Visual Arts Briefs

MFA Design Department Co-chair Lita Talarico was the MC of this year’s Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA) ceremony, which was held in Taipei, Taiwan in collaboration with the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA). Of the more than 4,600 entries received, only 42 finalists were chosen for the ADAA, which honor the most talented student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, developers, and computer artists from higher education institutions worldwide who have created projects using Adobe software.

Another member of the SVA community, MFA Interaction Design Department Chair Liz Danzico, served as a judge for the ADAA competition. “Over the years, the tools themselves have become so sophisticated that the students are able to realize their ideas in a much more sophisticated way than ever before,” said Danzico. “This competition showcases those great ideas that are expressed with a high level of technical ability.”

Image: Lita Talarico at the Adobe Design Achievement Awards.

MFA Design Department Co-chair Steven Heller received a 2011 National Design Award from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum at a gala on October 20 at Pier Sixty in New York City. To view more photos from the event, visit our Facebook page.

Photo: Richard Patterson, courtesy of Cooper-Hewitt.

Feeding the Dragon: A Culinary Travelogue Through China with Recipes (Andrews McMeel Publishing 2011) by Nate Tate (BFA 2006 Graphic Design) and Mary Kate Tate: With little more than two backpacks, a camera, and a tarp, Mandarin-speaking American brother and sister Nate and Mary Kate Tate traveled more than 9,700 miles throughout China to create a visual narrative of food and culture, all in the name of discovering the country’s best recipes. To learn more about the book and the trip, visit the Feeding the Dragon Web site.

Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel: Everything You Need to Know to Create Great Work and Get It Published (Barron’s) by Daniel Cooney (BFA 1998 Cartooning): Cooney offers valuable tips of the trade in this comprehensive book, which covers everything from the language of comics and graphic novels, to establishing characters and story structure, to creating layouts, making panel transitions and selling the finished product. Cooney will be signing copies of the book at New York Comic Con in Artist Alley from October 13 – 16.

GREY (Loaded Barrel Studios) by Jared Barel (MFA Design 2005), Jordan Barel and Alex Goz: This “live action” graphic novel weaves a twisted tale of horror, science fiction, drama and intrigue. GREY follows the story of John Mack, a former New York City cop who moves to the country in hopes of living a more quiet life. To his surprise, he soon discovers that small town life isn’t always what it seems when an alien arrives and disrupts things. Watch a trailer for GREY below.

The 2011 issue of The Annual, SVA’s yearly print publication offering an inside look at our ever-evolving College, is now available for view online. Featuring an introduction by President David Rhodes, this year’s edition traces the history of SVA’s always expanding roster of master’s programs and offers a preview of the new ones coming in 2012—MA Critical Theory and the Arts, MFA Design for Social Innovation, and MFA Products of Design.

Aside from conversations with the chairs of each of those departments—Robert Hullot-Kentor, Cheryl Heller, and Allan Chochinov, respectively—the 2011 Annual also features an exclusive interview with MFA Design Department Co-chair Steven Heller, who talks about how he develops new graduate programs and explains how SVA is “an incubator of practical work,” among other things.

To read the complete 2011 Annual, visit SVA.edu. Also on view: Student Demographics and Allocation of Tuition & Fees.

Helping an older generation plug into the Internet to leave behind a legacy has led to success for Lillian Lee (MFA 2011 Design). The SVA alumnus was recently announced as one of 22 winners of the 2011 Sappi Ideas that Matter grant program for her project, The Grand Assembly, which will become a curated online community allowing creative professionals 60 years of age or older to showcase their work and share their knowledge with a new generation. It strives to empower these individuals to become entrepreneurs through the sale of the work displayed and will allow them to find opportunities to be commissioned or teach workshops.

Lee’s $40,000 grant will go toward further establishing and developing The Grand Assembly, including the creation of video profiles to record the lives of these creatives, as well as organizing a physical exhibition of their work. The Grand Assembly is working in partnership with the Carter Burden Center for the Aging, which according to its Web site “promotes the well-being of individuals 60 and older through a broad array of direct social services and volunteer programs.”

“Society tends to focus on the endeavors of the younger generations, while not engaging the generations that came before,” Lee said of her underlying motivation. “We are in a longevity revolution with people living longer lives. It is necessary to create social relevance for older generations since it impacts both the social and economic well-being of society.”

The Ideas that Matter program was initiated more than 10 years ago through Sappi Fine Paper North America, a branch of global pulp and paper company group Sappi Limited. It is open to designers, design firms, agencies, in-house design departments, instructors, design students and student groups. Submissions must benefit a nonprofit organization and winners are awarded a grant of $5,000 to $50,000 by an independent committee of established design professionals. To date, Ideas that Matter has provided funding of approximately $12 million to more than 500 projects.

Image: Logo for The Grand Assembly. Courtesy of Lillian Lee.

MFA Design Department Co-chair Steven Heller and other winners of the 2011 National Design Awards were honored by first lady Michelle Obama at the White House this week (watch video below). Heller was recognized for earning the Design Mind Award, which honors “a visionary who has effected a paradigm shift in design thinking or practice through writing, research and scholarship.”

According to Businessweek, Michelle Obama offered another nod to SVA during the ceremony, quoting the College’s Acting Chairman Milton Glaser. “Good design is good citizenship,” she said, emphasizing that good design improves life for everyone.

Heller and the other recipients will receive their awards from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum at a gala on October 20 at Pier Sixty in New York City. For more information and to view all the winners of the 2011 National Design Awards, visit Cooper-Hewitt.

For the past six weeks, students of SVA’s summer intensive program Impact! Design for Social Change have had the opportunity to combine their creative skills with their desire to make a positive difference in the world. Aside from engaging in a series of educational field trips, the international group of designers also took in lectures by Wendy Brawer, founding director of Green Map System; Cheryl Heller, chair of SVA’s new MFA Design for Social Innovation program; Asi Burak, co-president of Games for Change; and many others. With the help of DesigNYC, the students were also divided into teams, matched with New York City-based non-profit groups, and asked to come up with improvements for the organizations. In addition, each student was tasked with developing an individual project that focused on community social advocacy. It was a busy month and a half indeed.

The Briefs had a chance to visit the class on a day when the students were pitching their individual project concepts to Allan Chochinov, chair of the MFA Products of Design Department. Also on hand to offer critiques were Impact! co-founders Steven Heller (MFA Design Department co-chair) and Mark Randall (a principal at Worldstudio), as well as Yellowbrickroad founder and president Bob McKinnon.

Each student brought a palpable earnestness to his or her presentation and the feedback was direct and constructive. Impact! student Tania Jimenez, a freelance art director, graphic designer, and researcher based in Montreal, proposed her idea of helping to break down cultural barriers and stereotypes by organizing a series of cleverly-named potluck dinners in her community. “Where does this take place?” Heller asked. “How is this going to happen?” After Jimenez explained, Chochinov nodded in approval and advised her to take a more DIY approach. “Just do this on your own, don’t take an official route.”

Etienne Pham, an artist and West Coast transplant who now works as a designer in New York, offered his idea for a project that would cater to the unique healthcare needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender elders. “This project is about empathy, and you obviously have a lot of it,” Heller said. “Remember to keep your focus on that.” Among the other thoughtful proposals was Zennie McLoughlin’s plan to reduce the demand for plastic bottles of water, and Chris Seabrooks’ idea for a comic that helps school kids deal with the issue of bullying.

On Friday, August 19th at 133/141 West 21st Street, the 2011 Impact! students present their final projects and the public is invited. From 10am – noon, they offer their team presentations on the ideas they came up with for Southwest Brooklyn IDC, Lower East Side Business Improvement District, East River Development Alliance, and Northfield Community LDC. From 2 – 5pm, they will deliver presentations of their refined individual projects. And from 5 – 8pm, they will party—they’ve earned it.

Images: (top) From left: Steven Heller, Mark Randall, and Bob McKinnon. (bottom) Impact! student Jacqueline Minkler. Photos by Pascal Filion.

MFA Design Department faculty member Stefan Sagmeister was featured in Core77 recently for a screening event at the SVA Theatre, where he showed an excerpt from his upcoming documentary The Happy Film. Still in progress, the movie seeks to explore whether or not an individual can train oneself to be happy, and follows the esteemed designer on his quest to achieve an elevated state of being through experiments with cognitive therapy, meditation, and drugs.

During the discussion portion of the event, Sagmeister explained, “I wanted to make a film about happiness, but it was too vague. So I wanted to make a film about my own happiness, something that I was very close to,” reports Core77.

The Happy Film, which Sagmeister is co-directing with renowned Web designer, author and filmmaker Hillman Curtis, also features the designer trying—and failing—to solicit dates from female strangers in a busy public market. But so far during the filming, Sagmeister has been able to find something that does make him happy: “A careful selection of 12 songs, a moped on a small winding road in Bali, and the wind flowing through my hair. This always sends the chills through me,” he said.

To read the full article, visit Core77. To read an interview with Sagmeister about the project, go to Fast Co. Design. Watch a teaser for The Happy Film below.

Irina Lee (MFA 2010 Design) has turned her SVA thesis project First Person American into a thriving initiative that is encouraging immigrants to share their experiences of coming to the U.S. Since winning a Sappi Ideas That Matter Grant in 2010, First Person American has teamed up with Active Voice and Shelbyville Multimedia to present Welcoming Stories, a series of five pilot episodes featuring immigrants telling their tales about the people who helped them settle in when they first arrived in America.

“Welcoming Stories is a way to spark public interest and engage the community in something that is traditionally taken for granted,” says Lee. “I want people to walk in the storytellers’ shoes, and experience a small epiphany about how one individual can make a huge difference in another’s life. These pilot episodes are especially important in a city like New York, where so much of its energy is fueled by cultural diversity and immigrant communities.”

But Welcoming Stories doesn’t end there. After watching the series online, viewers are invited to submit their own videos, photos and written stories to adriana@activevoice.net. Approved videos will then be shared on the Welcoming Stories blog.

Watch one of the pilot episodes below. To view all of them, visit Welcoming Stories.

Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State (Phaidon Press, 2011) by Steven Heller (MFA Design Department Co-chair): Recently released in paperback, Heller’s book explores how the dictatorships of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist China, and Soviet Russia all used graphic design to sell their messages to the public. Iron Fists also draws comparisons between those tactics and the branding strategies used by many modern corporations.

Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story, by Paul Shaw (faculty, Art History and BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Departments): Newly redesigned to accommodate 15 additional photographs and republished by The MIT Press, this limited-edition book traces the history of Helvetica as the official typeface of the NYC subways. To listen to a recent interview with Shaw about the book on The Leonard Lopate Show, visit WNYC.

Los Jardines de México, photographs by Janelle Lynch (MFA 1999 Photography) with texts by José Antonio Aldrete-Haas and Mario Bellatín. This collection brings together four series of photos shot in Mexico City and Chiapas between 2002 and 2007. Both sad and celebratory, all of the photographs in this book examine loss as an impetus for growth.