16. 344DESIGN, LLC
Stefan Bucher went to the village elders, he says, and asked them about their lives. Their stories are recorded in Bucher’s All Access: The Making of 30 Extraordinary Designers, his journal of these conversations. Bucher’s biographical narration runs counter to the prevailing depiction of designer as flawless artiste, whose every new piece effortlessly perfects the craft just that much more. “Everybody knows that’s not how it works,” Bucher says, “but if you hear it enough, you start thinking, ‘Well, shit. Is it just me, then? Am I doing this wrong?’” All Access presents “the shining moments,” as well as the “bumps and bruises, the weird twists and turns” in a designer’s life that PR machines would otherwise scrub clean.

Bucher lays bare James Victore’s career trajectory, for example, not just by juxtaposing early with later work but through a life history that links Victore’s politicized design to his upbringing on a military base during the Vietnam War. “I think it’s marvelous that so many designers trusted Stefan to print not only our good work,” Victore says, “but our bad work, and our dirty underwear as well. He is the only person we now trust with that duty.” In fulfilling the duty, Bucher found that his interviewees, singular in style and personality, share common experiences with which he himself is acquainted—the need to create, to receive help, to contend with outside forces controlling the work. Ultimately, he says, “It made me feel like part of a greater community.” Tiffany Meyers