Graphic artist William Drenttel died on Saturday, a able artistic who played abounding roles: a Mad Men-era ad man, a design industry legend, an advocate for amusing change. But as the architect of Design Observer, the affecting architecture blog launched 10 years ago, Bill assuredly adapted the way we allocution about design.
For abundant of his 40-year career, Bill ran the architecture close Winterhouse, with his wife and accomplice Jessica Helfand, which was housed in a awkward avant-garde home in rural Connecticut. (Before that, Bill headed the close Drenttel Doyle Partners; the appearance David Clennon played on thirtysomething was aggressive by and called afterwards him. No joke.) Autograph was consistently axial to their practice, from alive with audience like The New Yorker to publishing their own journals. But they aswell sensed an arising charge to fix something defective in architecture culture: a bigger way for designers to altercate and advertise the issues of the day.
When Bill started Design Observer in 2003 with Jessica, artist Michael Bierut, and analyzer Rick Poynor, I was a apprentice architecture biographer athirst for new ideas. Design Observer was something actually new: A architecture advertisement that could acquisition the "design" in anything, from small boondocks association meetings to Stanley Kubrick films, affective amid academic-quality account and pop ability annotation with absurd deftness. I voraciously advised the website and stalked its writers—they consistently managed to broadcast the big names—as I launched my own career. Bill became a friend, collaborator, and best of so abounding designers and writers, including myself.
Drenttel and Helfand were awarded the AIGA Medal in 2013
Bill had a agog journalistic instinct, and abundant of the accent and agreeable of the advertisement was acknowledgment to his own beat prowess. It was Bill, for example, who intuited the industry-wide focus on socially focused architecture and launched the site's Change Observer initiative, acceptable a Rockefeller Foundation admission to focus on belief about amusing impact. This ablaze move accustomed Design Observer to play a role in amplifying and implementing game-changing account for society.
Architecture Observer inarguably afflicted the way we as a architecture association wrote about and discussed architecture with anniversary other, but there was an even bigger impact. The website had a articulation that was actually attainable and absorbing to non-designers, who fabricated it a circadian stop in their RSS feeds (and, eventually, Twitter streams). It wasn't a accompaniment that, just as Design Observer was hitting its stride, we started to see anniversary architecture issues of business magazines, an added cultural articulacy about architecture and designers, and a massive advancement in the superior of architecture journalism.
In fact, every architecture advertisement I've accounting for in the endure decade owes a huge debt to Design Observer for assuming us there was a altered way of accomplishing things, abnormally at a time if book publications were aggravating to acquisition their footing. For an absolute bearing of adolescent architecture writers aggravating to agreement with forms alfresco of "traditional" publications, Design Observer was the model. Our careers would artlessly not accept been accessible if Bill's vision—and his enthusiasm—had not paved the way.
It was such a appropriate moment as so abounding writers brought their choir online—a aureate age for architecture writing. But Design Observer consistently nailed it. They were the best, the top, the angelic grail.
From a single-column website, Architecture Observer grew into a media empire
So if Bill beatific me an email allurement me to address something for Design Observer eight years ago, I appealing abundant broiled from shock. By the time I pulled myself aback into my armchair I accomplished I knew just the adventure to write: I capital to do an analysis of Scientology's architectural canning efforts in Hollywood, including entering the aerial alcazar called the Celebrity Centre. Bill aboveboard encouraged the a lot of destructive aspects of my angle, and he was right: The post lit up the blogosphere. I'd never had an editor so absorbed in what happened after the adventure was published. Bill beatific me emails every day with updates on animadversion threads, clairvoyant emails, and advantage of my adventure on added blogs.
Bill was aswell a accoutrement in my writing, aboriginal at UnBeige, area I wrote about architecture account and gossip, and in belief for publications like GOOD and Fast Company. He was the absolute subject: He was alarming acute and he admired to activity up debate, yet he had this absurd faculty of amusement about it all. If he would forward me emails with abbreviate requests to awning their assorted projects, he would generally proudly forward me links to places area humans were autograph negatively about Design Observer pieces. He admired the criticism, the chatter, and the controversy, but, a lot of of all, he admired the community.
Over the accomplished decade, I got to apperceive Bill alone in that bizarre, yet acutely accurate way that I got to apperceive my added "design friends"—first in the animadversion sections on blog posts, afresh through the belief I'd address about them, and sometimes, eventually, if we'd see anniversary added in being at events, as we marched through the appointment centers and auberge confined of accidental cities about the world.
Steve Heller, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Alissa Walker, Allan Chochinov, Drenttel, and Khoi Vinh on a 2007 console in Denver about architecture blogging. Photo by Liz Danzico
Seeing Bill was consistently the highlight of these trips. In the aboriginal years of Design Observer, the editors became acclaimed for throwing parties at the AIGA conferences (that generally outshone the official AIGA events). They'd hire out added aggressive spaces—a basement bar in Boston, a alveolate bistro in Denver, an absolute amphitheater in Memphis—ask designers to DJ, and watch the night deliquesce into a giddy, bathed celebration.
These contest were all Bill. He'd be at the door, the appreciative host, affable abstract adolescent designers who couldn't actually absolutely accept that a architect of Design Observer was there to accost them, in the flesh. But for Bill, this was all in the name of architecture real-life camaraderie, something that was appealing abundant exceptional of in our online world. He capital to actualize a abode for the readers and commenters to accommodated anniversary added in being and put a face to the personalities abaft the site.
He was the aboriginal one and the endure one on the ball floor. Always.
I was advantageous abundant to absorb a few canicule with Bill this summer at one of those architecture contest in a accidental city-limits as we advised the Sappi Account That Matter awards. He was honest about his one-year attempt with cancer—ever-direct, I anticipate the aboriginal affair he said to me was "Did you apprehend I accept academician cancer?"—and he got annoyed easily. But he hadn't actually slowed down. He was still so Bill: The blink in his eye, that abandoned wit, and a lot of importantly, his address to appoint in a agitation about which projects should accept grants (debates which he appealing abundant consistently won).
My baby acquaintance and adolescent architecture biographer Allan Chochinov wrote this about Bill Saturday at Core77: "When you formed with Bill it was consistently appearance time—and he aggressive humans about him to do their actual best. That may complete like a cliché, but it was one of his architecture superpowers. His bar was high. And he played for keeps."
This could not be added true, and it's apparently how every being acquainted who formed with him. Bill accomplished me to avert my ideas, to accomplish it personal, to acquaint a adventure that sparked altercation (even if it ability be an abhorred sentiment), and—maybe a lot of importantly—to accept a hell of a lot of fun accomplishing it.
Seven years ago, on this actual day, I was alive with Bill on addition Design Observer story, about the "War is Over (If You Want It)" campaign, which had originated as John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Christmas card. I bethink the aback and alternating over email as I listened to the song afresh and afresh on my laptop—"So this is Christmas, and what accept you done?"—seated in foreground of my parents' Christmas tree, while Bill aerated the section into shape, blame me to accomplish it better. Now if I apprehend the song anniversary year, it's a affect I always accessory with Bill and his great advance of acceptable ideas, but a lot of of all, his assurance to get it actually right—to accomplish a aberration with words.
I'll absence him so actual much, but his spirit is actual abundant present in aggregate I write.
Top image: Drenttel with his wife and accomplice Jessica Helfand. Photo by Bojan Velikonja via AIGA
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