John Maeda and Maira Kalman at ADC

John Maeda and Maira Kalman spoke at the Art Director’s Club on Tues­day night as part of the Hall of Fame Fes­ti­val.  The two on stage together were an uncom­fort­able set.  Mr. Maeda, direc­tor of the MIT Media Lab and pres­i­dent of RISD, for­got his lap­top.  He insisted that he had an amaz­ing talk pre­pared on his lap­top.  In place of this amaz­ing talk, he deliv­ered his life story, much like the talk I went to by him last year, just minus the sim­plic­ity com­po­nents.  Tofu fac­tory, MIT, chas­ing sorta girl­friend to Japan… His humor was dry and unsym­pa­thetic.  Seems that Maeda has reached a level of fame where he no longer needs to deliver orig­i­nal or intel­li­gent con­tent to the many audi­ences that ask for his time.  Thanks John.

Mrs. Kalman, illus­tra­tor and author of great repute, took the audi­ence on a mean­der­ing jour­ney through her cur­rent project on Lin­coln, pep­pered with anec­dotes about wall­pa­per and yard sales and din­ers.  Her self-mockery car­ried a dis­tinctly more inti­mate and charm­ing tone than Maeda’s.  (“The New York Times asked me to do a book about any­thing, so of course I did a book about noth­ing.”)  I have never heard Kalman speak, and I sus­pect she is in the same boat as Maeda, deliv­er­ing the same anec­dotes and con­clu­sions such that when you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it, and you’ll go see it again if that brand of humor or rea­son­ing suits you. (I went because I was so unsat­is­fied with the first talk I saw by Maeda, I wanted to give him another chance.)

The ques­tion and answer period was awk­ward.  The mod­er­a­tor strug­gled to find com­mon­al­i­ties between the highly trained com­puter sci­en­tist as designer and the untrained mean­der­ing illus­tra­tor.  “You both come from cul­tures out­side the US.  How has that informed your work?”  Silence.  They squint their eyes in the direc­tion of the audi­ence look­ing in the ether for some­thing to say.  The ques­tions about sim­i­lar­i­ties effec­tively accen­tu­ated their dif­fer­ences.  Kalman is moti­vated by curios­ity and repelled by bore­dom. (“I know to move on when I am board.”)  Maeda is moti­vated by achieve­ment and repelled my medi­oc­rity (“As soon as I see a stu­dent doing it bet­ter than me, I give it up and move on to some­thing else.”)  Even­tu­ally Meada started lean­ing in toward Kalman with ques­tions of his own.  Kalman deliv­ered flat, short answers, each time look­ing more eager to jump off the stage and away from this mock­ing, log­i­cal man.  Meada seemed to like it that way.