In Conversation With Tracy Ma

From helping to revolutionise Bloomberg Businessweek to leading the digital charge at The New York Times, Tracy Ma wants to develop an original visual language, trends be damned!

- Beren Neale

Tracy Ma has a problem with authority. That was her main takeaway from a stint teaching design at New York’s Parsons School of Design – that the role of teacher, being the person in charge, doesn’t sit well with her.

While that may be a revelation for Tracy, it seems inherently obvious when looking at her energised, loud, unapologetic work. As deputy creative director at Bloomberg Businessweek, working with creative director Richard Turley, she cut covers and page spreads apart and glued them back together (admittedly over meticulously devised grids). Now visual editor at The New York Times style desk, Tracy’s pushing digital design with her signature humour and shotgun visuals. We caught up with her in The New York Times office to see how exactly she gets away with it all…

What was your first light bulb moment in design?

That was in 2010 when I was working at Leo Burnett, a big advertising agency in Toronto. They were allowing [me to do] small freelance design work, on top of the big agency-type clients like Kellogg’s or Diet Coke. The job was a small, new restaurant in Toronto that needed some identity work. I wanted to print the menus on a big newsprint, to create something different that I hadn’t seen before.

I think it still has some relevance today, whereas other design work – like a Kellogg’s cereal box – is completely forgotten. It was a juxtaposition of these wildly different forms; I was beginning to discover the potential of recontextualising elements for effect, and that continued to inform my work.

Such as Bloomberg Businessweek… how did you get away with using this punk design style on a formal business mag?