Site Visit: Rick Griffith of Matter
Visiting Rick Griffith at Matter was certainly an experience! Rick is an outspoken and passionate designer who has the privilege of doing work he wants to do rather than being client driven. Creativity, self-reliance, and pushing the envelope seem to be the backbone of his philosophy as well as practice. Rick described his philosophy around self-reliance was rooted in his immigrant identity. This value manifested in a belief of the importance of owning his tools. The tools Rick has are amazing – he has many letter presses as well as a machine to make his own sets of movable type. His studio was an incredible place to be.
One of his insights that I particularly appreciated was his reframe of “imposter syndrome” to a specific kind of anxiety. Rick believed that by calling it anxiety, it removed some of the power from the feeling. As an anxious person who often questions my right to be in the room, this reframe was really powerful. I (mostly) know how to deal with my anxiety. Thinking of imposter syndrome in these terms makes it easier to see what tools and strategies I already have to deal with those feelings as well.
Rick’s obsession with “magic questions” was interesting – and a little uncomfortable to watch play out. While I agree that getting at the heart of questions can be really powerful, his demand that he only be asked “magic questions” seemed to require a certain vulnerability from students’ present in an environment that may or may not have felt safe.
Most helpful to my own practice were Rick’s thoughts about improvisation. He said the heart of improv is always being prepared. This preparation is necessary in both a practical sense as well as a mental sense. Practically, always being prepared means having the tools of your craft with you at all times. Mentally, it means committing to your work even if you don’t feel like – and being willing to put in the time consistently even if it means sometimes you’re “making shit.” Though he said that looking back a year later, he would challenge you to find the shit.
Throughout our visit, Rick focused on the importance of language. He particularly focused on how we describe our work shapes how others experience it. Developing precise vocabulary — rather than adopting vague or imprecise client language — fosters clarity and collaboration. This idea of communal vocabulary-building is critical to our work as designers: often we operate as translators for our clients' ideas.
