Schools of Thoughts : 3

Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand works in partnership with William Drenttel at Winterhouse, a studio focusing on publishing, new media and cultural institutions. Helfand is a founding editor of Design Observer, the largest weblog of design and cultural criticism; a co-editor of Below the Fold:, a journal of visual culture published by Winterhouse; and the co-founder of the AIGA Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing & Criticism, a $5000 yearly prize. In 2006, Helfand was appointed to the United States Citizen’s Advisory Stamp Committee.

Helfand has written more than one hundred essays in the past decade, and has been published in Print, Communications Arts, ID, Eye, LA Times Book Review and The New Republic. She is the author of Paul Rand: American Modernist (1998), Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media and Visual Culture (2001) and Reinventing the Wheel (2002). Her next book is a cultural and visual history of the scrapbook in America. Helfand has been a visiting critic at numerous programs in design and architecture and has lectured at the Netherlands Design Institute, Walker Art Center, Smithsonian Institution and Annenberg Public Policy Center, among others. She has taught for the last decade in the graduate program in Graphic Design at Yale University, where she is a Fellow at Jonathan Edwards College. She has also taught at The Cooper Union and NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Helfand received a B.A. in Graphic Design and Architectural Theory and a M.F.A. in Graphic Design, both from Yale University.

Somi Kim

Senior Partner and Creative Director
Ogilvy’s Brand Integration Group

Somi has had a distinguished career as a leading creative thinker in California, working on design and brand strategy initiatives for such clients as MTV and IBM. Through global consumer discovery projects she unearthed insights that were developed into campaigns and programs by Sony Electronics and Hewlett-Packard.

Before joining Ogilvy, she spent 13 years as a principal and founding partner of ReVerb, a multi-faceted and highly influential Los Angeles design firm that won the Chrysler Design Award in 1995. Somi is a graduate of Harvard College and California Institute of the Arts.

In addition, Somi has been involved in numerous educational institutions where she has taught or been a guest lecturer including Cranbrook and Stanford University. She is a member of the Media Design Program “brain trust” at Art Center College of Design and continues to develop visual language workshops for communication design students. Her interest in cultural context and behavior fuels an ongoing desire to integrate design into larger conversations about community, business and society.

Peter Lunenfeld

Professor in the graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design, Peter writes about art, design, film, and the broader culture in an era of computational ubiquity, studies that fall under the emerging rubric of Digital Humanities. His books include The Digital Dialectic, Snap to Grid, and USER: InfoTechnoDemo. His forthcoming book will be titled The War Between Downloading and Uploading: How the Computer Became Our Culture Machine. He is the editorial director of the award-winning Mediawork series for the MIT Press.

N SILAS MUNRO

N Silas M Munro currently runs his own freelance practice, From the Desk of:, who’s partnerships have included Catalone Design Co. and Grafik Marketing Communications in the Washington DC metro area.

Silas previously held design positions at VSA Partners in Chicago and Skolos-Wedell in Canton, MA. His professional work has been recognized by the AIGA, the Art Director’s Club, the AR100, and ID. He is the recipient of a Design Fellowship from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and studied poetry at Brown University. His writing and design have been published by the design blog Speak Up and in the pages of Novum. Part of the design collective Prototype Syndicate, Silas has been a visiting degree project critic at RISD, and is currently an MFA candidate at the California Institute of the Arts, in Valencia, CA.

Kali Nikitas

Chair, Communication Arts Department
Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles.

Prior to joining Otis in 2006, she has held appointments at Northeastern University in Boston (Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Visual Arts), Minneapolis College of Art and Design (Chair of the Design Department), and The School of the Art Institute in Chicago. She is seen here with her partner Rich Shelton, who is on faculty at Otis in Liberal Arts and Media.

She and her husband, Rich Shelton, (CalArts, MFA in Art, 1990, BFA MCAD, 1987) are the partners of Graphic Design for Love (+$). Clients include: The School of Architecture at Northeastern, The Walker Art Center, Southern California Institute of Architecture, The Weisman Museum, and SOO Visual Art Center. Kali has curated two international design exhibitions: "And She Told 2Friends: An International Exhibition of Graphic Design by Women" and "Soul Design." Her work has been published in Emigre, Eye, I.D. and AIGA Journal; she has received awards from the ACD, AIGA and the Type Directors Club. She is currently an editor for LOOP, AIGA's Design Education online journal.

Kali received her MFA in graphic design from CalArts her BFA in graphic design from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Panel: The Thorny Generalist / Specialist Question

Terry Lee Stone

Terry Stone is a graphic designer specializing in design management, strategic development and brand positioning, client relationships, and marketing of creative services. Stone held positions with AdamsMorioka, The Designory/Pinkhaus, and Margo Chase Design where she worked with Mercedes Benz, ABC, Sundance Film Festival, IBM, American Express, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Polaroid, Reebok, Hard Rock America, Bacardi, Nickelodeon, and Warner Bros. Records.

Stone has written and spoken on many topics related to design firm management and the design profession, and has recently used her industry knowledge to write two books. She is the author, with AdamsMorioka, of Logo Design Workbook: A Hands-On Guide To Creating Logos, and Color Workbook: A Hands-On Guide To Using Color in Graphic Design, both by Rockport Publishers. She is a regular contributor to Dynamic Graphics Magazine and STEP Inside Design, where she serves on their Editorial Advisory Board.

In addition to practicing professionally, Stone teaches creative business courses at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Stone has been on the Board of Directors of the AIGA in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Miami, where she also served as the chapter’s president. She served nationally as the president of the AIGA Chapter President’s Council, and recently on the Disaster Relief Task Force aiding designers impacted by the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes.

Panel: Integrating Media in Design Pedagogy

Peter Turchi

Peter Turchi is the author of a novel, a collection of stories, and two books of nonfiction, including Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer. He co-wrote and edited the exhibition catalog Suburban Journals: The Sketchbooks, Drawings, and Prints of Charles Ritchie. He co-edited, with Andrea Barrett, The Story Behind the Story: 26 Stories by Contemporary Writers and How They Work, and with Charles Baxter, Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life. He is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and North Carolina's Sir Walter Raleigh Award. He has taught at the University of Arizona, Northwestern University, the University of Houston, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Since 1993 he has taught Fiction in and served as Director of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.

Alice Twemlow

Design Writer

Alice Twemlow contributes to publications including Eye, Design Issues, I.D., Print, New York Magazine, and Architect’s Newspaper and her essays are included in books such as Elsewhere: Mapping (University of Minnesota Design Institute, 2006) and Looking Closer 5 (Allworth Press, 2007). She is the author of What is Graphic Design For? (Rotovision, 2006).
 
Alice teaches critical thinking to MFA students at the School of Visual Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design, and is the chair of a new MFA in Design Criticism at SVA scheduled to open in 2008. Alice has also directed and co-directed several design conferences including “Voice: AIGA National Design Conference 2002,” “Looking Closer: AIGA Conference on Design History and Criticism” (while program director at AIGA) and “Being Here: Craft and Locality in Graphic Design” in 2004.
 
Alice received her MA in Design History from the program run by the V&A Museum and the Royal College of Art in London and she is currently working on her PhD about the politics of design criticism.

LYDIA VARMAZIS

Lydia Varmazis is the Director of Emerging Markets and Technology at Adobe Systems Incorporated. In this role, Lydia helps define the strategic roadmap and new business concepts for the next generation of Adobe’s design, illustration and Creative Suite family of products. Lydia manages a growing team of product managers and software developers that deploys web-hosted solutions (Web 2.0) that leverage the Adobe Engagement Platform. Prior to this, Lydia was Group Product Manger for Illustration and Mobile Technologies and held product management positions on Adobe Acrobat and Adobe PDF Technologies. During Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia, Lydia lead the team that defined the product integration features for future combined Adobe Creative Suite and the Macromedia Studio products.

Lydia holds a Bachelor of Science in Graphic Communications Management, from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada and a Masters in Business Administration from the Graziadio School of Business Management at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

Christopher Vice

Chairperson, Department of Visual Communication Design
Indiana University Herron School of Art and Design

Professor Christopher Vice was appointed to the Visual Communication Design faculty of Indiana University Herron School of Art and Design in 2002. Christopher directs BFA and MFA degree programs in Visual Communication Design. The design degree programs at Herron approach designing as a collaborative process for identifying root problems and facilitating meaningful solutions to complex issues.

He serves as co-director of the Indiana University American Democracy Project, a national initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Much of his scholarly agenda is focused on civic engagement as a strategy for the integration of research, teaching, learning and service and the collaborative production of knowledge. Additionally, he is active in efforts to advance assessment of learning in higher education. Christopher serves on the Steering Committee of the AIGA Design Educator Community of Interest.

Prior to the appointment at Indiana University, Christopher was Vice President for Brand Marketing at Sapient, an international business and technology consulting firm. Christopher worked with Clement Mok and the firm's Chief Marketing Officer Dr. Merle Sprinzen to envision human-centered experiences with and within the organization. Before joining Sapient, Christopher worked as a communication consultant for firms in Los Angeles, Burlington (VT), Miami and New York. In a previous career as a graphic designer, Christopher's work included editorial design for Beach Culture magazine, Surfer magazine, Southern California Institute of Architecture and the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. His graphic design work has been featured in publications including The American Center for Design 100 Show, IDEA: International Graphic Art Tokyo, Brandweek, ID magazine, and Architectural Record.

He was graduated from North Carolina State University College of Design with a bachelor's degree (1989) in Environmental Design and from California Institute of the Arts with a MFA degree (1992) in Graphic Design.

Panel: Expanding Design Opportunities in Research Universities

Lorraine Wild

Faculty, Graphic Design Department
California Institute of the Arts

A designer and educator living and working in Los Angeles, Lorraine is an AIGA Medal recipient for 2006. She has been teaching at the California Institute of the Arts since 1985 (she was the director of the Program in Graphic Design from 1985 to 1991). She was a project tutor at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, The Netherlands from 1991 until 1998. In 1996 she established her own design practice to focus on collaborations with architects, curators and publishers in this country and abroad. Recent projects include the design of exhibition catalogues for the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and The J.Paul Getty Trust. Her work has been published in Emigre, Eye, I.D., Print, Design Quarterly, Studio Voice, and in the anthologies The Graphic Edge, Typography Now and Typography Now: Two. Her writing has appeared in numerous periodicals and books, including Emigre, I.D., Print, Graphic Design in America, Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse, Lift & Separate, Looking Closer, Looking Closer 2, and The Edge of the Millennium.

In 2001, Wild was one of three finalists for the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt's National Design Award in communications design. In 1998, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibited 'Lorraine Wild: selections from the permanent collection', a display of recent work acquired as part of their collection of significant design produced in California. Wild also has work in the collections of the Cooper-Hewitt and the Library of Congress. Wild has received numerous awards from The American Center for Design, The American Institute of Graphic Arts, the American Institute of Architects and the American Association of University Publishers, among others. She was named as one of the 'I.D. Forty' in 1993 and was a recipient of the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design in 1995. She has served on the national boards of the both the American Institute of Graphic Arts & the Society for Typographic Arts (now the American Center for Design). Wild received her BFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and MFA from Yale University.

Panel: History, Theory and Writing in Studio

David Womack

David Womack consults on interactive strategy for corporate and cultural clients. Current projects include researching trends and emerging markets for Adobe Systems; editing Adobe Think Tank: An online journal of design and technology; and working with Japan Society to redefine their online presence and create new opportunities for partnership between Japanese and American designers.

David writes about design, technology and culture for publications including Metropolis, Eye, I.D., Print, Salon.com, and The Guardian. He is coauthoring The Education of a Digital Designer with Steven Heller, which will be published by Wiley and Sons in Fall 2007.

David was the Director of New Media at AIGA from 2000-2004, and served as executive editor of Gain: AIGA Journal of Design and Business and managing editor of Voice: AIGA Journal of Design. Since leaving AIGA, has worked with firms including Ogilvy and Pentagram on projects for DuPont, CocaCola, Yahoo and the School of Visual Arts.

He has served as a visiting critic at CalArts and Parsons and has taught courses on digital media at the Pratt Institute.

Panel: Designing for Multiple Devices