Insights 2015 Design Lecture Series

If you can’t make it in person, please tune in to our live webcast on the Walker Channel and participate through Twitter. (#Insights2015)  Here’s a kit for educators, AIGA chapters, and anyone else who might want to throw their own viewing party.

Minnesota Design: A Celebration (featuring Andrew Blauvelt)
March 3, 7 pm (tickets)

Insights 2015 kicks off with a unique two-part event celebrating Minnesota and its long-standing design legacy. The evening begins with a presentation by Andrew Blauvelt, Walker Art Center senior curator of design, research, and publishing, who will explore the Walker’s new web-based Minnesota design collection highlighting Minnesota’s diverse heritage across the design fields. From the world’s quietest room to the Honeycrisp apple, from the humble sticky note to the Prince logo, Blauvelt offers a crash course on what makes our region such a hotbed for innovation. The talk will be followed by the opening of MGDA/AIGA Minnesota: A History Exhibit, marking the history of the AIGA Minnesota chapter on the occasion of the AIGA’s 100th anniversary, curated by designer/educator/author Kolean Pitner and design director Mike Haug. On view will be fascinating ephemera, posters, and correspondence presenting the chapter’s 37-year history of helping businesses and the public understand the meaning and value of graphic design. Check out the exhibition and join us in celebrating our vibrant design community. At the opening party, free snacks will be provided and a cash bar will be available.

April Greiman (LA)
March 10, 7 pm (tickets)

Through her Los Angeles–based studio Made in Space, visionary graphic designer and artist April Greiman has been creating vital work in a variety of media for more than 30 years. She helped pioneer the integration of technology and art as one of the first practitioners to explore the desktop computer’s creative potential, and her unique fusion of a postmodernist mentality with digital technology became emblematic of the “New Wave” design approach in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Her art direction (with Jayme Odgers) of Wet Magazine is a touchstone of this era, inspiring countless designers since its creation. Today, Greiman is known as an artist creating numerous multimedia works for both solo and group shows as well as commissions for public spaces. Her work has been featured in museums and galleries around the world, and has been covered by everyone from the New York Times andTime Magazine to ESPN and PBS. She received her advanced design education at the Basel School of Design, studying with Wolfgang Weingart and Armin Hoffman, among others. Previously, she served as the head of the design department at the California Institute of the Arts. Greiman has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the AIGA gold medal for lifetime achievement and honorary doctorates from Kansas City Art Institute, Lesley University, Academy of Art University, and Art Center College of Design. She is currently serving as faculty at both Woodbury University School of Architecture and the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Greiman’s groundbreaking 1986 issue of Design Quarterly (“Does it make sense?”) is currently on display in the Walker exhibition Art at the Center: 75 Years of Walker Collections.

 
K-HOLE (NY)
March 17, 7 pm (tickets)

K-HOLE exists in multiple states at once: it is both a publication and a collective; it is both an artistic practice and a consulting firm; it is both critical and unapologetically earnest. Its five members come from backgrounds as varied as brand strategy, fine art, Web development, and fashion, and together they have released a series of fascinating PDF publications modeled upon corporate trend forecasting reports. These documents appropriate the visuals of PowerPoint, stock photography, and advertising and exploit the inherent poetry in the purposefully vague aphorisms of corporate brand-speak. Ultimately, K-HOLE aspires to utilize the language of trend forecasting to discuss sociopolitical topics in depth, exploring the capitalist landscape of advertising and marketing in a critical but un-ironic way. In the process, the group frequently coins new terms to articulate their ideas, such as “Youth Mode”: a term used to describe the prevalent attitude of youth culture that has been emancipated from any particular generation; the “Brand Anxiety Matrix”: a tool designed to help readers understand their conflicted relationships with the numerous brands that clutter their mental space on a daily basis; and “Normcore”: a term originally used to describe the desire not to differentiate oneself, which has since been mispopularized (by New York magazine) to describe the more specific act of dressing neutrally to avoid standing out. (In 2014, “Normcore” was named a runner-up by Oxford University Press for “Neologism of the Year.”) Since publishing K-HOLE, the collective has taken on a number of unique projects that reflect the manifold nature of their practice, from a consulting gig with a private equity firm to a collaboration with a fashion label resulting in their own line of deodorant. K-HOLE has been covered by a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, Fast Company, WiredUK, and Mousse.

Bart de Baets (Amsterdam)
March 24, 7 pm (tickets)

Amsterdam-based Bart de Baets is a fierce formalist, an unrelenting experimenter who has developed a unique typographic attitude that has influenced designers around the world. His work spans the entire cultural sector for clients in the fields of art, music, performance, and film. A few of his clients include the Amsterdam club Paradiso, cultural centers such as W139, De Appel, AFK, and the New Institute, and film programs such as the Weight of Colour and A New Divide? De Baets is also known for his self-initiated projects, including Dark and Stormy, an ambiguous fanzine he publishes with Rustan Söderling featuring contributions from an international array of artists, and Success and Uncertainty, a poster series and publication made with Sandra Kassenaar during an artist residency in Cairo amid the chaos of 2011’s Arab Spring. Confronted with the reality of state-imposed curfews, the resignation of President Mubarak, and the politically charged environment, de Baets and Kassenaar were forced to explore their status as outsiders, questioning the relevance of their intentions—and in the process, creating beautiful and vital work. De Baets teaches graphic design at both the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam) and the Royal Academy of Arts (the Hague) and conducts workshops throughout Europe.

James Langdon (Liverpool)
March 31, 7 pm (tickets)

The UK’s James Langdon has carved out a unique practice that fully integrates his design, editorial, and curatorial pursuits. As one of six directors of Eastside Projects—an artist-run exhibition space dedicated to promoting cultural growth in its home town of Birmingham, England—Langdon designs and edits many of the organization’s publications and is responsible for creating a series of experimental manuals that explore its mission through ideas as varied as urban renewal, adhocism, and public engagement. In 2013, Langdon founded the itinerant School for Design Fiction, working with students to investigate the storytelling inherent in the design process, the emotions embedded within an artifact, and the benefits of living in speculative worlds. As a curator, Langdon organized Arefin & Arefin: The Graphic Design of Tony Arefin, an exhibition celebrating the overlooked but highly influential British graphic designer; Book Show, exploring the form of the book; and a restaging of Norman Potter’s In:quest of Icarus at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Langdon has been guest lecturer at schools around the world, including Werkplaats Typografie (Arnhem), Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht), and Konstfack (Stockholm). He is the recipient of the 2012 Inform International Award for Conceptual Design, presented by Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Germany.

Insights 2015 identity designed by Nani Albornoz. Laser cutting provided by David W. Johanson and Park Grove Laser. Printing courtesy the Avery Group at Shapco Printing, Minneapolis.