Today I'm serving a wonderful leftover - a story that was assigned by a magazine and never used. Why serve it here? Because outstanding work is one of the ways we identify beauty in this world. Take a look.
Works of passion have long defined how we see the American West. Ansel Adams captured the effect of light and shadow on landscapes. Georgia O’Keeffe, the majesty of jimson weed and skulls. Remington and Russell, the breathless energy of cowboys and Indians.
Graphic designer Michael Schwab has yet another view, captured in his posters and logotypes for clients stretching from Well’s Fargo Bank, Amtrak and the Golden Gate National Parks to Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort. In the tradition of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West posters, Schwab seeks to engage the viewer, tell a story and make it timeless.
His American West as a place of grandeur, reduced to its most potent form, like a fine sauce.
“Uncomplicated, spacious, meditative, vast, natural, quiet, dramatic, powerful – all of these come to mind” when thinking about Western people and places, Schwab says from his drafting table in a studio that is part barn, part high-tech enclave tucked away at the foot of Mount Tamalpais in San Anselmo, Calif. Nailed plywood sheets make up the floor. The ceiling is sloped, beamed and airy. On top of the fireplace is a row of awards, all shaped like the Coit Tower.
It is a majestic space, uncluttered and drenched with light, yet here and there are pieces a prop master would love – an ancient pair of ski poles, a polo mallet, a forest hanger’s hat, deer horns, a gigantic bass fiddle, needed for a Fillmore poster.
Redford himself has stepped through the studio doorway, over which is a Schwab poster of “The Cowboy,” a dramatically simple profile of a dude wearing a yellow slicker, Stetson and blue glasses.
“Mr. Redford was an art student originally. He saw something in my work and just liked it. It hit him, so he wanted me to create something for Sundance, which I did,” says Schwab, whose work for Sundance included various poster images and even wine labels. (Schwab and his wife, photographer Kathryn Kleinman, have also visited Redford at Sundance and liked it so well, they ended up buying a cottage there.)
Of Schwab’s design Redford has said, “There is a classic quality to his work – contemporary, but never trendy – that unique point of view.”
What Redford and others see is design that is calming to look at: timeless shapes, a strong sense of color, a preference for minimal type. People look at Schwab’s work and think of another era – the German propaganda posters of the 1930s, labels on California fruit boxes, a relation somehow to Peter Max.
Schwab begins his creative process with a concept, a camera and a sketch pad.
“I do a lot of research, and usually I take photos of my subjects and do a real study of them, whether it’s a landscape or a character. In the case of Lance Armstrong (done for Gero helmets), I had to just come up with a profile of him. That poster wasn’t working for a while, and I remember I couldn’t figure out why. So I went back and looked at other photos of him racing, and I realized that his mouth was always wide open when he’s racing. He’s just sucking in air, and so I opened his mouth on this poster, and all of a sudden, it just came to life.”
Schwab’s reductive style has been hailed a welcome sight in an increasingly noisy landscape of computer-generated, contemporary design. Schwab says he just embraces his own Western heritage through heroic, meaningful portrayals of the people and places that typify the American West. His view is that good design is succinct, immediate, and can be seen from way across the room, he says.
“I’m always trying to simplify things. I’ll simplify things to the point that there’s just nothing there.”
On a rainy day in Marin County, Schwab himself is dressed reductively in black oxford shirt, jeans and cowboy boots.
“There’s so much visual noise out there that I really try to simplify my work down to the essence in order to communicate graphics effectively,” says Schwab, holding out packaged snacks he designed called Lara bars, featuring simple text and cool, offbeat colors. “My work is commercial art, clearly, but I strive to create images that people don’t mind living around.”
He was born and raised in Ardmore, Okla., a small farming community north of the Red River. At his grandfather’s ranch, he worked Hereford cattle, drove a tractor, fished, hunted and gained an early appreciation for the land.
Drawing was something that came naturally.
“I was always the class artist in school, drawing hot rods, crazy stuff. My art teacher would be handing back papers to everyone, and she’d look at me and take me out in the hall, where she would tear up my papers. She’d say ‘Michael, you’ve got to stop drawing this kind of thing.’"
At age 18, Schwab attended art school at East Texas State University, later moving on to the School of Visual Arts in New York.
“It got to be summer time and hot, and sweaty, and I couldn’t see the sky, and I had to go home to Oklahoma,” he says. “I still wanted to go to a good art school. And luckily I was able to go to Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. Man, that was really something.”
He moved to San Francisco, where he landed one of his first big commissions – a poster for Levi jeans.
“That to me was a big deal. I felt like ‘Wow, I’ve arrived now, I’m working on Levi’s.”
Today, he often works on three to five projects a month but is careful not to overschedule himself and the two assistants he works with. When we visited, he had just finished a design campaign for Amtrak he’d worked on a couple of years and had also finished up graphics for the Major League Baseball All-Star game.
An avid mountain biker, snow skier and rock climber, he also makes time to play guitar in a band Schwab and his friends call Meat + Potatoes.
Beautiful work comes easier when you live in a beautiful place.
The advantage of living where he does is obvious.
"It comes down to the weather and the light. They’re so beautiful here. Driving across the Golden Gate bridge with the light shooting across it at the end of the day is just stunning, and it’s interesting too, because the weather here – this is my theory – matches what’s going on in the Mediterranean, where all that artwork was created in Italy and France. And the light is the same, the atmosphere is the same, and people don’t have to work at keeping warm or living in a harsh environment. It’s a beautiful environment and it’s an inspiring environment, and there’s just so much art and inspiration and beauty.
And California Is so full of people like me, who have come from maybe the hard-working Midwest work ethic, but they come out here and they can do things that are accepted instead of staying back there and having people make fun of you or tear up your work. You can come out here and really create things and have them celebrated."
And seeing the beautiful effect on his work when he least expects it still gives him a thrill.
“I’ll be reading The New York Times and I’ll see one of the Amtrak ads and think ‘Wow, this goes around the world. And I’m from Ardmore, Oklahoma.'”
See what I mean? Did you check out his design work? Feast your eyes at www.michaelschwab.com.
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