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Rosenwald is humble to a fault. She is her own woman, here and abroad. Her work is ambivalent about design and illustration. She makes pictures.

She recently spoke at the GEL 2005 conference. To follow is a transcript of that talk. The color images have been taken from her new monograph, New York Notebook. Some specific references to slides have been omitted to facilitate reading.

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Rosenwald: I was having an identity crisis. I didn’t know who I was. So I googled myself and a lot of things came up. It said I was an illustrator. It said I was a designer; I knew that. But then there was this… some guy I think in Minnesota, a student or a very young designer, I don’t know, and there was a link to this poster, he said, “in this poster I was influenced by Laurie Rosenwald, a designer who was big in the '80s.” So I really found out who I was, I was a designer who was big in the '80s. So I looked at the poster and not only was it a terrible poster, but I really could see my influence. (laughter). One thing I’m not is a professional. This is why I have notes. I don’t even know how to sketch which is the basic thing an illustrator does. Because I don’t know what something is going to look like until I do it. Art directors really don’t like that. They don’t like surprises. So as a result I get most of my work, about half of my work, maybe, killed. And I used to have stationery that said, “Rosenworld,” that’s the name of my “company” that, um, the “Rosenworld, the little house that kill fees built.” And to those of you who don’t know, kill fees... usually illustrations are, you know, $700, and if they don’t use it, you get $350. So this is how I make my living. Isn’t that great?

And I’ll show you some examples of this kind of work. But, yes, what else. Yes, my friend Yolanda. My friend Yolanda Cuomo, a very gifted designer, has a sign over her door that says: “For love or money, there is no in-between.” And I thought that was very true, but I don’t live by that. I’m not that smart. So I had a sign over my door that said: “I can’t afford to waist my time making money.” And I forget to bill people and stuff like that. I mean I do everything wrong. I do everything the wrong way and I always have. So, um, anyway, I’ve made so many mistakes. I realized I was really good at it. And then I turned it into a philosophy. I meant to do that; it became my theme. And then I started teaching this way, and then I started, you know, saying that I was working this way and this was my thing, making mistakes. And then I convinced a lot of designers that this was really cool and I decided to lecture and blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, I’m a native New Yorker, by the way. I’m very proud of that. Um, so that’s why I say blah, blah, blah. Um, yeah, so how do you make mistakes on purpose? Well, for me, you know, if you sit down and say, I’m going to make a good drawing now, it’s the kiss of death. Trying to be creative works about as well as trying to be charming. It just does not work. I need something to start with. So I started doing this workshop and it’s called: What to do when it’s too late to go walking in the woods like Georges De Mestral and get burrs and stuff on your pants and invent Velcro all over again. Georges De Mestral who invented Velcro didn’t sit down and say,"I’m going to find a way – what this world needs – ways to fit things together." A new "way." He didn’t do that. He got burrs n’stuff on his pants and he thought, "Oh? What could this be?" So he found the solution and then found a problem. He saw something in something and then created this great thing. That’s what I try to teach in this workshop, and that’s what I do. It’s not problem solving. What you learn in design school is all about problem solving. And I figure if those crazy kids can do problem solving 364 days a year, they can spend one day just making stuff the way you made stuff when you were a kid. When you’re a child, you don’t draw thinking, "I’ve got to do, you know, I’ve got to solve problems." Just draw cause you like to.

Anyway, what we do is we put on garbage bags because it gets very icky, we get all icky. And then I make them draw really, really fast. And it’s through speed that we achieve what we do. And we draw really, really fast. So draw a face, you know, draw a tree, draw a house, draw a car, draw a nude, draw a portrait. And do it as fast as they can. And then later we take these drawings and we put them all on this big database. And then they get to a computer, and then they use whoever’s drawing, it doesn’t really matter, and then I say, you know, I’ll give you five minutes. Make five CD covers, and I come back in five minutes. And they do and it’s the best work that they’ve ever done. It’s beautiful work and I said, okay, I’ll be back in five minutes, make five book jackets. And they do. And it’s just so amazing the work that they do and it’s just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of drawings that we end up with. And they play and I say, I want quantity, not quality. And it’s beautiful, beautiful work.

Anyway, so you need something to start with and it’s like ingredients. Now, I want to do this slide thing. It’s the left one, yes. Well, that doesn’t mean anything. What am I saying? Nothing’s happening. Oh, yes. I hate power point presentation because they’re always asking me the questions and I’m just supposed to answer them(laughter). Whatever. (more laughter). Okay. Yeah. So, oh wait. Oh, we have: garbage, bad, get icky, collect ingredients, that’s what its,I could do something funny. But that was a mistake, I meant to do it.

How do you make mistakes on purpose? What I do is I collect ingredients of what we do in this workshop which we get like a whole bunch of stuff. This is the imprint of a bread board that, you know, I made, that I used as a scan in all kinds of work. I just paint things and say, "What could this be?" I make stuff first. And this is one with just with ripped paper that I call “long ripped” that I’ve used printed in this poster for a film called “Dead Line,” a fun little film about capitol punishment(laughter). I can’t tell you . . . of the New Yorker. I work a lot for the New Yorker, too, but as an illustrator, I don’t do cartoons. And this was an old piece of paper I scanned, and this was the background for the poster that I’ve been doing a lot of work for this company BHV which is in France, which is this big department store. And this was some of the - let’s say it’s crayon or something blown up really big. Then I take things from an old type book. I stole this from Steve Behr, the designer is from Holland, that I love, and just scanned his work and used the background for something. This is a typeface that I scanned, an old book that I use. This is my father’s writing. This is what I used. Do you see why it fits perfect from the typeface before last, not my father’s writing? This was for Ikea. I have to say, those posters, let’s go back, for Ikea, oops. This was actually a big postcard where, you know, so many people apply for jobs at Ikea that they have a whole set of postcards made. They print thousands of them when you don’t get the job. So, this one is “you’re almost perfect.” But you came this close, but no. Thank you very much. Really. And this other one says, "thanks for thinking of us, but no.” This is another font that I actually made into a font. Oh, never mind. This is bullet holes. Just more scans, everything that I took slides. And then I made some into stuff. I want to show you how I make them into stuff.

I cannibalize my work, you know, just silly drawings like this. I’ve been accused of being a cocktail napkin artist and I took it as a great compliment. This is me. And this is about the workshop that I do. There’s going to be some student work. This is in London at Camberwell at Brighton University. I’ve taught a lot of this in Europe which means because they don’t understand it here very well. I have a lot of European clients. So here’s some crazy drawings from this, yeah, I know, they’re not very good drawings. But I encourage that. I live part of the year in Sweden for some reason. Nobody knows why. And this is from a Swedish student at school there. This is for a Swedish train company. I think this is so beautiful with just some streaky thing that they blew up and made a poster. And then I always come back to collage. I make things out of these things, these ingredients that I told you about. And basically it’s a collage. It’s a way of life. So this is in my kitchen. My loft where I live is below Canal Street here, sort of reflects the way I think with all these posters and paintings, very colorful and very inspiring to me. I’ve got this blue floor. This is a painting I did. I’ve been painting a lot since about ’77, ’78. This is a poster I did for BHV. You see the blue star? You see some of that streaky stuff? I use that squiggle up there. I just use them in things. This means we are all children.

I’m going to go fast now. I’m gonna really go fast. How many minutes do I have left? Five? But I just want to show you – This is for the New Yorker, but they killed it. This one they published in the New Yorker – these are all the New Yorker. Ooops. That’s alright. See? I meant to do that. This is about concrete – both are in the New Yorker. Didn’t get published. Portraits and specialties. Ooops. This is Paul Schaeffer when he didn’t have any... when he had hair and I went to the David Letterman Show, I said, "I have to draw people in real life." The New Yorker would send me to all these great jazz clubs to see people. And I said, "I just can’t work from photographs." That was really fun. So I went to the taping of the show three times(laughing). I mean my work is really minimal but what I do is I make 100 things really fast, and 99 are mistakes, and then I pick the one that is sort of okay and then I use that. Some times people say I’m some kind of a fashion illustrator, I mean, I really haven’t - , when I was at RISD, Rhode Island School of Design, I was in first the graphic design department but they wouldn’t let you draw, so I really missed drawing. Then in the illustration department where I thought it was too cutesy, stupid. So I wanted to go back to the graphic design department but they wouldn’t let me back because I insulted them. They said: "Well, you can’t come back because you’ve missed two months," or something like that. I said: "You know, it’s not like engineering like, you know, a bridge is going to fall on somebody’s head because I missed two months of graphic design class. It’s only graphic design; it’s only just taste. What’s the big deal?" They wouldn’t let me back. So I went to painting where they put you in studio and locked you in the room and threw away the key. So, and I still do all these things: graphic design and painting.

Thank you

All color illustrations are from Rosenwald's book New York Notebook

Or you can find out more about Laurie by visiting her website:Rosenworld