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One of the most common questions I get at a conference or speaking engagement is,

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what or who were your influences?

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Or what is your inspiration?

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There's so many graphic designers

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that I find extraordinary,

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and it's always tricky to narrow down that enormous list just to a few.

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But there are some that stand out, like Alexander Girard,

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an amazing colorist who worked both in

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graphics and environments across all kind of media.

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Or Sister Corita Kent, who

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used silkscreen and working with young people created a whole new voice of a generation in the 1960s.

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Again, psychedelic colors combined in odd ways that are completely unexpected.

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And

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the great Margaret Larson,

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one of the best art directors of the 20th century,

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often overlooked, but a remarkable individual who

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tackled color in ways that was often completely incorrect,

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but amazing.

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I

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saw Bass.

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He was the first person to call when the phone was installed at the Adams Morioka offices.

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He asked what I needed,

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and I said advice,

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which he kindly gave me for many years.

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His work changed how I thought about graphic design.

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I saw the film titles for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in my first year in school.

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It

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was so minimal, with one typeface, geometric bars, and black and white.

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How could something so simple,

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with so few elements, be so dynamic?

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The color of the title sequence of Vertigo gave me the freedom to work with color boldly and unapologetically.

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He worked in big swaths of color.

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Rather than small, itsy-bitsy pieces,

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he uses an entire frame of red over this eyeball.

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Imagine this on a giant movie screen in the theater.

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The motion, typography, and color all tell a story.

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And his print work challenges us to look at color as iconography.

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Very quickly, we can see from the colors of the flags on each of these negatives that

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this isn't an international film festival.

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And

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even this set of matchbox covers that Saul does design, which,

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again, are never anything close to being timid.

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There

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was always something funny about Saul's work, also.

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If you're going to have an affair in the afternoon,

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what's the first thing you might do?

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Well, one would hopefully pull the shades down.

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He explained to me that he made the imprint on this poster with potato.

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That's pretty exciting, considering how tied we are now to digital technology.

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And

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his approach to the poster for the movie The Magnificent Seven,

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which was based on the Seven Samurai,

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takes the idea of these Japanese marks and combines the Western together.

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Next, Lou Danziger was one of my mentors at school,

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and he's been a lifelong friend.

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He just turned 100.

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At first, I couldn't understand Lou's approach using metaphors and symbols.

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I was so caught up in everything New Wave.

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If it had flying type and exciting colors, I loved it.

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But I look back,

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and I recall very few of those items.

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But I do recall almost all of Lou's work.

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I recognize later in life how brilliant this work is.

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It

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makes the viewer think and solve a visual problem,

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and that's what makes it memorable.

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Here,

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for One Coat Rubber Cement, the Flax logo,

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an F made of squares,

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also contains a 1.

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Lou's work is smart, clear,

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and it's beautifully crafted.

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From

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him, I learned that a good idea is the most important part of any solution.

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Work should feel effortless, never forced.

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Here,

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to create skyscraper landscape,

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he simply took paint tubes and used a Sharpie to draw windows on them.

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He

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didn't use CGI,

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high-res Photoshop,

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or any kind of serious work to try to force the

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idea.

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He simply lets it be.

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On

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this cover for UCLA Extension,

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he uses the ladder as a metaphor for education,

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which is perfect.

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He

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crossed the street, took a picture of his own extension ladder against his house,

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and let it be what it was.

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Tying

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the idea into the concept is the most important part.

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And here, for an ad for the

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camera, Lou

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takes images from his own negatives and combines them to tell the story that he intends to explain.

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So,

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this camera is the only 35mm SLR camera with interchangeable lenses.

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Lou

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took European modernism,

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this idea of a Bauhaus approach,

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and he combined it with a Southern California aesthetic,

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taking the idea of color and light from Los Angeles,

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and interweaving it into the simplicity and modernism.

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Rather

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than a

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stark black and white or gray cover for the Wilshire House,

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a hotel in Beverly Hills,

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he uses bright yellow and

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red.

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And

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with color, Mary Blair is my hero.

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She's

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best known for designing It's a Small World at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

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Her

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color approach is joyful, optimistic,

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and forward-looking.

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It is bright and exciting.

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She

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always twists things slightly,

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and that's what makes it so spectacular.

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Rather

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than simply having a pink background,

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Mary

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Blair uses salmon.

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And rather than the color of the shading as just gray,

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it's got a slight brown tone to it.

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Or

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adding metallics when they're unexpected.

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Combining the green and the purple

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with black and then copper on top of them.

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The color and the shape all work together,

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and they all have a sense of depth and excitement and a sense of hierarchy and scale.

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She

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used colors in ways I could not ever imagine.

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It was as if she could see 10,000 more colors in the world than I could.

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The

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Grand Canyon Concourse mural at the Contemporary Hotel at Walt Disney World

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is a multi-story masterpiece in ceramics and color.

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Each

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tile is hand-painted,

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adding texture to the incredibly complex color palette.

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Recently,

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I re-watched the 1967 movie How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

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The colors of the sets,

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wardrobe, and every item are magnificently tied together.

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The

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colors are bold,

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unexpected,

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but at the same time,

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delicate and unique.

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Every

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set has its own personality and tells its own story.

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Of course, on the credits, when I was watching them,

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Mary Blair was the color consultant.

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She combined colors that broke the rules.

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Her work taught me that sometimes that's the right approach.

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After all, it's color, not heart surgery.

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And

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there are always others that I continue to add to.

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I could talk for hours about all of my influences from art.

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This

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painting by Sir John Edward Everett Millais of Ophelia is one of my favorites.

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The delicate flowers that are flowing within the piece and the bits of gold on the surface,

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all telling the story of Ophelia from Hamlet.

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Or

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architecture,

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when Lance Wyman took the 1968 Olympics and used it as an opportunity to pour color across Mexico.

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And travel.

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I always take tons of photographs whenever I go anywhere.

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After all, it's just digital pixels that you're using.

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So why not shoot it all?

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You can always go back later.

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You might find something unexpected.

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For example,

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the sunset that typically I would say,

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well, there's a million sunsets.

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But I had to catch this because of all of the distinct tones of gold and yellow combined with the dark green of the grass.

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There

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could be illustration,

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such as this Bob Peake image that my mother had framed in her house the entire time I was growing up.

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And

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the world around me.

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Like most designers,

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I'm adding to these images all the time.

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These, by the way, are tiles at the Los Angeles International Airport.

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And

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photography is a great source.

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Examining

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the color and the light and the kind of film that was used.

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And the tones and how they come together adds a whole new layer to the idea of narrative storytelling.

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And

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sometimes even things that might not be in the very best of taste are perfectly fine.

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The points to find influences everywhere, every day.

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Now,

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this isn't a visual inspiration,

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but a quote from the Rodgers and Hammerstein play Carousel.

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It's one of my big inspirations and has guided me through my career and turned out to be pretty accurate.

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The

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world belongs to you as much as to the next fella,

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so don't give it up.

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And

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try not to be scared of people not liking you.

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Just try liking them.

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Keep

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your faith and courage and it will turn out all right.