2 Irreverent for Words

If Michael Strassburger ever gets tired of graphic design, he’ll probably have a bright career in comedy. Co-founder, with Robynne Raye, of a boisterous, irreverent Seattle firm called Modern Dog, he reduced a young audience at Chapman University in Orange at last week to screaming fits of laughter with remarks that are, unfortunately, mostly unprintable.

The occasion was “2 Partners, 2 Views, 2 Design,” a panel discussion sponsored by the Orange County chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Teamed with the Dogs (their clients’ affectionate tag) were Noreen Morioka and Sean Adams of AdamsMorioka, an internationally lauded Beverly Hills firm specializing in bright, clean design bathed in high-key, saturated color.

The two sets of partners, all in their 30s, were a study in contrasts: Morioka wearing a casually stylish outfit and Adams in a dark suit and yellow tie; Strassburger in a gas station attendant’s shirt and Raye in a leather jacket.

“We didn’t know about the rules of design,” said Strassburger, who met Raye when they were students at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

Starting out with an absurdly wimpy portfolio (a drawing of anthropomorphic potato skins advertising a special at a local eatery), they cobbled together posters for Seattle rock bands and theater companies by copying Russian Constructivist designs.

Then they began to get really creative.

The delicately textured butterfly on a poster advertising Seattle Rep’s production of “M. Butterfly,” Strassburger said, was created with a roll of butcher paper and inked impressions of their backsides.

While inventive theater posters remain a Modern Dog specialty, they garner more prestige than cash. The Dogs hit pay dirt in 1989 with a wry, anti-corporate approach for snowboard manufacturer K2 that significantly boosted sales to style-conscious kids. One K2 ad featuring a bubbly couple in ski clothes that Raye said was based on a photo from a Sears catalog from the ‘70s.

“I wouldn’t say based,” Strassburger objected. “We pretty much ripped it off.”

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The Dogs’ antic approach--mingling and mangling styles from a dazzling array of eras and genres--has vaulted them into the big time. They’ve done billboards for Converse, ads for Nike Kids and product design for RCA Records. But the partners, who don’t actively solicit clients, still work only for people they can groove with.

“We don’t care what they want. We’re artists!” Strassburger joked.

Adams and Morioka, good friends whose arch, bantering style surely makes them the Nick and Nora of the Southern California design world, take a different, but no less lively, tack.

“We are the boring ones,” deadpanned Adams.

He recalled meeting Morioka at CalArts in Santa Clarita in the ‘80s: “In a sea of dyed hair, ripped clothes and black jeans, I see this woman in a yellow polo T-shirt and pink pedal-pushers. And I said, omigod, she is my friend.”

After graduation, Adams worked in New York, Morioka in Tokyo.

“I wanted to find out if I was Japanese,” Morioka chimed in. “And I am not!” Pause. “I am tall.” (Ripples of laughter.)

Back in Los Angeles, both lamented the “chaotic, illegible” type of graphic design that seemed ubiquitous. Why, they wondered, did avant-garde design have to be ugly and messy?

As they tell it, the two were sitting on the People Mover at Disneyland--whose parent company would become a client--when they decided to start their own firm. AdamsMorioka opened in 1993 with the goals of “clarity, purity and resonance.” Four years later, both partners were named to International Design magazine’s list of the 40 most influential designers worldwide.

“We were sure all our clients were going to be boring financial institutes,” Adams said. “But A&M; Records was one of the first.”

Zipping through a slide show of their work (to the strains of “The Lady Is a Tramp”), the partners strutted their stuff.

A poster for UCLA’s summer sessions sports a yellow block, an angular dash of blue and an orange ellipse, symbolizing endless summer at the beach. Thin vertical bars--recalling louvered windows on edge--add playful elegance to a logo for L.A. Louver gallery. A wordless store directory for the Gap consists of the faces of happy looking young men and women, with arrows pointing the customer to the appropriate department.

The partners also played a video of Winter Olympics commercials for ESPN: incredibly fast-paced, nutty sequences with a goofy female Japanese fan in wild outfits who practically assaults the athletes, and a back-flipping cartoon character straight out of Japanese Nanga comics.

Asked how the commercials fit with the firm’s neatnik style, Adams said “crispness” was the secret: “There are very few elements, and they repeat all the time.” As with all the firm’s work, when it comes to color, “the volume is turned up high.”

Whenever Adams and Morioka have contemplated moving to New York, they said, they’ve realized that their East Coast clients specifically want their sunny, Southern California style.

“We’re exposed to a certain kind of light, a certain kind of attitude,” Adams said.

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At the Guggenheim Gallery on the Chapman campus, where design work by both firms is on view, Modern Dog’s posters overlap one another in bumptious profusion. AdamsMorioka’s posters are--couldn’t you guess?--neatly spaced on a wall painted bright orange.

Founded in 1914 to foster good design and encourage those who produce it, the American Institute of Graphic Arts represents more than 11,000 practitioners and teachers of graphic design nationwide, including the 75 members of the Orange County chapter. For more information, call (800) 548-1634 or visit the AIGA Web site: https://www.aiga.org.

* “2 Partners, 2 Views, 2 Design,” a poster exhibition, Project Room, Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. Noon-5 p.m. Monday-Friday; 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. Free. Through Friday. (714) 997-6729.