SPARK
SI-011, from issue3, 2022.
It is About Connecting with People than it is About Anything Else Really.
Drew Litowitz is a graphic designer who also runs Graphic Support Group, a podcast talking to a cadre of amazing guests and hack away at past traumas, spiritual mantras, PSDs, PTSD, and inner peace.
UDÖ You interviewed Mount Eerie in the past and you highlighted that he liked to write songs about the recording process itself. For him recording was everything while studio was his instrument. So I wanted to interview you about interviewing.
DL I love Phil Oleverum. His process is so interesting to me, very self-aware. Maybe I am trying to learn as much as I can about other people’s processes so I can incorporate them into my own practice. Or just the way people think not even about design or music necessarily or more about life, because that gets down to the root of a person. I think the most inspiring people are the ones who are inspired by bits of life rather than their profession. But Phil Olverum is inspired by the process of making. So you can have both in a way.
UDÖ Was there a conversation that really influenced how you approach your life?
DL Not exactly, but when I was interviewing Bill Callahan I was such a big fan of him that the questions were intense and specific. He both appreciated that and also didn’t know how to deal with it. I read a lot of interviews with him and a lot of times he says the same things but the answers he gave me were very specific. It was interesting to get somewhere new with him.
UDÖ Do you feel like you need to understand what has been asked before and push against that to get to an authentic place?
DL Honestly, I try to overthink to the point where my analytical side takes over. Then I go back to the questions and make sure they are not too extreme. If they know that you are a big fan, they appreciate the questions better. But if it comes across as overly fanny, it’s uncomfortable. You have to strike a balance. On the more design side, interviewing Richard Turley was pretty amazing. Getting a hold of him was hard though. I messaged him and he would respond so slowly. But now I am doing a podcast and I am constantly reaching out to people. Some of the more recent interviews are more profound to me than my early music interviews or thesis work. Basically, I interview ten designers per season and it’s like a therapy session for designers.
UDÖ How do you set a good tone in these sessions?
DL It is about connecting with people, then it is about anything else really. You have to have an agenda while allowing the conversation to become fluid to a point that you can get lost in it. It’s most important that it is natural conversation. To be natural at it, be engaged to the point that you follow up but also you give a bit of yourself into it too, so they can also relate to you. That is not always the case but it’s the best when that sort of chemistry hits. They need to see that you are a real person, not just somebody to get information from them.
UDÖ What is the value of publishing a conversation then, if it comes with all these power dynamics when it’s public facing?
DL It’s tricky because I have dealt with that for my podcast. Firstly, I see other designers as friends. Then, I see if I want to have a professional relationship with them or not. I reached out to Bráulio Amado and got to be friends with him over time. Now, we eventually grab a beer. Do I want to invite him to the podcast as an amazing designer or do I want to keep this relationship as genuine? Sometimes you can do both. For instance, I had people on the podcast that I got to be friends with. It’s all up to you if you want to set specific boundaries or you want to keep things fluid. A good relationship to have when publishing someone is that they are getting something out of the publishing platform and you are getting value from the conversation. It’s strange. You are almost gaining from the interviewee’s social capital. More than anything, people can really tell that I actually care which isn’t something you can fake. I think that really allows people to forget the pretext and the weirdness of the situation.
UDÖ It’s like the care you put in becomes the unspoken trust in the room.
DL Having faith is also really important. You will never know someone well enough in a short conversation, so it is more of a blind trust. Our podcast guests reveal vulnerable stories that aren’t particularly fun for them to share and I wonder why it is that they share that with us. I’m talking about nervous breakdowns to getting physically ill from stress. It’s just a matter of finding people who are willing to open up.
UDÖ This makes me remember your interview with the guy who composed the score for The Room because he didn’t seem very willing to open up.
DL He studied with one of the most famous composers and is a very respected musician that somehow got roped into this project. We both knew the project itself was dumb but I was interested in acknowledging that. In any interview, the whole conversation is not going to be interesting. The whole conversation can be boring and that is also interesting. There is some joy in having a conversation with that sort of dynamic tension. When you ask them a question they have never been asked before, you get vulnerable answers. That creates a relationship that leads to real conversation.
UDÖ Is conversation a performance? Or is it playing football in the field where you don’t know where the ball will end up?
DL Strangely, you want to be prepared and you want the other person to feel that you have prepared in a journalistic sense. But it is extremely weird to bring that up in a normal relationship. Nardwuar who interviews musicians would learn the favorite food joint of the musician he is interviewing in a way that is overly private and dead-pan. That is the polar opposite of what I am talking about because he can’t connect with these people at all. If someone is really nice and thoughtful, you would be okay talking to them for hours even if you met them eating ice cream on the street. At the end of the day, people are just trying to connect.
Follow Drew Litowitz here
& Graphic Support Group here
interview by Utkan Dora Öncül
Spark Interview-011