World's leading designers come together at Walker Art Center for new series this March

Insights Design Lecture Series is copresented annually by the Walker and AIGA Minnesota.

January 16, 2017

Insights Design Lecture Series 2017 Brings World’s Leading Designers to Walker Art Center

MINNEAPOLIS, January, 2017—The acclaimed Insights Design Lecture Series, copresented annually by the Walker Art Center and AIGA Minnesota, returns March 7–28, 2017. This year’s series features five leading designers: Google creative lead Rob Giampietro (New York), illustrator Andy Rementer (Philadelphia), social practice and design studios Office of Culture & Design / Hardworking Goodlooking (New York, Manila), and editorial designer Richard Turley (New York), currently at Wieden + Kennedy and formerly of Bloomberg Businessweek and MTV.

INSIGHTS DESIGN LECTURE SERIES 2017

Tuesdays, March 7-28, 7:00 pm

Walker Art Center

Tickets

$24 ($19 Walker and AIGA members; $10 students)

Series Package: $72 ($57 Walker and AIGA members; $30 students)

Tickets on sale now. Ticket package includes all four Insights lectures. Purchase online, visit the Walker box office, or call 612.375.7600.

After-Lecture Receptions

Directly following each lecture, attendees can meet the designers and chat with fellow design lovers in the Walker’s new Bazinet Main Lobby.

Watch Anywhere: Insights Viewing Parties

The Insights lectures will be webcast live and archived on the Walker Channel. Those who can’t make it in person this year can consider having an Insights Viewing Party with a group of friends and send in comments and questions for the speakers via Twitter (#Insights2017).

March 7

ROB GIAMPIETRO (NEW YORK)

Google Design

What can interaction designers learn from a stonecutter? How can design be understood as an act of translation? How might the Sapir Whorf hypothesis apply to content management systems? When must we learn to unbuild, instead of building? Designer and writer Rob Giampietro lives these questions, consistently drawing connections between disparate design fields over the course of his diverse career. In his current position as creative lead and design manager for Google (New York), Giampietro’s mission is to infuse an appreciation for design into Google’s culture, and by extension, the company’s billions of users. He and his team are responsible for communicating major Google design initiatives, such as Material Design (Google's expansive interface program, inspired by tangible interactions with paper, light, layering, and movement) and Google Fonts (their open-source collection of digital typefaces).

Before joining Google, Giampietro spent much of his career inhabiting the art and culture sectors, designing for cultural institutions, and writing about design in both pragmatic and esoteric ways, often commissioned by independent visual culture journals such as Dot Dot Dot, Mousse Magazine, and Kaleidoscope. From 2010 through 2015, Rob was a Principal partner at renowned New York design studio Project Projects where he headed up many of their interactive initiatives; and between 2003 and 2008, he led his own firm, Giampietro+Smith, creating work for clients such as Knoll, Target, and others. For his Insights lecture, Giampietro will give us a glimpse into his idiosyncratic synthesis of design ideologies while offering a look into the evolving design culture at Google.

design.google.com

linedandunlined.com

Google's SPAN reader, edited by Rob Giempietro and Amber Bravo, 2016

March 14

ANDY REMENTER (PHILADELPHIA)

Illustrator

Andy Rementer is an illustrator and painter whose work has been featured in a number of high-profile brands and publications, from Apartamento magazine to the New York Times, Wired to Lacoste. Rementer honed his particular style while studying at Fabrica in Treviso, Italy. He has stated in interviews that his colorblindness inevitably brings him back to his frequently used bright hues, no matter how hard he tries to adopt a muted palette. This has become vital to his output— the pastel and poppy color schemes camouflaging the prevalence of loneliness, isolation, and ambivalence in his work. His projects often subvert or expand their intended format, whether a furniture catalogue masquerading as a comic book or a set of postage stamps that investigates the decidedly un-epistolary phenomenon of online dating. Rementer will talk us through his practice and give us a glimpse into his collaborations with some of the world's most celebrated brands.

andyrementer.com

Friends Poster, Andy Rementer

Walkers, Amdy Rementer, 2012

March 21

CLARA BALAGUER (MANILA, PHILIPPINES) & KRISTIAN HENSON (NEW YORK)

Office of Culture & Design / Hardworking Goodlooking

How can the act of publishing be democratized in developing countries? How can local vernaculars be celebrated in the face of globalized aesthetics? What is the cultural significance of EXTREME DROP SHADOWS? The Office of Culture and Design is a studio based in Manila, led by artist Clara Balaguer. Running in parallel to the OCD, Hardworking Goodlooking is a publishing and design practice Clara leads with designer Kristian Henson. Balaguer describes the OCD as “a social practice platform for artists, designers, writers & assorted projects in the developing world.” With their wide network of collaborators, Balaguer and Henson embrace contemporary art and design as necessary tools for progress with the hopes of affecting real change. This occurs by way of social innovation experiments, workshops, conferences, events, and feasts. Projects include product development initiatives designed to enhance the livelihoods of Filipino craftsmen as well as microgrants that they receive and redistribute.

Frequently produced in cottage industry presses in the streets of Manila and utilizing the most DIY production values, Hardworking Goodlooking's books embody the uncertain and insecure task that authors face, when trying to self publish critical content in the developing world. They also lead book-making workshops in which they teach people how to edit, design, and print their own books in a week or less, using inexpensive and readily available tools

In their lecture, Balaguer and Henson will present case studies from their practice thus far, and discuss the fraught and fractured history of Filipino graphic design, which Balaguer recently wrote about in her essay “Tropico Vernacular” for Triple Canopy magazine.

officeocd.com

Research, Office of Culture and Design / Hardworking Goodlooking

March 28

RICHARD TURLEY (NEW YORK)

Wieden + Kennedy

Wherever Richard Turley goes, he figures out a way to not have to play by the rules. Best known as the art director who reimagined Bloomberg Businessweek magazine as an edgy, design-forward publication, Turley recently ended a stint as MTV’s first senior vice president of visual storytelling and deputy editorial director.

At MTV Turley oversaw a horde of designers whose basic mission was to create “strategic anarchy,” personifying the corporation’s desire for self-critique and, in his words, “de-brand”-ing the network. The studio generated new TV idents and bumps on a daily basis, using whatever content they felt was appropriate as long as it was immediate and of the moment. Turley has described the approach as a form of social media, simply executed through the channel of a broadcast network. The segments range from abstract chaos to surreal mundanity, live social media conversations with viewers to bluntly worded statements directly responding to current events.

In his new position as executive creative director of content and editorial design at Wieden + Kennedy, Turley will bring his unique talent for visualizing ideas to the world of branding.

richardturley.tumblr.com