STEP inside design
Field Guide, Jan/Feb05
Chris Lopez
Latin name: Exerceo Noctivigus (actual Latin! to train, work, cultivate; and to wander by night)
Age: 34
Description:
Chris Lopez ran a full gamut of possibilities before settling on his current craft as an animator and video designer. A graduate of Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, he began his career creating interactive games, edged into art direction and then took a bold step back to school, studying motion graphics at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Chris now specializes in soup-to-nuts video and sound design of film intro sequences, commercials, trailers and music videos. His client credits include Tide, Qualcomm, Paramount Pictures and Comedy Central.
Voice:
Chris' work neatly straddles typography, graphics, animation and documentary. In his work for Imaginary Forces as a video designer, he found himself wondering: “Can design or typography stand on its own as a cinematic experience?” One of his reels explores this idea literally by creating a whole 3-D font out of PVC piping. A pair of disembodied blue hands cradles each letter in turn on a blank background; with a twist of the wrist, each letter moves from legible type to an abstracted form. “I wanted to ask: what is typography?” says Chris. “How do we read? And how is that affected by time-based work like film?”
Other reels reveal a darker political side: “American Weapons of Mass Destruction” begins with an agonizingly long tracking shot up a black spinal cord and ends with a growing rainstorm of black stars that morphs, subtly, into a barrage of spikes. Film credit sequences slice words through a universe of moody, abstracted forms, always suggestive of a film's atmosphere without ever placing a finger on its actual plot. “I think design is a good idea that becomes realized in a physical form,” Chris remarks. “Art holds design; it's not one or the other.”
Distinctive Markings:
Chris writes compulsively to gather his thoughts: “anything I can think of, anything that might be related. I'm just mapping my thoughts so I can refer back to them. I also start making stuff right away; I don't pin anything down or I'll get frustrated. In a few days of working open-ended, you notice that your unconscious is on to something. You start to trust and believe in that a little bit.”
Chris hails procrastination like an old friend. His mantra: “If there's plenty of time, there's no creativity.”
Habitat:
Chris works out of his apartment in Koreatown in Los Angeles. He describes it as a “1930s-era, streamlined modern apartment with wooden floors. It's inspirational because it's so well-designed--a real relic in L.A.” His workspace is lined with row upon row of chrome restaurant shelving. “I have so much gear - samplers, sound boards, drum machines - my space isn't the usual desk-with-a-computer.” He laughs. “I see it more like a little two-story house.”
Contact: xpez at comcast.net or xpez2000 at hotmail.com c: 213.361.0360 855 South Hobart Los Angeles CA 90005 www.cinegraphic.org
Spotted by: Rick Valicenti, 3st: “Over the years I have had the good fortune of working with a number of grad students in their studios; Chris is the first to really blow my mind. His short film work is the most graphically inventive, compelling and emotionally powerful work I have seen to date.”
Harsh Patel
Latin name: Vampirus Fantasticus Maxxximus
Age: 22
Description:
Like his work, Harsh resists labels with a clearly articulated passion. His design ranges from print to interactive to gallery pieces. He studied design in Austin but considers himself largely self-taught. For his next move, he's joining his friend Ryan Waller in Brooklyn at Thingmaking, an emerging art studio. Their client list is still largely under wraps, but current projects include work for various music labels and a skateboard company.
Voice:
Harsh likes unusual juxtapositions, strong colors and “dirty, torn-up stuff--things that feel natural, like you've just pulled it out of your pocket”. His work combines enigmatic wit and bold-face challenge, often in equal measure. He moves quickly through projects as his mood and admittedly-fickle attention span dictates. An earlier website, www.gutterlife.com, opens with a vaguely sinister story of high-school girls meeting for a movie. A line of 1960s yearbook headshots along the bottom links each girl to an unsettling, tantalizingly incomplete image: a view of her scary inner life? Her secret fears? The narrator's darkest urges towards her? Although Harsh's interests are moving on from web work, his current projects still excite the viewer with incompleteness and possibility.
Distinctive markings:
Harsh delights in mailing artwork and odd scraps of ephemera with his friends—the odder the better. He fondly recalls a receipt for a jar of peanut butter from one friend. Also, don't be offput by his first name: it's actually the Indian word for happiness.
Habitat:
Thingmaking is an airy workspace located in a stretch of old factories in Brooklyn. The studio is steps from the South Brooklyn Casket Company and a true-blue Italian restaurant for firemen, The Two Toms. It's fairly threadbare, aside from Ryan's recent inclusion of a ping-pong table. Mostly, though, its tenants prefer to keep it “empty and clean—a place to get work done.”
Contact: www.harshpatel.com , www.thingmaking.com Harsh is moving to Brooklyn right now, so no fixed phone # as yet. He's very responsive via email, however. Thingmaking Suite B302 232 Third Street Brooklyn NY 11215
Leigh Okies
Latin name: Unapologeticusdorkum
Age: 29
Description:
A successful, but mildly grumpy, costume designer, Leigh stumbled on design by taking a night class in illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Two years later, armed with a bulging portfolio and a firm commitment to her new calling, Leigh joined Ogilvy & Mather's Brand Integration Group (BIG). Currently she works on brand campaigns for Coca-Cola and Dove, focusing mostly on illustration, print and package designs.
Voice:
Leigh was drawn to design, she thinks, “because I needed to use my hands again—costume work can sometimes make you a glorified shopper. Now I stay off the computer as long as possible, just for pleasure's sake.” Her designs are awash in found bits of typography, line art, witty pairings of textures and mismatched, but oddly friendly images. She's proud of her work on Dove Canada's “Beyond Compare” campaign; a photography exhibit and accompanying book highlighting the beauty of ordinary women, the traveling show bypassed galleries for more democratic spaces like shopping malls and parks. “Good design should just be honest,” she remarks. She carries this sensibility into her personal projects, including the latest: a situationist activity book she's making with friends. She sticks to the group's little manifesto and tenets, like “No sarcasm”, “honesty will help”, and “no porn—porn's too easy”. Leigh unabashedly loves design, even (or especially) its functional and commercial aspects. “A museum is a dead space, a graveyard,” she notes. “But a billboard is a living space.”
Distinctive markings:
A favorite teacher at Art Center dubbed Leigh “the egg layer”. “I make a buncha-buncha things, then I pick out what I want,” she says. She warmly recalls a school assignment in which she had to make ninety versions of the same logo. As Leigh notes: “If you push yourself past what you think you know, and get things out of your system, you can get to the weird, really good stuff.”
Habitat:
Leigh describes her desk at BIG as “pretty intense. I have huge clean sweeps pretty often.” Her walls are papered with huge white pads, festooned with ongoing conversations with other BIG folk. On tap lately: an East - West Coast cholo graffiti debate, and a series of swooning love notes.
Contact: Leigh.Okies at ogilvy.com , 212.237.4705, c/o Ogilvy Worldwide 309 West 49th Street
New York, NY 10019
Spotted by: Helene Silverman: “When I first saw Leigh's work laid out on my kitchen table upon her arrival in New York, I was impressed by the energy and enthusiasm and love of design she exuded. I'm happy to see she's landed somewhere that she's valued and given space to add her quirky spark to projects for some 'serious' clients.”
National Forest (Steven Harrington and Justin Krietemeyer)
Latin name: Dopplerisimus Dos
Ages: Steven is 25, Justin is 26
Description:
As National Forest, Steven Harrington and Justin Krietemeyer collaborate on graphic design projects spanning from print, interactive, illustration and motion graphics. They studied together at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, a stone's throw from where both grew up. In only a year and a half, they've amassed an impressive client list including Rolling Stone, Showtime, Element Skateboards and record labels like Sony, Capital and EMI. Private projects include “Everybody Enjoys”, their first solo gallery show, featuring original illustrations filled with images of footloose, romping, everyday life.
Voice:
Steven and Justin are an unusual blend: old souls, filled with pure California fun. They're drawn to desaturated colors, roughened textures and unpretentious, joyful line art. Steven muses about giving print a tactile, aged feel, like a prized object: “We want our pieces to feel like a scan of something older, like there's an original out there, tucked under a bed, maybe.” Justin concurs, underlining the beauty of everyday things that their work highlights. His introduction to Everybody Enjoys sums it up well: “The images that we use in our work are things people have experienced, but may have forgotten. Sometimes it takes a pencil-rendering of girls in tube socks on roller-skatings hanging in a gallery for people to stop and remember how cool that really was.”
Distinctive markings:
Sharing a brain. Steven and Justin keep remarkably open minds and share ideas with uncanny fluidity. Very often one begins the project and the other finishes it. As Justin notes, “It's definitely become apparent that, when the two of us work on something, it's more than twice as good.” When doubtful of their whereabouts, check today's surf report or the local skateboard park.
Habitat:
National Forest works in a converted Pabst brewery in East Los Angeles, in a “weird industrial section of town,” says Steven. Their space is a huge loft with a silkscreener, a pile of vintage books from their local St. Vincent's--they especially dig “How to Draw” books by Ed Emberley--and a very thirsty plant on Steven's desk. Justin is little concerned and considering an intervention.
Contact: Ph 626.818.2028, www.nationalforest.com (steven at nationalforest.com , justin at nationalforest.com) National Forest 620 Moulton Avenue Suite 206 Los Angeles CA 90031
Spotted by: Helen Walters, IDANDA: “National Forest represents the new generation of designers for whom technology is nothing but another useful tool. As such, they use the computer only when they need to, combining it with elements they painstakingly create by hand to produce pieces of work that feel both timeless and bang up to date.”
Scott Ponik
Latin name: Hummus Yummus
Age: 27
Description:
A graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Scott worked as a designer for several years until joining the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis as a design fellow. At Walker he collaborates in a team of junior and senior designs on print and identity work, all of which support the museum's exhibits and multi-disciplinary performance schedule.
Voice:
Scott Ponik approaches his print and photographic work with an eye for reportage; images that bear the weight of the 'real' are his specialty. His designs begin thoughtfully and slowly, ruminating on the project until his response forms. His posters for the UCLA Festival of Books are a case-in-point: a richly colored, aged book floats in space, unbounded by any blocks of surrounding text. Nestled inside the book is a little antique car, or a bobby-pin: a found-object positively charged with storytelling power. Only a handwritten bookmark announces the actual festival name and dates. Scott draws ideas from all over, especially “reading texts about a project, or unrelated books - I've become a little obsessed with research.” He admires filmmaker Werner Herzog's adamant insistence on real-life detail, and designer Stephen Doyle's work: “It's simple in form, super-conceptual, with a really witty design,” Scott notes. “I don't think everything needs to be simplified, if it's not a simple problem or project.”
Distinctive markings:
Remember that flea market in Minneapolis? That fellow with the fedora pulled over his eyes, fingering the used books? He was eavesdropping on your conversation. Scott minds his manners, but he likes to position himself outside, among people and things, to see if an idea pops out.
Habitat:
Scott describes his desk at Walker as “messy-meticulous. I have this duality that comes from my dad, who was an engineer—his desk was all gridded out—and my mom. She was into drawing, the looser side of [thinking].” Scott compromises with a mountain range of paper-piles. He also collects printed materials, design pieces and photos by the dozens.
Contact: scott.ponik at walkerart.org or scotik at earthlink.net o: 612.375.7579 c: 310 968 1741, 1929 Fremont Avenue South #23 Minneapolis, MN 55403
Spotted by: Clive Piercy, PhD: “In my opinion, it's very unusual to sum up a young designer's work as sophisticated, but for me that is the best word to describe Scott Ponik. Great photography merges seamlessly with excellent design skills and a flawless typographic voice. I wish I'd been as good as him at that age.”
—Jude Stewart for STEP Inside Design,
2005
|
