THE NUMBER ONE FEAR IN EVERY POLL OF AMERICANS IS PUBLIC SPEAKING. SOMEHOW I DIDN’T GET THE GENE FOR THAT FEAR, BUT IT ALL EVENS OUT SINCE I HAVE THE GENE FOR GRAY HAIR (STARTING AT AGE 19). FOR ME, THE BEST PART OF TRAVELING SOMEWHERE TO DO A SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT IS MEETING OTHER DESIGNERS AND SEEING FRIENDS IN DIFFERENT CITIES. I DON’T MIND SITTING IN AIRPORTS OR WAKING UP AND FORGETTING WHERE I AM (THAT’S NOT ONLY IN TRAVELING SITUATIONS). ALMOST ALL OF THE TIME, EVERYTHING RUNS SMOOTHLY ... BUT THINGS DO GO WRONG. IT CAN BE AN AUDIO-VISUAL GLITCH OR GENERAL TRAVEL DISASTER OR, IN SOME CASES, STALKERS. THE STORIES OF THESE MISHAPS ALWAYS POP UP AT DINNERS WITH FELLOW DESIGNERS ON THE SPEAKING CIRCUIT. SO, IN A SLIGHT SHIFT FROM MY TYPICAL INTERVIEW, I ASKED SEVERAL ARTISTS TO TELL THEIR WORST SPEAKING STORIES. NOW, EACH AND EVERY PERSON I TALKED WITH WAS, AS I AM, EMPHATICALLY HONORED TO BE ASKED TO SPEAK. WE ALL LOVE THE EXPERIENCE WHEN IT WORKS. AND NOBODY WANTS TO BE ACCUSED OF BEING THE ROCK-STAR DESIGNER DEMANDING ONLY GREEN M&MS.

KATHY MCCOY.
A number of years ago I gave a presentation at a venerable Midwestern art school that still resided in its atmospheric but somewhat tired Arts & Crafts-era building. My presentation was to take place in a picturesque lecture room that apparently doubled as a life-drawing studio. My visuals were projected on a tack board wall (painted white in the distant past) pocked with pushpin holes. There was a door in the middle of the projection surface. Every slide had the door with the doorknob in the middle of the image. I hoped someone would come through the door from the next room and enter one of my portfolio images to surreal effect. Unfortunately that did not occur, although in the middle of my presentation, the school’s fire alarm went off, interrupting us for about 15 minutes while we shivered on the school’s front steps. This school now enjoys its own crisp new building, having joined a university with deeper pockets.

MARC ENGLISH
I’m in a small town somewhere in the U.S. Post-lecture, the AIGA chapter president gives me a ride to the bar where we are to meet the rest of the board. I had met the president once before, at an AIGA national conference. She puts her hand on my thigh. She is married. I remove her hand. At the crowded pub she is literally grabbing my ass, assuming others can’t see. I renegotiate my position in the room and try to outmaneuver her. She continues trying to grab and hold. I continue to maneuver.

The party decides to hit a dance club whose tagline is “(Name of State’s) Gay Dance Club.” I feel sorry for the entire state, but I digress. Our party of eight or so has a fine time dancing, but chapter president is now literally throwing herself all over me, actually clinging to my back, hanging from me like a cape as imagined by William S. Burroughs. She is drunk. I literally shake her from my back several times. I decide to sit one out and happen to have my hands folded together, almost as in prayer. She comes over and starts sucking my fingers. I remove the fingers and remind her she is married.

The club closes. As chapter president is too drunk to drive me back to my hotel, one of the guys on hand, aware of the situation, offers to drive. Chapter president rides shotgun, I’m in back. At the hotel I say I’m tired, shake the driver’s hand, say thanks. Chapter president wants to get out and hug me, then wants to say good night. I say “Good night,” but she wants to say good night inside the hotel. I suggest otherwise, but she follows me in.

“Why won’t you talk to me?!?!?!” she asks. I again remind her she is married, also drunk, and that I’m not interested. I just want to go to bed … without her. The guy at the front desk looks puzzled. I pick chapter president up under my left arm, like a sack of potatoes, deal with the revolving door, carry her down the sidewalk, stuff her in the front seat of the running car and bark, “Get her out of here!” As I am carrying her through the lobby to the door, the thought occurs to me: “This does not happen to Michael Bierut.”

MICHAEL BIERUT
I have had plenty of bad client presentations, but most of my speaking engagements have been fine, even the food part.

PAULA SCHER
Way back in the slide projector days I gave a talk for the Type Directors Club in the fancy theater at Parsons. I designed the talk with two projectors positioned against two screens, because it was a 25-minute talk, and I was advised to be time-conscious. (I was the first speaker in the program, and if my talk ran over, it would foul up the whole day.)

The AV person was annoyed with my dual-carousel approach, because he had to go out and find extra extension cords or something. He couldn’t find an appropriate cord and asked if I could just spill out the whole show of slides and set it up as one carousel. I said that would screw everything up for me, and it would also take at least 45 minutes to reconfigure the tray. He muttered something nasty and stomped off. I frankly didn’t understand what the big deal was.

So the projectors were set up, focused, and everything looked swell. I was introduced, the lights were turned down. I stepped up to the stage and clicked into the first slide. That click turned all the house lights back on. I asked the AV guy to turn them off. He did. I clicked into the next slide, and all the house lights went back on. This went on through about 20 clicks, making the whole slide show invisible.

Finally the audience starting groaning. Someone from the organization stopped the nightmare and ordered the AV guy to fix it. And they asked me to start from the beginning, no matter how late I ran. The whole program shut down for about 45 minutes. Everybody milled around pleasantly. People were speculating about how on earth a slide projector could be connected into the house-light wiring.

The AV guy said it was fixed, and I went back on stage. On my way up the AV guy had to mike me and said, “See, I told you not use that damn second tray.”

STEFAN SAGMEISTER
My worst experience was at the AIGA National Conference in Boston, where, 15 seconds before I went on, the tech guy handed me his remote control for the Mac that promptly crashed the entire presentation, requiring a lengthy restart in front of 2000 people.

Having just arrived jet-legged from Portugal an hour before, I might have made it through the restart period by telling little stories, but MC John Hockenberry saw me struggling. He decided I needed saving and came back onstage carrying bongos and started a little drumming session with me. I hate bongos.

When this little avenue of distilled humiliation finally came to an end, and I started my presentation proper, it turned out that the National Battle of College Bands was booked into the adjoining Ballroom C. An incredibly loud bass thump covered every other word I uttered, forcing its own rhythm onto mine.

It lasted 25 minutes.

PAM WILLIAMS
My worst speaking experience eventually turned out to be one of my best. I was 25 years old and in my very first new business presentation. I had been chosen by the head of my firm to be a partner, and this meeting felt like a test. We had flown from the East Coast to the Midwest and arrived 20 minutes late for the meeting. I was so nervous I thought I would throw up.

The presentation began. My boss asked me to talk about our experience in a particular area. In those days we stood up to address the group. “It’s hot in here,” I thought as I walked to the front of the room. As I started to address the group, my hair fell into my face, so I brushed it away. Simultaneously, my vision became blurry, and I felt dizzy. “I’m going to pass out,” I thought. A few seconds later, I realized the reason I couldn’t see was because I had wiped the right contact lens out of my eye when I adjusted my hair. I knelt down on the carpet (high heels, skirt, ugh) and began to look for the lens. The carpet was blue, just like my contact lens. Crap. Within moments, four potential clients had joined me on the carpet to help find the lens. After what seemed like a lengthy search (my left eye wide open, right eye squeezed shut), someone found the lens. I excused myself to rinse off the polyester.

Humbled and embarrassed, I returned to the meeting. “No problem,” I thought. “You can do this. You’ve only rehearsed 2345 times.” Then I felt the heat again. “Someone please turn on the air conditioner,” I thought. My mouth became dry. My legs began to shake uncontrollably until my whole body spasmed, worse than Kramer on Seinfeld. Water? Is there water? I looked around. I leaned against a table, and it wobbled back. I nearly fell. I righted myself and took the deepest breath I can ever remember. “I don’t know why I am so nervous,” I said to the group. “I love what I do, we’re great at what we do, and I’d like to share why.” Whew. I became a person instead of a presenter.

We were hired for a three-year stint. I have used this trick subsequently. Works every time.

CARLOS SEGURA
When I spoke at a design conference in Chicago in 1994, I was called a “communist” at a roundtable discussion for designing the conference materials the way I did, and for using the font Neo.

JOHN BIELENBERG
I was scheduled to give a presentation at the AIGA chapter in a medium-sized Midwestern city. Unfortunately the talk was scheduled on the exact same date as the annual Cattle Convention that is a big deal in this part of the country. All the downtown hotel rooms were taken, so I was dropped off at a motel on the outskirts of the city—in a mall parking lot.

I hadn’t eaten anything, and being without a car I walked over to the mall to get some food. At 11 p.m., though, only the drugstore was still open. Scouring the “food” section I came up with a can of “Hungry Man” soup and, thankfully, a bottle of inexpensive red wine. Of course, when I returned to my room I realized I had no way to heat the soup and no way to open the can or the wine. Duh. The front desk did have a can opener, but no corkscrew. So my “speaker’s dinner” consisted of drinking cold beef soup out of a can and shoving the cork into the bottle of wine and drinking it out of a plastic water glass while sitting in a depressing little motel in a parking lot at a shopping mall. Nasty.

I have another story but will keep it secret to protect my marriage … even though I didn’t do anything. I promise.

LUBA LUKOVA
Actually I’ve never had a truly bad speaking experience, because the audience has always reacted positively. But recently I had an interview that did not go as planned. I was to be in front of an audience at a national conference. Two days before the event I met with the interviewer, a very experienced professional much older than me. We agreed loosely on the questions to be discussed. We went over the images I was going to show during the presentation. To make things more organized, we decided how long I was to talk on each question, and we divided the slides into groups with black screens between the questions.

When the time of the interview came and we went on stage, I was shocked that the interviewer did not follow any of what we had rehearsed earlier. He took the microphone and talked about his upcoming book and his memories of the ’60s. He did not ask any of the questions we had planned. Needless to say, I was not sure how to change the situation. This was a live performance in a big hall full of people, and I did not want them to think something was wrong.

I noticed the interviewer was reading his speech. He had typed the words on pages with huge type, about 72 point. I guess this was so he would not look old by using glasses. With such big letters there was only about one sentence per sheet, and at one point the interviewer got lost in so many pages. For a moment he stopped reading to look for the next page. In that brief pause somebody from the audience asked me a question in a loud voice. That changed everything. I answered, and there were more and more questions from the audience. The interviewer did not have a chance to open his mouth again.

In the end it was a very successful event, and I did what I like most: talking directly with the people and having a spontaneous conversation with them. Afterward the interviewer ran from the room without even saying goodbye. I never heard from him again.

DENISE GONZALES-CRISP
It was the first time I had spoken to such a large crowd—over 700 designers at AIGA national in Las Vegas. The audience wasn’t there to hear me, though. I was sharing the stage with four typestars: Jonathan Hoefler, Jonathan Barnbrook and the Dutch Lett- Error guys, Just van Rossum and Eric van Blokland.

We each had 10–15 minutes to present. The LettErrors showed first with something hip and playful. Jonathan H. was erudite and succinct. I survived my 10 minutes. Barnbrook was last and went over his allotted time, charming the audience as he always does. By the time we got to the Q&A, I was good and freaked.

The moderator began the questions. Both Jonathans and the LettErrors answered first. I remember thinking how articulate they were, wondering what I could possibly add. When it came my turn, I calmly faced the audience. To my surprise I found I actually could add something to the proceedings after all: I could blather in an unintelligible language!

I had opened my mouth to find myself uttering strange syllables with great conviction. The sad thing is I carried on this way for an interminable minute or so. By the time my brain smacked my mouth shut, it was too late. I was an idiot, obviously. I spent the remainder of the time on stage nodding my head or laughing mechanically with the audience as they responded to my follow panelists.

A few months later I received a tape in the mail, with the title of the panel on the label. The session in its entirety had been recorded. Great. And to my great honor was now for sale, available to every AIGA member.

Abso-frickin’-lutely great.