Justin Kerr's Blog

Creative Questionnaire: Sixten Abbot

October 15, 2008 at 2:33 PM by Justin Kerr

Sixten Abbot is the Art Director (as well as a photographer and copywriter) at Sullivan & Co., a communications and marketing firm in Providence, Rhode Island. Sixten, which means "victory stone" in Swedish, told me his parents named him after one of the tragic main characters in the 1967 film "Elvira Madigan." When he's not spending his free time as a semi-professional band photographer, you'll find Sixten piloting his kayak through the icy winter waters of New England.

Current Project:
I wish I had the luxury of working on just one thing! At the moment, I'm trying to wrap up a moderately sized site with a custom flash piece, just starting a national logo redesign, doing some writing for a local energy company's brochure… and there's always other little things: retouching, color correction… the list goes on!

First step in my design process:
I guess it depends on a lot of things: first, what you consider the "first step" – naturally, you try to gather as much information as possible. In addition to the client, there's the competition, the audience. These days, people seem to want to design for everyone – but that's as successful as "design by committee," i.e., not at all. Even if the audience is broad, they have things in common. The best thing is if you can make a connection to an individual that you know, and design for them. Not their individual taste, per se, but as a gut check. As much as the industry would like to deny it, this is an art as much as a science. Trust your instincts.

Aspect of design I give the highest priority:
Usability, usability, usability. A close second would be suitability – is it appropriate?

Method for overcoming creative block:
Do something. It won't be good, but just get started, like automatic writing. Nobody keeps track of your bad ideas, so don't be afraid to get them out. Because the good ideas are always just beyond them, on the other side.

One typical myth about web design:
800x600. Seriously. Windows' default resolution, on a 15" monitor, has been 1024x768 for years. With browser chrome (you know, tool bars and stuff, not Google's Chrome browser – how confusing is that?), the "above the fold" measurement is somewhere around 900x500, depending.

Most challenging aspect about web design:
Microsoft. Couldn't be happy with the W3C's standards, they had to invent their own.

Most underrated aspect of web design:
The flexibility necessary to account for vastly different amounts of content. In a printed piece, there are ways to work around things like product groupings that vary; you can run them in, smoosh them together… You can't really do that online. It requires more forethought, and sometimes there isn't time for that, so it's conceivable that even a "well-designed" site can have a really ugly page when all is said and done. That should never be true for a printed piece. So despite its flexibility, the web is really quite unforgiving.

When I first knew I wanted to be a designer:
Heh. I hate to cop to it, but honestly – it was when I realized I wasn't going to be an illustrator. Freshman year at RISD. It was an easy decision, when you're surrounded by that many talented illustrators – I decided it was better to try to be good at something that I had less experience with than to try to get better at something I was only moderately good at.

Inspirations:
John Maeda, Laurie Anderson, Joshua Davis, Colin Moock, Yugo Nakamura, Tobias Frere-Jones, Richard Feynman, John Williams Waterhouse, Benjamin Franklin.

Oh, visually? Anything I can get my hands on. I think a lot of us are still looking at echoing analog processes, somehow. There's an unknown quality in the result which I think resonates with the human spirit. It's part of what makes some design "warm" and others "cold." The more analog, the more error-prone the process, the more we recognize the human hand behind it. Do I sound like a Luddite?

Favorite tool:
It's stereotypical, but – Photoshop. Especially ironic in light of the above, but fifteen years with something's hard to let go of, you know? And analog processes require so much infrastructure. And, if I may be allowed to stray from the strictly "design" tools here, two cameras: my Holga S and my Pentax k20d. Although if there's anything I'm looking forward to, it's RED's forecast DSLR.

Favorite design resource:
Gotta be Communication Arts; they set the standard.

The one typeface for a deserted island stay:
Hoefler & Frere-Jones' Requiem family. Gorgeous and quite extensive. Second choice would have to be Helvetica Neue – it never ends.

Bookmarks:
Hmm. I've actually stopped using them because I bookmarked too much, too quickly. But sites I hit often: boingboing, wired, pharyngula, slashdot, Giant in the Playground.

Design-related book I highly recommend:
It's probably too much of a given, but: Bringhurst's "Elements of Typographic Style." Or Eric Gill's, "An Essay on Typography." I know, I know – I'm a product of my education. And I have to admit, I haven't read a book on design (or directly related to design) too recently. What can I say? My tastes are too broad for me to spend my time away from the office reading about stuff that's directly related to what I do in the office.

Currently reading:
Like my current projects, there are just too many of these to list them all. I recently finished Naomi Klein's, "The Shock Doctrine." Not for the neoconservative at heart. Also, lest you think me too intellectual, I also just finished (for the first time) Orson Scott Card's, "Ender's Game" and "Xenocide."

Life lesson:
It doesn't matter what the salary is – the people you work with are the most important thing. No amount of money can make up for misery.

If I weren't a designer, I'd be...
It's the same answer I gave over thirty years ago: when I grow up, I want to be an artist or a scientist. I guess design sort of splits the difference.

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Justin Kerr's Blog

Creative Questionnaire: Sixten Abbot

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