, I, that's always been something that taking an idea or an object that everybody understands and then really blowing it out and thinking about all the ways you can look at it has always been a really exciting idea for me. And this clock show just happened to scratch that itch and be something that we could pull off in short order.

Christian Solorzano [24:31]

Yeah. And is there a criteria of some sort through which the museum determines which type of exhibitions to put out? What are, what are some of those, what's the checklist that, a proposal or something would have to meet to get actualized?

Tanner Woodford [24:49]

Nothing in writing, but we do take proposals and we do, we host traveling shows, we curate our own shows, we do group shows, we do all kinds of, we've done 27 exhibitions over the past 10 years and, we've done them number of different ways. We do have a board that weighs in on these things from time to time, but it's primarily driven by the staff.

And the staff is a rotating sort of cast of characters and interns and all of that who really heavily weigh in on what we show. Like any other museum, we plan 2 to 4 years out. So we're planned, I think, 3 years out at the moment.

Certainly things change and exhibitions evolve and that sort of thing. But we've got the big ideas kind of locked down. And we think a lot about the cadence of the exhibitions because we're super small. When you go to any other museum, you might encounter 4 or 5 galleries at least, and we have one. So, in that one, that one gallery becomes very important to our storytelling across time.

So it would be very rare for us to have a graphic design show followed by a graphic design show. In fact, it'd be very rare for us to have just a graphic design show in general because we're so multidisciplinary. But we think about sort of what's the biggest contrast between 2 shows that are back to back, both in terms of content and also form.

We knock down walls, we build structures, we change lighting. We really reimagine the gallery differently for every single exhibition. So when you walk in, you have a brand new experience and it keeps it sort of fresh and interesting. And we think about that with exhibitions as well. So we might do a traveling show followed by a curated show internally, followed by a group show, and then those might cover very sort of different types of content as well.

So it's a lot of just sort of taking a bunch of ideas and then putting the puzzle pieces together. And then reacting to reality. We might have a great idea for a year and a half from now, and we get 6 months into research again and learn that it's the wrong direction and change course. That happens from time to time as well. Wow.

Christian Solorzano [26:49]

Interesting. So it seems like the museum occupies a big part of your headspace. And I also know that you also do typographic murals. What other things are you currently doing? And do you still find yourself designing? It seems like a lot of the running the museum is a lot of just administrative work. But do you still find yourself scratching that itch to, yeah, to be like hands-on and making things?

Tanner Woodford [27:16]

Yeah. And because we're so small, I wear a lot of hats and the whole staff does. So I, I'll be a graphic designer one day or creative director the next or an art director the next, followed by a fundraiser. Followed by an exhibit designer.

And that's not to take too much credit, 'cause lots of folks do participate in all of these activities, and we have contractors and freelancers and all that stuff as well. But if I'm hungry for a graphic design project, I can certainly dream one up at the Design Museum. We do a lot of contract work outside of our exhibitions. So we work a lot with the City of Chicago.

We're in the middle of a project with Invest Southwest right now where we're designing, working with artists to design fencing murals and South and West Side communities that are going up before new construction goes up. And that's been— we've been heavily involved in the design of that. We partnered again with the city last year on the Chicago Monuments Project final report. So it was about a 75-page report that recommended what to do with the city's monuments.

There was a committee of people that made a recommendation, and then we were involved with putting the book together at the end, and I was very involved in that. That project and got to do a lot of typography and layout and that kind of thing. There's also, as you mentioned, murals. And frankly, this year, I've done a lot less painting than prior years. And I think that's just because of my personal circumstances at the moment.

I've got a young child and moved to a new house and trying to kind of get resettled and replant my roots a little bit here. But I'm still painting sort of on canvases and at a much smaller scale just to sort of explore. Outside of all of that I— and COVID times in 2020, I started a coin collection and have quickly gotten to about 2,000 coins going back to the 1820s really up until 2022.

Christian Solorzano [29:07]

American coins primarily?

Tanner Woodford [29:09]

Yeah, I've got some from a few other countries as well, but a lot of it was just going to the bank and collecting bullion and getting coins that really aren't worth a whole lot. But the act of putting them in a flip and documenting all about them, getting them in a database, learning how many were minted, the mass production of it's super interesting as well. And that's been incredibly fulfilling.

And it's also pushed the way that I think about collections databases. And it's a collections database with absolutely no expectations. I can do whatever I'd like with it. And it's only for me. And there's more too. But the other major thing that I just sort of touched on is just having a young child and a family and going to T-ball and soccer. And my wife picks up a lot of that slack.

But, well, it's more than I do probably, but being an active father takes a whole lot of time as well.

Christian Solorzano [30:03]

Yeah, I bet. And I think that, I think that could be an exhibition in itself, something about currency and just the design of, yeah, currency and banknotes and coins and all that.

Tanner Woodford [30:15]

That'd be really interesting. Yeah. And like thinking too about how it's so colonialized as well is something that's been really interesting and thinking about like, the, the— and this is something I even struggle with even having this collection in my house, is that it only celebrates white men.

So I was thinking a lot about this idea of really being able to create a database that can be whatever I'd like for it to be. I've got a column that looks for facts and data around people of color that have contributed to the minting process and how, and I'm not saying that I'm certainly like solving any problems or anything, but just researching this idea of American currency through a broader lens has been really fun.

It's certainly not academic, and maybe fun is the wrong word, but it's been very fulfilling. So thinking too about exhibitions that, the form and function and content of this mass-produced artifact is so interesting, but how do you present it in a way that is more sort of Broad and engaging and contributes back to the field. I mean, it would be an interesting show to try to figure out how to expand it in a way that it was, I don't know, appropriate.

Christian Solorzano [31:33]

Yeah, I remember when— so NFTs seemed to be like everything that everyone was talking about last year and even part of this year, but the club was trying to figure out like, how could we enter like the NFT space? And one of the ideas that we had was to create NFT currency for the club where like, if you hold this NFT, it gives you, special access to like X, Y, and Z.

But throughout that, like the conversation that we were having was, what would a, what would a banknote or what would some sort of design artifact look like that grants you access or that has some sort of perceived value look like? And I think that'd be really interesting to see what designers could come up with if the prompt was to redesign a dollar bill.

Tanner Woodford [32:26]

Absolutely. That'd be cool. And not just the form of the dollar bill, but like we've moved to crypto, the function as well.

And, I've got really a long-term optimistic view about cryptocurrency and NFTs. I know that they're, it's such a sort of controversial topic and rightfully so. Bitcoin Awful for the environment, but there's lots of other coins that aren't. I believe it's Cardano, and trading a Cardano token is about the same amount of energy as it is to send a tweet. And I think NFTs are absolutely overpriced and overvalued, and, don't contribute a lot to society.

But like this is beta version phase 1.0 of NFTs, and like what can we do with them in the future? And how will how will the field sort of evolve to make them more useful? To society. I'm really sort of optimistic about just technology in general, and that applies to me, to crypto and NFTs as well.

Christian Solorzano [33:23]

Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about optimism. It seems to be a theme that I always feel like it's associated with you. So how do you find optimism, especially these past 2 years where optimism has somewhat been really difficult to find.

Tanner Woodford [33:44]

Boy, I have to be honest, the last 2 years it's been very hard to remain optimistic. Michael J. Fox actually, of all people, has a quote that I love that gratitude makes optimism sustainable.

And I think about that a lot and try to just be sort of as gracious and thankful as possible for the things that I have. I do have a great life and I've put myself in a position to, I'm not I'm not like, I don't have all the time in the world. I do work too many hours, but at the end of the day, I'm doing a job that I love, and every single day is different.

And I value that very highly. It keeps me interested in things, and that sort of gratitude and thinking about that gratitude as much as possible, and thinking about also about the things that I'm proud of that we've accomplished at the museum, keeps me sort of optimistic. It's very hard to be pessimistic around my daughter because she just sees the world with such bright eyes. She's the light of my life.

And my wife's as well. And spending time with her, it really kind of brings back the optimism as well. I'm also kind of an introverted person, and I put myself in positions constantly that force me to be extroverted. So if I'm ever feeling down or burnt out, the best thing I can do is just go be by myself. And I try to at least once a year take a week-long vacation alone, usually to the forest, and stay in a cabin, an Airbnb or something.

I just got back from Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago, and that was— that really recharged my batteries. And I found that, when I leave for those vacations, I'm feeling pretty pessimistic. And then when I come home, I'm feeling completely the opposite and starting to feel optimistic again. So there's no silver bullet. And in the first 8 years of the museum, it was a lot easier to be optimistic than the last 2. But, you can find the silver lining in almost anything.

Christian Solorzano [35:44]

Yeah, I agree. And I think sometimes you just got to ride the wave. When things are horrible, you can't— sometimes you can't do anything about it. You just have to sit there and wait for it to pass. And then it does.

Tanner Woodford [35:57]

Time changes everything. And there's also an ebb and flow and everything. So when things are really good, bad times are coming. Exactly. Really bad, good times are coming.

Christian Solorzano [36:08]

Yeah, I like having that. I always keep that in the back of my mind. Because yeah, you can't, I mean, I don't know how useful this way of thinking is, but I feel like it helps to, yeah, to figure out like how to regulate your emotions at times. Because I think when you have like, really high highs and like everything is great, you can't, I don't know, like you can't think too much of it because you could get caught up in that.

And then, before you know it, your things are totally different.

Tanner Woodford [36:41]

It also, it also helps to compartmentalize. And that's something that I've gotten better at over the years. So we've had some projects that have not gone well. And we've really kind of taken that personally, a few of us that work at the Design Museum, even this year.

And to be able to sort of walk out of that project and reflect on that, and then walk into a place like the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center and put on a face and work with these youth and put that all behind you, then that sort of fills you back up. So without— through the sort of ebbs and flows of a day as well, being able to celebrate those highs while still learning from the lows, I think is really important. Yeah. Way easier said than done too.

I'm not trying to make it sound easy. I struggle all the time with this stuff. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [37:26]

Yeah. Yeah. I get it. And I want to— I want to go a little bit off topic, but I want to hear about what are some of your design influences, or who are the people that you think about or that inspire you, whether they're still around or no longer around?

Tanner Woodford [37:43]

One of my favorite designers, and just because of sort of when I learned about him in school, is Armin Hoffman. And just completely still infatuated by the way that he simplified graphic ideas into really sort of simple forms. So he's got— I've actually got a tattoo of a poster he designed in 1962 where he took every single chair in the Herman Miller line and turned it into a 2D silhouette.

And then the intent was in '62, this was an early time for thinking about design systems. The idea was that could run in a newspaper or a magazine or be a poster. It could be translated to all these different mediums. So I got a tattoo on my rib cage of that design. Which is sort of like another medium for it.

So I think about Armin quite a bit. He was really just the most amazing designer. And, that's from history. I get excited about Luis Barragán, an architect in Mexico who uses a lot of color and great sort of foundational forms. I learned about him in college as well. He's really always stuck with me. I think about him probably once a month, I would say.

But living and breathing in the fabric of Chicago, I'm constantly looking toward current contemporary street artists that are working— JC Rivera, Emme Starr Brown, just a whole slew of lefty people that are creating all across the city. And that I find really inspirational. I feel like I'm— it's hard to just to call out names on the spot here.

Christian Solorzano [39:29]

But yeah, the listener is gonna look— they're gonna look up everyone that you're mentioning. So perfect.

Tanner Woodford [39:36]

I'm happy to send more recommendations too. Cool.

Christian Solorzano [39:40]

Awesome. And another question that I have for you is so you talked a little bit about when you were— when you started the museum in 2012, you were sort of thinking like, what are, what are some of the various ways to fill in those gaps in the Chicago community. And you've certainly done a great job at just creating something that is this catalyst for conversations and ideas and thinking.

And something that I always find myself thinking about as well, on behalf of the design club that we started, is what are ways today that you see that like, what are some things that you think as designers, as a community, we could continue to like improve upon? Or what are those gaps that we could continue to fill?

Because I think when we started the Design Club in 2020, that was a response to the pandemic and just people feeling like there is no sense of connection with strangers and critical thinking and all that kind of stuff. And as we continue to, go into this new way of living and all that, we're just rethinking how we continue to engage with our community and how we continue to engage with people. So, and I'm sure this is something that you think about all the time.

So what are some ideas that come to mind? Or like, what do you when you look at the future of Chicago design, what do you like? What comes to mind?

Tanner Woodford [41:20]

Yeah, and again, I have a lot of optimism, and I really believe that the designers we have working in Chicago today are solving problems every single day and are constantly doing things to make life better. I think that there are certain— there's certainly, a bit of demoralization across America right now, across all fields. We're just living in such a complex moment, and life has changed so much over the past 2 years.

And I think that sort of as a backdrop is, to me, really interesting and inspiring, and a moment for people to be breaking free from that and making decisions that just simply make life better. And I've got this sort of optimistic view of design. It's worth mentioning that design's not all good. Weapons are designed, and wars are designed, and we design spikes to put on benches so homeless people can't sleep there. And, we're constantly— designers are constantly also making decisions that make life worse.

So when I look at the sort of future of design in Chicago, I'm really excited by the people who are doing the opposite of that. Alt Space comes to mind. They're a collective from Austin who's just constantly solving problems. So one of my favorite projects of theirs is called the Alt Space Market, and it's sort of like a little free library where you take or leave a book, but they do that with food.

So they have a wall and they put up shelves and they put up free food for people to take. And community, it turns into this community-based effort where community members start leaving food. And if you need food, you come and grab some sugar and salt and that sort of thing. And to me, that's a design exercise. It's not graphic, but it's, I guess they do use graphic design as part of it, but it's about finding a need, finding a problem, and sort of filling that need.

So, our next exhibition I hope this is answering your question. It's called Free and Open Chicago. And in that exhibition, we're taking 10— we're building 10 stages. It's in celebration of our 10th anniversary. And on each of these stages, we're turning them over to another nonprofit or another organization in the city that's also free and open to the public. And Alt Space is one of those stories.

And that has really sort of opened my eyes to all the great people that are doing work in our city just to improve it, just to make things better. So when I think about sort of what is needed and where things are heading, I think it's really the people that have their feet on the ground that are looking at problems in the face and trying to design solutions for them. And that's an important community.

And then it's important that they're supporting their own communities and All across Chicago's 77 communities in different ways. I also think a lot about the way that the Design Museum works is we're not— we're completely free and open, so folks can just walk in. And because of that, we see folks that have never thought about design. We see the unhoused, we see pre-K kids, we see retired folks, everybody in between, every single day. And they don't often know what they're looking for.

They see Design Museum on the side of the building, and they just wander in to check it out and see what it's all about. And I think that audience is an incredibly important audience to support. And I don't have sort of rose-colored glasses around this. I don't think we're going to turn all of these people into designers, nor would I want to.

I just want them to see the world a little differently. And if somebody walks into the room, if a high schooler walks into the room and sees something that inspires them to see the world differently, they might become the best accountant in Chicago. And just because they realize that, we talked about math on a show and we have— we talk about that a little bit on our current show. So, I it's a hard question to answer.

I just feel like by continuing to try to solve problems, by continuing to try to make the world better in small ways, we will open up possibilities that we didn't prepare to. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [45:21]

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I started— another thing that comes to mind is I just recently, I started teaching graphic design at DePaul, and one of the things that I'm trying to do is find ways to introduce students to— because I think sometimes graphic design is the way that it's presented or the way that it's taught is just as this very static thing that exists only on a screen or on like a flat surface.

And I think, again, just going back to the stuff that the museum does is multidisciplinary and thinking through the various ways that design could activate something. So I know a lot of our listeners are students or people that are just starting out in the design industry. So what would you say to them? What would you say to someone that just got into graphic design because they were creative as a kid, they like to mess around in Photoshop, and now they're going to graphic design school.

What sort of advice would you give someone in that position?

Tanner Woodford [46:32]

Try everything, and don't be afraid of being bad at it. We all start off as bad and we all get better over time. And I've encountered a lot of people over the past 10 years that have been very judgmental about the work that we're doing. And you just kind of have to deal with that and move on. For example, I really enjoy in my personal painting practice stretching typography and finding ways to elongate typography as much as possible.

And when I was in college, one of my professors told me to never, ever stretch typography. So now that I'm sort of more mature— I don't know if that's true or not— further along in my career, I should say, I'm starting to think about how to do that respectfully and how to—

How to use stretched typography to slow things down and encourage people to stop and spend time with a piece of art. And I think just being okay with breaking rules, being okay with being judged is a skill, and it can be hard to let go of that sort of thing when you're— throughout your entire career.

I was gonna say when you're starting out, but I think throughout your entire career, just keep trying new things and you can fall back on your strengths, but you're not going to grow unless you're really pushing the boundaries and doing something different.

Christian Solorzano [47:50]

Yeah. And as this professor, if they're still around, have they seen some of this stretched typography?

Tanner Woodford [47:56]

I know they have, and I don't know how they feel about it, but it does not matter. I've got some old faculty from ASU that have seen it that have been very encouraging, which has been really sweet. It's a good, it's a good program. It's a good school.

Christian Solorzano [48:10]

Yeah, it's beautiful. I've seen some of it and it's, yeah, it's great. I think you're onto something.

Tanner Woodford [48:17]

And I, and I do like making things that people react positively to. But I, it's not the intent. And frankly, with these murals, they really started when my daughter was born because I just found myself full of this new spirit and this new creative energy that I had to explore. And it just sort of came out as this giant mural. And this first mural was 40 feet long and 20 foot tall. It said, things take a long time. And it's in Gary, Indiana.

And that mural led to another mural, which led to another mural, which just turned into this sort of practice. And I'm not a career artist, and I don't pretend to be. But the— I guess all I'm trying to say is I'm doing a lot of this to scratch a personal itch, and it doesn't really matter to me how people react to it. Though when people react positively to it makes me feel great.

Christian Solorzano [49:07]

Yeah. So outside of being a parent, running the museum, collecting coins, what else are you up to? What are some things that people don't know about you? What are, what are some, what other things have you been up to recently?

Tanner Woodford [49:25]

I think you just described my whole life. Yeah, I think that's everything. I can't think of anything else. What else? I think I watch too much bad TV, probably. Listen to a lot of podcasts. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [49:40]

What do you, what do you watch? What do you listen to? What do you read?

Tanner Woodford [49:42]

I find a lot of comfort in rewatching the same things again and again and again and relistening to the same things over and over. So if I find an old podcast that's discontinued, off the air or whatever I'll find myself listening to the whole series a few times in a row. And, I've watched Breaking Bad probably 25 times. And it's to the point where when it's on, I'm not even watching it. It's in the background and it lets me focus on the work that I'm doing.

I think I've been really into the Nathan Fielder show that just ended. The rehearsal was really interesting and exciting and clearly problematic as well. But, just, it was just such a different way of looking at television and sort of pulled back the curtain in a way that I didn't expect that I found myself watching that a few times. There's that show on Apple TV, not Succession, Severance. I found myself completely enamored by Severance recently and watched that through a few times.

Can't wait for the next season. But for the most part, it's really like finding old shows that are nostalgic for whatever reason and then just like beating them into the ground. Like when I was designing— this is really embarrassing— when I was designing the Some mural projects lately for the city. I found myself watching Malcolm in the Middle over and over and over again. I guess there's a Bryan Cranston connection. That's probably how I got there.

Christian Solorzano [51:06]

Yeah, there's a Breaking Bad overlap.

Tanner Woodford [51:07]

Yeah. I'm not like the hugest Bryan Cranston fan, but that's probably how I got there, I bet.

Christian Solorzano [51:12]

So yeah.

Tanner Woodford [51:13]

And then for podcasts, I just, I can't stop. I just, it's just all the time constant. Yeah, they're always on. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [51:20]

And what are you, are you reading anything recently? Anything that you wanna share with the listeners?

Tanner Woodford [51:25]

Yeah, so I generally will read projects based around exhibitions and work that we're doing. I'll read books based around exhibitions and projects we're working on. We are working on an incredibly exciting show that opens in about 2 weeks at the Institute of Design in celebration of their 85th anniversary.

So basically, working with a team of about 15 people, we've selected 85 objects from the past 85 years, and things like a handprint Moholy-Nagy made on a piece of paper, to an amazing sort of more contemporary project that was done in the last couple of years by a grad student around any sorts of ideas. They did work for NASA. They designed the original Honey Bear. They did the form of the Dove soap bar. So I found myself digging pretty deep into some old Jay Doblin papers.

I just bought a Businessweek that was a profile on Patrick Whitney. That was really interesting. So, I'm not sitting down and reading fiction at the end of the day. And I'm really sort of focused on content that I can put back into some of the work that we're working on. So at the moment, I'm really doing a deep dive into the history of the Institute of Design.

Christian Solorzano [52:42]

So it's just like your life is just design 24/7.

Tanner Woodford [52:45]

Basically, yeah. Yep, love it or hate it, that's what I've got myself into.

Christian Solorzano [52:52]

Awesome. And so before we wrap up if anyone wants to reach out to you, or if anyone wants to get involved with the museum, or just what are some ways to connect with you or the museum?

Tanner Woodford [53:04]

Yeah, absolutely. Feel free to reach out. Our website is designchicago.org. We're @designmuseumchi on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all that good stuff. But yeah, reach out, say hello. I'm happy to help. I always love meeting people. Let me know what I can do. Awesome. Great.

Christian Solorzano [53:23]

Well, thank you so much. This was great. And I look forward to continuing to connect with you. And yeah, I look forward to everything that the museum is doing. So thank you so much. And you have something coming up in the next— well, I guess we're in October now. So something— do you want to talk a little bit about your what's coming up?

Tanner Woodford [53:44]

Yeah, we have all kinds of stuff coming up. So Free and Open Chicago is the main thing. The time, the correct time ends on October 17th, and Free and Open Chicago opens November 17th. On October 13th, we have our 10th anniversary soiree. So it'll be a great party with about 100 people. So come and enjoy some cocktails and good music. And then on October 19th, we're opening the Institute of Design exhibition. So really the next couple of months are going to be pretty intense.

Christian Solorzano [54:16]

Well, yeah, we'll post links to everything that you mentioned in the notes for this episode so people could just quickly access that.

Tanner Woodford [54:24]

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for your time. And I really enjoyed this podcast as well. And so thanks for all your energy and putting it together. And the Chicago Graphic Design Club is also just so amazing. It's been so fun to watch that develop over the past couple of years. Excited to see what it turns into.

Christian Solorzano [54:39]

Well, thanks so much.

Tanner Woodford [54:40]

Yeah, thank you.

Christian Solorzano [54:41]

Awesome. We'll talk soon.

Tanner Woodford [54:42]

Okay, sounds good. Bye. Bye.