Christine's Design Blog

Always drawing himself with a pipe, Seymour Chwast, designer, illustrator and co-founder of Push Pin Studios with Milton Glaser back in the day, said that the pipe adds a special something. I must agree. This was at at the last big AIGA event of the season, entitled Seymour: The Obsessive Images of Seymour Chwast.

Brightly lit variations of Chwast’s art for the event lined the theatre, with different words floating out of the pipe.

Held at the new SVA Theatre, the event was a conversation between Chwast and Steven Heller. Heller started the evening off by saying that Push Pin Studios was something that young artists either strove to be, or rejected — and Heller was in the second group. There was much bantering between the two (Chwast: ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about (not hiring me for jobs)’), though I must admit that a lot of the time I wasn’t sure if they were really joking or having a battle of wills. Chwast seems to have a rather dry sense of humor — many of Heller’s questions were met with ‘why not?’ type responses. But whatever the dynamic of two’s relationship really may be, it was a lot of fun looking through all the selected images from Chwast’s book, Seymour: The Obsessive Images of Seymour Chwast.

My favorite part was at the end, when they treated us to a ‘surprise’ (earlier in the talk, Heller urged Chwast that they must hurry, ‘So we have enough time for the … the surprise at the end’ — ‘Oh, yes, the surprise’).

The surprise was that they brought out an easel so Chwast could draw things requested by the audience. They provided him with a smock (though he was using a magic marker — ‘what they used to call a magic marker,’ according to one of the two gentlemen, I forget which … though I thought they were still magic markers?). It was quite funny when Chwast showed mock modesty and retreated behind the easel to don the smock, like so:

See the arms fling about as he shrugs into it:

Buttoning up, I suppose:

And here we have a rhinoceros:

A cat/automobile (he couldn’t choose between two requests … or he saw an opportunity?):

And a shark who’s a fan of Darwin:

Some help from Steven Heller in drawing a portrait of Heller:

And my personal favorite, the last drawing, which was of ‘sadness’ (who also has legs):

Aside from the excitement of the conversation, the night was like a who’s who of the design world. My volunteer friends and I saw some of our professors from Pratt (I saw my former typography instructor, Herman Schaper), former employers/co-workers, designers from Pentagram including Michael Bierut (my volunteer friend Ann used to intern there and recognized many faces), my fellow Random House intern Livia (whose supervisor is on the AIGA board and brought her along) — and my personal favorite, Chip Kidd, who had his book signed by Seynour Chwast:

Chip was nice enough to let me trouble him for his signature, which wasn’t just any signature, but an amazing illustration of Batman:

I also grabbed Mark Byron, who coordinates all the volunteers and such for these events, for a photo, since I won’t be seeing him until the next season starts. Mark is such a sweet guy and does such a wonderful job.

It’s a pity that the events have to stop during the summer, but I’m sure next year there will be lots more exciting things coming our way.

AIGA/NY
Seymour: The Obsessive Images of Seymour Chwast
Tuesday, June 16 @ 6:30 p.m.
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St.

Designer, illustrator and painter Seymour Chwast, will be discussing his latest book, Seymour: The Obsessive Images of Seymour Chwast, with good ol’ Steven Heller at this AIGA event, held at the School of Visual Arts Theatre. I haven’t learned too much about Chwast so far, but I’m very excited to be volunteering at this event. I do know that he is married to renowned designer Paula Scher and started Pushpin Studios with Milton Glaser, so tomorrow night we will definitely be in the presence of greatness.

It appears that they are still registering people at these prices:
$30 AIGA members
$20 AIGA student members
$40 General public

(Next time, be sure to volunteer so you can get in free of charge while also meeting other amazing volunteers!)

For more information, go here.

So as I mentioned before, on Wednesday I attended the First Annual SVA Designer as Author Thesis Forum at the SVA Theater on W 23rd Street. I attended the first session and headed back for the third and last session after my Electronic Page Design class.

My class arrived early, registered, and received our Moleskine gifts. When it was time to file into the auditorium, we took the first row, and I made my way down to the end of the row. I saw Milton Glaser sitting directly across the aisle from me, but quickly averted my eyes for fear that I would begin staring. Much to my chagrin and confusion, Nina and Stephanie were trying to take a photo of me, but I stupidly refused until I realized that we were not-so-discreetly taking photos ‘with’ the venerable Mr. Glaser. For my non-design friends, Mr. Glaser is the famed designer of the I Heart New York campaign, and is also the reputedly tough critic on whom the character of Ego is based in Pixar’s Ratatouille. He used to be a food critic/restaurant reviewer of some sort, so this makes perfect sense. He is, in fact, aware that the character is based on him, according to this interview.

So, courtesy of Nina’s iPhone, here are me and Steph, then me and Nina, who switched seats with Steph to partake in the paparazzi opportunity. I believe the president of the program was sitting behind us, laughing, though I can’t be 100% positive that he was laughing about us … It looks like Steven Heller is trying to peek into the photograph above Stephanie and my heads.

Milton Glaser moderated the first session, and Steve Haslip was the first student to present. The material presented at the forum is, I believe, confidential, so I won’t get too much into it. I was, however, blown away by some of the projects. I particularly enjoyed Kristina Critchlow’s Swap Hive and Steve Smith’s Tiny Hands.

Kristina’s idea was to take advantage of bartering, such as one’s graphic design skills for another’s web design skills. This is very handy, particularly for students, but some professionals in the audience also expressed approval, saying that bartering happens all the time, people are just unaware of it.

Steve Smith, considered ‘the department’s comedian’ (Nina reported that Lara told her that he used to be a stand-up comedian) presented during the third session. My particularly favorite part of his project was Compulsive Anecdotes, a hotline which you call during those moments when you HAVE to tell somebody something, but there’s no one around. He played clips of real anecdotes, and Lara, who snuck in from her coordinating duties during his presentation and coincidentally sat right next to me, exchanged a great laugh with me when the last recording (admittedly recorded by Steve himself) said, ‘And since then, I’ve learned that it’s called sharting…’ I enjoyed his banter with Steven Heller during the Q&A for his project, as well. Steven Heller is actually very amusing, too. Toward the end he said, ‘You know, Steve, I can say that after standing up here with you, I feel closer to you.’ And so Steve held his arms out for a hug and Steven Heller said, ‘No.’

It was pretty magical being there for the third session, because the faculty and audience were all getting eager for the celebrations afterward. The sense of community and encouragement was very thrilling, and I could taste the anticipation in the students after over a year of hard work.

Oh, and Allan Chochinov, co-creator of Core77 was there the entire day, and gave the closing remarks. He was pretty great and said lots of things of which I took note (will have to get back to that some other post), but he was also very insightful throughout the critiques.

Here is a photo also from Nina’s iPhone of him in the front row with the pen, and behind him are Steven Heller and Lita Talarico (and the person in red on the right would be me):

Another marvelous thing was getting to meet everybody. Aside from Stephanie, Nina and I accosting Milton Glaser after the first session, so that they could tell him that we are fans and that he is amazing while I just stared and smiled with my mouth open (he actually looked at me quizzically), I approached Steven Heller and very inarticulately told him that I am a fan and thanked him for the wonderful work he does. Then, after having a few of the finger sandwiches, I enjoyed talking to the students. It was particularly great talking to Gustavo Garcia, whose project was called Susu, a personalized art printing service. It was clear that there were so many ideas bursting out of him. It also felt nice that I could join in with my classmate Armaan in asking questions and offering suggestions, and we were able to carry a conversation with a fellow designer. While I know that I have a lot left to learn, it’s encouraging to feel like I’ve got something going on to make such a coversation possible. I do hope that one day I can get into this program, and I know it will be very competitive … but for now, it was enough to be inspired by the class of 2009. Congratulations to our beloved Lara and everyone else who made it all possible.

There will also be an exhibition of the thesis projects in May, which you should check out if you’re in the area.

Here are some parting photos of the event’s printed material. Grabbing the students’ beautifully designed business cards was another highlight.