Kaufman and McCarthy's studio is in Seattle's Pioneer Square historic district—the funky end (or beginning) of the free bus line that conveys legions of tourists up and down 1st Avenue. The term "skid row" is said to have originated here when timber would be slid down steeply graded Yesler Street to a steam-powered mill on the Seattle waterfront.

I had always thought Pioneer Square was a tourist trap—all taffy stores, WWII Duck rides and crappy restaurants. I was wrong. It is more, with character superior to anything in the city's gleaming business district. Bursting with art galleries, bookstores, antique shops, ethnic restaurants and nightclubs ... except for the area clos­est to the waterfront, the old neighborhood does not feel especially touristy. It occurred to me that Kaufman and McCarthy had settled on a location reminiscent of New York City south of 34th Street. When I learned they both hailed from the New York metro region, I realized this was no coincidence. To them, it feels like home.

HEADING WEST
Settling in at another of Seattle's ubiquitous coffee shops across from their office, I learned Kaufman and McCarthy were, in a way, Seattle pioneers themselves. They met in 1983 and married in 1989. At the time, McCarthy was a fine art major who took a job as an intern at a recruiting agency on 42nd Street in Manhattan. Kaufman was doing freelance work and looking for a more long-term role anywhere he could find it. "We were living in a hovel," he recalls. "I wanted to live somewhere else, so we made a list: Minne­apolis, Toronto and Seattle seemed acceptable. I got an offer, so we moved to Seattle in 1990, before it was on everyone else's wish list."

Kaufman landed in Bellevue, Seattle's Stepford Wife dead east of downtown across Lake Washington. The agency, Ilium & Asso­ciates, specialized in transit design. "Information design, really," explains McCarthy, "tickets, signs, public information, etc. It sounds dull, but it actually led to a specialty that has been our bread and but­ter since: municipal and public information design. And god knows municipalities and public services need help from graphic designers."

In the beginning, McCarthy took part-time jobs. As a security staffer at the Seattle Center, she once broke up a fight at a hockey game. She also answered phones for AAA Road Service, though she knew nothing about area streets. Still, their apartment was grand compared to the shoebox in New York, and they were young and happy. But in 1992 Kaufman got laid off. McCarthy had a few freelance design jobs to keep them going. Kaufman began help­ing her on projects while still keeping an eye out for a full-time gig. Eventually they realized they had enough business to keep them both occupied. Art-o-Mat was born. No more want-ad surfing.

Kaufman and McCarthy's contacts and music interests led them to work for some of Seattle's renowned music and arts orga­nizations such as Experience Music Project, Seattle International Film Festival and the Seattle Symphony. These experiences led to more opportunities in the arts and music scene, a creative outlet that both Kaufman and McCarthy say kept them sane when more mundane work wore them down.

To this day, the two remain ambivalent about Seattle—he more than she. She rolls her eyes when he makes one of his patently face­tious generalizations about Seattle, the place they've called home for 18 years.

"We don't camp, fish or bike. We don't like the outdoors," he says.
"But we bought a house with a nice garden," she reminds him.
"Yes, but the garden now looks like shit," he replies.
"Well, we had good intentions," she offers.
"In any case, I don't want to be buried here," says he.
She finishes. "Fine, I'll pack you up and ship you out when your time comes. I'm not going anywhere."

VIVATIV RISING
Their repartee is more familiar than biting, good-natured seaweed wrapped around delicious, raw truths. His volubility is comple­mented by her reason. I ask them why they ditched the name Art-O-Mat once they had become known for it. "A variety of reasons," explains Kaufman. "First, some group back East [artomat.org] started trying to change the world [in 1997] by selling art in old ciga­rette machines. Their idea was to make art more accessible, I think. Anyway, over the years we got tired of being distracted by calls and e-mails for them. We knew they weren't venal, horrible people, and we weren't going to sue them over it, so we decided to give it up."

"There was a more practical reason, too," interjects McCarthy. "We needed a change. Mark's cartoon and illustration work had begun to attract a certain editorial enthusiasm, and it was grow­ing. Our corporate and municipal design work never had much in common with Mark's editorial work, so it made sense just to sepa­rate the two. For me, marketing our work to clients as Vivitiv just makes sense."

"Um, I might add, my style is not going to do it for some insur­ance company's marketing executives," adds Kaufman. "By sepa­rating the business between issue-oriented design and my editorial work, I am getting more editorial work—which I love—and more of the other work, which we do well."

THE DESIGN OF PLACE
Vivitiv's website launched November 2007. The name is derived from the Latin word vividus, meaning full of life. Even if the name is a bit obscure, they call their practice "issue-oriented design," a nice mixing bowl in which they knead together their interests in public policy, technology, health care, education and the arts. McCarthy explains further.

"Why, I ask government and agency clients, do municipal recy­cling programs have to be so damn boring and ugly? Why can't garbage collection facilities and vehicles look nicer? Well, they don't, and they can. You change attitudes inside bureaucracy one individual at a time, month after month, year after year. Even­tually, you begin to accumulate a crowd within government that 'gets' it, that understands that issues and public information—washing your hands after you use the toilet if you handle food, recycling Christmas trees, how to use an automated ticket dis­penser at the light-rail station, etc.—[can be] more readily under­stood. When that happens, social improvements take place, and clients can claim credit for the success of their initiatives. We have made great strides over the years in getting public service profes­sionals here to go to bat for better design, even if it only appears on trash cans and lavatory walls."

The work they do is gritty and real. And it is important to the quality and health of any community, especially a mass society as diverse and complex as metro Seattle's. Consider that information must be imparted across the broadest spectrum of city residents—rich, poor, white, black, Asian, libertarians, social conservatives, Birkenstock liberals ...

"There's a lot of those here," Kaufman adds sardonically. "But the trick is to speak to them without talking down to the anti-recycling libertarian who thinks she can do with her milk cartons as she damn well pleases."

Both point out that such work is not always in the nonprofit realm. There are a lot of needs, and these types of clients do pay well. Winning the trust of them is the hard part, but once you do, you're well positioned to tackle difficult assignments and push the design envelope. The end result is a municipality with a more effective and sophisticated public discourse. That trumps selling organic cow shit to urban herb farmers.

SANE, SMALL, & STAYING THAT WAY
Still, one look at Kaufman and you know he would jump out the window if all he had to do all day was design arresting diagrams of how to lather up your hands after a trip to the men's room. "My edi­torial work [which can be seen and blogged on at drawmark.squarespace.com] keeps me going," he says. What about the rock posters that earned him recognition a bit earlier in his career? "When one gets to be 'of a certain age,' perhaps it is best if you leave that stuff to the younger kids," he says. "I have no intention of being perceived as someone trying to hold on to my youth by doing garage band posters until I expire. Unlike Dylan, I do not have nine lives to live."

Both Kaufman and McCarthy also believe that staying small is not only a virtue, it is a necessity. They have had their share of freaks and geeks come and go, and—in their ripe middle age—they say they're not into that anymore. "Not everyone aspires to be small, but we do," says McCarthy. "Whenever we tried to take on more than four or five people, it became a hand-holding exercise, a distraction."

"Like the young woman who kept coming to work in terrycloth hot pants," adds Kaufman, "that kind of distraction."

"Yes, so how do you tell some capable but ultimately naive young lady, 'Sue, you are very nice, but whenever you lean over to put something in the file cabinet, I can see your entire ass. I do not want to see your ass, in whole or in part."

"Well," muses Kaufman.

"Well? The point is we have work to do. Afterwards you can go to any club near Pike's Market and see someone's ass," McCar­thy says. "We care about young people's growth and education. We donate work to Art with Heart's good causes. We participate in AIGA; Mark is on the Seattle AIGA board. I serve on the National Executive Committee for the Graphic Artists Guild." Speak­ing of past staffers, McCarthy continues, "in the end, they come, they learn, and they leave for whatever reason—to a bigger gig with something like Hornall Anderson, or to start a rock band. But I do not see us as a nursery. We just found that if we keep it simple, we can do good work for good purposes, Mark can express himself through his editorial work, and we can take off every December to spend a month together in some place other than cold, wet Seattle."

THE PLACE OF DESIGN
"One more thing: I don't like to talk about 'design,'" Kaufman says later over dinner at La Spiga, an overdesigned Italian restaurant on Capitol Hill. "Look at this place," he remarks, his blood clearly ris­ing. "Lifer waitrons that don't know shit about Italian food, but pose like it [Mark is of proud Jersey Italian stock]. Same thing goes for far too many young designers. They constantly try to sell something that either the client does not want or does not need or that they themselves know little about. ..."

I admit to Kaufman and McCarthy that I, too, get weary of seeing design on a pedestal. Sometimes what designers do is meet a need. If we can make important information more accessible, we can call it a day, go home and walk our dogs in good conscience.

After our long discussion, I realize how much I like Mark and his jaundiced point of view. It suits the rain and fog of Seattle. And it suits him, even if part of his verbal carpet-bombing is proba­bly a defense mechanism designed to inoculate him from greater hurt or disappointment. Most of us have been there. For two who have been around the block more than once, who work in relative obscurity, this is understandable, even forgivable.

Later, I began to realize that there is something else at work with Kaufman and McCarthy. They have a nice life. They came to Seattle long before it got obscenely expensive to own a home here. They have a humble but nice office in a delightfully woebegone part of town, removed from the glitz, Gaps and Banana Republics of the more glamorous sectors. And they've got a good business model with a clutch of clients that allows them to live the kind of life they want. These two have earned the right to point out the differences between artifice and reality in the kind of design Mecca Seattle has become.

Really, who are the rock star designers today? The guys with the million-dollar studios that appear void of human life when depicted in Architectural Digest? Or the couple from New Jersey with the overgrown garden who recently wrapped up their annual month-long hiatus in Italy?

I got an e-mail from McCarthy sent from their hotel in Rome. "Wish you were here," it seemed to suggest. Indeed. Art-o-Mat, Vivitiv, Drawmark. It's all the same thing: smart, creative, real ... and an enviable place to be.

www.vivitiv.com