Design

WE ARE: HARDLAND/HEARTLAND
This is a loose facade, a fictional reality. The guise of our creative freedom — a p***a********** vision from the Midwest. The work created is biographical fantasy. We look through this lens, and it makes sense. To us. We’re Live! Broadcasting to you the end of the beginning in Hi-Quad-Defined-Large-Antiquated-Definiton. It should already be just inside your brain. Don’t you see? These are short bursts of information. British Television Advertisements — You love them.

Tired & True. Blech.

WE CAME FROM:
The map between the mountains — mostly coastless. Graveled roads and gangster rap cassette tapes in suede skate shoes. Trials, tribulations and trouble. They made numerous movies about where we came from. Pre-Internettal Youth. Mickey Mouse was huge.

WE DO:
We make things. Total creationists. This all started with drawings, lines were made to be finished by another. We have called it facilitated collaboration from time to time, but we try to not be boring. We try to have fun. Your resulting experience should be most pleasurable and at times quite confusing: We have tried our best to embellish and imbue these narrative explosions with meaning. Sometimes we do not.

WE WANT:
The (B)est (T)imes (O)f (O)ur (L)ives (E)ver. SRSLY. The Organ House forever ending.

There is a “we” — did you know this?
We are trying to take you there.

Self-interview commissioned by the Walker Art Center Design Blog.

As a teenager who, during the late 1990’s, spent every last dollar on vinyl records and every waking moment on a skateboard, I was extremely excited to learn the Walker was screening Aaron Rose’s film Beautiful Losers on May 2!

The event is in conjunction with an artist lecture by Chris Johanson and Jo Jackson at the Walker on Thursday May 1st, and with their exhibition Conclusions on Boundaries at the ART OF THIS GALLERY opening May 3rd. This nostalgic, yet contemporary film celebrates a cultural movement rooted in a DIY aesthetic that documents a bi-coastal group of like-minded artists who found common ground in New York City during the early 1990’s. Featuring interviews with Ed Templeton, Barry McGee, Mike Mills, Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson, Stephen Powers and the always inspiring Harmony Korine among many others, I was also pleasantly surprised by the amount of amazing footage from the late Margaret Kilgallen.

There will be two screenings on May 2: one at 7:00 pm and one at 9:30 pm.
Also, there is a Q&A with director Aaron Rose following the first screening.
Further details and ticket information can be found on the Walker Calendar.

courtesy Andy Beach!

Now accepting applications–deadline: June 9, 2008
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, Eastern Michigan University, 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 developing graphic identities for specific programs and exhibitions, including the design of all related collateral materials, to assisting the design director and other designers with long-term projects such as exhibition catalogues and promotional campaigns. Fellows are involved in all aspects of the design process, including client meetings and presentations through production and supervision of printing (a small sampling of projects executed by Walker Design Fellows between the years 1999 and 2008 are pictured above).

How to apply
Please submit a letter of interest, a résumé with the names and contact information of three references, a portfolio containing 8–10 examples of graphic design work, and a self-addressed, stamped envelope for the return of your portfolio (if desired) to:

Design Department
Walker Art Center
1750 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55403

2008/2009 Fellowship deadline: June 9, 2008
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.

Week three of Insights features New York based Project Projects on Tuesday, March 18, at 7 pm in the Walker cinema. Tickets are available here.

Before joining forces to form Project Projects in 2004, Adam Michaels, a Minneapolis College of Art and Design graduate, was associate art director of Architecture magazine; and Prem Krishnamurthy, a Yale University graduate, had completed a Fulbright Fellowship and worked as a designer in Berlin and New York. The two forged a cool, calm, and collected aesthetic that resonates with their nonprofit and cultural sector clientele. Project Projects has emerged as a leading design studio working for such organizations as Artists Space, Creative Time, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, Metropolis magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Princeton Architectural Press, the Van Alen Institute, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Their work has been featured in Japan’s most progressive graphic design magazine, IDEA, as one of 100 of the world’s most interesting studio practices, and identified by the Art Directors Club of New York and Print magazine as a new design firm to watch.

In anticipation for Tuesday’s lecture, both Adam and Prem were kind enough to answer a few of life's most--and possibly least--pressing questions:

Adam Michaels:
1. What have you been obsessing about?
This photograph:

Depicting the Swedish psychedelic rock band Träd, Gräs och Stenar on tour in Stockholm in 1971. Talk about hybrid modernities…

2. What’s your most prized possession?
One strong contender would be this painting:

Which I purchased directly from its maker, John Fahey, for $5 on May 23, 1998. That evening, he performed an experimental electric guitar set at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, IL, making for a stunning amalgamation of eccentric American genius. Fahey dressed for the occasion in red sweat shorts, a ragged red t-shirt, and massive red and white hi-tops.

3. What are you reading?
I just finished Enter Naomi by Joe Carducci, a fragmented but worthwhile first-person account of the early- to mid-period of SST records. Otherwise, I’m a big fan of Owen Hatherley’s two blogs, Sit down man, you’re a bloody tragedy and The Measures Taken.

4. What’s one of your guilty pleasures?
Excessive time spent at the studio (such as right now, for example)

5. What do you consider the most overrated virtue
Is versatility considered a virtue?

6. What is one of the most unexpected influences on your design?
I must admit I’m struggling to separate the unexpected from the expected here…

7. What were you doing before you responded to this questionnaire?
Typesetting

8. What question do you wish we’d asked you?
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

…

Prem Krishnamurthy:
1. What have you been obsessing about?
Klaus Wittkugel (1910-1985), an under-recognized East German designer

2. What’s your most prized possession?
My Leica M6.

3. What are you reading?
The Forger by Cioma Schonhaus and Alan Bance; Searching for Sebald: Photography after W.G. Sebald

4. What’s one of your guilty pleasures?
Madonna

5. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Reserve

6. What is one of the most unexpected influences on your design?
H.P. Lovecraft

7. What were you doing before you responded to this questionnaire?
Teaching someone how to make Photoshop masks to color-correct photographs

8. What question do you wish we’d asked you?
What book do I wish I had never read?

2001 / 02

2002 / 03

2003 / 04

2004 / 05

2005 / 06

2006 / 07

2007 / 08


…
2001 / 02 designed by Santiago Piedrafita
2002 / 03 designed by Linda Byrne
2003 / 04 designed by Chad Kloepfer
2004 / 05 designed by Chad Kloepfer
2005 / 06 designed by Matt Rezac
2006 / 07 designed by Emmet Byrne
2007 / 08 designed by Layla Tweedie-Cullen

24 x 8 inches, 6 x 8 inches (trim) 8 page barrel fold, gatefold or “that other fold”…sometimes 4/4, sometimes 2/2.
Click thumbnails below for larger view:

For 20 years, the Walker's Out There Festival has brought provocative and unexpected theatrical experiences to the Twin Cities. Featuring artists who mix movement, media, text, styles, visual culture, and technology with abandon, Out There has always been a visually and conceptually rich project for the Design Department to undertake.

Through its first 17 years, the festival’s vehicle for promotion was a newspaper insert:

1.

During its 18th year (and the subsequent years to follow) the piece became a more traditional mailer:

2.

3.

This year’s piece, while still remaining true to format, moved from a gatefold to resemble something more like a miniature poster. It was printed 5/2 on Kromekote which is cast coated and allows for one side (the 2 color side) to be uncoated while the other side (5 color) gets the coated treatment:

4. 5.

The font of choice was Guillaume Grall’s Jodie Foster Typeface for Posters:

6.

…and while on the topic of the Jodie Foster Typeface for Posters, we were wondering what it might look like if it was used in the original promotional material for Jodie Foster’s 1991 appearance at the Walker, so I whipped up a little something in like 2 seconds:

7. 8.

HOT. Finally; in rooting around through the archives I stumbled upon a couple older Out There pieces that were so very nineties (in a GOOD way). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any design credit information for either of these two but figured they were still worth highlighting. It’s always fun to see Walker in action:

9.
10.

…
img. 1: Out There 17 (2004) designed by Scott Ponik
img. 2: Out There 18 (2005) designed by Matt Rezac
img. 3: Out There 19 (2006) designed by Layla Tweedie-Cullen
img. 4/5: Out There 20 (2007) designed by Vance Wellenstein
img. 6: Jodie Foster Typeface for Posters designed by Guillaume Grall
img. 7: The original Jodie Foster, Growing Up On-Screen (1991) retrospective catalog designed by Brian Boyce
img. 8: Jodie Foster, Growing Up On-Screen retrospective catalog with edited type treatment
img. 9: Out There 7 (1995) designer unknown
img. 10: Out There 10 (1998) designer unknown