THURSDAY 25 OCTOBER 2007 6:30–9:00PM: Crouwel/Vignelli

Wim Crouwel.



Massimo Vignelli.

A rare opportunity to see and hear these godfathers of modernist graphic design and corporate identity.

From Aiga.org:
Wim Crouwel, Dutch graphic designer, exhibition designer, museum director and educator, established his first freelance design practice in Amsterdam in 1954. In 1963 he became one of the five founding partners of Total Design, so called because it was the first multidisciplinary design studios in the Netherlands. During the sixties and the seventies he was responsible for many of the posters, catalogues, and exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. From 1985-1993, Wim was director of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. In 1967 he launched his New Alphabet within the Quadrat-Print series of journals published by Pieter Brattinga and his printing firm Steendrukkerij De Jong. This radical typographic experiment proposed new letterforms as a response to new technology. It was commissioned by Olivetti for a new typewriter font and although completed it was not released at the time due to changes in technology. The basis of all Wim's work is a strong underlying grid system, his typefaces being a logical extension of this grid. Within the last two years The Foundry in London has digitalized and marketed four of Wim's typefaces.

Massimo Vignelli, Italian designer of graphic and corporate identity programs, publications, architectural graphics, exhibitions, furniture and products of all kinds, has lived and worked in New York for the past four decades. Massimo studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano from 1950 to 1953 and later trained at the Universita di Architetttura in Venice. His first professional position was as a designer of glassware for Venini, and from 1958 to 1960 he taught design at the Institute of Design, Chicago, while his wife, Lella Vignelli worked for architects, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. In 1960, the couple returned to Milan and founded the Lella and Massimo Vignelli Office for Design and Architecture. Four years later, Massimo began creating graphics for the Container Corporation of America, and designed its new logo. In 1965, with Bob Noorda and Jay Doblin he founded Unimark International, a design consultancy originally based in Milan. Soon after, The Vignellis moved to the U.S. and in 1966 Unimark established a New York office, specializing in corporate identity. In 1971, Vignelli Associates was established and subsequently designed corporate identity programs for Knoll, American Airlines, Bloomingdales, Xerox, Lancia, Cinzano, and Ford Motors. Massimo also turned his attention to designing furniture for Sunar, Rosenthal, Morphos and Knoll, including the Handkerchief Chair and Paper Clip table for Knoll. Some of the most well-known work of the Vignellis includes directional signage for the New York and Washington, D.C. subway systems.

Alice Twemlow is the chair of a new MFA program in Design Criticism at the School of Visual Arts, which launches in the fall of 2008. Alice writes about design for publications including Design Issues, Design Observer, Good, Eye, I.D., New York Magazine, Paper, Print, The Architect’s Newspaper, and Varoom. She is the author of What is Graphic Design For? (Rotovision, 2006), StyleCity New York (Thames & Hudson, 2005) and has contributed essays to Jonathan Barnbrook’s monograph, Barnbrook Bible (Booth Clibborn, 2007), Looking Closer 5: Critical Writings on Graphic Design (Allworth Press, 2007), ELSE/WHERE: MAPPING (Design Institute, 2006), and Why Not Associates 2 (Thames & Husdon, 2004). She has directed several design conferences, including “Voice: AIGA National Design Conference 2002," and “Being Here: Craft and Locality in Graphic Design,” held in Berlin in 2004, and co-directed “Looking Closer: AIGA Conference on Design History and Criticism.” Alice has an MA in Design History from the program run by the Royal College of Art and the V&A Museum in London, where she is currently a PhD candidate.

TIME AND PLACE

Thursday 25 October 2007 6:30–9:00PM
Tishman Auditorium
The New School
66 West 12th Street
Between Fifth and Sixth Avenues

6:30—7:00PM Check-in & admission
7:00—8:30PM Presentation
8:30—9:00PM Reception

"Low Life in the Golden Age" Golden Frame Poster

I thought This was a kind of interesting approach to backlit poster design. You see designers "color outside the lines" often on billboards, but I hadn't seen that kind of approach on a backlit poster box before. This is for the exhibition about farm life in The Netherlands, in paintings at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam-Schiphol. Including Adriaen van Ostade, Jan Steen & Jan Pieter van Baurscheit

Maria Magdalena Campos Pons - Exhibition Design and Branding

Elasticbrand, llc [My company] created the exhibition Design, branding and graphic design for the first retrospective exhibition by renowned cuban-american artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. The exhibition was organized and developed by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and curated by Lisa Freiman. See a few images of the project here.

Buy the Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons exhibition catolog here.

Picture This: New Ideas on Photography

Cranbrook Academy of Art candidates for Masters of
Fine Art (MFA) will show innovative new works in the
exhibition [i]Picture This: New Ideas on Photography[/i] at
the Museum of New Art, Detroit / Pontiac Michigan from
9 March through 14 April 2007.

Picture this: New ideas on photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art

Museum of New Art(MONA), Detroit
Pontiac Michigan
3.9.7 through 4.14.7
3.9.7 Opening reception with the artists 6p-8p
4.7.7 Group gallery talk and closing reception 3p-6p

Pontiac gallery hours
Thursday, Friday, Saturday weekly
12noon-6p
note: artists will host gallery hours daily

Presented by
Artcore and the Museum of New Art(MONA), Detroit

Museum of New Art(MONA), Detroit
Pontiac Michigan
7 North Saginaw Street
Pontiac, Michigan 48342
248.210.7560
[url]http://www.detroitmona.com[/url]

Mark Moskovitz at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ohio

Mark Moskovitz will be in an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ohio (MOCA Cleveland). The show is called side by side. Moskovitz's piece is called Future Perfect (I will have made). The concept is to juxtapose antiquated and primarily obsolete technique with modern materials and technology in order to enhance the idea of objects both pro-actively and retroactively. This non-linear exercise challenges the future with the past and the past with the future. This initial piece in the series features all hand-cut joinery (dovetails, mortise
and tenon, butterfly joints) and is constructed without powertools, glue, screws or other such fasteners. Surfaces are milled with a combination of hand-planing, draw knife, broad axe, and finished with a cabinet scraper. It is made from 100% recycled HDPE Plastic (milk jugs, etc.) and Polyester cord woven in a traditional style commonly associated with caning. The show also includes another Cranbrook Alumni, Barry Underwood, [Photography 1995.]

AIGA Chicago Fresh Talent 2006, Museum Boijmans Installation, VIDE Summer Experiences and ID Magazine's ID40

The Strange Attractors have been busy, here are a few news items from their studio, Strange Attractors Design (Catelijne van Middelkoop & Ryan Pescatore Frisk). They just returned from Chicago, where they were honored to be AIGA's Fresh Talent speakers for 2006. They also just completed a large (49 square meters) Typographic Installation, commissioned by Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. VIDE commissioned them to create a video to promote their Summer Experiences, where they will be teaching a workshop in July. Lastly, if you haven't seen ID Magazine, SA have been included as one of the ID40 for this year.