Moderated by Alice Twemlow
Imagine a new line of products that screw on to the tops of water bottles. They are made of shiny white injection-molded polypropylene with pale blue detailing, and their packaging bears the logo Avien+PLUS in red type. One is an "energy capsule" that dispenses vitamins into the water, another converts a bottle into a personal mister, and the third is a mini battery-operated humidifier. These add-ons are designed to fit the screw thread of a single brand of water. So while they might be sold to impulsive consumers at the checkout counter, the products could also be given away by a bottler to nurture customer loyalty. It's not that hard to picture, is it?
What might take a moment longer to register is that this savvy line of accessories is the work of an undergraduate design student. The surprise comes not because the objects are so finessed and the discernment of this narrow but untapped niche so keen, but because, naively, one supposes that the distance between the academy and the marketplace is somewhat wider than Avien+PLUS says it is.
Whether design schools should prepare students directly for the marketplace or whether they should provide a three-year-shaped space for the development of more abstract, even fantastical thinking (because by and large this is the only chance the students will get) has been debated as long as design has been taught. Both pedagogical approaches were evident in the hundreds of entries to the 2004 Student Design Review, juried by graphic designer Art Chantry, illustrator and children's book author Maira Kalman, and architect Lyn Rice.
Of the 20 winning projects, there were several similar to the Avien+PLUS range—clever, polished, and responsive to market-focused briefs. But there was also room for Additional, a "parasitic" brand that adheres to existing clothing through the addition of red thread and a label. In its own way, this no-brief conceptual critique of branding, which verges tantalizingly on art project, is just as market-savvy as the water bottle add-ons.
Another hot-button issue in design education centers on the extent to which schools should emulate the kinds of cross-disciplinary exchanges currently informing production in the real world. As many of the entries attest, the students are well ahead of the game. Whether through fruitful collaboration with friends in other departments or schools, the selection of diverse thesis committees, or the possession of broad-ranging skill sets, students venture beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries with confidence.
Just as their current proclivities may be driving the way design schools are structured, so, to some extent, might students also dictate the way future Student Design Reviews are conducted. It quickly became evident in the course of the judging that the labels under which entries were initially lumped—product design, industrial design, graphic design, and other—would not hold up. As Rice observed, "We realized that these projects could not be confined within conventional design groups—that judging by category no longer made sense. The students established the ground rules and we critiqued the projects without regard to discipline. Animations competed directly with battery-operated body massagers, self-powered composters, and vein-reading devices."
Jurors
Art Chantry
A Tacoma native, graphic designer Art Chantry graduated from Western Washington University and moved to Seattle in 1978. In the early 1990s, he began designing ephemera for bands, theater companies, and political benefits. Over the past 30 years, Chantry has produced a body of work that includes some 5,000 logos, 3,000 posters, and 500 record and CD covers. His witty, countercultural designs have appeared in numerous magazines and the books Instant Litter (Real Comet Press, 1985), Some People Can't Surf: The Graphic Design of Art Chantry (Chronicle Books, 2001), and Swag: Rock Posters of the '90s (Abrams, 2003), among others. His work was featured in a solo retrospective exhibition at The Seattle Art Museum in 1993, as well as in the exhibitions "Instant Litter" at the City Museum in St. Louis and "Art Chantry: Greatest Hits, Vol. 1" at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York. It is also in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. From 1983 to 1998, Chantry taught senior-level design at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle. In 2000, he moved to St. Louis where he now resides and runs his firm, Art Chantry Design Co.
Maira Kalman
Maira Kalman was born in Tel Aviv and came to America in 1954. She first became known for collaborations with her husband, the late Tibor Kalman, with whom she founded the award-winning graphic design studio M&Co in 1979. Continuing their work, Kalman published (un)Fashion (Abrams, 2000), a book about the way the non-Westernized world attires itself, and Colors, an anthology of Tibor's work as editor of that magazine. Kalman has written and illustrated a dozen children's books, including the popular Max series, Next Stop Grand Central (Penguin Putnam, 1999), Fireboat (Penguin Putnam, 2002), and most recently, Pete in School (Putnam, 2003). Her illustrations appear regularly in The New Yorker and The New York Times. Venturing into three dimensions, Kalman has designed mannequins for Ralph Pucci and fabrics for Isaac Mizrahi and Kate Spade, and created sets for the ballet Four Saints in Three Acts for Mark Morris Dance Group. She also continues to design watches and products for the Museum of Modern Art under the M&Co name. One of her side projects is the Rubber Band Society, a group bound together by their love of rubber bands, which she cofounded with Alex Melamid in 2001. Kalman is on the board of the New York chapter of the AIGA and teaches graduate design at the School of Visual Arts. She lives in New York City with her faithful dog, Pete.
Lyn Rice
Lyn Rice is a principal of the New York-based architecture firm OpenOffice, which he codirects with Galia Solomonoff. Dedicated to open exchange among artists, designers, and specialists, the six-person firm has completed a diverse range of architecture works and multimedia installations. Rice was the principal designer of the public art and exhibition master plan for Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport and the touring exhibition "Beyond the Catwalk: The Fashion Show as Performance Art," which won a Design Distinction in I.D.'s 2004 Annual Design Review. Currently, he is principal designer for the Johnson Center for Design and Kellen Archives at Parsons School of Design. Rice was a partner-in-charge of Dia:Beacon and has collaborated with Diller + Scofidio on CoreCut, retail prototypes for Shiseido Japan, and with artist Ben Rubin on "All the News," a permanent multimedia installation for Renzo Piano's The New York Times building. A licensed architect since 1988, Rice has a master's degree in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University and lectures widely on tactical design approaches in contemporary architecture, art, and planning. He has taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and serves as an adjunct professor of architecture at the Cooper Union. He lives in lower Manhattan.
Alice Twemlow — Moderator
Alice Twemlow consults on matters relating to design, visual culture, and their histories. She contributes to design periodicals including The Architect's Newspaper, Eye, Grafik, Print, Step, and I.D. She is the author of Style City: New York (Thames and Hudson, 2003), a guest critic at Yale's MFA graphic design program, and a senior lecturer in History of Graphic Design and Critical Thinking at Parson's School of Design. She is also guest program director of the GraficEurope Conference that will take place in Berlin in October 2004. Twemlow has a master's in design history from a program run jointly by the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. She was program director and editor at the AIGA for four and a half years, during which time she was responsible for eight national design conferences. She now serves on the board of the AIGA New York. She lives in Brooklyn.
View the 2004 winners.
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