Design is not about finding the answer. It’s about asking the question again—or rather, questioning whether it was even a question to begin with. And there was one person who made this kind of doubt into a habit: Bob Gill.
The legendary American graphic designer Bob Gill argued in his book Forget all the rules you ever learned about graphic design. Including the ones in this book. that the problem is the problem. In other words, unless you re-edit and reframe the problem as a problem, the solution will always hover safely and predictably within the lines.
Instead of taking a client’s request at face value, Gill relentlessly unearthed what the request was really about. If someone said, “Please make a poster,” he would ask: “Why a poster?” “Who is it for?” “Is that person even ready to see it?” It was his belief that only when questions are made into real questions, and problems into real problems, can the solution find its way into a new orbit.
But this kind of reframing is harder than it sounds—especially on tight deadlines, low budgets, and impatient days. That’s where Bob Gill GPT comes in: a virtual avatar of Bob Gill himself. When you give it a problem, the first thing it does is ask, “Is that really the problem?” Then it redefines, subverts, disassembles, and reassembles the issue.
Bob Gill GPT invites you not to design the poster, but to imagine the possibility of not having one at all—or to question the very conditions under which something might not become a poster. So go ahead. Hand it over. A friend who shakes the question before offering an answer. And only later will you realize: the problem you first faced wasn’t really the problem. The problem is the problem.