I am the Design Director here at the Walker. I also help edit and design a sporadic magazine called Task Newsletter with Jon Sueda an Alex DeArmond.
Yale Union. The style sheet is 672 long. The php loop on the index page is 109. The weather is 52 F. The time in Portland, OR is 6:16pm.
What would do you some good is an establishing shot or an articulation of the circumstances. Circumstances can’t be ignored, but they might happily de-intellectualize the approach. Any design, from weaponry to cobblin’ (not sure why, but it seems right to omit the terminal “g” here.) is a provisional response to particular and irreproducible circumstances. Our circumstances, in their barest psycho-skeletal detail, were to design and program a website for Yale Union (YU), an institution that hasn’t been around since the Pleistocene epoch or anything. Things are un-smelted here. Our arms are sausagey, our knuckles-drag, and we are trying to adjust ourselves to change, shifting our frame, looking for a position that doesn’t shoot pains down the backs of our thighs. Design plays its part; decisions depend not on their immutability but on their adaptability to all this change.
The attempt was low-altitude. We wanted to take in some ‘real life’ in the design, which is to say, we wanted to take up the real concerns of our institution. So, we made a website that was responsive, like responsive in the superficial it-adapts-to-the-size-of-the-device-way, but also responsive in the sense that the site—a very chopped and screwed Wordpress—can respond in real time to additional content and editorial changes. With the internet, everything too is un-smelted. Nothing ends. So you can make something and then change it and then undo that change and then change it again. We wanted to make that pliability a loud fact. We wanted to build something forgiving, you know, something that allowed us to think and make at the same time.
What else should we say? Should we say, “Well, the site follows the old modernist notion that anything is possible, the postmodernist notion that everything is exhausted, the post-postmodernist notion that since everything is exhausted, everything is permitted.” Bushwa. Not untrue. But a total stucco job. It’s always tempting to put this kind of response before stimulus, to sit back, make finger-steeples and retire into elaborate theoretical justifications for your work, but if we treat our work too ponderously we might negate the very qualities that give it oxygen.
Higher intelligence and special consultation arrived in the third act when Stuart Bailey, a close friend and kind of avuncular figure, invited us to speak to his class at Otis College of Art and Design. Even now, we aren’t all that inclined or enabled to counter the students’ insightful criticism and questions:
1. The pressure of language is perhaps too constant.
2. The site is afraid to let itself go. Better said, perhaps it pays too much respect to formal requirements.
3. (1+2). At worst it behaves like a kid in a tuxedo, at best, it behaves like a kid in a tuxedo.
4. By nature, humans organize information hierarchically, so the absence of a hierarchy naturally makes a statement. Is that statement worth the number of readers that will defect?
Still, the nightmare is involution. The nightmare is that the site produces communication signals, but does not in fact communicate. Have you ever been to a party and someone is just talking at you, like really chewing your face off, and you don’t actually need to be there for the conversation to carry forward? And like, yeah, wow, we don’t want the reader to think it’s a great idea, but palpably an idea. We have a thing about ‘ideas’.
—A.Flint Jamison, S. Ponik, R. Snowden for Yale Union (YU)
Signage on the east wall at The Hollywood Burger Bar, 4211 Northeast Sandy Boulevard, Portland, OR 97213. One example of how in the course of this design we went a decent distance in a circle, to arrive not far from where we started, but considerably more informed. So much for being sui-generis, first to the apple, the original progenitor. I mean, dig how deeply sunk in our subconscious this place is. Clearly our copulation is simulated. Fraudulent. Deeply imitative of the Burger Bar!
Yale Union (YU) home page
Insights 2012: Aaron Draplin’s “100 Things I Love About Minneapolis”
“100 Things I Love About Minneapolis” by Aaron Draplin
01. Ideal Diner on Central Ave.
02. Axman.
03. Gardens of Salonica.
04. Washington Avenue Warehouse District.
05. MCAD.
06. Cheapo Records.
07. Treehouse Records.
08. Hennepin Avenue.
09. Charles Spencer Anderson Design Co.
10. Burlesque North America.
11. Ryno, that hunk of shit.
12. Todd Trainer.
13. Hüsker Dü.
14. Turf Club.
15. 400 Bar.
16. First Avenue.
17. 7th Street Entry.
18. Skyways downtown.
19. Mickey’s Diner in St. Paul.
20. Matthew Rezac.
21. Aesthethic Apparatus.
22. Todd Piper-Hauswirth logos, icons and vector mastery.
23. Lee’s Liquor Lounge.
24. “Fargo” references.
25. Jon Baugh.
26. Jason Miller.
27. The Evening Rig.
28. Compound Gallery.
29. Garrison Keillor’s sleepy drawl.
30. Lake Calhoun.
31. Ice-cold Grain Belt beer.
32. The “Urinal of the Gods” at Stasiu’s.
33. That big Grain Belt sign.
34. Grant Hart.
35. The Jayhawks.
36. Gay Witch Abortion.
37. Michael Gaughan.
38. Hammerhead.
39. AmRep records.
40. Juicey Lucy.
41. Sub-zero temperatures.
42. Hot dish.
43. Dick Stuck.
44. Cal Surf Scott.
45. Walker Art Center.
46. The Twins.
47. Minnehaha Creek.
48. Mississippi River.
49. Prince, that little nugget.
50. Electric Fetus.
51. Extreme Noise.
52. Hamburger Help Me.
53. The bullseye.
54. Those Replacements.
55. Paul Westerberg anything and everything.
56. Dillinger Four.
57. Grumpy’s.
58. Terminal Bar.
59. Nye’s Polanaise Room.
60. Atmosphere.
61. Rifle Sport.
62. Savers.
63. White Bear Lake. “Go Bears!”
64. Derek Schille’s links.
65. Mike Davis.
66. Aaron Horkey art.
67. Process Type Foundry.
68. Studio On Fire.
69. Wink.
70. Chank.
71. Junkin’ in Hopkins.
72. Jerry Allan.
73. Jan Jancourt.
74. Laurie DeMartino Design.
75. Lifter Puller.
76. Hold Steady references.
77. Willie’s American Guitars.
78. Encore Music Shop.
79. Rainbow Foods.
80. Little Tijuana.
81. Geoff Schley.
82. Erik T. Johnson illustration.
83. Beer Helmut.
84. Fleetwood Big Mac.
85. Lagoon Cinema.
86. Coon Rapids.
87. Mason Jennings’ first record.
88. Big Brain Comics.
89. That Minneapolis skyline.
90. Totino’s Frozen Pizza.
91. Foshay Towers.
92. Tonka Toys.
93. Kirby Puckett.
94. Pizza Luce.
95. The Coen Brothers.
96. The Minneapolis flag.
97. The Alt.
98. Buck Hill
99. Charles Schultz.
100. Louie Anderson.
Insights 2012: Aaron Draplin on the Replacements
Above: The Replacement’s first official photo shoot, Walker Art Center, 1981 Photos by Greg Helgeson
I moved to Minneapolis in 1998. For serious reasons like, “Home of Hüsker Dü and Charles Spencer Anderson.” That was enough for me. And being new to a town, you lurk around thinking about all the shit you missed. All those Twin Cities bands I was into, hell, they were long gone and dead. And the mere mention of my love for any of the ’80s stuff was enough to generate snarky quips from locals. I was just excited to be there…in the town that gave us the Replacements!
What I knew about the ‘Mats was limited. I came to the band pretty late, opting for the obvious roster of punk rock bands that I saw on my skateboarder friends’ t-shirts. By the time I discovered them for myself, the band was broken up and scattered. All I had were the ghosts. They were my uncle’s ages. That put things into perspective for me. They were all grown up and family men and what not. All the lore I was hearing about was in their youth. And that was so long ago.
Such a bittersweet little story to them. They were that close to making it, consistently blowing it time and time again with disastrous tours, infighting, and record company disillusionment. And then, out of nowhere, they would be on for a night. And that’s what would fuel the legend of the Replacements. Folks would show up expecting to see a train wreck, and instead get blown away by the tightest band in the world. I like that kind of sucker punch.
Turns out they didn’t make a cent? Or so I’ve been told by dudes working in guitar and record stores around the cities. That hurt to hear. They were big, but maybe not that big. I’d scour the town thinking about what they were up to. I still do. Working stiffs? Bored? Proud? Or maybe Westerberg’s in his basement making songs? I hope so, at least.
I saw their Walker Art Center photo shoot a couple year back. So young and dumb and wild and awesome. That’s still enough for me.
—A.D.
Insights 2012: Questions for Aaron Draplin
We thought we’d try to get inside the minds of some of our upcoming Insights design lecture speakers, you know, dig a little deeper. Invade their personal space.
So here is Mr. Draplin answering some of life’s most—and possibly least—important questions:
Describe a recent dream in 15 words or less.
I usually don’t remember my dreams, and that sucks. That’s nine words. Damn. What a bummer. Sometimes I do, but it’s only the scary stuff.
What do you wish to have done with your mortal remains?
Reduced to ashes and then spread out all over the land. Someone’s gonna be going on one helluva roadtrip! Or wait, what about just crawling off into the wilderness and dying in the woods? And then letting the bugs, varmints and elements have at you. Like an old mountain man who met his end? That sounds better than embalming fluids or spilled urns.
What have you been obsessing about lately?
Pantone equivalents, going from screen to poster. I keep a pretty cave-like corner at the shop and when it’s time to pick real colors, I have to lift the blinds on our big windows and get some real light on the subject. I don’t mess around with Pantone selections. I take my time with that shit.
What was your worst (college/post-college/make-ends-meet) job?
I might still be working it? When I think back, this job still takes the cake: I was a carny one summer. 1994. Worked in a pizza wagon in Northern Michigan on a second-rate fair circuit. Little shithole towns all over Michigan. Long hours in a pizza wagon, sweating it out with rambunctious fairgoers. All summer long. Finally got fired up in Escanaba, Mich., and dumped at a laundromat. Mom and dad had to come up to rescue me. Weird as hell.
What’s your most embarrassing moment?
Maybe not my most embarrassing moment, but here’s one that comes to mind: My buddy Larry and I are walking down the hall outside my shop, down to hit the men’s room. As we round the corner, some guy is there, and I walk in, and Larry walks in behind me into the stall and sits down. I’m at the urinal, letting nature take it’s course, and I start in on Larry, “I got a good strong stream going here. Proud of it.” Stuff like that. Stupid things dudes say to each other in a bathroom. And he’s sorta laughing and making weird little “Yeah, right…” guffaws. And I’m going on and on about this and that, and get done, wash up and walk out the door. And Larry’s standing outside the door waiting to go in.
What’s one of your guilty pleasures?
Crummy television. I’ll plop down in the living room, working on my laptop. The TV acts a bit of a radio. Pawn Stars or Storage Wars or Alaska State Troopers. Mindless stuff. Good, clean fun. It’s pleasurable as background noise, which makes me guilty.
Fill in the blank. What the world needs now is _________________.
…to slow the hell down.
Things are moving too fast. I have all sorts of weird theories about time and how it passes in different parts of the world. Like, does a life go by slower in a rural setting, and quicker in some bustling city? I’d wager a “Yes.”
Who is your favorite villain of fiction? Of non-fiction?
Chigurh the hitman from No Country For Old Men comes to mind. A calm, collected, poetic psychopath. Disturbing as hell. Maybe it was just his haircut? That was equally terrifying.
What’s your most prized possession, and why do you prize it so?
I don’t really have a material object to offer up. I mean, a couple rare records come to mind, but, shit, like that stuff really matter in the grand scheme of things, right? The answer that comes to mind is my relationship with my mom and dad. I’m just thankful to have cool parents, who have always been good to all us in the family. Very lucky.
If you could have any job/career, what would you choose?
I’m doing it! Seriously. I love this stuff. I get to make cool stuff all day long. Growing up, I was told things were gonna be hard and that I wouldn’t like my job. No one told me that outright… It was more like, seeing family lose a job or lament about their line of work. Stuff like that. All these years later, I can proudly say I love what I do. So thankful. Wow.
What is your advice for young people today?
For young designers: Find yer voice, and fast. Learn to love this stuff. Work hard.
For youngsters in general: Practice yer penmanship, you scrubs!
What public figure do you detest?
Any of the Conservative/Republican/Bigot/Hatemonger pundits. Sarah Palin’s charade gets me pretty fired up. Or Michele Bachmann. Or that Rick Santorum fuck. These are bad people…plain and simple. Dinosaurs scaring people, and setting us back years and years.
What’s your favorite place to people-watch?
Las Vegas, Mall of America, World’s Longest Yard Sale, Canton Days outside of Dallas, Antique Expo in Portland,
Which living person do you most admire?
Cornel West is pretty high on the list. I find him inspiring, and spot on. I like his passion. Brother Cornel. Love that guy. Would love to see him speak.
What are you afraid of?
Disease. Something that comes out of nowhere, growing inside you, from the inside out. Like, at least with something harmful that’s external, you can sort of react and duck or whatever.
Who’s your favorite poet? (Or what’s your favorite poem/passage/lyric?)
That’s an easy one. It’s a bit mushy, but it’s a Paul Westerberg lyric that I assume is about a girl…
You’ve got a voice like the last day of Catholic school.
I know what that day sounded like. I went to Catholic school my 9th and 10th grade years. And that shit sucked.
What’s your most vivid memory from childhood?
Christmas stuff. My favorite memories. We had wonderful christmases growing up. Big trees with beautiful, handmade ornament my mom made. My dad is a chronic decorator and took the holidaze seriously! Our house was so cool.
I remember leaving notes for Santa…along with a beer and a sandwich. And man, I believed! I remember believing. I remember finding out there wasn’t a Santa, and how much it hurt. The death of magic in yer life is a hard one to take. Don’t care how old you are. I was 17.
What’s your most vivid Minneapolis memory?
Walking to school this one time, and dipping down by the river by St. Anthony’s. It was so cold out I got a bloody nose. And I loved it. I remember thinking, “I love this place.” I really screwed up when I left in 2000. Damn.
How do you recharge creatively?
A Saturday junkin’ around town can really put a puff of air into my sails. A pile of treasures from the excursion will carry me all week, and inform projects I’m working on. I just love finding cool old stuff, that I can post on my site, or, use a bit of it in my work. Might just be color or language or type. I love how that works. Always fires me up.
What is your favorite euphemism?
“Syrup on shit doesn’t make it a pancake.” Wait, is that a euphemism?
What is your favorite film scene?
The scene in Shawshank Redemption where Red opens the buried tin. Just incredible. That and anything with Brooks Hanlon, from the same movie. Poor, old Brooks just couldn’t handle life on the outside. Still sad about that one. For Brooks.
What is your greatest extravagance?
800 thread count sheets, motherfuckers! We’re gettin’ Egyptian on that shit, too!
What was your most humbling moment?
Seeing my little sister holding my nephew Oliver, just minutes after an hour after he was born, still can bring me to tears. My littlest sister, all grown up and bringing a new life into the world. Man, out came the waterworks. Seeing my mom hold her grandbaby for the first time was incredible. I got the shot and everything.
After seeing that little guy that day, suddenly, EVERYTHING I was working on, or fretting over, or whatever, just didn’t matter. A new life came into the world. Me, I was worrying about whatever logo I was wrestling. Cycle of Life™, man! Moving stuff.
What was your most character-building experience?
Washing dishes on the railroads in Alaska tested me. I remember getting mail up there and friends detailing their fun summers down in the lower 48. And me, I was washing dishes to make cash. I remember the early mornings, and how much the prospect of two back-to-back 16-hour days would almost bring me to tears. Or the first couple days of the summer, knowing I had five fucking months of ahead of me. I wanted to quit every hour. I did four summers up there, and the first summer I didn’t go back, I had these oddly soothing fantasies about heading back up for another summer, going through the training and then the first day out on the rails, quitting that shit. Leaving them high and dry. That’s horrible, but I played that scenario out in my head a million times.
What’s your favorite recording of all time?
Oooh. Damn. A tough one. Probably Son Volt’s Trace from 1995. Just perfect. When I go, at the yard sale that they have in my honor, that is to be played the whole time.
What three items can always be found in your refrigerator?
01. The yellowest mustard possible: French’s. None of that bullshit honey mustard crap, or anything with seeds in it. Not cool.
02. Cholula Hot Sauce. I can drink that stuff. My favorite hot sauce.
03. Orange Juice. Always adds a nice splash of orange to the fridge. Hell, anything with an orange cap, really.
What artist turned your world upside-down as a teenager?
Jim Phillips from Santa Cruz skateboards. Best linework, ever. That’s where it all started for me.
What’s your favorite comfort food?
Mom’s spaghetti. I like getting comfortable with a big plate of it. Dad’s garlic bread. Mostacholi noodles. Mmmm.
They say dogs and their owners tend to look alike. What kind of dog would you own?
I don’t look like a dachshund, but had a weiner dog named “Gary” for five-and-a-half years. He’s missed. He was lean and mean and fast as lightning. Me, I’m chunky and girthy, but fast as lightning.
If you own a pet, what kind and what characteristics do you share with it?
Gary and I shared an appreciation and understanding for the following: Cunning stunts, tennis balls, burrowing into blankets, peeing in the backyard under the stars, cold water and ankles.
What artists would you like to collaborate with?
I’d love to make something with my buddy Jared Eberhardt. His work is amazing. He’s an incredible graphic designer who shed all that 2D shit, and reemerged as a director of commericals and videos. Beautiful stuff. Hire me, Jared.
Is there anybody you’d refuse to shake hands with?
George Bush. I’d love to refuse that piece of shit a handshake. I was afraid each day that cowboy hack was at the wheel, and want my eight years back. Still relieved our national nightmare is over.
What have you been listening to lately?
Cheap Girls, Mastodon, Lambchop, Damien Jurado, Stephen Malkmus, Bill Fox, John Moreland, Guided By Voices, Bon Iver, Low, Big Business, Luke Roberts, White Hills, Flaming Lips, Crooked Fingers, Jayhawks, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Wilco, Richmond Fontaine, Danava, Idaho, Gillian Welch, Battles, Sam Prekop and Centro-Matic.
What have you been reading lately?
Slow, slowly going through Cormac McCarthy books. Taking my goddamn time, too. Slow going. I don’t want to finish them, just it’s not like he’s a guy with 100 books. There’s like eight of them or something. Words to savor.
What is your least favorite sound?
People chewing with their mouths open. It’s 2012 for fuck’s sake. Time to evolve.
Which element would you like to be: earth, air, fire, or water?
Earth. Just sounds the coolest.
Name one surprising aspect of your morning ritual.
Phlegm. I hock up some wild shit sometimes. Is that surprising? I can gag Leigh with my plumbing antics. Sorry, sweetie.
What is your favorite inanimate object?
I’ve got a pretty serious thing for my Martin guitar.
What’s the last (or favorite) book you read?
Last book I read? Child of God by Cormac McCarthy.
Favorite book of all time? Papillon by Henri Charriere.
If you could throw a dinner party for anyone in the world, who would you invite?
Dinner party? Sounds pretty hard ass. I’d like to get a couple pizzas with the following people: J Mascis, Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, Patterson Hood, Paul Westerberg, Wayne Coyne and Gibby Haynes. But that’s just rock-n-roll fan stuff. That might be a dumb answer.
How do you like to unwind/relax?
Watching documentaries on the couch, going junkin’, catnaps and hitting the road on long roadtrips. There’s something relaxing about watching America whip by all day long.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I’d like to slim down. Get back to my fighting weight of 112 pounds. I was eight then.
What’s your favorite mode of transport?
When I bought my Volvo station wagon last year, I traded in my Ford Econoline van. The thing was a gas pig, but I loved driving that fucker. So comfy for a man of size like myself. Plus, you could live in it, in a pinch. Added value.
Do you own a status symbol, and if so, what is it?
Weird question. What are you talking about, like…tennis bracelets and shit? I don’t own any of that shit. I have a nice Volvo that puts me into the Yuppie Portlandia set pretty easily, but damn, the type is so nice on the instrument panels. That’s what did it for me in the end. The Volvo beat out the Ford Edge simply on typography. The kind of shit I worry about.
Insights 2012 Design Lecture Series
Insights is back!
March 6–27, 7 pm
See below for this year’s lineup. In the coming weeks we’ll be posting interviews with the speakers.
To watch past Insights lectures, check out the Walker Channel.
March 6
Aaron Draplin, Draplin Design Company,
Portland, Oregon
Although he makes his home in Portland, Oregon, Aaron Draplin is more a product of being born, raised, and educated in the Midwest. A native of Detroit, he studied graphic design at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design before heading west to work as art director of Snowboarder magazine. He founded Draplin Design Company (DDC) in 2004, producing a wide range of award-winning projects and developing products for businesses such as Coal Headwear; board designs for Ride, Forum, and Gnu; conceiving Field Notes journals with Coudal Partners in Chicago; and the array of merchandise for the DDC brand enterprise. Draplin’s iconic forms and bold designs are steeped in a no-nonsense Midwestern vernacular and work ethic. They project an authenticity and attitude that seems inseparable from his self-deprecating personality and his clients’ passions, reflected in the DDC motto, “Work hard and do good work for good people.”
March 13
Khoi Vinh, New York
As a child, Khoi Vinh emigrated to the United States from Vietnam. He studied illustration and practiced graphic design for print before moving to New York City in 1998, where he began his career in web and interactive design. From 2006 to 2010, he gained acclaim as design director of nytimes.com, working with colleagues to transform the early web version of the newspaper into the robust, multifaceted digital platform that we know and use today. Named one of the 50 most influential designers by Fast Company, Vinh shares his thoughts about media, technology, and design on his blog at subtraction.com and at conferences worldwide. Since leaving the New York Times Company in 2010, Vinh cofounded Lascaux Co., which recently launched Mixel for iPad, the world’s first social collage app that allows users to make, share, and remix their creations.
March 20
Michael Lejeune, Metro Design Studio,
Los Angeles
Michael Lejeune is charged with “making public transportation cool,” a not-so-easy task in the car culture of sprawling Los Angeles. As creative director of LA Metro, Lejeune heads a studio with a staff of more than 20, applying design strategy and thinking to the nation’s third-largest transit agency, which serves some 1.5 million people each day. Their projects, ranging from wayfinding systems, schedules, and maps to vehicle identity graphics and advertising campaigns to promote ridership, have been honored with more than 80 awards. This mix of consistent design standards, commonsense approaches to complex information, and engaging communications strategies has made LA Metro a standout in the public sector for embracing design and the capabilities of in-house teams.
March 27
David Pearson, London
David Pearson celebrates the printed book in all its
dimensions despite the publishing industry’s woes and its headlong dive into e-books and other digital platforms. He began his professional career in 2002 at Penguin Books, the venerable British imprint, where
he fused a contemporary sensibility with classical bookish elements to reinvigorate the brand. His seemingly traditional designs can be both unorthodox and unexpected, such as all-typographic book covers for Penguin Classics, the rainbow spectrum applied to the book spines of Pocket Penguins, or the use of letterpress and tactile papers in the Great Ideas series. He formed White’s Books with editor Jonathan Jackson in 2008, repackaging classic texts by Shakespeare and Dickens as well as titles such as Jane Eyre and Treasure Island.
Anthony Burrill Can Be Funny
GD:NIP #15: Designer as Producer: THE CLASS
Using the exhibition Graphic Design: Now in Production as its subject, the Walker Art Center created a seminar course for graphic design majors from the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and the University of Minnesota’s College of Design to investigate the themes and ideas of the show. The installation explores the ways that graphic design is being made, produced, and distributed today with a particular emphasis on how designers are becoming authors and publishers of media, instigators of/researchers on problems of their own choosing, and business entrepreneurs creating new products. The exhibition includes sections on posters, magazines, books, typography, information design, branding, and motion graphics—representing a diverse range of genres within an expansive field of practice. The Designer as Producer course included a mix of lectures, discussions, and off-campus activities and was held each Thursday night during the fall 2011 semester. As part of their coursework, students were asked to contribute four pages to a book, with subject matter determined by the content on a randomly selected press sheet from the exhibition catalogue. When the book was completed, everyone involved received a copy through the print-on-demand service Lulu.com.
Students visited the Walker galleries while the show was being set up and also attended a catalogue press check at Shapco Printing in Minneapolis in order to gain exposure to installation and production processes. Other sessions included studio visits with Nicole Dotin and Eric Olson of Process Type Foundry in Golden Valley and Laurie de Martino and Charles S. Anderson of Minneapolis, each of whom is featured in the exhibition. The course concluded with a public presentation by British designer Anthony Burrill. The instructors for the course were Walker Art Center staff Andrew Blauvelt, curator of architecture and design; Emmet Byrne, design director; and Michael Aberman, graphic designer. The instructors would like to thank Sarah Schultz, Susy Bielak, and Ashley Duffalo of the Walker’s education and community programs department, all of the members of the Walker’s design/editorial/photography department, and the graphic design faculty at each of the participating schools for their help in organizing this initiative. A jointly offered course with local area schools would not have been possible without executive leadership support for the project by Ann Ledy at the College of Visual Arts, Jay Coogan at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and Tom Fisher at the College of Design at the University of Minnesota.Lastly, the course would not have been possible without the students, whom we thank for their participation.
From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America catalogue
“ON A GREAT SLAB OF MESOZOIC ROCK”
Above: image research for the catalogue From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America (2010)
From Amazon.com:
From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America is the first exhibition catalogue to feature the full spectrum of the work of Alec Soth, one of the most interesting voices in contemporary photography, whose compelling images of everyday America form powerful narrative vignettes. Featuring more than 100 of the artist’s photographs made over the past 15 years, the book includes new critical essays by exhibition curator Siri Engberg, curator and art historian Britt Salvesen and critic Barry Schwabsky, which offer context on the artist’s working process, the photo-historical tradition behind his practice and reflections on his latest series of works. Novelist Geoff Dyer’s “Riverrun”–a meditation on Soth’s series Sleeping by the Mississippi–and August Kleinzahler’s poem “Sleeping It Off in Rapid City” contribute to the thoughtful exploration of this body of work. Also included in the publication is a 48-page artist’s book by Soth titled The Loneliest Man in Missouri, a photographic essay with short, diaristic texts capturing the banality and ennui of middle America’s suburban fringes, with their corporate office parks, strip clubs and chain restaurants. This full-color publication includes a complete exhibition history, bibliography and interview with the artist by Bartholomew Ryan. Alec Soth was born in 1969 and raised in Minnesota, where he continues to live and work. He has received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (1999, 2004) and Jerome Foundation (2001), was the recipient of the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography and was short-listed for the highly prestigious Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. His first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published in 2004 to critical acclaim. Since then Soth has published Niagara (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), Dog Days, Bogota (2007) and The Last Days of W (2008). He is a member of Magnum Photos.
From DLK Collection’s review of the book:
What I like best about Soth’s catalog is it’s overt subversiveness; while it of course contains plenty of images from the past 15 years and a handful of texts, it’s overall feel is unlike any other exhibition catalog I have ever encountered. The cover is both unpretentious and quirky. The essays wander all over the place, following exploratory tangents. Choice blog posts are interleaved, like little vignettes or thought bubbles. The obligatory artist interview is actually insightful and revealing. In short, the book is personal, real, and intelligently authentic, rather than packaged up in the normal trappings of haughty art world cool; it is joyfully nerdy and unabashedly eccentric.
From Nerose’s Amazon review of the book:
. . . there’s some smart texts by interesting writers, marred only by persnickety little blog entries e.g. bitching about photo-books with “America/American” in the title, but then, my goodness—this book is sub-titled “Alec Soth’s America”—right there on the cover. Sweet irony.
From the AIGA Archives:
During our typographic research we came across a DIY, simple-living magazine called The Mother Earth News, which we referenced for the general layout of the cover.
From Conscientious’ review of the book:
Alec Soth certainly isn’t chasing after the kind of “cool” the “MAC” guy seems to possess. That conversation’s title is “Dismantling My Career,” and From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America does just that, except it does it in such a way that’s not all that obvious whether or not there is something being dismantled here. After all, the artist is a very good friend of the old herring who might or might not be red.
From The PostModern Common’s review of the book:
This exhibition catalogue is more than a book, it is a guide to life using the medium of photography.
From Photoeye’s review of the book:
Everything you already knew and ever wanted to know about Alec Soth is accessible within the design of this book—and if you feel you have a few more questions about Soth the book didn’t answer, the photographer was even kind enough to provide his phone number and email address—you can’t miss it, it’s right there on the cover.
From Twin Cities Daily Planet’s review of the book:
Fortunately, the book contains more than critics’ analyses. There are plates representing the exhibit’s images, pages republishing some of Soth’s blog entries in ironically tactile raised letters, and a kind of art-book Izzy scoop: a little paper volume chronicling the artist’s search for The Loneliest Man in Missouri tucked into a pocket in the back cover.
From Zippidy-Doo-Daa’s Amazon review of the book:
“THAT’S PRETTY MUCH IT…NOTHING ELSE TO SAY OTHER THAN GO OUT AND BUY IT…THANK YOU JAHI FOR BEING SUCH AN AMAZING FRIEND, AND PURCHASING THIS FANTASTIC BOOK FOR ME.” -EMILY KINNI
GD:NIP #14: A good children’s book with decent story and appropriate illustrations, modestly printed and produced, would not be such a success with parents, but children would like it a lot. —Bruno Munari, “Children’s Books,” Design as Art, 1966
“Back when Paul Rand wrote, “There is no such thing as bad content, only bad form,” I remember being intensely annoyed. I took it as an abdication of a designer’s responsibility to meaning. Over time, I have come to read it differently: he was not defending hate speech or schlock or banality; he meant that the designer’s purview is to shape, not to write. But that shaping itself was a profoundly affecting form. (Perhaps this is the reason that modern designers—Rand, Munari, Lionni, etc.—always seem to end their careers designing children’s books. The children’s book is the purest venue of the designer/author because the content is negligible and the evocative potential is unlimited.)” —Michael Rock, Fuck Content (2005)
above: Bruno Munari lounging around among his children’s books
Graphic Design: Now In Production catalogue
Our catalogue for Graphic Design: Now in Production is now available. Above is the illustrated colophon for the book which gives a lot of detail about the production so click in at your leisure!
Book blurb:
With more than 250 artists and some 1,400 images, this ambitious catalogue and exhibition survey the vibrant landscape of graphic designers who have seized the means of production and are rewriting the nature of contemporary design practice. Charting a rich vein of activity that cuts across wildly diverse fields, Graphic Design: Now in Production chronicles the postmillennial scene of all-access design tools and self-publishing systems, the open-source nature of creative production, and the entrepreneurial spirit of the designer turned producer. Part operating manual, part academic reader, and part sourcebook, the catalogue features writings by some of the field’s major thinkers, including Åbäke, Ian Albinson, Peter Bil’ak, Andrew Blauvelt, Rob Giampietro, James Goggin, Peter Hall, Steven Heller, Jeremy Leslie, Ellen Lupton, Ben Radatz, Michael Rock, Dmitri Siegel, Daniel van der Velden, Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio, and Lorraine Wild. Freely mixing writing styles, from personal rants to the collective speak of Wikipedia, the book touches upon hundreds of topics. Picking up where the design authorship debates of the 1990s left off, this catalogue examines the evolution of graphic design in an expanded field of practice. It considers myriad issues, such as the changing nature of reading and writing, self-publishing and clientless design, the persistence of the poster and the book in a screen-based culture, the designer’s voice in the age of crowdsourcing, the visualization of journalism, the ubiquity of branding, and the democratization of design tools and software. Sprinkled throughout are numerous bits—factoids, explanations, and tangents—exploring everything from fake Apple Stores to Adobe DPS, Ghanaian coffins to cultural analytics, Scriptographer to heraldry.
Above: stack of proofs
The design of this book is the culmination of a text-image strategy first employed in a campaign created to promote an exhibition of the Walker Art Center’s painting collection (2009). Inspired by museum founder T. B. Walker’s own salon-style hangings in his nineteenth-century mansion and our painting storage facility, this display style allows for a dense presentation of material and unexpected juxtapositions. Although dominated by its strong visual approach, the design also integrates textual material throughout its composition. In 2010, this layout strategy was used in a poster to celebrate the Walker’s twenty-five-year collaboration with the AIGA on the Insights design lecture series. For this catalogue, the strategy was elaborated and extended. Previously utilized in the design of a single poster or billboard, the layout approach was used to create more than one hundred pages of this 224-page publication. Small texts that we call bits are incorporated throughout the catalogue and represent a combination of original writing, aggregated authorship, and excerpted quotations. In this way, the design weaves together the voices of curators, “crowds,” and artists with images of works found in the show and beyond, including the supplemental and the tangential. This premodern style of arrangement, which attempts to impose an order and sensibility on an often incoherent assemblage of objects, speaks to our contemporary condition of information overload in an increasingly fragmented search-based culture. The Whole Earth Catalog was also a key reference point, both in terms of layout as well as the general intention of the book to provide “access to tools.” As part of the content generation phase we created a wiki, editable by Walker Art Center and Cooper-Hewitt staff as well as the guest curators, to collect all these bits of knowledge. The layout of this book was a unique process for us, in that every page was inevitably designed 2 or 3 times. We would take a first pass at the general layout, then assess the specific content, add in new texts and images, assess again, and redesign the page again. To say the generation of the book was “organic” is an understatement. The book clocks in at about 118,000 words with 1366 images (collecting image rights for this book was an endeavor in and of itself).
The book also includes the 21st issue of Åbäke’s “parasite publication” I Am Still Alive. This ongoing project only exists within other magazines and books, relying on publishers donating pages for Åbäke to use. This particular issue of I Am Still Alive is a transcript of a lecture presented as a play that Åbäke gave (and continues to give in various forms) about the form of the lecture as an art form. That’s right.
The book ends with a great essay called “School Days” by Rob Giampietro on the production of designers themselves—an overview of the influence of graduate programs on the field. Read more about it on Rob’s blog.
The book is a paperback wrapped with a thin, coated, four color dustjacket. We were looking for a very floppy book, something that falls open quite easily and is very easy to read. In order to achieve that we asked our paper mill, French Paper (which I visited in Niles, Michigan), to cut the paper on the opposite grain direction than what they normally do, to make sure that the grain fell in line with the binding of the book. Åbäke’s parasite publication is the only signature in the book that is cut in the typical grain direction, which is quite noticeable when you flip through the book.
In tandem with the run of the exhibition, the design department is also teaching a class called “The Designer as Producer” consisting of students from the College of Visual Arts (St. Paul), the University of Minnesota, and the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. (Look for posts on that soon.) We took the class on the final press check for the catalogue at Shapco Printing, and photographed them on press, ran back to prepress, chose the photo, color-corrected the photo, wrote the caption, inserted the photo into the layout (its in the colophon . . . see top of this post), burned the plates, and printed the final form. And of course we even caught some unexpected typos at the last minute . . . “in production” doesn’t even begin to describe this book . . .
