really, it’s kinda been just about 10 years for flomm here

A PERSONAL HISTÓRY oF FLOMM so far     PART 1 of 10

“FLOMM made non­sense un­til I saw five lines scrib­bled on the back of an es­say. The es­say was not mine.”
—Jes
 

It’s been ten years since this FLOMM project start­ed. And here’s how it happened.
 

cat­a­lysts
My dad died in 2006 while a well-re­viewed, world-span­ning graph­ic de­sign ex­hi­bi­tion I’d pro­duced was hap­pen­ing at the UC Davis De­sign Mu­se­um. I’d spent the year pre­vi­ous work­ing with a hand­picked team of cu­ra­tors, and it was an awe­some thing in my life. 

But I re­al­ly felt empty.

I con­tin­ued teach­ing my de­sign cours­es though it all felt more like an act. 

Per­for­mance is part of wat a teacher does, and I’d man­aged to con­tin­ue ‘sell­ing’ my cours­es to the stu­dents, but my heart wasn’t in it. And at that point, I’d been work­ing in graph­ic de­sign for al­most two decades – my heart wasn’t in that either.
 

“If I see a brochure now with lots of white space that has … six lines of Hel­veti­ca up on the top and a lit­tle … ab­stract logo at the bot­tom and a pic­ture of a busi­ness man walk­ing some­where. The over­all com­mu­ni­ca­tion that says to me is, ‘Do not read me. Be­cause I will bore the shit out of you.’”
—graph­ic de­sign­er Ste­fan Sag­meis­ter, from Hel­veti­ca (2007)
 

This is wat I’d done for half of my life at that point: Put pic­tures of busi­ness peo­ple shak­ing hands with fake sound­ing mar­ket­ing words that no one would ever read on dis­pos­able, bor­ing brochures. It paid, but it made me feel use­less, as use­less as the brochures. 

But there was mor go­ing on with me. Re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, my an­i­mos­i­ty to­wards brochures was a bit over the top.

I had so much re­spect for my dad, he had al­most a dozen dif­fer­ent ca­reers over a life­time – from WWII vet to hard­ware store own­er, hy­dro­pon­ics man­u­fac­tur­er, to nurse … dad even won his first house in a pok­er game (ala Han Solo). A ther­a­pist fig­ured out that a big part of wat fu­eled me was seek­ing his very hard to earn approval. 

And I did get it be­fore he died, he said he was re­al­ly proud of all I had worked hard to ac­com­plish – which was so out of char­ac­ter for him. Yes, I’m a worka­holic, nev­er idle, a ‘busy per­son’ who’s found through teach­ing I just hap­pen to be güd at help­ing oth­ers find their pas­sion in their own form of busy work. 

In 2000, Stan­ford Hos­pi­tal Psych De­part­ment la­beled me with OCD and gave me drugs to stop me. So the drugs – which knocked me down for three whole months – had to go. I couldn’t do any­thing, the doc­tor said, “Well, now you’re just like the rest of us.” But I didn’t want to be like the ‘rest of us.’ (Watch out for psy­chi­a­trists who put THEIR OWN is­sues on you – and a men­tal health sys­tem that be­lieves meds are the cure all for everything) 

And since, I’ve found – per­son­al­ly – with a lot of prac­tice and med­i­ta­tion (and help from an awe­some acupunc­tur­ist) I can turn the OCD off and use it when it re­al­ly matters. 

But I digress.

I need­ed some­thing to­tal­ly new. A way to work at wat I love be­cause the ap­proval from dad wasn’t go­ing to hap­pen again. 

I need­ed to re­boot. Like they re­boot su­per­hero films. 

(The night be­fore my dad died, I was head­ing to see Su­per­man Re­turns (2006). It was a fun retro-in­spired movie that didn’t have a co­he­sive end­ing. And that resonates.)

A scene in the doc­u­men­tary Sketch­es of Frank Gehry (2006) – su­perb to watch for any­one go­ing into the arts – showed how Gehry found his pur­pose as an avant-garde ar­chi­tect. And I de­cid­ed to take the same approach. 

Drop every­thing, start over.
 

“You say you’re a graph­ic de­sign­er. But you’re re­al­ly an artist that THINKS he’s a graph­ic designer.”
—said a friend, who I lost in my life reboot
 

It was 2007 and I re­al­ized I’d been liv­ing a life oth­ers had sug­gest­ed to me – I even had an awe­some 4 bed­room mid­cen­tu­ry house that sucked away time and mon­ey – and it turned out our bank want­ed it mor than we re­al­ly did. We had it cause it was the thing to do. Amer­i­can eq­ui­ty! Tied to this term I even­tu­al­ly learned about: ‘Be­ing underwater.’

An­oth­er thing I learned: Don’t restart your life when the econ­o­my is in the toi­let.

Then my wife got se­ri­ous­ly ill, I was turned down for a teach­ing po­si­tion I had been al­ready do­ing de fac­to, but not on pa­per – I was re­placed by some­one who had nev­er taught be­fore. Be­cause ed­u­ca­tion pol­i­tics are a night­mare I wasn’t even mar­gin­al­ly pre­pared for.

Then the hous­ing and job mar­ket crashed, I was head­ing home from the only job I could find at that time. Af­ter be­ing yelled at by the ad agency’s traf­fic man­ag­er for some­one else’s mis­take – while I was cross­ing the street, I looked up and saw a con­fused mini­van head­ing straight at me.

And every­thing turned upsidedown.
 

up next
Then I met Chelsea Davis at a con­cert and we start­ed to col­lab­o­rate on sev­er­al things. 

She’s a mu­si­cian who can do any­thing. And we’ve spent hours just dis­cussing life and wat hu­mans are ca­pa­ble of. Her ap­proach to mu­sic and self-dis­cov­ery start­ed help­ing me find my­self. That, and a re­fer­ral to a ther­a­pist who ac­tu­al­ly man­aged to get me (I’m very güd at burn­ing out therapists). 

A new for-prof­it de­sign school opened up just in time to stop me from leav­ing teach­ing. I couldn’t stand their logo or that they were all about prof­it, but when prof­it is in­volved, the cul­ture is much dif­fer­ent from pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion. Change hap­pens a lot faster, and I ac­tu­al­ly kno a bit mor about how cor­po­ra­tions work, they were the back­bone of my free­lance career. 

And I need­ed in­come. It was start­ing to be ANY income. 

They al­lowed me to teach wat I was güd at: Ty­pog­ra­phy. For the next ten years, I taught five dif­fer­ent cours­es rang­ing from tra­di­tion­al to ex­per­i­men­tal to dig­i­tal. And they paid for most of an MAEd where I first ever re­al­ized there were rea­sons I was güd at teaching.

(I use a mix of both ‘tra­di­tion­al’ and ‘con­struc­tivist’ learn­ing process­es – which are the ex­tremes I’d learned over the years by at­tend­ing dif­fer­ent schools. ‘Tra­di­tion­al ed­u­ca­tors will HATE Con­struc­tivist ed­u­ca­tors,’ was a con­cept from one of my text­books. This ex­plained A LOT of wat I was do­ing, though I know bet­ter than to just ap­ply one or the oth­er. Chang­ing out philoso­phies to ad­dress IN THE MO­MENT stu­dent needs is some­thing I found I’m güd at. Some­where in there, I end­ed up la­belling my ap­proach: ‘Ag­gres­sive Waldorf.’)
 

the game that be­came flomm
Spring, 2009. I end­ed up hav­ing a lot of re­al­ly weird con­ver­sa­tions with the head of the Game Art and De­sign de­part­ment. Like, re­al­ly fuck­ing weird con­ver­sa­tions.

Be­cause I’ll talk to any­one about any thing. It’s a great way to get out of your head, work to un­der­stand (or not) how screwed up some­one else’s view may be. Ran­dom peo­ple in el­e­va­tors end up in my web. 

In this case, John (we’ll call him John cause that’s his name) was talk­ing about game apps. Cause he was de­vel­op­ing them. And I would talk about wat I loved about old ar­cade games.

De­fend­er (1980) was my favourite, so much that I made up an orig­i­nal char­ac­ter based on the game – with art and back­sto­ry – that I pub­lished in my high school news­pa­per and lit­er­ary magazine. 

And no one knew wat the hell I was doing.

He showed me a side shoot­er app he was work­ing on and said, “You kno, you could re-skin this with your own artwork.” 

And I said, “Okay!”

(Fun­ny thing is, John didn’t hear me say ‘okay’ – nor did he re­mem­ber the re-skin com­ment – so when I showed up a cou­ple months lat­er with a to­tal whacked out pre­sen­ta­tion for wat would be­come FLOMM! THE BAT­TLE For MOD­eRN 1923, he had this con­fused look on his face I will nev­er, ever forget.)
 

the bat­tle from art history
My ap­proach to the art­work came from my Graph­ic De­sign His­to­ry course. 

I’d been teach­ing this since 2003 and per­form it as standup com­e­dy. Pic­tured above: Col­lege news­pa­per cov­er­ing my antics.

Be­cause I al­ways get bored in the pres­ence of a dry lec­tur­er, and I as­sume oth­ers feel the same way I do.

So over the years I start­ed play­ing around with hu­mour, egged on by the tech­niques of George Car­lin and Ed­die Iz­zard. Plus, Robin Williams, Will Durst, David Let­ter­man, who turns out was cre­at­ed in a lab by Mer­rill Markoe. And Bill Cos­by, great fuck­ing sto­ry­teller and ed­u­ca­tor. Damn him.

Also, Cobb’s Com­e­dy Club in San Fran­cis­co was my week­end hang­out in the 1980s – and their Mon­day night line­up had about a dozen ‘new­com­ers’ hon­ing their ma­te­r­i­al – who knew I’d be prac­tic­ing my own ver­sion wat they were do­ing years lat­er in front of a bunch of un­sus­pect­ing stu­dents in a lec­ture hall?

And the game con­cept hit me WHILE I was lec­tur­ing. I re­mem­ber paus­ing and think­ing, this is HUGE. A HUGE con­cept. I kno wat I’m go­ing to do with this re-skinned game. I stood there work­ing out the en­tire uni­verse in my head. 

While my stu­dents won­dered why my dra­mat­ic pause this time was so long.
 

the mod­ern art metaphor
There are pat­terns in his­to­ry. The big one that runs through every­thing we do as hu­mans is: 

 
“New gen­er­a­tions ex­ist to piss off the previous.”
—which I end­ed up adding to the FLOMM manifesto
 

But there is an­oth­er one. That re­al­ly kicked in af­ter the In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion end­ed up speed­ing things up:

New vs. Old. 

New ways of do­ing things, new in­ven­tions, new prod­ucts, to­tal­ly new new new. 

 
“[life has three rules:] para­dox, hu­mor and change … 1. Life is a mys­tery. Don’t waste time try­ing to fig­ure it out. 2. Keep a sense of hu­mour, es­pe­cial­ly about your­self. It is a strength be­yond all mea­sure. 3. Know that noth­ing stays the same.”
—Nick Nolte, from Peace­ful War­rior (2006)*

*I don’t rec­om­mend this film – it was kin­da a snooz­er – and the best part I just quot­ed above.
 

New vs. Old takes many forms. 

And in my course I was cov­er­ing: Avant Garde vs. Es­tab­lish­ment, The Fu­ture vs. The Past – all tied into hu­mans want­i­ng CHANGE but NOT REALLY.

It’s a bat­tle we’re fight­ing RIGHT NOW.

CHANGE IS GOOD, but DON’T CHANGE THAT. Cause things should stay the way they are be­cause we like that, but we don’t like that, or them or we should make things bet­ter again, but they were worse for the oth­ers but not our­selves so they can go away but they want to stay be­cause things should be bet­ter than they are but they’re not and hu­mans are fuck­ing self­ish and that’s why we have laws but we must chal­lenge the laws if they’re un­fair and shit, my life is not your life but you want me to live your life and your re­li­gion and that’s not some­thing I can wrap my brain around so I’m just go­ing to go eat a meal that is ei­ther com­fort food or to­tal­ly new be­cause An­tho­ny Bour­dain was awe­some and re­spect for oth­ers leads to a bet­ter so­ci­ety but peo­ple who’ve nev­er been off the farm will not like that but they kno how to farm which is some­thing I can­not do.

And we can’t make up our minds about ANY of it – caus­ing this con­flict to keep fu­el­ing it­self – I mean, just read Twit­ter at any time. The con­cept: New vs. Old, Us vs. Them, Left vs. Right is every­where. And every­one is ar­gu­ing about it.

It should res­onate, no?

In Meg­gs’ Chap­ter 13, there is a quick overview of Mod­ern Art. This is where my en­tire class con­tent EX­PLODES into to­tal­ly new ways of do­ing graph­ic design.

And the metaphor is there. On inky text­booky pa­per. The bat­tle is:

Mod­ern vs. Tradition.

And it was a big fuck­ing battle! 

As big as pol­i­tics to­day, be­cause it was pol­i­tics then. 

With ma­jor play­ers: Artists, oth­er artists, po­ets, au­thors, crit­ics, fas­cists, despots, dadaists – rulers and pawns – class strug­gles, pro­pa­gan­dists, en­tre­pre­neurs, im­pre­sar­ios, with a play­ing field that had its own Great War, humanity’s in­tro­duc­tion to be­ing glob­al, every­one played their parts, and every­thing changed be­cause of it.

Only one big problem. 

I didn’t kno much about Mod­ern Art. Just Chap­ter 13 in Meg­gs’ and Meg­gs says in his in­tro­duc­tion that his whole book is just the tip of the iceberg. 

I had a lot of home­work ahead of me.
 

con
tinue
read
ing —

                   forward to  PART 2   • • •

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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