Design Like a Musician

I talk about music a lot when I teach. It sneaks into critiques, pops up as metaphors, it’s built into project prompts, and often frames class discussions. Somewhere along the way, music has became one of the ways I understand, describe, and teach design.

Michael Bierut kicks off 79 Short Essays on Design with a short story about designing a catalog for Robert Wilson without much understanding of his work. He writes:

“With single-minded obliviousness, I plunged ahead, got the job done, and was quite pleased with the results… [When] I finally saw my first Robert Wilson production. It was the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 1984 revival of Einstein on the Beach. And sitting there in the audience, utterly transported, it came crashing down on me: I had completely screwed up that catalog. Seen live, Wilson’s work was epic, miraculous, hypnotic, transcendent. My stupid layouts were none of those things. They weren’t even pale, dim echoes of any of those things. They were simply no more and no less than a whole lot of empty-headed graphic design. And graphic design wasn’t enough. It never is.”

Bierut recognizes, with humility, the shallowness of that approach. If we aim for surface visuals without understanding the conceptual or emotional underpinnings, we miss the mark. That’s where Picasso’s line “good artists copy, great artists steal” lands for me. Copying on sight alone rings hollow; it lacks the soul and the reasoning that drive visual decisions. Great artists steal ideas and attempts to work at a deeper level. The results may look different but usually it communicates more authentically.

I’m always hesitant to show visual inspiration in class. I’ve seen countless projects ripped straight from their references, and I’ve been guilty of the same thing early in my education. If the tendency is to copy the look of our inspiration, one remedy is to be inspired by non-visual creative work. This is a big part of why I’m drawn towards the creative process of musicians.

When we do title designs in motion graphics, my two favorite examples to share are the Song Exploder episode with Jeff Beal (1) and a behind-the-scenes feature on Hans Zimmer’s music for Interstellar. (2) I’ve found the discussions in these pieces are difficult for students to mimic at the surface level. They push us into conceptual framing, process, and decisions about symbolism and theme, faster and more effectively than a VFX breakdown or interview with a title designer. Applying ideas from one creative genre to another forces students to stop copying outcomes and start tracing intent, choices, and process. Learning this way becomes analysis rather than a quick xerox.

Design that taps into this deeper conceptual plane takes full advantage of the tools we have for communication. As we try to move past cliché and surface visuals toward the heart of a project, we develop a kind of synesthesia, a trained sensitivity where one sense can trigger another: where you can “see” sound or “taste” color. Animator Michel Gagné described this idea for Ratatouille: “The concept was to design and animate abstract representations of what the character was tasting.” They took the experience of tasting cheese and strawberries and translated it both visually and musically.

This is a skill designers should practice and build. I think this is the skill Bierut realized he missed. As he put it, “They were simply no more and no less than a whole lot of empty-headed graphic design.” Before we hop on the next trend train or pump out a shallow but polished deliverable, take a moment to reflect. As Jessica Walsh put it “Do work you love and are passionate about [and] look outside of the world of graphic design for inspiration.” 🤙