Wednesday, March 4, 10:00am–1:00pm
CSB 218C

Gregor Huber is a co-founder of Huber/Sterzinger (formerly Glashaus), a collaborative design practice based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Past projects include Yto Barrada, The Dye Garden, Edition Digital Culture Nr. 6 – Virtual Reality, and A Pyrotechnic Display of Creativity (recipient of the Swiss Design Awards 2009).

On A Pyrotechnic Display of Creativity, Au­re­lia Müller noted:

“Gre­gor Huber is re­spon­si­ble for the con­tent, con­cept and de­sign of the Rote Fab­rik news­pa­per and has been awarded a Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Grant in recog­ni­tion of his graphic de­sign for the years 2007 – 2009. The news­pa­per, which ap­pears ten times a year, pro­vides in­for­ma­tion on the pro­gramme of events at the Rote Fab­rik in Zurich, a for­mer fac­tory turned al­ter­na­tive arts cen­tre. It also ad­dresses a wide range of top­i­cal is­sues. Al­though it fo­cuses more on the role of this his­tor­i­cally left-wing in­sti­tu­tion as an on­go­ing pro­ject rather than on any ide­o­log­i­cal dogma, ac­cord­ing to the graphic artist, the news­pa­per can and does take a po­lit­i­cal stance.”
“The themes tra­di­tion­ally as­so­ci­ated with the al­ter­na­tive arts scene are de­lib­er­ately re­placed by cur­rent top­ics. In one issue, for in­stance, the news­pa­per ex­plores ‘Wis­sen und Be­denken’ [Knowl­edge and Mis­giv­ings]. In an­other, it looks at the Wikipedia Gen­er­a­tion and the rise of half-knowl­edge. Under the head­ing ‘Fo­cused on you and your needs’, the ques­tion of sur­vival in a cor­po­rate world is dis­cussed, while an issue de­voted to ‘Selb­stveröffentlichung’ [Self-pub­li­ca­tion] is all about pri­vacy and the quest for iden­tity in a mass-me­dia so­ci­ety. What is par­tic­u­larly re­mark­able about this news­pa­per is the way it merges con­tent and form: in this issue, a Face­book-style lay­out is used to con­vey all the in­for­ma­tion gath­ered on­line and col­lated to form the fic­ti­tious per­sonal pro­file of a so-called Mr Rolf Müller.”
“The key to the graphic de­sign of the Rote Fab­rik news­pa­per is that it re­sponds specif­i­cally to the cur­rent theme of each issue and is freely adapted to suit the topic rather than hav­ing to fol­low a pre­scribed for­mat. This tai­lor-made ap­proach means that the de­sign of each issue is unique, brim­ming with ideas and in­vari­ably full of all sorts of sur­pris­ing and un­ex­pected graphic so­lu­tions.”
“Gre­gor Huber notes how im­por­tant it is for him to be on the look­out for new, ex­per­i­men­tal ways of get­ting the mes­sage across. He has cer­tainly proved that amply in his de­sign for the news­pa­per. The pos­i­tively py­rotech­nic dis­play of cre­ative ideas in his use of dif­fer­ent styles, to­gether with his metic­u­lously ex­e­cuted and highly var­ied so­lu­tions make him a de­serv­ing win­ner of this award.”

http://spring2020-seminar.designforthe.net/

Wednesday, February 26, 10:00am–1:00pm
CSB 218C

Federico Pérez Villoro is an artist and researcher living between Mexico City and New York. Through texts, performances, and digital artifacts, Federico explores the materiality of language and the impact of technology in socio-political behavior. His work has been exhibited internationally and published by Printed Matter, C Magazine, Gato Negro Ediciones, and the Walker Art Center’s The Gradient. Federico has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the Rhode Island School of Design and California College of the Arts. He has lectured and acted as a visiting critic at schools such as CalArts, The New School, UNAM, and Hongik University. In addition, Federico has advanced a number of experimental educational initiatives. He recently founded Materia Abierta, a summer program on theory, art, and technology in Mexico City. Previously, Federico developed Second Thoughts, a series of lectures, workshops, and discussions on contemporary design at Fundación Alumnos and Museo Tamayo. Alongside Roxana Fabius, he is the co-founder of (human) learning, an itinerant study group that has been hosted in spaces such as P! in New York City, Art Center/South Florida in Miami, Florida, and ZONAMACO in Mexico City. In 2013, he received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

http://spring2020-seminar.designforthe.net/

Wednesday, February 19, 10:00am–1:00pm
CSB 218C

An independent graphic designer in New York City, David Reinfurt introduced the study of graphic design at Princeton University in 2010. In late September 2019, Inventory Press and D.A.P. published a book based on his teaching, A New Program for Graphic Design, a do-it-yourself textbook that synthesizes the pragmatic with the experimental and builds on mid- to late-twentieth-century pedagogical models to convey advanced principles of contemporary design, rooted in three courses (Typography, Gestalt, and Interface).

As a co-founder of O-R-G, Dexter Sinister, and The Serving Library, Reinfurt has developed several models that have reimagined graphic design and publishing in the twenty-first century. He was 2016–17 Mark Hampton Rome Prize Fellow in Design at the American Academy in Rome and is the co-author of Muriel Cooper (MIT Press, 2017).

http://spring2020-seminar.designforthe.net/

Wednesday, February 12, 10:00am–1:00pm
CSB 218C

New York-based designer Yotam Hadar has over a decade of experience collaborating with studios, agencies, and clients in leading concept-driven projects in typography, print, branding, environ­mental and interactive media for clients in culture, retail, media, education, government, and tech. Past experience includes Nike NY, 2×4, Pentagram, Project Projects, Sagmeister & Walsh, Hugo & Marie, Mother Design, among others. A design educator since 2009, Yotam taught design and typography at Yale School of Art, Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design and Rutgers University.

Wednesday, February 5, 10:00am–1:00pm
CSB 218C

New York-based graphic designer Kristian Henson is part of the publishing imprint, Hardworking Goodlooking (with Dante Carlos, Czar Kristoff, Clara Balaguer). They recently spoke to the Walker about how cultural work can be used as a critical tool through various platforms, especially publishing, which they explore through a transnational collaboration: Henson works in New York; Carlos, in Portland; Kristoff and Balaguer in the Philippines.

Hardworking Goodlooking

http://spring2020-seminar.designforthe.net/

Wednesday, January 29, 10:00am–1:00pm
CSB 218C

Neema Githere is a curator and guerrilla educator/performance artist based in the #digitaldiaspora. She is part of the collective Data Healing which seeks to illuminate + activate the intersections between nature, spirituality, and technology. Her new site Presentism2020 is a manifestation of her ongoing theories, projects and relationships: afropresentism, #healingimagery, radical love, #divestfrominstagram, and data healing.

“It may feel as if the internet is up in the clouds, but in actual fact it’s at the bottom of the ocean, in the form of 880,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cables. These cables make up the essential infrastructure for sending all our emails, websites, photos, films and of course emoticons. Beneath the waves, our wireless life is very bound up with physical wires—it’s the virtual made physical. Among the submerged cities, drowned sailors and hidden histories, the ocean is home to a complex communications network. Here, the technologies controlled by the West expand along the old colonial routes, so in a way the cables are the hardware of a new, electronic imperialism. Deep Down Tidal is a video essay in typical net.art style, weaving together cosmological, spiritual, political and technological narratives about water and its role in communication, then and now. It’s about how this cable network can facilitate the retention and expansion of power. It also reminds us that water doesn’t forget.”

This session will be a reflection-based workshop around the concept of data healing. Terms of interest: data trauma, data healing, cyber doula. As students read the assigned text, I encourage them to reflect upon & attempt to self-define the above terms, which will frame our conversation in class.

http://spring2020-seminar.designforthe.net/

Paul Sahre
Wednesday (May 1) – 10:30am,
Civic Square Building – Room 218C

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