It's Not About Me

Joe Doucet

Design director, Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners
New York, New York

I grew up in an environment where i was encouraged to be very creative. My mother was an artist. My father was a third-generation ironworker. He made things with his hands. So genetically, you could say I was predisposed to design, which is a combination of both. I never envisioned myself at an advertising agency. But I always wanted to make a good living creatively. I just wasn't sure how.

The essence of what makes a truly great creative person is the ability to remove oneself from the process. You have to become the person for whom the work is being done. And what that means in terms of my work here is that it's never done for a client; it's done for the people the client is talking to. That removal of oneself is critical, not only to executing the work but also in explaining why a solution is right for the client.

I'll give you an example from one of our accounts. Most people look at a Target ad and say it's just fashion. There's no concept to it -- or at least what the advertising world thinks of as a concept. But it's high fashion for a mass brand. Talk about concepts. That's a very big concept.

The majority of the products in a Target and Wal-Mart store aren't that different. It's the experience, the message, the lifestyle that you're buying into. The way you tell the story is just as important as the story you're trying to tell.

In addition to his role at Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, Joe Doucet founded, with his wife, a high-end design company in New York called Intoto.

Question Assumptions

Donna Kacmar

Principal, Architect Works Inc.
Houston, Texas

My creativity lies in trying to explore new possibilities for what might be considered a dumb or mundane problem. We all think we know how to make an office building or a townhouse or some run-of-the-mill thing like that. Well, do we? Let's question the assumptions that we have and see if there are some new things we can try. I always take risks on projects. But I don't take risks with wacky forms. I'm not Frank Gehry. But I'm not trying to be.

I always thought of myself as a problem solver. I also teach architecture at the University of Houston, and I once had a student tell me my buildings were boring. And, yes, they are pretty straightforward. But they're complex in that they allow systems to be expressed. There's a world of limits I operate

in and that I am appreciative of. For example, the project that I'm working on right now is a Montessori high school, and part of what they do is have the students help maintain the building. They don't clean it. They maintain it. What does that mean -- and what could that mean -- for architecture? It's the idea of taking the routine and making it into something more. How do you understand the rituals that take place and then relate them to architecture?

What I'm able to do is help people see things a different way. I think I'm able to see things a little bit more openly -- to find relationships between things that aren't as readily apparent and then make something of those relationships. My version of creativity is more like a quest for understanding.

Donna Kacmar was one of five recipients of the 2004 American Institute of Architects' Young Architects Awards.