Craig Mod is a designer and writer East in Tokyo, but with some of his time spent in New York. He writes regularly for The Message, and has published a few books about art, design, publishing, culture and aesthetics. His writing has appeared in New Scientist, The New Yorker, Virgina Quarterly Review, The New York Times, CNN.com, Codex: A Journal of Typography, A List Apart, and other publications. VCFA GD Chair and fellow Tokyoite Ian Lynam spent some time chatting with him about design, writing and life.
What’s your favorite form or detail of punctuation?
My favorite punctuation is the absence of punctuation. Just the rata-tat-tat of short, declarative sentences that break your heart. See: Jenny Ofill, Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, and Helen Macdonald.
(I know, that’s cheating. OK, if I have to pick something: I love em dashes. Who doesn’t? Everyone loves … ’em. See what I did there? Sure, they’re completely overused — the equivalent of throwing George Clooney into an Important Political Movie — but they’re genuinely useful and hardworking, or: they work hard at allowing the writer to be lazy.)
Why do you write and when did you ‘get serious’ about writing?
I had a short story published when I was 18 in a national journal — now long gone — and that was probably my first “serious” thing in the world. But it took me a long, long time to return to or imagine writing as something that I could do that was worthwhile or that anyone would care about.
The first “serious” thing — writing heavy or focused — that I wrote as an “adult” — where I sharpened my pencils and sat up straight and worked Really Hard — was probably my GF1 essay back at the end of 2009. I spent months on it and it scared me to no end to put that out there. It did well, thankfully. And, man, did the feedback buoy me. Kicked me in the ass. Made me want to do more of that.
But, honestly, I consider very little of my writing to be “serious” where serious is defined as properly rigorous. I’ve been working on a book for the last three and a half years and it’s only been in taking on this project that I’ve learned how little rigor has formed the basis for my other work (both in writing and design). Each time I think I’m done with this manuscript, I realize there is another peak in the distance to be dealt with. And, I doubly realize there is a creative trap into which one can fall of never finishing something, of climbing forever, but what has been so astonishing and affirming about this work has been that it does move forward, it continues to reveal my weak points, and forces me to reconcile them or lose the whole damn ship. God willing this thing ever see the light of day in a form and with the rigor I want it to have … well, that will be the first truly “serious” thing I’ll have entered into our little so-called cultural ledger.
How about design―when did you first become emotionally and intellectually invested in designing?
Emotionally? Always. For as long as I can remember. Even programming — which I began doing precociously and, undoubtedly very very obnoxiously, on my neighbor’s computer (we couldn’t afford one) around the age of nine — was in service to design. How could I “program” a cooler menu? How could I hex edit my BBS software to work more smoothly? To display better graphics? To support more complex art? I’ve always sensed the import of container — the shape and way it functions — in storytelling, and so those two interests: storytelling and design, have always been linked. And both continue to bounce back and forth off one another. It’s a very useful dance, that dance. The design and story dance.
But “intellectually” invested … Boy, I am such a bad intellectual. So under-learned. Again: So bereft of rigor in so many facets of life. But there have been moments where I’ve tried to feign some rigor. I had an internship when I was 19 and, at the end of the summer, my boss — who was like a hero to me — gave me a set of Tufte’s books. That was it. I was done. I read them in two days. Entranced. And then Bringhurst and his Elements of Typographic Style. Which is really just a poetry book. I suppose these are all cliches. But they were transformative for the cultural desert that was my brain. And I have to mention an explicitly “design” professor I had at Penn: Sharka Hyland. She taught me rigor although I was too egotistical and impatient to fully recognize it at the time.
How do you perceive your role as a writer and designer?
Just trying to frame, codify, condense, distill: experiences, learnings, failures, in a way that’s useful to others, that catalyzes … conversations? Maybe that helps us peel back a little bit of the universe in a curious way. Hopefully a fun way. Hopefully a useful way; whatever “useful” may be! (I have no idea — I find lots of uses for things other people seem to find useless, and find the majority of stuff the world thinks is useful to be totally unnecessary.)
How do you navigate/mitigate the relationship between writing and designing your content?
Depending on the project, they’re entirely intertwingled. I write a draft. Design a draft. Respond to the design in a second draft. Continue to shape the text in response. Et cetera ad infinitum until some deadline forces me to stop or I am broken or nothing makes sense anymore.
How do you sustain your interest in both?
I would find it hard to have an interest in either without the other as complement. When I am deep in the trenches of Text Only Literature, I find myself needing to: take a break, photograph, respond to image.
Who are your favorite contemporary writers who design?
Liz Danzico. She’s so good. So. Good. Talk about feeling the pulsing curiosity of someone through their words. And the precision. So precise. Incredible. Always moved by her. Her essays feel like watching beautiful machines with beating hearts unfold before you.
Frank Chimero, of course — whose very “tagline” is “designer who writes” — mainly because he’s so very willing to mix a little academia with practice and also embrace the fuzziness of exploring contemporary design — of which there is much (fuzziness) when it comes to our screens.
Rob Giampietro. Another dear friend. He just took over Material Design at Google and, well, dammit, I’d wager he’s one of the most thoughtful of design unicorns — someone who has navigated and built systems for the totality of “deep culture” (think: an enviable cadre of critical museums and other institutions around the world), is steeped in theory, is a grad advisor, and just received the Rome Prize — working in tech today. He joined in April but, wow, I can’t wait to see the kind of leadership and thinking someone with his background brings to the table. Google is one lucky company.
Thanks so much, Craig! We really appreciate you taking the time!
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