Wednesday, 18 October 2006 | 8:30 PM

REDCAT

Wednesday, October 18, 2006 | 8:30 pm | REDCAT

Join AIGA/LA as CalArts president Steven D. Lavine hosts a lively and thought-provoking roundtable discussion led by graphic design luminary Lorraine Wild—one of this year’s winners of the coveted AIGA Medal, the highest honor in the field of design. Focusing on the design of catalogues and other art publications, the panel examines the balance between the respective aesthetics of the designer and the showcased artist or collection; the role of the designer as mediator; and the emergence of West Coast institutions as champions of innovative design. Wild, who is renowned internationally for designing hundreds of books and catalogues, is joined on the panel by leading Los Angeles designers Gail Swanlund and Michael Worthington, plus Russell Ferguson, chief curator of the UCLA Hammer Museum.

Several exhibition catalogues by all three designers will be raffled off at the presentation, which will be followed by a wine reception.

This event is co-sponsored by AIGA Los Angeles.

Learn more about REDCAT and this program's series.

$8 AIGA members and non members
$6 students, CalArts alumni with ID
Free to CalArts Students, faculty and staff

Register online at the REDCAT website or by calling the box office at 213.237.2800.
Mention AIGA/LA when you register.

REDCAT
631 W. 2nd St
Los Angeles, CA 90012
213.237.2800

Located in the Walt Disney Concert Hall Complex.
Enter via separate entrance on 2nd Street.
Parking is available in the WDCH structure and opposite the 2nd Street entrance. More information here.

Metro: Take the Red Line to the Civic Center Station. Proceed west on 1st St., turn left (south) on Grand Ave., and turn right (west) again on 2nd Street. The REDCAT entrance is at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets.

About the speakers

Lorraine Wild is a designer and educator living and working in Los Angeles. 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 served as a project tutor at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, The Netherlands from 1991 until 1998. In 1996 Wild established her own design practice, now called Green Dragon Office, to focus on collaborations with architects, curators and publishers in this country and abroad. Recent projects include the design of exhibition catalogues for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Getty Museum, UCLA’s Hammer Art Museum and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal. Her work has been published in Emigre, Eye, I.D., Print, 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, Looking Closer 4, and The Edge of the Millennium. Additionally, she is a sporadic contributor to Design Observer, a blog that covers general design topics.

In 2003, Wild’s work was included in the National Design Triennial exhibition presented at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. In 2001, she was one of three finalists for the Communication Design Award of the National Design Awards sponsored by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. In the same year she was awarded a Gold Medal by the New York Art Director’s Club for the design of Height of Fashion. In the spring of 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 has received numerous awards: AIGA has announced that it will award her the prestigious Medal in the fall of 2006, and her book designs have been chosen for their highly selective "50 Books/50 Covers" (fifteen times as of 2005). Her design work has also been cited for excellence by The American Center for Design, 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 boards of the International Design Conference at Aspen, AIGA, and the ACD. Wild received a BFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and a MFA from Yale University.

Read Lorraine Wild's Medalist essay, written by Louise Sandhaus and Susan Yelavich.

Gail Swanlund was born in Minnesota and recieved her MFA in graphic design from CalArts in 1992. She founded STRIPE Los Angeles in 2004 and is currently a faculty member at CalArts. Swanlund's work has been exhibited internationally, most recently by the Mois du Graphisme, Echirolles, France, in “Californian Dream, Graphic Designers in California," and at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the current exhibition, "Belles Lettres." She has been recognized by the ACD, AIGA, and TDC; her work is published in numerous design anthologies. Swanlund cut her teeth writing for the experimental and influential typography journal Emigre, and currently writes for various design publications; and is a Fellow at the Design Institute of Minnesota.

Michael Worthington teaches in the graphic design program at CalArts and is a partner in counterspace design, Los Angeles, where he designs identities, books and art catalogues. His design work has received awards from the ACD, AIGA, I.D. and the New York Art Directors Club, and he was the recipient of a 2001–2 City Of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship. His work has appeared in various publications, most recently Type Design: Radical Innovations and Experimentation, Area, and Graphic Design for the 21st Century. His work was exhibited in "Californian Dream, Graphic Designers in California," in Echirolles, France and he has lectured in Holland, Belgium, France, Singapore, Australia and England, as well as throughout the USA. Worthington's writing has been published in Eye, Education of a Graphic Designer, AIGA 365 Annual, and Restart: New Systems in Graphic Design. He received a BA (Hons) from Central Saint Martins School of Art and an MFA in graphic design from CalArts, and lives and works in Los Angeles, where his current practice includes writing and editorial projects, as well as graphic design and typography for print and screen.

Russell Ferguson is deputy director for exhibitions and programs and chief curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, a position he has held since 2001. From 1991 to 2001 he was at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, first as editor, then as associate curator. He has organized many exhibitions. At the Hammer, these have included "The Undiscovered Country" (2004), a survey of various approaches to representation in painting, as well as solo exhibitions by Wolfgang Tillmans (2006), Patty Chang (2005), Christian Marclay (2003), and Jeff Wall (2003). At the Museum of Contemporary Art, he organized "In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O’Hara and American Art" (1999), an exploration of the circle of artists that revolved around the poet, as well as survey exhibitions of the work of Liz Larner and Douglas Gordon (both 2001). With Kerry Brougher, he organized "Open City: Street Photographs Since 1950" (2001) for The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. He is currently working on exhibitions of work by Mathias Poledna and Francis Alys.

Ferguson is the editor of two collections of critical writing: Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture, and Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, both published by the MIT Press. He has written about the work of many contemporary artists, including Thomas Eggerer, Olafur Eliasson, Tony Feher, Rodney Graham, Nikki Lee, Damian Ortega, Laura Owens, Glen Wilson, and Gillian Wearing.

Steven D. Lavine has been president of CalArts since 1988. Previously, he served as associate director for arts and humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation and as an assistant professor of English literature at the University of Michigan. He serves on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Endowments Inc., National Public Radio station KCRW, Public Broadcasting Service station KCET and Idyllwild Arts Academy. He is also a director of Arts International, Villa Aurora and the American Council on Education. He has co-edited, with Ivan Karp, the collections Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display and Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture.