Ted Audio Collective.

Audio Collective.

This is Design Matters with Debbie Millman from Design Observer.com.

On this program, Debbie Millman talks with legendary designer Bob Gill,

about coming up in the profession in the 1950s, about working with the Beatles, and about

the problem with many designers today.

The vast majority of designers, their idea of a wonderful job is something that's beautiful. They're just not that

interested in expressing an opinion. Here's Debbie Milman. There are a lot of things to know about Bob Gill, but here are a few random nuggets to get us started.

He was born in 1931.

When he was a teenager, he played piano gigs in the Borsch belt.

He was one of the founding partners of pentagram.

He prefers the word idea rather than concept.

He once went to London on a whim and stayed for 15 years.

He's designed for the Beatles. He's made industrial films put on a Broadway show and

written children's books. Switchware's talents, he was once asked to direct a hardcore porno movie but he had to admit to the producer

that he had never seen one. That was probably because he was too busy writing books

on graphic design including the classic.

Forget all the rules you ever learned about graphic design, including the ones in this book.

To talk about his illustrious career, Bob is joining me at our studio in the School of Visual

Arts in New York City, where he also used to teach.

Bob Gill, welcome to Design Matters. Thank you, thank you. So Bob, is it true that

your mother was a piano teacher and when you were five years old you became her first pupil? Absolutely yes and I read that you had

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