Graphic decorator William Drentteldied on Saturday , a multifaceted creative who played many character : aMad valet de chambre - era ad man , adesign industry fable , anadvocate for societal change . But as the founder ofDesign Observer , the influential design web log launched10 years ago , Bill irrevocably transmute the mode we talk about intent .
For much of his 40 - year career , Bill lam the design firmWinterhouse , with his wife and partner Jessica Helfand , which was housed in a bucolic modern home in rural Connecticut . ( Before that , Bill headed the solid Drenttel Doyle Partners ; the fictional character David Clennon meet on thirtysomething was breathe in by and name after him . No joke . ) Writing was always central to their practice session , from play with clients like The New Yorker topublishing their own journals . But they also sensed an emerging need to fix something lacking in design culture : a dependable way for designer to hash out and disseminate the issuing of the day .
When Bill started Design Observer in 2003 with Jessica , designer Michael Bierut , and critic Rick Poynor , I was a newcomer figure author hungry for new ideas . Design Observer was something irrefutably fresh : A purpose publishing that could find the “ design ” in anything , fromsmall Ithiel Town community of interests meetingstoStanley Kubrick films , moving between academic - quality journal and pop culture comment with unbelievable adroitness . I voraciously studied the site and stalked its writers — they always managed to publish the big names — as I launch my own life history . Bill became a friend , collaborator , and champion of so many couturier and writers , including myself .
Drenttel and Helfand were awarded the AIGA Medal in 2013
Bill had a swell journalistic instinct , and much of the pure tone and content of the publication was thanks to his own editorial artistry . It was Bill , for representative , who intuited the industry - wide direction on socially focused conception and launched the site’sChange Observer first step , win a Rockefeller Foundation grant to focalise on fib about social impact . This brilliant move allowed Design Observer to play a role in amplify and implementing plot - changing melodic theme for society .
innovation Observer inarguably change the way we as a intention community wrote about and discussed pattern with each other , but there was an even bigger impact . The site had a vocalism that was completely approachable and interesting to non - designers , who made it a daily stop in their RSS provender ( and , finally , Twitter streams ) . It was n’t a happenstance that , just as Design Observer was hit its stride , we started to see annual design issuance of business magazines , an enhanced cultural literacy about design and designers , and a massive rising slope in the quality of intent journalism .
In fact , every design publication I ’ve written for in the last decennary owes a Brobdingnagian debt to Design Observer for showing us there was a different way of doing things , specially at a time when mark publications were trying to bump their footing . For an integral propagation of immature figure writers trying to experiment with forms outside of “ traditional ” publications , Design Observer was the model . Our careers would simply not have been possible if Bill ’s vision — and his enthusiasm — had not pave the manner .
It was such a particular moment as so many writers brought their voices online — a golden years for intent writing . But Design Observer always nailed it . They were the best , the top , the holy grail .
From a single - newspaper column website , Design Observer farm into a media empire
So when Bill sent me an email asking me to pen something for Design Observer eight years ago , I pretty much melt down from shock . By the prison term I pulled myself back into my chair I realized I knew just the storey to write : I wanted to do an investigation of Scientology ’s architectural preservation efforts in Hollywood , including infiltrate the towering chateau discover the Celebrity Centre . Bill wholeheartedly boost the most seditious aspects of my angle , and he was correct : Thepostlit up the blogosphere . I ’d never had an editor in chief so interested in what happened after the story was published . Bill send me emails every day with update on comment train of thought , reader e-mail , and reporting of my fib on other blogs .
Bill was also a reparation in my written material , first at UnBeige , where I wrote about design newsworthiness and rumormonger , and in stories for publishing like beneficial and Fast Company . He was the perfect field of study : He was scarey smart and he have it off to stir up argument , yet he had this unbelievable horse sense of humor about it all . When he would send me electronic mail with curt request to cover their various undertaking , he would often proudly direct me links to places where hoi polloi were writing negatively about Design Observer pieces . He be intimate the criticism , the yak , and the controversy , but , most of all , he enjoy the community of interests .
Over the past decade , I got to hump Bill personally in that flakey , yet extremely bona fide style that I get to know my other “ intention friends”—first in the comment sections on web log station , then through the stories I ’d write about them , and sometimes , finally , when we ’d see each other in person at events , as we marched through the group discussion centers and hotel saloon of random cities around the earth .
Steve Heller , Tina Roth Eisenberg , Alissa Walker , Allan Chochinov , Drenttel , and Khoi Vinh on a 2007 panel in Denver about design blogging . pic by Liz Danzico
get wind Bill was always the highlight of these trips . In the early years of Design Observer , the editor became celebrated for fuddle party at the AIGA conferences ( that often outshine the prescribed AIGA events ) . They ’d let out more and more ambitious spaces — a basement bar in Boston , a cavernous cabaret in Denver , an total theater in Memphis — enquire designers to DJ , and watch the night dissolve into a giddy , sweaty celebration .
These consequence were all Bill . He ’d be at the door , the lofty host , welcoming starry - eyed young clothes designer who could n’t really quite believe that a founder of Design Observer was there to greet them , in the flesh . But for Bill , this was all in the name of building real - life chumminess , something that was pretty much unheard of in our online world . He wanted to make a place for the proofreader and commenters to meet each other in person and put a face to the personalities behind the land site .
He was the first one and the last one on the dance floor . Always .
I was lucky enough to drop a few days with Bill this summer at one of those plan events in a random city as we judged theSappi Ideas That Matter laurels . He was honest about his one - year struggle with cancer — ever - verbatim , I think the first affair he said to me was “ Did you get a line I have learning ability cancer?”—and he got commonplace easily . But he had n’t really slowed down . He was still so Bill : The sparkling in his eye , that wicked witticism , and most significantly , his readiness to engage in a debate about which undertaking should receive grants ( debates which he pretty much always pull ahead ) .
My darling Quaker and fellow design author Allan Chochinov wrotethis about BillSaturday at Core77 : “ When you worked with Bill it was always show time — and he inspired people around him to do their very best . That may fathom like a cliché , but it was one of his design superpowers . His legal community was gamey . And he played for keeps . ”
This could not be more true , and it ’s probably how every person felt who worked with him . Bill instruct me to defend my ideas , to make it personal , to distinguish a fib that activate word ( even if it might be an unpopular sentiment ) , and — maybe most significantly — to have a hell of a lot of fun doing it .
Seven years ago , on this very 24-hour interval , I was work out with Bill on another Design Observerstory , about the “ War is Over ( If You need It ) ” campaign , which had uprise as John Lennon and Yoko Ono ’s Christmas card . I remember the back and onward over email as I listened to the song again and again on my laptop—”So this is Christmas , and what have you done?”—seated in front of my parents ’ Christmas Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , while Bill whipped the piece into shape , pushing me to make it good . Now when I listen the song each twelvemonth , it ’s a persuasion I forever associate with Bill and his boundless boost of good approximation , but most of all , his decision to get it absolutely mighty — to make a difference with words .
I ’ll miss him so very much , but his spirit is very much present in everything I spell .
Top persona : Drenttel with his wife and partner Jessica Helfand . exposure by Bojan Velikonja viaAIGA
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