WALKER
Insights 2016 Design Lecture Series
Viewing Party Kit
30th Anniversary
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WALKER
channel.walkerart.org
Insights Design Lecture Series:
Throw your own Viewing Party!
Join us in celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Insights Design
Lecture Series, with four talks by some of today’s most exciting
designers. Over their careers, these visual form-makers have created vast collections of symbolic imagery—logos, layouts, photographs, alphabets—intended to elucidate the present and destined to one day delight and confound historians of the future. This
year’s series features lectures from South Korean conceptualists
Sulki & Min, music-packaging designer Brian Roettinger, design
curator Jon Sueda, and Susan Sellers, cofounder of 2x4 and current head of design at the Met.
But if you can’t make it to the Walker Art Center to check out the
talks (hopefully you live somewhere warmer)—you can still participate. We’re setting up viewing parties all over world—letting you
watch Insights live from your own space with your own friends via
webcast. Watch all four lectures or pick one that seems particularly
relevant to your group. And watching from afar has some benefits:
you can discuss the lecture as you go, share a cooked meal, or even
throw popcorn at the screen.
Insights website
WALKER
channel.walkerart.org
Why host a
viewing party?
For
educators
Whether you’re a small five-person design studio, an official school student group, or an AIGA
chapter, hosting a viewing party is a great way to
provide inspiration to your people with engaging
talks that will spark thoughtful conversations and
an energetic exchange of ideas. You can hold a
private event or make it as public as you choose.
Host a student group viewing or incorporate these
lectures into your curriculum. The designers we
present do what they do with passion and conviction, and represent a culture of self-initiated and
self-critical design practice. The Walker will provide further documentation and interviews with
the speakers on our design blog, to supplement
the lectures.
Be a part of
the conversation
This year we are inviting our web-viewing audience to participate in the lecture, live! Tweet
any questions you have for our speakers at
#insights2016 any time during the lecture and our
moderator will select a few questions to be read
aloud to our speakers. Make sure to include in the
tweet where you’re watching from.
For
AIGA chapters
Let us
know
If you plan on hosting an Insights viewing party, we
want to hear about it! Send an email to designinfo@
walkerart.org and tell us who you are and what
you’re up to. If you take photos during your event,
we will post them to the Walker design blog after
the series.
Insights
archives
Looking for an intriguing event to supplement Check out the growing archive of past Insights
your chapter schedule? Insights viewing parties design lectures at the Walker Channel or AIGA
are an easy way to bring in world-class design for Minnesota.
no cost at all. The AIGA understands that there
is no such thing as one “design community” and
this is a perfect way to introduce your members
to a diverse set of designers and ideas. And since
you set the rules, the event can be as casual or as
formal as you like. Just find a screen, grab some
snacks, and get watching.
WALKER
channel.walkerart.org
Schedule of Speakers
March 1, 7 pm
March 8, 7 pm
Sulki & Min Choi
Brian Roettinger
(Sulki & Min)
Seoul, KR
(Brian Roettinger/Hand Held Heart)
Los Angeles, US
When asked what their studio motto might be, designers/artists
Sulki Choi and Min Choi replied, “Clarifying is our business, obscuring is our pleasure.” Indeed, this tension between fact and
fiction, concrete communication and abstraction, reveals itself
throughout their practice as the designers create what they call
“impurely conceptual” work. The married couple founded their
design practice in Seoul in 2003, focusing primarily on the cultural sector with projects such as graphic identities for the BMW
Guggenheim Lab, architecture firm Mass Studies, and the 2014
Gwangju Biennale; the guest art direction of Print Magazine’s 2012
“Trash” issue; and an extensive graphic system for the architecture exhibition Before/after.
Working in both Roman and Hangul alphabets, their intense
approach to typography reveals a deep interest in language.
Whether systematically inverting English oxymorons in a type
specimen poster or dissecting the typographic relationship between Hangul vowels and Taoist yin-yang symbolism through a
series of patterns, much of Sulki & Min’s work exerts an almost
scientific approach to the use of words, reminding us that language is, in fact, the earliest and perhaps greatest “kit of parts”
at a designer’s disposal.
In 2006, the duo founded Specter Press, a publishing imprint
that presents monographs of Korean artists. Sulki & Min are also
one half of the artist collective SMSM, which is an “applied-art
collective devoted to health and happiness.” Their work has been
exhibited internationally and Min also curated Typojanchi, which
is a typographic biennial in Seoul. Sulki teaches design at the
Kaywon School of Art & Design, and Min teaches at the University
of Seoul.
The work of graphic designer/artist Brian Roettinger is an uncanny union of punk ideology with a conceptually driven mode
of modernist design. He frequently employs architectural strategies such as repetition and structure (think die-cuts and folds)
while subverting this sense of order by manipulating the production process in unexpected or “wrong” ways (think pulling
the sheet out of the printer before it is done). Hailing from Los
Angeles, Roettinger launched his own record label in 1998 called
Hand Held Heart and began to release albums by bands such as
the Liars, No Age, and the Chromatics, featuring artwork that he
designed and produced himself. The moniker Hand Held Heart
came to encompass all of Roettinger’s creative output—curating,
publishing, editing, artwork—including his stints as the in-house
designer for the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCIArc), art director for LA–based fashion magazine JUNK, a variety
of projects for clients such as Yves Saint Laurent and MIT Press,
and most obviously, his ongoing work in the music industry. As
Rolling Stone’s 2009 Album Designer of the Year, Roettinger has
created album artwork for Marc Bronson’s Uptown Funk, Childish
Gambino’s Because the Internet, and most recently, Florence + the
Machine’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. In 2013, Roettinger
was commissioned to design Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail album, which was nominated for a Grammy (his second nomination).
With friends, Roettinger was also responsible for celebrating
the now-legendary Colby Printing Press in LA, for which he created an official archives, curated an exhibition, and designed and
edited a beautiful catalogue.
sulki-min.com
handheldheart.tumblr.com
WALKER
channel.walkerart.org
March 15, 7 pm
March 22, 7 pm
Jon Sueda
Susan Sellers
(Stripe S.F.)
San Francisco, US
(Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2x4)
New York, US
Over his career, Jon Sueda has carved out a unique practice for
himself as a designer, curator, and educator—a practice that
has allowed him a curious perspective simultaneously creating
design, generating dialogue about the field, and helping shape
the designers of the future. Originally from Hawaii, Sueda has
bounced around the globe, working in California, Holland, and
North Carolina, and finally founding his design studio, Stripe, in
2004. Since then he has created work for a variety of cultural clients such as Chronicle Books, the New York Times Magazine, the
Architecture Association (London), and REDCAT Gallery. For seven years, Sueda served as director of design for the CCA Wattis
Institute for Contemporary Arts, creating all of their exhibition
graphics, catalogues, and branding. He is also the art director of
Exhibitionist magazine, a journal “by curators, for curators”; coeditor of Task Newsletter, a journal of design; and a co-organizer of
AtRandom events, a “community-sponsored public gathering of
designers, artists, writers, and researchers within the Los Angeles
area.” Sueda is currently the chair of the MFA design program at
the California College of the Arts.
As a curator, Sueda creates shows that endeavor to contextualize aspects of the design field. His most recent exhibition, All
Possible Futures (SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco), tackled the subject of speculative design, examining the conditions
in which graphic designers are able to create work outside of the
typical client-based relationship. Featuring an international range
of practitioners, the show and its accompanying catalogue have
been highly influential, mapping the connections between speculative fiction, academic investigation, think-tank innovation, and
contemporary art.
From her early career working with Dutch studios Total Design and
UNA to cofounding a preeminent global design agency to teaching
at the Yale University School of Art to her recent appointment at
the world’s third most-attended museum, Susan Sellers has kept
herself at the epicenter of some of the world’s most exciting design and cultural scenes. She has actively explored issues as varied
as data visualization, screen-based technologies, critical design,
material culture, brand development, and craft. In 1994, Sellers
cofounded 2x4, an agency with offices in New York, Madrid, and
Beijing. Its massive output includes anything from brand work for
Vitra to in-shop displays for Prada, environments for Nike, identity work for the Brooklyn Museum, pattern work for Kate Spade,
and the design of a 7-screen cinematic experience for Kanye West.
On top of her work at 2x4, Sellers was recently appointed head of
design at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she will oversee
a team of designers, installers, and architects to execute the full
range of the institution’s design needs, including print materials,
gallery installations, and signage. In March 2016, the institution
will unveil its newly designed brand—Sellers’s Insights lecture
will be her first public presentation of what should be a fantastic
new identity.
Sellers is also one of the core faculty members of the MFA
graphic design program at the Yale University School of Art, where
she helps shape one of the most prestigious design programs in
the world. She has written about design for such publications as
Eye, Design Issues, and Visible Language and her work has received countless awards.
stripesf.com
2x4.org
WALKER
channel.walkerart.org
You will need:
To access the webcast:
1. Strong Internet connection (at least 2 MB/second
downloading speed; 5 MB would be best)
2. An up-to-date web browser (we recommend Firefox,
Chrome, or Safari)
3. A PC or Mac.
4. Depending on your group size: A large flat screen TV/
monitor, a projector, a screen
5. Speakers
1. Point your browser to channel.walkerart.org a few minutes prior to the start time (7 pm in all cases). The webcast is free of charge.
2. Hit fullscreen!
3. This is a live webcast and may not be recorded.
Videos of the talks will be archived on
channel.walkerart.org shortly after the events.
Contact us:
If you have any questions regarding the webcasts, or
would like further information on any of the speakers,
please contact us at [email protected].
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