By Aggie Toppins

Business of Design III took place at the Alliance Française on November 17. Chris Pullman, former Vice President of Branding and Visual Communications at WGBH in Boston, was the guest speaker. The event began with a lecture by Mr. Pullman and was concluded with a Q+A session moderated by Philip Burton, Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Pullman’s long career is a case study in graphic design history. During the time he spent at WGBH, from 1973 to 2008, the industry went through numerous technological changes that affected his work and opened possibilities for new applications. Simultaneously, he saw the small local station known as, “Channel 2,” with under 200 employees, grow to an Omnimedia distribution company, with over a thousand employees and an international reach.

It was Ivan Chermayeff that offered Chris Pullman the position to work as a design director for WGBH in the early '70s. Chermayeff and his partner Tom Geismar had just finished branding the station and were in search of an ongoing brand steward. At first, Pullman was reluctant to accept the position since he, “didn’t even own a television.” He said, “My teachers warned me that [a career in television] was the worst way to squander my talents and expensive education.” But after visiting the studio, he was convinced that it was a golden opportunity. Since public broadcasting is driven by social benefit, as opposed to profit, WGBH was a place where insightful programming would thrive. It was WGBH that brought forth Masterpiece Theatre, Nova, and important documentaries like Vietnam: A Television History.

In the beginning, the WGBH brand was characterized by an “idiosyncratic and iconoclastic behavior” and a “sense of down and dirty design” that resulted from its underdog status in the world of broadcasting. This came through in the “Channel 2-mobile,” a car shaped like a giant 2, and ads that appropriated Chanel perfume marketing. As the station grew to enfold more offerings, “We [were] obliged to produce work that [was] both eclectic and coherent…reflecting the unique content and voice of each program…rather than applying a ‘house style.'"

His last project at WGBH was overseeing the design aspects of the construction of the station’s new headquarters in Boston. It was a chance to, “apply the values of our programs to our physical space,” said Pullman. He further commented that the project was the greatest design challenge of his career.

After going through each decade and sharing insights on the ever-changing profession of graphic design, Pullman offered his favorite learning lessons. “Work on things that matter,” he said, and “Work with people you like and respect.” “Have high standards,” and “Have a sense of humor.”

In the Q+A session that followed, Pullman and Philip Burton shared anecdotes about their convergent paths in design education. They taught together at Yale for nine years. Pullman was a student at Yale in the early ‘60s, when Paul Rand and Bradbury Thompson were among the faculty. “Paul Rand confused me,” said Pullman, ”It seemed that the thing he hated about my work one week would be exactly what he loved the next. I think that every student, male or female, at some point, left his class in tears.” Pullman continues to teach at Yale while Burton has moved on to a tenured position at UIC. While acknowledging Rand's eminence, they both agreed that, “sensitivity and compassion are essential in teaching.”

Chris Pullman retired in 2008 after 35 years at WGBH. Today he is enjoying, “Life 2.0,” as he called it. He passes time at his family’s cottage where he paints watercolors on the beach and fills up on homemade cakes baked by his wife Esther.

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