I don’t get nostalgic about my working days; normally they appear in my nightmares. But reading the obituary of the graphic designer, Bob Gill, in the NYTimes yesterday, did prompt a little fond remembering. When I was an engineer for a specialty computer modeling firm, and deep into the then new technology of geographic information systems (GIS, just think Google Maps), I started a marketing outfit called Community Cartography with a friend. We took public digital data and formatted it for easy use by the masses. Bob Gill designed the venture’s logo, displayed above, courtesy of the Wayback Machine. The simple idea of using a scale bar as the logo of an outfit dedicated to making maps was, well…brilliant, and pure Gill, in that the image conveyed the idea with elegance and clarity. Not only that, usually, the logo was incorporated into the map so that it was correctly sized and functional, as in this detail from a map that was included in a National Geographic atlas:
I remember showing one of the partners at my employer firm the calling cards he designed for us, with a simple black and white design and text. Predictably he said, “I could have done that! All that money for this?” I explained that, of course, we were not paying him for the amount of ink he expended, but for his imaginative work and ideas, but that did not go over well. When the firm decided to rework its branding, this was the logo they selected. We employees referred to it as “the boob in the cube.”
I have read accounts of people who worked with Frank Lloyd Wright, and who rate it one of the high points of their lives despite his craziness. Well, working with Bob Gill was not a pinnacle of my life, but it certainly was fun, and it definitely was a high point of my career. He was a character, and clearly a creative genius. And he was dedicated to his clients, even if they were relatively unimportant and feebly bankrolled as we were. His office was his apartment in One Fifth Avenue, where we sat on twin Eames lounge chairs, and he spun out ideas and amusing stories.
I sought him out again to do the graphics for a big proposal I worked on to win the job to create a computer map of the NYC sewer system. I wanted our proposal to be something different, from top to bottom. Filled with media gimmicks and suggestive imagery, including a Powerpoint presentation referencing Victor Hugo and Napoleon. Bob christened our proposal team The Datum Group, a wonderful idea as the problem of the datum was central to the execution of the project. We lost big time…what was I thinking? The selection committee didn’t have the slightest grasp of the technical issues involved, although I did get credit for “the most literary” proposal offered. A few years later, I bumped into the fellow who was leading the team that won the job. He congratulated me on my loss; the project was shortening his life.
Bob kept in touch for a while, sending me copies of his latest memorandum book and a book on graphic design that featured the logo he created for us. The obituary in The Times does a good job at capturing his sense of humor and creative drive. I do think that working with him gave me a greater insight into what it is like to be an artist, a person gripped by and driven by their talent. Fortunately for him, he was able to channel it in a way that made him a good living and gave him a lot of fun and fulfillment.
Glad to have known you, Bob!