Rick Tharp's Door
R
ick Tharp was a well-known designer in Los Gatos. He’d won all sorts of awards (which he hung from a clothesline with tiny clothespins, stretched high across his office—as if the ink with which they’d been printed was still wet. He was famous in our little town for a number of reasons. First, he never made much money because he was besieged year in and year out by town officials and nonprofits for his design expertise (expected to be pro bono of course). Although Los Gatos is absolutely awash in an ocean of money, people don’t like to pay for something they can get for free. And Rick, poor fellow, had said yes early on, then got stuck with the check over and over again.In addition to being wildly talented, Rick had a sense of humor. He drove around in a small white van—an old baker’s van, I think it was. It had very rounded edges all around, it was probably made in the 1930s, and he had his company name: “Tharp Did It.” on the doors. But the lettering was a huge joke. It was so tiny you had to be within twelve inches to read it because it was twelve-point type—about the size of the text you’re reading right now. But on a sixteen-foot baker’s van.
He was poking fun at designers who think ridiculously small print is more elegant, despite being unreadable. When I first saw his van and got close enough to read what I’d thought was just a smudge on the door, I nearly choked with laughter. Honestly, I had a hard time trying to stop; the truth of it hit me like a thunderclap. He knew what I knew and what everybody knew actually, but weren’t willing to acknowledge: communication doesn’t work if the reader doesn’t get the message, and making the message pretty or elegant is completely irrelevant if your idea is unreadable. Which happens a lot, and it’s just stupid.
And then there was his door. The door to Rick’s studio in Old Town was interesting. Covered in text, it certainly caught the eye and was impossible to ignore. It said a lot about the guy on the other side of it. I reproduced it below.
Gene Faucher and I considered him a genius beyond reason and wanted the town to install a plaque in his honor in the town park in front of the post office, but they didn’t understand what we did. RIP
