The Inventions of Steven M. Johnson. An Interview

The Inventions of Steven M. Johnson. An interview

by Federico Rebecchini Published in italian here In a famous sequence from Paolo Sorrentino's movie "This Must Be the Place", a character talks about the invention of a suitcase with wheels. He tells how a man in 1988 had the idea and patented it, surprising himself why no one before that moment had thought of something that seems absolutely obvious to us today. "Why didn't anyone think of it sooner?" The inventor, a certain Robert Plath, made a prototype, tested it in his garage, created patent drawings and presented them to the patent office. Usually an invention comes to life following this process, with more or less variable complications.

But what if there was another way to invent? What if Plath had instead thought of 20 other variants of suitcases with wheels, drawing them with extreme accuracy?

Steven M. Johnson, since 1974, has been making incredible inventions by drawing them. Objects, vehicles and clothing modeled on the needs (and non-needs) of the modern man. Johnson, unlike Plath who found a direct solution to a problem following sequential logic, applies a type of thinking called Lateral. Instead of venturing in the direction that seems the only plausible way to solve a problem, Johnson begins to explore alternative solutions (lateral in fact), looking for elements and insights outside the rigid logical chain. Edward De Bono theorized Lateral Thinking in 1967, but Steven M. Johnson applied it for years without knowing about De Bono’s ideas. Thousands and thousands of absurd inventions are born from this process, which the author represents in a very clear and understandable way in particularly communicative drawings. Many of these inventions were precursors of some things that seem common to us today, while others are on the verge of the almost senseless Rube Goldberg machines.

In any case, what is surprising is Johnson's great productivity and mental elasticity, that allows him to continue to draw and invent today. His drawings present a coherence and a graphic synthesis that is worth investigating. I therefore decided to interview him, to talk about his life, his evolution as an inventor and above all his drawings.

Hello Steven, thank you so much for your time.

You are welcome; you have given me a chance to articulate to myself why I created a side career as a lateral thinking inventor.

You were born and raised in Berkeley, near San Francisco. How was it to grow up in the 50s California? How much did the environment where you grew up in influenced you in expressing yourself through drawing?

There were several intertwined factors that resulted in my choice of a sideline venture of creating strange, product-related cartoons. It helped that I had favorable family culture, good opportunities, and even my own inventive, artistic past life tendencies! These can be said to have influenced the trajectory of my personal expression in this lifetime. My mother was the daughter of a famous University of California history professor, and my father became, when I turned 13, Editor-in-Chief of Sunset Books, a major California publisher of books with a Western lifestyle theme. The family moved from Berkeley to Palo Alto in 1951. Also, my father was artistic but not crazy-creative like me. I grew up in a quiet, intellectual, middle class home.

Have you always drawn? Or did you start during the university years?

I became known, as early as third grade in the 1940s, as a young person with artistic talent [FIG. 01, Future Cannon, 1951]. I created art to impress and amuse classmates, all through my early school years. I created cartoons at different times during my school years, including during my days in the mid-1950s at Yale University.

You’ve been a student of both Yale and U.C. Berkeley. Can you tell me about your artistic formation? In a previous talk you mentioned some lessons with Bauhaus’ Josef Albers…

Probably the single biggest influence on my artistic career came when I took an art class at Yale in 1957, where students were only allowed to use pencil, and were required to fill cheap newsprint pads with drawings. The instructor was already world-famous Bauhaus founder Josef Albers. He retired from teaching a year later!

He was strict, bordering on harsh and humorless, and energetic. In his class, he refused to allow us to erase lines we had drawn, and insisted that we spend hours training our hand-eye coordination by drawing ellipses, circles, squares and parallel lines in pencil. During the second semester, we drew objects, including people, with emphasis on learning to see negative space, and to use a confident, single line, rather than multiple, sketchy lines. For some of the exercises, students drew objects from start to finish without allowing the pencil to leave the paper. I attribute my clean, disciplined drawing style to the lessons I learned from Albers. I did not attend art school, and had only a few other art classes at U.C. Berkeley.

There were times in my life when I failed to meet my own expectations, or those of my parents. There was a time of discouragement, especially after returning from a motorcycle trip through Western Europe in Spring, 1961 when I suffered from a poorly-healed appendectomy, performed at the end of the trip in Karlsruhe, Germany.

While in Europe, I used a Rapidograph pen and made sketches in a diary. [FIG. 02 Europe Diaries, FIG. 03 Perseus]

During the 60s you conducted what you called “an artist life”, working both as a city planner and cartoonist, with a small shop in Oakland as a personal studio…

Yes, I lived in a working-class section of Oakland, while working

as an assistant city planner for a private firm in Berkeley. I rented a large, empty, ground floor of a corner grocery store for $75 per month. There was no heat, no furniture, just a large wooden floor and a sink, bathroom and shower. I paid the rent and allowed friends to move in and set up their own beds or sleep on the floor. I sawed a rectangle in a wall, added hinges and a door handle, creating a private door, and thus giving myself access to my own “room”—a space under the stairs where lettuce had formerly been stored. It became my live-in “studio” from summer, 1963 to Spring, 1965. I had a tilting drafting table and a small electric heater which I kept near my legs in the winter. One day, an acquaintance brought in lumber and built a tiny house inside the vast large, grocery store space, so he could have privacy spending time with young ladies.

Among my drawings done at this time, were a few that reflect my lonely life, sitting in coffee shops in Oakland, CA. [FIG. 04 Coffe Shop Habitues, 1965], Often at the grocery store, there was a pungent, overbearing smell of marijuana at the empty corner grocery store I rented. At the time, I began a habit of purchasing cheap, large sheets of paper from a warehouse and using it to draw “from the subconscious,” beginning a drawing in the lower left corner, using a Rapidograph pen. [FIG. 05 Parking Lot, 1965] From this practice, I taught myself to be unafraid of a need to plan, design or consider layout or grand meanings for my artwork.

You said that around 1967 there was a new, exciting mood in the air especially in the San Francisco area: Robert Crumb moved to Haight & Ashbury and the underground culture was growing rapidly. What do you remember of those years, and how were you influenced by what was happening?

Converging trends in the U.S. gave the 1960s a distinct atmosphere: Women’s liberation, the invention of female contraceptives, war in Vietnam, new music and the heavy use of marijuana and LSD. Since I always needed to earn a living, I could not smoke marijuana or drink too much wine or beer, lest it leave me too tired during my work day. I knew about R. Crumb but did not meet him in person until 25 years later,

in the late 1980s when he lived near our home in Sacramento, California. Soon after I met him, he and Aline moved to Southern France. At the grocery store space I rented, I was paying the rent while friends and persons unknown to me moved into and out of the space. They tended to be unemployed. In March, 1965, I paid the phone bill and rent and drove south to Guadalajara, Mexico with a friend, where I participated in an archaeological “dig” until June. Six months later, in January, 1966, I got married and we celebrated our 54th year together this January.

You shared some sketches from the early 60s. Your style was still not fully formed but it is clear that you were tending toward a “dry” (meaning without ornaments) and clear style…

During my “Rapidograph drawing-from-the-subconscious” phase, 1963-65, my black ink line quality was loose and weak. One holds the pen vertically and needs to shake it now and then for the ink to flow properly. Beginning around the early 1970s, especially after I began to develop a habit of meditating, my line style became firm, clear and stiff. During that time, for example, I admired the clear line work of artists like Albrecht Durer.

During the 70s you started working for several magazines, journals and newspapers as a cartoonist, not always being paid. I imagine at the time collecting photos for newspapers wasn’t as easy as today, and an illustrator was coming in handy. Was it stimulating to have always new and diverse content to draw?

The World Wide Web did not emerge in a usable form until around 1994. Before that, an artist or cartoonist relied on “art scrap” and “magazine clippings” for reference. Thus, for 20 years, I prepared artwork with this type of reference material. [FIG. 06 Oil Derricks, 1973] Around the time of the invention of the World Wide Web, in 1995, I took a job as a “futurist” scenario thinker at Honda R&D. I then drawing and cartooning. In 2006, I got the idea of doing more books, but in spite of submitting around ten book proposal, full of detailed rough idea sketches, I was not offered a contract. Then in Spring, 2009, I received an email query from a New York Times columnist, Allison Arieff, which resulted thereafter in my creating artwork for online publication.

During a TEDx talk you tell how you started your activity as an inventor. In 1974 Sierra Magazine requested you to draw 16 vehicles of the future [FIG. 07 Desert Ecohome, 1974]. You call yourself a latent inventor, did you ever invent something prior to that request?

Personal, psychological factors and current cultural trends affect every artist. I recently discovered one single drawing that I made when I was around age 13, in which I depicted numerous, imagined military weapons. Yet around that time I was becoming attracted to having girlfriends, enjoying secret beer drinking with friends, and owning automobiles, so I forgot about my earlier phase of thinking up imaginative future devices.

In the mid-1950s, pre-WWII automobiles were cheap. For example, I bought a 1929 Model A Ford in perfect condition for $75! I drove it to high school every day. At one time, I owned 5 automobiles, using up space on the driveway of my parent’s Palo Alto home.

As I mentioned, I was married in 1966. Soon, my wife and I were studying Hinduism and practicing meditation. My life and ideas were changing, Meditation can cause an upwelling of euphoric feeling and expanding energy and thought. I began to feel that ideas are created “out there” and, in a sense, already exist and are available if one reaches for them. Said differently, the potential to reach out with one’s mind seems nearly infinite.

At 36 you started inventing, and never stopped. A relentless activity that brings you to your first published book called What The World Needs Now (1984). Can you tell me about the genesis of the book, why you decided to publish it and how was it perceived?

After assignments with Sierra Magazine, I developed a habit of thinking like an inventor. I had never had that habit earlier. Now, I found I was praised for my unusual concepts.

Earlier, I had been offered a book contract in 1968 to do a children’s book, but turned it down, feeling I needed to think about what it was I was “sharing” with the world.

Fifteen years later, in 1983, I revisited the idea of having a book published. I began to accumulate hundreds drawings of humorous or unique of product ideas; drawing such concepts had become a habit. I submitted two thick binders of

several thousand product ideas to Ten Speed Press in Berkeley, proposing to create a book that showed a fake, pretend catalog of humorous, odd products. Seeing my proposal, the publisher decided they did not want the polished, careful pencil shading style that I offered, but preferred my clear, simple, unadorned line drawing style. A contract was drawn up in May, 1983 for a book to be titled WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW.

The drawings from the series Patent Depending are an inexhaustible source of ideas [FIG.08 Patent Depending - Tunnel Bus year 2010, FIG. 09 Patent Depending - Survival Eyewear 1984] suggestions and also a fierce criticism of social problems, from the most trivial to the most serious ones. But most of all, we are talking about ideas, big or small, they are always examined until the final core, even with multiple variations .

How did you train your mind to produce such ideas? You once mentioned a process similar to a pressure cooker…

The production of multiple ideas and images had, after the mid-1970s, become a mental habit. Soon I found I was UNABLE to think of only a single solution to a design problem, but actually preferred to spin off alternative solutions. The act of inventing was itself fun! The act of pretending that something might be real, or could be real, was my fun. So-called “sideways” or lateral thinking became my habit. But it is not my “normal” state of mind. It requires that I put myself into that realm. [FIG. 10 Put a Lid, 2014] It is clear that you really enjoy inventing.

Amusing yourself could be a perfect and legit motivation behind your work, the fun in inventing and drawing. But are there other motivations behind this outstanding work? Why do you do it?

The motivation was a composite of a) needing attention–my wife feels I “did not get enough attention growing up”—b) enjoying an almost ecstatically fulfilling process of imagining and sketching and modifying what I imagined, c) enjoying the idea that my odd work could actually earn money, and d) helping to squelch any feelings I had about not quite being fulfilled when working as a city planner. My work was unique!

With the Internet and unique tools for expressing oneself, this impulse is widespread around the world now!

Have you ever thought seriously about presenting one of your inventions to the U.S. Patent Office? Have you ever tried?

I am asked this question often! My habit of preferring to think up ten ideas instead of perfecting a single idea is quite annoying to some people. It seems to them that I am wasting a talent, and ignoring a potential personal revenue stream. What the critics do not understand about me is that I am extremely lazy and impatient in certain important ways, and have no desire to make money designing products. It would feel

“dirty.” I enjoy getting into the so-called hypnogogic mental state, which often means I am half asleep and unaware of everyday duties and thoughts. My son Alex feels I do not like products per se, but rather that I have simply found a way of expressing myself, especially a way of criticizing consumer-oriented cultural trends. I have created an odd form for presenting social critique! I actually think the consumer culture is quite foolish! Consider how the oceans are choking on plastic! I am amused by product, but not interested in developing a single product or even learning how to apply for a patent. All I care about is thinking up ideas. One of my favorite books/movies is CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, a true story about a young man who pretends to be good at various careers, including sociology professor, MD, and lawyer, and succeeds. I seriously view my work as a running joke, an odd specialty, and that I am an impostor and lack the hard working habits and skills of an actual product designer. I am a fraud. I pretend that I know how to make products, that’s all!

You give particular attention to vehicles, something that is deeply rooted in the American culture. But the truth is that you move between different kinds of inventions.

From fashion [FIG. 11 Shirt and tie permutations, 1984], to food [FIG. 12 Patent Depending - Toilets, 1984], to housing [FIG. 13 Patent Depending - Add-A-Room, 1991]. Which category is your favorite? All your ideas are universally understandable but they are mostly linked to common themes of the American culture.

Have you ever thought about dealing with situations from different cultures? (i.e. foreign food, different social problems etc etc) Yes, I seem to have a slight preference for vehicles as a subject matter for design. But I like to think up things in all product categories. It needs to be understood that I am lazy about certain things, so researching other cultures to lampoon and satirize the cultures and habits of other cultures would seem like lots of work! Maybe I should do that next, though!

What about the Noodlings? You call it “lazy art” but I think it is a great exercise, similar to the ones by Albers you were telling me about.

Yes, Noodlings [FIG. 14 Noodlings, 07-07-2018, 27-08-2020, 06-09-2020] are my opportunity to be extremely lazy intellectually, while still enjoying the act of drawing. For these, I only use a “part” of my mind. I am very conscious of “parts” of my mind, by the way. I only use the part of so-called right-brain thinking that discerns line, line weights, so-called negative space between lines, arrangement of shapes, patterns, flow and sometimes, of mood (frenetic, upsetting, calming, disgusting, etc.). My Noodlings have no great purpose, no subject matter, no meaning. I create them from start to finished art, and colored in Photoshop in around 20-30 minutes.

How does one of your illustrations come to life? I want to know every step of the process! (idea-pencil sketch-final draft-tracing etc etc) First, there is an activation of the product-thinking part of my mind, mixing and matching remembered images, and mentally stretching existing products and concepts, tying the mental images in with current trends, etc. Let us say I ask myself if it might be interesting to design toilets. I ponder existing toilets. Why are they designed the way they are? If this process succeeds in my “finding” some new ideas, I make notes on scraps of paper, using any paper including a paper napkin—it does not matter. Next, if an illustration is desired, there is a rough idea of what I wish to convey. I may research people images, backgrounds, etc. but I usually RESIST

knowing about existing products. If I know how great and clever ideas are being generated by handsome, healthy, young designers ¼ my age, with good, new tools and training and co-workers, I will just feel like giving up! So, I keep my idea in my mind and do not research existing products on Google. Next, I draw with a pen, often creating the rough concept currently with a black 07 FRIXION erasable pen. Then, I grab sharp, clear, clean, smooth-flowing, permanent black PITT Artist pens, FABER-CASTELL, “F” or “S” which yield a clear, clean line. Sometimes I trace my pre-sketched lines using a light table on Fingerpaint paper, which has no absorbency.

(My use of pens and paper has constantly evolved over the years, however). Next, I scan the image as TEXT, 400 pixels-per-inch, corrected for darkness. The file becomes TIFF, which I open in Adobe Photoshop on my Mac and convert to Photoshop. Next I carefully examine the black lines for gaps and errors and clean up the art with a black line tool with matching width. Then, I save several copies of the art, and use the Photoshop Paint Bucket to fill in colors.

How much time do you use to finish an average illustration (b/w)? How much time to color it?

There is no average but these days I spend maybe 45 minutes to an hour for a detailed illustration, and 30 minutes at most to color it.

I’ve seen some preparatory sketches. Is the Sketch a tool that you use often? Do you find them important in your work? How do you do them? Can you share some of your sketches with me?

In order to create a sketch, I intentionally change my style from stiff to loose.

I employ a variety of drawing techniques, including one I use exclusively for sketches drawn on newsprint paper. The sketch is often done fast, with a different mood and thinking as compared with work done more carefully and precisely. There is an emphasis on speed, loose design thinking, creativity of ideas. These [FIG. 11 Treadmill Sketches, 2011] were drawn with a BIC pen, either 0.5mm or 0.7mm. on rough, light brown newsprint paper.

This kind of work is done without pre-thinking, without multiple iterations or rough pre-sketches. These were drawn directly on the paper, from mind to paper as it were! I intentionally avoid getting stuck on detailed accurate linework. Messy is okay!

Have you ever tried or thought about drawing totally in digital? Maybe with a graphic tablet linked to Photoshop or with an iPad + Apple Pencil? What do you think about digital born drawing?

I have no objection to drawing digitally though I have no experience with the latest technologies except as noted. (For example, at the newspaper, I created many graphs and charts with Aldus Freehand, Illustrator, etc.) Until recently, when trying out a Wacom tablet or similar device, it seemed to me like it created a “distance” between the drawing instrument and the resulting image on the screen. Yet I have purchased the 12.9’ iPad Pro, with Apple Pencil, but have not used it yet. My impression is that working with these new technologies is more seamless. Yet, I seem to have some uncertainty and fear about using my iPad! Which kind of paper do you use for your final drawings?

See above. Many of my drawings are on simple printer paper. It does not seem to matter so much with me.

You learned Photoshop only 9 years ago, and from that moment on you started coloring all the illustrations of the previous years (all in b/w). Did you start coloring your drawings for a matter of appeal and saleability of the product or because you think that color can add meaning to the drawings? (Personally I really like your soft coloring). What kind of instrument do you use to color? Graphic tablet linked to Photoshop?

In 2011, I got the idea of creating my own Print-On-Demand (POD) books, as I could not find a publisher at that time and I was in a hurry and POD is nearly free of charge.

I started creating books with Adobe InDesign to sell in a booth that I had at The Maker Faire south of San Francisco. I have shown and sold my work at Maker Faires in many places, including twice in China. Coloring my art seemed to make it look more like comics. [FIG. 16 Unzipped Fly Alarm, year 2011] There is some loss however, given how strongly color attracts a viewer’s attention. Color is a distraction.

My b/w books are easier to “read” in some ways. But partly because a publisher in China insisted that I color my work for two books to be published there in 2021, I ended up coloring most of my existing artwork, using the Photoshop Paint

Bucket tool mostly. I basically got paid to color my own work!

Your drawings are really clean; you used to hatch but in recent years not so frequently, same thing with the shadows that are rarely present. You often opt for a dot pattern, mainly to express a texture. It seems you don’t want to add too much for a matter of clarity. They are almost patent drawing, so I imagine they need to be as clear as possible, am I wrong? Is it also a matter of time? You are correct that presenting my drawings unadorned and plain like a patent drawing adds to the humor. A viewer asks him/herself: “What is that? Is that real?” The simpler art style, the better for this kind of product concept humor. But I have also done some cross-hatching, as for instance in my 1991 book PUBLIC THERAPY BUSES. For the book WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW at first, my submission included samples of pretend, fake, faux products carefully sketched and matching the forma, font and look of a 1983-era L.L. Bean outdoor products catalog. They rejected this style of careful pencil rendering [FIG. 17 Patent Depending - Inflatable Swimwear 1983].They chose instead a style with crude hand lettering and spare, simple drawings almost like product diagrams.

You just finished two fully colored books for a Chinese publisher. What are your plans now?

I am now pushing my mind back into the void, into a zone of no desire, no plan, no intention until I get an idea of what to do next.

Thank you so much Steven for your time and availability. I’m curious to see what you will come up with in the future!

You’re welcome, Federico!