ALICIA JOHNSON AND HAL WOLVERTON
JOHNSON & WOLVERTON, NEW YORK/PORTLAND, ORE.
LENGTH OF RELATIONSHIP: 20 YEARS

Hal Wolverton and Alicia Johnson met in the early ’80s while working on a fashion show at New York’s Palladium, which Johnson was directing. Almost immediately they found themselves living together. “The studio we were working in happened to be my apartment in Brooklyn,” Wolverton says. They started with no real experience, learning to do by doing, and developing a unique style. Married without children, someone else governs their lives. “Emit Barker, our chocolate Labrador, our ever-present muse, our conscience and ballast, and designers’ best friend. We have repeatedly chosen to pass on opportunities because of their impact on him,” Wolverton says.

Their brand marketing and consulting firm brings them work covering a broad range, from logos and identities to advertising and photography. Current client, Jaguar, is keeping them in New York with glamorous junkets for shoots. Work starts at the crack of dawn.

“I make lattes,” Wolverton says. “Alicia puts out global fires by e-mail. I feed the dog. We taxi to work. We have endless reviews and meetings, and when everyone goes home, we either finish our own work, or we say fuck it—what we need is a glass of wine.” For housework and cooking, there’s MasterCard.

“We almost always work as the leaders, from different angles of the projects we work on,” Wolverton says. “I’m hands-on at the inception of most work, setting the design direction. Alicia does most of the strategic development, and we usually collaborate on the conceptual development.”

Of course there is the occasional rock in their collaborative shoe. “We’re both extremely opinionated and generally come at a problem from a really different perspective,” says Johnson. “Since we have no inhibitions with each other, the conflicts can be a bit much for other members of the team,” Wolverton admits. And yet it works. “She brings an unironic beauty to the things she touches.”

“I like Hal a lot,” Johnson says. “We make things together. We hang out. We fight and laugh. It’s just life.”