By Jonathan Sigmon with Jason Locy
Hi Jason, can you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?
I am the founder of a strategic design and branding agency called FiveStone. We work primarily with companies that want to make some form of positive impact. That might be because they have a unique business model or that they give back to their communities in some way. Or, they could be a traditional non-profit working solely to serve others.
What's the goal of your work at FiveStone?
I started FiveStone in 2001 with the idea that we could use the power of design-thinking, branding, and messaging to amplify a brand’s positive impact. We never wanted to help people sell more sweatpants or SUVs or promote habits and behaviors that didn’t bring about flourishing. Instead, we wanted to focus on helping brands that were trying to do good.
In the beginning, this meant a lot of non-profit work. Which was great. But today, a majority of business leaders believe that companies with purpose have a competitive advantage and so they try to merge profit and purpose. This means our client base has broadened. I love this shift in focus, not only for brands but for FiveStone.
How do you find balance while running a design agency and having a large family in New York City?
Well, it's not easy! My wife and I have four kids, So, as you can imagine it’s a constant tension (like it is for everyone). And not only is it a balance issue—paying attention to the right things at the right time—it's also an issue of staying healthy—paying attention to what your whole self needs.
My wife is wonderful about keeping me accountable and encouraging me. She’s a spiritual director so she sees choices and situations as moving towards God (consolation) or away from God (desolation). I know I am out of balance when I am too focused on myself and my own desires. This is desolation, moving away from God’s presence, and causes me to make unhealthy choices which lead to stress and being off-balance.
So then, trying to find balance comes from staying centered in my faith. This means getting up before the rest of the family and spending time reading the Bible, praying, and reflecting. This helps me set intention for the day and keeps me centered in what is truly important.
The past two-ish years of COVID have helped too. I hit “reset” on a lot of unhealthy, off-balance, habits. So while COVID sucked in almost all the ways, it did have an upside for me and helped bring some things back into focus.
Do you have any advice for young creatives?
C.S. Lewis once noted that “real things are not simple.” As I have gotten older I have certainly found the truth in that.
Lewis makes the point that something may look simple, like a table, but if you ask a scientist what the table is really made of you would hear all about the molecular structure, the way your eye perceives the table, and how your brain processes the information, and on and on. And so, a table is not really that simple.
Such is most of life. Nothing is really that simple when you unpack it. Think about all the complexities and challenges that come with the creative act of designing a logo. If done well, the “simplest” logo had to address a variety of constraints and challenges: what is the logo for?, where will it live?, the legibility of the mark and type across multiple devices and mediums, the budget, the timeline, the decision-making process, on and on and on. It's amazing anything gets made.
By the way, be careful critiquing other people's work. You have no idea what complexities forced their decisions. It's very easy to critique, it's much harder to create. You’d always be better off listening to the advice of Michelangelo who said, “critique by creating.”
Back to my point, if something as “simple” as creating a logo can be met with all that complexity imagine building a business that generates positive impact, or a non-profit, or trying to do anything that brings about public value. Someone starts off with a “simple” idea like, for example, building wells in Africa so people can have clean water. Then, they are faced with the complexities and constraints of actually doing that work. In the end, what does it take to do that work? What compromises need to be made?
I don’t think this means that people should get a free pass on their idea or execution of their idea. But when I was younger I couldn’t see the complexity of “real things.” I ended up bashing a lot of people and ideas and brands because they didn't live up to my ideal, my standard, my way of seeing things. I missed the complexity and so I also missed a lot of the goodness.
As a result, I think I wasn’t as effective as I could have been in actually participating in and making positive impact. Or, in leading people and growing an agency.
In my book Culture-Bending Narratives, I talk about thoughtful compromise. The idea isn’t mine, but I talk about it all the time! It’s been a helpful perspective as I try to navigate the complexity of creating something “real” and keeping it true to my vision.
In thoughtful compromise you realize nothing is ever going to be perfect or the ideal. So, you accept this and use this limitation to thoughtfully navigate paths forward in whatever you are working on. Along the way you make considered decisions on what areas you might bend on in order to keep the bigger vision and goals intact. You identify the “costs” of the compromise in relation to the “gain” of keeping the vision alive. Of course, too many compromises and the vision suffers. But, you can ask yourself if it's okay to compromise in one place in order to keep the vision alive. It’s a balance.
How do you feel like you've matured as a designer over 20 years in the industry?
I am learning where to channel my angst. A friend once told me that as they were getting older they wanted to get angrier. I’ve spent most of my life trying to be less angry. Ha. But, angry about what? And why? When you are younger you are just pissed at the world and all the wrongs you see. As I have gotten older I think I have started to see what’s important and what I can actually work towards changing. This makes my work more personal and relational.
There is a great photo of activist Dorthy Day during a protest for farmworkers. She is probably 76 years old. In the photo, Day is framed by police officers as she sits calmly waiting to be arrested. Imagine being 76 and having that much inner calm, conviction, and righteous anger.
I know you read a lot - can you recommend a few of your favorite recent books?
I like starting the year with Wendell Berry. Last year I read Jayber Crow and this year Hannah Coulter. Both books are set in the same time and place with the same characters. There is something about Berry, and it gets back to your balance question, in how he sees the world: its progression, what matters in it, etc. I find his writing to be a reminder of what’s important to me.
I recently read George Saunders, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. I love Saunders’ short stories but this book is different. It’s basically a college course on Russian literature. The general setup of the book is that you read a Russian short story, then he unpacks the story with you. It’s a hard book to recommend because it won’t be for everyone. But I think that if you love writing, reading, and the human condition you will love it.
Towards the end of last year, I read Claudia Rankine’s Just Us. The subtitle does a great job of summing up the book: An American Conversation. That’s what it is. Rankine is a poet and essayist whose work focuses on race. The book really does feel like a conversation in which she is talking to strangers and friends and herself about what she tries to understand what sees around her.
What's your day-to-day office attire like? And do you dress differently when you're seeing clients?
Thanks to COVID I’ve gone full athleisure wear. Ha. Kidding (sorta, I’m not afraid of a hoodie). But, I do tend to dress way more relaxed during a normal workday. My friend Jeremy Kirkland (Blamo! podcast) helped me with finding a few “capsule” pieces that gave me some staples for every day. These make up most workdays. Of course, you did a great job of helping me do the same thing for when I want to look sharper and buttoned up.
My go-to office outfit is pretty simple: jeans, button-down, boots. I do this just about all year round. But, I especially love the fall and winter in NYC because I get to layer on top of that with an overshirt or cardigan. I swap out the jeans for wool five-pocket pants or cords. And of course, I have my eye on your polo coat.
I do need to be comfortable during the day. Running kids places, fighting the F train, rolling my sleeves up at work to do anything that needs doing. You get the practicality of that, and you’ve always emphasized that if I’m not comfortable in something then it’s not worth it. Not just comfort in how something feels on the body but does the piece make me feel relaxed while wearing it. Am I comfortable in it? Confident in it? Does it feel like me? I’ve always appreciated that about Flusser.
We try to dress with the same formality as the client or slightly better. So when we visit clients or we have a big presentation I almost always throw on a jacket. A jacket normally hits the right balance and the two I have from you are my go-to choices. They work great with jeans which makes it easier to match the dress of the client. Sometimes I throw on a tie.
Occasionally, something calls for a suit. I love that! There is so much confidence that comes from the suit. I never experienced that until I started working with you.
Are there aesthetic principles that guide your work that overlap with how you view clothing?
At FiveStone we say we want our work to be “good” in that it is: beautiful, beneficial, lasting. While not a purely aesthetic idea, I think you can apply that same framework to the clothes we wear.
In clothing, we find beauty in all sorts of ways. You and Alan always talk about color and proportion (along with taste). This is the language of a craftsman. Anything well crafted includes an element of beauty to it.
Not to mention the aesthetic (and tactile) beauty of fabrics along with colors and patterns and the the overall ways in which an outfit comes together.
What does it mean for a piece of clothing to be beneficial? In general, something is beneficial if it produces good results. So much of the clothing industry is bent towards exploitation (labor, materials, and so on) it takes some effort to find clothing we could call beneficial.
You and I were talking the other day about a belt that was for sale in your shop. You told me exactly who made it, where they lived, and explained their entire process. That’s amazing. There is a “benefit” to that belt.
And lasting. For clothing, this might mean the timelessness of the outfit. I like working with you because you help me make good decisions regarding tastes. I also look at guys like Bruce Boyer and Jason Jules and Simon Crompton (all bald guys with beards, ha) and you are all helping men make smart, timeless decisions. I love that. Thank you.
Lasting also means, literally, how long the piece will hold up. I have a pair of Imogene + Willie jeans that I have been wearing since 2012. Or, my Drake’s cardigan that I bought five years ago. I know it’s got at least another five or ten in it. I was with my dad recently and he had on a pair of loafers that he bought 20 years ago. How great is that? The same is true of my Flusser pieces, they will be in my wardrobe for years, if not decades.
One of the reasons I love your shop is that you naturally see the world in this beautiful, beneficial, and lasting framework.
Sincere thanks to Jason for participating. You can find out more about FiveStone here.
Photography by Christopher Fenimore.