Speakers

Andrew Blauvelt

Andrew Blauvelt is Curator of Architecture and Design and Chief of Communications and Audience Engagement at the Walker Art Center, a contemporary arts museum in Minneapolis. From 1998-2010 he served as Design Director of the Walker, where he oversaw its in-house design studio, progressive cultural identity, and publishing programme.

As Curator of Architecture and Design, he has organized several major travelling exhibitions for the Walker on a variety of topics, including: Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life (2003), Some Assembly Required: Contemporary Prefabricated Houses (2005), Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes (2007) among others. In 2011, he co-organized the exhibition Graphic Design: Now in Production with the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.

His design projects have been featured in various magazines including, Print, Eye, Metropolis, I.D., Surface, Creative Review, and IDEA, as well as the books, Area (Phaidon), among others. He writes about design and culture for various publications including DesignObserver.com, Visible Language (USA), Emigré (USA), Eye (UK), IDEA (Japan), Items (The Netherlands), and Perspecta (USA).

Blauvelt serves on the National Board of Directors of AIGA, the professional association of design in the United States, and is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).


Christoph Keller

Christoph Keller is a founder and former owner/director of "Revolver - Archiv für aktuelle Kunst", a non-profit publishing house based in Frankfurt am Main, specialised in artists' books, exhibition catalogues, audio projects and artists' writings. Revolver has established itself globally as a publisher for young contemporary art, collaborating with the cutting-edge art institutions worldwide. Keller has edited about 200 individual books on contemporary art, and has designed/produced about 400 books. Keller as well published several texts on independent publishing within the context of contemporary art and other subjects in various international media.

Christoph Keller has organised and curated various exhibitions. Since 2001 he has been organising and curating "Kiosk - Modes of Multiplication", a travelling archive on independent publishing and design. "Kiosk" has been shown in 27 different institutions including Manifesta 4; The 25th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana 2003; The Istanbul Biennial 2005; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Kunst Werke, Berlin; ICA, London; Artists' Space, New York; MUDAM Luxembourg and Midway Contemporary, Minneapolis among others. In 2009 the entire archive became part of the Berlin Kunstbibliothek permanent collection.

He teaches and lectures regularly and has given talks and workshops at institutions such as IASPIS, Stockholm; Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam; Secession, Vienna; Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver; Zürcher Hochschule, Winterthur; ZKM, Karlsruhe; NAK, Aachen; Tate Modern, London; Platform Garantie, Istanbul and many others.

Since 2007 Christoph Keller curates and edits "Christoph Keller Editions" a series of artists' books published by JRP/Ringier, Zurich.

He lives and works as an editor, designer and curator in Stählemühle, Münchhöf, Bodensee, Germany. He runs an award-winning distillery for exquisitely fine fruit spirits and eau-de-vie (www.staehlemuehle.de).


Na Kim

Na Kim is a graphic designer working primarily with cultural clients on diverse projects. She studied product design in KAIST and graphic design in Hong-ik University, in Korea and from 2006-2008 participated in MA residency programme at the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, The Netherlands.

She occasionally works on her own autonomous self-initiated projects, including 'umool umool' or 'Blow-up' series and organized several exhibitions, 'WT at Neon', Lyon (FR) in 2007 and 'Starting from Zero', Seoul (KR) in 2008. Since 2009 she works as an editor and art-director of GRAPHIC magazine published in South Korea.

Na Kim participated in various exhibitions, including Milan Triennale Design Museum (IT), Design Beijing Typo '09 (CN), Graphic Design Festival Breda (NL), Different Ground (RUS), Template 2.0 (IR) and lectured and gave workshops at Gerrit Rietveld Academie (NL), ÉCAL (CH) or Hong-ik University (KR). Her work has been recently featured in Wallpaper* (UK), Grafik (UK), Gestalten Verlag (DE), AXIS (JP) among others. In 2008 Na Kim was selected as the 'Young Korean Design Leader'.

Na Kim lives and works in Amsterdam.


Kasia Korczak

Kasia Korczak has been interested in design primarily as a vehicle for producing and distributing content, in particular within publishing. She works primarily with printed matter and specialises in artist's books. She completed a BA in Fine Arts at London Metropolitan University and MA residency programme at the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem.

Kasia Korczak received the Grand Prix of the Brno Biennial in 2008 and Prix Fernand Baudin in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

In 2005, Korczak co-founded Slavs and Tatars (www.slavsandtatars.com), an artist collective whose work has been exhibited widely. Slavs and Tatars works across several media, disciplines, and, particularly, registers of culture, both high and low, with a common thread in the stories - both political and personal - of Eurasia. Slavs and Tatars works were acquired by the MoMA in New York.

Kasia Korczak lives and works in Poland.


Zak Kyes

Zak Kyes is a Swiss-American graphic designer working in London. Kyes formed the design office Zak Group in 2005 and Grégory Ambos joined as partner in 2012. Kyes joined the Architectural Association, London, as art director in September 2006. In 2008, he co-founded Bedford Press, an imprint of AA Publications.

Kyes has been awarded the Inform Award for Conceptual Design in 2011 and Zak Group was twice awarded the prize for the Most Beautiful Swiss Book in 2010. The studio's work has been included in the exhibitions Graphic Design Worlds (Triennale Design Museum, Milan, 2011), Wide White Space (CCA Wattis, San Francisco, 2011), Graphic Design for and Against Cities (Corner College, Zurich, 2009), and the 22nd International Biennial of Graphic Design (Brno, 2006).

Apart from studio projects, Kyes's critical practice encompasses publishing, curating, and site-specific projects for and with art institutions. As a curator Kyes organised the touring exhibition Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design (Architectural Association, Casco, Lux, IASPIS, Archizoom, BolteLang, 2007-2009) and Joseph Grigely, The Information Economy (NYABF, MoMA PS1, New York, 2010).

He currently teaches at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London and in the MA programme at ECAL (Ecole Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne).


James Langdon

James Langdon is an independent graphic designer and one of six founding directors of the exhibition space Eastside Projects in Birmingham, UK. Langdon's work as a designer is concerned with the mediation of art and ideas and is informed by an art education.

He has worked as a designer for institutions including Book Works, London; Sternberg Press, Berlin; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; and OCA, Oslo. He has lectured at Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht; the presentation of The Most Beautiful Swiss Books, Zurich; Typography Summer School, London; Platform Garanti, Istanbul; and Bold Italic, Saint-Lucas Visual Arts, Ghent.

James Langdon lives and works in Birmingham, UK.


Linked by Air

Linked by Air started as a partnership between Tamara Maletic and Dan Michaelson in 2005. The studio specializes in the production of public spaces and other networked structures, both physical and online. Through in-house programming and an emphasis on collaboration, the studio is able to approach design and technology as intertwined inventive processes. The studio is experienced in several media, including print, online, and installations in the environment.

In 2004 Dan and Tamara were awarded a Charles Nypels grant for research on embedded digital sign systems, in residence at the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Netherlands. While at the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Dan and Tamara collaborated on a couple of projects with Min and Sulki Choi. The studio's clients include the AIGA, ArtAsiaPacific, Do Ho Suh, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Museum of Modern Art, the Public Art Fund, Stroom Den Haag, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Yale University.


Karl Nawrot

Karl Nawrot (a.k.a. Walter Warton) is a French graphic designer and illustrator based in Amsterdam. He studied illustration in Lyon (FR) and between 2006-2008 participated in MA residency programme at the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, The Netherlands.

Drawing has been the centre point of his graphic works. Drawing practice has influenced both his personal and commissioned projects in which he embraced different forms of expression: type design (both hand-drawn and digital), model making (buildings and typographical modules) and illustrations (architectural representations and abstract drawings).

Karl Nawrot teaches at Gerrit Rietveld Academie.


Robert V. Novák

Robert V. Novák is a Czech graphic designer and typographer. He began as a lithographer in the printing, reproduction photographer and technical editor, he moved from craft to graphic design. He lives and works in Prague.

His domain is the visual layout of monographs and art exhibition catalogues; he works for the theatre, art museums, galleries and other cultural institutions. His work emphasises perfection and achievement in craftsmanship. He also deals with photography.


Jon Sueda

Originally from Hawaii, Jon Sueda has practiced design everywhere from Honolulu to Holland. After earning his MFA in Graphic Design from CalArts in 2002, he was invited to North Carolina State University to serve as a designer in residence, followed by an internship in the Netherlands with Studio Dumbar. In 2004, Sueda co-founded the design studio Stripe, which specializes in printed material for art and culture. He is also the co-editor of Task Newsletter, and the co-organizer of AtRandom events.

Sueda has lectured, taught workshops and has been visiting critic at: North Carolina State University, Raleigh; University of Hawaii; École des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, France; Rutgers University; University of Missouri, Saint Louis; Otis College of Art and Design; Art Center College of Design; Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI ARC); and California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

In 2007, Sueda relocated to the San Francisco area, where he is an Assistant Professor in the Graphic Design Programme at California College of the Arts (CCA) and Design Director at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. Most recently, he curated the exhibition The Way beyond Art: Wide White Space at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts.

Jon Sueda lives and works in San Francisco.


Sulki & Min

Sulki & Min is a collaboration between the Seoul-based graphic designers Sulki Choi and Min Choi. Sulki Choi studied communication design at Chungang University, Korea, and Min Choi at Seoul National University, Korea. Both earned their MFA degrees in graphic design at Yale University, New Haven, US. Since 2003-2005 they worked as researchers in design at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands.

Sulki & Min have worked mainly in the cultural area, collaborating with such institutions as Arko Art Center, Insa Art Space, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Festival Bo:m, and Hyunsil Culture Studies, on the design of graphic identities, marketing materials and publications.

In 2006, they held their first exclusive exhibition at the Gallery Factory in Seoul, for which they received the Art Award of the Year from the Arts Council Korea. They had their second exhibition in 2008 at Kimjinhye Gallery in Seoul. They have participated in many group exhibitions in Korea and abroad, including the ones at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2005), Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic (2006), Ninbgo Graphic Design Biennale, China (2006, 2008, 2010), Anyang Public Art Project (2007), Arko Art Center (2009), Platform Seoul (2009), Graphic Design Festival in Breda, The Netherlands (2010), Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (2010) and CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (2011).

In 2011, Sulki & Min were appointed as graphic designers of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a collaborative project initiated by the Guggenheim Foundation and BMW, for which they have created an interactive identity system based on on-line participation.

Both Sulki Choi and Min Choi teach graphic design and typography, at Kaywon School of Art & Design and the University of Seoul, respectively.


Jan van Toorn

Jan van Toorn studied graphic design at the Amsterdam school of printing (1948-1949) and the Institute of Arts and Crafts (later Gerrit Rietveld Academie) in Amsterdam (1950-1953). He has been a freelance designer in visual communication since 1957.

His radical teaching and practice were highly influential on the younger generation of Dutch designers. The emotional charge of van Toorn's designs stems from his interest in investigating visual meaning and the social role of the profession as opposed to purely practical requirements. He taught for many years graphic design and visual communication at various academies and universities in The Netherlands and abroad, including Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (1968-1985) and the Department of Architecture, Technical University Eindhoven (1982-1983). He was the head of the Multi-media Department of the State Academy of Fine Arts, Amsterdam (1987-1989).

From 1991-1998 he was director of the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, transforming it into an international postgraduate centre for fine art, design and theory. In 1989-2008 he was associate professor in the MA programme of graphic design, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (USA). Since 1972, he is member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).

Jan van Toorn lives and works in Amsterdam.