We often have the pleasure of entertaining visitors to the Design Studio. However, this is the first time–to our knowledge–that said visitors sent thank you cards composed of deconstructed Walker print ephemera:
Thank you Margot Harrington of Pitch Design Union and Chad Kouri of The Post family !!
Now accepting applications for the Walker Design Fellowship–Deadline: June 8, 2012
Take our new Walker Art Center Design Studio ART TEST to see if you’re a good match–there’s a special message for candidates who answer all 18 questions correctly.
Since 1980, the Walker Art Center Design department has maintained a graphic design fellowship program that provides recent graduates (both undergrad and grad) the opportunity to work in a professional design studio environment. Selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants, fellows come from a diverse assortment of graphic design programs, such as Art Center College of Design, California Institute of the Arts, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, NC State University, Rhode Island School of Design, Royal College of Art, Werkplaats Typografie, Yale University, and many others.
Fellows are employed full-time for one year and are assigned a wide range of graphic design projects, from designing identities and related collateral for programs and exhibitions to assisting with large-scale initiatives such as catalogues, campaigns, wayfinding systems, and websites. Fellows are involved in all aspects of the design process, from conception through delivery, and everything in-between.
How to apply Please attach a letter of interest, a résumé with the names and contact information of three references, and a pdf portfolio containing 8–10 examples of graphic design work to walker.design.fellowship@gmail.com. Keep your files under 10MB. No phone calls please.
For more information, visit our fellowship page. Also check out the Walker’s job listings.
“We are interested in the ways in which Facebook and government, Facebook and employers, Facebook and friends, Facebook and enemies constitute a power arrangement, and the way in which this constellation might influence politics, currency, and the social contract.” So says Metahaven of Facestate, a Walker-commissioned project in the exhibition Graphic Design: Now in Production. An Amsterdam-based studio for design and research, Metahaven was founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden to engage in projects intended to spark discussion and foster inquiry. Recent activities range from research around and product design for WikiLeaks to the identity design for Sealand, a self-proclaimed sovereign nation-state located on a platform seven miles off the British coast. In 2010, they released Uncorporate Identity, an anthology of work featuring the studio’s writings and visualizations of networks, politics, branding, and the overlap among all three. In an interview with Walker designer Andrea Hyde, the duo discusses how Facestate presents the tools, the vernacular, and the identity of a fictitious, but all-too-familiar social network.
Below, a selection of renderings and installation views of Facestate. Visit the Walker homepage for the interview.
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From top down, left to right:
001. Facestate logo
002. Password / Passport. Facestate device.
003. Handheld (Void). Facestate device.
004. Face Recognition. Facestate device.
005. Facestate device.
006. Card Phones. Facestate device.
007. Mask, Pool of Memory. Facestate device.
008. Empty. Facestate device.
009. Invisible Walls. Facestate device.
010. Structure. Facestate device.
011. Digital Wallet (Social Debt). Facestate device.
012. View of installed devices under cases.
013. Installation view of Facestate in Graphic Design: Now in Production.
014. Phone with “tantalum powder” under case.
015. Mobile Architecture; “No-Stop City” grid.
016. “Social Capital is Mobile Gold.” Installation view of Facestate.
017. “No-Stop City” grid, after Archizoom Associati.
018. Facebook Credits and Euro Zone Money Pyramid; Facebook currency.
019. Mobile device featuring “mask” and poems.
020. Currency Symbol. Facestate device.
021. Currency Panel. Installation view of Facestate.
022. Invisible Walls. Facestate device under case.
023. “From Laws to Invisible Walls.” Installation view of Facestate.
Mark your calendars! On Thursday, December 1, Anthony Burrill will lecture at the Walker.
Walker Cinema, 7 pm
FREE tickets are available from 6 pm at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk.
Above, page 98 of the Graphic Design: Now in Production catalogue featuring Burrill’s posters.
Anthony Burrill is a graphic designer living and working on the Isle of Oxney in England. He designs and prints posters that combine bold typography and strong color with a witty use of language. “Work Hard and Be Nice to People” sounds like a sensible motto, while “Oil & Water Do Not Mix,” which was screenprinted with spilled oil from the Gulf of Mexico disaster, delivers a well-deserved admonition. Burrill’s posters demonstrate a keen interest in printmaking processes such as woodblock and silkscreening. His unique approach translates well to other media, including collaborations with filmmakers and musicians on moving-image work and installations for Colette in Paris and the Design Museum in London, among others. His work has been exhibited in England, the Netherlands, France, Italy, and now in the United States in our exhibition.
POSTSCRIPT: Burrill conceives a new poster during email correspondence with Walker staff:
Hey!
i’m happy that you are happy – wait a minute, that sounds like an idea for another poster!
best wishes,
Anthony
Case study #2 from Graphic Design: Now in Production…
Symbology: Trevor Paglen
Trevor Paglen is an artist who employs the investigative tools of journalism and social science. To create his 2006 project Symbology (Volume I), Paglen collected embroidered patches from the “black world” of classified military and intelligence units. Although the activities and even the existence of such programs are closely guarded secrets, members of this covert world nonetheless seek to express their group identities. Their underworld patches emulate the established language of the military, where symbols and insignia have long expressed a warrior’s rank, achievements, and affiliations. An ominous sense of humor pervades these unofficial insignia, which include anything from a satin-stitched alien head to the warning “Don’t ask! NOYFB.” Paglen is the author of several books about the culture of national security, including I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World (2008). —Ellen Lupton
…appears on page 204 of the catalogue.
Above: I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World (Cover)
Detail of badges from top-left clockwise:
1) II
2) Special Projects: “Semper en Obscurus”
3) Project Zipper: “We Make Threats Not Promises”
4) Red Hats: “More With Less.”
On the same page, some interesting background on military symbology courtesy of Andrew Blauvelt:
United States Army Institute of Heraldry
Located at Fort Belvoir, a military installation in Washington, DC, the United States Army Institute of Heraldry provides heraldic services to branches of the armed forces and other governmental entities. The Institute undertakes various activities, such as research, design, development, standardization, presentation, and recording of official symbolic iconography, including flags, medals, badges, insignia, decorations, and seals. Although the US military has been using and issuing insignia and other forms of heraldry since the American Revolution, the roots of official governance can be traced to 1919 when a special office within the Department of War was formed to handle such issues. Public Law 85-263 in 1957 further delineated the authority of the Secretary of the Army to provide heraldic services to the military and other federal entities. —AB
In the gallery…
…badges such as
1) NKAWTG…Nobody ["Nobody Kicks Ass Without Tank Gas"]
2) To Serve Man–509: “Gustatus Similis Pullus” [Tastes Like Chicken]
are displayed alongside
B-12–”The Cat’s Out of the Bag,” which, according to Paglen, is a patch from satellite launch USA 144
Indeed. The cat IS out of the bag.
Mexico City-based Pedro Reyes’ Walker exhibition, Baby Marx, is an in-gallery film production studio featuring the founders of communism and capitalism. The artist and curators Camille Washington and Bartholomew Ryan chose a Playbill-influenced direction for the gallery guide, featuring the all-puppet cast “bios” and project chronology. And as theater programs often have advertisements, we decided to embed the exhibition’s related events into faux ads. This no doubt contributes to what one curator quipped, the “church newsletter designed by a grandmother” look. (I chose to take that as a compliment!) The guide is illustrated with 1- and 2-color woodcut portraits in the woodblocking style favored by 1930s and 40s Chinese communist texts. Reyes’ studio produced the woodcuts with the help of students: José Antonio Tavira López, Alitzel Abigail Hernández López, Mónica Fabiola García Ramírez, Diana Aurora Gutiérrez Valencia, Ilse Sarahí Ballesteros Aviña, Tanya Nayashell Ramírez Pérez y Francisco Javier Trejo Gómez.
The back cover features a list of tongue-in-cheek “working titles” for the exhibition, including: Baby Marx: With a Vengeance; Baby Marx Returns; Baby Marx Redux; Baby Marx: Full Frontal; Baby Marx: All Access; I Blame Baby Marx; Baby Marx: Speed Protects You; Baby Marx: Prologue; The Emancipation of Baby Marx; Baby Marx 101; The Miseducation of Baby Marx; Baby Marx: The Idea of Good Appears Last of All; Baby Marx: Back to Reality; Baby Marx: Free Champagne; Baby Marx: Judgment Day; Baby Marx: We Don’t Need Another Hero; Baby Marx: Beyond Thunderdome; Baby Marx: BYOB; Baby Marx: 2 for 1; Baby Marx: In Recovery; Baby Marx: Out of Rehab (again); Marx Attacks!; Baby Marx: We Come in Peace, Shoot to Kill!; Baby Marx: Emerging; Baby Marx’s Excellent Adventures; Whatever Happened to Baby Marx?
I suggest adding How Baby Marx Got His Groove Back to the list. (ha!) Does anyone have other suggestions?
Notes on Camp(y ads):
1. The top left ad refers to the premise of the film–a group of children in a small-town library bring Karl Marx and Adam Smith back to life by microwaving their books in the “Smart-O-Wave.” Hopefully no one is encouraged to try this at home. I tried it, and it doesn’t work. :-(
2. The middle ad, with its malapropos style and tone, is by far my favorite. A shout out to Gil Scott-Heron and an abstracted American flag? Yes, please.
3. The far right ad’s meter and key is the promenade of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. (A detail, that if I wasn’t posting a blog on the guide, would remain my dorky little secret) Though not an overtly political piece, it’s still a little wink to the times and tastes of a country on the verge of becoming the world’s first communist state.
We liked the working titles so much that we included them as a single small line of text underneath the title graphics for the show, pictured above (though not visible).
Views of the set interior (above) and set exterior (below): the public library
Reyes, cinematographer and puppeteers (above) and gallery view (below)
Find out more about Pedro Reyes and Baby Marx on the Walker Channel:
Latest scene of the film, shot at the Walker Art Center
A selection of little red books with big ideas in the gallery (above). Since we’re operating on a smaller scale–Baby Marx, puppets, booklets–we thought it appropriate to use pink instead of red. It’s also pretty.
Now accepting applications–Deadline: June 20, 2011
Since 1980, the Walker Art Center Design department has maintained a graphic design fellowship program that provides recent graduates (both undergrad and grad) the opportunity to work in a professional design studio environment. Selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants, fellows represent a diverse range of graphic design programs, such as Art Center College of Design, California College of Art, California Institute of the Arts, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, NC State University, Rhode Island School of Design, Royal College of Art, Werkplaats Typografie, and Yale University, among many others.
Fellows are employed full-time for one year and are assigned a wide range of graphic design projects, from identities and related collateral for programs and exhibitions, to assisting the design director and designers with large-scale initiatives such as catalogues, campaigns, wayfinding systems, and websites. Fellows are involved in all aspects of the design process, from conception (the “thinking”) through delivery (the “inking”), and everything in-between. Throughout the year, the studio supports and advises our fellows and the fellow inspires and energizes our studio>>>>>
>>>>Take our COMPATIBILITY TEST if you’re interested in this kind of symbiotic relationship.
Below: A small sampling of projects executed by the Walker’s design studio–including the work of 4 fellows–between the years 2008 and 2011
How to apply Please attach a letter of interest, a résumé with the names and contact information of three references, and a pdf portfolio containing 8–10 examples of graphic design work to design.fellowship@walkerart.org
2011/2012 Fellowship deadline: June 20, 2011
All candidates will be notified of their application status by July 31. No phone calls please.
For more information please visit the Design Fellowship page on the Walker Art Center Design website here. Also check out the Walker Job Board.
Insights, our annual graphic design lecture series, returns on Tuesday nights, starting tomorrow with Kevin Quealy and continuing during the next four weeks with Michael Hart, Julie Beeler, James Goggin, and Casey Caplow. Buy your tickets! These lectures will be webcast live and archived on the Walker Channel, where you can also view past lectures such as Experimental Jetset, Project Projects, Irma Boom, and many many more.
Tuesday, March 1: Kevin Quealey, New York Times Graphics Department
Quealey has created compelling information graphics for both print and online, including the interactive “You Fix the Budget” deficit and dynamic visualizations of the voting shifts in the 2010 Congressional elections, among many other works. The New York Times Graphics Department recently received the National Design Award in Communication Design. kevinquealy.com
Tuesday, March 8: Michael Hart, Mono
After successful careers at leading ad agencies, Michael Hart, Chris Lange, and James Scott founded Minneapolis-based Mono, a firm specializing in inventive communication solutions for a variety of clients, including Herman Miller, Apple, Blu Dot, Airstream, and USA Network. Mono was named Small Agency of the Year by Advertising Age in 2010. mono-1.com
Tuesday, March 15: James Goggin, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
James Goggin established Practise, a London-based studio that garnered acclaim for its work with clients such as Tate Modern, Channel 4, Artangel, and the Design Museum. He was art director of the British music magazine The Wire, has served as tutor at the Werkplaats Typografie in the Netherlands and at ECAL in Switzerland, and has written for publications such as Dot, Dot, Dot. In 2010, Goggin became director of design, print, and digital media at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. practise.co.uk
Tuesday, March 22: Julie Beeler, Second Story Interactive Studio
Since 1994, Julie Beeler, cofounder of Portland, Oregon’s Second Story, has become a leading developer of unique interactive solutions for a variety of clients. Known for its technical savvy and ability to craft compelling stories into immersive experiences, Second Story has won numerous awards and critical acclaim for its interactive installations, websites, motion graphics, and three-dimensional visualizations. secondstory.com
Tuesday, March 29: Casey Caplowe, Good
A three-time finalist for the National Magazine Awards, Good is a diverse enterprise with a printed magazine, a web platform, and a convener of events. With the tagline, “For People Who Give a Damn,” Good has become a catalyst for more socially engaged thinking around issues of health, food, the environment, and design. The Los Angeles–based Caplowe is a cofounder of Good and serves as creative director.www.good.is
Annie Larson is a Minneapolis-based fashion designer who specializes in knitwear. She recently took part in the New Land of Milk and Honey, a collaborative project exhibited at the Soap Factory. Even more recently, she launched an online store and knitwear label, ALL, featuring sweaters in a variety of colors and patterns, made-to-order on her Brother KH-950 Electroknit knitting machine. Annie was able to get a hold of herself to answer a few of her own questions to post here.
[flyer for New Land of Milk and Honey by Eric Carlson
What have you been doing for the past five years?
I worked at Al’s Breakfast in Dinkytown for just over a year near the end of my undergrad. I loved Al’s more than any job I ever had–it will always be one of my special places in Minneapolis. After a second summer there, I applied for an internship at Target. Skip over the next three years where I end up taking a full-time design position, a real job, to last August when I made the decision to resign. Taking advice from a friend, I started a journal about quitting my job. The journal was called, “Quit Your Job,” and I wrote it in for four consecutive days. Here we are…
08 30 2009
Today I decided to quit my job. It’s funny how my attitude immediately changed, I feel different. I went out to see friends that I hadn’t seen in awhile and putzed around on my bike for a few hours. I told everyone I saw about my decision, hoping that my friends would weigh in. I stopped to get a coffee and talk to Matthew, something I hadn’t done freely in a long time, maybe a few years. I was relieved he was there, I needed to spill my news to an adult. His response was positive, which was the boost I needed. I came home happy.
08 31 2009
Monday at work, the absolute pits. I’m already checked out. I saw Fletcher later in the evening. His presence reminded me that I can do whatever I want.
09 01 2009
I practiced being unemployed today by calling in sick. I love these days. I spent all day transposing patterns and knitting. I thought about not having a job.
09 02 2009
I looked at jobs today on the Internet. There are jobs out there, just in case.
Since then, I have been focusing most of my energy on opening an online sweater shop, which I was finally able to do at the end of April. I knit from home every day to send knit goods to people in places like San Diego, Portland, New York, London, Los Angeles, Seattle, Australia, and so on.
Why?
Machine knitting is blowing my mind.
What’s the deal with the Internet?
Communication and expression on the Internet is important to me.
What do you think about fashion?
The fashion world is really interesting to me. One thing that has recently captured my attention is the influence of fashion and style bloggers, and how their work effects the role of editors and magazines. I’m also intrigued by what the Internet has to do with all of this, how designers are using it to propel their labels, and the online identities that are created in the process. I gawk over runway images from high profile shows, because fashion is such a spectacle! It just tickles me to know that presentation is still valued in this industry, that designers showcase their work in outlandish ways because they can.
What’s been on your mind lately?
I have been thinking a lot about moving. I’ll hear Lou Reed sing about New York, and I’ll want to move there. Then I’ll hear Randy Newman sing about Los Angeles, and I’ll want to go there instead. I’ve been working on a couple different schemes to get out of the country, and if that happens I think I’ll be temporarily relieved.
Another thing that has been on my mind is the importance of dialogue and critique in fashion design. There is this class of young designers (myself included) that exist outside the realm of fashion writers and critics, so there are fewer critical dialogues about our work. Is a person who appreciates fashion qualified to critique it?
What are you going to do this summer?
I’m looking forward to a trip to New York.
Is Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons your favorite designer?
Yes.
Do you really only have one favorite?
No! It’s hard to have one favorite. Norma Kamali, Mary Quant, Alexander Wang, Andres Courreges, Prada, Marc Jacobs, Pierre Cardin, Ashish, Karen Walker, Jim Drain, Balenciaga, Hussein Chalayan, Bernhard Willhelm, Issey Miyake, Henrik Vibskov, and Betsey Johnson have all been my favorite at some point. I believe there is a time and place for everything, even Donna Karan!
Tell us an embarrassing story!
I stepped on Brett Smith’s art in The Austerity Cookbook last fall at the Soap Factory. I stepped on the barricade. Everybody saw, and I didn’t know if I should try to put the pieces back together. I didn’t, but I found out later that I probably should have.
What characterizes your work?
The use of color has always been the primary quality that defines my work, even before I started designing knitwear. I was never interested in making couture gowns. I was only interested in designing garment shapes that allow me to curate palettes of color and pattern and exist within those boundaries. The garment shapes then become building blocks for transforming the body, and the final impact relies on the interaction of color. Even when my job at Target was to sort thirty-six colors of a pique polo, I would heavily consider the way the colors would look next to each other in the store presentation. The presentation style would often dictate the final assortment. Sometimes, I would wake up in the middle of the night wondering if I should have chosen Soft Lime instead of Lime Peel.
Humor and optimism have been other prevalent factors in the way my work is created, presented, and perceived. The overdone, bubbly sense of YAY! in my design and presentation is not fake, and if you know me as a human, you know it’s true.
Tuesday, March 16 7:00 pm
Insights: Peter Buchanan-Smith
In anticipation of next Tuesday’s lecture by Peter Buchanan-Smith (New York), we asked him to answer a few of life’s most—and possibly least—pressing questions:
1. What have you been obsessing about?
Peter: Aside from Haiti it would be: the start of a new collection (sticky tape), Small Trades by Irving Penn, The Office (the American version) and Steve Carrell, a lack of water white varnish on the market, keeping the dust in my workshop down.
2. What’s your most prized possession?
Peter: My forcola: it is the part of a Venetian gondola that the gondolier supports his oar in. I just bought a beautiful used one from a man named Saverio Pastor that was hand carved from a single block of ash in the 1940s.
3. What are you reading?
Peter: Small Trades by Irving Penn, Alec Baldwin’s book about divorce, a book of collected interviews with Bob Dylan, Burry my Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown.
4. What’s one of your guilty pleasures?
Peter: Expensive take-out food on an almost daily basis.
5. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Peter: Talent
6. What is one of the most unexpected influences on your design?
Peter: Fashion
7. What were you doing before you responded to this questionnaire?
Peter: Sitting still, in dread and panic, not know what to do next because I am so overwhelmed with how much I have to do. But luckily your questionnaire came through!
8. What question do you wish we’d ask you?
Peter: Where did you get that / those ____________ (insert any article of clothing or body part)?
9. What question do you get asked that you are tired of answering?
Peter: Why axes?
Peter Buchanan-Smith is a New York–based designer, author, and entrepreneur whose career has included designing book jackets for Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux; art direction of the New York Times Op-Ed page; creative direction for Paper magazine; and work for fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi, musical legends David Byrne, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, and the band Wilco. He is the author of several books, including The Wilco Book, and he has collaborated on many others, including Strunk and White’s classic The Elements of Style with illustrator Maira Kalman, and Muhammad Ali by Magnum Photographers. His first tome, Speck: A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things, which originated as a thesis project at the School of Visual Arts, where he also teaches, explores the fascinating lives of ordinary people and commonplace objects. This connection between people and objects is also at the heart of Buchanan-Smith’s latest venture, Best Made Co., a purveyor of bespoke axes that offers not only a finely crafted tool but also entrée into the symbolic world conjured by the object and summoned by its owner (adventure, hard work, balance, and so on). buchanansmith.com
