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Todd: It is already out there. So it would be redundant.

Gelman: In terms of industry and assignments you get, does it still mainly revolve around clothing and youth market?

Todd: Yes, sometimes, but it depends. In the last three months probably a decent amount was for clothing companies. We are doing some stuff for Corda, Nixon and a couple of Japanese companies. Some of it is tangential, but we also did a commercial for the Discovery Channel which is about wild animals.

Helen: How did that come up?

Todd: They had seen our reel and I think there was something specific that they liked. They had come up with an idea based on something we had done in the past, but also pretty different. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out, so I don’t know if I want to say what it is.

Helen: You haven’t shown it to them yet?

Todd: We did, but they’re changing some stuff around right now. Audio and other things. I don’t know quite how it’s going to end up. That’s one thing about TV: you hand something over and it’s changed half the time.

Helen: Will you see it before it goes out, or is that it? They’ll just take it and finish it?

Todd: Yeah, they’ll probably just take it and finish it. I think its jarring for people who are used to a print background. When it’s print, you are there at the press as the job is coming off. When it’s TV it’s more like you’re delivering ingredients to a larger recipe. It’s a much more liquid form. So if they decide they want to change a couple of shots and redo the audio there’s not a whole lot you can do about it.

Helen: God!

Todd: You might not work with them again after that but that’s about all you can do.

Gelman: When you do TV there are a lot of people involved. There’s much more responsibility. Before it goes on air everyone has to be happy. The designer is the last person to satisfy.

Todd: Yeah, we try to take on things on the video side where hopefully we can do the whole project. There are a lot of companies out there that will just do the logo at the end, which is a challenge unto itself. But because we are small and we only take on a handful of projects we try to do the whole thing.

Gelman: Have you ever rejected a project?

Todd: Oh yeah. All the time. Well, not all the time.

Gelman: What are the reasons for rejecting something?

Todd: Generally when it’s just not the right fit, for a number of reasons. If somebody wants something and we don’t think we would be the right company or the right match for them, we’ll generally tell them up front. And sometimes we’re wrong. Sometimes they’ll say "No, we really think you are and here’s why." And we’ll say, "Oh, maybe you’re right then."

Gelman: You’ll try.

Todd: Mostly we think we are not appropriate for whatever it is. But I think the other thing is that we don’t take on that much. We try not to have more than one or two big things going on at a time.

Gelman: The proportion you worked out, of having half commissioned work and half your own products helps you to be more in control, even when deciding what clients to take on, it’s really good. Tell me about your teaching. How does that fit into this process?

Todd: It’s kind of accidental actually.

Gelman: If it fits at all?

Todd: Yeah, I don’t know actually. I just stumbled into it. I went up to substitute for somebody a couple years ago, at a critique. And then I started going up more regularly.

Gelman: Do you like teaching?

Todd: Yeah, it’s fun. I like being in that environment. It’s just a little escape from your own world. All of a sudden you’re back in a school environment where some of the more tangible considerations are not considerations at all. As far as money or clients go.

Gelman: That’s fun.

Todd: It’s good just to break up your week with that kind of thing… But I don’t really know. I’ve never taught a class before. You’ve taught a lot right? SVA? Cooper?

Gelman: Yeah.

Todd: I’m going into it saying, "Let’s see if this works."

Gelman: Some people get really tired from teaching. It sucks everything out of them. I’m the opposite. After teaching a class I’m full of energy. I can be totally exhausted in all the client meetings and all the office stuff but after dealing with students I’ll be completely recovered.

Todd: I can see that. You can forget all the things that you are worried about when you are in the classroom. That makes sense.

Helen: You’re teaching one class next term?

Todd: Yeah, one class at Yale.

Helen: How many students do you get in the class?

Todd: However many sign up, so it remains to be seen.

Gelman: I think you’ll have a big class.

Todd: Yeah?

Gelman: I’m pretty sure.

Todd: I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Gelman: It’s good!

Helen: Exciting.

Todd: Yeah, it’ll be fun.

Gelman: Do you ever collaborate with other designers or design companies?

Todd: Occasionally. We tend to know a lot of people from around. We’ll collaborate occasionally. There was a show we did at Alife two years ago that was a collaboration set up through this magazine called Arkitip. It was with a guy Dave Kinsey who has a graffiti background. We did this big wall piece and sent it off to him and he did something on top of it and sent it back. Not that much though. We’ve done some stuff with other lines and we’ll do some kind of co-branded type of thing with another clothing line. We do collaborate on projects with people when it makes sense or it seems like a fun idea.

Helen: Where does the name Green Lady come from in the first place?

Todd: There was a bar that we used to go to and there was one of those mass-produced 60’s paintings of a Chinese woman in a kimono-type dress on the wall. And she was green. It was so arbitrary: "What’s up with that painting? Why do they sell six million of them?" You’d see them at thrift stores all the time and just think "Why?" So, it came out of that but it was also just nonsensical. You could put whatever you wanted into it. But also, a lot of that industry is kind of tough and very male oriented, especially at that time. Green Lady was a wimpy name and there was something kind of appealing about choosing a very wimpy, sissy name, so it had a little to do with that too.

Helen: So you are quite into the idea of reacting against what other people are doing?

Todd: It wasn’t that so much. It was more a question of, "How many more companies doing camouflage and paramilitary clothing can the world take?" So it wasn’t so much rebelling against anything. The first couple of years we would do things where we challenged ourselves to approach it as if Green Lady were a race horse. Or a movie. "What if Green Lady were a drink?" You name it. That lasted for a while; after about two years, it got pretty old. [laughs] After that it became pretty abstract.

Gelman: It was intriguing because it didn’t really make any sense.

Todd: Yeah, for a long time I had a complex about it because people would say, "That name doesn’t make any sense." People would think we were selling hemp wear. We used to do trade shows and we would show up and all the cool companies would be over there, while we’d get stuck over here next to the people selling hemp tote bags, or something like that. Or they would think we were making women’s stockings. So for a long time I thought we had picked the wrong name; that it was a really bad idea. But then, after a while, if you do anything long enough, people just stop thinking about it. "Oh, Green Lady, sure!" You don’t even hear any discussion about it any more.

Gelman: What were people’s reactions to the name HunterGatherer? It’s not necessarily a cool name or a trendy name. It’s completely removed from any kind of fashion appeal.

Todd: Right; that’s why I think people are into it. It’s too long though. People can never spell it. They get the website wrong all the time. It makes our email addresses way too long.

Gelman: That’s why you shortened it to HuGa?

Todd: A little bit, yeah. Well, you try to fit HunterGatherer on a T-shirt and you have to break it into three lines to make it fit. HuGa is a contracted version of it. People seem to like it okay. It just sounds kind of stupid, so it has that appeal. HunterGatherer sounds a little pretentious. HuGa sounds sort of pre-vocal, like a product for two-year-olds. I see it being the first thing a baby might say.

Helen: You’d be so proud if that was the first thing your baby said? Where did the HunterGatherer name come from originally?

Todd: I don’t know. We had a million ideas and it was the one we hated the least. I think there is something nice about it being really primitive and low tech and it just kind of worked for some reason. Hunting and gathering and reprocessing and repurposing and filtering and re-compositing and also some of the evolutionary things I talked about earlier. The idea is that it’s a very primitive term, and the behavioral thoughts behind it really haven’t changed that much. It’s sort of a universal thing. I think we did a lot of stuff with Green Lady that had some connections to that thought.

Gelman: What do you want to do? What are your plans?

Todd: Going forward? [laugh]

Gelman: This is really structured like an interview, isn’t it? It’s not always like this.

Todd: I think in the last year we’ve hit a good point where it seems like enough people know what we do so we get more of the jobs that we hope to get. But right now I’m more interested in some of the product and furniture stuff. I’m interested in spending a little more time working on those kind of things because that’s something I haven’t done a lot of. Also the television stuff and getting some bigger projects in that world where there’s more editorial control.