I went to Sub Pop Records in Seattle in June with an idea for a story. Was the digital music market shrinking the performance space for graphic design, illustration, and photography? Was there any room left for great album art on a graphic user interface (GUI)? Where would a young Milton Glaser put a young Bob Dylan’s psychedelic silhouette today? On a digital dingbat half the size of one’s pinky nail?

The notion was dismissed virtually as soon as I posed it to the Sub Pop staff. I learned this in conversations with design director Jeff Kleinsmith, general manager Megan Jasper, and cofounder Jonathan Poneman. “If anything, the digital era has opened up opportunities,” says Poneman. “For example, we allow people to sample up to two MP3 downloads from every album release—this has stimulated sales for our artists, not inhibited them.”

Sub Pop leaders said digital access was creating new markets. Due to online programming, webzines, and blogs, for example, even more opinion and trend influencers need to be reached. Just because people do not shop at traditional music stores as much as they used to, it does not mean that they have stopped shopping, the Sub Pop staffers reminded me. “Ask Jeff [Kleinsmith] and Dusty [Summers] in our creative department if their workload has diminished,” suggests Jasper. “I don’t think they’ll say it has.”

A ROUND HOLE FOR SQUARE PEGS
My original thesis blown out of water, I searched for a new angle. Talking shop wasn’t one of them: What Kleinsmith and his colleagues did not yet know was that I was (and am) a music moron. I don’t know jack about their industry. I mean, I like music; I own a lot of music; but really I don’t know music. Certainly not the groovy or the cutting edge kind of stuff that Sub Pop is known for. These people gave the world Nirvana and Cat Butt. I’m even a little intimidated by those who do know music—the hip, not the nerd, knows music, we learn at a young age. My only trenchant music question was about a rumor: “Did you guys, like, really know any famous artists who, like, strangled themselves while having sex and doing coke trying to have the ultimate orgasm? I mean, that’s just so cool if you did.” Such a prurient and voyeuristic curiosity would expose my musical stupidity and permit me to get inside the story behind the people of Sub Pop, not music legends or backstage gossip.

The next five hours of interviews were among the most enjoyable in my reporting career. The conversations ranged from vinyl to MP3s, from Starbucks to freelance, from flowers to feces. After meeting the various personalities that drove Sub Pop—its publicity, design, copy, talent, retail, and marketing people—one realizes that this was the only place where Kurt Cobain and Cat Butt could have been discovered and launched. It’s the ultimate round hole for penultimate square pegs.

THE YOUNGEST ELDER
Kleinsmith has been directing design at Sub Pop for a dozen years. Having turned 39 recently, he looks toward his 40th birthday ruefully, yet he makes concessions to the years: he eats responsibly, but not neurotically—vegetarian, but not vegan; he states that his “self-medicating” days are long behind him (“My doctor’s prescribed plan has worked well for me for more than seven years, and I’m not changing it!”); he says he loves being a husband and father.

Kleinsmith is one of those lucky guys who does what he loves to do all day—design. He’s unself-consciously disheveled—a mass of hair on his head appears recently shampooed. His shirttails are out, hanging over baggy trousers. He dresses in darkish tones, but nothing seems deliberately coordinated. You get the feeling he is still a big kid—at least at heart and out of the closet.

With age and experience come new responsibilities: “I have come to accept,” he says, eyes rolling upward slightly, “that I am now being looked upon as an ‘elder statesman’ in this business. I’ve had to overcome my fear of speaking in front of big crowds.” But mostly, he now finds meaning in life’s more fundamental things: spending his free time with his wife, Katie O’Donnell, and his two young girls, Juniper, age 8, and Frances, 4.

But the push toward 40 still nags him. “I guess when you approach 40, you get it in your head that you’ve got to make some major changes in your life. I mean, doing the same thing is not supposed to be all right, right? Turning 40 is supposed to be transformational, right? But I love it here. I’m not bored. Every band is a new client; new artists offer new points of view. I love being a husband, a father. I love being a graphic designer, and I love Sub Pop. The only thing that scares me is growing complacent. When a creative person does that, they are dead.”

AN UNLIKELY ASCENT
Jasper would be the longest continuous-run employee at Sub Pop if it were not for one inconvenient truth: After starting with the company in 1989, she got fired. In total, she has served Sub Pop for 17+ years. She now sits atop the company as its general manager, reporting to Jon Poneman, company cofounder. He explains, “Back then, she didn’t have the skill-sets and the attitude to work here, so I fired her.” He was kidding, sort of, but he remained deadpan. There was something more to this story, but the two were coy. They’ve been friends for years. They share many secrets. They are continuity.

On the subject of change, however, both Jasper and Poneman grew more talkative. “I’ve been here since we stored records under Bruce Pavitt’s [the other company cofounder now no longer involved with Sub Pop] bed,” Poneman explains. “During that time, I’ve seen a lot of technological change. You even see it circle back again. For example, in Europe the 7-inch vinyl 45 disc is seeing a revival. But what never changes is that technology always opens the way to new audiences.”