Core77 Owns Up to the Great Tobias Wong Switch

When the guy to the left took the stage pretending to be Tobias Wong (the guy to the right) at Core77′s Design, Wit and the Creative Act, Stephanie’s BS radar blipped right away. However, this was a panel on design wit (more disturbing perhaps was the fact that the crowd of designers didn’t seem to get the joke). A few months later, Core77 has finally delivered the punchline. So who was this impostor?

Rama Chorpash, chair of the Undergraduate ID Dept. at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and a great designer to boot, did what can only be described as a pitch-perfect job of presenting Tobias’s work (and later answering, Q&A as Tobias, remaining authentic to the designs as well as the philosophical underpinnings of the Wong oeuvre.

You can watch video of the event for proof of his acting skills; Chorpash never breaks character, and neither does Wong (oh, how we wish we could say the same for Jimmy Fallon). Wong assumes Chorpash’s identity during the cocktail hour and praises Wong’s “genius,” a priceless little moment in design wit itself.

Also up, and every bit as funny, are videos from the rest of the presenters: Ze Frank, Paul Budnitz, Steven Heller and Kelly Dobson.

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