Minneapolis, February 15, 2013—The Walker Art Center and AIGA Minnesota present the Insights 2013 Design Lecture Series in the Walker Cinema on consecutive Tuesday evenings, March 5–26, 7 pm. Insights brings leading designers from around the world to the Walker to share the thinking, methods, and processes behind their work. This year, each designer has been invited to create a project specific to the Walker, from large-scale murals to online interventions. Copresented by AIGA Minnesota.
Insights Design Lecture Series
Walker Cinema
Tuesdays, March 5–26, 7 pm
$24 ($18 Walker/AIGA members; $10 students)
Series: $85 ($60 Walker members; $40 students)
The Walker Shop will be open until 7pm the night of each Insights 2013 program.
LECTURES
Tuesday, March 5, 7pm
Geoff McFetridge, Champion Studio, Los Angeles
LA-based designer McFetridge is a leading figure in the contemporary realm of graphic culture, working fluidly between the realms of art and design and the printed page and the moving image. Featured in the film and exhibition Beautiful Losers, McFetridge’s clever and engaging art has graced nearly every kind of surface imaginable—from limited-edition Nike sneakers and his own line of silkscreened wallpapers to laser-etched illustrations on toast for a music video by OK Go. His work has been shown around the world in cities such as London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, and Amsterdam and he was featured in the Walker exhibition Graphic Design: Now in Production. His Insights lecture also celebrates the installation of a temporary site-specific mural he created for the Walker.
Tuesday, March 12, 7pm
Eike König, Hort, Berlin
As one of Europe’s most fearless design studios, Berlin’s Hort has consistently bridged the gap between aggressively contemporary aesthetics and big name clients. From glitch animated GIFs to elegant hand-drawn illustrations, Hort’s aesthetics run the gamut, displaying an unflinching dedication to formal and conceptual play. With an early focus on record sleeve design and illustration, Hort’s output has come to span all genres and includes work for clients such as Nike, Universal Music, the New York Times, Wallpaper, Volkswagon, IBM, and Playboy magazine. In addition to running Hort, König teaches graphic design and illustration at the HfG University of Arts, Offenbach, and travels the world conduction workshops and lectures. In conjunction with Insights, Hort will create a work specifically designed for the Walker website
Tuesday, March 19, 7pm
Job Wouters, Letman, Amsterdam
Wouters—better known as Letman—is a practitioner of the lost art of psychedelic and delirious penmanship, a letterer who’s precisely honed technique hides behind a world of unbridled alphabetic experimentation. Creating wildly unique work that nods to the past but transcends vernacular nostalgia, Wouters operates between illustration, graffiti, painting, and graphic design. The Amsterdam-based designer has worked for clients such as the New York Times Magazine, Audi, Tommy Hilfiger, Heineken, and Duval, creating editorial illustrations, fabric prints, posters, typefaces, site-specific murals, and even body-paint designs. He was recently commissioned by the Walker to create a mural and he will perform his hand-lettering technique live during the Insights lecture.
Tuesday, March 26, 7pm
Luna Maurer, Moniker, Amsterdam
According to the “Conditional Design” manifesto, Maurer is interested in logic-based design as a tool to understand the ungraspable. Her work with interactive media bridges the divide between digital and analogue systems, often relying on deceptively simple rules to create complex organic artworks. Maurer is especially known for her participatory experiments in which she designs a process that requires the participants to implement—often in humble materials such as tape, markers, and sticky notes—algorithmic explorations of group thought that expose the process of making. Her work explores the relationship between people and technology, and she has created a breadth of projects—from an exhibition of 400,000 photos of the Amsterdam sky to a website designed in Microsoft Excel. Based in Amsterdam, her three-person studio Moniker balances applied commercial projects with self-initiated experiments. She is a visiting critic at Yale University School of Art and teaches interaction design at the Gerrit Reitveld Academy in Amsterdam. Maurer will present a “social experiment” with the lecture audience, unique to Insights 2013.
RELATED EVENTS
Post-Lecture Receptions
Directly following each lecture, meet the speakers and chat with fellow design lovers at the Garden Café. Wine, beer, and edibles available for purchase.
Insights 2013 Viewing Party
Throw your own Viewing Party!
For those who can’t make it to the Insights 2013 lectures, the lectures will be webcast live and archived on the Walker Channel. If you can’t make it here in person this year, consider having an Insights Viewing Party with a group of friends and send in your comments and questions for the speakers via Twitter (#Insights2013). Here’s a kit to get you started.
Explore Design in the Walker Shop: Show Your Ticket & Save
The Walker Shop features work by top local and international designers and a large section of design-related publications. The shop will remain open until 7 pm for each Insights 2013 programs. Present you Insights ticket stub the day of the event and receive $5 off of a purchase of $25 or more.