 Welcome, welcome everyone. Welcome to Graphics Project 2022. My name is Yoon Jae Choi and Graphics Project is an annual series of lectures and workshops exploring the role of graphic design within the field of architecture. The goal is to examine various methods of visual communication used to convey concepts to both specialists and general audiences. In the short term, these events aim to help students build a successful graduation portfolio, but also hopefully trigger a lasting interest in how representation relates to the work itself. And while all, you know, doing all this while unpacking the topics, tools and trends of contemporary graphic design. I've been teaching a course called design and typography which some of you may know or might even be taking the semester for many years now at GSAP and I'm continuously surprised and impressed by the level of not just interest but appreciation and literacy of graphic design by the students here. There's been a fascinating and heartening evolution, I think, over the years where students truly understand how ideas and representation of those ideas, they must be coordinated and considered. So Graphics Projects happens over two weekends. This weekend we have four separate talks lined up tonight. We have Albert Hicks who will go first from Bluebug Newsweek. We have Julie Cho, Alice Chow and Karen Shu of Omnivore. Tomorrow evening we'll hear from Josh Jordan who you may know from the making studio at GSAP and Melissa Deckart and Nicole Licht of Party of One. The pictures from previous years and resources can be all found on the GSAP website on the Graphics Project page. And in two weeks from now, February 12th and 13th, we'll also have portfolio reviews, which is a kind of a workshop session also happening over Zoom, which gives the students a chance to present and discuss their work in progress portfolios with critics. I want to say a quick thank you to Stefan Boddika, Shannon Well, Kaylee Streeter and Danielle Smoller for helping me to put these events together during what I know is a very busy and hectic time here in the academic year. So to kick this series off for 2022, I'm really pleased and excited to introduce Albert Hicks. Albert is the graphic designer and he's currently an art director at Bluebug News business week. In the past, he has worked at New York based design studio called Wax Studios, also at the Whitney Museum after they went through the rebrand with Experimental Jet Set and before a brief West Coast interluder Apple and Palo Alto. With an interest in how communities, spaces and objects shape culture, language and perspective, Albert has also recently started an independent practice for this partner, Marcus Washington Jr., called AM. Originally from Baltimore, he received his BFA in graphic design from the Parsons School of Design at the New School. So if you may be familiar with Bloomberg Newsweek for a business week. If it's, you know, it's it, if it's, you know, not as a publication but then at least as a brand I would think it was first published in New York City in 1929 weeks before the big stock market crash, but then in 2010, the magazine was bought by Bluebug LP and it was rebranded as Bluebug Newsweek, a business week. And so, you know, in a way the magazine is about 100 years old, but if you look at it another way it's about 11 years old, I will give more about it from Albert. Thank you so much for coming. Yeah, thank you for having me. And thanks for sharing your snow day with me. Let me share my screen and get started. Okay, are you seeing this clearly? Awesome. So, thank you for that introduction. My name is Albert. I'm excited to be here today. Thank you for allowing me to speak and share my work with you. When I first spoke to you and I thought it would be a great idea to sort of take you on a process of my current position at Bloomberg and do my best to sort of provide a step by step process on how the magazine is made. So, while creating this lecture and compiling the work that I've made, I started thinking more about the process at Bloomberg and my own sort of personal process. And I wanted to start this talk with the power of storytelling. And so I chose this title actor was all done. And it, I came to the conclusion that everything that I made and everything that we're doing at Business Week is sort of that through the act of storytelling through graphic design. So storytelling lives in all the work that I make, but more importantly, as an art director at Business Week, it's important to sort of understand how to communicate the news stories were reporting weekly. And it dawned on me that we've been learning how to tell stories from our early childhood days. I'm not sure if any of you guys remember these worksheets here as as a young student, but I went back to revisit them because this is sort of this is basically what we're doing at Business Week, really thinking about the the five W's and what, when, where and why, sort of getting down to the, you know, the characters and the settings and the problems and the solutions, you know, and this is a method that if you, if I, you know, return back to these worksheets. This is what we're doing through graphic design and storytelling, whether it be myself as an art director or even the editors themselves. So this whole lecture is sort of based off of those five, five W's. And I sort of repositioned them for this lecture and the purpose of sort of taking you along this process starting with where, who, what, when, how, and why. My lights went out one second. Yeah, so thinking about this sort of who, where, who, what, when, and how, and why. I then started to think about how to dissect them into, you know, graphic design terms or ways to communicate them through the sort of art direction that we're making and the work that I make. So thinking about where that's really focusing on placement. Who is audience. What is the content. So, you know, the stories that we have in bloom in business week. When is time. How is thinking of ways to visualize the stories. And lastly, why and I have designer here, which I'll touch on. When I get when I get there later in the lecture but I think, you know, why is sort of special it's really it really is a point that I think I can elaborate for myself but I think, you know, other designers will have their own why and I'll get there. So really starting with where understanding the context of the institution and the client and its limitations. And I think before even jumping into the work at business week. I think it's important to give you a bit of context on the, on the background that, you know, coming from the previous institutions. And sort of coming from Parsons to Bloomberg, I just wanted to fill you in a bit more on the work that I made there and sort of the sort of realization as a graphic designer after working at all those places and then now being in my current role. And so my first role, as you Jay said, I was an intern at wax studios. And wax is a graphic design art direction and publishing agency based in Brooklyn with a focus in strategic branding, and they work closely with art and design, the studio partners were Dave Union and that club. And here I started as an intern and then became the first employee. And at wax, I worked on many branding projects develop art direction skills and worked on their wax magazine. And then from wax, I decided to move to a cultural institution. And that was the Whitney Museum of American art. After working in a small studio and sort of designing for several cultural institutions I had the urge to work in house. And to feel a disconnect, sort of between how I understood the work that these places needed and wanted versus the work that I wanted to make. I just really wanted to learn how a machine like the Whitney really operates internally. And I wanted to learn if I was a graphic designer in house at the Whitney. What would that mean for my position as a graphic designer and how could I really understand that sort of structure from within and kind of bridge those resolve questions that I had while working at at the at wax. And then from Whitney, I went to Apple, and it was a short freelance job there at in their mark homes communications department. And I won't discuss much work that was made there but I think it's important for me to acknowledge the sort of significance it had on the ways I started to understand how the institution and which I worked in had certain limitations or restrictions on the type of work I wanted to make. And it's sort of, you know, I started to, I went from wax being so small, maybe four, four team members to, you know, Whitney and Apple sort of growing in scale. And it really made me reflect on the type of agency I had as a designer at each place. And so I learned quickly that working in a small studio I had so much agency I had so much voice I had. I felt like a real member on the team, even with the small to little experience that I had, and then sort of moving up, I had a lot less agency and a lot and sort of felt like my voice was a bit more stifled in certain places. And if you take a look at the pyramid, it really suggests you know that this cultural institution was more of a balance between the two. And, and tag was sort of the place where I felt like there were more structures and political reasons why my voice was a bit stifled. And with that being said, I always, anytime I talk about this sort of hierarchy. There's always that inevitable question of like money that comes involved and so. Sorry about that. I have a sort of idea about money that comes so, you know, working as small studio you have this, you know, you have more voice you have more agency but maybe there's, you know, less money that that comes with that. And as you come up to tech, you know, it's, it's the opposite you have, you know, more, more money and but then your voice is a bit more stifled and so I always think that's such an odd place to be and to actually see that and understand it. So, just working at the Whitney, I think, you know, it sort of was a place where I really learned how to work within, you know, a team of graphic designers but also working with other departments. And I found a lot of it was a learning curve really, you know, working with marketing and understanding the ways to talk to, you know, education versus marketing. And these are just examples of jet sets brand identity for the Whitney just so if you're not familiar you can see this sort of start and rigid ways where topography is laid out on the page and understanding that, you know, there wasn't much agency within the branding I'd say to really see myself as a designer, you know, taking us on and sort of developing an identity for myself. It was really about learning how to work within this rigid, this rigid system. And so, anytime I see this page and look back at this page I think about this quote from jet set, where they say, if the history of art should not be seen as simplistic straight line then how should it be seen instead and second if presenting a straight line is not what the Whitney is about, then what is is zigzag. And so I thought I always think that's so powerful you know this sort of W that becomes this flexible zigzag and really thinking about how this W responds to art and and as a graphic designer being within this house, you know, in house, I was also responding to the art as working with this identity. And so I quickly wanted to talk about the project that I worked on at the Whitney, which focused on Warhol. And the show was titled after this book the philosophy of Andy Warhol from a to B, be and back again. And so when thinking about where you know, you know, I think it's important to think about the sort of institution that you're working within or the client that you're working with and what was really important about this project was that Warhol was at the Whitney. Like what did that mean in terms of building a sub branding identity for for this show, you know, Warhol has been everywhere it's been seen everywhere. It's, you know, have collections at unique glow, you know, there's been rip balls here and there so how it was important for us to define is, you know, how can we use this exhibition, the largest show to date at the Whitney and understand Andy Warhol within the foundational elements of the Whitney's identity. So these were some early sketches to really creating this identity and thinking about overlapping and screen printing so you get to see some, you know, layering here and dots and repetition, some of the things I wanted to pull out from Andy Warhol's work. And then we quickly pulled back a bit and I created this sort of sub graphic identity here. And it really talked about the sort of ways where the team could really knock out a lot of the big parts to the, you know, the branding identity so that was, you know, understanding how to current Warhol and Whitney together the very like basics that they need it when to use these different sort of blocking schemes so Whitney, Warhol, Warhol, Whitney, or this sort of alternating Whitney, Warhol, understanding how to use it and for different formats, understanding how to choose images, understanding, you know, ways to sort of sort of use certain artworks within the Warhol and when not to. And these were all sort of considerations that weren't really in the toolbox of the brand guidelines for the Whitney youth normally, but it was important for us to sort of take some parts that were that felt new and vibrant and fresh to sort of make this show feel special. And then this sort of goes on it just gives the, you know, another designer, an understanding of how to work with the guidelines here. And so, these are just images so that you can see how the final sort of turned out in certain formats. This was newspaper. These were different banners, museum guide tickets. And for different formats, you can see how the identity sort of developed in different ways. Sometimes, you know, we pulled back and didn't use the Whitney Warhol at all and I think we put it on the back here. Image of Jay-Z wearing it. And then, you know, I think anytime, you know, I watch lectures and things of that nature or go to lectures, I think it's really, really fun to see this sort of like behind the scenes like how, how does this shit really get made, you know. And so, this is always getting made, really using like plotter to, you know, see, okay, how does this really look like in terms of scale, you know, when these were going to live in the subway station and so thinking about placement, thinking about people actually interacting with this on their commute. I think it was really important for us to understand, okay, like, if we're have displaying quotes about Andy from Andy Warhol, like, what are these quotes, you know, taken on sort of an editor's role there and also thinking about, okay, how do they look, you know, how is this going to feel when people are passing by. So, you know, this is really what was happening. And, you know, in the process of this all thinking about, you know, the different quotes that were, you can see on the glass here that we were working with in different images. And then, since we were taking over the 8th Avenue subway station. I just went through and just basically took pictures of all the placements there and made this sort of like roadmap, and then it became a very easy way for myself and other members on the team. Curators, market marketing team, etc. to actually understand, okay, this is how it's going to look when they're actually in the subway and walking by and it gave us sort of, it gave myself sort of this way to curate the items that were there, you know, and sort of see this space as a small gallery in itself. So, hoping that when people were walking through on their commute going to work wherever they would get a smaller sort of gallery through the subway and then want to come back into the, come to the Whitney to see the full show. And then these are just more process pictures showing on the right just sort of color correcting and then, you know, the left my friend Joel, not doing anything. And then, you know, I went in into the subway station and sort of watch them put them up and it sort of became like this full. I don't know, it was a cool moment to see this come to life in this way and see them actually putting up the posters. So I think, you know, just understanding that, you know, coming from that sort of process phase and printing them out and then seeing them actually it's really nice to get a feel of what you're making when you can actually see it and you know understand scale to body. And then this was just a wider shot showing showing them subway station. And so, in that sort of pyramid I didn't really talk about where Bloomberg fit. But I think, you know, Bloomberg is such an interesting place because it really takes from, you know, different parts of tech different parts of this cultural institution and different parts of, you know, a small studio and, especially, you know, thinking about a small studio where we're a smaller team and you know, it definitely has that that same feeling of working together, crafting ideas together. And then I think like, you know, cultural institution. There's that sort of cultural impact that Bloomberg has that's very similar to, you know, MoMA or Whitney, etc. And you called it a brand in itself. And I think that's, you know, it's a, that is really indicative of Bloomberg Business Week today. And also thinking about scale in terms of, you know, tech and I think, you know, Bloomberg has an audience that reaches a wide audience and so it really pulls these different strings together in this in this publication that's really exciting. And so really getting to the who and identifying your audience I think in any project is, you know, really important. And so this Rubin Museum of Art poster here I worked on at WAC Studios and the Rubin Museum of Art is a dynamic environment that is, I think, you know, not many people are aware of it really but it's quite inspiring. You know, it's, it connects ideas and culture and art of the Himalayan regions. I often hear people, you know, discuss the Rubin Museum of Art and I always recommend, you know, you go and check it out. But I worked on this campaign here and it was my actually one of the first campaigns that I worked on, but as a young designer working on this I really was focusing on, you know, myself who wasn't really familiar with the Rubin Museum of Art then, just learning about it while working on the project. And I thought, okay, I really want people to feel compelled to visit here and feel the sort of energy that lives within this institution, this sort of the vibration it has. And so I was working with some of the images in their collection and started to make these really like exuberant forms that then panned out to be these sort of like snake-like structures. And we worked with a copy editor to really craft this that he came up with Infinite in a World which was really cool because it really felt like this sort of dynamic structure that lives off the page and maybe enters like another void and then comes back onto the page. And so really playing with like certain croppings that really felt emotive and powerful in tone. And then sometimes just like having certain images collide or intertwine in one another felt really indicative of their mission and the certain works that they had in their collection. And then from there, this wasn't a part of the brief, but then a few, maybe a month or two later, they asked to have it on the side of the wall of the institution. And I felt like, you know, this was a really cool moment for this to really live. Like, you know, when I look back at it, I felt like this actually this format was best for this sort of application, because it really, you know, when you're passing by this placement, you really feel captivated in the sort of form and repetition of the images. And then sort of thinking about some of my freelance work. I recently worked on this project at the Brooklyn Rail. And if you're not familiar, the Brooklyn Rail is a journal. And they sort of report on criticism of music, dance, film, theater, fiction and poetry, and visual arts. And they have a section called the Critics Page, which functions with a sort of rotating editor. And in this issue, the guest critic was Ralph Lemon and this keeps happening. I'm so sorry why this keeps doing that. Here we go. And so I was also the sort of the guest designer for that section. And so this was the moment where really thinking about who and sort of the audience and thinking, you know, you know, sort of having free reign to do whatever I wanted to do with this content, versus having, you know, there weren't any sort of boundaries or restrictions. And so the first thing I did was I read the content and to really digest what was happening here and the, you know, the essays in this small package were so strong and they were very defiant in ways that spoke about, you know, race and really spoke towards, you know, working brown and African Americans in an art and art world. And I thought it could be really nice to have these really powerful columns that are just like the format is quite large and sort of have these strong pillars that are, you know, going from the top to the bottom of the page really feeling in this sort of justify topography really feeling like it couldn't be knocked over or, you know, flexible it was like standing its ground on the page and working with like these ways of, you know, huge, huge headers and really giving that's the the byline the same treatment as the header of the story and creating these sort of like different ways of balance on the page. And so you can you'll also see these sort of like triangular forms that go across the page and those were ways where they usually appear next to an image and then the caption is at the very end. I just wanted to create these ways where people, if you were the audience was reading the stories, you have these sort of moments where you could jump from content to content, and still have, you know, these nice pockets of open space. And so, when there were moments where, you know, I felt like the, the, the heads were really, you know, sort of provocative and, you know, really were strong I felt like there were moments where those could just live on a page by itself, you know, just really take up that page and, and feel just feel the weight of the topography on that page with the header and that byline. And so this was sort of this is an example of that. And then here, there are moments where that's that that line or that that sort of triangular form just sort of goes into the column and just interrupts it so as you're going through the book. I really get this feeling that while reading the content, the sort of the shapes are sort of doing the same thing they're being, you know, very concrete, and they're really like, you know, being defiant in the function that you have. So thinking about the sort of who at the audience at Bloomberg. It really comes down to like, it's a business magazine and a lot of the audience is focused on finances. And, you know, a lot of the audience is focused on what's happening in the stock market, etc. And so, although I'll get into some of the Bloomberg work shortly but although if many of you are aware of Bloomberg, it can come off as being a very, you know, lighthearted magazine, but there are oftentimes where as an art director there and I have stories where I have no clue what the hell I'm reading when it comes to like anything about the stock market. And it's, you know, it becomes challenging. It becomes like an effort to really understand how to communicate it. And it takes a lot of questions with my editor to understand what's the best way to, you know, have someone who's aware of the information. I feel compelled by the art and someone like me who may not know what the story is about how to sort of get their attention and get them to understand what's happening here. And so that's always the real challenge working with the content and understanding the sort of audience for Business Week. And there's also Mike, he's also the audience too, right? It's this magazine. So I think, you know, we're always straddling, you know, we're always pulling strings in terms of like how comical we can be or how strong with any sort of illustration, photography and graphics in general, just to understand the tone of the stories that we're working with. And I think, yeah, going back to that sort of like branding of Business Week, you know, there's been, you know, generations of designers and art directors at Business Week. And I am in the, I feel like I'm in the current generation there, but there have been several amazing designers who sort of helped it to be what it is today. And I found this article from like 2019, where they say how a band of design misfits brought anti-esthetics to Bloomberg Business Week, which is really interesting, especially coming from working at the Whitney that was, you know, I think from my personal opinion, the identity was so strong and so rigid and locked in and thinking about the anti-esthetics in that way. It's totally opposite, I would say. And so I don't particularly agree with that in terms of the anti-esthetics, but I think that there are ways at Bloomberg where when you're working with content that isn't always maybe on the surface fun or lighthearted. I think the designers before and the designers now are great at understanding when to sort of dial that up and when to dial it down. And so for sort of the point three, what is really discerning content. And so I just wanted to sort of talk about the structure of the book at Business Week. And the front of the book is, has five parts, is business, technology, finance, economics and politics. And the way that is structured is that each week an art director has one or two of those sections of the book. And so then from there, you then work with an editor to craft those sections each that week. And along with that, you have these sort of templates that you and Jay sort of touched on it, was redesigned. And that was before my time there, but you have these sort of headline weights here, you have deck and this sort of where you see business, this structure here that just interchanges between those two, those categories, those five categories. And you have folios at the top and byline under the business here. And so these are just in terms of, you know, not sure if you know or Business Week is a weekly magazine so the pace is so fast that it really helps to have these templates in in design sort of ready to go once we are about to turn over the issue. And so, you've been having these sort of headline goals here with the debt, it just makes it really easy for when we have an initial, initial conversation with our editor, and we sort of know, okay, so we're going to have about two or three stories for this section for this week. And we can sort of, you know, craft out okay, how, how is this going to live on the page, just sort of prematurely before we get the text in and, you know, know what art is at least we kind of have a working word count, and we can sort of see, fill out what what's going to happen. And then these are just other pages that sort of just get to the brand colors for the front of the book and just different styling for quotes and graphics, etc. Another page for formats. So this makes it really easy for us to sort of like, get things on the page, get things as we call it attached so that the editors can sort of fill in their stories and get things sort of working in terms of knowing where account and that and that sort of foundational part. And then with each issue there are usually about three features and features are different from front of the book where it's really a moment where the art director has a lot of agency so this is a place where this is the basically the template for a feature. And that that just shows that, you know, it's basically you can do what you want with with that story. And so the front of the book is really rigid. It's really is meant to be structured in a way where you can get it going quick quickly get things attached get things moving and then features you have most of the time they are, you know, about them about maybe a month before and you can really take time to craft, you know, the art for them there. Most of the time about for some time to eight pages. So this is a place where you get to really have a free for all. And this is sort of just a template for it but you can really dial it up. And then there are times where there are special issues so here I'm showing the Bloomberg 50 which happens each year and it sort of highlights 50 people who define that year. And so this is from the cover from 2017. This is the cover from 2018. 2019. And then this or sorry 2020 and then this one 2021. And I worked on 2021 and it is interesting because basically there are three parts to Bloomberg 50, there are 50 entries and they're 40 to 45 just like stock images or images of these 50 people. And there's about five original photography so the real challenge here is having developing this sort of identity that pulls images from all anywhere and that we can license and then sort of making it feel cohesive. Which can be really challenging and has a lot of different parts to it. So I'll just go through this. A few spreads from here but the real goal of B 50 is to make it feel exciting to make it feel dynamic to make it feel fun. Each color is attributed to the category in which that person is in so yellow is entertainment and entertainment politics, etc. So the colors change as you go throughout and really acknowledge the sort of craziness of it all. And that was really the goal here was to make this feel as my goal was to make it feel as insane as possible in the way where these the text is sort of like snaking into one another and sort of just move your eye in this dynamic way because you know when I see this list is really exciting it's about the 50 people who have you know changed the world basically. And so that's, you know, dynamic in itself and exciting itself. And so I think it's also interesting here to note that not only was I responding to the content but also really responding to myself as a designer and what I really wanted to see from the fourth iteration of this Bloomberg 50 sort of looking back at the previous ones and. sort of looking at some of the work that I was making before, especially thinking about the Brooklyn rail that was more rigid and and had these sort of, you know, strong straight columns and white spaces, and then just sort of thinking about Bloomberg be 50 in a total different way. I think that kind of felt challenging to me as a designer and sort of thinking about how I can be like what were my sort of personal limits. So, these are more spreads. And these forms sort of just started to just take on a life of their own which I was really interested in you know sort of making these pieces feel like this sort of mechanical engine that was like, you know, by spread by spread you get to feel that sort of like these sort of poles or rails that were happening in certain places. And then this is a different type of special issue that I worked on where the stories were feature length and it was about nine longer stories. So it's very different in the tone is different. We ended up going with this cover of Dorothy Brown, and with this head is the tax code races. Dorothy Brown on the secrets of white wealth and so if you think about that content is very different from, you know, Bloomberg 50 that I just showed so therefore I think the tone of the design obviously had to to feel different, you know, and so I was really compelled by some of these, you know, tax return forms or us passport forms ways where the the topography and these sort of like light highlights are in the field, the field options. These sort of like decorative items. I, maybe they have a function but from not knowing what that function is they feel decorative in the sense. And thinking about some of these sort of smaller, like little checks here, or outline of the 20 and the, and the field 21. So I thought that could be a really cool starting place for how I approach the stories that were in the publication. And so you get to see how that sort of led the design here. And really thinking about the stories so this one here is tax code so white, really, in these all the most of these stories here we're talking about tax code or tax or property taxes. So really, this identity for this really design for this really spoke to the stories quite directly. And at the top here I had to sort of like progress bar. I'm not sure if you any of you have taken, you know, done any sort of government field things online but they always have these weird progress parts that feel so strange or even this sort of large arrow at the bottom I saw that on another sort of form so I was sort of pulling all these smaller details from these different forms and sort of compiling them. And then each story sort of has like a different color. So you get to see, even these sort of like black rules at the top and then having these sort of singular lines around the text in the head here, really playing with like that highlighting field in the previous slide. And you just get a bit more of that. And I think it really helped the content come alive come to life but also, I think these are, these are ways and I think this example here is indicative to that and, and how you can make the, the story feel accessible or lively without being too, to fun or understanding that what that that tone is just in terms of color or these sort of different sort of characteristics. And then my four point is sort of thinking about the how and how are ways that, you know, you can visualize content. And I think that's one of the most important things that business week, you know, when we have our initial conversation with our editors we have these stories. We chat about them and then you know it's, it's a, it's a quick process to think about okay how, how can I art these, these stories in a way that feels new, because this magazine have been running for X amount of years. I'm sure this, this sort of subject isn't new, but it's current today. So what are ways that I can make this come to life. And usually they're, you know, illustrations one way. Topography is another way. Photo illustration and photography. Sometimes these things can live separately sometimes they can live together. And, you know, most of the time it, one or the other makes sense for whatever reason maybe it's, you know, timing and location maybe it's, it's really what's the best way to get the content or the story across more most effectively. And so, for example, this was a feature of mine that I commissioned illustrator to work on. And it was really about how this Black Lives Matter and K-pop sort of joining forces. And when I, when I read the story, I just knew that the best way to sort of get to this idea would be like illustration someone to really like capture that spirit of, you know, being at a K-pop concert, which I've been to before. And so I just knew that, you know, that could be the best way to get this sort of subject across but also working with my photo editor. We also commissioned some secondary imagery. This is another story where I commissioned an illustrator where this was sort of at the beginning of the pandemic and Disney fired 28,000 workers. And so I thought it could be really, it could hit home to see the actual characters leaving Disney. And so these are moments where you can really make the histories come to life in a different way that I hadn't done before, like working with illustrators and thinking about ways to really create a story in that way, which has really had been really fun. Or this one was thinking about how rich kids are owning apartments in New York. And so this was another, you know, commissioned illustration. And sometimes these really can hit home and really, it's sometimes take time to sort of make them write or, you know, work with the illustrator and get feedback so that, you know, some things can be tweaked here and there to get the tone correct. I think when, when they're final and we get them to a place that we like, I think they really can bring the reader in and get them to really understand what's happening. And then this is just another example of a story with the baby deficit and it was also another illustration commission. And then I think I mentioned full illustration and so this is another way where, you know, the, this is the front of the book here you can see in terms of the structure of the page but the story was about how, you know, Magda Stallion is, works with TikTok to make songs that hit and other others pop stars and rappers. And so I remember working on this layout and choosing images of Magda Stallion that felt a little risque and I recall my editor being like, this is a business magazine. And so there are tones where, you know, it maybe it pushes too far in terms of the, you know, the, the brand of Business Week today, you know, I sometimes look back at some of the older issues and some of the, you know, art that I've seen there is, you know, way more provocative than things that we would do today. And so it's really interesting to see how I think with different designers and editors, the magazine just continues to evolve in different ways. This is another illustration photo illustration that I did where I basically Photoshopped the sort of marijuana trees in front. When I look back at this, I'm like, wow, this is so ridiculous. But it really captured this story, you know, and I think I had some other sketches showing different treatments of like ways to sort of show marijuana in these different ways and this was the preferred way. And then this was just another way of showing this was a story on Forever 21 and I worked with Ryan on my team who's a photographer and we sort of set this still life up when we were working in the office. And we worked with a set designer and it sort of just we created this in-house and I thought that was like a really fun process, you know, not there. I think this is the first time working at a place where I got to really be more hands-on with the type of content and topography. So I'll just go through these. This was another freelance job that I worked on with Actuosaurs and I put this in here because, you know, very different from Business Week, but here, you know, they had commissioned me to work on the inside of the book and for the topography. And so it's just, I think, you know, I put this in here just to show that, you know, this was a conversation. So the way that I'm treating topography here is totally different than the way that I would treat topography in Business Week, you know, it's much more rigid and less comical and fun. And then when understanding why this is important in this moment, thinking about the content, why are we showing this? Why is this now? Is this important? Is this irrelevant? You know, do people care about this? I think that's something that we should always be thinking about and anything that we're working on. Do people really care about this? Do we need this out in the world at the moment? Or, you know, do you even care about this? I think those are questions that we're always asking. Sometimes out over here, our director's being like, didn't we run a story about this thing two weeks ago? It's actually new about it. And so I think when talking about when, it's really important to talk about the cover of Business Week because the cover is sort of, I would say the most important story in that issue. Or if it's not the most important story, it's the most immediate story, the story that causes for that moment or is taking on that moment. And so Bloomberg obviously being a weekly magazine has had several covers before my time and since I've been there. So this is just a range for you guys to see. But here are some covers I've worked on. You saw this one earlier. This is another one at the very beginning of the pandemic. And it was on, the story was about Zoom and the cover line would everyone please mute. And I knew I wanted to figure out how, if there was a way to sort of get to everyone using Zoom at that time. I mean, everyone's using Zoom now, but at that moment it was so new to a lot of people that they'd be on Zoom several hours a day. And so this really captured that moment, the how to issue, targets of surveillance. This is another cover I worked on. And so you can see that treatment of this sort of photo collaging work that is, I feel like I started to develop that at Bloomberg actually. But never done this sort of type of collaging experience before or work before. But it sort of became natural in terms of like having images that were sometimes stock or taken from photographers that weren't from Bloomberg and figuring out ways to sort of communicate the story and bring in all these disconnecting parts that made sense together. And so it really helped me to develop, is helping me to develop a style in this way. This was a story on a finance story where it was about shorting that I had no clue what that even meant. And I, and honestly, I still really wouldn't be able to tell you that. But I had a few options for art and this wasn't a cover, a content at all. And my editor thought this was like, you know, a perfect way of showing it. And I was like, oh, okay. So there are moments where I feel like I go into a walkthrough with like, I'm not sure if this is correct or even the best way. But here are the options I have that, you know, we can discuss and talk about and then maybe revise them and go from there. And so that really is the process when working on the cover or inside the book and being a weekly magazine, you know, things change often. So sometimes it's a cover and then the night before goes to publishing is not a cover and vice versa. And that's kind of what happened here. This was sort of, this was my first cover I worked on at Bloomberg, and it was the very start to the pandemic. And I remember working on this cover and my editor thought maybe that that cover is a little too serious. And it's really funny to, you know, we went with the cover, but that was before we really, we didn't know much about COVID then. And so to really think back that was like two years ago to think back and think, wow, you know, sometimes, you know, information is so new that even when creating our assets or visuals for certain stories, it may not be, you know, 100%, you know, how important it is or how, you know, how immediate it may feel or is to the audience or to anyone. So there are sometimes I feel like, you know, there are risks that we have to take in terms of the editor pushing, you know, for certain covers and certain stories. There's another one and sort of still getting really developing that sort of collage style with topography here. I think that's been sort of one of my favorite ways of making some of these are assets and working with topography at Business Week. And then just like really thinking about when in that moment, you know, Black Lives Matter movement, there was, you know, we had a story on it, and it then took President to be the cover. And so I think, you know, when discussing when it's, you know, and discussing the cover, it's really important to understand like this is happening now, like people are, you know, discussing this, this subject or people are aware of this or is fueled by this. And so therefore, you should be too. And so I just really wanted to show a sort of sort of a sketch phase to how I worked on this cover and shared it with the team. And so the photo editors reached out to photographers that they knew to just get sort of a photo call and to share images that they had of protests around the US. So some of these cover lines were all working cover lines or maybe they were from me or my editor or someone. So really taking on sort of that editor cap and images and then sort of exploring what that cover could look like. So there were, you know, typographic covers covers that were just photo cover to images together, really taking on, you know, different cropping methods. Maybe it's, you know, less about a singular picture or maybe it's more about this sort of like interaction between police and the people. Maybe, you know, this is a bizarre idea, but maybe like the cover is just a resource list, you know, I remember at that time people were sending different, you know, different resource list or Instagram post and so I thought maybe the cover could have a different picture where, you know, it takes on sort of, it becomes like this sort of informative list that people can use. And it's reacting to certain images that I had in thinking about America is on fire or no progress in sort of looking at the images and in thinking about different cover lines. Maybe there isn't a cover line and then the image becomes a cover line from the protest signs, or maybe it's just abstract and it's just fire and then you have the cover line doing that, that sort of work for you. And so on. And then I really, really love this image and so I then decided, you know, I showed this but then I think a second walk through I then cropped it to just be the fist and felt like that was so powerful in a way where it wasn't really focusing on these faces here. It was really focusing on this fist and the strength of that fist and I thought that would resonate with people of all walks of life but really understanding that, you know, how strong that sort of symbol is. And so we went with this cover and what we did was sort of made the Bloomberg Business Week this sort of darker gray so that it could recede in the back, and we went with out ahead or deck. And so I felt like that was, you know, a really strong move because it didn't really need to have. I feel like the image in this in this cropping really does the work doesn't need it didn't need to have any extra bits or pieces to communicate it. And then lastly, I want to sort of conclude with the sort of why and what can you contribute to a project as a designer and I think that's, you know, this why it can be different for anyone, you know, and I think for me, I think even in the stories that I can't understand you know, I'm not interested in or the content that may not make me feel, you know, excited to know get going to work on. I think, you know, as a designer, you can find ways to really see how you can make that content come to life. And I think, you know, different designers approach content and in different ways. And so I think to just go full circle. This is some of my work. This is a small book that I did in undergrad, but when I actually when I look back at this I'm still so moved by it because I can see some of the sort of things that are happening here are still happening in my work, especially this sort of like layering of content and this this sort of pamphlet was based off of the color gold and so it was taken to articles and sort of juxtaposing them. And so you really can see how some of these the orientation of the different stories are sort of jutting into one another. And so I just bring this back some of this work for my thesis class to where I was focusing on the news and then in the news that I was taking in at that time and thinking about how it's important to sort of reflect on the work that you're interested in and sort of ideas that you're interested in and the ways of making because I think they really come out with each project that you do and sometimes when you look back at your older work you can see certain things that are showing up in different areas of the project that you're making. And here I was interested in these different parts like celebrity as feminist. And I think it comes you know full circle to business week in a way I was making these sort of these PDFs where this was one thinking about who's booty is it and then thinking about different terms centered around this term booty or booty lishes or sexuality. And so it really is it comes you know full circle to some of the work at business week or the way that I approach some of the stories at business week. And lastly I just want to end off with sort of AM which has become a sort of new initiative with my partner Marcus and I just you know during the pandemic. He's also a designer. And so we kind of wanted to just make work that we wanted to see out in the world or explore that we hadn't explored or what have you and so we started off just like working with artists who we're friends with and thought you know it could be nice to work on their website for them because I feel like that's something that many artists you know younger artists they may not have the resources or or or time etc to sort of get you know a custom website and where you can work and talk about their ideas and their work and sort of you sort of display their their work digitally and that in a more organized and unique way. And so this is my friend Taj who's a painter graduated from Yale and so Marcus and I worked with him to develop his website. This is a collaboration collaboration between Wax Studios and AM where we designed these cars for them. And so I think you know I just really wanted to show this stuff because we've never made textiles before or you know we have you know dreams to continue making these kinds of objects. But as a designer, you know you can always just, you know, explore and I think that what's really important, especially thinking about, you know, different formats. I think, you know, I've had a lot of jobs that were in print and in some digital, but what kind of keeps me going and drives me the most is sort of exploring different ways that you can, you know, play with topography and different formats and really understanding how people can interact with these things. And then lastly, this is sort of the lap. This is the last project I have here but I think you know with AM Marcus and I are both interested in learning about other people and that's where design is really fun for me. And so we made this calendar with our friend Virginia Chow and she is, I met her at the Whitney and we created this Lunar New Year calendar and so Marcus and I had seen these when traveling in Seoul and in other parts of Asia. And so we just thought it could be fun to, you know, dissect them a bit more and actually Virginia's mom sort of helped us navigate the content on these and so those are moments where it really feels like wow design can actually bring people together. You can actually learn, you know, new things you can make things that you think are cool and sort of share ideas and so that's what we really had on this. And then we also worked with Sam Virginia's partner on some of the illustrates the illustrations here. And so it was a real feat for all of us but and then it came out great and so those are some of the projects where there's a release initiative from Marcus and I, but it's important for us to keep, you know, understanding how design can really create representation and collaboration so yeah, that's all. Thank you so much. Thank you. I've, I mean for a long time I've actually you've you've alluded to this when you were talking about the Whitney stuff earlier but how, you know, sometimes as designers we were just curious about how it goes you know behind the scenes we just want to know what happens. And with with Bluebug Business Week it's a as you said it's a weekly periodical so so many decisions get made so fast so quickly and you know things are changing it has to reflect the world that we live in so you know it's it's been really enlightening and interesting for me and I'm sure for the students to learn a little bit about your process. We're running a little bit behind so we'll forego the questions the Q&A's and we'll move swiftly on to Omnivore. Thank you again. Thank you. Hello. Hi. Hi. Dining from three different locations. So let me introduce you very, very quickly we're so fortunate to have all three partners of Omnivore here tonight. They are Julie Cho, Alice Chung and Karen Xu. Omnivore is a three person female owned graphic design studio located in New York, Portland and LA. All three of them are second generation Asian Americans working mothers, design educators, small business owners, food lovers, justice seekers and friends. They have been collaborating since 2002. And they've worked on various projects, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Princeton University, School of Architecture and Architects, ICA, the New Museum, Center for Architecture, New York Times, the Atlantic and many, many more. And anyone that can run an independent design studio for 20 years and maintain a friendship and between partners has my utmost respect and admiration. So tonight I'm really excited to learn more about their practice and their friendship. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thanks, Yoon Jae. It's so good to see you. Hi, Albert. Nice to meet you. I didn't hear the whole, we didn't get to hear the whole thing but what we saw was so amazing and really energizing. Okay, I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to share my screen so hold on. Everybody can see this, correct? And then if I click ahead, yeah, yes, good. Okay, cool, cool, cool. All right, we're going to try to be mindful of time so Yoon Jae, you can like draw the curtain if you need to at any given point. Okay, so thank you. Thank you everyone. So nice to be here. I'm just really excited to share with you our process and work. So we're going to start with some like personal intros, talk about our studio practice and some thoughts about our book work in particular and then do a deep dive into some, a couple larger projects and then that relate to our process and then end with some reflections and maybe there'll be time for questions we'll see. All right, I'll begin. Hi, I'm Alice. I came to design in a bit of a convoluted way. I was a biology major as an undergrad, and then went on to get a master's in health and social behavior before finally turning to design for my public health thesis and grad I was looking at the efficacy of PSAs and seeing whether they could really affect healthy behaviors. And that's when I really started to pay attention to messaging and the tools used to communicate ideas so typography type of image. And I honestly don't think I even really knew what graphic design was before then, but I took an intro to design class the next semester. And so my desperate interest, all those, you know, art history or studio electives, they all seem to finally fall into place and my professor of that class became a sort of mentor, he really encouraged me to continue on with design despite having to restart and retrain but that persistence led to my going to RISD where I met my future employers at two by four which is where I met Karen, and then eventually we started our own studio. I grew up in New Jersey, I grew up in New Jersey as a second generation Korean American. So just like Alice, I didn't start as a graphic designer, but was always in love with, you know, making books even as a little kid. I went to Columbia in New York Alliance in the 90s. And when students were protesting on campus for an ethnic studies department. I entered in history and sociology and visual arts where I really found my soul in the printmaking studios, making multiples and books. So after graduation, I worked for years in television, searching for space between art and design, art and life, or really just context. I was antsy and wanted to get back into studio space I decided to totally switch careers and go to art school. I had no idea what what graphic design was. But the only thing was I felt like it really like lived in the world and so that was the part that I really loved about it. So I started my design education at Cal Arts and then I moved transferred to Yale and finished my degree there. I also met lifelong friends, and most importantly, Karen Alice and my husband. Hi, I'm Karen, my parents came to the United States from Taiwan, and I was born and raised in Oregon. I'm part of two declining populations, a middle child and a Karen. I was designing before I even knew what design was and knew it was the right place for me when I realized it was about words and images about what language can look like about textless communication. My BFA is from Oregon State University and my MFA is from Yale University School of Art. Decades after graduate school, I can only appreciate the confusion and attempts in my work to use design to explore identity. I can never escape the feeling of being an outsider inside. This is like the blurriness between life and work, distinctions of work work and personal work. I'm proud to support recreational typography. So, as you mentioned, the three of us are in different cities so Karen is in Portland. Alice is in Brooklyn and I'm here in Los Angeles. Alice and I are also involved in design education. Alice currently teaches undergrad type at Yale and I teach at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles in the undergrad and graduate departments. And as a studio, we've, you know, been invited to hold workshops with students and speak and kind of engage in design education that way. When we started Omnivore at the end of 2002 in New York, Karen and I had decided to start a small studio with the intention of keeping the work closer in many ways and also to be deeply involved in all aspects of the creative process. We knew that working small could accommodate our increasingly busy and chaotic lives. We embraced the idea of remote office well before the days of Zoom and Dropbox and we were figuring out how to have a truly flexible home and work life. In 2007 Julie joined us but then within the next year she and Karen both moved to the West Coast. The history of our studio is our own personal story of births and deaths, moves and marriages. Studio life is regular life. Between the three of us, we practice design, collaborate on projects outside of the studio, chase after a total of five kids, one cat, one rat and one dog. As working mothers, there is no beginning or end. We just have to keep working. In our studio practice, we collaborate on a range of work from large scale to visual identities and brands. We love to illustrate and we found over the years that we feel really energized by collaborating on projects that we feel fully invested in. In our 20 years of studio practice, we've loved and felt a deep passion for making books. They are challenging from concept to execution. They require systems thinking, organizational skills, deep looking poetry, weirdness, risk taking attention to detail. They are a real metaphor for life. Today we're going to share our approach to making books, organizing them based around conceptual categories. You could imagine the book or the act of designing the book as a kind of methodology, a guiding principle that you continually refer back to Princeton has been a longtime collaborator we started working with them while still at two by four. The underlying concept for this early edition of the architecture prospectus was to make an object that exposes its construction. So each section is a different page size. And the structure organizes the content as well as reveals how the book is built. In this iteration we've limited ourselves to only utilizing the traditional methods of bookmaking rather than experimenting with binding or page size, while still thinking of ways to reveal the construction of the book. It's always helpful to take things apart in order to build something new. So in this image, the book below was one that we actually took apart in our own sketching process. We had mock up and the one above was a dummy that the printer created to model that idea, which then became the basis for this catalog for the exhibition of temporary structures at the Decorative Museum and Sculpture Park. Sometimes parts of books aren't bound but are free floating in a box that accompanies the book. So recently with Princeton, we're still exploring ideas first initiated in the early books where different page types define different content types. And then here in the latest iteration where again we're engaging with similar ideas, but this time readers can deconstruct the book themselves by tearing out perforated postcards and posters. Obviously each book can be customized in infinite ways. We've always believed that the physicality of how a book is made can intersect with different narrative structures, taking cues from film, music and interactivity as ways to think about time. A book that isn't a book was the basis for the design of the 2009 AIGA 365 year in design competition annual. Preparatory constraints necessitated a purely digital edition. We designed the book to be like a print your own room of paper using the natural click through of a marked up PDF for stop motion based sequencing. If a book is a kind of stop motion what if we think of the book structure as nonlinear. The book whose content can be shuffled and reshuffled robot house is a studio based out of Southern California Institute of architecture otherwise not a Syark in Los Angeles run by Peter tested the studio considers the robot as both tool and production arm we're coding and computation can create formal innovation inspired by glitches dictionaries and interfaces we conceived of the content as both indexical and reshuffleable. Just to think about how the layout of over 1000 images generated by the studio over the course of many years could be both lyrical and ordered. To that end the books organization became a dynamic system that started from how the content was initially organized, which was tagged by a different terms that define the studio's methods of making the robots. The structure then emerged from this tagging system and images were laid out throughout the book where readers could see repeat images in different configurations. There was no underlying grid structure for these images. But the spread themselves were held together by a menu bar along the outer edge, which became a kind of navigational device for the reader. A comprehensive indexed at the end that shuffled the images yet again, we're based on what studio the images were associated with. In addition to linearity and non linearity moves the circle, trying to map different timelines was one of the challenges of a small book we designed for artist Gary came a ton. His projects, a film and installation at the Charlie Museum and Cultural Center and a permanent installation at the University of Oregon, are centered around time. Tominoas and Tominoas is returned from the American Museum of Natural History to tribal lands. Tominoas is a meteorite known to the grand brawn people as a spaceman traveler, sky person relative a gift. It's the largest meteorite found in North America oral histories suggest the clock most people knew it came from the sky. However, Tominoas was discovered in 1904 taken for display at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and later donated donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. We wanted the book to mirror the circular narrative of Gary's projects story. The cyclical structure allowed research and archival imagery to travel across the spreads where they are reclaimed as juxtapositions and Gary's installation diptychs. Bringing forth Tominoas return, a story that is housed between blind debossed front and back covers. The framing of multiple stories is the anchor of one of our current projects where series of linear sequences weave together like a music compilation. Skylab architecture was founded in 1999 by Jeff cobal in Portland, Oregon. Skylab is an interdisciplinary studio interested in shaping human experience, a self described band of makers. Skylab was conceived of their architecture monograph as a double album as a framework for their studio origin ethos and spirit, working with editor Benjamin Halpern. We looked to music, looping in the ideas of a set composition, how a body of work evolves over time, and the lens of a prism as a graphic form, investigating different structural interpretations. So Skylab lives within a rhythm of book binding, how sections are sewn together, how and where one can switch paper or ink, and the construction of the book becomes a practice of its own. Materiality is important to us in that we in that we think of the book as physical and tangible. Once you know how book is made, it becomes an opportunity to rethink those structures. Since 2017 we have collaborated with Aaron Siegel social worker and social work academic on an independent publishing practice called thick press, where we make and publish books related to care work and the work of care. In addition to designing publishing longer titles, we conceived of a booklet series called book emerging to help authors develop and organize content through design. Every distinct book pages become spaces for different content that can then be shuffled and reshuffled by the authors to help see if interesting editorial connections begin to emerge. So seen here are collaborators justine Derigo and Chris Hoff both professors in clinical psychology at Cal State Bernardino, going through this exercise of shuffling reshuffling for their book emerging title beyond critique. In the book collage we can't help but think of this quote from Aldo Rossi. He writes how our observations become memories and that a book or a catalog as he references quote, lying somewhere between imagination and memory is not neutral. It always reappears in several objects and constitutes their deformation and in some ways their evolution. We take existing typologies of books that we often recognize a nature field guide with its classy black photos, a pulp fiction novel with a single text block and soft paper, a dictionary with distinct grid structures and typographic detail become multiple reading spaces within a spread. This idea was floating through our brains looking for a place to land in a future book. We tried it out in a sketch for a monograph of the architecture and research studio urban think tank. Which ended up as a more coherent book a giant brick where texts were still collage between narrative and individual reflections of the studio principles, but took on the form of a more traditional narrative structure. But in early 2019 we connected with Sergio Lopez Pinheiro architect and theorist at the GSD, who is similarly circling around ideas of reading spaces as fragmentation and typology. The history of urban voids is a collection of over 200 terms regularly used to name the urban void from the terrain vague to the buffer zone. As a play on the idea of voids and making visible the invisible, the underlying grids are activated in the front and back better by a white shadow reminiscent of a sun print or a cyanotype. In the book a collection over for 200 terms regularly used to name the urban void from the terrain vague to the buffer zone is juxtaposed with Lopez Lopez Pinheiro's text. Using the glossary as theoretical and conceptual tool. The book design becomes a collage of book typologies and alternating between the dictionary and a narrative driven form. The graininess of the Google image views of the various urban voids throughout the world further elaborate the textural metaphor of avoid as a kind of fade these kinds of metaphors for form and texture are poetic. In that sense, we often think about books opportunities for poetic typographic play. Every whole press grew from a desire to turn play scripts into printed form, so that they could be shared with a wider audience. It was started by Rachel Carter nail buff a playwright, author and educator and former student of mine, who sees publishing as a step towards making contemporary performance more accessible. And the book as a performance for the reader. The biography also illustrates language. Our story of the snacky tunes book started at a dinner party in Italy, where an old friend from New York City was living in Los Angeles sat next to a woman, a woman from fighting. We had already been working on our own typographic recipes and we boldly forwarded our book proposal. We actually already in discussions with Darren and Greg resonance the brothers behind the snacky tunes podcast. After seeing our proposal fight and felt the combined music and food and design audience would be a perfect opportunity for typographic play. The question was based on a number of guidelines that could allow for flexibility because recipe and story lengths would be highly variable. A limited palette of two colors and four typefaces defined types of text playlist playlist story ingredients recipe stories. This was being finalized and edited. We started designing the recipe and song titles, listening to the songs and looking at interiors, photos of the interiors of the restaurants inspired each typographic configuration. Most of the design of this book actually occurred at the beginning of the pandemic where the chef stories and memories became even more poignant designing this book brought back a world of being together and sharing the universal languages of food and music. Sometimes the book can become the impetus for the design of a larger project. Our collaboration with an architects began with the design of their so called anti monograph. This is a subtle manifesto about the open ended incomplete and the ambiguous and architecture. The potential of reassembly or remixing of contents became the basis for the underlying structure of the book where ideas process drawings and final images shuffle organically allowing for new connections to be drawn by unexpected juxtapositions. And then the design of the website grew out of the structure of the book again not conforming to conventional narratives, but allowing for the user to explore and engage in a participatory process. The identity system developed iteratively iteratively as the site developed a somewhat backwards and non linear path. If we could describe our practice right now in 2022, you would say that our practice is full of interruptions. Interruption for us is not just even our family or the world interrupting the design process, but also the design process work creativity, interrupting life, and also designing interrupting designing interruptions are about meeting quickly, sometimes setting timers to stay on track. We often joke that together the three of us equals one human being a three headed monster of sorts. So our process is all about a collective effort that we think decentralizes design, yielding a more generous and collaborative space. In 2017 architectural historian, architect and longtime collaborator and friend Jessica Varner, and her my turn also a PhD candidate at MIT at the time. I'm a department of architecture put together a competition symposium exhibition about the relevance and importance of modeling and climate change across disciplines. We use conversations and research to start the design process typically and then our job is to reflect expand think through and begin to create a visual vocabulary and language with these references. The touching process is about play. Imagine futures wire frames, typographic puns fuzziness and smudges grammatical insertions access points and grids grid structures models as visualizations for clarity data points and connecting information and we land on a final mark that begins to incorporate the visual language from the making process and establish a visual language to use throughout the event. We love so much to see our work in the wild. We always model our work through drawings and mock ups, and we're happy when things look just like our drawings. My favorite part of variability is the inevitable expansion of an established visual language, like for this menu we created for symposium dinner that asked the question, what will food be like in 50 years. The menu was risographed by MJ Balvin era who was working with us at the time. The design for this piece evolved like a mutation. We often synthesize our work together to create a kind of mutation. There's so much between the three of us and we each have our own strengths will meet over zoom and then go through so many rounds of iterations that eventually the work is seamless. Sometimes we don't know whose hands touch which particular part of the project, like this one. We worked on the Venice Biennale for architecture which was postponed due to the pandemic. The evolution of the identity was like a mutation, every iteration shifts a particular form, or typography, a color, texture, a gradient. It's never about reinventing the wheel, it's really about evolving a form. The theme how we live together developed pre pandemic by Biennale curator Hashim Sarkis and it really resonated for us. How will we live together was viewed through the lens of five different scales. How do we live together as humans, as new households as emerging communities across political borders and as a planet. This concept became the organizing principle for how the design was developed. I was asked by Hashim to include this film still by the artist McCall-Rovner, who gave us free reign to use her work in whatever way we wanted. Our work always begins with research and our initial research involved looking at many reference for typography, form, color and texture, which led to these initial sketches exploring togetherness through human connection association through abstract equations, even typography made from the figures. As well as other sketches that considered space, relationships and togetherness, referencing historically iconic design posters. As some of you will know, it's Herbert Byer and Tedinoy Yoku. As identity developed, we look more carefully at typography, trying to find forms that were less Eurocentric, letter forms that had more of a hand drawn feel forms that were more organic while at the same time exploring the language of diagrams or equations to see how they could connect to the theme as well as to Rebner's work. Equally as important was image making and how it could encompass the breadth of global humanity for this project. We wondered was that even possible. We looked at images drawn from art history throughout the world and thought about how they could be combined to create a new multi-layered environment that can include Rebner's amorphous people which recall cells or other shapes found in biology forms found inside every one of us. There are a lot of moving parts and ultimately we came up with a system to bring it all together. It combined typography with the scale themes and incorporated Rebner's imagery. The primary typography or Logomirth evolved into this cellular form which was paired with a secondary typeface inspired by the capitals on Trajan's column. We developed posters related to the five sub themes and as you move from left to right, the scale shifts from planet for this away to the individual at extreme close up. The curatorial team didn't take to the blobby logotype so we revisited the typography again through many iterations until we finally landed here with this lockup for the main exhibition name and a lighter treatment for the theme with custom ligatures that reinforce and communicate human connection. And like with revisiting the typography, the image making went through many, many more iterations. We introduced more recognizable forms starting with traditional architectural figures, adding our own to emphasize diversity among humans, human activities, plants and animals. Whose graphic scale corresponded with the thematic scales. So as you can see the work in person the last October just before the exhibition closed. We had a sense of how the identity lived in the context of the city from some of these images that came from other people's posts on social media, but nothing really compared to actually being there in person to witness the scale and the energy that we felt in the walls of the central pavilion the graphic is mirrored with two levels of translucency hashing envision the experience of seeing yourself becoming part of the exhibition as you enter the building. At the entrance of the arsenal. The exhibition graphics were printed on a scrim like material, which was both economical and organic, creating a kind of curtain like translucency. Like they were breathing in the wind. The identity program extended into the gift shop. Where you could pick up any one of the five books we designed for the exhibition. A new catalog, a short guide, a book documenting how will we live together in 11 different cities. And lastly responses to how will we live together from any architects, urbanists, theorists. The identity activated in space is thrilling and can never replace a digital mock up or rendered image. I think in reflecting on this question of how we will live together is thinking about the idea of showing up of being present. It's always been important to us to have our hands hold our work through all stages. Sometimes it is impossible for just the three of us to do it all. So we've been really grateful to our teams such as the Venice Biennale Curatorial team and the team on the ground in Venice. Jackie Lee and MJ Balvin era helped us with climate change. Sometimes we actually ask our husbands for help. This next project couldn't have happened without Jackie's help, as well as the rest of the team. In 2015, we were asked to design the interpretive graphics, a wayfinding system, a resource library and an app for a reimagined nature center in Culver City, Los Angeles. The project first started as a competition. And one of our main tasks was to bring together the vision of all the hands in the project, including EYRC architects, a bay landscape architects and fallen fruit the civic artists whose artwork uses fallen fruit throughout the city to create social engagement through food related events. Another big part of our time was having to engage with the many civic institutions that were part of the project. And the many, many stakeholders and community members that were invested in the site, which was on a small residential street where school had once been abandoned for many years. The central theme of the interpretive program is based on the intersection of three distinct themes, the healthy environment and watershed, and how the history of the site and the process of remediation and water conservation leads to an environment where seeds can be planted and food harvested as a community, inspiring a healthy relationship between the mind, the body and the community, where the spaces on site are designed to be both active and contemplative. We're interested in the moments of intersection between the different themes and how when they come together they form the central theme of our interpretive concept. A comprehensive visual system was born out of these separate themes, which was a flexible system consisting of logo and colors that work as a kit of parts. So when we first visited the site we discovered this abandoned sign. The form inspired us to think about how the function of a sign can frame a space and become a kind of window or viewpoint to direct the visitor's gaze. The visual system grew to incorporate a variety of shapes that could be used both as physical signs as well as cutouts and signs to frame the interpretive moments that exist on site. We developed four distinct sign types to use throughout the site, the concrete pavers which were engraved with text pointing towards the ground, the trail marker signs that sit lower to the ground pointing towards key plantings, the viewshed signs that stand upright framing the views of the site as well as the city, and then cut vinyl lettering which calls out interpretive moments in the building. We developed an app that we consider a kind of sign that further explains the various interpretive moments on site. As part of the interpretive graphics and visual identity system we created illustrations for the native plants and animals, California friendly plants and edibles on site. So this is the site and landscape plan for the park and also the background map for the app showing all the interpretive moments in corresponding signs. Three main areas on the site represent all three themes. We developed furniture for the reading library and Jessica who worked with us on MIT collaborated with us on writing the text and sourcing the reading for the library. The design resources of an all encompassing project could be pretty draining, but it's also allows you to have a kind of all in mentality. There's also a challenge that feels really scary at first but allows allowed really us to stretch as a studio. The resources were pretty tight but we were so committed. We even printed out and laminated cards to create a physical app for those unable to download the app at the park from their phone, but we were really committed. I think we all agree that it's important to feel a sense of intense ambition or excitement for every kind of project, even if it's as tiny as a postcard. There's always these moments of reflection and use and make us feel energized and you really forget sort of how hard it was. So rooms was another collaboration with architect and architectural historian Jessica Barner, we love Jessica. Exhibition celebrated the graduate women of Yale School of Architecture and asked how can we make room. How can we create a collective archive for a school of architecture women alums. The idea of the collective became the thread that ran through all aspects of the design and execution of the exhibition identity, along with a notion of making space as reflected in these early logo mark sketches. It was important to have the women's names prominent and brought to the forefront. They appear on the exhibition poster which doubled as wallpaper for the exhibition entry. The work in the shows were organized chronologically. Jessica designed the space, which was defined by Curtains, whose formal qualities reappear on the exhibition logo type. Equally important to us was to only use typefaces designed by women and we were lucky enough to collaborate with recent Yale MFA grads Julia Shaffer and Mambo Wang, whose typefaces were crucial throughout the exhibition design. This ethos of collectivity and collaboration is so critical to us, especially as we grow older. Small studio life is both hard and very gratifying. With all of this we think often about how to make work and sustain a creative life, although it is cliche to say that design is everywhere there is truth to that design really is everything for us. And in honor of the Lunar New Year, happy Lunar New Year everyone, some advice from us. There's value in all work. Take care of each other. With yourself, with your work. Being small is okay. Find joy in your creative practice. Advocate for yourself. And have faith and uncertainty. And check for double spaces. The end and Thank you. Thank you so much. It's so nice to see you all to because I haven't seen you in such a long time and it's nice to see you all in the same zoom window and you know we've we're sort of now accustomed to this kind of method of communicating in the past couple of years but you three must be pros at this, you know just connecting, regardless of the way where you are and just sharing ideas I mean with, you know, the rest of us just catching up to what you've been doing for years. Yeah, it was funny. I feel like right before pandemic, we were doing a lot of we we like discovered zoom because before that was Skype. And then we were like this thing is so awesome and so we would like to zoom in like what is this. But now it's like, yeah, you were living in the future. I love I love that the last last little bit of the lecture to where you give us advice, which is I feel like I really needed that some of these things are really sort of reaffirming things about life and practice and you know all of these things design. So the first things that you had said in the beginning when you were talking about the, you know, the different book projects is that sometimes you have to take something apart to understand it. And I think that's so true whether it's like physically tearing a book apart to see how it's actually bound, but also like, you know, dissecting or kind of passing through content, and really sort of trying to because often as designers we don't generate that content and we, you know, we get it from somewhere. So to understand the content the ideas and maybe the point of this thing this this exercise, you know, it's something that we just have to we just have to go through and, you know, for the for the architecture students at GSAP, you know, they, they have to put together a portfolio at the end of their tenure at Columbia. And I think one of the hard things is like that act of taking things apart because it's your own work that you've accumulated over, you know, a year to three years, taking that apart I think sometimes is sort of hard. I wonder if you have any advice like if you if you're the generator, the, the, you know, the maker the content, you know, provider the editor and designer of this thing. How do you gain distance like how do you actually give yourself room to take something apart and then put it back together again. That's a really good question you Jay. Like, I also want to extend like Albert you should totally chime in because we didn't have like time for like conversation so we can all have collective conversation. I think it takes practice for me personally and you guys can also chime in. It's real practice to like, not think of work as precious, right, that there is, I mean it's hard, right. You spend so much time doing it and there's so much investment so there's this like really like hard balance between like 100% commitment investment it's yours, you're going to like see it to the end, and having this sort of like, my kids call it like a dumb brain where you're like really allowing yourself to like have that like growth mindset, and you're allowed to like, you know, change and make it different or take it apart or like, because you're always kind of searching for the better version of it right like you're always wanting it to see it and it's, and it's like full fully realized capacity so I think when you have that mindset, then you're just like more open to. So we work to I'm always like really amazed without Karen, and I think the three of us the way we just sort of like are able to like change our ideas like we'll show something to each other and then we'll just be like oh okay you know like, we're just so hoping to get to a point to share a goal that I think we feel okay and feel safe with like making changes and like taking things apart and if something is not quite there yet or if it's not actually right for that thing in that moment that maybe you put it on the back burner and then you know you revisited like you were saying, Albert with like the work from, you know you did in school, like years ago you like revisit you're like, okay, I'm going to do that again. Yeah, I mean just to like piggyback off of that I think that you know working at Bloomberg. It's always sort of working in a weekly magazine it's always sort of being a bit removed from whatever you make because you don't know tomorrow if something else is going to come in and knock that out. It's not the window you know or if you feel like you landed on something and then you know everyone's like oh great that's great in the walkthrough and then tomorrow everyone's like wait I don't think that works and you're like, it worked yesterday. So yeah, you have to sort of yeah I think there's like you know you have to be like 60% you know committed and then 40% like okay. If things change or if there are other opportunities that can communicate something more efficiently or better. You just have to you know be a be open to it. Yeah I mean I think I think what Albert was saying it connects back to Julie's earlier point of like don't be too precious and I think that's easier said than done, especially as a student sometimes right but this idea that you know that you have to be sort of, you know in the moment and acknowledge the context and you know like Albert said it can be correct today but not correct tomorrow. I think that I think that's so true and to be comfortable with that and to not feel like this is this is the final thing I think it's so it's so I think as designers we have to remind ourselves about but as students especially you have to. This is just another thing that you learn from. So you know what what you're making at school, you know, even at the end of your, your three years at GSAP it's not. That's not it, this is just the first document that you're going to make of so many documents. As you, as you guys know. And do you have any, do you have any sort of changes that you have made in this era of I know that you guys have been working remotely for a long time but you know because we've all we're all working in a slightly different way Albert, you know moved to Baltimore from being in New York, even though BlueBug Newsweek is a business week is a very New York sort of publication. Now it's totally possible. Do you in the past couple of years you have different ways of working that you think are actually better for the for the practice or for the for the design outcome. I know Albert you really enjoy being in Baltimore and being able to work for a New York publication from somewhere else. I mean, I think that, you know, I am one of, you know, many who have found that working in my own space has been like the most enjoyable thing in the world. You know, like, I think, like, while I'm working on business week stuff, I can have like am stuff on the wall. And so I'm like, looking at work that I'm making on other projects and like working on Bloomberg and then I can easily just turn off Bloomberg and work on something else. So I feel like the idea that sort of just like moving around where once going into the office there's sort of that commute and that sort of like, you know, working in the office on Bloomberg and then going home and then starting something else is these interruptions, not good interruptions, bad interruptions. You know, and so, yeah, I found sort of this nice working method at home that seems to work great with the other work that I'm doing for personal projects and things like that. That's interesting. The kind of the physical geographic call kind of compartmentalization like translating of the brain compartmentalization before but now you can just kind of you can move, you know, easily from one thing. I also think that like, you know, working in the office at Bloomberg is great being around like the business week team and we all look kind of like cookie and weird, but everyone else is like in suits and stuff, you know, so like, there's a part of us that kind of feels a little like outsiders, like, little weird, you know, like, going in there and, you know, wearing this orange top is like, you feel like an outsider. So you sort of have to like, put on this, you know, this, we're facade to like, you know, go through the business week office and then get to your desk. So some of those things are just like, you know, not present at home, obviously, so it's like navigating those outside parts, then getting to the designing that can be stressful at times. I feel like collaboration will take many different forms. We've been spaceless for so long that, you know, there's one version of brainstorming which is just purely verbal, you know, and it's just a conversation or like a text thread, you know, or, or, or a slack sort of conversation that is sometimes for a very long time one sided until until it becomes interactive. But we've also started sometimes just working together on zoom. You know, we might not even be talking to each other. We're just, you know, shuffling things around in a shared document, or, or literally on zoom with one person driving and just chiming in and it's like watching a strange YouTube video. And we just, it's, it's been a really kind of like changing process, I think, and just, it depends on how much time we have to to sit down and really focus at once. Yeah, I feel like that screen sharing thing that we do now it's like more recent in the past couple years where we're like, just, let's just get it done right now, open up the file. It's been really hard. I've been doing that. I think this sort of encouraging of like showing your file and like, let's open up the design doc and let's look at it and it's so vulnerable, it really is. I think for a designer it's like, you know, it's like opening up your underwear drawer or something right it's like it is very intimate. And I was going to add that we do that a lot that we go into each other's files and I think there's a real trust there that has been established, you know, after obviously these many years but I think that's where like, you know, any kind of hesitancy about, this being like my part of the design and this is your part of the design it all falls away because I think all of us sort of work interchangeably and while we may work differently, we can easily like move into, you know, someone else's files or someone else's kind of setup of something so I think that's a parent in the work and I think some of these was that you used to describe some of the work earlier on like blurry or maybe I'm sort of misremembering some of the words but there is something kind of blurry and slippery and like not quite one thing about many of the projects. And I think that's, you know, I really notice these kinds of attributes like it, you know, during this talk previously to but especially during this talk and we're looking at these together and I wonder if that's a, it's a product of you know three different brains sort of working together there's no sort of hard edge or where somebody starts or somebody else, you know, ends is just it's blurry and that's, I think that's really sort of. It's really enticing that kind of blurriness. Yeah, I feel like it's. I think, like we respect each other's work so much and like there's always a sense of like, it's always really positive, like, oh my god that's amazing, you know like there's no like a very positive space that we're in. And then when the sort of like where we push is just like, when we, I think there's a lot of self reflection right like, if you don't think it's going well, like if you're you feel like it's not a good place and I think that sort of sense of honesty with like what you're doing and then like reaching out and then other people coming in to like sort of help within that space. I think that's where sort of, you know, I'm not able to do this, can you, can you take it on and I think also just that there's like really no ego so like we're always like someone's doing really like can do the production work or someone else can take on the sort of other stuff like I think we're always really in a place where we're trying to help each other because we have so much other stuff going on that it's like, it's like comes from a place of love you know like we really want to like, you know, like a sisterly love. We're really sensitive to everything else that's going on in like Julie was saying there are many things going on in all of our lives and I'm sure all of you to and so we're always I think trying to be aware and sensitive to that. Which is why I'm especially grateful for you joining us today. Despite all the crazy things that are going on in New York we're having a, you know, we had like a So on top of everything else. So, thank you. Thank you so much for making time that was really wonderful to get to know a little bit about your process and the stuff that you've been working on a little bit more recently to and seeing your faces. Good to see you enjoy it's nice to meet you, Albert. Yeah, great meeting you guys and hearing about your work. Thank you everyone for joining I can't see the students faces but Please come join us again tomorrow we have Josh Jordan and the two designers from party of one giving talks tomorrow at the same time so we'll, we'll see you there. Thank you. Bye everyone. Hi, thanks.