Photographer Petra Bindel’s Constant Pursuit of People and Pictures

The camera functions as an organic extension of self to photographer Petra Bindel:

“After more than 13 years of living and working as a photographer, the camera has almost become an extended part of my body, like an extra limb, and my eyes work constantly. Still every new challenge fills me with excitement and fear.

I don’t think there is anything more fulfilling than to work with talented people. It’s inspiring and the feeling of creating something together drives me forward and makes me want to do more.

I still feel like I’m in the beginning of something new and something big. There are so many beautiful pictures waiting to come my way.”

Beyond the importance of good tools, Bindel’s emphasizes working with “talented people.” It must not be ignored: good people help others do good work. Of course, “good” is whatever you believe it to be—the school of attitude that appeals to you.

Bindel claims that working with such people is a source of inspiration that begets inspiration. Collaborating with others and other disciplines—including clients—with the goal of creating satisfying work and realizing the goodness of that experience…that’s not BS. Thanks go to Bindel for the reminder of the rewards had from seeking out and sticking with good, talented people.

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This is a piece in a series focused on collecting and pointing to “effortless” expressions, created by designers describing themselves. In these pieces, designers reveal something about their attitude toward work—whatever their discipline may be—one “About Me” at a time. In case you missed the previous release, read about Love and War’s Turn from Dissatisfaction.

Designer Self-Statement: Love and War’s Turn from Dissatisfaction

Is was through their work for New York City Restaurateur and Food Network star Geoffrey Zakarian that creative agency Love and War caught my attention. A clear truth emerges when the agency describes themselves: Dissatisfaction leads to something better. The founders of Love and War took their dissatisfying work circumstances, envisioned a workplace aligned to their work-style, and then made it real:

“Love and War is the agency we wanted to hire, but couldn’t find, when we were on the client side. It is the company we wanted to work for, but couldn’t find, as creatives.

Instead of departmental silos, we wanted a single ‘go to’ team that could attack problems, develop creative solutions, and execute across print, web, and broadcast media. We wanted to work with people who had an intuitive grasp of brand strategy and a knack for breakthrough creative.

We wanted a streamlined structure and a flexible process. We wanted to work with people who would roll up their sleeves and get it done.

We couldn't find the agency we wanted. So we created it.”

There’s a “viral” quote that goes “The best way to complain is to make things.” It’s attributed to James Murphy, founder of retired band LCD Soundsystem. Creating is complaining, and Love and War is doing just that. They also call themselves “creatives” which may make you run, but in this case, toward them because they mean it.

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This is a piece in a series focused on collecting and pointing to “effortless” expressions, created by designers describing themselves. In these pieces, designers reveal something about their attitude toward work—whatever their discipline may be—one “About Me” at a time. In case you missed the previous release, read about Lundgren+Lindqvist’s Enthusiasm for Design and Friends Along The Way.

Designer Self-Statement: Lundgren+Lindqvist’s Enthusiasm for Design and Friends Along The Way

Lundgren+Lindqvist is a studio duo. One half is Andreas Friberg Lundgren, an art director; the other half is Carl-Johan Lindqvist, a web designer. What they wrote about themselves is set to enthusiasm, not only for design, but also for friendships:

“We talk, live, dream, work, and digest design. It’s as natural to us as the air we breathe and the beer we drink. It’s our yang.

Using our experience in branding and marketing, we work across all disciplines including illustration, art direction, web design, social media consulting and print design. Along the way we’ve also made many talented friends including photographers, 3D-artists and copywriters. That means—whatever your needs we have the skills to cater to them.

If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help you, collaborate or request further information about any of the work you see here; please say hello.

And remember. Good design is good business.”

The closing reminder is associated with IBM’s former executive Thomas Watson—but it’s not exclusive to the extra-extra-large companies. It also—even best—applies to companies that may be small in numbers but are big in heart.

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This is a piece in a series focused on collecting and pointing to “effortless” expressions, created by designers describing themselves. In these pieces, designers reveal something about their attitude toward work—whatever their discipline may be—one “About Me” at a time. In case you missed the previous release, read how Printmaker Abigail Uhteg writes about herself.

Designer Self-Statement: Abigail Uhteg’s Cinema-Charged Manifesto

Printmaker Abigail Uhteg’s statement about herself appears as a dissonant run-on at first, but there’s method to its flow. It builds with each re-read. Each paragraph is treated like a spread in a book. There’s an unfolding of cinematic texture in Uhteg’s prose:

“Preemptive isolation: the reduction of variables (seemingly minor details, nearly always silent and solitary), dangerously romantic sympathetic, intimate. Irrelevant fumbling selves (certain configurations of line and color, or peculiarly-shaped objects) find their particular nostalgia in darkness.

An unabashedly emotional response to catastrophe: distant, distracting, counterfeit details, continually vibrant instead of freezing an instant, as if things should have halted long before, a paragraph before, a page before, faithful whispers confident in spite of their strangeness.

A pervasive fascination with unforgettable things, a quivering conscience, a clumsy counterfeit of inordinate proportions concealed in boundless depths of ambiguous nothingness (anticipating an inexplicable absence). Mumbles unremarkable transient things (a street, a waterbody), irrationally significant, weightless, slips into another language to avoid or invite misunderstanding. (A humble not to Nabokov’s staring fish, a stubborn devotion to the object.)

An overture to a paradigm, searching for honesty, elegance, conviction, parenthetical thoughts enclosed in the appropriate shape, any residual equivocal quivering to be confined therein. Enduring, momentous, italic capitals necessitated by deliberate selves’ longing for authenticity.”

How she writes about herself speaks to her sensibilities with printmaking, where narrative seeps beyond the surface.

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This is the second piece in a series focused on collecting and pointing to “effortless” expressions created by designers who describe themselves. In these pieces, designers reveal something about their attitude toward work, whatever their discipline may be, one “About Me” at a time. In case you missed the first, read how Artist and Musician Scott Hansen, of blog ISO50, writes about himself.

Words: One of the Designer’s Best Natural Resources

I’ve become more interested about how designers describe themselves on their websites. The designer’s ability to arrange words in a layout; be it printed or digital, on a surface large or small, requires skill. The skill of describing what one does as a designer, or expressing one’s attitude as a designer, is what I’m honing on.

I’ve discovered a lot of well crafted—that is to say, well worded—statements by designers about themselves, like this “About” wording by Artist and Musician Scott Hansen of the popular design-and-music blog ISO50:

“Design, to me, is the search for efficiency. Efficiency in conveying a message, efficiency of form. In this way I see some of my own work falling into the category of design, while some of my other work falls under the umbrella of illustration. With the more illustrative pieces my primary goal is to create something beautiful or striking in a visceral sense. These goals remain intact when I create a purely design-driven piece, but there is the added goal of minimalism and efficiency which constrains the process and limits the content. It is these constraints that force us as designers to reveal the core of the idea we are trying to express and to seek the most direct route to it. In this way, all of the periphery and excess of illustration and fine art can be shed to expose the roots of visual communication and express them in a concise and instantly understandable form. When I see something that embodies these ideals it is always very moving, these are the things that drive me to create.”

I wonder if these “About Me” sections are read or largely ignored, but they fascinate me. I’ve heard, depending on what pro gives the writing advice, that writing what you know is what not to do, perhaps because it’s too easy. Even so, it could be the hardest thing for a designer to do. Though all people—not only designers—are in daily situations where they talk about what they do for a living, it’s impossible to also listen at the same time. I would find it helpful to have automatic playback of my telling about who I am, how I think and why it matters in a way that is clear and fits with my personality. Putting all this in a tidy sentence or a succinct paragraph is a tall order. Noticing and reading statements by designers, whatever the discipline, about themselves helps learning about designing and writing.

Author Samuel Johnson said that, “What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure.” Designers strive for results of effortlessness; though creating something which projects that effect, more often than not, demands considerable effort.

At first, I wanted to start a blog exclusively dedicated to this topic of how designers describe themselves, but why not add it as a new category called Designer’s Self-Statements to this blog, plus it’s so easy to set up yet another blog at the start. I see this category (for now) as a dedicated place to collect and point to designers’ “effortless” expressions when they reveal themselves, one “About Me” at a time.