conferences

“Outlaws and Icons” is the theme of this year’s Gravity Free design conference, which kicks off tomorrow at Chicago’s Spertus Institute. The multidisciplinary affair brings together disparate design stars, from Chip Kidd and Brian Collins to Rafael de Cárdenas and Margie Ruddick. Jonathan Alger of C&G Partners will be on hand to moderate, probe, and query. And the big finish? A Wednesday afternoon keynote address by George Lois. Register here.

Back in New York City, the month of May brings flowers and the Parsons Festival, 20 spring days worth of exhibitions, symposia, panel discussions, critiques, and special projects that celebrate the next generation of artists and designers. There are graduate shows a-plenty, beginning with tomorrow’s fashion benefit honoring designer Donna Karan and entrepreneur Sheila C. Johnson.

On Wednesday, all eyes will be on the D-Critters at the School of Visual Arts as the MFA Design Criticism program presents “Eventually Everything,” its third annual conference. Change Observer co-editor Julie Lasky will moderate a day of presentations from the likes of media historian Stuart Ewen, Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, and the whipsmart student speakers. MFA candidate Anna Kealey’s talk sound particularly tasty. “I’ll be presenting my thesis topic ‘Unpacking the Pastoral Food Package,’” she tells us, “which discusses the role designers have played in perpetuating myths about how food is produced in the United States.” Yum! And save room for talks from her classmates, who’ll tackle topics including the implications of Anthropologie and the AK-47.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

As Chip Kidd’s crackerjack TED talk—“Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is.”—delights design junkies and design neophytes the world over, we asked the man himself to tell us about the challenge of distilling a career’s worth of memorable book jackets into a brief yet memorable and cohesive (and funny!) presentation—delivered whilst wearing a “Lady Gaga skanky mic,” no less; his overall TED experience; and how his distinctive sartorial flair was received by an audience that tends to view khakis as dress-up pants.

How did you approach the task of distilling what you do into a few minutes (or at least 17 minutes and 16 seconds)?
That was the hardest part, because I’m usually given anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour or more to speak, and I use it! And what I don’t use is notes or a script of any kind. But TED of course has strict time limits (which they do for very good reasons) and encourages all speakers to write out what they’re going to say, memorize it, and rehearse, edit, rehearse, edit, rehearse, etc. So that is what I did, and boy am I glad. I knew I wanted to start with the ‘Apple’ lesson (which has nothing to do with Mr. Jobs’ company, in case that was unclear) and end with 1Q84. It was what went in between that I really sweated over. I cut a lot from the first version and along the way.

What was the most exciting/surreal/strange aspect of your TED experience?
I’d say all of it. More specific: meeting and talking with Al Gore; rehearsing in the theater and finally understanding how big it was; thinking that I would not need a speaking coach but reluctantly meeting with Gina Barnett and getting 100% more confident because of her. She is amazing.
Read more

Innovative. Refreshing. Full of ideas. Three ways to describe both TED and Chip Kidd. The charismatic graphic designer, author, editor, Batman expert, and rock star made his TED debut at the recent Full Spectrum conference in Long Beach, California, thanks to “guest curators” Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell, who organized a smashing session entitled “The Design Studio” that featured creative superstars including architect Liz Diller, Metropolitan Museum of Art director Tom Campbell, and IDEO’s David Kelley, bracketed by the whimsy of Maira Kalman‘s tapestry-cum-stage set and the wisdom of John Hodgman, who provided interstitial interrogations on design classics such as Philippe Starck‘s Juicy Salif citrus squeezer (“When you fall asleep it comes alive,” warned Hodgman. “Mr. Starck, I have revealed your terrible secret.”) In the leadoff spot was Kidd, who managed to bring the tech-heavy crowd to its feet by talking about the wonders of books: the analog kind, with dustjackets, odors, and, according to Kidd, “tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness—a little bit of humanity.” Treat yourself to his freshly posted TED talk:

“As a kid, I was quite disappointed to learn that there actually wasn’t a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” a prism-wielding Chris Anderson (pictured) told the freshly-seated crowd of 1,500 yesterday in Long Beach, California. Moments before, he had angled his chunk of glass just so and bathed the stage in a temporary radiant rainbow. “But now, we’re going to follow that ray of light to something possibility more valuable: wonder, insight, and those dangerous little sparks with a life of their own that we call ideas. It’s time for TED.” The theme of the 2012 confab, which runs through Friday morning, is “full-spectrum,” a nod to the expanded ambition and scope of the dozen sessions that tackle topics ranging from quantum physics (from kickoff TED talker Brian Greene) and the future of healthcare (surgeon-journalist Atul Gawande) to secrets (PostSecret’s Frank Warren) and the industrious, intimate constructions of bird nests (photographer Sharon Beals). Stay tuned to UnBeige—and our Twitter feed—for TED highlights as we count down the minutes to tomorrow’s peek inside “The Design Studio.” Guest curators Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell have lined up an all-star session that includes the perpetually crowd-pleasing Chip Kidd, IDEO’s David Kelley, Metropolitan Museum of Art director Tom Campbell, and (swoon!) the one and only John Hodgman.

In a move that we hope will land him the network-TV variety show he so richly deserves, Chip Kidd will give a talk at this year’s TED Conference, which gets underway on February 27 in Long Beach, California. The charismatic author, editor, art director, book jacket designer, Batman expert, and rock star will lead off a March 1 session entitled “The Design Studio,” according to the program line-up released today. Kidd will be followed onto the TED stage by Andrew Bolton, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, who may shed some light into the global phenomenon that was “Savage Beauty” (he organized the McQueen blockbuster) or just help to get the audience thinking outside their boxy polos and khakis. Rounding out the session is IDEO founder and Stanford professor David Kelley, who is expected to address his passion for “unlocking the creative potential of people and organizations to innovate routinely.”

Meanwhile, New Yorkers have a couple of imminent opportunities to get their Kidd fix (and wouldn’t Kidd Fixx be a great name for that TV show?). Tomorrow evening, the Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art hosts an evening of Bat-Manga. Kidd will discuss the Japanese Bat-mania phenomenon, the basis for his 2008 book, amidst the museum’s current exhibit of original artwork and lavish cover art from the Batman-manga comics. And on Thursday, January 26, he’ll be on hand for “The Next Chapter,” an AIGA/NY-sponsored look at e-publishing dynamics. What does Kidd know about digital publishing and the future of the book? Absolutely nothing, so he’ll be moderating a panel of people who actually do, including Carin Goldberg, Craig Mod (500 Startups, Flipboard), and Jeremy Clark (Adobe).

New York’s Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) pulls out all the stops for its annual fashion symposium, and this year’s confab is even more star-studded than usual, as it will take place in the midst of the museum’s ambitious and exquisitely realized Daphne Guinness exhibition (on view through January 7). The couture maven herself is among the headliners of the two-day symposium, which begins next Thursday, November 3, with a conversation between Guinness and Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of the Museum at FIT. Subsequent sessions will tackle topics ranging from Jean Paul Gaultier and Standard Oil heiress Millicent Rogers to “vampire dandies” and how luxury goods like the Hermès Birkin have replaced living, breathing fashion icons. Featured speakers include designers Sophie Theallet and Joseph Altuzarra, Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Glenda Bailey, and Thelma Golden of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Check out the full symposium schedule and register here, then start planning what you’re going to wear (we’re debating between ostrich feathers or a kooky Courrèges ensemble that turned up in our grandmother’s attic).

Get out your fancy pens and draw an elaborate box around November 4-13. That’s Illustration Week, an event bonanza featuring exhibitions, talks, panel discussions, and parties that will draw out a crowd of people who don’t blink when faced with questions such as “Prismacolors or Copics?” The fun begins next Friday, November 4, as Parsons the New School for Design plays hosts to the third annual Pictoplasma Conference, which invites designers, illustrators, fimmakers and producers, artists, and character connoisseurs to discourse freely about the world of character-driven art and design. The two-day event features lectures by global superstars such as Siggi Eggertsson, Wooster Collective, Jon Burgerman (whose work is pictured above), and French-Swiss Technicolor enfants terribles Ben & Julia. The Society of Illustrators follows up that character-building bunch with a presentation on the history of illustration by Murray Tinkelman, an Illustrators Sketch Night featuring the musical stylings of the Half-Tones (illustrators Barry Blitt, Joe Ciardiello, and Michael Sloan, joined by guest guitarist Kenny Wessel), and an evening with children’s book icons and illustrators including Ted and Betsy Lewin and Jerry Pinkney. Check out the full schedule of events here.

Eager for the inside scoop on retrofitting the Manufacturers Hanover Trust building on Fifth Avenue (pictured) for retail use? Want to know how Beyer Blinder Belle restored the Beacon Theater? Fancy a peek inside the restored and renovated Gracie Mansion? Don’t miss “Living With History: Restoring, Redesigning, and Reviving New York’s Landmark Interiors,” which takes place tomorrow at the Museum of the City of New York. In showcasing some of the extraordinary projects aimed at bringing historic NYC buildings back to life, the half-day symposium will highlight the various and sometimes controversial approaches to preserving the past while accommodating the needs of modern life. The presenters include architectural historian Matt Postal, Frank Mahan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, designer Jamie Drake, and Franklin D. Vagnone, executive director of the Historic House Trust. UnBeige readers can register at the $25 member rate by clicking here and entering the discount code Living1022 at checkout.

Why and how does color motivate, trouble, persuade, and feed our spirits? How does Pantone decide upon the “color of the year” and does it involve alcohol—a mimosa, say, or a Bombay Sapphire martini—and/or a dartboard? Why do we feel giddy when walking by the Farrow & Ball emporium that recently opened a few blocks from UnBeige HQ (hint: paint colors like “Dead Salmon,” “Mouse’s Back,” and “Clunch”)? Answers to these questions and many more are on the agenda at Print magazine’s first ever Color Conference, a three-day confab that kicks off on Tuesday at the Art Directors Club in New York. Among the creative thinkers and experts in visual culture scheduled to “reveal their passion for color, their processes, and their ideas on how color connects us all” are Leatrice Eiseman of the Pantone Color Institute, Pentagram’s Eddie Opara, and Cooper-Hewitt director Bill Moggridge, whose tireless engagement with the design community leads us to believe that he has managed to transform his ground-breaking GRiD Compass laptop into some sort of time machine that allows him to be in many places at once. Sign up for the conference here and enter code UNBEIGEPCC to save $50 on the $595 registration fee. And whatever you do, don’t wear beige.

After 16 years in Berlin, the annual TYPO Design Conference is returning to London for a three-day inspirationfest and creative boot camp that kicks off on October 20. And don’t let the “typo” title fool you. Along with typography, the deliberately broad program will include aspects of visual communication, film, emerging media, design, education, technology, and information. “Our aim is for people to leave the event with strong talking points, controversies, new favorites and, most importantly, new perspectives and knowledge,” says conference director Robin Richmond. Among the speakers that will tackle this year’s theme of “places” are Neville Brody (Royal College of Art), Michael Bierut (Pentagram), Chip Kidd (Knopf), and—would you believe?—artist Lawrence Weiner. The agenda also has plenty of new faces (read: design minds to whom you haven’t already constructed elaborate shrines in your basement), such as the dynamic duo pictured at right. That’s Togbe Ngoryifia Céphas Kosi Bansah, King of Hohoe, Ghana, and designer Julian Zimmerman. King Bansah works as an automotive mechanic in Ludwigshafen, Germany, and governs his people in the African Volta region from there. As part of his undergraduate thesis, Zimmerman created a corporate identity for the king. Their joint presentation at last year’s TYPO Berlin Design Conference brought many delegates to tears and garnered standing ovations.
(Photo: Gerhard Kassner)