Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Inouye.
Amy, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My day job is a freelance book designer. I decided to specialize in books around 20 years ago (prior to books, I did general print graphics) and have managed to settle into a nice niche. I worked with LA publishers and used to do a lot of projects directly with authors and artists; I have tallied up over 250 book projects.
Since a lot of the projects involve LA subject matter, it’s been serendipity–I’ve learned so many fascinating big and small lessons about the city and made wonderful friends with authors–the LA history nerd club. Book design is its own narrow lane of graphic design involving visual, literal, psychological aspects, and math. It’s time-consuming and not going to make anyone wealthy, but as a career, it’s been pretty okay.
The thing that I may be best known for will always be Chicken Boy. It starts with a childhood obsession with roadside vernacular architecture–most notably Doggie Diner of San Francisco–a chain of fast food stands whose signage was a dimensional dachshund’s head wearing a chef’s hat and scarf. When I moved to Los Angeles, one of the first things I saw was Chicken Boy (a guy with the head of a chicken, holding a bucket of chicken)–kin to Doggie Diner, and my own personal welcoming committee to the city.
Through the journey of our meeting, then becoming his caretaker and manager, to relocating him and seeing to his well-being, it’s been so interesting and wonderful to ride our little conveyor belt together. He’s a matchmaker to so many like-minded new friends (that is to say, smart and fun). Route 66 travelers from around the world, people who grew up in LA and remember Mr. Boy on Broadway way back when (late 1960s to mid-1980s), newcomers who just really have an instant attraction to him, and little kids who are as obsessed with him as I was with Doggie Diner.
(By the way, I choose to ignore any philosophical questions regarding the personable and popular spokesmodels of restaurants selling food products made from their own kind.) BTW, there is a much longer history and other archival material about Chicken Boy at www.chickenboy.com, including a link to the online souvenir shop. I have freelanced for most of my career, and that has allowed me to pursue tangents that all together cross-pollinate and make sense for me. I have been able to use graphic design skills and contacts to promote Chicken Boy through catalogs and other media.
Working on so many books about LA brought me into contact with the Photo Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library. I got involved with Photo Friends, the collection’s nonprofit support group, and now serve as president. The amazing board of the group also has diverse interests, and we now produce our own books generated by these interests (including crime, architecture, street photography, sports), which generate enough revenue to support our exhibits and talks.
Along the way, Future Studio Gallery was born–it’s part of the design space. When the North East Los Angeles Second Saturday Gallery Night started (11 years ago), we jumped in and have been programming local artists’ exhibitions and art events on a semi-regular basis. Shows have included traditional visual art & photography, sculpture, quilts, found art, conceptual and performance, and yarnbombing.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
In retrospect, my very selective memory thinks it’s been smooth. I accepted a couple of full-time positions in the far past, and one, in particular, was not pleasant and put me on the freelance track. Freelance has cash flow perils, and that’s gotten rough a few times. Art school was excellent training for living creatively, so that’s been a help.
One big lesson I learned (sadly, only recently), is not to feel obligated to say yes to everything and listen to the intuition. There are struggles for sure, but I would categorize them as universal–there is likely no one who hasn’t had disappointments, accidents, and unfairnesses visited upon them.
There was a money-pit business venture that failed. Of course, I wish I had just put all that into my retirement fund, but I didn’t. I just worked harder to make up for it and hopefully learned a valuable lesson there.
Please tell us about Chicken Boy & Future Studio.
Twenty years ago, it seemed like the world of books was in certain decline. I thought by the time I could think about retirement, the decision would be made for me (that is to say, no more physical books). But, the joke’s on me–book world is changing but thriving (it is, however, a really really tough business). The tools and resources make it easier to publish now.
One of the things that gets forgotten is that it’s still a book–it needs to be readable and make sense visually–it needs to draw your attention but also move it along to the next page. It needs to be edited for sense and proofread for grammar and spelling.
Any book is an endeavor of a million tiny details–the trick of which is to make them invisible to the reader. I like to think that I am able to see the small and big picture of a project simultaneously, combining art and trade. Within a small book universe, I have a decent reputation, and I’m happy about that. As for Chicken Boy, I’m channeling his energy and love of roadside and souvenir culture.
Truly I can say that his souvenir shop has items that can only be found there and are pretty darn unique as well as nicely made. (Non-Chicken Boy gift items are at least weird or hilarious and not commonly found in other gift emporia.) The curse of an art school education is that I see his souvenir shop as an art project more than a retail outlet–I’m trying to change this because I do believe the shop (combined with an art gallery) can be an actual business that I need to get serious about! This will happen by and by…
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Lately, I wonder (just a little) about the art school part. It has gifted me with a way to see the world that makes me never bored ever and given me great tools for my art-adjacent career. And again, the people I meet through art are mostly pretty great. Sometimes I wish I had pushed myself to study some kind of engineering.
I wish I knew more about technology from the bottom up. On the other hand, I made certain choices, and outside influences made other choices, and I chose to just follow the paths of least resistance. Ultimately, it’s probably best to think that this is all how it was meant to be. And I’m okay with that.
Contact Info:
- Address: 5558 North Figueroa St. Los Angeles CA 90042
- Website: www.futurestudio.com; www.chickenboy.com; www.futurestudiogallery.com
- Phone: 323-254-4565
- Email: [email protected]
Image Credit:
Gary Leonard
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