Results tagged “SVA” from :: ( CRIT ) :: DESIGN BLOG ::
Last spring, Steven Heller asked me to talk in his office.
"This might be like taking coals to Newcastle," he began. Then he told me that the New York Times was looking for summer interns and asked if I'd like him to recommend me for the program.
I paused for a second, just a second and told him no, but thank you.
In that second, I realized that the MFA Design program at SVA had changed me. I had come to graphic design as a refugee from the neighboring field of journalism. I have a degree in political science and journalism, and I'd spent six years at a major daily newspaper in Omaha, Nebraska, designing section covers and losing quite a lot of the idealism that had come with my journalism degree.
But in that second in Steve's office, I could hear echoes of my 22-year-old self. To that woman, this opportunity would have been a pie-in-the-sky opportunity that would have been impossible to pass up.
But that woman didn't get that opportunity. Instead, I stayed at the Omaha World-Herald for six years until I could design the local cover in my sleep (column one for columnist, five columns at top for lead story, four-column stand alone art, column six for second-most-important story) and I was feeling such a professional inertia that I quit my job to go back to school.
Even after starting at the University of Iowa for my BFA in design, I relied on journalism for my livelihood, taking a part-time job as a copy editor at a small daily. But that daily was owned by Gannett, and a few days after I earned my BFA, I was laid off as part of a 10 percent, across-the-board cut by the company. It was no reflection on my work and my competence, the managing editor told me. It was a situation I'd never pictured myself having to face, a situation I thought was reserved for employees who were lazy or incompetent, and I thought it would be a black mark on my resume. This made it even more amazing to have the possibility of a New York Times internship dangled in front of me.
It wasn't until after I followed my initial instinct to say no and left Steve's office that my cautious side spoke up. How would I make money this summer? (That's right, it was that elusive creature, the paid internship.) What if I didn't find a better internship? Would potential employers see a blank spot on my resume and think I was unemployable?
But those rumblings subsided when I realized that the New York Times wasn't my dream anymore. In fact, I felt exhausted and unhappy at the very thought of going back to a newsroom every day. And, in case you're wondering, I didn't find another internship. I spent the summer sweating in my apartment while dyeing and screen printing small batches of bags for the little business I started to support myself last winter, and enjoying the freedom that business gave me to travel to Italy with the department's study abroad program and to spend a week at a time at home in Iowa with family and friends. It would have been much more difficult to do those things while holding an internship for the whole summer.
I spent last night meeting the incoming 2012 class, and of course the new students want to know what the next year will be like. They're excited at the prospect of taking classes with Stefan Sagmeister and Milton Glaser, but worried about the workload. I'm honest with them, and I tell them it will be a really difficult year. It may have been the toughest year of my life. There were weeks when I had to chose between sleeping and showering. There were times when I wondered if I'd made the right decision. But by the time you get done with the first year, there's a sense that you can take on anything. The workload prepares you for that.
In the end, though, the most extraordinary thing I took away from my first year in the MFAD program was a sense that I control my own destiny. If I can't find a job that works with the grueling MFA schedule, I'll start my own business. If I have an idea, I don't have to run it by a boss or an editor. I can find a way to take it to market, and if the audience doesn't support it, I feel like I now have the resilience to move on to the next thing. I'm not dependent on somebody else.
"This might be like taking coals to Newcastle," he began. Then he told me that the New York Times was looking for summer interns and asked if I'd like him to recommend me for the program.
I paused for a second, just a second and told him no, but thank you.
In that second, I realized that the MFA Design program at SVA had changed me. I had come to graphic design as a refugee from the neighboring field of journalism. I have a degree in political science and journalism, and I'd spent six years at a major daily newspaper in Omaha, Nebraska, designing section covers and losing quite a lot of the idealism that had come with my journalism degree.
But in that second in Steve's office, I could hear echoes of my 22-year-old self. To that woman, this opportunity would have been a pie-in-the-sky opportunity that would have been impossible to pass up.
But that woman didn't get that opportunity. Instead, I stayed at the Omaha World-Herald for six years until I could design the local cover in my sleep (column one for columnist, five columns at top for lead story, four-column stand alone art, column six for second-most-important story) and I was feeling such a professional inertia that I quit my job to go back to school.
Even after starting at the University of Iowa for my BFA in design, I relied on journalism for my livelihood, taking a part-time job as a copy editor at a small daily. But that daily was owned by Gannett, and a few days after I earned my BFA, I was laid off as part of a 10 percent, across-the-board cut by the company. It was no reflection on my work and my competence, the managing editor told me. It was a situation I'd never pictured myself having to face, a situation I thought was reserved for employees who were lazy or incompetent, and I thought it would be a black mark on my resume. This made it even more amazing to have the possibility of a New York Times internship dangled in front of me.
It wasn't until after I followed my initial instinct to say no and left Steve's office that my cautious side spoke up. How would I make money this summer? (That's right, it was that elusive creature, the paid internship.) What if I didn't find a better internship? Would potential employers see a blank spot on my resume and think I was unemployable?
But those rumblings subsided when I realized that the New York Times wasn't my dream anymore. In fact, I felt exhausted and unhappy at the very thought of going back to a newsroom every day. And, in case you're wondering, I didn't find another internship. I spent the summer sweating in my apartment while dyeing and screen printing small batches of bags for the little business I started to support myself last winter, and enjoying the freedom that business gave me to travel to Italy with the department's study abroad program and to spend a week at a time at home in Iowa with family and friends. It would have been much more difficult to do those things while holding an internship for the whole summer.
I spent last night meeting the incoming 2012 class, and of course the new students want to know what the next year will be like. They're excited at the prospect of taking classes with Stefan Sagmeister and Milton Glaser, but worried about the workload. I'm honest with them, and I tell them it will be a really difficult year. It may have been the toughest year of my life. There were weeks when I had to chose between sleeping and showering. There were times when I wondered if I'd made the right decision. But by the time you get done with the first year, there's a sense that you can take on anything. The workload prepares you for that.
In the end, though, the most extraordinary thing I took away from my first year in the MFAD program was a sense that I control my own destiny. If I can't find a job that works with the grueling MFA schedule, I'll start my own business. If I have an idea, I don't have to run it by a boss or an editor. I can find a way to take it to market, and if the audience doesn't support it, I feel like I now have the resilience to move on to the next thing. I'm not dependent on somebody else.
If you're familiar with the design triangle, you know you can't get things good, fast and cheap. At best, you're going to get two of the three.
Our class learned last semester that the design triangle applies to food, too. We would emerge from our night classes famished and needing something quick before we got back to work. Do you go cheap or good?
On one of those nights last winter, Alexej Steinhardt and I went out for pizza, and Alexej ran an idea by me: He wanted get a group of people together, and each would be responsible for a home-cooked meal one night a week, but everyone would be fed for the whole week. Did I think anyone would be interested?
I knew I would. After winter break, Alexej found three other people who were interested in participating, bringing the total to five, enough to cover one meal each weekday. And the food co-op (we gave up trying to find a more clever name for it) has been a success.
It works like this: Each of us chose a regular day when we bring in food (mine, for example, is Friday). If that day doesn't work some week, for whatever reason, I'm responsible for finding someone to switch with me, and the co-op members are pretty flexible. We've even opened up guest chef spots for classmates who don't want to commit to the whole semester, but would like to participate for a week.
Although we've had vegetarian guest chefs, no one in the core group is a vegetarian, so meat is allowed most weeks. We've outlined some food preferences: I hate peppers and raw tomatoes, Jinah Min won't eat cucumbers, and there's a strong dislike of mayonnaise among most of the group. But for the most part, the co-op keeps an open mind about what's served. We try to prepare food that's relatively healthful. The variety of food has been amazing, and we've only had a few repeats.
And although there's no expectation that we have to eat as a group, the social aspect has been a bonus. And occasionally we do something that is more fun as a group, such as sushi or cheese night. Last week, after a few days of beautiful warm weather, I had an unstoppable craving for ice cream. So I found a recipe I'd been saving for a few years, and we made ice cream from scratch in plastic bags full of salty ice water (which you can see to the left). I wasn't sure it would work, but after 10 minutes of shaking freezing Ziploc bags, everybody got to eat fresh vanilla ice cream.There have been a few breakdowns during weeks when our workload is higher, but they've been rare. Usually, someone is far enough ahead of the game to cover for someone else who's struggling with an assignment that week. And even though we spend a little more time shopping and cooking one day of the week, the payoff is more than worth it when we don't have worry at all about the other four days.
Mark your calendars for Tuesday, April 20 (28 days away, but who's counting?) for the SVA MFA DESIGN THESIS FORUM which will be held at the SVA Theatre.
21 talented SVA Masters Degree candidates will present and defend their thesis projects to an industry-filled audience.
Join us for UNLEASHED when the MFA candidates for 2010 each present their unique concepts in ten minutes followed by five minutes for audience feedback and questions. Every year, MFAD candidates’ work reflects the leading-edge quality of the school and its graduates. You will be inspired, surprised, and motivated by the ideas of our future design leaders.
SVA MFA Designer as Author
THESIS FORUM
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
SVA Theater
333 West 23rd Street
New York, New York 10011
The “SVA MFA Designer As Author” program is predicated on the growing need for content providers throughout visual media. Building on students’ fluency with the graphic design language of type and image, the MFA Design program is the first in the United States developed exclusively to encourage authorship and entrepreneurship across a broad range of media. As a result of this ground-breaking curriculum, students envision, develop and present real concepts and products designed to enter the marketplace and serve a specific audience.
Springtime will soon be here and there are many events to attend this month. To start off March, we're giving away 10 free tickets to the AIGA/NY Jessie Auersalo talk. To get a ticket, just post a comment and share an event we can blog about. First come first serve.
1. Small Talk: Jessie Auersalo/BIG ACTIVE
In his first-ever U.S. presentation, Jesse Auersalo will discuss his design background, its relationship to his personal background and how they all affect what he is doing now. Jesse is an illustrator dividing his time between Brooklyn and Helsinki. His distinctive, character-driven work is marked by an aesthetic he describes as, "polished and clean, as well as sticky and dirty." His images are uniquely powerful, dark, intriguing and captivating.
http://www.aigany.org/events/details/10S5/
When: March 3, 2010, 6:30 pm–8:00 pm
Where: Bumble and bumble, 3rd fl, 415 West 13th Street, New York, NY
Price: $20 members, $10 student members, $35 general public
2. Armory Arts Week
Art insiders spend their whole lives traveling from fair to fair—Venice, Basel, Miami Beach, London—but each March they return to New York for Armory Arts Week. "With Basel, in Miami, it's like the whole world moves [there] for one week, but for the rest of the year it's not really an art city," says Katelijne De Backer, longtime director of The Armory Show,"New York is the center of the art world." The Armory Show: New Art by Living Artists (Pier 94) and Modern: Art of the 20th Century (Pier 92). The twelfth edition marks another milestone for the fair with the introduction of Armory Focus, a new section that will feature an important art community every year and is premiering with Berlin. This year The Armory Show features 267 galleries from 31 countries.
http://www.armoryartsweek.com
When: March 4-7, 2010, 12:00 pm–8:00 pm
Where: Various locations, New York, NY
Price: $30 general public, $10 students
3. Working with Inhibitions to Creativity
Marilyn LaMonica, MPS, NCPsych, will discuss how psychoanalytic theory provides a unique explanation of impediments to creative work. Clinical cases of a filmmaker, a painter and a writer will be used to demonstrate how explorations of fantasized object relations lead to freer access to creative potential.
http://www.schoolofvisualarts.edu/events/index.jsp?sid0=70&page_id=181&content_id=3265
When: March 5, 2010, 6:30 pm–8:00 pm
Where: MPS Art Therapy, 133/141 West 21 Street, room 101C, New York, NY
Price: Free and open to the public. RSVP 212.592.2610 or arttherapy@sva.edu
4. The Tablet
Khoi Vinh, design director of NYTimes.com, and Matt Jacobs, designer for Six Apart, will discuss new modes of media presentation. They will address how the size of an object frames the user experience and how designers need to consider grid, typography and behavior differently. Books. Magazines. Televisions. We hear these words, and understand well what shape their content will take. But “tablet?” “Digital magazine?” How does the size of the objects frame the user experience? Influence their portability or accessibility? How will the experience with these devices compare with other more “fuller-figured” media? How do we need to consider grid, typography, and behavior differently? Hear from four perspectives how telling stories in new spaces influences new experiences.
http://interactiondesign.sva.edu/events/entry/lecture_the_tablet/
When: March 10, 2010, 6:30 pm–8:30 pm
Where: Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn
Price: $6 general public, register at http://svaixd-tablet.eventbrite.com
5. Collaboration: Pablo Medina/Parsons School of Design
Can Collaboration Help Haiti? On Thursday, January 28th, Pablo Medina gave a tough assignment to the 15 students in his Experimental Typography class at Parsons The New School for Design: Use the medium of typography to help Haiti. Students are now working in pairs to satisfy the assignment. Each pair has one week to come up with 15 ideas and one more week to execute the very best of those 15 ideas. On March 11th, Pablo and his students will jointly present each of the final solutions. At the end of the presentation, the audience will vote for the most successful project and that project will - in the following weeks - be executed to achieve the ultimate goal: to help Haiti. All event proceeds will be donated to Yéle Haiti.
http://www.aigany.org/events/details/10C3/
When: March 11, 2010, 6:30 pm–8:00 pm
Where: Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, NY
Price: $13 members, $26 general public
6. Chris Hacker: Design Thinking & Sustainability
At the top of Chris Hacker’s agenda is the imaginative application of sustainable design thinking. He has overseen this process as Chief Design Officer at Johnson & Johnson for the last five years, and at Aveda™ for the previous five. Dubbed as “the man to bring sustainable design to corporate America”, by ID Magazine, Hacker and several members of his design and engineering team will explain their approach to sustainability in both design and business, illuminating his mission: to change the way designers think about sustainability. They will discuss how they have updated the design process at J&J, where over the last 5 years Chris has built a 120-person think tank, including an award-winning design team, where environmentally conscious decisions are a fundamental part of the process. Hacker is Chief Design Officer of the NY-based Global Strategic Design Office, Johnson & Johnson Group of Consumer Companies, leading all creative processes for brand identity, packaging design and brand imagery at J&J Consumer. Prior to J&J, Hacker lead Marketing and Design for Aveda™. His work was awarded the 2004 National Design Award for Corporate Achievement from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
http://www.aigany.org/events/details/10DS/
When: March 12, 2010, 6:30 pm–8:00 pm
Where: Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, New York, NY
Price: $20 members, $10 students, $30 general public
7. Design Trust: Partnerships to Improve Public Space
Deborah Marton, executive director of the Design Trust for Public Space, will provide an overview of several of the organization’s projects, the process that went into shaping them and their influence on public space in New York City.
http://dcrit.sva.edu/view/events/lecture-with-deborah-marton/
When: March 16, 2010, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm
Where: Design Criticism MFA Department, 136 West 21st Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY
Price: Free and open to the public. RSVP 212.592.2228 or dcrit@sva.edu
8. The Buzellis, A Marriage of Art Direction & Illustration
Soo Jin Buzelli is the creative director of PLANSPONSOR, PLANADVISER and ai5000 magazines; Tim O'Brien once said SooJin's magazines were like "Fantasy Island for illustrators." Chris Buzelli is an award-winning illustrator who works in advertising, publishing and editorial for clients pretty much everywhere. Together they make a powerful and creative team whose love and support for illustration is hard to match. Chris Buzelli will be signing limited-edition prints after the lecture.
http://www.spd.org/calendar.php
When: March 16, 2010, 6:30 pm–8:30 pm
Where: Design Criticism MFA Department, 136 West 21st Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY
Price: $10 members, $7 students, $15 general public RSVP 212.838.2560 or jessica@societyofillustrators.org
9. Type Salon: Cooking with Type
Douglas Riccardi will speak about his cookbook work for Mario Batali and give an survey of cookbook design and typography through the years: discovering trends, uncovering the roots of conventions, and perhaps even discovering new possibilities. After working in New York and Italy for 10 years, Ricardi founded Memo Productions in 1993. The studio’s work focuses on brand identity and development with many clients in the restaurant, food and hospitality industry. He has designed 8 best-selling cookbooks and for Mario Batali and 8 restaurants for celebrity chef Mario Batali.
http://tdc.org/tdc/archives/1049
When: March 18, 2010, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm
Where: Type Directors Club, 347 West 36th Street, Suite 603, New York, NY
Price: Free for members, $15 students, $20 general public RSVP 212.633.8643 or director@tdc.org
10. Stewart Smith
Greg Brunkalla has been directing commercial content, music videos, and other moving images in New York City since 2002. He has recently founded a new media company with industry friends called Legs, based out of Milk Studios in NYC. Legs' first project was a multifaceted black-and-white film campaign for Diesel.com. Greg was nominated for an Emmy for a series he directs for The New York Times Style Magazine. Other clients include: Nike, Levi's, Kia, and Diet Coke. Agencies he has worked with include: Mother, Taxi, Farfar, Duetsche, 180, and Ogilvy. He lives in Brooklyn. Greg is part of the ADC Young Guns 6 class of winners, honored in 2008.
http://www.apple.com/retail/soho/
When: March 22, 2010, 6:30–8:00 pm
Where: Apple Store SoHo, 103 Prince Street, New York, NY
Price: Free, no reservation required
11. E Pluribus Unum: Creating Design Policy in the U.S.A.
Casey Jones, Director of Design Excellence and the Arts for the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), will discuss his role in overseeing the design and development of new and renovated federal buildings as well as the artwork commissioned for them. Previously, Jones led jones|kroloff with Reed Kroloff (Director of Cranbrook Academy), an architect selection advisory firm whose clients included the Whitney Museum of Art, Yale University, Friends of the High Line and Brad Pitt’s Global Green USA.
http://dcrit.sva.edu/view/events/lecture-with-casey-jones/
When: March 30, 2010, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm
Where: Design Criticism MFA Department, 136 West 21st Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY
Price: Free and open to the public. RSVP 212.592.2228 or dcrit@sva.edu
If you've ever wanted to study with the best typographers in Italy while eating gelato and overlooking beautiful Italian scenery, then sign up for the 2010 SVA Masters Workshop in Venice and Rome.
For two weeks, students will be immersed in multidisciplinary design: architecture, art, literature, and typography. As the website states, "Our workshop in design history, theory and practice is an intensive period of study that enables students to research and analyze the roots of typography, draw type and letters from the classic models while practicing contemporary design with Italian and American designers and design historians."
2010 SVA Masters Workshop
Design History, Theory and Practice in Venice and Rome
May 30–June 5, 2010: Venice
June 6–12, 2010: Rome
Program Tuition: $6,700
Tuition includes all accommodations, continental breakfast, workshops, transportation for off-site visits, guided tours of architectural and archaeological sites, train from Venice to Rome, receptions.
The application deadline is March 15, 2010.
However, if the $6,700 tuition sticker shock leaves you paralyzed, you can still embody la dolce vita by becoming a fan of the SVA Masters Workshop Facebook Fan Page.
The Society of Publication Designers will be hosting SVA's own Richard Wilde for the SPD Speaker Series. If you're an SVA graphic design department alum, then you remember sitting in the darkened 23rd Street amphitheater, hoping that your work would appear on screen in Richard's class.
This year marks Richard Wilde's 40th year of shaping the visual culture at SVA. "The Wilde Bunch" will be an evening where Wilde will share with us one of the most important parts of being creative: taking time to refocus your creativity.
As Richard puts it,
"This talk will address the idea that we have two natures. One that is acquired and one that is inborn. Often times, in the course of our careers we lose sight of our essential nature and our work becomes more mechanically driven and we also lose sight of our original goal of being an artist. The question is, how do I make my work more vital, which will give meaning to my life? "
SVA is celebrating Richard Wilde's 40th anniversary at the school with a special exhibit of work from 200 alumni, a special reception and a fancy dinner. So join us tomorrow, Tuesday, October 6th, at the Helen Mills Theatre to help kick off the month-long celebration of all things Wilde.
RICHARD WILDE
Refueling: Putting Myself Back Into My Work
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Helen Mills Theatre
137-139 West 26th Street (between 6th & 7th Aves), NYC
7:00 - 8:30 PM, doors open at 6:30
Tickets (cash only at the door):
SPD Members, $10 in advance, $15 at the door
Non-Members, $15 in advance, $20 at the door
Students & faculty with valid ID: $7 in advance, $5 at the door
Click here to register.
