It is my belief that Kenn Hiebert was the true founder of the American design school for Swiss Design in the United States, even if he would fight me tooth and nail against this description. But it is my contention that he was a messenger of a distinct way of evolving visual languages and solutions not just for the professional studio environment but for introducing novices to the discipline, commitment, and ways of designing that engendered integrity and the revealing of deeper roots than copying visual European styles.

He actually presented a true antidote to the Swiss style as it was taught in the United States, because it really cannot be copied, which is quite different from those one finds in the work of Unimark International or the Container Corporation of America in the 1960s. His approach requires a much higher commitment to an ideal and a much deeper immersion, which closely parallels a monastic life, a slowing down of hyperactivities to be able to look beyond the immediate surface, not for expediency, but for discovery, while not confusing time, price, and effort with quality; rather, giving time and efforts over to careful and detailed explorations of the unique principles of visualization. Only through distinct cloistering is it possible to gain this greater insight. One has to be able to screen out the noise emitted by conventions and traditions.

It matters to me not that his stellar teacher was Armin Hofmann, because that value existed only until Kenn Hiebert left the school to find his own voice in the United States, which I remember was not easy at all. It has been one of the downfalls of the Bauhaus to credit its faculty more than its students—we know little about Bauhaus students. Hofmann taught individuals not followers.

Unlike in Switzerland, where designers held themselves to the standards and conduct of the age-old guilds, in the United States, the designers developed a sense of entitlement and self-importance. The field now has an abundance of design talkers, who posture about the importance of design, but in truth don’t have the skill assortments held by the Swiss. In American design education many more teachers never practice in the field, or have the skill and knowledge to visually craft eloquent images.

In my eyes, Kenn Hiebert’s integrity did not start with the typical business of studio design as it is mostly taught at American design schools, but with his rather clearly defined personal convictions founded on the belief in both the mission and ministry of Anabaptism—namely honesty, work, and integrity. In America, one doesn’t speak about the background of critical personal motives, which facilitate one’s religious or worldly philosophical views; one hides behind a so-called professional mission, mostly void of clearly defined ethics and taboos.

I have always admired Kenn Hiebert’s skill of motivating his students: honesty, hard work, peace, and sociability. I have visited the University of the Arts frequently, but never found a bored or listless student. There seems to be an embedded spirit that work celebrates the human, and her/his capabilities, skill, and endurance.

It seems like a historical recollection of frequent requirements to give up possessions in order to retain individual freedoms, and a response to the “hardness of the heart” as the root of all evils. For me, it is this Mennonite spirit, learned to live a very honest and simple life, that seems to be reflected both in home, institution and church. This has been unique.