Color Magazine Online

John Maeda is both indefinable and understandable. He holds a master of electrical engineering and computer science, a doctorate in design sciences, a master of business administration, has written four books and earned several design awards, but it's his ability to make sense of it all that makes him one of the most important minds of the 21st century.

His art - which is in the permanent collection at Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Cartier Foundation in Paris - reveals the oft-obscured humanity inherent in technology. He has written groundbreaking computer programs, including one to teach coding to visual artists - so instead of learning Photoshop, they can write their own photo-editing software. His latest book, The Laws of Simplicity, is a guide to finding the essence of design, and life, in the digital age.

A former professor of media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Maeda recently became the president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), bringing his unique brand of creative leadership to the renowned art institute.

Color Magazine: How has your Japanese background shaped your career?
John Maeda: I grew up in a Chinatown area of Seattle later named the international district. I grew up making tofu, so from a young age I understood the importance of making things by hand, making things in this older way. All of our friends were Asian at the time, it was this small enclave, and then I went to school! And school wasn't like that, it was different, it was real America. It was there that I began to realize I had this cultural side, and also this other kind of side. It was always difficult to reconcile the two together, but difficulty creates opportunity to learn.

CM: What did you learn from studying in Japan?
JM: It was difficult because I look Japanese, and people would come up to me speaking Japanese and I kind of understood, but not really. It was there I realized in Japan I wasn't Japanese and in America I wasn't seen as American sometimes. It was the ‘un huh' moment, what side am I allowed to be? And its very simple I'm American, easy as that.

CM: When did you know you wanted to become an artist?
JM: I'm not done choosing actually. I went to MIT, did computer science and electrical engineering, I went to Art School, I did fine art, industrial design, graphic design, then I went to MIT as a professor of media arts and sciences, got my M.B.A., and now I'm president. I'm open to learning new things.

CM: You've said that you will put any piece of art up on your wall for at least a day. Why is it important to keep an open mind?
JM: Oh yea, I'll try stuff out. I'm very flexible. I think the whole key to survival in this world right now is openness and trust in what you believe, risk taking. So I am very flexible on most things, how I appreciate things. I don't feel you have to go to a museum to see art. Anywhere you go in the world, anywhere you sit in a restaurant, anything you see has an artistic moment in it.

CM: In the business world there is a need for more diversity and for everyone to keep an open mind. Is there that same need in the art world?
JM: Well we might say the art world reflects our world culture. And because our world culture is changing - the world is becoming flatter, our nation is becoming more diverse, a true melting pot is occurring - art is going to change as well.

CM: Is the education world changing?
JM: I think education is quite slow to change; it's like a Brita water filter. It takes a while for the water to get through the filter, sometimes decades. I think that the shifts that are happening in the world take longer to come into education. I know at MIT, when I was chair of the culture and race committee, I noticed that you can bring a student with a diverse background to a school, but if you don't have a culture that actually makes them feel comfortable they are going to leave.

CM: Do you have that culture at RISD?
I'm working on it. I worked on it so much as a professor, and now I don't have a problem lobbying the president with these issues - now I'm the president. It's very different, I actually care about this stuff, and I can actually do something about it.

CM: How are you applying the laws of simplicity to being the president of RISD?
JM: I think many of the laws are used everyday. The one law that comes to mind is the second law of organization. I think that keeping organized isn't about you but it's about the people you work with. I have some incredible people around me. They are all very organized people, very good.
The other one is to keep trust alive, because trust is key to building community. I like how community and communication are from the same Latin root. I am a very over communicative president. I was just in the cafeteria today hanging out, because I like to ask students how they are doing. It's kind of like truckers say, ‘How's my driving?' As president I ask, ‘How am I doing, how am I presidenting?'

CM: You have a unique way of communicating with your students and you really understand how to utilize technology to do so.
JM: By some freak accident, I am the I.T. guy that became president. Because of that, I can blog, I can photograph, I can upload. I have no boundaries. I actually post on the blog, it's actually me typing things, it's actually me resizing the image. It doesn't take much time of course, because it's a practiced effort.
Also, inside RISD, we are the only university that has a blog where everyone can talk with me. And on Tuesdays you can become anonymous, which recently has been a little spicy. I talk to anonymous voices, like in ‘The Sixth Sense.'

People ask me, ‘Why don't you make it so people have to stick up with their name?' When I first came here, it was all real names. Blogs are mostly anonymous right? Like, bigbluebag says or yellowscreamer says whatever. Then my friend, a professor at Harvard Business School, suggested we have a hybrid blog. So ours is the only one of its type. It's kind of exciting.

CM: You also go jogging and invite people to join.
JM: Yea, it's with local business people in Providence and students as well. I gave a talk to some providence business people and at the end someone got up and said, ‘Is this the last time we're going to see you? Because every time I see a president show up they like go away somewhere on an airplane and we never see them again.' I said, ‘No, no. I'm going to be here.' The guy in the front row suggested we start running. So me and Steve Cronin, who is the CEO of a printing company, began running. It's called Jogging with John. You should come along and jog!

CM: Seems like you use a good balance of face-to-face conversation and communication through technology.
JM: Yea, we do both. If you Google ‘do both' I think I'm the first link. It's because I believe in doing both. Maybe that's what you were asking in the beginning, ‘How do you feel being both?' I've gone though the things everyone else has in my situation. You get in a taxi and the driver asks, ‘Where are you from?' and I say, ‘I'm from Seattle and they say, ‘Where are you really from?' not quite getting it. I've had bottles thrown at me in Texas. I've gone through all that, and at the same time, I do notice that we are in a different era. We have a president of color. And it's like ‘Oh how interesting, now everything seems, OK.' I'm the president of RISD and I'm of color and it seems, OK. So that norm is shifting.

CM: You wanted to study the classic mediums but were discouraged by a professor. Can you talk about that shift?
JM: I was so in love with the classics and my professor of the classics asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I said, ‘I want to become just like you sir.' And he was very angry with me that day. He called me a horse's behind, which is really bad in Japanese. And he said, ‘When you're young, do something young with yourself. Because when you're old the classics will always be there.' I like that perspective.

CM: But you also take from the classics and bring them into this new medium of computers.
JM: Yes I do. I'm a mixture, a mixture of the classics and the modern. I'm also a mixture of the childish and the very adult, the cultured and the non-cultured, the Japanese and the non-Japanese.

I'm also interested in leadership. Leaders will come from the arts and design. I believe in what I call a creative leader. I just bought creativeleadership.com. My point is that a traditional leader is concerned with being right. The creative leader is more concerned with being real; people who are creative are comfortable being themselves.

CM: What is the role for these leaders in the future?
JM: It's fantastic! I'm thinking government, running companies, better ways to run not-for-profits, magazines. Magazines were already places where creative leaders existed, because of editorial, flow, creativity and I think that expertise is transferable. I don't see it as impossible for an editor in chief to become the president of a college, because it's a similar kind of thing.

CM: How do you see yourself as a creative leader who is different from past presidents?
JM: Well, most people are very yes or no. I'm very comfortable being maybe, sometimes great people can be maybe. Like when you take a photograph, it's maybe. It isn't like exactly 100 percent correct. So for me it can be maybe or maybe not.

CM: Does that cause any problems for you?
JM: Tons. But also a creative leader is comfortable being wrong. If you are never wrong you never get something right. The best way to never be wrong is to do absolutely nothing. Guaranteed. That's called zero risk. That's why I think that the people who are creative are the bravest people around. Nancy (the photographer) has that camera and is taking a picture. And someone's going to look at it. And someone could say, "Nancy that's a terrible photo." But then you say, "I took that photo, I'll stand behind it." That takes courage. I believe in that.

CM: You have a background in technology and science as well as art and design, but you also have a passion for language. How do you communicate and connect these fields that most people see as unrelated.
JM: Well that's a good question because I've been trying to figure that out. I was the shyest kid in class. I could never stand in front of an audience and talk to people. I hated writing. I was good at math, the classical math/science. Somewhere along the way I realized I loved words, and how words connect. How people are moved or not moved by words. Then it became interesting. And not just that, drawings I would make, people would respond or not respond. I saw the power of communication versus making something. See, if you're just making this, than you end up just making this. If you don't consider the audience it should just stay in your brain! Once it leaves your brain it becomes alive, and to see that living thing happen is a kind of real time state of art.

CM: Does it take people like you to help others see this real time art?
JM: Well, I don't have to explain it often. I get so many Facebook messages that say ‘Oh I really like your work. I'm trying to do it myself.' Because I'm doing it, it becomes OK. I think that being a leader means making it OK. I gave an MLK day speech in Rhode Island, it was in a church, and there were African American kids in front. I could just tell that when Barack Obama became president this whole thing got lifted. It just requires a person to step forward.

CM: Are you trying to teach RISD students to be that person?
JM: I guess I'm trying to be that person. I'm trying to be the president I never had. That's my only goal right now. Lead by example, that's all there is.
I'm not perfect I make a ton of mistakes, but at the same time I'm willing to make them in public. It counts for something. It's like taking a photograph, same thing.

CM: When did you realize you liked to write?
JM: When I realized how bad I was at it. So I just began to write.

CM: I feel like you've never met a medium you didn't want to explore.
JM: Oh yea, exactly. This time last year, I was planning on becoming a lawyer. I took the LSAT and was going to go to law school. Then I got this offer out of the blue (to become president of RISD). Do I want to become president or become a lawyer? Hmm, interesting choice. I think I will do this; I've never done it before.

CM: What appealed to you about becoming a lawyer?
JM: I think that law is so basic to the fabric of society. It's the invisible handcuffs. It's the invisible slide and windmill that controls every single part of our being and it's composed of words. I couldn't read law texts. So I wanted to decode that, so some day I will spend more time on deciphering that code.

CM: In the Laws of Simplicity you added a story about an insightful conversation you had with a former professor that seemed unrelated to the rest of the book. Why did you add it?
JM: The whole point of that one page is that I believe that every moment you are alive you can learn something very deep. Whether your in a cab, or in a locker room, or your getting your tea, there's something that's always there that can move you. But you will never know it unless you're listening. So the point of that page was to say that I was listening that day.