did the work look like then? How do you make it relevant? It’s not like the “new and improved” Rilke. It’s still Rilke. How can you visually educate your public? The publishers are reissuing this Rilke, it’s not being rewritten. It’s not like Dave Eggers is rewriting Rilke. So what do you do? Do you do some modern, weird, wacky thing? No, you go to the source, because you want to maintain the work’s integrity. At that time, in the 1980s, the general public was not aware of the Wienericht, and no one knew what the Bauhaus was. But 20 years later, this style has become ubiquitous. At the time, we were unearthing what had not yet been verbalized as a visual style. Do you ever want to do anything besides graphic design? Yes. I wanted to be a painter. I still would like to find a way that I can make my own work, perhaps painting or drawing. I still have a lot of ideas; I still feel like there’s a side of me that would like to segue into this. I haven’t figured out how to do it yet. I think this is because I’m still fundamentally excited about being a graphic designer. Do you ever look back on your work and say, “Damn, that was a good cover design”? It depends on the day. I might be proud of the fact I did it. I would likely be bored by it. I’d be bored because I would like another 15 years to do it all over. I did those book covers when I was pretty wet behind the ears. Now I feel I would have done some of it very differently. So I usually think, “Ugh, I would have done that differently . . .” I rarely think, “Oh, I was lucky I could do that, and that was kind of cool.” Every once in a while there are days when I might look at something and think, “Hmm, maybe that was a little ahead of the curve . . .” But it’s up and
ca r i n g o ldb e r g
millman_galley_FINAL_070820.indd25 25
25
8/20/07 12:32:19 PM