Tom Klinkowstein in 1979 at “The Customer Is Always Right” an interactive performance.

PRATT: Were you always interested in interactive design?

Tom Klinkowstein:My interests go way back, as a kid I wanted to be an astronaut, I started studying physics, but then went into art and design-it was a lot more social! In any case, science and interests in technology helped guide me even as a designer-I came to believe that design was a way I could help frame the future.

PRATT: Which you’re still doing now?

Tom Klinkowstein: Yeah of course I’m still doing it. I was just talking to someone the other day about this speech I saw JFK give when I was nine years old, and how he talked about the change and future. I remember him giving a speech in front of my father’s television store. He spoke like Obama speaks today about change and the future. You see we still have very similar issues today as we had back then; it’s all connected. We’ll always need to advance as a society and as designers we need to fuel that change.

JFK speaking in front of Tom's father's store.

PRATT: You’ve been working with the web since it first started, could you talk about you’re experience?

Tom Klinkowstein: I’ve been working interactively, since way back in the 70s, I even had an email address in the 1979. So really far back, in those days I started doing interfaces for medical devices in hospitals.

Also I would create events and performances in the art world that used early versions of computing systems. We would even use fax machines and slow-scan televisions that could send images by phone for performances in nightclubs. This was the big craze in Amsterdam in the 70s, where I was living at the time.

PRATT: That’s really interesting, so you would use interactive artwork as entertainment?

Tom Klinkowstein: Yeah we would do these weird performances using these “strange” machines. I mean fax machines were even strange in the 70s. We would create themes, about the emerging global culture, which was a new idea back then.

For instance one performance was called “The Customer Is Always Right”, we had this large image of a McDonald’s logo with a quote from Andy Warhol about McDonald’s. So we would fax sections from a nightclub in Vienna to a nightclub in Amsterdam. I would pin up each sheet (there were about 125 sheets at the end of the night) as the faxes came in and people would try and figure out what the image was. We also would amplify the sound of the fax machine as the ambiance in the nightclub. So that was the nightclub’s entertainment in place of a band for the evening.

Tom Klinkowstein at “The Customer Is Always Right” an interactive performance

PRATT: What other types of interactive design did you work on before the web?

Tom Klinkowstein: The next iteration, which came before the web, was Videotext, which was developed in England and Holland, and then later used in France. It was a simple television interface that was supposed to replace the yellow pages; I designed the Dutch version of that in the 80s. While it has been largely been replaced by the web, it is still used in France to a limited extent, it’s now called the Minitel.

PRATT: When did you start working with the web?

Tom Klinkowstein: My first web project was in 1993 for Conde Nast, it was the prototype for Epicurious (http://www.epicurious.com/), a website that’s still in existence about gourmet food. It was a secret project for Conde Nast; we had our own secret office because they were afraid that all the print editors would quit if they found out. Since nobody even knew about the web in 1993 we didn’t know how people would react.

PRATT: This was one of the first websites out there?

Tom Klinkowstein: It was the first large commercial website in the whole country. The browser was only invented about 1991, so it had only been around a couple of years before that.

PRATT: So what was the process for creating this prototype for Epicurious?

Tom Klinkowstein: Well no one had created a prototype like this before so it was a new process for us. They hired me as the designer on the project and had me work with a web expert, James Kim. First the two of made this wall about food and interactivity, basically explaining how you were going to build the site.

Before we even started we had to educate the head designer at Conde Nast on how it was possible to make such a site, and then she had to educate the owners of the company. So eventually we created a prototype for the site in about 4 months; it took another year or so for the actual site to be created.

PRATT: What do you feel about the future for web design?

It’s a very conflicting time for the web. On one hand you can make a blog, and can set that up in 5-10 minutes, but to create a professional website it’s actually more complicated, because of all the web 2.0 related developments. Now each project has become different from each other. It used to be that websites were slightly interactive brochures essentially, and now they’ve become complex databases.

PRATT: Do you have any advice for current students at Pratt about interactive design?

Tom Klinkowstein: If I was 24 years old and a graduate student right now, I would want be as well informed as I could about not only design but also about the world around you. You should be reading blogs on design and blogs about the business of design. Nussbaum On Design (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/) is a great blog to start with.

PRATT: Do you think it’s important that students take advantage of sites like CCwebworking?

Tom Klinkowstein: Oh absolutely, I think the value of the printed portfolio is over weighted relative to how the world actually operates, web portfolios and blogs are the way of the future! So students should put their work on CCwebworking, they should have their own blog that should that has links to this site, they should post on CORE77 and on AIGA. I mean if nobody knows about you as a designer, then it’s just a hobby.

Every time I do something I put out on my facebook page I put it out on mass emailing and it propels me into future opportunities. So my students definitely should be doing the same. All my students in every one of my classes are required to have a blog and must also present from their blog.

If you have a blog and/or use a site like CCwebworking, then you start becoming a social entity. You need to make people your agent, and that’s what blog’s and websites can do they can immediately make anyone who sees your work up on the web or reads your blog your agent.