Tris

This post will be neither humorous or music related, so it's a bit of an anomaly for me. I was thinking today about graphic designers/art directors; I've met many and worked with and managed several.

The finest art director I ever had the privilege to work with, and someone whom I still think was one of the best advertising art directors in the Baltimore-Washington area, was the late Tris Johnson.

Tris graduated from the Rocky Mountain School of Art + Design, where he was a gifted sculptor, primarily working in bronze. He apparently blew everyone away at the annual student art show in his freshman and sophomore years, to the point where he was asked not to compete during his junior year, so someone else would have a chance.

Unlike most artists, Tris saw no difference between commercial art and fine art. To him, your job was to communicate something, and the only difference was the medium and the tools. He won many advertising awards for his work, and deservedly so.

For reasons I won't get into, Tris and I saw many, many designers and writers and their portfolios. For the three years we worked together, I'm sure we saw at least one person most weeks, even if we didn't have a job opening, because we liked seeing who was around and what they were doing. For Tris, who valued substance over style, the worst criticism of any graphic designer was this: page decorator.

"Tris, what'd you think of that guy?" I'd ask after we'd reviewed someone's portfolio.

"Page decorator."

"Didn't like his work, did you?"

"No. Good typography, though."

To this day, when I look at beautiful, empty work, I think of Tris' two-word dismissal.

Tris was a large man, 6' 5", holder of a Bronze Star from his tour of Vietnam. He rarely spoke and was, in fact, rather shy. Given his size and silence, most folks were intimidated by him. I, a foot shorter and ten times more gregarious, got along with him famously.

We worked together in a very high pressure, high volume ad agency. Freelancers who worked with us couldn't believe the volume of work we sent out the door. It was quality work, too: the first year I was there we won eight ADDYs, finishing second only to an agency 15 times our size in that year's competition.

The agency owner would bring in an impossible project with an insane deadline, and I'd look at Tris.

"Tris, we're screwed."

"I know."

"Are we gonna dodge the bullet this time?"

"Yeah."

And we always did.

Now I'm a writer, and not a designer. But I try to never be the writing equivalent of a page decorator.