Visual Arts Briefs

• Several members of the SVA community are featured in the March/April issue of Communication Arts. The magazine has reviews of Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight, a documentary about SVA Acting Chairman Milton Glaser;  Design School Confidential, the latest book from MFA Design Department Co-chairs Steven Heller and Lita Talarico; and Look Both Ways, the new book by MPS Branding Department Chair Debbie Millman. Millman was also quoted in an article about the ethics of spec work in the design field. The issue also includes a profile of illustrator and alumnus Lisel Jane Ashlock (MFA 2009 Illustration as Visual Essay).
• Maira Kalman, faculty member in the MFA Design Department, was recently interviewed by Paper magazine. Kalman spoke about the exhibition of her work currently up at The University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art as well as her New York Times blog And The Pursuit of Happiness.
• The MFA Fine Arts Department exhibition “Thanks…but it’s actually on purpose” was covered by the Spanish-language news outlet El Diario/La Prensa. The video report features highlights of the exhibition as well as interviews with exhibiting artists Lorena Duran, Maria Jose Duran Steinman and Visual Arts Gallery Director Francis Di Tommaso. Click here to view the video.
• ABC’s The View hosted alumnus Elissa Stein (BFA 1994 Graphic Design) on Tuesday, March 10. Stein talked about the book she co-wrote, Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation. Click here to view the clip. Stein was also quoted in a New York Times article about euphemistic advertising for feminine care products and the book was covered in U.S.1.

SVA, along with Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics and TOON Books, is partnering with New York’s iconic bookstore, The Strand, on a limited-time opportunity for artists: The Strand Tote Bag Design Contest.

The grand prize winner will have his or her work featured on a tote that is sold online and in store, and will join an illustrious group of artists who’ve paid homage to The Strand, including Masterpiece Comics creator R. Sikoryak, graphic novelist Adrian Tomine and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who will all serve as judges in this year’s contest along with SVA’s Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA Design Department, and New Yorker art editor Francoise Mouly.

Submission details and a full list of prizes can be found here. The deadline for submissions is March 31.

Image: Lettering by Andrew Schaff, first-year student in the MFA Design Department.

Now that the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games are a wrap, the world has a new set of sports icons: the medalists of this year’s competition. But another set of icons will also go down in history: the pictograms and other graphics used at the various venues and in the media. This “frenzy of visual signage” hasn’t been lost on Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA Design Department, who traces the evolution of the Olympic pictograms in each sport since their appearance in 1932. Click here to view his multimedia report for The New York Times.

Another member of the SVA community, BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member David Ross, recently talked about the Olympic posters with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report. Read the original post here.

Image: Vancouver 2010 pictogram for alpine skiing, © VANOC/COVAN.

• Alumnus Deborah Adler’s (MFA 2002 Design) redesign of the Target chain’s pharmacy prescription bottle was included in an article about major design developments on the GOOD magazine Web site. Adler developed new, safer prescription bottles and labels for her thesis project in the MFA Design Department, which was also the subject of an exhibition at SVA in 2005.
• The Print magazine Web site is featuring an interview with faculty member Genevieve Williams and alumnus Dan Cassaro (BFA 2008 Graphic Design), who were creative director and one of the art directors, respectively, for the BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department 2008 Senior Library. The Library, a three-book set with each volume designed by a different art director, was a winner in the New York City section of Print’s 2009 Regional Design Annual.
• Alumnus Dash Shaw’s (BFA 2005 Illustration) new book The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century—along with his accompanying Web series on IFC.com—recently received coverage on the Entertainment Weekly Web site, Big Shiny Robot!, Comics Alliance and shortandsweetnyc.com. Click here to read previous Briefs coverage of The Unclothed Man.

SVA students, faculty members and alumni frequently appear in news stories, but lately several students from SVA have been making the news in a different way: by writing it. Here are three recent articles written by current students in the MFA Design Criticism Department (D-Crit):

• Frederico Duarte recently wrote a piece for Eye blog about his work investigating a project for a D-Crit course taught by MFA Design Department Co-chair Steven Heller. He researched six Pan Am posters from the early 1970s using the Lily Auchincloss Study Center for Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, as well as the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives at SVA. He also wrote another article about the posters for Eye magazine’s issue 73.
• Alan Rapp penned an article for Print magazine about the evolution of design work for heavy metal bands, which encompasses a wide variety of styles beyond stereotypical gothic fonts and satanic iconography. Rapp also produced a podcast on the same topic for a D-Crit class early this year.
• Earlier this semester, Angela Riechers contributed to Voice: AIGA Journal of Design with an article entitled “Blood Types.” She examines vampire typologies since the 1897 publication of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, as well as contemporary pop culture’s obsession with the mythical creatures.

Read more articles by D-Crit students in the Reading Room section of the department’s Web site.

• MFA Design Department faculty member Stefan Sagmeister is the winner of the 2009 Lucky Strike Designer Award. This international design award from the Raymond Loewy Foundation recognizes a designer whose work has helped improve the social and cultural conditions of everyday life. The jury said of Sagmeister, “His work is highly creative, bold and innovative. It combines philosophy, politics and socially relevant subjects with avant-garde design; it’s democratic and accessible to everyone.”
• Critics at The Onion’s A.V. Club compiled their list of the 25 Best Comics of the ‘00s, and three members of the SVA community made the cut: alumnus Michael Kupperman (BFA 1998 Fine Arts) for Tales Designed to Thrizzle (Fantagraphics, 2005–present); BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department faculty member David Mazzucchelli for his graphic novel Asterios Polyp (Pantheon, 2009); and alumnus James Sturm (MFA 1991 Illustration as Visual Essay) for The Golem’s Mighty Swing (D&Q, 2000).
• At this fall’s NYC Metropolitan Area College Computer Animation Festival (MetroCAF), 10 of the 26 digital animations selected for the festival came from the BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects and MFA Computer Art Departments. The 2009 MetroCAF continues a multi-year run for the College as one of the festival’s top contributors. Click here for the complete list of 26 honorees.
• The Art Directors Club (ADC) recently announced the recipients of its 2009 National Scholarships, and three of the eight winners were students in the BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department: Yumi Nakamura won the $2,500 ADC Scholarship in Graphic Design; Kaya Ono won the $2,500 Sahre, Victore, Wilker Scholarship in Graphic Design; and Youngbum Kim won the $500 Jeffrey Metzner and Carin Goldberg Scholarship.

Image: Stefan Sagmeister with his Lucky Strike Design Award; photo by Elias Wessel.

Brazil is getting a double dose of SVA this month, with one department chair just returned from the South American nation and another chair due to fly down soon. MFA Design Department Co-chair Lita Talarico was in Sao Paulo for Brazil Design Week, where a variety of talks, workshops and seminars about global issues in design were presented from November 3 – 6. Talarico gave a keynote address as part of a forum focusing on colleges and universities involved in teaching design. “The theme for the forum was entrepreneurship and how to educate students for the future so that they are prepared for the business side of design,” said Talarico. “I talked about and showed case studies from the book The Design Entrepreneur: Turning Graphic Design into Goods that Sell, which included more than 20 student projects from the MFA Design Department.” She also took some time to visit Rio de Janerio and meet up with several SVA alumni who are living and working there: Renato Alarcao (MFA 2001 Illustration as Visual Essay), Celina Carvalho (MFA 2003 Design), Alexandre Damiano (MFA 1999 Fine Arts), Luiza Novaes (MFA 1994 Photography and Related Media) and Marta Strauch (MFA 1990 Illustration as Visual Essay).

Later this month, MFA Social Documentary Film Department Chair Maro Chermayeff will be in Sao Paulo to attend PIC DOC, a five-day international training program in documentaries that begins Monday, November 30. Chermayeff is one of a select group of industry professionals invited to participate in the week-long conference, sponsored by the Brazilian TV Producers organization to help Brazilian filmmakers increase the competitiveness of their documentary projects in the international marketplace.

Image: Lita Talarico and Luiza Novaes in Rio de Janerio.

• Limited Edition KAWS Creme de Corps: The “Kiehl’s Since 1851″ lotion label received a temporary redesign from KAWS, aka alumnus Brian Donnelly (BFA 1996 Illustration). The profits from its sale will benefit RxArt, a nonprofit organization that brings contemporary art to hospital patients.
• Movado Artist Series: Alumnus Kenny Scharf (BFA 1981 Fine Arts) was commissioned by Movado to design six limited-edition watches. Each of Scharf’s colorful watches comes in a box designed by the artist.
• Look Both Ways, by Debbie Millman (chair, MPS Branding Department): A collection of illustrated essays on design that was recently featured in New York magazine’s Approval Matrix (HOW books, 2009).
• Graphic Design Referenced: A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications, and History of Graphic Design: A survey on the graphic design field that features a two-page spread about the College, including the MFA Design Department and the SVA subway poster campaign (Rockport, 2009).
• The Teen Vogue Handbook: An Insider’s Guide to Careers in Fashion: This guide for teens interested in the fashion business lists the BFA Photography Department as a key program for fashion photography (Razorbill, 2009).

Image: Limited Edition KAWS Creme de Corps, courtesy of Kiehl’s Since 1851.

During the last week of October, three SVA department chairs traveled to China to attend the Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA). This prestigious annual competition recognizes the best work in a dozen disciplines, including animation, interactive design, motion graphics and photography, with over 3,200 entrants from around the world. Katrin Eismann (MPS Digital Photography Department), John McIntosh (BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects Department) and Alice Twemlow (MFA Design Criticism Department) were at the ADAA exhibition and ceremony in Bejing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts in support of SVA’s two competition finalists, alumnus Daniel Bolliger (MPS 2009 Digital Photography) and current student James Kyungmo Yang (MFA Design Department). In addition, two SVA students were ADAA semifinalists: Juhee Cho (BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department) and Nathan Friese (MFA Computer Art Department).

According to Eismann, “This was the first time that the ADAA was held outside of North America. The high point of the event was the opening ceremony of the Icograda World Design Congress, which featured many high-profile speakers (including Twemlow) and of course the ADAA announcements. All of this took place in the fabulous National Centre for the Performing Arts—a truly stunning building in the center of Beijing.” As is fitting for the chair of a graduate photography program, Eismann had her camera with her in Beijing and shared several of her photos with the Briefs:

Images: Katrin Eismann, 2009: (top to bottom) the 2009 ADAA ceremony; the award finalists in Beijing; alumnus Daniel Bolliger and his work at the ADAA exhibition; the National Centre for the Performing Arts.

Historical moments and political shifts are typically accompanied by signature visuals. Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential campaign was no exception, with both professional and amateur artists creating images that served to aide and capture the transitional moment. Many of the campaign posters designed by volunteers around the country are collected in the new book Design for Obama—Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology (Taschen, 2009), edited by designer Aaron Perry-Zucker and filmmaker Spike Lee, and featuring an essay by MFA Design Department Co-chair Steven Heller.

On Wednesday, November 4, Heller will join Perry-Zucker and Lee for a special book-launch event commemorating the 1-year anniversary of the 2008 election at the Taschen store, 107 Greene Street. The trio will be discussing and signing copies of the book from 6 – 8pm; the event is free, but due to limited space attendees should RSVP to store-ny@taschen.com.

Image: Design for Obama. Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology, Taschen, 2009.