The last thing I’ll write about Tibor
Original published in Backstage Talks Magazine for a feature called ‘What We Learned From Tibor Kalman’
Tibor challenged everything.
On the first day I got to the office Tibor asked me my name. After I told him he asked if he could call me Shmuley instead. After that, he introduced me to all his friends and clients as Shmuley. The ones I still keep in contact with to this day call me Shmuley.
In the short time I worked at M&Co he challenged everything. Each and every piece of design. Why we look at magazines. The way food is designed. What we eat. The differences between Whisks. Which way up we should read things. The Umbrella that was the symbol of the company outside our office window. The words we choose. The way files were organized in the archive. How we understand time. The way we look at art. How companies and committees take over how we think. What we can, or cannot talk about.
His eyes sparkled.
Once when we reviewed the designs of Maira’s new book together he called on Maira to see if she liked it, when she did the sparkle in his eyes lit up the room. We would all try so hard to elicit that same reaction from him. It only happened when something made his neurons fire and his heart beat faster at the same time. This bar was very very high.
He would see brilliance in normality.
Fancy designers would call it vernacular, but Tibor would send us out to go look at the World: Painted signs, shop windows, food stacked on shelves. Hotel 'do not disturb' signs, menu boards, market-stall penmanship. The way non-designers did things seemed more astounding to Tibor than design. He always encouraged us to try to forget that we were designers. I think he believed that ‘design’ created a barrier that could obscure the brilliance of a thought or idea.
He was impulsive.
Tibor liked to throw impromptu parties, whether to celebrate someone joining the studio, or moving on, or to celebrate lunchtime, to celebrate a project beginning or coming to an end.
He would also re-write and rethink everything numerous times, often after the work was already finished. If he found a way of doing something better he would do it no matter the challenge.
He was eternally optimistic
Tibor was surrounded by brilliant people, he collaborated with many of them. People like David Byrne, Issac Mizrahi, Rolf Fehlbaum, Andres Balazs, Florent Morellet. I got the feeling that he was continuously amazed at what people were capable of. I remember his favorite chair in the office was The Little Beaver by Frank Gehry, entirely made of corrugated cardboard, a chair so full of optimism that it seemed to defy physics.
His work is unfinished.
I wish he were here right now. We need his mind to challenge every little ridiculous thing that’s happening right now, help us all gain the perspective and optimism needed to imagine a much better version of reality. But he’s not here, so it's up to us.
