MINNEAPOLIS, January 3, 2017—The acclaimed Insights Design Lecture Series,
copresented annually by the Walker Art Center and AIGA Minnesota, returns
March 7–28, 2017. This year’s series features five leading designers: Google
creative lead Rob Giampietro (New York), illustrator Andy Rementer (Philadelphia),
social practice and design studios Office of Culture & Design / Hardworking
Goodlooking (New York, Manila), and editorial designer Richard Turley (New York),
currently at Wieden + Kennedy and formerly of Bloomberg Businessweek and MTV.
INSIGHTS DESIGN LECTURE SERIES 2017
Tuesdays, March 7-28, 7:00 pm
Walker Art Center
Tickets
$24 ($19 Walker and AIGA members; $10 students)
Series Package: $72 ($57 Walker and AIGA members; $30 students)
Tickets on sale now. Ticket package includes all four Insights lectures. Purchase
online, visit the Walker box office, or call 612.375.7600.
After-Lecture Receptions
Directly following each lecture, attendees can meet the designers and chat with
fellow design lovers in the Walker’s new Bazinet Main Lobby.
Watch Anywhere: Insights Viewing Parties
The Insights lectures will be webcast live and archived on the Walker Channel.
Those who can’t make it in person this year can consider having an Insights Viewing
Party with a group of friends and send in comments and questions for the speakers
via Twitter (#Insights2017).
March 7
ROB GIAMPIETRO (NEW YORK)
Google Design
What can interaction designers learn from a stonecutter? How can design be
understood as an act of translation? How might the Sapir Whorf hypothesis apply to
content management systems? When must we learn to unbuild, instead of
building? Designer and writer Rob Giampietro lives these questions, consistently
drawing connections between disparate design fields over the course of his diverse
career. In his current position as creative lead and design manager for Google (New
York), Giampietro’s mission is to infuse an appreciation for design into Google’s
culture, and by extension, the company’s billions of users. He and his team are
responsible for communicating major Google design initiatives, such as Material
Design (Google’s expansive interface program, inspired by tangible interactions with
paper, light, layering, and movement) and Google Fonts (their open-source
collection of digital typefaces).
Before joining Google, Giampietro spent much of his career inhabiting the art and
culture sectors, designing for cultural institutions, and writing about design in both
pragmatic and esoteric ways, often commissioned by independent visual culture
journals such as Dot Dot Dot, Mousse Magazine, and Kaleidoscope. From 2010
through 2015, Rob was a Principal partner at renowned New York design studio
Project Projects where he headed up many of their interactive initiatives; and
between 2003 and 2008, he led his own firm, Giampietro+Smith, creating work for
clients such as Knoll, Target, and others. For his Insights lecture, Giampietro will
give us a glimpse into his idiosyncratic synthesis of design ideologies while offering
a look into the evolving design culture at Google.
March 14
ANDY REMENTER (PHILADELPHIA)
Illustrator
Andy Rementer is an illustrator and painter whose work has been featured in a
number of high-profile brands and publications, from Apartamento magazine to the
New York Times, Wired to Lacoste. Rementer honed his particular style while
studying at Fabrica in Treviso, Italy. He has stated in interviews that his colorblindness
inevitably brings him back to his frequently used bright hues, no matter
how hard he tries to adopt a muted palette. This has become vital to his output—
the pastel and poppy color schemes camouflaging the prevalence of loneliness,
isolation, and ambivalence in his work. His projects often subvert or expand their
intended format, whether a furniture catalogue masquerading as a comic book or a
set of postage stamps that investigates the decidedly un-epistolary phenomenon of
online dating. Rementer will talk us through his practice and give us a glimpse into
his collaborations with some of the world’s most celebrated brands.
March 21
CLARA BALAGUER (MANILA, PHILIPPINES) & KRISTIAN HENSON (NEW YORK)
Office of Culture & Design / Hardworking Goodlooking
How can the act of publishing be democratized in developing countries? How can
local vernaculars be celebrated in the face of globalized aesthetics? What is the
cultural significance of EXTREME DROP SHADOWS? The Office of Culture and Design
is a studio based in Manila, led by artist Clara Balaguer. Running in parallel to the
OCD, Hardworking Goodlooking is a publishing and design practice Clara leads with
designer Kristian Henson. Balaguer describes the OCD as “a social practice platform
for artists, designers, writers & assorted projects in the developing world.” With
their wide network of collaborators, Balaguer and Henson embrace contemporary
art and design as necessary tools for progress with the hopes of affecting real
change. This occurs by way of social innovation experiments, workshops,
conferences, events, and feasts. Projects include product development initiatives
designed to enhance the livelihoods of Filipino craftsmen as well as microgrants
that they receive and redistribute.
Frequently produced in cottage industry presses in the streets of Manila and
utilizing the most DIY production values, Hardworking Goodlooking’s books embody
the uncertain and insecure task that authors face, when trying to self publish critical
content in the developing world. They also lead book-making workshops in which
they teach people how to edit, design, and print their own books in a week or less,
using inexpensive and readily available tools.
In their lecture, Balaguer and Henson will present case studies from their practice
thus far, and discuss the fraught and fractured history of Filipino graphic design,
which Balaguer recently wrote about in her essay “Tropico Vernacular” for Triple
Canopy magazine.
March 28
RICHARD TURLEY (NEW YORK)
Wieden + Kennedy
Wherever Richard Turley goes, he figures out a way to not have to play by the rules.
Best known as the art director who reimagined Bloomberg Businessweek magazine
as an edgy, design-forward publication, Turley recently ended a stint as MTV’s first
senior vice president of visual storytelling and deputy editorial director.
At MTV Turley oversaw a horde of designers whose basic mission was to create
“strategic anarchy,” personifying the corporation’s desire for self-critique and, in his
words, “de-brand”-ing the network. The studio generated new TV idents and bumps
on a daily basis, using whatever content they felt was appropriate as long as it was
immediate and of the moment. Turley has described the approach as a form of
social media, simply executed through the channel of a broadcast network. The
segments range from abstract chaos to surreal mundanity, live social media
conversations with viewers to bluntly worded statements directly responding to
current events.
In his new position as executive creative director of content and editorial design at
Wieden + Kennedy, Turley will bring his unique talent for visualizing ideas to the
world of branding.