Jessica Helfand, "John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr." I.D., 44:1 (January/February 1997) 83.

John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr's greatest fear is of being decontextualized by New Yorkers who prefer to consign them to the "West Coast Hot Tub Marinating Hippies" media file.
So let's debunk a few myths.
As the team responsible for visualizing the identity of both Wired and HotWired, Plunkett and Kuhr are smart, serious, and over 25. Dividing their time between San Francisco, California (where they claim to spend only a fraction of each week) and Park City, Utah (where they claim to do an equal amount of skiing), they view their work as an opportunity to resolve the relationship between form and content, between concept and execution, between existing expectations and new experiences.
Perhaps most surprising, their creative process bears a closer resemblance to traditional notions of design than Wired's visual identity might suggest. Says Plunkett: "New media demand new and more open approaches, but the old laws of media have not been repealed: you still have to tell a good story, and present it in a way that it provokes someone to want to experience. These are skills we learned from our mentors, who are concerned with form only as it relates to content, and who try to avoid the merely fashionable."

This modernist thinking is framed by a desire to challenge traditional linear presentations of print, but also to understand the pivotal role the audience plays in the process. Plunkett and Kuhr, who trained in more corporate New York environments at Pentagram and Chermayeff and Geismar respectively, see their role as "moving away from 'delivering' experiences to shaping them." As each other's collaborator and editor (John is the point person for the magazine, Barbara for the web site) their work is as committed to reflecting Wired's unequivocally strong editorial perspective as it is to mapping new processes for its execution, delivery and exchange. While on the web site their options continue to evolve in keeping with the technology (where they define their function as "process initiators") they see their work in the Magazine as "fairly traditional."

Traditional?
Critics might argue that there is nothing even remotely traditional about Wired, citing its proprietary jargon, bleeding-heart libertarianism and often questionnable legibility as among the reasons why. Still, if reconciling tradition with innovation is an example of one of the many contradictions at play here, let us consider an even greater one: Plunkett and Kuhr, self-described refugees from New York, have been selected for inclusion in this, the West Coast ID40. "New Yorkers tend to use that modifier the way some people refer to "women" writers," observes Plunkett, who adds that the appetite to entertain new possibilities is greater in California, which he describes as "the extreme edge of American optimism."

Generalities aside, Plunkett and Kuhr's provocative thinking and prolific accomplishments--in both new and old media--have clearly earned them a place among the distinguished designers featured in this issue. Perhaps in the end we are all decontextualized: in a world where technological advances now afford an unprecedented opportunity to test the model of the virtual office, why not work in sunny, optimistic California--and take a quick dip in a hot tub while you're at it?

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