June 5, 1998 |dog bytes
I just finished writing a book about graphic design (On Edge: Breaking the Boundaries of Graphic Design, due out this fall) that taught me something about dogs, which is appropriate given that, as far as I was concerned, the book was something to keep me going while we looked for a dog (the search is still underway). When I say "finished," by the way, I mean that word in the editorial sense, which is, like the editorial "we," different. In the non-editorial world, when you're finished with something, you're finished. In the editorial world, "finished" means that maybe you've finished the manuscript and handed it in, or perhaps you've "turned" (that is, returned) the edited version, complete with your queries that carefully argue over this change or that. God forbid you should consider it truly done and forget about it. Because, with a book's many production stages, there is, as Gilda Radner's famous character so eloquently put it, always something.
      In any case, this book was, is, and ever shall be about graphic design and how it has changed because of digital technology, a subject I was somewhat equipped to write about because I've worked with lots of designers on both print and online publications. And because I was interested.
      The research involved calling up about a million designers to interview them and ask for examples of their digitally influenced or produced work that had been produced digitally or influenced by computerish style. And I disovered something really interesting, which is that dogs have a noticeable presence in the world where computers and design meet.
      I'm not just talking about dog-related Web sites. Let's not get into that; it's too huge a subject. Suffice it to say that there are possibly more Web sites about dogs than there are dogs in the entire world.
      No, what I'm talking about is the coolness factor and the star-alignment factor, which have somehow combined to make it deeply hip, right now, to include a canine reference in your name if you're a design shop with a mixed print-and-electronic client roster or a strictly electronic design shop.
      For example, there's Doghouse Productions, a Web-design firm located in Seattle and owned by my friend Rob French. I met Rob through journalism and, until he started Doghouse, I never knew that he is a serious dog person who has two large doggy dogs — Real Dogs that need lots of exercise. He could have named his company Shoehorn Productions or Box Lunch Productions but, of course, worked in the aforementioned canine reference instead. The illustrations on Doghouse's Web site, by Greg MacDonald, are charming.
      There's Black Dog, a design firm I've only heard about but never contacted. I believe it's located in southern California somewhere, which sounds appropriate. I picture an open-layout studio, several surfer-looking guys with laid-back but lengthy blue-eyed stares, and a dog. (I vaguely remember hearing about a White Dog Design, but maybe I'm making it up. I could be influenced by a science fiction novel I'm reading right now: Paul Park's Celestis, in which an alien sees mind's-eye images of a black dog and a white one, symbolizing the struggle between her alien nature and the part of her that wants to be human.)
      Or how about Laughing Dog Creative? They're in Illinois. The head of the firm, Frank Grubich, does a promotional T-shirt every year. Each one has a different dog and a different tag line. The logo for his electronic work is a winking dog, executed in jaggy, digital-looking lines; on his business card, the dog's head is repeated over and over at all four ninety-degree angles, so the cards looks like a circuit board.
      DogStar Design & Illustration, in Alabama, incorporates the extremely digital intercap in its name. That's the capital letter that comes at the start of a syllable, but in the middle of a word; you see it all the time in software application names. Print magazine's digital art and design annual last year included DogStar's cute "red dog" stamp, all teeth and angry, rigid fur, which the firm puts on invoices that are "seriously past due."
      One of my favorite design-related dog names is Bau Wow Design Group, located in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. I like the conjunction of the perennially cool Bauhaus design school and the dog reference. Their floppy disk labels are especially nice. A black dog, blurred, peers at the viewer, its tail wagging; around the dog is white space and the firm name.
      So why is it that dogs, computers, and design go together? Part of it must be the energy and enthusiasm that dogs have. Actually, they do more than have energy and enthusiasm. Dogs are energy and enthusiasm. Computer-based design is a new thing that started with the arrival of the Macintosh, PostScript, and PageMaker in the eighties and has expanded to include multimedia, the Web design, computer-based games, and all sorts of other products. When something is new, energy and enthusiasm flow out of it, around it, and into it. Dogs do that every day, about everything, whether it's new or old. If you want energy and enthusiasm, dogs are there. Dogs connect. Cats, on the other hand, tend to evaluate things. Don't get me wrong; pure love can emanate from cats, and often does, at least in our house. But cats need some space and some time to arrive at that state and then express it; their decision-making process is different. So, if you're a design firm, you want some energy. Some enthusiasm. Somebody who looks at your work and says, "Wow! Cool! Now let's take a walk!" As opposed to somebody who stares hard at your work for awhile and then says, "Well, I'll let you know."
      I also think there's something retro about dogs, and, as we all know, retro is very big right now. As I understand it, the appeal of retro style is about ironically recapturing the innocence and naivete of past eras. Or something like that. And if innocence is what you want, dogs are it. They'll just go right along with you. "Whatever" is most dogs' middle name. Which may be why they get hurt so often by callous people, but also why they seem to have so much more fun than people do.
      There may be something, too, about dogs' attention spans. Dogs concentrate hard, but not for very long, and, of necessity, that's often the way designers work. They're on short deadlines a lot of the time, and doing design well requires intense focus. Designers obviously like having dogs around because dogs' mental style matches their own.
      Finally, there's the play aspect. Design firms have open layouts, bright colors, and toys festooned around people's desks. An ability to mentally play is essential in design, as it is in advertising. Dogs appreciate that, because, when they're not working, playing is what they do. Cats neither work nor play. They hunt — or practice hunting against stuffed mice, your feet, etc. — or they sleep. Mostly the latter. So, again, dogs and design and computers are a good match. Especially when you consider that a certain, shall we say, free-form mentality is culturally specific to the computer community. When you team up design with computers, you're going to find dogs in there as well.
      I suppose this will change. Computer-based design will mature. Design firms will get more serious. Some of the fun will be left behind. These company names may even seem dated five or ten years from now. But I hope not. After all, if these design firms have any sense, they'll always have canine companions. Working with cats around is wonderful. As I write, Samantha is curled up on my lap, making a sound like a pigeon, which is what she does when she purrs. But a dog would go her one better. It would tell me how wonderful this column is. And that's what I really want to know.

Next time: dogs au naturel