Connect Lecture Series

Join our first virtual Connect lecture of the Fall 2020 Semester! 

[Post lecture recording of Nick Adam's talk is now available; University credentials are necessary to access Box folder]

Nick Adam

Design Principal — SPAN

https://nickadam.co/

Nick Adam is a Design Principal at Span in Chicago. He sees every act of design, even the mundane, as containing opportunities for agency. His work focuses on the nuances of visual identity and visual brand through which typographic details and formal maneuvers enhance the artifacts the design process brings into the world. This notion is an optimistic and experiential one: rich, diverse, and meaningful form can lead to rich, diverse, and meaningful life experiences.

Join our second virtual Connect lecture of the Fall 2020 Semester!

June Shin
Type Designer—Occupant Fonts

https://junesh.in/

June Shin is a Seoul-born designer currently based in New York City. After graduating from Cornell University with a B.A. in Art History, she studied graphic design at Parsons The New School and later Rhode Island School of Design, where she received her master’s degree and now teaches typography. In addition to making typefaces at Occupant Fonts, she enjoys taking on graphic design and lettering projects on the side. Her type-centric work has been recognized by Type Directors Club, Art Directors Club, Communication Arts, and more. She was not born in June.

Join our third virtual Connect lecture of the Fall 2020 Semester!

Sean Stewart 

Conceptual artist and Canadian 'pataphysicist' Sean R Stewart

Director of The Dopamine Collective™ (2011–present)

The Dopamine Collective is a ‘group’ of scientific minds with a common strong desire to shed their lab-coats and embrace the philosophy of the art world. Each uses their trained scientific field to create their unique body of work.

Co-founder of Kopec Chun Gallery (2011–2015)

Kopec Chun Gallery maintains a focus on artists exploring a variety of concepts and expressions utilizing non-traditional contemporary practices. The focus of their presentation at art Toronto is on the representation of scientific concepts and phenomena through an artistic lens.

Title: Plausibility—Cultivating the experience of submission

Conceptual artist and Canadian 'pataphysicist' Sean R. Stewart explores the human desire to have conclusive stories and the need to project upon others.

A new capacity to be represented; contemporary human beings choose not to investigate:

A person that honestly believes an inaccurate statement cannot be lying because self-deception prevents this. One question at the root of these ambiguous definitions is who decides when something is accepted as true. Perhaps an even more important question is what happens when a truth and fiction intermingle in reality?

“What we learn is that unless we come to know the actual contents, we are bound within the enclosure. This enclosure now becomes the de facto artwork.”

Through this web of pseudo-truths, we must navigate ourselves to an understanding of what we believe to be true. The traditional definitions of truth and fiction have since departed and both have now become a single conceptual premise, homogenized to perpetuity.  “I now sit at the edge of the realized and the imagined, careful not to step too far in either direction”

Join our fourth virtual Connect lecture of the Fall 2020 Semester!

Mary Yang

Founder — Open Rehearsal

Assistant Professor of Graphic Design — Boston University

Mary Yang is a designer and educator based in Boston, M.A.. She is the founder of Open Rehearsal, a design practice that works with clients and collaborators in the arts, music, and academia. She joined the faculty of Boston University as an Assistant Professor in 2019, where she teaches in the Graphic Design program. Her recent research and projects explore the relationship between design and music, identity design in public spaces and urban design, exhibition design, and publishing. Collaboration with cultural clients include the RISD Museum, Verso Books, among others. She has exhibited at institutions, lectured and served as guest critic nationally and internationally in the US and UK. Previously, she has taught and lectured at the Rhode Island School of Design and University of Washington and has worked on the graphic and brand design team at Victoria’s Secret PINK in NYC, the University of Washington Press in Seattle, WA, and Studio Blue in Chicago, IL.

Join our fifth and final virtual Connect lecture of the Fall 2020 Semester!

Mauro Panzeri 

So far, so close: a date with Mauro Panzeri, Graphic Designer in Milan, Italy.

Mauro Panzeri (1954) graphic designer, lives and works in Milan, Italy. He graduated in Political Science with a thesis in Political Philosophy dedicated to Jean Baudrillard’s thought.

Self-taught graphic designer with initial experience in graphic design studies as an apprentice. From 1976 to 1985 at the Studio Alchimia in Milano, a post-modern atelier of radical design.

Collaborator of Modo, an Italian design monthly; art director of Décoration Internationale, a French monthly, and later graphic designer for Domus, international architecture monthly, under the direction of Alessandro Mendini in the 80s.

1986 marks the beginning of GrafCo3, design studio specialized in editorial graphics. The studio has worked for clients such as IBM Italia, Domus Academy, Editoriale Domus, Triennale di Milano, Alessi, Olivari, Istituto Europeo di Design, Electa, Arcadia, ADI, LesCultures, Edizioni Ambiente, Prénatal, Gilco, WWF Italia, Cassina, Salani, Ponte alle Grazie, Longanesi, GeMS, Parole di Cotone, Bruno Mondadori, Barovier&Toso, Nemo, Metafora, Fondazione Wurmkos, Unimark International and many others, mixing brand projects, business communication, graphic design for exhibitions, art direction and book design.

In recent years he has been designing corporate identity, books and magazines. He is currently graphic designer and art director of the magazine Materia Rinnovabile/Renewable Matter for Edizioni Ambiente, and art director for the publisher’s products.

Mauro Panzeri has been professor at the Milan Polytechnic for 15 years, Faculty of Industrial Design, Communication Department. He currently teaches Graphic Design for Publishing and Methodology at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design), where he is thesis supervisor in Graphic Design.

He cultivates a personal inclination to reflect on the themes of design and its changes. Critic of “the magnificent and progressive fortunes” of the technologies that have emerged in recent years, he uses them with pleasure for “out-of-time” projects that reveal their way of production.

Mauro Panzeri has written two books: La grafica è un’opinione (Graphic Design is an Opinion), Ledizioni, 2013, and Graphic Novel, Ledizioni, 2019; two diaries that mix personal experiences with more general themes.

Chris Cote
Graphic Design Fellow, 2019–2021
University of Tennessee, Knoxville School of Design

Chris is a freelance designer and full-time design educator at The University of Tennesse Knoxville who will be joining our department to share his experience in virtual exhibition identity design. Chris received an undergraduate degree in History from the University of Washington, after which he joined the Peace Corps in Moldova where he learned Romanian, completed community development projects, and carried a camera everywhere. In 2011, he moved to South Korea where he co-founded and designed an art magazine as well as a screenprinting collaboration. These undertakings led him to design opportunities like branding for pubs and breweries, and editorial design for artists and art museums. Chris received his MFA in Graphic Design from Rhode Island School of Design in 2019 and is currently conducting research as the 2019-2021 Graphic Design Fellow within the UTK School of Design. His design practice includes identity systems, books, magazines, posters, websites, exhibitions, patterns, and videos. He believes in the intersection of design, art, and community development.

John Pobojewski
Partner and Design Director
Span

John Pobojewski is a partner and design director at Span. Pobojewski focuses on intermedia and the blending of brand, interactive, sound, motion, and environments. John was featured as one of five designers profiled by Communication Artsin their 2016 feature “New Currents in Chicago Design.” In 2007, he was named one of Print Magazine’s “New Visual Artists: 20 under 30.” John has also received professional recognition from the Type Directors Club, the Society of Typographic Arts, the Chicago Design Archive, AIGA, and SEGD. From 2003–2019, he was a designer and later partner at Thirst, and his work with the studio has appeared in many design publications including Graphis, ID Magazine, IdN Magazine, and is currently part of the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Letterform Archive, and others. John has presented at numerous conferences including SALT Istanbul, the SEGD Conference, the Mas Context Analog Conference, AIGA National Convention, Processing Conference Chicago, and TEDx. He also lectures at colleges and universities around the U.S. As an intermedia artist, John has been part of several group exhibitions including Mark Applebaum’s Metaphysics of Notation project at Stanford University, as well as five annual Typeforce exhibitions. His digital projections for Chicago Repertory Ballet’s production of Macbeth brought “a contemporary look” and were “especially potent” according to the Chicago Tribune. John is a graduate of Northern Illinois University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communication and a Bachelor of Music in Performance. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife and daughter.

Join our third virtual Connect lecture of the Spring 2021 Semester!

Will Hum
Studio Entrepreneur
Clear Space Design

Clear Space Design in Toronto, Canada specializes in brand strategy and identity, print and web design, UX, and UI. The two founders and principals of the company are Paul Ratchford, Director of Digital Strategy, and Will Hum, Creative Director. Will leads the strategic vision and creative direction for the firm. He is passionate about building great teams and driving his clients’ brands forward with creativity and fresh insights. Will is an advocate for smart and simple ideas that make a big impact while always keeping the business needs and goals of his clients in sight.

Malika Soin
Art Director
Purpose Investments

Malika is an Art Director at Purpose Investments, an investment firm in Toronto. She holds a Masters in Design from York University, Canada and a graduate degree in Visual Communication from the National Institute of Design, India. She has spent 9 years working at design studios in India and Canada. Her work spans from conceptualizing and realizing brand campaigns to designing identities, postage stamps, websites, environments, annual reports and information graphics.

Jenn Livermore
Graphic Designer
SF MOMA

Jenn Livermore is a graphic designer based in San Francisco, California. For the past year, Jenn has been part of the design team at SFMOMA where she’s gotten to create exhibition graphics, face masks, web pages, and a bit of everything in-between. Jenn has also worked at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, Volume Inc., and Mende Design. Jenn holds an M.F.A. in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She also enjoys teaching, and has taught graphic design as an Adjunct Professor at San Jose State University and as a TA at RISD.