Crit Face Button Set

Alberto Rigau created a set of buttons to keep his fellow NC State University graphic design graduate students perky during marathon critiques. They spread like a viral video… appearing on the t-shirts, lapels and bags of undergrads in my classroom. I too coveted the buttons. It may be superstition, but crits seem to go smoother when I rock a crit button.

The phenomenon spread to SpeakUp, Design Observer and Alberto even gave away a set of 50 free buttons on his website now long gone. Keep your eyes peeled to his site, I’m sure these will be making their way to a design classroom or client meeting near you…

CalArts is a small school. With a population that averages around 1332 students in 6 different departments that include: Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film-Video, Music, and Theater, each department is its own intimate microcosm. Its faceted nature is eerily similar to the Walker’s own interdisciplinary model, both sharing many of the same departments. The campus is basically a one building compound composed of bits and pieces that form their own semblance of a whole that evokes Lawrence Weiner’s work on the face of the Barnes Building. This unity makes walking around CalArts a frenetic fission of dancers, designers, artists, filmmakers, composers, choreographers, vocalists, dogs (CalArts is a dog friendly campus), and of course posters. They are made by all stripes of students, from those announcing their own shows and performances to figuring out a summer sublet.

But the smart ones get a graphic designer to design and silk-screen their posters. There is a long tradition of the second year Masters students in Design producing all the posters for the Visiting Artists and Designers that frequent CalArts so often. The MFA candidate class of 2008 is currently selling groups of posters on Ebay for those of you who lust for tactility and Day-Glo or metallic inks.If you are interested in taking in more of the history of the posters at CalArts then go take a look at the web version of the exhibition and catalogue for Earthquakes and Aftershocks: Posters from the CalArts Graphic Design Program 1986–2004 edited by Jérme Saint-Loubert Bié with Texts by Michel Bouvet, Jeff Rian, Louise Sandhaus, Somi and Sojin Kim, Jérme Saint-Loubert Bié and a delightful book design by Yasmin Khan and Jon Sueda.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of addressing the AIGA national convention from it’s main stage. But only for 60 seconds. I and 19 other young designers had to present of our idea of “what’s next” for the graphic design profession. Each of us were nominated by an established practicing designer. I was nominated by AIGA Gold Medalist Lorraine Wild, a speaker in the Walker’s Dis-Contents: Insights 2007 Lecture Series. I’ve had the good fortune of working for and being a student of Lorraine’s in the MFA program at California Institute of the Arts

My presentation entitled Towards the notion of a Designer-less Design Office or a (micro)theory of graphic design evolution is a parody of the recent trend for graphic designers to create more self-initiated briefs. In 60 seconds with this chart and several supporting examples I argue that

Designers want creative freedom. The Designer-less want the ultimate autonomy: to design themselves out of practice. If designers can thrive without clients, then the next natural step would be a design office without designers.”

To see some field examples starting to evolve into the Designer-Less see Butt Magazine, Virtual Paula Scher + HP and the graphic design result ofOtto, an artificial design intelligence entity.

The notion of graphic designers striving for autonomy was actually forecasted four years ago by the Walker’s very own Design Director and my former boss, Andrew Blauvelt, in the famous Rant issue of Emigre magazine. In his essay, Towards Critical Autonomy or Can Graphic Design Save Itself? Andrew urges that graphic designers should create work that is aware of and critiques it’s social, cultural, economic, technological contexts.

I didn’t create my parody to make light of Andrew’s essay. I extended the kernel of his idea to a ridiculous, but possible conclusion to coax the graphic design profession to be open minded and adaptable in a constantly expanding, shifting discipline that is perhaps out growing the term “graphic” design.

The Walker Design Department’s endeavors into curation, event programming, and now critical writing (in addition to their roles in exhibition, catalogue, publication, and advertising design) are but one possible model of nuanced and multi-faceted practice that deserves a different, more evolved nomenclature than a perhaps obsolete term coined in 1922.