Joseph Robertson, mastermind of LAB, performs a quick’n’dirty self-inteview with a jenky self-hypnosis contraption constructed out of 1) a portable Westinghouse record player found in the basement, 2) a handmade plate purchased for 25¢, and 3) an ipod with Aphex Twin’s Cliffs on repeat. A dangerous proposition at best. Hypothesis: this is an un-scientific experiment, bound to yield nothing but rare gases, hot air, radioactive woo-woo waves, and residual ego issues. But you get to be the judge. Here’s the results:
You chose the tagline: Live. Learn. Repeat as necessary. Were there any alternate taglines?
How convenient that you should ask! Why, there just happens to be a plethora of alternate tagline candidates, not limited to:
LAB: Highbrow, lowbrow, no brow.
LAB: Inconsistent by design.
LAB: For Creative Content Mavericks. Grrrrr!
LAB: We make stuff… not, like, with a laboratory, but, like… WITH OUR MINDS.
LAB: It’s not an acronym.
LAB: For really really really ridiculously smart people.
LAB: Short. Concise. Liberal with periods.
LAB: Semi-colons are for wimps.
LAB: ALL CAPS, ALL THE TIME.
What’s the story behind the name, LAB? Does it stand for anything?
It’s a bit of a geeky reference to LAB, an international color space. It’s a way of defining colors, a little like sRGB or CMYK… actually, for a far better explanation, check out this wikipedia article: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIELAB]. And, of course, there’s the more obvious reference to a lab, where you experiment with stuff.
Where did you get funding for this project?
I introduced some of my photography equipment to eBay. I’m down to a single 50mm lens. Which is fine— that’s what I started with, and I love the simplicity of it. It’s like riding a single-speed bike. I’ve also been lucky; my partner has helped float me. We plan on taking turns— down the road, when she goes back to school (for a degree in library science, is the current plan), I’ll float her. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back, and then all of our backs will be… all scratched. Which is, you know, nice when you’ve got an itchy back. I might just be wearing too many microfleece midlayers… or is it nanofleece?
I don’t think nanofleece exists just quite yet.
Well, it should! If we can’t have rocketpacks and monorails, the least Modern Technology can do for us is give up some freakin’ nanofleece, right? I want some nanofleece that’s so breathable that even the pores on my pores can breathe.
We’ll get right on that, sir. *ahem* What tools did you use to put together LAB?
A 20” iMac G5. Adobe Creative Suite. A six-year-old AGFA scanner. A desk built out of two planks of wood on top of eight milkcrates. A small studio space, provided by Michael Fine (a very kind, warm-hearted guy who let us use a space when he heard that our original studio fell through because of a leaky roof). A 13” macbook. A Canon 350d. Oh, and that dusty old Cray supercomputey thingie in the basement.
What were some of the challenges along the way?
Riding the emotional roller coaster of the project. Where the euphoric peaks were something like, “This is fantastic! I love this! Why didn’t I do this years ago? I’m learning new things! Weeee!!!” followed by the stomach-churning plummets: “What am I doing? What was I thinking? I can’t do this! I don’t have the skills or the budget! What have I got myself into? Waaah!!!” That probably makes me sound a bit like a manic-depressive bipolar Cathy comic strip, but you get the idea. Self-doubt, fear & loathing, anxiety, diarrhea— these are the things that destroy creativity, and generally make your butt clench uncomfortably. What got me through: the Power of Granularity. A fancy word for basically just breaking down each task into lots of little tasks and then breaking those tasks down into even smaller bits (the only downside being that to-do lists on any given day ran the length of a small novel). Other assistance came in the from a magical french press (never runs out of coffee), a heap of good books, Dave Brubeck, Nina Simone, long wandering photo walks, atrociously delicious chocolate crepes from Brenda’s Tour De Crepes, encouraging friends who put up with my grandiose brainstorming mixed with self-indulgent whining (Hi Julie!), and a partner who believes in me fiercely and is honest enough to tell me when my one of my ideas is a big pile of poop. And several cases of pumpkin seed Ryvita. Can’t underestimate the power of fiber in the diet, I’m telling you. It’s all about fiber. And vigilance.
Fiber is good. What are the best/worst parts of being your own boss?
Worst: Putting more on my plate than I can handle. Being incredibly self-critical. Best: Putting what I want on my plate. Being able to have ideas and know I can make them happen, without going through any kind of committee group-grope or ten layers of apprehensive middle-managment. Finding like-minded folks to collaborate with. Just using the word “collaborate” a lot, generally, was pretty satisfying.
What kind of jobs have you had in the past? Or projects you’ve worked on?
Jobs/workplaces, in reverse chronological order: natural foods store, retail clothing, natural food store, bookstore, cafe/theater, pinball arcade, nude art modeling, tech support for ISP, natural foods store, used computer store, inventor’s assistant, bookbindery, natural food store, bookbindery, grocery co-op, tech support for software company. Self-employment stints include: running a small bookbindery (Robertson Journals), online retail (CactusPony Books), and doing a scosh of freelance design & photography. Related: I spent three years running things into the ground with a site called pthbbbt.com, now (thankfully) RIP. And various other sites, including a small book collective. Also: kept up a mail art network (Mail Is Neat) for about five years, which is now simmering on a backburner. Volunteer gigs: I’ve put in time with ZAP (the Zine Archive Project) in Seattle, and I’m currently volunteering with Reading Frenzy, the mecca of micropress here in Portland.
Is that all?
Besides a spot of office temping here and there, yeah, that covers it. It looks pretty crazy and unfocused, but I’ve picked up some invaluable experiences along the way. But it’s hard to cram that all on a resume and have it make much sense. I guess it highlights a few recurring interests: books, natural foods, books, and geeky tech stuff. Oh, and books. All those disparate jobs served as springboards to all kinds of learning adventures, whether it was meeting folks (I met John Hansen while working at Elliott Bay Book Co and he gave me a crash-course in hand bookbinding), learning how to set type by hand for a hot-foil stamping machine, learning how to troubleshoot network issues, watching an eccentric inventor design binding machine prototypes, or learning InDesign to make a store newsletter. If every boring task is viewed as an excuse to learn something new, well, life gets a little more interesting. Of course, with repetitive busy-work, there’s a point of diminishing returns, and it’s easy to start going a little nuts. I remember one temp job that involved stuffing envelopes with insurance statements all day long, and at some point (after mastering the art of using a bone-folder to get a perfect crease… which would later come in handy when folding signatures for handmade journals), I started stuffing outgoing envelopes with candy and glitter and haiku… *ahem* But enough of that— I’ll save those stories for the grandkids.
Doesn’t this all this seem a little self-indulgent?
Yes. It’s incredibly self-indulgent. But that’s what I appreciate as a reader: stuff that has personality. Or a story behind it. The zines I enjoy most are made by people I know, or have at least met. That personal connection gives their work more meaning to me. As well as a different level of authenticity and trust. It’s the same with food— when you know the person who’s serving you that crepe or slice of cake, it makes it taste that much better. That, and I felt it would only be fair that I subject myself to the same interviewing lens that I’ve been aiming at everyone else, just to see how it feels (See Laura Kicey’s article on self-portraiture, page 23). It’s a little uncomfortable, actually. But at the same time, I think a little introspection via the ol’ Q & A is good for ya.
What are your plans for LAB? What were some of the inspirations?
To see if there’s an audience for something that’s a hybrid mix of online media & micropress, with a healthy sprinkle of the personal aspect of a zine or blog, but with some nice clean design & eye candy, would be a messy way of putting it. While working on this issue, I’ve thought a lot about the audience, and the groundswell of DIY media makers, and this little 3D model of parameters has been forming in my mind, not completely unlike the LAB parameters (where A = green to magenta, B = yellow to blue, and L = lightness)… visualize this: in a three-dimensional space, we’re talking about creative folks who might fall anywhere on the X axis (of amateur to pro), or the Y axis (of for-profit to not-for-profit), but on the vertical Z axis of I’m doing this to pay the bills to I’m doing this because I love doing it, these folks would all definitely be in the latter category. In other words, people who are passionate about what they do, and would do it no mater what. Technical gibberish aside, on a more selfish level, LAB is like one ginormous learning project for me. Overall, I’ll be happy if LAB provides some food-for-thought for anyone, even if just those involved. Some personal inspirations: Tibor Kalman, M&CO, COLORS, Lawrence Weschler, Miranda July, Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s, Emigre, and a whole heap of micropress publications & online media makers. And pretty much every single interviewee in this issue, for that matter. I have huge crushes on all of them, in terms of what they’re creating.
Are you afraid of LAB being a giant belly flop?
To be honest, I’ve imagined every flavor of failure. The little librarians in the back of my head that never sleep (metaphor stolen from Dave Egger’s You Shall Know Our Velocity) are fantastically good at providing a wide inventory of worst case scenarios, ranging from no one cares to everyone will point & laugh to you’re going to look back on this little phase and be so fantastically embarrassed. There’s always a million ways to fail. The only true failure is if you don’t learn anything. So, to my warped way of thinking, a million ways to fail = a million ways to learn. Or, as the design firm WK+12 so elegantly put it:
Fail harder.
What’s next?
I’m in the process of starting up a small design studio with Nate Beaty of Clixel Design & BrainFag infamy. It’s called color | space, and we’re going to wear the following feathers in our hats: print & web, coding illustration, photography, and, maybe eventually: info architecture & color consulting. Such fine feathery hats! We have a very nice white couch. One of us is color blind, while the other can tell the difference between chatreuse & harlequin green; one of us can code while sleep-walking, and the other couldn’t code his way out of a wet paper bag, so we make a good team. An odd-fellows sitcom just waiting to be made. We could call it: Who Moved My Pantone Swatches? Did I mention we have a white couch?
Any words of advice for DIY startups?
Not that I’m qualified to be giving advice, but, if I must… Find something you love doing. And something that will provide opportunities to constantly learn and grow and be challenged. Don’t get stuck in something dead-end, where you’re cranking out books or bread or crafty widgets like some kind of sleep-deprived low-wage zombie, ie; don’t become a sweatshop of one. So find your Thing (sometimes this involves doing something and finding out that it is most definitely Not Your Thing), then work your ass off and chalk it all up to experience. Try not to re-invent the circle too often, although sometimes you’ll need to hammer a new shape out of a pre-existing circle. Find excuses to learn new things. Keep a journal of those things. Keep a sense of humor no matter what. Find a way to make your work fun, even if that means less profit. And don’t forget to give yourself an emergency escape button. Listen to others, but not to the extent that you stop listening to yourself. In fact, you probably shouldn’t be listening to me. Finally, don’t write in the 2nd person imperative— it’s just plain obnoxious. I’ll leave y’all with yet another quote from Buckminster Fuller:
A lot of people think or believe or know they feel (experience)— but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling (experiencing).Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel (experience). Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel (experience), you’re nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself— in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else— means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. ¤