Design

This morning design director and curator Andrew Blauvelt spoke about Walker design at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., as part of a public program series featuring 2009 National Design Awards recipients. The Walker was this year’s winner in Corporate and Institutional Achievement. Andrew spoke about technology and design alongside Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel, later taking questions from Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer.

The video from the panel is now available in case you missed the webcast:

The first 11 or so minutes are without sound or are the audience getting in their seats, but after that, the quality is quite good.

In the afternoon, all the award winners were invited to the White House for lunch with First Lady Michelle Obama.

As far as I can tell, Scott Thomas was here at the Walker as recently as last November when we screened the film Typeface, featuring his group The Post Family (verified, I think, by this interview with local letterpress firm Studio on Fire, who also presented their work at the same screening). Though come to think of it, that screening took place only a couple of days after Barack Obama’s election win, so maybe he was still hard at work in Chicago. Regardless, Scott will be speaking at the Walker on Tuesday night about his role as the Design Director of the historic Barack Obama campaign and its groundbreaking branding effort. Joining him will be Sol Sender, the man who spearheaded the development of the Obama logo, possibly the most hope-drenched and emotion-laden piece of vector art to ever enter the public consciousness. The blog posts (and conspiracy theories) about this identity are e n d l e s s, but there’s nothing like hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth. Moderating the discussion will be Paul Schmelzer, editor of the Minnesota Independent news site and author of the blog Eyeteeth. You’ll also be able to check out a special exhibition of posters from Threadless Loves Democracy, a challenge to design the most unique and conceptual call to vote.

Designing Obama
Tuesday, May 12, 2009   7:00 pm
Walker Cinema

It was announced this week that the Walker is the recipient of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Corporate Achievement for 2009. The award is given to institutions that “use design as a strategic tool of its mission and exhibits ingenuity and insight in helping to advance the relationship between design and quality of life in the United States.” Some previous winners were Apple, Google, Target, Aveda, and Nike.

The award recognizes the history of design at the Walker, which dates back to the 1940s, when “design” was referred to as “everyday art,” a concept used to bridge the gap between people’s daily lives and the heady world of modern art. Since then, the Walker has hosted numerous exhibitions displaying the best of product design, graphic design, interior design, and architecture; published the influential magazine Design Quarterly; commissioned world famous designers to create everything from our building expansion to our custom typeface; maintained an in-house design studio and fellowship program; and integrated design into the fabric of the institution.

Now here’s Andrew to tell you all about it:

Speaking of Andrew, Mr. Blauvelt is featured prominently in Gary Hustwit’s new movie Objectified, which played to sold out crowds last night here at the Walker (it was great—definitely a sister film to Helvetica). If Hustwit plans on making a third movie about design, I’m hoping that he chooses to expand upon Andrew’s story about the Bionic Hamster.

Lux et Veritas: 2009 Yale University Graphic Design MFA Thesis Show: May 9–15
Closing reception: Friday, May 15 from 7–10 pm.

“This unconventional show does not present the students’ graphic works as design objects but instead shows them as a single illuminated collage which constantly rearranges itself. Print, motion, interactive, and site-specific design will be shown through video projection. When the gallery’s lights are off, the videos provide a shared, immersive experience of designed pieces. When the lights come on, the show disappears. By flattening their pieces into a seamless surface and wrapping the entire gallery with it, the designers build a world from their work.”

For additional information visit here or call 203 432 2622.

WALKER ART CENTER // DESIGN FELLOWSHIP 2009–2010 // design.walkerart.org/fellowship // Deadline: June 8, 2009

(left to right, top to bottom) iMac G4; The James Diamond Collection of Home Movies WAC 9.5 16mm BW; Eric Luken 13 JonBenéts; Nov 10 1991 1/8”=1”– 0”; Cho—Fro; Canon AP200; Hanging Out; Elizabeth Peyton Michelle and Sasha Obama Listening to Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention August 2008 2008; Galleries 4, 5, 6; Pantone Cool Gray 10C; John Baldessari I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art; telluridefilmfestival.org; Hella Jongerius Polder Sofa 2005; x 7601; La Ex; TELEVISION ASSASSINATION Bruce Conner Estar Base Print: NEG.1; Silky Furry Fleece Pillows; Norman Vincent Peale Enthusiasm Makes the Difference; Press Department Files Jan 84—May 86; Roasted Vegetable Panini D’Amico’s.

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Click here to see a selection of work from the studio
For information on how to apply: 2009/2010 Walker Art Center Design Fellowship

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There is also an opening for the Senior Graphic Designer position.
For information on how to apply: http://info.walkerart.org/jobs/detail.wac?id=5006

Text/Messages: Books by Artists, organized by Walker curator Siri Engberg and Walker librarian Rosemary Furtak, is a very exciting exhibition opening tomorrow, December 18, 2008, and will be up until April 19, 2009. It will feature artist books from the Walker’s extensive library and collection that rarely get displayed for public viewing, so its an absolute treat for this show to be happening. As a designer, many of these books have been highly influential, especially the typographic works by Dieter Roth and Lawrence Weiner. I was overwhelmed with nostalgia when I saw some of Edward Ruscha’s Los Angeles influenced books like Every Building on the Sunset Strip. Here are some installation images from the exhibition and a few of my favorite pieces on display:

fig.1: Dieter Roth; fig.2: Lawrence Weiner; fig.3: Edward Ruscha; fig.4: Allan Kaprow; fig.5: Yoko Ono; fig.6: Richard Tuttle

About Text/Messages:

“Books have historically been an important arena for artistic endeavor. Early in the 20th century, artists often illustrated existing texts, creating deluxe publications released in limited editions. By mid-century, many were beginning to see books as a more democratic way to present visual information. The rush of underground publishing in the 1960s and rise in widely distributed leaflets, posters, and magazines set the stage for an unprecedented exploration into the book as an art form, often reflecting contemporary movements such as Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, and feminism. Since then, newer modes of commercial printing and experimentations with handmade papers, unconventional methods of binding, and unexpected materials have vastly expanded the book’s potential.

Over the past 30 years, the Walker Art Center Library has amassed a significant holding of artists’ books and illustrated volumes that numbers some 1,600 objects. Usually accessible to the public only by appointment, these works, supplemented with pieces from the museum’s permanent collection, are now on view in the galleries for the first time in two decades.

Co-organized by Walker librarian Rosemary Furtak and Walker curator Siri Engberg, the show highlights this important trove of material and showcases examples from a broad range of artistic movements. The books and book-based works on view come from some of the most recognizable names in contemporary art as well as lesser known artists. The process of selecting the works in Text/Messages: Books by Artists was a fascinating endeavor for the curators, who found the premise of the exhibition to be an ideal opportunity to explore many areas within the Walker’s collections. Even in today’s digital age, artists’ continued engagement with books—as medium, material, and subject—is evidence, say Engberg and Furtak, that this is an area of artistic invention alive with ideas and possibilities.”

The exhibition’s identity, graphics and labels, designed by Walker design fellow Noa Segal, reference the card catalog system the Walker Library uses to organize it’s books. The actual call number for each book is beautifully and cleverly used as an informational and graphical basis for the show’s printed materials. In an upcoming post, a conversation between Segal and Walker curatorial fellow Dan Byers, will describe in detail the process and development of the visual identity of Text/Messages: Books by Artists.

Until then, make sure to check out upcoming events related to this exhibition:

ARTIST’S BOOK WORKSHOPS—
THURSDAYS, JANUARY 8, 15, 22, AND 29, 6 – 9 PM FREE
STAR TRIBUNE FOUNDATION ART LAB
Minnesota Center for Book Arts instructor Aki Shibata and artist Sam Hoolihan lead the curious on four bookmaking adventures that utilize audience-generated text messages, photos, found objects, and even paper! All materials will be provided. For details on individual workshops, visit calendar.walkerart.org.

CURATOR TALK—
THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 7 PM FREE
MEET IN THE MEDTRONIC GALLERY
Text/Messages exhibition curators discuss the history of the Walker’s collection of artists’ books and point out examples of works that have been key contributions to this dynamic area of artistic production.

PANEL DISCUSSION: THE ART OF THE BOOK—
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 7 PM FREE CINEMA
Free tickets at Bazinet Garden Lobby desk from 6 pm
Artist’s books have always held an important place in the Walker’s collection, yet they are rarely exhibited in the gallery. David Platzker, book dealer/scholar and former director of Printed Matter, Inc., moderates a discussion on the current state of artist’s book production. Panelists include artists Buzz Spector and Harriet Bart, and James Hoff of Primary Information.

Copresented by Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Rain Taxi Review of Books.

MULTIPLES MALL: A BOOKISH FAIR–
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 11 AM – 4 PM FREE
CARGILL LOUNGE AND LECTURE ROOM
Minnesota artists who make book-related multiples set up shop at the Walker for a day of merriment, complete with short presentations on the history of chapbooks, radical reasons for making multiples, and more. Artists’ books, chapbooks, zines, and other booklike objects will be featured. Come browse the offerings and purchase a piece from this local and thriving creative scene. For a full schedule of activities and a list of participants, visit mnartists.org/multiplesmall.

Copresented by mnartists.org, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and Rain Taxi Review of Books.

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In the spirit of Text/Messages, I will be posting in the upcoming month, conversations I’ve had with artists, designers and independent publishers at this year’s NY Art Book Fair about the various books, periodicals, and ‘zines that they’ve put out.

Talking with Kris Latocha of Paperback Magazine at NY Art Book Fair. Photo: Jessica Williams

It seems too good to be true, but SF author Samuel R. Delany is speaking at the Walker on November 15th, in conjunction with the exhibition Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis. Of his mind-bending masterpiece Dhalgren, critic Kate McKinney Maddalena writes  “… [it] ranks Delany with Samuel Beckett; I would teach it as a Nouveau Roman alongside the work of Duras and Borges.” If you’re new to Delany, I might start with Babel-17, in which he manages to extend the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to it’s unnatural and delirious conclusion.

It seemed as good a time as any to post some of my favorite science fiction book covers. Many designers unconsciously scan bookstore shelves for the work of Fred Troller, or Penguin paperbacks in general (omg Penguin Books has an online dating service?), or maybe now it’s Jon Gray, but for me it’s this series of Bantam science fiction covers from the ’70s and ’80s. I’ve found maybe 10 of these guys and a whole slew of rip-offs from other publishers. (Don’t ask me why I assume this series is the original and not itself a ripoff—I just know it. In my heart. They’re better.) The combination of the retro-futuristic illustrations, the bastardized Futura Black, and the sobriety of the layout is a beautiful example of restraint in a genre that relies on the fantastic. ***One detail you can’t see here is that the titles are all printed in metallic ink. ***I also threw in the cover for A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller, Jr., which is another amazing post-apocalyptic novel.

They weren’t sure, but Bantam publishing thinks that Leonard Leone was most likely the art director for these books. I managed to talk to him on the phone a few months ago, but that’s a story for another day . . . (he seemed more interested in talking about some books he designed in the basement of the White House than these science fiction paperbacks, go figure).

And if you want to see a more recent interpretation of Delany’s science fiction novels, look here. Otherwise, make sure to check out the lecture!

ASDF’s For a Brief Time Only… is a purchasable exhibition of 24 artists available at a photo developer near you. You can find it at any store that allows file uploading via the internet (including most major US drug-stores). The image files will be sent to the closest location near you, and within minutes you will be able to walk in and pick them up as prints.

This exhibition contains 24 small 4×6 photographic prints contained within the packaging provided by each store. Also included are a contact sheet with all the artists’ information, and a letter to the store employee reassuring that there is nothing wrong with the order.

The artists featured in this exhibition are Ken Ehrlich, John Sisley, Martin John Callanan, Miranda Lichtenstein, Lucky Dragons, eteam, Jim Skuldt, Mira O’Brien, Joshua Kit Clayton, Matt Keegan, Emily Mast, Brian Kennon, Lukas Geronimas, Amy Lam, Paul Pieroni, Moyra Davey, Graham Parker, Paul Branca, Penelope Umbrico, Lucy Raven, Bik Van der Pol, Emilie Halpern, Tim Ridlen, and Vlatka Horvat.

No money is being made by ASDF in this exhibition. You will purchase the show directly from the store (unless you can acquire it another way), which will probably cost around $5. So far this show is available throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. If you live elsewhere, and know of a store that meets the necessary requirements, please email ASDF and we will send the show near you.

The show is on view from November 6 to December 4.

For instructions on how to view the show at a location near you, please visit:

http://www.asdfmakes.com/nearyou

Please join us on Thursday, November 6, at 7 and 9 pm, for two screenings of Typeface. After the screening will be a conversation with its director, Justine Nagan; Bill Moran, St. Paul-based designer and letterpress guru who cowrote a book documenting Hamilton; and Greg Corrigan, designer and Hamilton technical director.

Typeface documents the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, the only such institution dedicated to the preservation, study, production, and printing of wood type. With 1.5 million pieces and more than 1,000 styles and sizes, the Hamilton’s is one of the premier wood-type collections in the world. The museum, however, is not just host to static holdings of preserved artifacts behind glass, but rather is an active educational center for letterpress workshops for designers and artists from across the Midwest and around the country, and a place where the last generation of skilled men and women who once created these intricate fonts—now in their seventies and eighties—can share their knowledge of this enduring craft.

In anticipation of this sneak preview, we interviewed Justine Nagan about the process of making Typeface.

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WALKER: How did you get involved with this film? Was your entry point the museum, the craft, or the people?

JUSTINE NAGAN: I’ve always had an interest in design and preservation, but my introduction to the museum was fairly random, and serendipitous! My husband Matt and I were coming back from a wedding in Door County and saw the sign for Two Rivers’ Ice cream sundaes… We stopped and stumbled on the museum.  Once inside we were just blown away by the collection and the space and I thought—this should be documented. After looking into it further, things clicked into place and it seemed the perfect collaboration for my first film.

W: Why make a film about an obsolete technology?

JN: I became fascinated with exploring the changing importance of analog technologies in our digital age. There is this theory that as we as a society sit at our computers all day, in the off hours, tactile and sensual experiences become all the more important. People are craving things with texture that they can hold in their hands—whether it’s knitting or playing guitar… Then there’s the whole nostalgia factor: LPs vs. ipod, film vs. video, letterpress vs. inkjet.

W: What kind of research did you do in preparation for the film?

JN: I reached out to people in the graphic design, letterpress, printing history and craft communities. I spent a lot of time on the internet. Paul Gehl at the Newberry was a wonderful resource.

W: Seeing as how you’re making a documentary about a museum which is already a very didactic source of information, how did you go about drawing the subtext out of the place?

JN: We use the museum as the locus and then follow several strands out from there. Through our cast of characters across the Midwest, all connected to the museum in some way, we are able to weave a thematic narrative that covers the various ideas we’re interested in. Among other things—how the value and purpose of older printing methods has changed as our society has transitioned into a digital age?  How is contemporary graphic art influenced by the history of the artform itself?  We try to raise questions about what to preserve, how to preserve it, and why it’s worth the effort.

W: Some obsolete technologies manage to take on a second life by addressing a different need or being adopted by a new (sub)culture in a different context. Do you think a revival or re-interpretation is inherent to any successful preservation movement?

N: I think evolution is key to preservation. Re-imagining and adapting technology, while maintaining the elements that made it interesting in the first place, ensures longevity of the medium. I think the new interest in letterpress and craft is sustainable. The current styles of letterpress may fade, only to be re-invented again by some future generation.

W: It’s hard to talk about your film’s potential impact in the design community without bringing up the immensely successful Helvetica — do you think Helvetica has opened any doors for your film, and how do you compare the two? Do you see them as complimentary films?

JN: I had been working on Typeface for years when Helvetica was released. At first, I was worried that they would compete, but then as soon as I saw Helvetica (and enjoyed it) I realized they were totally different works. I think Helvetica has shown what a voracious audience there is for films/discussions about type and design and that both films raise points about the prevalence and importance of type in society, but in the end they cover very different ground.

W: I was excited when I realized that Kartemquin Films, known for films such as Hoop Dreams and Stevie, was producing this. How is Kartemquin making this film differently than someone else would?

JN: Our films take a very long time to make—largely because we follow subjects over time and are invested in getting the story right. I think we worked to flesh out the documentary beyond just a film about type to be more of a discussion about the state of our culture in its current frenzied state. We try to show the opportunities and obstacles inherent in preserving a collection like Hamilton. I hope it resonates with audiences—both designers and laymen alike, and that it gets people thinking about how to take care of the things in their lives, jobs and communities that they value.

Nick Sherman

Dwadle & Gape, Yale’s 2008 Graphic Design MFA thesis book show opens at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing on October 24th. Future dates, both in Europe and the US, are scheduled to be announced later this year.

Taken from the exhibition’s gallery guide (pictured above):

“Books are important for many reasons. In a time of instant communication and instant gratification, books exhort us to slow down and consider things more carefully. Where everything that can be digitized will be digitized, books remind us of our physical, tactile relationship to the world. This is not to denounce the march of progress but rather, to realize that, as the book designer Irma Boom said, “books became much more interesting because of the internet.” New technologies do not replace old ones, they simply co-exist and refocus them.

This exhibition was collectively conceived by the Yale graduate graphic design class of 2008. At the end of our studies each of us produced a thesis book (a catalogue raisonné) which documents a cohesive body of work made over the course of two years, including a designer’s statement. These thesis books represent the cumulative sum of a methodology unique to the MFA graphic design program at Yale.

Josef Albers  established the graphic design department at Yale in 1950, the first degree program of its kind in the United States, and thesis books have been made and archived in the Sterling Memorial Library since 1967. The graphic design thesis at Yale is unique in that, where most programs focus on the elaboration of a single thesis project, at Yale the thesis is conceived of as a loose framework within which an individual develops a unique ‘visual method’, deployed across a large number of diverse projects over two years.

Thesis books are produced in small editions and vary greatly in their form, content, structure, size, and means of production, each calibrated to reflect its particular themes. While some explicate the work comprehensively, others use the work as source material to generate something entirely new. Some books emphasize craft and employ elaborate bookbinding techniques while others emphasize economy and standardization. The end result is a series of unique publications that sit somewhere between an artist’s book and a designer’s monograph.

The seemingly irreverent exhibition title Dawdle & Gape takes its inspiration from advice Sheila de Bretteville gave to our class –- in turn quoting Henry James –- when we began our MFA degrees in 2006. We were encouraged not only to work hard and harness our creative energies, but also to allow time to ‘dawdle and gape’ at anything and everything that sparked our interest in our newfound and incredibly rich surroundings. With this exhibition we hope to share some of the results of those efforts.”

Installation views of Dawdle & Gape at Zero-one Design Center, Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea.