Interview with Marty Neumeier: A babe falls in the woods

Graphis: So why not teach a class at Stanford or endow a chair at Art Center College?

Neumeier: I started thinking about what kind of business I could do and enjoy and sell sometime in the future if I needed to. One morning I just woke up with a smile on my face and thought a magazine would be it. My best friend, a great graphic designer in the Valley named Gordon Mortensen and I talked about doing this together. He realized the risk was too dangerous for him, so I decided to go ahead with it alone.

Graphis: You thought you were able to straddle two chariots at full gallop?

Neumeier: I only intended to keep the design studio going during the launch years, and once the rocket had escaped the atmosphere, I expected it to keep going under its own power. That really never happened and that probably should have been a sign to me that it wasn't working out as I thought it would.

Graphis: When you decided to change your life, what did your wife Eileen say or did you have a pipeline to Silicon Valley venture capitalists?

Neumeier: It never even occurred to me that "vulture capitalists," as we call them, would be interested in something this small. Critique could probably support a family but not an entire corporation plus venture capitalists. Anyway, I probably would have wasted the money on all the wrong things if someone had given it to me. It was better to be a penny pincher with my own money and take it step by step.

Graphis: But what did your wife actually say when you told her, "I want to start a magazine?"

Neumeier: Actually, I asked her what she thought of the idea and of investing our own money and she said, "Failure is impossible." She supported me 100%. My design staff was pretty worried but my wife came to the studio and told them the same thing: "Failure is impossible."

Graphis: What was the magazine's mission? Did you envision Critique as a journal of critical discourse on graphic design?

Neumeier: My mission was to mentor designers through the vehicle of criticism. I wanted a community of the best designers-the community of Critique-to get involved as teachers and mentors for the rest of the community. We would mentor each other and the young people coming up.

Graphis: Why was this so important and really different from, say, How magazine which is instructional, and in a sense, teaching techniques?

Neumeier: We would be different. For the last ten years, people have been saying criticism is what's missing in graphic design. We're not critical of our work and we can't become a mature profession until we become critical. Actually, criticism has branched off in two directions. One is cultural criticism-the role of design in the culture. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in practical criticism, which is about becoming a better, more influential, more powerful designer.

Graphis: You are one of the very few designers who have really mastered the written word. Did you feel graceful, editorial prose was missing in design or design publications?