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.

Hi everyone, my name is Christian Solorzano, and today I will be your host I'll be speaking with Dan and Sofya, partners at the design studio the Narrative, which focuses on brand strategy, book design, web design, data visualization, you name it. And not only are they business partners, they're also life partners, which is really exciting. I hold the Narrative dear to my heart because in 2020, they were amongst the first to give a lecture with the Chicago Graphic Design Club.

They shared the process behind the brand identity for a Mies van der Rohe building in Chicago, and you could find a link to that on our website. So thank you, Sofya and Dan, so much for taking the time to speak with me. I recently discovered that both of you are no longer in Chicago and you've moved to St. Louis. So I want to hear a little bit about that.

Dan McManus [01:48]

Yeah, so I'm not sure if you've ever heard the term an Irish goodbye, but that's pretty much what we did is when you leave without saying Anything. It was very hard to leave Chicago, and it was very much a family-based decision. 2 years ago, almost 2 years ago, Sofya and I had a little girl, and 1 year of being parents and running the design studio seemed to be quite a daunting task.

And then we decided to move closer to Sofya's parents, who live right down the street from us. And who have been really wonderful and are very active in our daughter's life. And it's a beautiful thing to see. But we have some very good things lined up here. We are currently working on designing the brand collateral for the St. Louis AIGA Design Show coming up this spring. And I'm gonna be teaching at WashU next week. And we're still very active in Chicago.

We still have our arts club membership and our clients are still there. Sofya's been back a couple times in the year, almost year that we've been gone. And it's always going to be a very special place to both of us and in our hearts forever.

Christian Solorzano [03:06]

Yeah. And I see that you're— obviously the listener can't see what you're wearing, but you're wearing some Chicago apparel. So you're still representing. Awesome. Great. So I really want to learn about the story of how the two of you've met. Because I think it's really interesting that you're both, you're both partners in business, but you're also life partners. And I think that's really interesting. And I want to know the story.

Dan McManus [03:34]

Yeah. So I had started the Narrative after graduate school in 2012. And in— I started by myself before Sofya and I met. It was— we met the following August, and we actually met at the Design Archive 13, the judges' night, which was over on at the old Creative Go-Round near the Kinzie Bridge. And when I first walked into the event, I see this man and he's frantically waving his arms at me.

And at first thought, I thought, I looked at him, I was like, maybe he's a disheveled resident from one of the local men's shelters or something. But then I realized it was tomato legend Bob Zeni.

And what had happened was at a previous design event, Bob had lured me into his den of immorality and convinced me to make a wager of $20 on the Bruins in the Stanley Cup that was going on against the Chicago Blackhawks. And the Bruins were the superior team, but in Game 6 they had a 17-second brain fart and lost the series. And Bob had been stalking me, trying to go to design events, trying to shake me down for his $20.

Oh so I gave him his money and he kind of scurried off presumably to the bar. But however, before he did that, he introduced me. He turns and says, Dan McManus, I'd like you to meet Sofya Karash. And he introduced me to the most wonderful person I've ever met. And my life and the narrative has been forever changed because of that day.

Sofya Karash [05:35]

I remember that evening, the first question Dan ever asked me was, who is your favorite designer? Almost like a test or something. And I remember I said El Lissitzky, and I remember we just spoke all evening about design.

Christian Solorzano [05:52]

Oh, that's awesome. So that was in 2013, the archive event. Okay. So was that the year— that was the year that Nick Adam and Matt Wazinski did the identity for it, right?

Dan McManus [06:06]

Yeah, exactly.

Christian Solorzano [06:07]

So I was probably there somewhere, like volunteering in the background. So maybe, but if I was, it's cool because I was there on the night that the two of you—

Dan McManus [06:19]

Yeah, no, who knew? It was that the last Archive too?

Sofya Karash [06:25]

Yeah, I think so.

Christian Solorzano [06:26]

Yeah.

Dan McManus [06:28]

And Sofya's book actually got into the was a judge's choice that year, her thesis book. Which is a pretty good night for you.

Sofya Karash [06:36]

And everyone.

Christian Solorzano [06:39]

So I want to go back into— I want to hear about your childhood, but specifically how you, the both of you, got interested or got immersed into the world of design. I know for you, Sofya, you grew up immersed in creativity. I read that you were involved with building miniature sets and painting and a lot of theater type of stuff. So tell me a little bit about, yeah, just some of the inspiration that was pulling you when you were a child or growing up.

Sofya Karash [07:19]

Yeah, I was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and lived the first 2 years of my life in an art school dormitory as my parents were finishing their graduate degrees at SADA, which is the Kharkov State Academy of Design and the Arts. So in some ways, I was in design school since birth. Apparently, my mom used to take me to watch my dad play bass guitar in the college rock band. I wish I could remember that, but I don't.

Unfortunately, because of the war now, people know a lot about where I'm from. I think according to UNESCO, over 20 cultural sites have been damaged in Kharkov so far since the war. But as far as I know, XADA is still standing. So that is great. The department they studied in was just called Gráfica, which is an interesting concept, basically, that translates to graphics, and it included traditional drawing and painting. So my parents can really draw. Theater set design, graphic design, typography, as well as illustration.

So I feel like From the very beginning, I had a very interdisciplinary understanding and approach to design, which I think affects the way that we really think about design at the Narrative 2, influenced by this creative work that my parents had always been doing and collaborating on, which I witnessed growing up and oftentimes participated in. So those were my earliest, but also the greatest influences on me.

One of my earliest memories, and my parents still have this book, was staring at this large white cloth book, and it had this really thick spine with big, juicy, high-contrast black letters. And I would stare at it as I was falling asleep, and it said something at that time that was really mysterious to me, Plakatkunst, which later I understood is German for poster art.

My dad would set up still lifes for me when I was a really little child and always spoke to me pretty seriously, almost as if I was an adult, about, form and light and composition and his own creative ideas. My father, at that— when I was a child, did a lot of theater set design. And so I would take walks in the snow with my dad and we would like gather supplies for him to build theater sets.

One that I remember specifically was finding small pieces of wood to build this tiny model train car, which he made look really dilapidated on the outside, but in the inside it was really bourgeois with little tiny red couches, a chandelier, and little lights that actually switched on. And it was a theater concept for a play based on the poem Land of Scoundrels by Yesanyan. And my father continues to have an illustration practice and teach.

He actually just came out with a graphic novel based on a Boy's Own Story, which is a novel by Edmund White. And we continued to discuss art and design. So I think that really solidified, a lot of my earlier creative endeavors. Russian animation was also a big influence on me during Soviet times. A lot of artists and designers weren't able to fully express themselves in terms of creating kind of more serious personal work.

So a lot of them actually worked on children's animation, and particularly the work of Yuri Norstein and his wife, who rarely gets credit. Her name is Francesca Yarbuzova. Their stop-motion animations like Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales are just poetic magic. And what they do is actually they layer multiple glass plates with cutouts of little characters and the way that they move. And as the camera stays still, those glass plates move. As the camera's shooting. And it's just absolutely incredible to watch.

They're actually, for the last 40 years, they're still alive and making animations. They're collaborating on an animation called the Overcoat, and everyone's been waiting for it to come out for 40 years now, and they're still working on it. There's an interesting YouTube video I watched recently. I think it's called the Animators who've 40 years on a single film. But there's a lot, a lot more Soviet animation that's really great. And I think film inspired me too.

There's a Soviet Armenian art film that's called the Color of Pomegranates by Parajanov that also had a big impact on me just because every single still of that film is almost like a well-composed painting. It's really visually evocative and beautiful storytelling. After immigrating to the US, I went to a performing and visual arts high school in Houston, Texas, and that really prepared me to apply to art school. And then I went to undergrad at MICA in Baltimore, still unsure of what my major would be.

Initially, I was deciding between painting and illustration, eventually moving into choosing illustration, although my I was a little bit of a black sheep because my interests didn't align with the other illustration students. I wasn't into anime or any of those kinds of things.

And surely, slowly but surely, through my illustration work, and because of my love for book and book design, I ended up also doing a concentration in graphic design. And grad school at SAIC, once I moved to Chicago, was really my first opportunity to solely focus on design and became my entrée into teaching.

Christian Solorzano [13:51]

So that's yeah, so it sounds like you're pretty fortunate to have that upbringing just immersed in creativity. Was there ever at any point another career or something else that you considered doing that was not in the arts, or were you pretty set on doing that?

Sofya Karash [14:14]

I was pretty set on doing it. I think during the research that I did For my thesis in graduate school, I discovered a lot of my interests. I think if I wasn't a designer, I'd maybe do research relating to anthropology or material culture studies. That really interested me. But that was only at— I only discovered that at the graduate level.

I think it was because I lived in 4, what are now 4 countries before I was 8, and each time I had to leave things behind and I became attached to objects. Because each time we relocated, our heavy things accompanied us, and they were like unpacked and rearranged. And I think each move increased the emotional value that I associated with these objects. And also perhaps the fewer things there are, the more you are aware of each individual object and its function.

Perhaps as an influence during Soviet times, I became really interested in why people were so preoccupied with things, because it was difficult to find things, and people would trade things for other things, and they were fixing and making things. And so this, I called it like a thing predicament that people had allowed for a lot of creativity to flourish, especially when it came to like repurposing or augmenting and making new different kinds of objects. And many people created unique objects for themselves and their families.

In my thesis work, one really great example that I find is called muziek in de ribbrach, which means music on ribs. Music on ribs were like homemade records, and they were made on old hospital X-rays. That people sourced and sold on the black market. If any of your listeners are interested, there's a really cool website called xrayaudio.com, and you can actually see and listen to some of these recordings.

And so I really got fascinated with material culture studies, which I think at University of Chicago there used to be a material culture studies department. There's a really great writer, Bill Brown, who wrote Thing Theory, and other like articles. And so I think those kinds of avenues and research, I think, would be possibly an alternate path.

Christian Solorzano [16:58]

Yeah, because what I noticed through looking at some of— doing some research about some of the work that you've done, there's a big component of it that is about narrative and storytelling. And it just seems, I mean, pretty appropriate given the work that the two of you are doing, even just the name, the Narrative. And then I want to hear a little bit about you, Dan.

I discovered a fun fact about you that you started your design company, a design company when you were 14 years old. Yeah. What was, what, tell us, what was that?

Dan McManus [17:41]

Yeah. So I was raised in a small town called Prospect, Connecticut, in the middle of nowhere, Connecticut. We had one stoplight and no high school. And if I could borrow a quote from the great Irish writer Brendan Behan, the only culture we had was agriculture. And but my— and I was the only child. And but we did, 3 of us did travel a lot.

My father is part of a rather large Boston Irish family. It's about a 2-hour drive from where I grew up. And we did travel a lot to— when I was younger, which made a huge influence on me. And, in the probably the early '80s, I was really fascinated with baseball, was really into baseball throughout the '80s. And I was fascinated with the logos of the teams.

That were, and this was at a time when baseball was flirting with modernism, and you kind of had those awesome, like the Montreal Expos logos and the Milwaukee Brewers logo where there's typography mixed in a kind of duality of form that baseball hadn't really seen before. And I was really pretty fascinated with these, my use of DROM, and that was like around the late '80s.

I want to say '87, '88, when I was in middle school, my— I started getting into skateboarding and we had this like feral little skate crew in our town and we'd be, getting chased around for various shenanigans by, one cop in town or the mayor that's been the mayor since 1978 and still is, Mayor Bob.

But we found skateboarding and this was at a time where you would get a real Thrasher magazine in the mail and you, or at a skate shop if you could get to one. And we were just absolutely fascinated with the graphics and everything around it. It was like every magazine or catalog or video that we get was like a whole new world that we'd see outside of our little, kind of pocket in Connecticut, and this was that time was like Vision Streetwear logo.

Like I remember like realizing the Paul Peralta logo had three P's in it, and it was just like mind-blowing. There was this really you know just obnoxiously adolescent design logo for Bimpy's clothing. Once I figured out what that meant, I thought that was hilarious. Like you know it's funny because you walk down State Street now and you see that skate shop over there, and it's like. Like the Santa Cruz hand, on in the window.

And I remember seeing that when it first came out, like in a magazine, and we were just our minds were just absolutely blown by it. And, we were just totally geeking out on these brandings and graphics. And I wasn't very good at skateboarding, but I did enjoy the graphic part of it. And we also, there was a lot of, pretty much by default, you start to listen to punk rock and, heavy metal and hardcore was kind of in the peripheral then.

So there was a lot of kind of cross-culture between them, which there always has been. And, I think punk rock, when I look back at it has a really a way of energizing ideas, and it certainly did for us at that time. And kind of that skate punk visual culture was like a huge influence that I think probably still is in some way. And yeah, it was around the age of 13 or 14, we saw this stuff and we wanted to do it.

So I started a t-shirt company, skateboard clothing company named Gracie Skates, which was named after my Airedale, which was— her name was Gracie. The logo was this crude silhouette of the dog. I worked on it with an incredibly creative friend that I grew up with, Chris Swirsky, who's actually a UX designer now and a drummer for the iconic post-punk indie band Komono Dragon out of Connecticut. And like we had a little skate team and like merch and everything was DIY.

I was— we were making handmade t-shirts, painting with stencils. And, we— I would— was cutting and pasting typography off my mom's Mac. I probably had like 10 typefaces and I would make these little 8-page catalogs just cutting and pasting them and have my dad make photocopies of my work. And then I'd, staple. And, we were like, this was a time where it was like there was this great skateboard video called the Search for Animal Chin.

So we were trying to make like promotional videos like our skateboard heroes. And these are like, just, I mean, we're like editing with like the actual video camera on a VCR. I'm not even sure how these things were even made. And but we would all look at it as, we just saw these skateboarders doing this and this is what we wanted to do. So, and stickers were a really big deal.

And what I discovered is that like the local politicians would leave like bumper stickers at like coffee shops and places around town. So I would just go and just grab stacks of them and take them home and take my mother's nail polish remover and, basically bore out all the ink and then just tag it with Gracie Skates, cut it up a bunch of stickers and pass them out. And to our friends and to whoever.

And so we were just kind of doing this and we didn't know what we were doing, it was pure, just pure out of following our heroes. We didn't know what graphic design was or anything. And then one weekend I was up in Boston visiting my grandfather and I have 21 first cousins on my dad's side. As I said, moderately sized big Irish family. Most of them were older than me, like 17 of them were born before me. So I was kind of later in the pack.

But it was pretty common at that time. My grandfather lived in a 3-decker apartment in Boston that he owned. And a lot of my cousins after graduating college would go and live with him, for, as they started their careers in Boston. So I'd go up and visit and they were all older than me. So I'd go upstairs and it was infinitely cooler than my grandfather's apartment because they had, table television.

And so I would bring my, Gracie Skates catalogs and maybe some t-shirts and try to peddle some t-shirts up there. And one of my cousins had a roommate who was a graphic designer. His name was Ted Dieter. And he, was a graphic designer. He immediately recognized that this, 14-year-old's got a saddle stitch catalog. And he saw my mother in the trip and, took her aside, hey, you Do you know what graphic design is? And she's like, no. I was like, does Dan know what it is?

He's like, no. I was like, well, he's doing it. You may want to look into this. So, and fortunately, I had a really great art teacher. I was in high school by this point going to Holy Cross High School in Waterbury, Connecticut. And my art teacher, Michael Marsiglia, was incredibly, encouraging and was kind of this lone beacon of nonconformity in the Catholic school that, we all really enjoyed.

And, after that I moved to Boston to go to Northeastern University where I got an undergrad degree in graphic design.

Christian Solorzano [25:13]

I'm very curious about what brought you to Chicago. After all of that, after all of that, what motivated you to come here?

Dan McManus [25:23]

Yeah, so, I Graduated in 1998 and, right before the dot-com, I think I had about, maybe a year or 2 months before the whole economy crashed. And at that time, Boston didn't have a lot of design studio jobs and they were very much like everything you needed design studio experience in store to even be considered. So it was like just unattainable, I'm not even sure how, that happened.

But so I ended up working a variety of in-house jobs for the next 10 years that, range from good to horrific. And I had a good job that I lost in 2003 which I didn't know it's going to kind of be the start of a, about a 15-month Category 5 shitstorm that my life was.

That started with that, and it culminated with the loss of a friend of mine Sergeant John Olin, in the Second Iraq War. He was killed during the Battle of Fallujah. And that loss was a catalyst for change in my life. He died doing what he wanted to do, and he inspired me to kind of follow my own dreams, but also to be of service with what I'm doing and not just have it to be solely to make money.

At first, I was— I did some volunteering, like I volunteered as a playtime activity leader for a Horizons for Homeless Children, which basically you run a playgroup once a week. I did that for about 2 years, which actually prepared me for now in a strange way. And I also did some canvassing for then-Senator Barack Obama, who was running for president in New Hampshire during primary. So because of the war, I wanted to get involved with some politics.

And try to not have people have to go through something like that because it's absolutely horrific. And, this around 2009, I was getting pretty bored with my job. I was— I had a pretty good corporate job, but it was just dreadfully unfulfilling. And I kind of felt like Boston had this barstool sports culture that was going on that I didn't really agree with. And, I needed a change. So I started applying to grad school. I got into UIC.

I sold my car so I could buy a laptop and I moved to Chicago. And then UIC was just such, incredible experience because I got to work a lot with Philip Burton and Megan Farrell on my thesis. And I learned an incredible amount about just the process of design from particularly from Philip and the faculty there was, quite amazing. It's turned over a little bit since I've been there, but, we had Marshall Lawson and Matthew Gaynor and Sieren Oiga and many others.

And, the whole grad school experience, I mean, you're— you get to meet so many interesting people from different backgrounds and so forth and just from around the world. And, that's actually the first time I met Matt Wazinski. He was a year behind us at UIC, Barack Barinji, Perrin, who I'm sure, Kelly Evans, Jen Tauch, Jillian Cooney. We were all there at the same time. It's people that you end up having, professional and personal relationships afterwards.

And I got to work on my thesis project kind of went back to those days of the early baseball logos, which my thesis project was called Baseball Iconography as a Civil Religious Relic. So basically I wrote and designed a book based off of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Civil Religion and how baseball typography evolved to represent different regions and cultures. Because when I moved to Chicago, I would always wear my Red Sox hat, which is, a standard issue uniform for anyone that grows up in New England.

And I thought it very strange that people would talk to me all the time about baseball. And then I started to realize that it was like much of a bigger story than just, how the Red Sox did or poorly they did the day before. So, and I started to kind of think about how, I started doing more research and there was this theory written about that America is its own civil religion. Because basically Jean-Jacques Rousseau said there's religion of man and religion of God.

And religion of man, America would be, a religion of man. We have our own rituals, our own holidays, traditions, martyrs, and iconography. And then baseball is its own subset within that, where it has its own symbol. So I got to write about that. It was really quite— I mean, it was a dream job, a dream project to go through and to really immerse myself in that.

Christian Solorzano [30:33]

I read in an interview that the 2 of you did online, and there's a quote that I noted down, and one of you said, we believe that designing well-thought-out work contributes positively to our culture as a whole. In a brand-cluttered world, our work is created with a respect for the audience as a top priority. Her process demands discipline, and it requires a purity of intention. And I really love the last piece of it that says purity of intention.

So, and I think that is a little bit in line with what the two of you have been talking about, just as in regards to design within culture, and then also just design as something that is like interwoven into what you refer to as civil religion. So could you expand a little bit more on what you mean when, or just what purity of intention means? I think it's such an interesting choice of words.

Sofya Karash [31:36]

I think that both of our motivations, having come from such different backgrounds, and kind of together in this collaborative design process, something that is really important to us both is that any project that we take on, we hope that— and we make it a point to choose our projects wisely. Ultimate goal is to create design that is timeless.

We don't look at kind of like trends or other things going on, and we've developed over the last decade that the narrative has been around, and we've been collaborating together, a process together that I think allows us to be really thoughtful, take plenty of time for research. And I think the path that we've chosen is not the perhaps the easiest or more efficient path to navigate when it comes to client work. But we think it leads to more thoughtful and intentional outcomes.

So we always budget in and put in our timeline a really long, rather long research process. And I think the way that we educate our clients and collaborate with one another and the trust that we have with one another as we develop the work and the relationship with the project that we have Our thoughtful approach allows us to come up with design solutions that are effective for the client, but also are to our own standards.

We, as educators and as designers, we hold ourselves to a very high standard. And so good enough for the client is not often good enough for us.

Christian Solorzano [33:58]

Yeah. I like that. I remember when the two of you shared your process on the redesign for the Mies van der Rohe building that the both of you did. I really appreciated just how much research was done and how much attention to detail went into like the smallest detail. And that's something that I always really appreciate hearing designers talk about.

So in regards to clients and projects that the both of you work on, is there a criteria or what type of work excites you both the most?

Sofya Karash [34:36]

I think, we have 4 basic criteria. Like one, number one, is it a good fit in terms of our expertise and capabilities? And we're very honest about that. We're not afraid to say, we're not the best fit and recommend someone else. Our timeline, because of our kind of internal process, we need to make sure that we have enough time per project. And so we make sure that it fits well with our ongoing projects and our teaching commitments.

And then I think one thing we look at very thoughtfully is there an opportunity in this project for us to make a valuable design contribution? And is this work that we're interested in doing and we can contribute something that is gonna be meaningful and worthwhile? I think that is very important to us. And I think the last one is just fair compensation.

Dan McManus [35:42]

Beautiful. I think, I mean, every client is different and, we customize our process particularly the research phase to each client, because it's especially a branding if you're dealing, with the decision makers, often the person who started the company and maybe there's some backstory with the current brand or logo or whatever. So it's a very personal and intimate process.

So you have to kind of start with that understanding because it's almost like With branding, you're almost like creating what one of the client's children is gonna look like if they're the founder, emotional attachment to it. So because of that, we're very transparent with our process and we require that the, decision makers be decided before we start. That's one thing that's important because we don't wanna get in a design by committee scenario. We avoid that.

And we wanna make sure everyone's on board with our process and that the majority of the input's gonna come from the client at the research phase as opposed to the creative phase. And we put pretty strict limits on revisions. For instance, we'll allow for, if we do a branding project, we'll allow for color changes but no formal or typographic changes. We don't— if they wanna be part of, the creative process or to be an art director, we politely decline to take them on.

Because that's why they're— what they're paying us for. And we have one of the few professions where unqualified people feel qualified to offer advice with no experience. You don't see it in the legal field or medical field or anything else. Everyone thinks that they can be an art director, with Canva or with whatever, is out there now.

And because of this, we stay as objective as possible and we state the goals early and then, we match them, we try to live up to those goals and standards that we set at the initial proposal and we make sure that we satisfy those before we present.

Christian Solorzano [37:56]

Yeah. And what about, so you're both educators and you've been educators for some time now. And how does education fit within your professional design practice, studio practice? Because I recently started teaching graphic design, and that's a question that I keep asking myself is how could there be a relationship between the 2 disciplines, teaching and practice? So any advice to share for me or anyone that's listening that is also maybe Teaching?

Dan McManus [38:33]

I think, well, for me, the influence from teaching that comes to my work is, I can't help it. Whatever I'm teaching, it really depends what I'm teaching, but I'll find myself, particularly when I was doing a lot of, 2D form and dealing with a lot of black and white, I would kind of be designing a lot like that in my, professional side.

But what I enjoy, I enjoy teaching the, a lot of the formal stuff, beginning type, 2D form, things of that sort, which is basically, in my mind is just really about getting students to look at things closer.

And for me, it's, gestalt, and I just, love gestalt and playing with it. So I find that to be, that I find it always kind of carries over to my professional work and vice versa. Like sometimes I'll find a typeface that I'm working— a student will find and I'll bring it, I never would have thought of using that or things of that sort. So there's a lot of back and forth. And I think it keeps your, the foundation skills sharp if you're always teaching.

Because I can't, be telling the students to, kern their ones and then not kerning my own ones when I'm sending something to a client, like I hear myself in my head telling me. You should do better than this because at the end of the day, you're just really trying to get them to see better and then hopefully, make the world a little more beautiful, through their work.

Christian Solorzano [40:00]

Yeah. I've noticed also that students, they emit so much energy and so much like enthusiasm for what you're teaching and it's, and it's, and it just you could feed off of it. It's just so nurturing to see what, the new generation of designers are like thinking through and like how they perceive design. And that's been one of the, I don't know, like just one of the most like humbling experiences that I've had professionally is just, yeah, they, the students continue to amaze me.

Like sometimes they just do things so quickly, so good.

Dan McManus [40:40]

They always pull it together somehow.

Sofya Karash [40:44]

I, I've had the same experience. I think it keeps continuing to talk about design with your students, but also with other faculty and kind of participating in other events on campus keeps you continually engaged and thinking about design and different things that I think particularly for us as a small design firm, we don't want to get too stale or kind of soak in our own juices too much. And so I think teaching allowed us to have other colleagues and conversations with them.

Many of those have developed into collaborations or friendships, and to also, I've also enjoyed preparing for new classes. I've taught a very wide array of classes from like, graduate courses that are more conceptual to data visualization to image studio, which is getting back to my kind of roots in image-making and how you apply image-making to design.

And I think over the last decade or so teaching, I've gotten much more confident also when it comes to speaking about design and that has helped for me to be a much better communicator to our clients in our firm. I've kind of gained a lot of confidence and understanding in how to explain and talk about design to designers, but also to non-designers and people of different kind of knowledge bases and levels. And that's been really great as well.

Dan McManus [42:35]

Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [42:36]

Yeah, I found that the classroom is a really good place to play and experiment. And that's something that, you don't always get afforded that luxury when you're working with a client, especially when, it's dependent on budget, timeline, all that stuff. So yeah, I think it's a beneficial practice for sure. So what are, what are the two of you working on today? What are some, what are some, what's, what was '22 like for the both of you?

I know that the poster, Dan, that you sent me for the Chicago Graphic Design Club won an award. So that's like really exciting and it's, and it's hanging upstairs in my living room. So I get to look at it every day.

Dan McManus [43:25]

Yeah. Thank you for doing that call too. I mean, that was really a fun project to work on. And it was, came together actually rather quickly. Would you like to hear the backstory on that?

Christian Solorzano [43:39]

Yeah, if you could tell us just like a brief story about the story. So, and then just for the listener, just for some context, we have on our website an open call to designers where we ask any designer, whether they're in Chicago or even other parts of the world, to design an 11 by 17 poster that answers the question, what does Chicago mean to you?

And we've received, dozens of submissions throughout the past 2 years, and it's always exciting to see just people's visual language and how they interpret the question. And your poster was definitely one of, one of my favorites. So yeah, tell us a little bit about that.

Dan McManus [44:24]

It was actually, it was before we moved, but a lot of it kind of happened after or before we decided to move. But we're kind of heading in that direction. But, I looked at the question as if I was answering it to my then infant daughter.

And so, I was very inspired by her to make that poster. And it was a collection of ideas and photos I basically accumulated over, the 10 years or 12 years, I guess I was in Chicago. And what was funny about it is it took me about 6 hours to design the concept and come together and then about 5 weeks to actually produce it because we did everything by hand and I had 2 great assistants, Derek McCormick and Isabella Aviazzi, who are former SCIC students.

But, I really, I was I used to take a lot of photos of typography and alleys, which is kind of where I got part of that image with a mixture of photo montage of the alley and the lake. I was kind of fascinated when I first moved to Chicago from Boston because Boston doesn't have alleys because all the streets were designed by cows. So there's no alleys. So I never saw anything quite like that. And the alleys actually have signs, the few that are in Boston.

Sofya Karash [45:44]

Boston.

Dan McManus [45:44]

So I always kind of looked at them as a typographic antique store. There's always interesting things, there's always weird sharp angles too, because you have the bright sky and then the various structures that are in the alley. Honestly, I think the reason it was so quick to come together is that with having to use Patric King's—

Christian Solorzano [46:06]

Big shoulders.

Dan McManus [46:07]

Big shoulders. It was like, I always wanted to do a stencil poster, and then I saw that there was stencil display. I'm like, okay, that was the easiest typographic decision I've ever made. Patrick, let's see if your display stencil can hold up. And it did. I never got to meet him before I left. I actually would have— I think I would have enjoyed meeting with him, but he seems like a pretty smart guy. And then, I kept looking at it.

I needed a compositional element on the bottom right. And I just kept seeing the lake and the word great next to each other, and I just could not stop thinking about John Massey's Chicago as a Great Lake poster. And that's where I just kind of, looked that up and plugged it in, and, it started dancing. And, at that point we just needed to come up with the production plan of it.

We printed the base layer and then spray painted the typography on top of it, and put stickers on top of the typography to edit typography, because I really wanted to feel like it was Chicago without being too obvious or cliché, which is something that we always try to avoid here. So, and I just wanted to have it, a real Chicagoan be like, yeah, I know this is us.

Sofya Karash [47:20]

And it became a sort of symbolic homage to Chicago right before we moved as well. So we have a soft spot in our heart for that poster. For that reason too.

Dan McManus [47:30]

And I always love that Norman Mailer quote. I remember seeing that the first time I was on— I think I was on the Halsted bus probably about 7 years ago. It was a Domu ad, and I was like, I just remembered it. And I said, I just kind of pulled that out of, my pocket. And I always wanted to do something with the municipal device.

It's such a cool little formally perfect thing, and it's all over the place and no one sees it when it was intended to be borrowed and used by the community and re— adapted. So, it was just really kind of pulling together a lot of different things. And, it really kind of became a farewell note to, a city that did a lot of great things for my career and my personal life. So, yeah.

Christian Solorzano [48:13]

Great. And what other, what other exciting projects are the two of you working on? Anything that you both could share?

Sofya Karash [48:20]

Yeah, we're Continuing to work for an arts and cultural center in Carbondale, which is in southern Illinois, called Art Space 304. They are continually expanding. We're actually, even though we're in Missouri now, we're closer to them than we were in Chicago.

And our new client is DiverseWorks in Houston. They're an arts organization as well, and we're working really closely with them to really rethink I think the way that they position themselves in the art world in the US and abroad, they're really wonderful. We're working on redesigning their website right now. And locally—

Dan McManus [49:13]

Yeah, and as I mentioned, we started, we're gonna be doing the branding for the St. Louis Design Show. And Joining faculty at WashU, Washington University, on Tuesday. Very excited about that. It's a pretty incredible faculty, and I've actually found a punk rock soccer club here. There's a new soccer team, and I'm doing some personal work for them, which is fun. I'm kind of again going back to my old days of making things like that.

Christian Solorzano [49:47]

What's a punk rock soccer team? Is that Soccer club.

Dan McManus [49:50]

So basically there's a new soccer team here that's starting and there's different supporter groups. The hooligans in Europe, kind of like that, except it's all people that like listen to punk rock. So and then go to shows together and also, soccer games. So it's fun.

Christian Solorzano [50:09]

That's exciting. I like that. And we'll include— I'll include— I'll make sure to include a link to your poster in the notes for this episode. And then I want to ask you another question, and this is a question that we ask everyone that we speak with on this podcast, is what does community mean to you, to the both of you? You're in a new city now, but you were in Chicago for some time, and I always just enjoy hearing people's answers to that question.

Sofya Karash [50:42]

As someone As someone who has been part of so many different communities and so many different cities and so many different countries, for me, it's having— being part of whether it's like a city or a group of like-minded people. I was always kind of an individualist because I didn't belong. I was never, you know in the place where I was from, and that allowed me, I think, to share interests and kind of create little mini communities wherever I am.

Currently I think, Dan as my business partner, my life partner, and our daughter is like the core of my little community. And I think we have other interests like design that connects us to people. But I think as I'm always interested in other people and their experiences, and so I can relate to so many different kinds of people and through so many different kinds of ways and experiences that I've had.

I think Chicago was a really great place for being part of so many different kinds of communities because it was so diverse and I just loved being able to take the train or just go on a walk, and you would walk to one neighborhood, and it was one kind of community and a certain kind of aesthetic and certain kind of food, and then continue to walk, and you end up in a different community. It's something— that's something about Chicago that I definitely miss.

But now that, we have Zoom and post-pandemic, I feel like it's even easier for us to connect virtually than before and form online communities, which I was not too much of a part before several years ago.

Dan McManus [52:49]

Yeah, that's the thing. It seems like every definition has been turned on its head since the pandemic. But, like Joe Strummer said, without people, you're nothing.

And I kind of would start there, I think that's really, and just finding people that you do have common interests with, but that also want to make your world better around you or whatever it is that the community is based off of, and that could be through its own cultures or language or, in our instance, the design community, and the Chicago design community was really pretty remarkable. As I've lived in, now 3 cities, and Chicago's design community had something that was very special.

The fact that it's big enough to have a lane for, your programming, with all the other things that have been on and more established. A— that there's an openness to that. And because everybody understands that the community is something that is, you need to preserve, but it's just for you to care for temporarily.

And that the people that were running the design community 20 years ago, we look to them for advice and so forth when they do come around. But it's like, everyone has their turn. That they need to kind of step up and run things and make it better for everyone else. Because if you don't do it, who else will?

Christian Solorzano [54:37]

Yeah, I've been, I've been thinking a lot about the word stewardship and this idea of everyone being able to play a role and being able to contribute. And I think that's something that I've noticed in Chicago is that there's a lot of people that step up and find ways to, yeah, to make some impact. So that, that's what I love about this city a lot, is that there's always someone that's willing to raise their hand and roll their sleeves up. So I like that a lot.

Great. So anything exciting? I know, I know the both of you talked a little bit about some of the projects that the two of you are working on. But anything else just in the world that's influencing the two of you?

Dan McManus [55:30]

Well, I can't say I've been watching much. Reading Matt Wesinski's book, which is, pretty amazing piece. And we spend a lot of time, as I said, we have our daughter who's really the source of a lot of inspiration right now. I hate to sound like the gushing Dad, because I became a dad rather late. I mean, I was 45 when she was born. So I heard everybody do that, for the last 20 years.

So, but she does offer a lot of inspiration, just being able to see the world in a different way and the way she looks at everything and develops. And to be, one thing that we do enjoy with St. Louis is taking her to the art museums. They're all free here. So we take her there just to run around and she enjoys it. The beautiful paintings and sculptures and so forth.

Sofya Karash [56:27]

But anything— I've recently begun to sketch more, and I feel like it was more of like kind of a meditative way for me to relax in the evenings. And sometimes I make drawings for our daughter or for myself, but I started to do a lot more writing and a lot more sketching. And for me, sketching is almost like a way of thinking. It's a way that your, mind and your body are connected.

And, whether on paper or digitally, but on paper, I feel like you have to commit in a way that you don't digitally. And I found that through that process, it provided me a lot of inspiration because it allowed for me to subconsciously begin to think about or write about the different projects and the different things that we've been working on. I think as we're beginning to prepare and design for this design show in St. Louis, I think we've been inspired by this city a lot.

And as we're starting to discover different parts of it, and also like the symbolism and like the fleur-de-lis and the French architecture and other things. And so we've been kind of soaking up also what this city has to offer visually. There's a lot of really great mid-century typography and a lot of like old 1880s kind of architecture and kind of 19th century aesthetic. I think some Art Nouveau as well. It's a really interesting combination.

Dan McManus [58:12]

Yeah, Art Deco. The era that it was, the city really expanded, in the post-war America, World War II. And I think one thing that, and this just kind of goes back to probably fatherhood, but also before that with COVID was just kind of getting back to more towards the basics of, reading books and listening to music instead of screens. Become very weary of, the screens.

And particularly with being an example, if I don't want our daughter to grow up and just see us looking at our phones all the time, because that's all she's gonna do. And it's just, it's something that I've become more and more, I'd rather, listen to a lot of music. We do barely watch. We have one television here in our bedroom, but everything else is just music. And pretty much since she was born, she's been listening to music.

With the Sirius Radio subscription and just incredible variety there.

Christian Solorzano [59:11]

But what do you— what's the music that plays in the house?

Dan McManus [59:16]

It depends who's home.

Sofya Karash [59:20]

Our daughter is a very big fan of Edith Piaf because I have lately been Listening to a lot of French music. Okay.

Dan McManus [59:35]

Also, when I'm— we basically split our time with her, what, about 2 days a week? 1 day a week I have her, and then 1 day a week Sofya has her. 1 day, 2 days a week her parents have her, and then we work back and forth. So there's 1 day where I have her and we listen to the stage— the show called Celtic Crush by the band Black 47's lead singer Larry Kirwan.

When I was growing up, my, I used to go visit my grandfather and the way I was introduced to Irish culture was this radio show that's supposedly still on called the Irish Hit Parade.

Every summer, we go up and it'll be like the soundtrack was the Red Sox game followed by the Irish Hit Parade and my grandfather was really was really deaf, so you could hear like either of them from like 3 blocks away. So like to kind of honor that or carry that on, I have her listen to Celtic Crush, but it's not just all traditional Irish music. There's, contemporary and like stuff that's coming out of Ireland right now.

And, but then so I have her listen to that 3-hour show once a week to get her fully indoctrinated and prepared to be a McManus. But yeah, there's all different stations, but we try to stay away from the news too, because it's just too depressing.

Christian Solorzano [61:02]

Yeah, for sure. Are you both familiar with the— oh, it's called the Radio Garden. And it's, and it's a web-based radio station where it's like Google Maps, like you're able to just move the globe around and go to any, anywhere in the world and see what music is playing there. And you could get as zoomed as— you could zoom in as much as you want and get like very specific to like, what's this little town listening to?

And that's something that I, that I do pretty frequently because it's a radio and some of the songs, sometimes you don't know who's singing or what the song is. So there's that aspect to it that I really appreciate. Yeah.

Dan McManus [61:45]

Yeah, and I say sometimes we, there's a station on there that's all Cuban music. We listen to that quite a bit. Jazz, Symphony Channel, we'll jump all over the place. Afternoons, you could listen to Mozart, Buena Vista Social Club, and the Clash within an hour. Like it totally, when I'm home anyhow.

Christian Solorzano [62:07]

So it looks like your daughter will one day also be on a podcast talking about the music that she was listening to as a kid.

Dan McManus [62:16]

Quite possibly. Music's important. It's amazing just how accessible music is now. It's— might as well take advantage of it.

Christian Solorzano [62:30]

Yeah, I recently just started getting into record collecting again. I used to do it when I was younger, but I just missed the— because, as designers, we appreciate the album artwork and the work that goes into that. And I've noticed that I just wasn't— I just wasn't— I was no longer aware of the artwork that comes with music because everything is just streaming.

And so lately that's been— I've also been like reacquainting myself with music and buying records that I used to really like as a kid. And yeah, and just exploring new music, going to that website Radio Garden and just yeah, it's been great.

Dan McManus [63:16]

And I think that's such an important part for our design process too, like always listen to music. Yeah. Yeah, always say the same thing over and over again usually, but, that's just a whole different thing.

Sofya Karash [63:28]

But there are a lot of really great record stores here. The first record I bought in St. Louis was Little Richard because our daughter goes wild for Little Richard, and now we all have a new appreciation for Little Richard.

Christian Solorzano [63:43]

That is awesome. Well, this is— this has been really great, and I hope that the both of you come to Chicago again soon to visit. I'd love to yeah, to get together sometime and continue the conversation. But other than that, I just want to say, I really appreciate all the support from the both of you since we started back in 2020. So Thank you so much. And yeah, this was great. I enjoyed learning more about the both of you.

Sofya Karash [64:17]

Thank you so much for the conversation. And you're always welcome in St. Louis as well.

Christian Solorzano [64:22]

Yeah. And if anyone wants to reach out to the both of you, how could people get ahold of you?

Sofya Karash [64:28]

Hello@thenarrative.design.

Christian Solorzano [64:32]

Okay.

Dan McManus [64:34]

And our Instagram is just @thenarrative.design.

Christian Solorzano [64:37]

Okay, sounds good. I'll make sure to include that on the notes as well. But thank you so much. This was great.

Sofya Karash [64:43]

Thank you so much, Christian.

Dan McManus [64:45]

All right, talk soon.