THS: What is a broadcast designer?

TG: The term is becoming more and more ambiguous as time goes on and on. It customarily refers to someone who designs graphics for television or cable but it could mean anything for a show open to a network ID, credit bed, stuff for commercials, any graphics that normally appear on television. That is changing pretty radically. Now it is anyone who is a broadcast designer is also involved in interactive or web or anything else that involves creative insight with graphic design.

THS: Does it merge with what we normally think of as a director?

TG: Yea, more and more. Usually - Well say twenty years ago, a broadcast designer was mostly occupied with still imagery and stuff that wasn't particularly complex. People like Harry Marx were certainly innovators of broadcast design that involved direction, meaning that the designer now becomes the major influence in the theme and the message and as such becomes a director. While they are not directing live people, you are certainly directing elements of a message or a theme.

THS: It is interesting as you are talking, it reminds me of Slavko Vorkipitch from the thirties and all those montage people might be in there too. Has digital technology made an impact on this?

TG: I think so. I think certainly it has made an impact on audiences they have grown to expect a lot more, they have grown to expect a lot quicker turnaround. Meaning if something is on today's headlines, certainly if you look at the news, suddenly there is very complex graphics. If a fire is burning somewhere, there is suddenly very complex graphics and now even animation, that really involve the location of the city, it involves the elements of where the fire is, and suddenly there's intense graphics and animation going on based on something that maybe just happened an hour ago. So the audience is now expecting something to happen that much quicker. And because digital technology is providing such quick flexibility and turnaround, it's probably had its biggest effect on the audience. Everyone is striving to keep up with it.

THS: Sure. It's that notion of real time, whether with CNN with the Persian Gulf War the missile down the chimney kind of photos....

TG: It is really creating a demand for real time stuff and it is interesting that you say the word real time because I don't think the audiences think in terms of what is real time and what is not, they simply know that when an event happens they expect to see it on television right away. The biggest example of this that I have seen recently is in the O.J. Simpson case. It went from being intriguing to suddenly being this broadcast design frenzy. I know people who haven't worked in years, but because of the O.J. Simpson case, there are new companies cropping up all over the place.

THS: Right - yeah. It's interesting. Chris Marker's film, Le Jette, which is about time, and so if one said real time to him, who knows what you would get back. In your view, what makes the design for broadcast or digital broadcast?

TG: I am not sure I understand.

THS: You're working away with these images, they are your own, they are ones that come from the client, there are ones from everyone else doing them - Is there anything that you see that either in your own work or in that others that you see that you say "Yes this is good, this is a good design"?

TG: Yes, the basic elements of good design, from my standpoint, and you are going to get different answers from everyone else, would be does it convey a singular idea or message? So often, especially now that digital stuff is relatively available and inexpensive there is a lot of people entering the field that come from only watching tv who assume that the more flashy and more screaming and spirals and jumping up and down the better it is going to be which is not necessarily the case. While I have certainly done some of that stuff on request, most of the stuff that I do is not necessarily screaming off the screen at you.

The quality isn't measured by how many pictures you can fit on the screen at once; instead it is a measure of how much the audience takes away. We have done spots that are remarkably simple in their content, but the audience has been left with a very dramatic impression and can, in fact, recite messages back to you verbatim after seeing the spot. That to me is a good spot. How did it inspire the audience? What kind of emotions did it invoke? That is certainly not becoming a lost art but - well when desk top publishing became a craze, when it became readily available - suddenly you look around and there were hundreds of thousands of really bad newsletters. So that is kind of what is happening now with design and with video.

There are a lot of people jumping into it and granted I - the more the merrier - I certainly welcome more people into the field, but certainly people have to stop and look at their design and say if this is going to be something to evoke a reaction from the audience not just paint pretty colors.

THS: Sure - right. I think somebody once asked Duke Ellington how he learned to play such great jazz and he thought about it for a minute and he said "Well, I learned to play the classics first."

TG: Right - absolutely. In fact, you can even usually spot waves in design, if you watch television you can usually see the trends and the trend that is pretty much in full swing now is - and I think is just about on its way out - is spirituality. If you look at good designers you will see that they are seeing where the public consciousness is and they are seeing what kind of images are affecting audiences and right now spirituality is pretty key in that if you look at Levis jeans commercials one of the biggest players in that they started doing all these - well for their shorts campaign, they had very spiritual imagery in it - kids flying around, and floating around in slow motion, and a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon and it became a very popular motif and the audiences were really responding well to it. But I think that is probably on its way out now. But if you keep your eyes peeled for what people are reacting to that is the best place to start.

THS: Sure. Well that kind of brings up the issue of how do you monitor your professional environment? What is your radar for looking over the horizon?

TG: Do you mean as far as content or technology?

THS: Well you were just saying there spotting a trend in your field with spirituality.

TG: Well its not something I would really put a method to it - it is just what affects me. I don't watch a whole lot of television myself - I watch probably a small amount of television comparatively - but when I do watch television, I look to see what affects me. I watch with a not so much a critical eye so far as quality because I know what quality is and I know which is good and what is bad. So I am not really that - I really don't care that much for quality, instead, I watch for what has left me with an impression, what has moved me in some way, and I see if that is becoming a trend. It is certainly a - we don't mind trying to start a trend now and then but we have started a few but it's always good to see what is on and try to step back from your profession and try to absorb and see what is left of an impression. There was a spot on Los Angeles television, I don't know if it was a national spot, that to this day I think is one of the greatest spots, it was on about two years ago, it was for Ikea and it was a guy who walks in the very far background - black and white spot - he is in a large white room, and he walks from the far distant background up to the foreground and presses his face up against the screen and looks around your room, steps back and screams that you need new furniture and that's the whole spot. And it was so subtle and so brilliant. I appreciated that spot not as a designer, not as someone who craves television, but as an audience member. It left an impression on me.

THS: It's interesting, their catalog just arrived today.

TG: I actually work for them but I did not want to tell you that.

THS: Okay - that's great. How do you monitor technology?

TG: That is relatively easy to do. There are so many sources available on technology. It's an exploding market where everyone and their mother are writing about it. The easiest thing to do is to keep your nose in magazines. We are like everyone else in that respect in that we just read all the trades that we can get our hands on, we attend all the trade shows even though ninety percent of it we had seen at the last trade show. There is still ten percent of it that effects you and it says this is new and cool. And because we have gone to so many trade shows and subscribe to so many magazines, and we are pretty well known, and in fact do a lot of speaking at the trade shows ourselves, now because oddly enough we have somehow become one of the poster child's for digital video. That was accidental; we really didn't intend that but because we absorb so much and learn so much so quickly we wound up knowing a lot more than most people. We were called on to deliver some of that information. But it is really just a matter of keeping your ear to the ground and reading magazines and going to trade shows. There is not a big secret to it, the information is there. It is just a matter of getting it. And the web is just a wonderful place to get information because usually when a company writes a press release, the first thing they do is stick it on the web and then figure how to get that information out to magazines and hope that they will print it. But if you go to companies' websites, if you learn who the key companies are and go to their websites you will find their press releases moments after they happen. It is a great place to go to get some information.

THS: Congratulations on winning first place in the RADIUS digital video competition in Cannes.

TG: Thank you. How did you find out about it?

THS: I looked at your web page.

TG: Well there you go.

THS: Exactly. But that's a very good thing, winning the award.

TG: We were very excited about that. It's interesting, I mentioned spirituality before and that was a very spiritual spot. It was for Nissan Pathfinder and they wanted a high energy exciting yipee ki yea kind of skiing spot and it incorporated skiing footage and the Nissan and we went a 180 degrees in the other direction and made a very slow motion, a very beautiful, spiritual piece out of skiing --- out of high impact skiing --- and that had quite an effect so there is an example of using a currently working metaphor and applying it in a way that might not necessarily be expected.

Continued: Taz Goldstein Interview: Part Two