He Wrote Beyond The Genius Of The Sea

09.14.09

Contributor: Michael Langley

Recently, I was asked by Rough to answer a few questions about my inspirations. I thought I’d share them here, too.

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Where was the first place that you worked in Dallas? When did you work there and what was your title?

Name 4 people that you’ve worked with/work with that inspired you/taught you/influenced the way you work.

Mark Perkins, SP Principal, convinced me the words in a subhead should be chosen as carefully as those in a sonnet.

Rob Wilson, SP Creative Director, taught me that my verbal brilliance was only part of an ideal solution, and that I needed to help him come up with visual brilliance as well.

Art Garcia, former senior designer at SP, taught me a lot about the correct composition of menudo and annual report layouts.

Kelly Allen opened my eyes to the power of illustration and the glory of Hank Williams.

Name 1 person whom you taught/influenced/worked with that was more junior than you — that taught/inspired/influenced/impressed you in return.

I schooled a kid named Chris Ault on my office dartboard many times, and he has gone on to inspire me with music, animation and general brilliance since.

What is your Favorite memory, saying or quote you have from any of the people mentioned above?

A few weeks after I started, an SP designer had a run of personal bad luck, including a flooded apartment. My colleagues decided the first thing to do was to make her a giant card, with a picture of her in a boat. The plentiful fish around the boat were real twenty dollar bills. “A Little Something to Keep You Afloat” was the headline. That showed me the sort of people I was working with: kind, generous and possessed of a belief in the power of graphic design to deliver real benefits.

There’s that memory, and the one of reciting Wallace Stevens’ “The Idea of Order in Key West” from memory after my boss had made an offhand allusion to it. But we’ve all done that.